We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer….Hope

A New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof
A concretely encouraging article for frustrated liberals. Just Google this post’s title.

God and the Whiners

An imaginary story of God’s conversations with his best bud, Adam, and then more of God hanging out with various generations of Adam’s descendants through the ages. Adam is sitting around with God admiring God’s handiwork. Adam: Wow, God, this is a nice job you’ve done. Particularly this sex thing. That’s great. Thanks for thinking of it! God: Well, there’s another side to it. Sex creates new life, so you can fill the earth with people who will be my partners in creation Adam: Gosh, that will take a lot of women to do that. I better find me some more wives. God: And you better collect a lot more goats and sheep to feed all those wives and children. Generations later: Descendant: God, we’ve got a problem, we can’t keep dragging all these wives and children around with droughts everywhere. God: From now on just choose one wife, find water, and till the land. A later Descendant: God, we’ve got a problem. We’re getting a lot of cast off older wives who are starving. God: In this day, men must take responsibility for women and children. You must no longer cast off wives for new wives. Choose carefully, because you are stuck with the first one. Another Generation whiners : God, we are running out of good arable land and it’s causing constant wars. God: Okay, you can slow down on the procreating. Whiner: But, God, we men must work hard all day and come home to whining wives and children. Surely, you aren’t telling us to give up our one delight? God: I gave you a brain. Figure it out. And start taking one day in seven just for being thankful. I’m also tired of all the whining. New Descendant: God, women are getting pushy. When we go to war, they have to take over at home. When we come home they complain about the way we run things. Some even think they could run things better. Like maybe sitting around crying would solve the world’s problems! God: Well, it might cut down on wars. New Descendant: But, it won’t put food on the table or send the kids to college. God: I’ve given women the luxury of developing the gift of relationships. Technology has freed humanity from the heavy lifting. Women are now needed in the workplace to bring their gifts of nurturing into the larger world. It’s time for nurture to be valued as much as achieving. It is time for power over to become power for others, for ALL others. I am doing a new thing. Modern Man: God, these days it’s hard to tell women and men apart. And men are loving men and women are loving women. What’s with that? God: I know you are not going to like this, but life just isn’t about differences. In My world there is no male or female, no slave or master, no favored people, no favored religion, no favored nation. Life is about learning to love. The most advanced school for that is marriage, a monogamous intimate committed relationship. Haven’t you caught on why I still make sex so enjoyable, even when I don’t need you to keep procreating to fill the earth? Sex has the power to draw people into a stable relationship that can free them to risk being vulnerable in loving. It’s the appetizer, not the main course. Modern Man: God, this Women working thing is really a bummer. Now they expect us to take care of the kids ad do chores at home. God: Shared responsibility for both survival and nurture can bring balance to relationships and society. Dependency and need are not love. Neither is control. I created human beings with the capacity to love one another as I love you. My love is the healing, nurturing, challenging, life changing, sacrificial love that does not have limits or borders. I fleshed it out for you in Jesus. Modern Man: Well, Jesus wasn’t married. God: It is time for humanity to grow up. You keep missing the point. The greed that is destroying the world will lose its power when humanity recognizes that my love is for all. No exceptions. And that you are called to be the channels of my love for the world. God: Hear my plea! I am asking you to accept my love and let it fill you until the joy of being loved overflows to all those you encounter without being blocked by judgement or fear.

