I quit talking when I lost hope of Utopia

I used to be a soapbox grassroots political passionate, from days spent longing for my 18th birthday as I watched a Presidential election pass me by in 1996 to fighting unionization in my 20's at my place of employment. I've always been an "issues" voter: worried more about the morality of government than anything else, I had a short list of issues that determined which candidate got my support. Through the years, those issues remained almost unchanged: women's rights; abortion; and issues of personal freedom and choice such as those defined by the Constitution and it's amendments. When I was 18, I was for the death penalty. Now I'm opposed to it. At 18, I would have voted against gay rights, raised in a Bible-banging fundamentalist cult and still a talking head for what I'd been taught in my formative years. Now I'm much less sure of myself: I'll vote for the rights of gay spouses in healthcare every time, and I don't know how I'd vote on gay marriage.

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But this political season has me silenced. I think mostly because I still desperately dream, somewhat delusionally, of a political arena that encourages balanced, although passionate, debate. Discord? Certainly. But with chivalry, respect, and a chance for everyone to get a word in edge-wise. I've never voted for a candidate I agreed with 100%, nor have I voted against a candidate I disagreed with 100%. Isn't it that way for every voter? Because there is no duplicate of the unique and wonderful YOU in the universe?

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It seems like politics are more polarized than ever this year. Maybe it's that I've never been through a Presidential election on Facebook. Maybe it's that I've finally made enough friends who disagree with me that I'm bombarded with more and more ideas very much other than my own. When we're not facing a major political decision, I love the back-and-forth that is now part of my daily conversations: many of these friends have gently and respectfully helped me expand my horizons and have even helped me work out whether or not my ideas are based on Scripture or just the pipe-dream pulpit-banging of a mouthy pastor.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag: I won't be voting Democrat this election. But I won't be happy about voting Republican either. Because I am not a party-line voter. I no longer consider myself a "Republican", history in the Young Republicans notwithstanding. What I really believe in is freedom. Personal responsibility. Reaching down to help someone else rise up. Grassroots aid coming from the very communities needy people live in. I don't want to live in a socialist nation. I want to live in a free nation.

There's a big reason I feel this way: my faith. Not only am I commanded to love my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:31), I am told that "religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows" - and perhaps the uninsured? - "in their distress." (James 1:27) Call me a passivist hippie commune love-glazed freak, but what a country we would live in if we could somehow encapsulate Galatians 3:23-28 in a government!

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I can't make that kind of change happen no matter how I vote in 2012. Maybe that's why I sigh every time I think of the election. Unfortunately, the main issue I'll be voting on this Presidential election will be economics. Our country is in serious money trouble. Someone has to find a way out of it. Our current administration has proven that it doesn't have an answer to balancing the budget, plugging the holes that money is leaking out of, and still accomplishing what the Federal government needs to do. One major reason? It has kept adding to the ever-longer laundry list of what the Federal government "needs" to do. What needs to happen - hopefully before we become the next Spain, Portugal, or Greece - is a long, hard look at that list, and some serious prioritization and budgeting. We've got to quit borrowing to accomplish our goals. We have to make our goals fit into our budget, somehow.

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The Constitution states that we shouldn't overthrow Government lightly, lest we all suffer even greater than we currently do. Yet when a "long train of abuses" and "Despotism" are evident in our Federal system, it is our "right...duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (from the Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 supporters of Freedom on July 4, 1776)

If we are to continue to exist as a free nation, we cannot print money like it is mere paper. We cannot borrow what we cannot repay. We cannot vote individual mandates into law, as we did with the Healthcare Reform Act, penalizing people for inactivity, which is unconstitutional. We cannot be ruled by fear and propaganda, such as the misinformation regarding the uninsured population statistics - which did not take into account illegal aliens and other non-citizens nor those who choose to live without insurance due to youthful ignorance, stupidity, or lifestyle - used to push the Healthcare Reform Act through the House and Congress in 2012.

We have been, historically, a creative breed. We've worn our "melting pot" brand proudly. We've been known to work together enormously successfully on occasion - think World Wars and the Great Depression. We've survived horrible rifts such as the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Civil Rights Movement. Great changes have been effected by large groups of people - women and children, minorities, religious groups, and even political organizations. We've transformed our nation over and over again. Today we look nothing like we did in 1776. If we survive another 200+ years, I imagine it will be a totally different patchwork quilt of people and ideas. Will there be more harmony? The pessimist in me doubts it. But I want to believe it is possible. 

I am more than willing to reach a hand across the aisle and grasp yours in brotherhood. I promise not to be a bad sport if my side loses. I won't quit speaking up for what I think is right - because that is what makes our nation great. But I love you just the same. I love atheists, lesbians, Muslims, liberals, humanists, drug addicts, commune-living hippies, researchers who wear hideous business suits. All kinds of people who don't look anything like me.

