Posted on 08/18/2005 8:39:28 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.
Um...well OK they haven't. But this hostility towards Christianity that is given off by the left certainly wouldn't make Jesus too happy.I'm not a Christian, but I'd agree.
That's one of the reasons it's important to keep religion and government separate. If the right uses the government to promote Christianity, the left might sneak back into power and use it to repress the faith.
-Eric
Either Jesus was the Son of God, and the most important figure on Earth or He was just a man claiming to be divine, not worth our attention.
The left has tried to find a "third way" and claim that He may not be divine but that He never claimed to be, that the Gospels were written after He moved on (some deny His crucifixtion). They only want to look at His message of being kind to our fellow man.
"Do as thou will is the law of the land"; anything goes.
Sorry,
left off the /sarcasm
tag. :)
We get things we don't deserve and don't get the punishments we do deserve. Such is God's grace and charity.
Whether Hell is a genuine "place" or not, people who sin can make their own lives a living Hell (and not just from pangs of guilt).
Would Jesus have voted democrat when the northern democrats were undermining the Republican's efforts to end slavery?
The founding fathers were inspired by their faiths when they established this country.
Religion does not need to be kept for "just the weekend".
Atheists believe that there absolutely is no God.
Agnostics come to the conclusion that they "don't know".
Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. When there are efforts made to suppress all public expression of faith, the antiGod brigade are pushing their "no God" god on me.
No way Jesus was a left winger, my tag line is right out of the Bible.
Jesus is a royalist.
Yes, of course. Because Jesus was Pro-Abortion, right?
Jesus was as intolerant as can be, especially in matters of religion. He is the narrow gate to salvation. We may only know His Father through Him. That can't be any more exclusive.
Whacking babies in the womb and people who are sick and people who are old is definitely not what I'd call Christian.
Paul was a tent-maker, and in his letters he would admonish people tempted to wait for the second coming to basically 'get a job'. In one of His parables he talks about the three servents who are given a number of talents and the responsibility for administrating them. I don't think Jesus was anti-profit, though I do think he was anti-exploitation of the poor.
These people are funny. As long as the unfettered slaughter of innocents is a constitutionally guaranteed right, they'll have a tough time selling this to the Red States.
Uh huh.
Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. When there are efforts made to suppress all public expression of faith, the antiGod brigade are pushing their "no God" god on me.There's no such effort being made. I still hear the church bells in my neighborhood every Sunday morning. There's still ministers of all types all over the airwaves. The Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons still go door to door.
"Public" does not mean government approved.
-Eric
"liberals support changes that increase personal freedom ..."
but further on:
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.
No wonder liberalism is now defined as a mental disorder.
Don't bother posting to against_kerry. He just posts articles. He hasn't actually replied to anyone for a year.
I can't speak for him either but I do know he would take a dim view of those who fight so that the moneychangers will always have unrestricted rights to the temple ( Democrats ).
I can see why he is retired. He doesn't have a message that is Biblical.
Phillipians 3:18 For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame--who set their mind on earthly things.
2 Corinthians 11:3-5 (King James Version) King James Version
3But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
4For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
5For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.
As hard as it may be, we must remember that many are deceived, and the "god of this world" has them deceived, in darkness. We battle not against people, but against spiritual forces that wish to destroy the Jews, Christians, and ultimately all humanity, in that order.
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