The Whiners

An imaginary story of God’s conversations with his best bud, Adam, and then more of God hanging out with various generations of Adam’s descendants through the ages.
Adam is sitting around with God admiring God’s handiwork.
Adam: Wow, God, this is a nice job you’ve done. Particularly this sex thing. That’s great. Thanks for thinking of it!                                                                                                                                      God: Well, there’s another side to it. Sex creates new life, so you can fill the earth with people who will be my partners in creation                                                                                                          Adam: Gosh, that will take a lot of women to do that. I better find me some more wives.                                                                                                                                                                            God: And you better collect a lot more goats and sheep to feed all those wives and children.
Generations later:
Descendant: God, we’ve got a problem, we can’t keep dragging all these wives and children around with droughts everywhere.                                                                                                              God: From now on just choose one wife, find water, and till the land.
A later Descendant: God, we’ve got a problem. We’re getting a lot of cast off older wives who are starving.                                                                                                                                              God: In this day, men must take responsibility for women and children. You must no longer cast off wives for new wives. Choose carefully, because you are stuck with the first one
Another Generation whines : God, we are running out of good arable land .and it’s causing constant wars.                                                                                                                                              God: Okay, you can slow down on the procreating.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Whiner: But, God, we men must work hard all day and come home to whining wives and children. Surely, you aren’t telling us to give up our one delight?                                                                    God: I gave you a brain. Figure it out. And start taking one day in seven just for being thankful. I’m also tired of all the whining.
New Descendant: God, women are getting pushy. When we go to war, they have to take over at home. When we come home they complain about the way we run things. Some even think they could run things better. Like maybe sitting around crying would solve the world’s problems!                                                                                                                                                                        God: Well, it might cut down on wars.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        New Descendant: But, it won’t put food on the table or send the kids to college                                                                                                                                                                                      God: I’ve given women the luxury of developing the gift of relationships. Technology has freed humanity from the heavy lifting. Women are now needed in the workplace to bring their gifts of nurturing into the larger world. It’s time for nurture to be valued as much as achieving. It is time for power over to become power for others, for ALL others. I am doing a new thing.
Modern Man: God, these days it’s hard to tell women and men apart. And men are loving men and women are loving women. What’s with that?                                                                                  God: I know you are not going to like this, but life just isn’t about differences. In My world there is no male or female, no slave or master, no favored people, no favored religion, no favored nation. Life is about learning to love. The most advanced school for that is marriage, a monogamous intimate committed relationship. Haven’t you caught on why I still make sex so enjoyable, even when I don’t need you to keep procreating to fill the earth? Sex has the power to draw people into a stable relationship that can free them to risk being vulnerable in loving. It’s the appetizer, not the main course.
Modern Man: God, this Women working thing is really a bummer. Now they expect us to take care of the kids and even do chores at home.                                                                                          God: Shared responsibility for both survival and nurture can bring balance to relationships and society. Dependency and need are not love. Neither is control. I created human beings with the capacity to love one another as I love you. My love is the healing, nurturing, challenging, life changing, sacrificial love that does not have limits or borders. I fleshed it out for you in Jesus.                Modern Man: Well, Jesus wasn’t married.
God: It is time for humanity to grow up. You keep missing the point. The greed that is destroying the world will lose its power when humanity recognizes that my love is for all. No exceptions. And that you are called to be the channels of my love for the world.
God: Hear my plea! I am asking you to accept my love and let it fill you until the joy of being loved overflows to all those you encounter without being blocked by judgement or fear.

Deleted

 

What Does the Bible Say About Abortion? ( Long, but Enlightening for those of Us in the Middle)

 

