It probably is, but it would be very misleading to say that my post implied I thought that was the reason. I explicitly said I didn’t know how one would decide which of the two candidates was more Christian in the personal lives.
But then, I don’t imagine you think there is any reason to vote for Bush that is NOT stupid, right? 
I fail to see the dilemma. The body of Scripture that informs the Christian faith is large and diverse enough that you can find just about any message in it you choose. Ergo, many parts of the tradition contain logic that is mutually exclusive, and requires qualifiers like “The Lord moves in mysterious ways” to make any sense of whatsoever. Since Christians have been dealing with internal inconsistency and contradiction for roughly 2000 years now, how is it that Bush’s brand of evangelical Christanity presents any sort of unanticipated paradox?
**Renob[/b}:
Ah hah! You’re not being specific as to which programs we’re talking about, and yet you dismiss all publicly-funded programs as doing nothing but “victimize” the poor. Healt care, education and job training victimize the poor? And you call them all “wasteful” not because you’ve done the math in each case, but because you’re conservative philosophy defines them as wasteful so you can denigrate them. Most people who recieve cash assistance do so for a short period of time. Programs which do a better job of lifting people up from poverty and forstalling the cycle of dependancy need to be more sophisticated, but conservatives hate nuance and see everything in black-and-white. And a truly effective anti-poverty might be more expensive. Would you be willing to pay for it if it showed such promise or would you continue to demand yet another tax cut? (Oh, and I don’t see how it’s a “theological gyration” to oppose giving less help to the poor when Jesus clearly tells us to to help the poor. That may be lacking in nuance but it’s hardly a distortion).
well I view rhetoric like this as not focused on helping the poor but on finding (parroting) rationalizations for getting more money for themselves. We all know that people don’t give their tax cuts to charity dollar-for-dollar. And tax cuts don’t automatically create jobs with complete reliability–there’s a point of diminishing returns. And not everyone who is poor is poor solely because tax rates (didn’t Reagan already cut taxes?) have destroyed the jobs they might have gotten. Jesus never came out against familiy planning, and yet conservtive opposition to it is a major cause of poverty, but directly and in terms of overseas job loss.
And yet I support supply-side economics as part of a compassionate and practical set of social policies. It’s the attitude of many conservatives that I have a problem with. “My taxes, my taxes, my taxes, my opponnet wants to raise your taxes, liberals are all socialists who hate America”, etc. If at worst liberals are naively misguided then a wise, compassionate person should be able to set them straight without displaying so much contempt and hostility as we often hear from the right.
As for foreign policy, no one is suggesting that we actually turn the other cheek to Osama bin Laden, but we needed to be much more compassionate and helpful to those innocent Afghanis whose lives we disrupted and to the Muslim world in general. We shouldn’t have let our anger over 9/11 turn into such unbridled enthusiasm for “kicking ass” and contempt and hostility for anyone who isn’t as bloodthirsty as we have become, like the French. We didn’t invade Iraq because we had to, but in order to satisfy our thirst for revenge. Using military force and/or brutal interrogation techniques is sometimes neccessary, but only as a last resort. That wasn’t the case in Iraq and Abu Garib. Christ’s message boils down to good will begats good will, and yet when the whole World is angry at us for our arrogant behavior, our response is to hate the whole World.
well, a lot of people do think that the US is a “Chritian nation” and therefore the government should enforce Christian beliefs like the “sanctity” of marriage and the need to “acknowledge” God in our official oaths, even as they denigrate Christian ideals such as peace and loving our neighbors and helping the poor.
The only problem with this is that the government policies you espouse have not done what you think they should. We’ve already seen that tax cuts targeted to the rich have not created jobs. The higher tax Clinton years had both higher job creation and less poverty. Repeal of the estate tax (which I bet you support) would cut charitable giving between 3.6 and 6 billion dollars.
Cite Another from OMB Watch
I can’t find much about overall giving, but I did find that giving in 2002 barely kept up with inflation, and certainly did not increase as a result of the tax cut. So, while you hew to the line that tax cuts help the poor, the facts give us a different story. Surely you noticed the recent articles showing how poverty has increased in the past few years? I think Jesus would be more interested in the actual impact of the tax cuts, not the supp[y side theories about what the impact should have been.
BTW, as someone who is not and never has been Christian, I kind of resent the implication that giving is inherently Christian, and that a policy of government assistance to those in need will make this a Christian country.
Well, I am a Christian, and I also strongly support isolationism in foreign policy. Ergo, my response to 9/11 would primarily involve actually listening to the stated goals of the terrorists, which in many respects correspond with what I think we should be doing. They want us out of Saudi Arabia, and to stop supporting corrupt ME regimes and Israel? Fine by me. I would have immediately pulled us out of the ME, cut any sort of support to Israel (both of which I would support even if al-Qaeda were out of the picture), and focused on fortifying our domestic security. At the same time, as soon as OBL and his companions were identified as the source of the attack, I would have demanded that Afghanistan hand over those immediately responsible; if they refused, then would be the time to attack. However, as soon as OBL et al. were caught or killed, I would have withdrawn our forces completely. Forcible nation-building is a supremely bad idea.
It’s the “et al.” part where it gets sticky. We most likely won’t ***ever ***get every “al.” in the “et”, if you catch my drift.
Am I bold?
It is not about being a theocracy. The government should not concern itself with religious beliefs, but if the government is comprised of Christians then it would be hypocritical for them not to base policy on Christain values.
The point is how can a Christian support a government that clearly does not follow Christian values.
As a Christian I would vote for the government that most represented my set of values and ethics.
An email campaign which may interest you - or not…
Grim
And daring!
Where this argument runs into trouble is in defining Christian values. For a significant number of Christians in the US, Christian values is keeping down the gays, keeping down taxes, keeping up the pressure on those godless Muslims, keeping pornography in check…in other words, keep others from doing things you’d want to do but can’t while your fellow Christians are watching…
Dont forget the drugs.
I was not aware that these were ethics that Christ taught. How did we get from looking after the poor, avoiding violence, honesty, tolerance and forgiveness to no porn, no drugs, no taxes, no heathens and no pooftas.
These people must have read this thread.
Senator Kerry doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he’s very quick to emphasize his own supposed religiosity.