“During the 2012 democrat convention, they openly heckled and booed any mention of God...”
To explain this strange hostility, maybe it would help to understand what it means to be a Democrat.
The “Democratic Party” like all other forms of socialism derives its ideas from the French Revolution. The main theme is economic equality. Since people differ vastly from one another in terms of ability, skills, industriousness, etc, economic equality can be achieved only by government coercion, which requires that the government must have the power to redistribute wealth from productive hard working people to Democrats.
The main concern with American Conservatives on the other hand, is conserving our tradition of individual liberty, which denies the individual the luxury of relying on all powerful government, and requires that he seek wealth and happiness by acquiring productive skills and putting them to use through his own excruciating efforts.
Being cursed with the lonely burden of self reliance, the only one the conservative could even conceive of lending him a helping hand is God. The liberal, on the other hand, is troubled by persistent rumors that God only helps those who help themselves. Therefore, he has no use for Him. But he does have Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Obama, the Lotto ... But what if they don’t come through? The alternative is unthinkable. He might even have to leave Baltimore and get a real job or something. Life is tough for the true unbeliever.
Excellent post.
So few people seem to recognize that the American principle of legal and social human equality, as put into effect by the American Revolution, was taken a bridge too far by the French Revolution, which attempted to add economic equality to the mix.
Attempting to implement this of course, requires the abolition of all other forms of equality. And then it still fails. Much of history over the last 200 years has been the inability of people to recognize that legal and social equality can be put into practice, albeit imperfectly, while economic equality simply cannot.
To be fair, I should add that human legal and social equality was proclaimed as a goal by the American Revolution, but has of course still not been perfectly implemented.
I sometimes think much of the confusion in this regard is based on the two definitions of “fairness,” both of which are valid.
One definition is that fairness = equal shares, the other that fairness = compensation in proportion to contribution.
Socialism goes with definition A, capitalism with definition B. So when they talk about fairness, they’re talking right past each other.