Arrogance of Condescension (The Secular Politician and use of the Christian Bible)

People often look to their politicians to reflect their values to some degree before voting for or supporting them. The glory of the republic is that all peoples can be represented and yet we will have sometimes stark disagreement on issues. When a politician believes passionately in something and the truth is on their side they need nothing more than that issue, their knowledge and their passion. Yes, they better have their facts straight. However, when the issue is more about their world view being passed and in conflict with the people they either have to conform or convince those people that their issue, the way they see it, is in concert with their values.

Enter the poser! The politician whose soul is already sold has no problem coming forward and putting on the table that his or her idea is actually already in harmony with the majority. And interestingly enough we have liberals in this country who demand the fiction of Separation of Church and State continues but under the way THEY frame it especially when the majority of this country is overwhelmingly self identified as Christian. When it does NOT go their way, they are some of the first to suggest that it is the practicing Christian who is out of step. Gays have used this very method to slowly convert churches from those which clearly hold to a scripture that says homosexuality is a sin, but now its okay to marry same sex couples and acknowledge that homosexuality is in keeping with God’s plan for all mankind. This is a perversion of the truth and most of them know this. The same can be said of politicians who trot on out to proclaim their “Christian” effort as one that should be supported by the masses they spend so much time deriding.

Shockingly..the NY Times actually printed the following: Senator Barack Obama: “The Sermon on the Mount, because it expresses a basic principle that I think we’ve lost over the last six years.” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: “The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think that’s a good rule for politics, too.” Mike Gravel: “The most important thing in life is love. That’s what empowers courage and courage implements the rest of our virtues.” Representative Dennis Kucinich: “Prayer from St. Francis, which says, ‘Lord make me an instrument of your peace.’ ” John Edwards: “What you do unto the least of those, you do unto me.” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: “The Sermon on the Mount, because I believe it’s an issue of social justice, equality, brotherly issues reflecting a nation that is deeply torn and needs to heal and come together.” Senator Christopher J. Dodd: “The Good Samaritan would be a worthwhile sort of description of who we all ought to be in life.” Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.: “Christ’s warning of the Pharisees. There are many Pharisees, and it’s part of what has bankrupted some people’s view about religion. And I worry about the Pharisees.”

Kind of amazing to say the least. There are plenty of more examples from republicans posing in front of their base to liberal progressives whose only real use of scripture is to use it to beat the very believers in it to thinking they are wrong. How arrogant! Despicably so! Barack Obama has done this more than most. Yes, he quoted scripture at the Easter Prayer breakfast…I expect this, but I will add that he did not look or even sound like it is something that he believes in or is comfortable saying as someone you may know who sincerely believes this and is well read in their own faith. In other words, Christianity is a political decision for Obama. It was for Bill Clinton too. If you wish to say it was for George W. Bush I would say he stood very far apart in delivery and actions in the White House reflecting his talk. In other words, there was a lot more “walk” to support it. Nevertheless, Obama’s sell on his supposed “faith” is cold and unbelievable. The insult comes when trying to pass immoral acts against the will of the country and then scolding those people by use of a scripture he has demonstrated he does not believe in.

Do not pretend to tell me abortion fits scripture. How do they square this? Do not pretend to tell me that Homosexuality is NOT a sin but something to be embraced when the very bible you quote clearly calls it what it is, SIN. But that’s just it. The liberal progressive poison has always been that there is no such thing as a moral absolute, it’s all relativism. It has to be! How else can you justify murdering Gods creation in the womb? They quote the scripture, so I will start demanding they either adhere to it or avoid speaking it. How else do you tell people that their security by way of a law that t makes it a crime to circumvent the ports of entry should be ignored in the name of Christian compassion? The very people charged with the faithful discharge of our nations laws have said they will NOT enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.

Hey poli-hypocrites…from you frauds on the right to you moral relativists on the left…just don’t bother trying the “God” thing…you’re read a thousand miles away as liars. I would actually respect you more if you simply stood up and said what you really believe because the way you do it now makes me resent you as well as disagree with you.

