Posted on 08/18/2005 7:34:07 AM PDT by against_kerry
The Democrats turn their lonely eyes to Hillary: Give us a message. Lead us home.
Even for the Wonder Woman of the Party of JFK, this is no easy task. How to decry the excesses of the Bush administration and the GOP Congress without validating the label "The Party of No"?
How to lure enough GOP votes to win elections at a time when Democrat means liberal and liberal is a term of derision?
A Web site set up by a minister and his daughter (www.liveliberal.com) has an answer you can wear on a T-shirt: "Liberal is not a dirty word."
Retired Lutheran minister Daniel Bruch of Live Liberal gets right to the point: "I don't know if Jesus was the first liberal, but he was an important one."
Jesus taught love, tolerance, forgiveness, charity and humility. Don't take my word for it. Read the New Testament. It's not that long. And it's not about fire-and-brimstone fundamentalism, judging one another or dominating the Earth. It outlines a philosophy based on a really radical idea: Love your creator, love yourself, love your neighbor as yourself.
When it comes to following this lesson, the current administration "is walking 180 degrees opposite of the person they call their savior," Bruch said in a phone interview.
On their Web site, Bruch and daughter Sarah offer quotes and essays on liberalism that Hillary Rodham Clinton should work into her speeches. For example, "liberals support changes that increase personal freedom and tolerance, and exercise the liberty to empower government to the extent necessary to achieve those ends."
Instead of trying to make their best candidate, Clinton, into a vanilla-flavored, inoffensive centrist, Democrats ought to boldly point out that liberals provided the impetus to move society toward acceptance of civil rights, women's rights, children's rights, consumers' rights, etc.
Liberals also deserve "family values" mantle because the 40-hour workweek, laws against child labor and other protections for workingmen and women were liberal ideas of old. High-quality childcare is a liberal idea for today's working families.
They should be "for" better wages.
They should be "for" national health care.
They should be "for" being liberals. They should point out that Jesus was a liberal, too.
Somehow, Democrats let others define them as elitist snobs. That label, not the liberal label, is the one Democrats have to shake.
Can Hillary help them do it?
She has the charisma and the intelligence -- and she has infinite patience, or Bill would be toast. She needs the guts to take a proud left turn and loudly proclaim that the United States is not a "Christian nation" in any pinched or exclusionary way. It's a nation that honors the individual rights of pagans, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others, as well as Christians.
It is also nation that acts for the common good in ways that were meticulously outlined by a radical liberal named Jesus. Linda Valdez is an editorial writer at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached at linda.valdez@arizonarepublic.com
This is your brain on drugs.
"Jesus would vote Democrat"
The Dems have been known to raise the dead to vote, so I wouldn't completely reject this.
Whew....
Thanks for the link, I think.
Reads like the Jewish version of "The Satanic Verses".
Liberals delusions as usual, they surely lack tolerance and humility
When it has to do with the word of God, I leave that in the hands of John Denver
This crap keeps coming up over and over again about the political affiliation of Jesus. It just shows we have no inkling of what "King" and "Lord" means. There is no appeal to the SCOTUS in His court. He is Judge and Executioner. The same Lord that killed every man, woman, and child on Earth, sent His Son to die to save us. Go figger that one out. It is up to us to be on the side of Jesus, not that He be on our side. The minute the "Right Wing Fundamentalist Extremists" loose influence in the Republican Party, I will go Independent. Secular Republicans keep saying Christians will only shoot themselves in the foot to go 3rd party, to which I reply, "So don't loose us." The RINO's couldn't win dogcatcher without the Christians.
Sorry, I don't believe in eternal damnation.
The Libertarian Party is opposed to taxpayer funding of art of any sort. Can't say the same for the other parties, who are happily supporting dung-and-piss art with your money.
it's your gamble!
b'shem Y'shua
I find it VERY hard to believe that a Supremely Enlightened Being is going to subject people to eternal torture. Us mere mortals have laws against cruel and unusual punishment - don't you think a God of Love (if that's how you define him) would too?
Unlike the democrats, who turned them into whine.
That is an incredibly idiotic statement. To follow this logic, the government should not ban anything it would not want to "require".
A government that can ban murder can someday require it.
A government that can ban child abuse can someday require it.
A government that can ban assault and battery can someday require it.
A government that can ban auto theft can someday require it.
A government that can ban blackmail can someday require it.
A government that can ban election fraud can someday require it.
Does this author seriously believe Hitlery fits this mold??!!!!
The G-d of Love only asks you to accept Him as Creator of the universe.
If you choose to not accept Him as King of the universe,
He has shown you His alternative for you.
I believe Pascal or some other frenchman observed:
Better to live your life assuming that G-d exists and dieing finding none;
than living your life assuming no G-d exists and dieing and finding one!
b'shem Y'shua
"Jesus taught love, tolerance, forgiveness, charity and humility."
That's a novel concept. I was under the impression that Jesus preached repentance for sins and love for God and neighbor through a life of service to others.
I'm trying to reconcile sucking babies brains into sinks and sexual hedonism with this, but apparently I'm theologically impaired.
Jesus said things like "Render that which is Caesar's unto Caesar, and that which is God's unto God."
I find it amusing that those who reject the Father often treat the Son like He was a homeless activist advocating socialized medicine. They do not understand belief in the spiritual rather than the physical, the same error made by the pharisees and the lost of Jesus' time.
The Lord will bring about perfect politics when He returns. Only then will human suffering, taxation, greed, graft,and bureaucracy end.
Yeshua is a Zionist, as is Yahweh. The words of Yeshua in the Bible say he will return to destroy the enemies of Israel.
What would Jesus drive? A Hummer with a Star of David on the doors... Who would Jesus bomb? Probably Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians, just to start...
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