OCTOBER 23, 2016 BY NEIL CARTER

When evangelical Christians first began debating the issue of abortion, they were nowhere near as unified about the topic as they appear to be today. Shortly after the Supreme Court made their landmark decision on the issue in Roe v. Wade (1973), influential Baptist minister W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist in Dallas, TX, and predecessor to FOX News darling Robert Jeffress, said: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
As late as five years after the legalization of abortion, Southern Baptists were still listed among the denominations officially affirming the decision. Richard Land, who formerly headed up the SBC’s political action division, points out that in those days there was a clear divide between what Baptists and Catholics believed about the matter. They pretty much bought into the idea that life begins when breath begins, and they just thought of [abortion] as a Catholic issue.
In November of 1968, Christianity Today devoted an entire issue to debating the subject, including an article written by conservative biblical scholar Bruce Waltke (Dallas Seminary) who argues that the Bible gives no clear answer on the matter. In that article, Waltke explains that “in the absence of any biblical text forbidding abortion,” we are forced to look at the literature of nearby cultures at the time of the Old Testament to compare their laws with those of the people of Israel. He notes that while neighboring Assyria exacted punishment for performing abortions, no such prohibition existed among the ancient Hebrews. The fact that God did not set forth a similar law becomes even more significant when one realizes that in sexual matters the Mosaic Code is normally more extensive and more severe than other codes.
In Assyrian law, when a fight between two people resulted in a miscarriage, a life was demanded in return for a life. But no such reckoning was present in the Old Testament. If the mother’s life was lost, that would be a much more serious offense. But the termination of the pregnancy itself would only incur a fine, since an unborn child wasn’t yet considered a separate person from the mother (see Exodus 21:22-25, also see note about translation at the end of this article). The closest thing to a biblical definition of “when life begins” would most likely be found in Genesis 2, where it says that God breathed into the nostrils of the first man, at which point “he became a living being.” This kind of language is repeated in multiple places throughout the Bible, equating “breath” with “life” in a fairly unambiguous way (e.g. Ezekiel 37:4-10).
Evangelical Christians today (who seem to have settled on a much more uniform opinion on the issue) often quote Psalm 139 as if it answers a question it wasn’t even being asked: For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.I will give thanks to You, For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
As Waltke points out, the writer here isn’t really spelling out at what time or place “life begins” (which is a misleading way to frame the personhood question in the first place). Taken in context, the writer of the psalm was marveling at the omniscience of Yahweh, who he believed could see everyone and everything before they even come into being. Reading the verses around it makes clear what he means to say. It is a poetic expression, as are the lines which follow: “My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written , The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.”
No Christian interpreter today would be so literal as to argue this passage teaches that babies are built “in the depths of the earth,” since the language is clearly poetic. The purpose of the imagery is to express wonder at the omniscience of God, who sees what happens everywhere and to everyone before it even happens. Time would mean nothing for such a being. For Waltke, and for most Protestant thinkers at the time, the literary genre at play here made this passage the wrong place to look in order to answer the question of “when life begins.”
One more passage about abortion in the Bible must be noted before we can move on. In Numbers 5 we are told there are circumstances under which Yahweh actually instructed his people to perform an abortion. If a man suspected his wife of having slept with another man, he could take her to a priest, who would give her “bitter water” to drink and then perform a curse over her in order to induce a miscarriage. Whether or not this ritual ever accomplished its purpose is difficult to say, since the only ingredients spelled out in the text are water, dirt, and ink (and of course “a curse”). But the intent of the punishment is clear: For her alleged infidelity, the pregnancy should be terminated.
As it turns out, this is all the Bible has to say about abortion. I must say, it’s not at all what I expected to find when I first set out to discover what it says. It’s not at all what people around me think the Bible says about abortion.
The Origins of the Pro-Life Movement
