Lately, I have been following US presidential politics quite closely. I don’t blog about it much because everyone at St Blogs is pretty much in awe of George Bush and I am not. In fact, I am not impressed by many politicians in either party. I do see Obama as being a game changer. That is I think he will win and I think his winning will change the country and the world quite dramatically. Most of the changes will be positive.
I do think the game of politics has to be changed. It seems to be stifling rational thought. One party comes to the conclusion that proposition A is good and the other immediately jumps to the other side saying A is bad. Then the first party find every reason to embrace A and dismisses every reason to reject A. The other party finds every reason to destroy A and dismisses any reason why A might be good. This is done with backwards reasoning. That is when you start with your conclusion and then try and create an argument that gets you there.
This sort of thing is what you would expect from the less intelligent participants of the debate. The really smart guys would be the ones who could rise above that. But that isn’t so. Even the most brilliant conservatives and the most brilliant liberals fall into this trap. They argue very intelligently but only within the box of their ideology. They see nothing but evil and stupidity on the other side.
The trouble comes when the issues that get caught up in this debate are very important. Abortion is one such issue. From the conservative side it is often used to write people off as simply evil. Not because the person is evil but because they are liberal (a distinction few conservatives make). Not because they care about the unborn but because they care about the Republican party. So the goal is not to convince but to demonize.
From the liberal side there is no openness to the prolife arguments. Why? Because they are conservative arguments. They just want to turn back the clock on the sexual revolution. Why is that bad? It is a question that need not be addressed. Few conservatives and no liberals ask it. It is a closed question because all questions are closed. You don’t question your school of thought. It is just not done.
Americans change religions more frequently than they change political parties. They see the irrational clinging to tradition in the other party but they cannot see it in their own. They see their own position as being totally based on reason. Neither side changes very often. When an issue like abortion gets into the liberal/conservative dynamic then it becomes almost impossible to discuss. The politics overpowers the voice of reason every time.
The goal is to convince both sides that abortion is wrong. How do you get there? Just winning the political battles is not good enough. Republicans have won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections and that has accomplished exactly zero in terms of legally recognizing the life of the unborn. Is it realistic to think one party is going to win a lot more than 70% of the time? I don’t think so. So we need to get to a point where the Democrats don’t automatically just undo the little bit of progress a Republican may have made. They need to buy into the prolife arguments as well. But how do we get there?
I think part of the answer is to not demonize the other side. Catholics believe in invincible ignorance when it come to dealing with protestants. We need to believe in it when dealing with Democrats. We need to charitably assume they are trying to do the right thing. That was hard to do with Clinton because he was such a sleaze bucket. It should be easier with Obama. He does have a fairly Christian mindset. He reminds me of my way of thinking before I came to fully experience Christ. I was a liberal evangelical. I was comfortable thinking like a Christian. Still I didn’t really understand the depth of my sin and the power of God to change my heart and make me holy. Obama seems to me like he is in that space. He is comfortable in church and believes it is true but he does not really understand the gospel.
I do think the vast majority of the stuff you read about him is crap. He is either the messiah or the antichrist. Christians have fallen mostly in the ladder camp. Mostly we have failed to speak the truth in love. Often we have disregarded both truth and love in order to try and win. That is problematic when you win and it is even more problematic when you lose. It gives Democrats absolutely zero reason to take what we say seriously. We have called them every nasty thing we can think of and have assured them that we are speaking with the mind of Christ.
What we need to do is rise above politics. This is easier said than done. The Catholic church has always been very strong on the idea of not associating the church with a political cause. They have made that mistake many times so they know the dangers very well. You can see it quite clearly now. There is so much confusion between what is Christian and what is conservative. The abortion issue is just one more issue thrown into the mess. We need to separate it out and talk about it in a way all political camps can understand.
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