Democrats & Republicans hug in Hawaii's House after invocation, April 2012 (image credit) 

Whatever your political stripes, I encourage you to remember that the world will not end on November 6, 2012. We must maintain our relationships as we struggle through these great debates that are coming in the next few months. Because when the dust settles, and a new or returning President claims victory late that night, WE will be what's left of this nation. WE will determine which senators and congressmen get elected in the wake of the Presidential election. We will vote our opinions over and over again. We will spend our money on what we value. We will speak freely as long as we are able. We will build the bridges and come up with the solutions and make amazing suggestions that politicians will grab from Twitter and Facebook and your blog and mine and call their own.

Don't stop talking. But for heaven's sake, don't stop loving either! Perhaps our founding fathers said it best, as they concluded the Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Part of the Faith and Politics synchroblog hosted by Andi Cumbo

Freedom songs and answers that don't fit

My son is 4 years old, and he brings me wildflowers every day. He calls them "early Mother's day presents". One day I asked him to bring a vase to put a daisy in. He brought me a canning jar from the porch, which had already been home to several caterpillars and other bugs this summer. Much too large for a single daisy. I put the daisy across the top and set it on my nightstand, a tribute to the stage this sweet boy is in, simple gifts brought to Mama's bed in a chubby fist, a vase much too big for the flower but not too big for the expression of love.

I feel just so about our nation. My vote is a drop in the bucket, an often childlike expression of simple love for the freedoms I'm allowed here. I feel a reverence for the country I've been raised in, freedom running deep as life blood down from generation to generation, something we couldn't earn with our blood, sweat and tears now but was passed on to us from a different time. The problems we face today are many: poverty, social issues such as the definition of marriage, life and death, integrity in politics and business, and immigration. But to think that our forefathers lived in a time without problems would be to romanticize the birth of our nation as a simpler time. Slavery, social hierarchy, widespread poverty, lack of access to the most basic of human needs such as clean water, food supply, health care and housing, women's rights, worker's rights, landowner's rights, and issues surrounding Native people have all been large issues of our nation's past that still bleed into our modern problems. No one had a clear solution for those problems then, just as we lack clarity as we face the issues of today.

What I do see, all around me, are expanding hearts and minds on both the right and left - bloggers, friends, neighbors; Christians and non-Christians - all voicing concerns, empathizing, seeing needs, and trying to address them in whatever way they can. I hope this is a time of revitalization of our country and a turning point in history that we will look back on as a victory in the future. I can feel the shifting sands under my feet and, as I do whenever change is afoot, I feel a little unsettled. I worry about what socialized medical care would mean for my family, because we support our family by working in health care. Yet we pay tens of thousands of dollars every year in medical bills ourselves, so who knows? I watch, and listen, and I hold my canning jar vase in my hands, silently. All I know is the solution I hold in my hands is probably not fitting for the bouquet.

This July 4th, I am just happy to be part of the masses lighting firecrackers, singing anthems, raising flags, smiling wide for freedom and history and shared experience and joy over this great nation. 

I am God, your God. Every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle of a thousand hills. Call upon me in your day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you will honor me. (from Psalm 50)

Oh, say can you see?

I will walk about in freedom,
for I have sought out your precepts.
I will speak of your statutes before kings
and will not be put to shame...
Psalm 119:45-46

I really considered posting something political. It's not that I lack the guts - although there is a time and place for political rants, and that's outside the purpose of my writing here - it's that I don't really know how to frame my thoughts in coherent, readable words. I have a rather amorphous desire to pass on a fierce patriotism, an elemental belief in certain inalienable rights, the drive to pursue a culture and a government that embraces independence, personal fortitude and excellence, and joy in living...the hallmarks of this nation from it's inception in a time when nations were looking for something to hope in. Being nannied by my government does not fit well with those ideologies.

Instead of a laundry list of my concerns for my nation, I am compelled to think about the substance of the legacy I want to leave for my children in this area, as in others. Love. Yes, love. I think that encapsulates my current cognitive meanderings on the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you: say, for instance, it was your team that won the election - would you want to hear a bunch of sour grapes from the other side? Love one another: in hard times especially, it is our love for others, our service of others, that will show our true inner colors. In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God: when the political climate favors Christians, and when it persecutes them, give thanks. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God: freedom is relatively illusory here on earth. While we pray for our leaders and pray for the situations that concern our daily lives, we must remember always that worry accomplishes nothing. It won't change the eventual outcome, nor will the outcome change eternity. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself: political pundits decrying incrementalism and relativism would do well to heed this basic truth. For, as Christ said, who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

I pray for this country every day, my children with me. I wonder where the next fifty years will find us. I still think it's incredible that we've come this far past the 200 year mark that has heralded the downfall of many great civilizations of history. Most of all, I believe that the truth this nation was founded upon is never changing. And that is what has me looking up and singing while so many others hang their heads and cry.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
~ 4th stanza, our national anthem, penned hopefully by Francis Scott Key in 1814

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