From some questions asked me by a rather conservative seeker a year or so ago. (Who I found to be a wise and good man.)
“Do you have to be a flaming Liberal to be Pagan?”
Thermal

hell no. You can be a flaming radical too!
(sorry, couldn’t resist….)

Yes, I suspect the key word here may well be “flaming”. To be Pagan SOMETHING has to set you afire, get your passion up, be it the Gods Themselves, or even your own curiosity about new ways to think about things. Or responsible use of power, or even the feeling of power, called up in ritual and burning through you. Or, or… something. Fire!

For starters Pagans tend to have a deep reverence for nature. Since the conservatives have been mocking anyone who has a concern for the environment since Reagan was governor of California, (“You’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all”, that leaves us little choice. Also, a lot of Pagans believe we are all interconnected which leads to a compassionate outlook. Most of us don’t see the conservatives paying more than lip service to compassion.

Actually, I started this thread because I wondered how many folks would rebel against the straightjacket labels of “Liberal”, and/or “Conservative”.
For me, those labels, like “Democrat”, or “Republican”, are essentially meaningless bullbleep. Since both parties have recently attacked or failed to support the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I have no real respect for either of them. Although I mostly vote Democratic, it is a default vote against a party which has been co-opted by big business. And both parties have been essentially anti-American in the great rush to the “Free Trade” mania which, by letting extranational entities loot America of working capital, crashed the American and world economies.
The politicians who call themselves “Liberal” and those who call themselves “Conservative”, use those labels in a manner opposed to what they meant a generation ago. And whichever party or beief-system they embrace, they are almost all wealthy, and stand with their pockets stuffed full of money from other wealthy people. (Oh, excuse me, “Campaign Contributions”, we wouldn’t want to call bribery bribery.) Whether “Liberal” or “Conservative”, they have already proven that they will protect the wealthy before they will protect the workers of America.
For me, the struggles I personally find myself concerned with are between Humanism and Feudalism, between freedom and Fascism, and between the Capitalist/Industrialist promulgation of blind consumerism and finding a real balance between our technical and industrial capabilities to change social and environmental systems and a future in which people live well and free together in a world with ecosystems which have not been looted to destruction.
I also have a deep reverence for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States, I believe them to be the documents upon which the rise of Democracy in the world are founded, and still the best guide to good government to be found.
Both political parties in America, and both of the belief-systems which they have been promulgating, get in the way of what I personally believe in and work for, and confuse the issues I want to address, so I can offer no fealty to any of them.
But I was hoping for a deeper response from the Pagans out there, because Pagans tend to not be captured as much by belief-systems. Where are the Pagans who are outside the (Conservative/Liberal) bags?
Or, for that matter, where are the Christians who are tired of being stuffed in a bag?
Thermal
jaundicedi said;
June 2, 2009 7:06 PM
For starters Pagans tend to have a deep reverence for nature. Since the conservatives have been mocking anyone who has a concern for the environment since Reagan was governor of California, (“You’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all”, that leaves us little choice. Also, a lot of Pagans believe we are all interconnected which leads to a compassionate outlook. Most of us don’t see the conservatives paying more than lip service to compassion.

I think it first depends a lot on how closely you associate modern Paganism with the view of nature as sacred. If you view it as very important, the only alternative I can see is that politically, you don’t see the government’s legitimate role in protecting nature, which is a libertarian political philosophy.
The other alternative I’ve found are people who interpret polytheistic cultures in a rather politically and culturally conservation fashion. Usually those will minimize the connection between polytheism and a sacred view of nature, which I think has some legitimate points, depending on who you point to historically.
So I would say no, you don’t, but…

Sorry, that should be: interpreting ancient polytheistic cultures as in a politically and culturally conservative fashion.

Pagans tend to be free-thinkers and chafe at the bit if someone tries to rein us in or put labels on us.
However, I question the need to put labels on anyone. If I say I’m a Liberal, it does not mean that I won’t consider *any* Conservative values. Maybe it’s a leftover from growing up in the 60′s but I won’t be constrained that way.

Cheryl: As an exercise, I often try to look at the labels of political Conservatives and Liberals in the U.S. and compare that to the classical sense of a liberal as one who generally favors change and conservative as those who generally oppose it.
It lines up in some senses, but not in others. Ideally, I prefer to live in a way that finds equilibrium, just as well saying I want to conserve at times and change at other times.
(I hope someone can delete my double posts above!)

For Thermal, I’m not quite sure what your point is. I am old enough to know what I mean by calling myself a “liberal”. I demonstrated against the war in Viet Nam and against the first war in Iraq. I picketed with the United Farm workers and even, on occasion with the Black Panthers when we had common cause. I see no reason to find a new adjective because Rush tried to make it a dirty word. I consider the source.