So what changed? Absent a clear biblical prohibition of abortion, and in light of the ancient definition of life beginning at first breath, how did evangelical Christianity come to embrace the Catholic denunciation of abortion? Evangelical opposition to abortion was crafted by political operatives as a way to co-opt the Christian church into the Republican party in order to save it from extinction after its landslide loss to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (see map above). Far too few people realize that the pro-life movement was essentially cobbled together by opportunists seizing upon a sudden voter vacuum in the Republican party following the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964. They needed something to unify a group of people under one banner, and it took a decade and a half to make it happen, but they were eventually very successful. At first, they were stuck with appealing to the white Southern disgust toward federally mandated racial equality (“It should be decided by the states,” they argued). But shifts in U.S. population demanded a more broadly acceptable issue, something more noble and universally appealing to an increasingly diverse demographic landscape. Randall Balmer explains how Paul Weyrich, founder of both the Heritage Foundation and ALEC, initially struggled to find a unifying issue around which he could piece together a coalition of both Protestants and Catholics, who traditionally were at odds with one another on numerous issues, into a single monolithic political force. …this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.
His big break finally came in 1975 when the IRS moved to rescind the tax-exempt status of fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, for failing to maintain racially equitable admissions policies. Both Catholic and Protestant schools alike were alarmed at the threat to their financial status this move represented, and out of that panic grew a more unified coalition of political operatives ready to declare this an infringement on their religious freedoms. Weyrich at that time tapped Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell to head up his new “Moral Majority” movement. Falwell’s associate, Ed Dobson, would later corroborate Balmer’s reasoning for the formation of this new political entity: The Religious New Right did not start because of a concern about abortion,” Dobson said. “I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with the Moral Majority, and I frankly do not remember abortion ever being mentioned as a reason why we ought to do something.” Perhaps after accepting the regional limitations of his own Southern Strategy, Weyrich proposed the abortion issue again a few years later. Given the growing Southern Baptist disdain for feminism and the sexual revolution, Weyrich sensed an opportunity to use opposition to Roe v. Wade as a rallying cry to unify Catholics and Protestants into a single powerful coalition.
Incidentally, Bob Jones University would go on to lose their “religious freedom” case in the Supreme Court in 1983 in an 8-to-1 decision against them. The court’s lone dissenter, Justice William Rehnquist, would later be elevated to Chief Justice by President Ronald Reagan, who was propelled to electoral victory in the South twice thanks to the support of Falwell’s Moral Majority, despite having passed the nation’s most liberal abortion bill in 1967 while he was still governor of California. Abortion wasn’t always what the Religious Right was about, but it certainly is today.
Pawns in a Political Game
In the 2016 presidential election, American evangelicals, who naturally detest virtually everything about Donald Trump, declared they are reluctantly willing to elect the reality TV star to the greatest position of civic responsibility in the country despite his never having held public office of any kind. Why? Because he has promised them he will appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade .
Evangelical Christians today are willing to overlook Trump’s “foibles, peccadilloes, and metaphorical warts” because they have become deeply convinced that “life begins at conception,” and that abortion is murder. It has become a black-and-white issue for them, a clear case of right versus wrong. Anyone who would appoint SCOTUS justices who uphold Roe v. Wade must be “worse than Hitler” since he or she would then be responsible for the taking of millions of lives. It’s an issue so central to the way they view their mission in the world today that some of their most outspoken representatives (e.g. James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Robert Jeffress, and Eric Metaxas, who has taken to calling Secretary Clinton “Hitlery”) have been unwavering in their support for the “thrice married owner of casinos with strip joints” who has lately come under fire for allegations of sexually assaulting more than a dozen women in precisely the manner in which he himself boasted on a hot mic before the filming of an Access Hollywood segment.
Leaving aside the biblical and historical problems of this argument, there are at least three significant semantic problems inherent in this contention that abortion is murder, and that life begins at conception.
First, when opponents of war or capital punishment cite the 6th Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”) in order to support their causes, hawkish conservatives are quick to call out the absence of nuance in the translation of the word for “kill.” Because there are many different contexts and motives for the taking of a life, better translations render the commandment as saying “You shall not murder.” Why is a different word for killing selected in this case? Quite obviously it is because in the larger context of biblical ethics there are circumstances under which the taking of a life, even a human life, is morally acceptable (e.g. war, self-defense, capital punishment). In order to distinguish this kind of “taking of a life” from other kinds, the word “murder” is chosen, as it denotes a more brutally violent and life-devaluing choice. For some reason, when war or capital punishment is being discussed, evangelical Christians demand context-sensitive interpretations for words that signify the taking of human life, but whenever the subject of abortion comes up, they drop every form of nuance and lurch directly into calling it murder. Why would they do this? They certainly aren’t deriving their positions from the biblical passages that relate to the topic, as we’ve seen above.
