To borrow the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, I hate and despise politics, and I’ll hate and despise them till the day I die.
Nonetheless, I’m interested in politics.
Last election’s increasingly polarized Red State vs. Blue State mentality made me ask myself a lot of questions: Is there really such a great divide between the American people? What side am I on? (Neither, I discovered.) The results of the election — and of the previous one — were so, so close. Yet it wasn’t close because so many people supported Bush and so many others supported Kerry. When it came down to it, most people voted for whichever candidate they considered to be the better of two not-very-different-or-very-great candidates. They were predictable. (Bush more-so than Kerry the flip-flopper.)
And I wondered: can a country be an effective democracy when only half — and now far, far less than half — of the people are happy with the government’s policies?
In my opinion, no. A president can’t just be president to the people who voted for him. A president has to be president to the entire country. He and his cabinet have to make compromises for the greater good, for the benefit of the most people. They can’t be so caught up in the politics that they lose perspective and cloister themselves within their parties. No matter how much monetary backing and clout are at stake.
By the way, I think this is a universal truth. I’m about as big a fan of denominations within the Church as I am of political parties. We are all Christians. Why should differences separate us? God made us different. Differences should be freeing. Differences should give us more perspective, make us a better functioning whole. You know, like that Body of Christ analogy that Paul is so very fond of. The Body divided kills itself. And don’t we have enough to worry about from Satan’s attacks without self-destructing?
Politics should be no different. We’re all Americans. If one party has absolute power, then we cease to function as a Democracy — we become little better than those enemies who are supposedly threatening our way of life. Terrorist attacks frighten me far less than my government spending itself broke, being embroiled in business scandal after scandal, losing its place as leader of the world because we’ve got such absolutely craptastic foreign policies and relations, and letting education and health care go to pot because we’re so wrapped up in moderating TV and Internet and ruling on who can and cannot get married. In short, America has a bad case of plank eye. In the grand scope of world events, we’re picking specks out of other people’s eyes while neglecting our biggest problems.
Of course we have a left and a right. There really are states that are more liberal and there really are states that are more conservative. But neither liberal nor conservative policy is the cure-all for our country’s problems — or the world’s. As it is, we’re increasingly sectarian, us and them, just without the physical violence that plagues those other places on earth we call sectarian. We’ll remain in a state of gridlock if we continue as we are. And most people fall somewhere in between left and right, liberal and conservative. Or rather, more people would be happy if our government fell somewhere in between.
Which is exactly why we have a Constitution.
And a pretty darn good Constitution, too. I’d hazard to say the best constitution in the world, but seeing as I haven’t actually read anybody else’s constitution, I can’t say it. But I do think the Constitution, while predating the Internet and many other issues we have today, covers everything that’s really important for a government to govern. And the things that aren’t expressly covered — especially the things that have to do with personal religious convictions — aren’t things that I require the law to uphold in order for me to uphold them. Not to say that Christians shouldn’t or can’t be politically active. Just that Jesus never seemed to expect a secular government to do what He called His people to do. All He said about the government, in fact, was that we should pay taxes to Caesar and honor the king — none of whom, at that time, were exactly moral exemplars. But I digress…
We also jave three branches of government to provide checks and balances, regardless of party lines, to keep a president from overstepping the bounds of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, party lines are increasingly blurring Constitutional lines, and there are times when I’m not sure checks and balances are even in government vernacular these days. Just look at the House and Senate unable to check Bush’s war spending.
All that to say…
The front-runner candidates for the 2008 keep talking about it being time for change, but they’re not different from their predecessors, really. Guiliani won’t take a stance on anything, McCain claims not to agree with a lot of the Republican party’s stances but has yet to back that up, and while Obama and Clinton are on the right track about getting out of Iraq and seriously tending long-neglected domestic issues, they want a big government that isn’t necessarily any more Constitutional than the current one. I’m not a political expert, but frankly I don’t see how any one of these people being elected to office is going to bring any kind of effective change. I suppose the Democrats would have the best shot, with control of the House and the Senate, but again, I don’t see how a simple party change is going to bring us any closer to that much-needed moderation.
My support is for one of the long-shots — the very longest shot, in fact. So long that you might not have really heard much about him, though in the past week he’s gotten a bit more buzz because he and Guiliani got into a bit of a fight at the most recent GOP.
Who is this candidate? Congressman Ron Paul. Christian. Texan. Member of the House of Representatives. Libertarian/Republican.
I encourage you to take a look at his site and read about his stances on today’s issues, as well as his voting record in the House. Watch him in the Republican debate, too.
What amazes me is how rooted in common sense Dr. Paul’s platforms are — which seems to be in short supply these days. He doesn’t mouth party platitudes, he’s neither left nor right.
He is a breath of fresh air.
Fresh, free air.
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