Life Amidst the Postmodern Ruins

“...I was very impressed with how Chesterton, although writing in 1907, had already diagnosed the pathologies of the left. In fact, his ideas mirror exactly what Polanyi wrote some 50 years later about the “moral inversion” of the left, i.e., the dangerous combination of radical skepticism and an unhinged, ruthless moral perfectionism unbound from tradition.

Chesteron writes of the socialist that although he may have a “large and generous heart,” it is “not a heart in the right place.” And only a human being can have a heart dangerously set in the wrong location. It generally occurs “when a religious scheme is shattered” as a result of their intense skepticism. When this happens, “it is not merely the vices that are let loose.” Rather, “the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.” Just because someone has a moral code, it hardly means that they are moral.

I have written a number of posts on the dynamics of this pathological process, which I thought that Polanyi had been the first to recognize. But Chesterton also writes of how “the modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.” Most every destructive policy put into place by the left can be traced to some Christian virtue gone mad i.e., feed the hungry, so steal from “the rich” and call it “giving,” or defending abortion on the basis of the sanctity of “liberty,” or encouraging every manner of deviancy under the guise of “tolerance.” They have the bizarre idea that it is “easier to forgive sins” if “there are no sins to forgive” except for the sin of believing they exist. ....”

HERE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1932911/posts?page=5#5

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Belief in Disbelief, or Inside the Postmodern Skeptic Tank -
[T]he new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything.... And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in the way when he wants to denounce anything. For denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.... In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. G.K. Chesterton

One of the key ideas of Orthodoxy is that we require a stable framework in order to think productively and deeply about reality, and that certain frameworks (Chesterton would say one framework) have been given to us from “on high,” so to speak, in order to accomplish this. Naturally, the “radical” opposes this constraint on his freedom, but freedom in itself is not freeing, any more than progress in itself is progressive; without limits, or boundary conditions, the former is “nothingness” or “lostness,” while the latter is just pointless change, drift, or entropy.

This reminds me of the distinction Polanyi drew between what he called the open society and the free society. He used the practice of science to illustrate the difference, pointing out that a truly free society does not merely consist of everyone believing whatever they want. Science, for example, is a free and spontaneous intellectual order that is nevertheless based on a distinctive set of beliefs about the world, through which the diverse actions of individual scientists are coordinated. Like the cells in your body, individual scientists independently go about their business, and yet, progress is made because their activities are channeled by the pursuit of real truth.

In contrast, in a merely “open” society, there is no such thing as transcendent truth: perception is reality and everyone is free to think and do as he pleases, with no objective standard by which to judge it. This kind of “bad freedom” eventually ramifies into the cognitively pathological situation we now see on the left, especially as it manifests in its purest form in academia (the liberal arts, not the sciences, except to the extent that science devolves into metaphysical scientism).

Initially, the assault on the existence of objective truth seems liberating, as we are freed from the dictates of arbitrary authority.

However, the whole idea of the individual pursuit of truth was a deeply liberal project, since truth was not accepted a priori but was subject to criticism and logical or empirical demonstration. But with deconstruction the Swiss pacifist knife of the intellectual left the entire concept of truth is undermined, so there is no way to arbitrate between competing notions of reality.

Therefore, whoever has the power may enforce their version of reality, which is what political correctness is all about: Truth is arbitrary, but you had better believe my version of it, or be branded a bigot, or a homophobe, or a white male oppressor. One more reason why contemporary liberalism is so deeply illiberal. Their ideas cannot be argued on the merits, so they are enforced by the illegitimate authority of political correctness.

If you are on the left, you are undoubtedly oblivious to this bullying pressure (unless you are a totally cynical Clinton-type who does it consciously). If you are on the right, you feel it all the time cognitive “stop signs” that impede you from uttering certain truths in public for fear of triggering attack. The politically correct leftist is always a passively-aggressive controlling person hardly a victim, but an aggressor (for his self-imposed victimization legitimizes the release of amoral sadistic aggression).

Thus, the deep structure of the left-right divide in this country goes beyond the secular vs. religious worldview.

A purely secular society is an open society, where all points of view, no matter how stupid or dysfunctional, are equally valued (e.g., multiculturalism and moral relativism), whereas a truly free society must be rooted in something permanent and transcendent. ....”

HERE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1932911/posts?page=4#4

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