Second, they stack the deck in favor of their desired outcome whenever they frame the discussion by asking: “When does life begin?” Is that really the appropriate question? Exactly what kind of “life” are we talking about? Conscious life? Intelligent life? Self-aware life? Even plants and trees have life, as do bacteria. Other animals have not only organic life but also consciousness, thanks to brains that look and function in ways virtually identical to ours. Once again, nuance and clarification fly out the window whenever this exceedingly complex topic is oversimplified into a matter of “protecting the unborn.” The reality isn’t nearly so simple as that.
Third, whenever we talk about the morality of abortion, the most passionate opponents of the procedure tend to lump every form of terminating a pregnancy into the same category, again jettisoning any trace of nuance. But should we really be using the same word for terminating a pregnancy at six weeks that we use for week thirty? Is any effort being made to understand that virtually anyone who elects to terminate a pregnancy in the third trimester (which is extremely rare) would only do so because of an imminent threat either to the health of the mother or to the viability of the child? [Related: “There Are No Nine Month Abortions“] These oversimplifications are unfortunately effective tactics of emotional manipulation employed by well-funded political operatives intent on preserving the national dominance of a political party with very deep pockets, and they themselves frankly don’t care a bit about abortion, gay marriage, or fighting pornography (Do you suppose Donald Trump cares?). These are all handles on the church which they have seized upon in order to steer a large group of potential voters wherever they choose, even to the electing of the least qualified presidential candidate ever to top a major party ticket. In other words, evangelicals are being played. They have fallen for a strategy devised by desperate people with money to spare who were looking to stitch together a coalition of trusting people who would go on to serve as a reliable voting base for a half a century, right up until this election. It is the last gasp of the Southern Strategy finally playing itself out on a national stage.
In continuing to support Donald Trump simply because he says he will outlaw abortion, evangelical Christians have effectively given up their right to speak to moral issues in American life. Five decades of well-coordinated political action has programmed them to draw a line in the sand over issues about which the Bible says virtually nothing, even while turning a deaf ear to the cries of the less fortunate, the marginalized poor and the socially disadvantaged in our country (something the Bible speaks about voluminously). In so doing, as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe so aptly put it, they have forfeited their right to claim moral authority over matters of public life.
A couple of months ago on her own blog, Rachel Held Evans, a Nashville resident who was once an evangelical herself but who no longer claims ownership of that label, wrote a persuasive piece arguing that consistently pro-life voters who seek to reduce the number of abortions happening around the country should vote in this election for Hillary Clinton. In the eight years since we’ve had a pro-choice president, the abortion rate in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest since 1973. I believe the best way to keep this trend going is not to simply make it harder for women to terminate unwanted pregnancies but to create a culture with fewer unwanted pregnancies to begin with. Data suggests progressive social policies that make healthcare and childcare more affordable, make contraception more accessible, alleviate poverty, and support a living wage do the most to create such a culture, while countries where abortion is simply illegal see no change in the abortion rate. [emphasis hers] By focusing exclusively on the legal components of abortion while simultaneously opposing these family-friendly social policies, the Republican Party has managed to hold pro-life voters hostage with the promise of outlawing abortion, (which has yet to happen under any Republican administrations since Roe v. Wade), while actively working against the very policies that would lead to a significant reduction in unwanted pregnancies. She’s absolutely right. The best way to reduce the number of abortions nationwide is to vote for progressive healthcare policies which approach the subject of birth control from a realistic standpoint rather than an idealistic one. The states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy, STDs, and poverty (including my own) are not-coincidentally the same states which teach “abstinence only” rather than comprehensive sex education, and they are the states that generally make every form of birth control more difficult to procure. In essence, they are exacerbating the very problem they are trying to remedy.