My point is/was that the seeker I spoke of in my first post was probably closer to you spiritually than he was with most of the neofascist conservative pseudochristians, but the labels were keeping him (and many others) from realizing it. He knew that he viewed the Earth with religious awe, but felt part of a bag which kept him from being able to hear “flaming liberals”.
I see as many Pagans who have bought the “Liberal” bag, and deny their own feelings which might better fit into the “Conservative” belief-sets.
I was/am trying to provoke debate about the political and religious value of those bags. About whether we can approach our relationships and dialogues about religion, politics, technology, and ecology in a less confining manner.
jaundicedi wrote;
June 3, 2009 9:44 PM
For Thermal, I’m not quite sure what your point is. I am old enough to know what I mean by calling myself a “liberal”. I demonstrated against the war in Viet Nam and against the first war in Iraq. I picketed with the United Farm workers and even, on occasion with the Black Panthers when we had common cause. I see no reason to find a new adjective because Rush tried to make it a dirty word. I consider the source.

My question would be why the need for “bags” at all? Climb into any of those bags and the first thing you’ll notice is that it’s suffocating and rather dark in there. Hard to see anything except what’s in there with you.
It seems to me that your Seeker friend is more concerned with the label he’ll be wearing than what he actually believes. “I want to be an environmentalist but I don’t want to be called a hippie tree-hugging dirt worshipper”.
I think that bags have little, if any, value. They are too easily stereotyped and become Clubs where people are told what to think by the “leaders” of their particular belief-set. My advice to people has always been – get the information you need to make your OWN decisions and think for yourself.

Thermal: It seems like everyone’s agreed political orientations like Liberal and Conservative harm when they constrain independent thinking.
But what else is there to say about it? I think labels can be useful when you admit to their limitations.
We can talk about new political orientations that attempt to challenge them like third parties such as the Libertarians, Greens, etc. Do they offer anything specific for Pagans? I’m rather open about 3rd parties as an alternative the deadlock of the Republicans and the Democrats. I’ve been debating the wisdom of voting 3rd party for years and was convinced until I voted for Obama.
So far, I think I’m probably going to vote for a 3rd party next time. There’s always the argument for being an independent, but that begs the question of how effect being independaent if you can only effectively choose between two very similar corporate parties.2

I am a pagan, a free-thinker, and I gladly embrace the term “left-wing” to describe my political philosophy because that’s what it is. No harm in calling a spade a spade.

Forgiveness. How do other Pagans/Witches view it?
I was checking out some news stories last night. As you may have heard, Susan Atkins is dying from brain cancer and has once again asked to be released from prison so she can die at home.
I can still remember clearly the news reports of the Tate/LaBianca murders, documenting especially her vicious murder of Sharon Tate as Sharon begged for her unborn baby’s life.
But what surprised me were some of the messages I saw posted regarding Susan’s plea for release from prison. People were bluntly hateful toward her. Some said that they would gladly slit her open the way she slit open Sharon Tate. After all these years, I found no shred of anything even approaching forgiveness for her. I would expect that reaction from the relatives of the victims, but strangers? The posts were evidently from people of no relation to the murder victims.
I pondered where that level of hatred could be coming from after so much time. I then began to consider my own feelings about forgiving people when they have harmed me. I am not a forgiving person. If someone hurts me – not by accident or some silly slight or thoughtless comment but a calculating, planned harm – I will not forgive that. Not ever. That doesn’t mean that I will necessarily go after them or try to return the hurt, but I will never trust them again and will sever all ties. I was wondering if other Pagans/Witches are like that.
So as Pagans/Witches, where do you stand regarding forgiveness? Can you do it? Should you?

Holocaust Museum Shooting. I am simply sick over the shooting death of Stephen Tyrone Johns by James von Brunn, an 88-year old White supremacist with a long history of being a Holocaust denier who has also served time in a Federal prison for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board in 1981. That guard is a hero who gave his life to protect the thousands of people within the Museum.
It is yet more proof that hate groups are still alive and well in our country. That there are radicals in our society who are willing to kill to further their cause — whether it’s an anti-abortion fanatic gunning down an abortion doctor or a violent White supremacist determined to kill members of a racial group they dislike — is nauseating.
What could possibly drive people to the point where they could commit such violent acts? What feeds such seething hatred within them to keep it alive for decades? I have no words to express the anger and outrage I feel when confronted with such senseless violence.
Thoughts? Comments?

Cheryl, I feel the pain too. Senseless deaths at the hands of mindless fools add up, and up and up….But the reality I’ve come to understand is that the battle between good and evil is one fought within the human heart. We can fight evil only within ourselves. To everyone else, we must present a shining example of divine love. This is part of the reason why i have come to despise our models of justice and especially the punitive wrath that culminates in the ultimate form of injustice, the death penalty. I don’t claim to have the answers, perhaps at best, the right questions. But I agree with Voltaire, we should each tend our own garden. Lately however, I begin to believe that fences are becoming more important…

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