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.
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.
Double post...oops
yes, yes I remember that one well! =)
I've also seen "God is not a Republican, but the Devil IS a Democrat."
Chipping etched monuments off of walls, prohibiting Jesus shirts in school, the removal of a cross from the city of angels (LA) symbol...
Nope. No revision of the society to suit the godless despots.
The brilliance of the left is so underwelming.
Just because Jesus did not challenge Ceasar, does not mean He did not have opinions about government policy. He was extremely outspoken about local policy, particularly the over litigious nature of the Jewish people of the time. He quite forcefully criticized the folks overseeing the day to day Jewish life, for being hypocrites who were only paying lip service and offering empty rituals to His Father.
The Apostle Paul expounded on Christ's point in this. If the person this world puts over you is evil, you should still try your best to do a good job and be a good citizen. But if the people this world puts over you fear God, all the better.
At the founding of our own nation, Congress was forbidden from passing laws interfering with religion -- which was a matter the states disagreed on. They were all Christian, and many states required public officials to be dedicated to Jesus Christ, but they were afraid of the federal government being used to force the Christian doctrine of one state on another.
The idea that either Jesus or our founding fathers would have preferred the penumbrial "separation of church and state" we have today is quite simply wrong.
for later
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