The Shores of Normandy

An opulence of travel visions:
Paris, London, Lisbon, Prague,
beauty rampant with history and art.
Yet etched forever in my mind
the cross-crowned cliffs and beaches
along the shores of Normandy.
A cliff face sheering from the ocean,
Pointe du Hoc, where our soldiers
climbed point blank into German guns.
Now, just empty bunkers on pitted earth,
its beaches wave washed innocent
below silent sentinels left behind.
Row on row of small white crosses
guarding fields of blood-rich ground.
Old Glory whipping, snapping in the wind.

Liberal I Am, Sam I Am, and Christian Too, Why Aren’t You?

Lori Gallagher Witt                                                                                  Lynn Coffinberry                                                                                                Eileen Norman

This was started by a woman named Lori Gallagher Witt, the brilliance is hers, the rest has been edited to best express similar, though not identical, opinions of those passing the main ideas on.

An open letter to friends and family who are shocked to discover I’m a liberal… I’ve always been a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you seem to think it does.
Let’s break it down, shall we? Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:
1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.
2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.
3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.
4. I don’t believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don’t want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share  would go a long way toward alleviating this.  Believing that  does not make me a communist.
5. I don’t throw around “I’m willing to pay higher taxes” lightly. I’m retired and on a fixed income, but I still pay taxes. If I’m suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it’s because I’m fine with paying my share as long as it’s actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.
6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as paying fast food workers enough to buy a Mercedes.  What it means is enough for them to have at least transportation to a job and that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multi-billion dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn’t have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.
7. I am not anti-Christian. In fact I am a born again Christian who believes Jesus died to save us from our inborn human selfishness.  I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians in whatever way they see that playing out in their own lives.    (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is. Besides, no one can keep anyone from praying, which is just conversation with God.) All I ask is that my Christian brothers and sisters recognize *everyone’s* right to live according to *their* beliefs.  I believe in “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I don’t want anyone trying to force me or anyone else to live by their particular religion’s rules. Besides, you cannot force Christianity on anyone. It doesn’t work that way. To be real it has to be a free choice.

8. I don’t believe LGBT people should have more rights than anyone else. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as everyone else.

9. I don’t believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they’re supposed to be abusing, and if they’re “stealing” your job it’s because your employer is hiring illegally). I’m not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).  And since it became illegal to hire non-citizens, many industries are having to shut down some of their production lines because of labor shortages.  It seems Americans don’t want the jobs the illegal immigrants were taking from them.
10. I don’t believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It’s not that I want the government’s hands in everything — I just don’t trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they’re harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies make their bottom line the deciding factor on what is in the public interest and what is harmful.
11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I’ve spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.
12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, affluent, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that’s causing people to be marginalized.
13. I am not interested in coming after your guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun.
14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles, I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you’re using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?
15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.
16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?
I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I’m a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn’t mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don’t believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome for the sake of profit or corporate savings.
So, I’m a liberal.
(I didn’t write the above from scratch but edited and added to a similar post to reflect my personal beliefs. Please feel free to do the same with this post).

