Posted on 02/14/2005 4:56:19 PM PST by Clintons-B-Gone
Recently, on Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes," we were introduced to a man named Jim Wallis, the editor of "Sojourners" magazine. Wallis has been chosen as the person who will advise the liberal Democrats in Washington on issues of faith.
Democrats are still in a state of disarray over the presidential election. They are shell-shocked. They cannot believe that the positions and policies of President Bush were more in line with the American political mainstream than those advocated by John Kerry. Moreover, they stubbornly refuse to believe that Bush's declarations of faith and his stand on moral issues were significant factors in their defeat.
Opinion polls are increasing stating that faith is an integral part of American lives. So why should it be any different for those we choose to represent us? It is possible to learn something about the character of a candidate by the faith he articulates.
Democrats do not think that Americans truly embraced Bush's principled leadership and his bold stands on the moral issues. They think they were the victims of slick marketing and packaging, further revealing that their shallowness is only exceeded by their supreme arrogance.
That is the reason they have chosen to consult with Mr. Wallis. Better packaging! That is their solution for their electoral woes. They have absolutely no intention of changing their positions on moral issues. Liberal Democrats are readily familiar with the issues that truly matter to Middle America. However, they are equally quick to dismiss them and to belittle those who fervently hold those views. Instead, they are seeking to cloud their positions on these matters in such a way as to fool the voting public.
For years, the Democrats have been attempting to politicize morality and moralize politics. In so doing, the great "defenders" of that unconstitutional concept of separation of church and state are deliberately blurring the boundaries between the two.
They equate morality with environmental concerns, welfare, minimum wage, and support for the United Nations. Meanwhile, they attach no morality to the protection of innocent life or the defense of traditional marriage. Liberals want to elevate animal rights, thereby lowering the status of all of us. And when those differences no longer exist in our minds, then there is no animal-like behavior that is too abhorrent for mankind to embrace.
Liberals do not bow their knees to an omnipotent god. They worship only themselves--their intellect, their philosophy, and their public policy. They want to deify humanity and humanize deity. They want us to curse our god and bow our knees only to the state. They want us to make no judgements, to draw no distinctions. It is their goal to eliminate any differences between right or wrong, truth and dishonesty, or good and evil.
They have intimidated and ridiculed those who seek to bring faith into the public square and they are seeking to permanently silence those who would address issues of morality in the pulpit. Whether or not the liberals choose to acknowledge the fact: our liberties are a gift from God, not an act of benevolence from the government. Liberals such as Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi are seeking to remove any last vestiges of faith from our public and private lives.
They deliberately moralize politics by claiming that the president’s actions in the Oval Office with Monica were not an indication that Clinton was a man of low moral character. They claim that his liberal stands on the issues were a more accurate indicator of Clinton’s moral superiority. These same people deliberately politicize morality by telling priests, pastors, and rabbis that they will lose their churches’ tax-exempt status if they tell their congregations what the Scriptures say about homosexuality and the slaughter of the unborn.
To further illustrate my point: whenever you hear anybody in politics use the term “economic justice,” be prepared to grab your wallet. And anytime you hear anybody talking about Jesus and economic justice in a church or synagogue, be prepared to grab your hat. Economic justice is just a polite sounding euphemism for socialism. And the invoking of the Lord’s name is a shameless attempt to put faith and freedom at odds.
In the days following the attacks of 9/11, in the president’s address to Congress, Bush said that “freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
Jim Wallis, the Democrats’ new faith advisor, will not help liberals in Washington clarify their positions. They want to cloud them, to hide them, to package them in a more acceptable and attractive wrapper. The Democrats’ problem is not that Americans do not know where they stand; their problem is that too many Americans already do!
I know Wallis's politics well. I used to subscribe to "The Other Side and Sojourners. As well as the Progressive and the Nation. It is a mix that doesnt set well over time.
I didn't even have to read the article to know that this guy is a charlatan---
I say him on Hannity and Colmes, and I heard him today on Hannity's radio show and he is a loud-mouthed rude kook---
Can Democrats please STop assuming Evagelicals are ignorant? Those people are VERY informed on the issues. And they're not going to be duped.
" say him on Hannity and Colmes, and I heard him today on Hannity's radio show and he is a loud-mouthed rude kook---"
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...who seemed incapable of answering a direct yes or no question with a direct yes or no answer. It was pretty revealing!
Packaging faith for political gain? Lots of voters will buy it, but God won't.
Beware: With the number of people who are going to be proclaiming their "faith" this next election cycle, one will think a revival is in the works.
Great screen name, BTW.
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Hannity asked him at one point where he stood on abortion. Wallis replied that he was a staunch "pro-life" advocate. Wallis then proceded to define "pro-life" as legal abortion on demand (claiming that he would support lots of waiting periods and counseling). When Hannity called him on that one, Wallis argued that he wasn't going to let Hannity frame the issues.
Hannity then turned to Jerry Falwell and asked him whether he would support any form of abortion. Falwell said no and gave a nice, short little monologue about overturning Roe v. Wade, and outlawing all abortions. Falwell also emphasized the importance of supporting women who choose not to have abortions.
In a poignant emphasis of the fact that the democrats have hired a pig to dress them up in sunday clothes, Falwell was silent throughout Wallis's 5 minutes of prevarication and doublespeak. Except for one muffled bit of laughter when Wallis refused to admit that a pro-abortion legal policy is not "pro-life". In contrast, Wallis talked and made viscious comments ("You're a liar, Jerry. You don't speak for evangelicals or christians.") throughout Falwell's entire answer, despite that Wallis literally had 5 full minutes of uninterrupted air time to explain his "pro-life" baby-killing ethics while Falwell did his part in about 45 seconds.
