response to Don on Mudville

Because Mudville's Liberall Democrat deletes me now and then --my blog is my back up.


I won't speak for Republicans --only for my self AS a Republican who is an evangelical Christian.

I am a Republican from my family heritage --taught to be one by my very smart mother and father. The reasons then were the party's belief in small gov't, less taxation, local control of gov't and schools, less gov't intrusion into small business, people's lives via taxation and federal programs. If we weren't self-governing and self-reliant, we would lose our freedom to laws, bureaucracies, high taxes, red tape, etc.

I was taught that the republicans had freed the slaves as the Party of Lincoln --but my family didn't believe in demonstrations as a means of pubic discourse as they usually became violent when the emotions hit the streets. they didn't blame all crime on poverty or racism, nor think that poverty or racism justified immoral behavior of any sort. Liberals were leaning that way even in the 1950's when I was a child.

I was taught the song, "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, jesus loves the little children of the world." The equality of the races --and the missionaries to Africa --were emphasized in my church --as we had missions in Sierra Leone mainly. One African man was an American trained doctor because of our missions and he and his wife would teach our all-white VBS kids in our small town.

In those days, Bibles were given to hs.graduates by local businessmen or ministerial associations at graduation--different versions for the Catholics or the Jews in our city. Public prayer was taken for granted and not seen as a conflict between church and state. Religion was respected in the public square --not banned or scorned as on this forum.

My mother and father had no use for FDR --one, he was rumored to be adulterous --he also got us into WWII and they were ironically as opposed to that as you all are to our involvement in Iraq. They didn't believe that a man who couldn't be faithful in marriage could be a really wise leader (without remorse and repentance.) I still believe that. They didn't like his public works programs putting people to work for the government. I'm not opposed to that idea if worthy projects were completed --as they were. They also believed in Prohibition. I'm sure you are not surprised. My husband will tell you that the medical stats show that it WAS good for the national health. The cirrhosis of the liver cases dropped definitely. We didn't get back to our pre-prohibition level of per capita consumption of liquor until the 1970's --the prohibition era slowed down our national consumption for half a century. (Granted, there were moonshiners and speakeasies. But most people abided by the law most of the time --and the bars weren't beckoning on every corner as today --by the way, my neighbor was killed in a bar fight in our trendy pub in our trendy inner city, gov't subsidized community in the 1970's. Had the bar not been there and so popular and respectable, he might not have been there -and be alive today.)

as for my belief in the depravity or sin nature of man --yes, I believe that man is essentially selfish --and that it is not the constitution that reminds him of civil rights and counterracts his selfishness. It is our Bible-based cultural history that was bedrock to our Constitution and cultural view of what is "right" and "nice"--we believe certain things are just right or wrong based on historically Christian culture. We think selfishiness is a sin --but that self-reliance is a virtue to encourage and equip people for.

we really don't consider it legit for a wife to shoot her ex husband and his new wife in their bed because he was such a jerk about everything. She will go to jail at least.

Whereas in a fundamentalist Muslim culture, as in ancient Jewish culture, it was appropriate to put both adulterers and homosexuals to death.

In India, women were sometimes burned alive on their husbands' funeral pyres.

In Hinduism, you transcend the problems around you, the beggars at your temple door, because those beggars need to endure their Karma.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AFFECT OUR VALUES --I.E. OUR VIEW OF RIGHT AND WRONG AND JUSTICE and COMPASSION and thus affect the kind of government we have, the kinds of laws we make.

Liberals think there is some grand nobility to secular thought --that secular ideas are the noblest --that religious-based values violate separation of church and state --yet secularism is the bed partner of atheism, the granddaddy of communism --the three philosophies say man's problems can't be addressed by religion, see religion as a negative--and believe that religion should have no part in what is deemed right and wrong --and of course Stalin killed 50 million and Hitler his 11 million because their God was not the God of the New Testament Christ who would never countenance murder of the innocent to advance a political system or leader.

We get our ideal of democracy from a verse that says we who believe are all one in Christ Jesus --that we are all members of the Body, all branches on the Vine, all Children of the Family of God, all living stones of the temple of God --and that ALL who repent may be part of this body of equals --and that God loved the whole world so that ALL could come to Him in repentance and be part of this whole.

Thus, if everyone is created equal (as Thomas Jefferson believed out of His Christian-influenced deistic philosophy of life), every voice can be heard. of course, at first they didn't think that included women and slaves--but the Bible verse DID include women AND slaves as equals in Christ. Our civil rights law eventually caught up with the implicit Biblical theme of human equality --for all races, all disabled, all socio-economic classes --ALL PEOPLE.

We have left wingers now who see us as equal to all living creatures --who won't eat animals, who won't test products, etc. on animals, etc. --these people have a view of right and wrong which is NOT derived from the Bible. Left wingers also see people as products of their environment such that their crimes are not their fault --and so they should be given another chance to repeat their crimes. I do believe in mercy and rehabilitation --but through religious conversion. I don't think man's nature becomes unselfish and righteous without a commitment to Biblical-based values --some hold to such values without faith in the Bible --but over time, as we erode the influence of religion in our culture, I believe we'll become more and more violent and base in our morals.

Unrestricted internet porn, song lyrics, movies, etc. as free speech is an example and will hasten our moral demise --is doing so right now. Addictions abound --because our youth are not committed to Christ --and because we don't restrict or punish sin enough to preserve a good culture for our kids to grow up in. Many of us will be shocked at what our kids will do despite a good upbringing --even the religious.
Because secular culture has run amok--we don't self-censure as we should --there are evil people making porn and we let them prosper in it. Likewise with drug sales and alcohol. When the law doesn't prohibit our worst excesses, we say they are "rights" --and our kids think they "have a right" --to do whatever. Listen to the Bill Mahers champion drug use and immorality in general. As if these things had no consequences that were tragic, --debilitating at least.