The Dangers of Advent by J.B. Phillips

Familiarity may easily blind us to the shining fact that lies at the heart of Christmastide.
What we are in fact celebrating is the awe-inspiring humility of God, and no amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should ever blind us to its quiet but explosive significance. For Christians believe that so great is God’s love and concern for humanity that he himself became a man. Amid the sparkle and the color and music of the day’s celebration we do well to remember that God’s insertion of himself into human history was achieved with an almost frightening quietness and humility. There was no advertisement, no publicity, no special privilege; in fact the entry of God into his own world was almost heartbreakingly humble. In sober fact there is little romance or beauty in the thought of a young woman looking desperately for a place where she could give birth to her first baby. I do not think for a moment that Mary complained, but it is a bitter commentary upon the world that no one would give up a bed for the pregnant woman – and that the Son of God must be born in a stable.
This almost beggarly beginning has been romanticized by artists and poets throughout the centuries. Yet I believe that at least once a year we should look steadily at the historic fact, and not at any pretty picture. At the time of this astonishing event only a handful of people knew what had happened. And as far as we know, no one spoke openly about it for thirty years. Even when the baby was grown to be a man, only a few recognized him for who he really was. Two or three years of teaching and preaching and healing people, and his work was finished. He was betrayed and judicially murdered, deserted at the end by all his friends. By normal human standards this is a tragic little tale of failure, the rather squalid story of a promising young man from a humble home, put to death by the envy and malice of the professional men of religion. All this happened in an obscure, occupied province of the vast Roman Empire.
It is fifteen hundred years ago that this apparently invincible Empire utterly collapsed, and all that is left of it is ruins. Yet the little baby, born in such pitiful humility and cut down as a young man in his prime, commands the allegiance of millions of people all over the world. Although they have never seen him, he has become friend and companion to innumerable people. This undeniable fact is, by any measurement, the most astonishing phenomenon in human history. It is a solid rock of evidence that no agnostic can ever explain away.
That is why, behind all our fun and games at Christmastime, we should not try to escape a sense of awe, almost a sense of fright, at what God has done. We must never allow anything to blind us to the true significance of what happened at Bethlehem so long ago. Nothing can alter the fact that we live on a visited planet.
We shall be celebrating no beautiful myth, no lovely piece of traditional folklore, but a solemn fact. God has been here once historically, but, as millions will testify, he will come again with the same silence and the same devastating humility into any human heart ready to receive him. J. B. Phillips
This is an excerpt I took from an excerpt published In The Plough Quarterly and offered as an advent devotional by them on face book.
It describes so well my own personal experience of Jesus fifty years ago and the power of it for me.
Each year my Advent prayer is, “Come, Lord Jesus, come and be born in our hearts.”

The Merry Minuet

You can learn a lot about a person from their favorite song.  Here’s mine.

The Merry Minuet                                                                                                                                         (Composed by Sheldon Harnick  in 1958 and Popularized by the Kingston Trio)

They’re rioting in Africa.
They’re starving in Spain.
There’s hurricanes in Florida.
In Texas it’s rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans; the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much!
But we can be thankful and tranquil and proud
that Man’s been endowed with the mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.
They’re rioting in Africa.
There’s strife in Iran.
What nature doesn’t do to us
will be done by our fellow man!

Deja vue!

Are We Becoming Emotional Terrorists?

Americans are becoming emotional terrorists. We publish totally false information on social media without checking on it’s validity. That is slander. It’s immoral. We have degenerated from arguing logically on issues to name calling and ridiculous irrelevant criticism of any one remotely related to people we disagree with. We are shrinking to the level of moral gnats. And it not only accomplishes nothing positive, it alienates us from one another more deeply than ever before, since the civil war. We aren’t just targeting the politicians we disagree with, but one another. For me face book has been a wonderful source of information about friends and family, photos of grandchildren, connection to family living in other countries, and virtual travel to places I’ve never been. In the last two years I have been more home bound by both my own health issues and my husband’s than I have ever been in my life. The internet and face book have been a great blessing. But now, trying to wade through all the political posts, advertisements, and memes someone else chooses for me takes more time than I have to spend for finding the things I want to see or read. Perhaps we should set up our own face book pages as ones limited to one or more of the following: politics, or spirituality, or jokes, or cute animals or travel experiences, or mental health, or venting, or personal ones just relevant for family and friends. I really need to cut down on the vitriol I have to wade through on my face book page. At my stage of life, there are many serious personal challenges that I have to face each day. Some people may find an escape from personal struggles and our sense of the helplessness of individuals in our modern world through a vicious verbal war on politicians and the people who support them. I don’t. It just adds to my sense of helplessness and vulnerability. Discussions with accurate and comprehensive information are helpful. Writing our representatives to express and give logical support for our opinions on policy is a vital part of a democracy. Peaceful protests like those of Martin Luther King Jr. have been an effective part of the democratic process. But it’s beginning to look like we lost the patience, self control, and commitment needed for those some time ago.