Values Voter Summit Straw Poll

I realize that there will not be a single candidate that will 100% match my opinions on the biggest challenges facing our nation. That is really not what bothers me the most. I am not bothered by the candidates' religious positions or seeming lack thereof.
Show me that you are a candidate with a vision. A vision for how America could be. How we can gain a position as a nation the world can trust, how we can foster human rights, environmental responsibility, and hold the high moral ground. How we can rise above all these individual issues (gay marriage, immigration, abortion, etc.) to come to a place of unity and a vision of our role in the world. These issues will have to be dealt with. They are important....I see them more as issues that our state and federal legislatures will need to hammer out. I want a President, a chief executive, a commander in chief, who will provide a vision for the nation against which we can test our policies. A vision that will define our actions in the world arena and in the position our federal government takes in regards to the people of our nation and the role of our state governments.

We need to start with the vision. When you start with the issues, you end up with an incoherent vision or a complete lack thereof. (What we've got right now.) Lets figure out who we want to be in the world, then work back to how to get there. So show me the vision. Show me you can lead, that you can rise above the clamour to find the things that unite us. Show me you can see the way ahead through the tough, complicated, dangerous world we live in.

So show me the vision. Show me you can lead, that you can rise above the clamour to find the things that unite us. Show me you can see the way ahead through the tough, complicated, dangerous world we live in.

The horrific irony in all of this is that it is the presidential candidates with the vision that we never hear from. It is the Mike Gravels, the Dennis Kucinichs, and the Ron Pauls that are the visionaries.

All of those supposed values based issues - simply aren't. When I hear a politician gathering the mob over one of those issues (I keep waiting for them to pass out the torches to go after the enemy) - I know it is code language. dealing with poverty, caring for the sick, reforming the justice system to be just, peace, - those are Gospel values. I can't connect the others to Jesus - just to our current set of Pharisaic rules.
Should we deal with poverty, care for the sick, deal with a justice system based on the possibility of redemption rather than vengeance and look at the world without needing to control it - peace - Many of the other so called values issues will fall into place. I'm not sure when making the rich richer became a gospel value in this country - not sure when the outsiders (whom Jesus embraced repeatedly) became monsters to be destroyed, not sure when being sick became somehow our own fault.
We have created a sort of pseudo-Christian thought that is about prosperity instead of a poverty of spirit, it is about being faithful to Rome/ Washington instead of to the beatitudes, it is about looking moral instead of being a moral thinker. It denies empathy as a value and rejects the outsiders in a way that simply does not match any part of God's desire for the world.
A free market economy has nothing to do with being Christian. Neither does socialism (although to be honest it is a bit closer).
Here is the reality of what this SCHIP veto will mean. It means that is a child like Graeme Frost is in a terrible accident - he will be cared for - to a degree. When time comes for rehabilitation - the long hard part of coming back from brain damage - the care will not happen. He will forever be stuck without such therapy. Here's what our current prison system means. It means that if a 17 year old kid is running with his friends from the block - doing risky things as virtually all 17 year old kids do and one of them brings a gun, and somebody is hurt - or dies - we throw that kid and everyone else we can gather into prison, purse our lips, find reasons to call them unredeemable, and the kid is stuck - forever in a kind of hell we enjoy knowing exists. There are consequences to our need for vengeance in all things. We must come together and dream of a means of both caring for the vulnerable, educating those who seemingly cannot fit into our current ways of learning, caring for the sick so that they might reach optimal health for the benefit of us all and being part of a culture that will enable the violent and weak to find redemption. It is not a liberal or conservative task. It is about our very survival as human beings.
The first moral lesson parents teach their children occurs at about 2 years of age. No, we say, "how doyou think that made him feel. You hurt that person. " We allow our children to find empathy. I simply suspect that many did not get that lesson or forgot it. Without that empathy for our own victims, we are mere machines, cold and forgetful of our souls.

the key is Alan - what issues gather us viscerally and short circuit any actually thought and which issues call us to conversion. Poverty, caring for God's planet, non violence, forgiveness -now there are the hard ones. We are a hard audience since we have been taught to react rather than thoughfully come to conclusions. We have short attention spans which often do not connect to the hard process of conversion. We like the idea of hell for some more than the idea of a kingdom that includes all. One of my favorite films is "Spitfire Grill". May I suggest it as film we can all watch. It is about the difference between the kingdom of God and the righteous order of human beings. A lovely redemptive film.

