Monday, February 5, 2007

The half empty glass--always republicans' fault

You will always find some need which America is not filling, here and abroad --and blame the Republicans for it --as though the Democrats would be able to fill every need in the world with their high taxes which historically cripple the economy and dry up the tax coffers --as though the human tendency to worry about one's own security for self and family, thus resisting higher taxes, were unique to the one party.

I notice that its the very rich liberals who won't notice higher taxes --like Streisand and ex-presidents --you don't ask for your OWN taxes to be raised --just those you imagine to be filthy rich if they have more money than you --which ends up being those who work really hard to establish small businesses and who employ and provide benefits for dozens of other working families. My husband works the hours of 3 men and provides income to 19 other families with work that all has to have his personal touch and signature --which requires him to absorb all the liability. Yet we bother men like him with frivolous lawsuits and threats of higher taxation --when he already gives over 20 percent away plus a third at least to the gov't.

The U.S. has always --and are still --throwing HUGE chunks of money into the developing nations -- --for AIDS and other problems they have. as well as at least 70per cent of our monies into Social security and health care here. We have helped many countries whose attitude toward us is lousy. Like France.

I'm sure Bush would like to spend all the money we have on such projects as Uganda's wells--but we need to first help Iraq and Afghanistan and have gotten many health clinics, hospitals and schools and infrastructure up and running in both nations. The recent report on Afghanistan was great --on C-span--telling of the road that now encircles the nation to join all the rurual areas --and the schools and clinics established. We have Katrina, too. My church is taking its 3rd team down there to assist in clean-up or building projects soon.

I suspect we have been afflicted all across our nation by natural disaster in God's effort to bring us to our knees --to get us to contemplate our sin and realize that "righteousness exalts a nation" --while sin brings it down. For our culture is awash in immorality through online sources, and the public promotion of perversion.

Fortunately it is Uganda, i believe, which promotes abstinence until marriage to combat their aIDS crisis --and they report the largest decrease in new AIDS cases of any of the African nations with that problem.

In this country, I have a young friend with some very minor health problems who gets $600 a month from S.S. plus foodstamps, plus another $200 from welfare plus free healthcare and transportation to her healthcare --plus her estranged husband's voluntary $400 and more a month for 2 babies. Plus Legal Aid and free mental health counseling and a payee to handle her bills. Her husband picks up any slack in what the gov't doesn't give her. So don't tell me about the cruelty of our gov't toward the needy who are deemed unable to work whose husbands are accused of dom. violence or molestation or whatever. We pick up the pieces.

Many of us give thousands to charities who go and deliver the aide personally --such as an India Rice Fund that goes to hostels for kids run by my church --and child sponsorship so they have school and one meal a day through the mission. and the Appalacian mission boarding school which takes in troubled students --whose brilliant teaching staff gets most of their grads into and through college.

I met a wonderful young man from Kenya who told of walking 5 miles a day both ways to a mission school --and eventually he was sent to America to a Christian college. He was a freshman so he asked my son if I would look over an essay he wrote on "kenyanization" (the modernization of Kenya.) He had bleak hopes for it because of the tribal culture and customs (the way of initiating the young men into adulthood with teen-age circumcision and weeks in the woods with the men) that he believed held his nation back from true progress--and from Christian values --and held them in tribal rivalries with a war-like mentality amongst themselves. He could write English and express himself excellently--all thanks to the Christian mission school he had attended.

I believe the African Children's Choir is an outgrowth of Christian missions, considering the songs they sing. There used to be a Korean Orphans choir with World Vision --and I heard that nation is now sending out more Christian missionaries than the U.S. Don't know if that is true or not, but I did hear it.

The charities with the lowest overhead are Christian --and there are MANY who do wonderful work --including Operation Christmas Child for which church people prepared millions of boxes last Nov. World vision and Samaritans' purse have done water well projects for years in foreign countries--as did a local Rotary club here in Toledo for Haiti.

Our church has sent medical mission teams out to Haiti before.

Bush is right about the heart --He got this notion from the Bible and experienced it in his own life --with his alcohol and purposeless younger years --which years you focus on --instead of Clinton's continuing shallow life.

The bible says the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful --and that out of our hearts procedes sin--but Jesus is quoted as saying, "Behold I stand at the door and knock (visualized in a famous religious painting as our heart's door) --if any one hears and will open the door, I will come in to him and fellowship (dine) with him."

When you experience this, your heart (mind/soul) is changed --as in "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds."

I have no doubt that Bush sincerely wants to do rightly for our Country.
And that he believes as I do, that our superior war capabilities CAN enable us to secure the peace in Iraq --if we pull together in resolve to "git er done." And quit aggravating the situation with our own civil strife --and short sighted desire to just get ourselves out of their religious civil war. We took out their Hitler, a just cause --he WAS a WMD-- we need to help them build their gov't.

10:14 AM EST

2 comments:

Neighborhood Concerns said...

The answer to the problems you laid out is what?

It seems to be to me that if we follow the Christian ideals then all will be right with the world and yet since the inception of the Christian faith there has always disputes and war fare.

Barb said...

Granted, N.C., there are always disputes and warfare --because there are always bullies --and there is always selfishness and disagreement about control --even in churches.

My origional point was that the Republicans are not to blame for all the ills in the world, but at campaign time, that's the message of the Democrats. They seem to suggest that if we just elect the Dems, there will be no more wars or poverty, etc. And no more rich people, just taxes and social programs. Because, after all, the Republicans and the religious right are PURE EVIL! Not to be trusted.

If we DID each follow Christian ideals, there WOULD be a lot less strife --and a lot less poverty.
We would all be generous; the rich would provide jobs and a living wage so that we were all richer than otherwise; kindness would prevail.

And most importantly, people would wait until maturity to make babies and they would stay together to support those children with a father and a mother who would put their marriages and families first.
We would all have a good work ethic. We would be honest, no cheaters. We would all be diligent in school, work and home.

Ah! Utopia! heaven on earth.

I just don't think we get to that state with Democratic philosophy of enabling people with social programs that discourage incentives to marry, to stay together, to work, which reward indolence and goofing off in school. Which make such people feel entitled to march around with posters blasting the "Haves," many of whom worked hard to be "haves" and blaming the "haves" for the fact that they are the "have nots."
Which is what is happenng whenever the democrats scream out, "Tax the rich!" It's not just the rich they want to tax --it's the small business people who are financially comfortable --including the "middle class" --the working folks who now pay taxes. The poor don't pay taxes as it is and get earned income tax credits if they work --and other hand-outs if they don't work.

Granted, some fall beneath the safety nets of poverty and end up homeless --often drug addicts and the mentally ill. And my one friend who is chronically unemployable because of her own attitudes --she's about to be homeless and I am puzzled as to what my responsibility toward her is ....since she makes her own messes and doesn't really get out there to look for a job.

Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you"