The only scary thing is that there are Christians out there who do not read their bibles, who just want someone to tell them that God didn't *really* mean it that way. "He couldn't have meant that, because that's not how I live."
I think the only one who sounded like a "horse's rear end" today was Hannity, and I usually agree with him.
Wallis was correct - the only way to stop abortion is to make it legal and to convince women who want one that there is a better alternative.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably too young to remember when abortions were illegal, common, and too often resulted in the death of the mother as well as her baby.
I suppose people who think that abortion deserves the death penalty will think that's fine, but I don't.
I would just as soon they continue assuming we are ignorant.
Yeah, sure, like that's worked really well in practice. It's already legal (since you apparently haven't noticed), and the effect of legalizing was to increase the number of abortions from a few hundred per year to about 600,000 the first year it was legalized, with the numbers standing at over 1 million per year. Furthermore, abortion pushers like Planned Parenthood, upon legalization, IMMEDIATELY went into full action, not only trying to convince--almost coerce--pregnant women to snuff their babies, but also doing everything they could to convince non-pregnant girls to get pregnant and have abortions. They went into high schools (and probably still do) to sell abortion, going so far as to tell young girls outright lies. (For instance, one lie my class was told: that if you suffer menstrual cramps, having a late-term abortion will cure them forever.) PP's actions are hardly those of an organization trying to teach women that there are better alternatives. There's too much money in pushing abortion, for those who don't have a conscience.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably too young to remember when abortions were illegal, common, and too often resulted in the death of the mother as well as her baby
You do know that that's mostly hype put out by PP and other abortion pushers, don't you? Maybe 2 or 3 hundred women per year died from "back-alley" abortions before it was legalized; the number of women dying from legal and "safe" abortions is far higher. Maternal death rate is somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000--on the low side, that's over 1,000 maternal deaths from abortion per year. The child death toll, of course, is far higher.
I downloaded the 1st chapter of Wallis' book. He says, "If the Democrats could be persuaded by both good political sense and sound moral values to moderate some of their positions by becoming anti-abortion without criminalizing an agonizing and desperate choice, and being profamily without being anti-gay, they would change politics in America ..".
That sounds like a faith without backbone. Do we want to be against murder without criminalizing it? Do we want to condemn theft without being anti-burglar?
You don't know how many abortions occurred before they were legal. None of us do. And you don't know how many deaths occurred - that's the problem with underground activity - no statistics are available.
But if you think making abortion illegal will stop it, you are very mistaken. Marijuana and crack are illegal - do you think no one uses that? Auto theft is illegal - do you think no one ever steals cars?
You have to decide whether you want to end abortion, or whether you just want to punish the women who have them. I'm in the former class, and you seem to be firmly in the latter.
That's total bullpuckey. While it's certain there were some illegal abortions going on pre-Roe, the left has made a long career out of mythical claims of millions of back alley abortions and death by coathanger. It's propoganda, and you've bought it hook line and sinker.
All the democrats are interested in now is their package, not the substance of their message. They'll spend the next several years convincing uncritical voters that the Bible really doesn't consider abortion to be murder, that it's really more "religious" or "spiritual" to avoid standards that make people uncomfortable, that Romans 1:26-27 doesn't really refer to homosexual behavior between committed couples. They'll trot out the tired old garbage about how there were 1 - 2 million back alley abortions every year, done with coathangers, that it's only poor women who get abortions and that we need to be "compassionate" for women who think it's a good idea to murder an unborn child. Of course, their version of "compassion" is to pretend to be opposed to abortion on moral grounds while promoting it on legal grounds.
SOME illegal abortions? How do you know there were only "some"? There were no statistics kept. Ask anyone who was a teenager or adult pre-Roe, and you will find that almost all of them knew "some" who had illegal abortions.
And if you use common sense, you will be able to figure out that very few change their behavior just because it's illegal. Do you ever drive above the speed limit? That's illegal. Did you ever drink alcohol before you were 21 (or do you drink it, if you're not yet 21)? That's illegal. Etc.
"Everyone" knows someone who has been shot, who has been raped, who is gay, who is blah, blah, blah. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." Your claim is unsupported nonsense. There has never been a single shred of proof that the pro-abortion advocates' mythical claims of millions of deaths by coathanger and back alley abortions.
Your common sense claim is typical of those who have nothing else other than blind emotion to back their claims. After all, it's common sense that guns cause crime and that more guns in private hands will lead to more shootings and more accidents. Except that those "common sense" claims are really just guesses by people who see only those facts that support their pre-existing ideologies.
Your claim that making something illegal does not change behavior is just as absurd as your claim to knowledge of the number or rate of abortions pre-Roe. There will always be people who violate the law, but society works because the vast majority of people do conform their behavior to legal requirements. How many 17-round magazines did you buy between 1993 and September 2004 that were stamped "For Law Enforcement Use Only"? How many rapes have you committed lately? Murders? Did you file your tax return last year? Pay taxes this year?
More poignantly, pre-Roe there were many children available for adoption. Post Roe, couples who cannot have children generally must leave the country to find an adoptable infant. Those mothers were obviously not all out there getting back alley abortions - the law against abortions, perhaps together with existing moral outrage against murdering babies in their mothers' wombs, clearly modified their behavior.
There's no point in continuing since both of our ideologies are obviously fixed.
The abortionists were the ones punished by the law before Roe v Wade. You're throwing out a red herring.
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