And just think how far the millions of dollars the candidates have raised from lobbyists, hedge funds, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and the military industrial complex (except Gravel and Kucinich, of course, and Paul, I believe.)..

Just think how far those millions could go to help the poor. What a country, what a country. We deserve better.

You can't slip much past the Christian conservative!

Poor = black
Social justice = black & Hispanic
environment = neopagan tree-hugging Californian or pointy-headed Northeastern college professor

You're sure not going to slip anything like THAT into the list when there are sure-fire winners like putting the Ten Commandments up in the courthouse to draw the cheers of the crowd.

And Christian conservatives wonder why they get sterotyped as small-minded reactionaries. For anyone who remembers (as I do) the segregated South with it's numerous code words it all has a familiar ring. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."

When the public schools were integrated in the South in the 60s, the immediate result was the creation of hundreds of all white Christian academies. As far as I'm concerned, it's a shameful legacy, and one whose echoes are still with us. The horror and disgust in the 1960s over the prospect of racial integration was the wedge that the GOP needed to bring the South into their camp. Believe me, prior to that the very idea of touching the Republican lever was unthinkable in the South. The Republicans-- party of Lincoln, William Tecumseh Sherman, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Reconstruction. Unthinkable. But as is so often the case in America, race is a key (if often unstated) issue.

There is a Utopian strain in the Christian right, a longing for the imagined Golden Age of the past. In that Golden Age there were no blacks in the local high school, nobody ever mentioned homosexuality or abortion, divorce was a social death sentence, environmental degradation was not yet an issue, and all the children prayed every morning in school. There were plenty of good jobs for working class white folks, and every car was American-made. 'Career girls' were a novelty, associated with screwball comedies set in places like New York. Smoking was probably not that great for you, but not that bad either. America was mighty, and Christian, and good.

It was a more innocent age, in spite of the Cold War. But it was no Utopia, especially for the poor of either race. And you can't get there from here.

Thanks! Will check it out.

Donny:

If you think Democrats = Communists and would lead to a "G-dless socialist state," it's a fair statement that you almost certainly flunked poli sci back in school.

PS -- Still trying to figure out how health care (NOT "reproductive" health care) for children is "anti-Christian" ...

David, I think you should go ahead and repent anyway, but I'm confused. Would you repent to the Lord or to Donny?

I've given up responding to those who believe God hates the same things and the same people that they do. 30% of the population is both authoritarian (or likes an authoritarian world) and literalist. That means that last little 24% still believing in the administration - well - they can't help it. This also includes the Ralph Naders of the world - I'm still blaming Ralph by the way.
We do not know why some people can think only in terms that need enemies to make sense of the world and others cannot. Most of us fall in the middle somewhere. It is a responsibility of those who follow Jesus to learn to think outside of the cultural box in which we live.
Christians helping the poor - well, we're no better than non Christians nor are we worse. We like to give money to causes rather than the poor and we certainly don't like to get our hands too dirty. Our current generation - people who are my kids' age are more action oriented and seem to care much less for dogma and more about actually caring for the poor.
Our local megachurches - read their bulletins. Bowling league, bridge league, dinner for eight, teens practicing for band or choir, Scripture study, and only a few little entries about St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen, or Sunday school gathering for Habitat for Humanity. But, go into a group of kids and they are planning on being of use in the world. Invisible Children has inspired so many young people. They don't necessarily do it for Jesus - but they do it to be of use.

I can't believe the issue of the Ten Commandments being in public is even on the scale at all. Must be nice to live in a world where stuff like that is the most important thing to think about. Meanwhile, those of us who live in reality are concerned with whether or not people are able to take care of the kids they already have. But I could be deluded in thinking that is more important than making sure everyone is forced to view our beliefs exclusively on the public dime. This is what lack of sleep will do to you.