Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

My opinion on experience is that you do need some to be a strong leader in Washington. If you don't have the experience, you can't navigate through the shark-infested waters and won't have the leverage to push through your agenda. Congress will eat you alive as it did Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, and a country cannot be successfully led by a committee of 535. While Carter did have experience as Georgia governor it apparently did him no good as even the Democrat-controlled House and Senate pretty much ignored him and ran roughshod over him. Strong chief executives can pass their agenda even through a hostile Congress.

Agree with a president's agenda or not, the country needs a strong leader, especially in times of danger and turmoil. The Founding Fathers recognized that and placed great powers in the hands of the presidency where parliamentary systems tend to dilute the powers of the chief executive.

In general, having some executive experience tends to be a great positive. Senators looking for the White House have tended to have poor records. And here all three front runners are Senators. Sigh.

At least McCain knows how to get things done even if you may disagree with what he wants. Both Clinton and Obama have relatively no record, Clinton's biggest successes being the naming of a few federal buildings. Obama doesn't even have that. And none of the three has any executive experience at all.

I voted for Steven Colbert

Actually, I'm surprised to hear lack of experience cited as a negative for current candidates. Back when Bush was first elected, I seem to recall many news reports about how his lack of experience was a concern, but that it would be okay because he'd have plenty of advisors who were experienced who could tell him what to do. So, according to the expert thought of the time, experience wasn't really that much of a requirement in a President. Nice to have, but not really a deal-breaker.

So...has very much changed in the interim? If it wasn't a hindrance back then, why would it be now? Wouldn't Obama have advisors?

Course, there are some who would say that Bush's resultant Presidency proves that lack of experience definitely is a negative...

LabRat

Actually, one of the best pools from which to pick a President is considered to be a governorship. A great many of our recent Presidents have previously been governors of states, which, if you think about it, is a sort of lesser presidency, and gives the candidate some experience in the field. Bush had been Governor of Texas, which gave him that particular pre-requisite. Unfortunately, I personally disagree with some of his other ideas. I'd list them, but it would lead to a fight, which I am not up for today.

Obama, Clinton and McCain are all US Senators, which really doesn't give any of them governing experience. Personally, the thought of the next four years under any one of them scares me to death.

Nan

Harry S. Truman had been a senator and vice-president. Dwight D. Eisenhower had never been elected to political office before his presidency (his experience was entirely in the military). Every single president from Kennedy to Ford served first in Congress and then the Senate. Going back even further, Lincoln served only in Congress.

You can't always tell from their "experience" how they're going to make decisions. Unless, of course, you were <*insert adjective of your choice*> enough to vote them into office a second time.

Bush had been knocked about a lack of foreign policy experience, which definitely showed during the debates. Ironically, he had trouble coming up with the name of the President of Pakistan, Perez Musharraf, a person who would later play a huge role in the fight against al Qaeda. His advisors that were talked about would have been Condoleeza Rice, a Russian expert, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell. At the time, foreign policy wasn't very high on the list of priorities since it was pre-9/11 and Russia and missile defense looked like the biggest topics of foreign policy. Terrorism wasn't on anyone's radar, so even the "experts" had a lot of catching up to do. Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Richard Myers, was chosen at the time for his experience with missile defense.

Note that Bill Clinton had no foreign policy experience either, but he did have twelve years in the governor's mansion in Little Rock. Nobody in the press cared since foreign policy was on nobody's mind during the 90's.

In the campaign, Bush emphasized how well he worked with a Democratically-controlled Texas legislature with the press essentially calling Texas state Democrats "Republicans in Democrat clothing," especially with Bush being best friends with the Democratic Speaker, Bob Bullock. So the press didn't think he was battle tested against "real" Democrats. Bush also emphasized his relationships with Mexico being that he was governor of a border state to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

As for executive experience, he had already been easily re-elected by a huge margin with lots of Democratic support as governor when he started running for president and had six years as a chief executive by the time he made it to the Oval Office.

Today, foreign policy is a huge issue. With hot spots all over the world with North Korea and Iran, plus the continuing Iraq deployment, we need someone with foreign policy experience. Obama and Clinton have none. McCain has a lot, but he's never been a governor.

On some previous presidents, Harry Truman was considered a terrible president at the time and won re-election by a miracle. Remember "Dewey Beats Truman?" President Eisenhower's lack of experience really showed. While he was popular with the people, his relationships with Congress were terrible and he could do very little. It was during his sixth year that Republicans took one of their biggest bloodbaths in the 1958 midterm elections in the party's history, losing 48 House seats and 13 Senate seats (though gaining one seat in the brand new state of Hawaii, though Democrats picked up three in the two new states of Alaska and Hawaii, so the GOP was -12 and the Dems +16 net).

While John Kennedy is lionized today, he was actually losing his re-election effort at the time. His trip to Dallas was because he was afraid of losing Texas despite having a Texan as his vice president. Lyndon Johnson didn't even bother to run for re-election, knowing he wouldn't win. Nixon had long resume, including a stint as Eisenhower's VP, but a stupid decision to cover up a break-in that he had not had anything to do with ended up with him resigning in disgrace. Gerald Ford had never been elected and ended up losing to dark horse Jimmy Carter in one of the closest elections in this nation's history. Carter's now considered one of the worst presidents we've ever had.

That led up to Ronald Reagan, a successful two term governor of California and a successful two term presidency. George H.W. Bush had never been governor either but had been a Senator. He was a one-termer. And H.W. Bush had been coined the man with "the longest resume in the west," having been Director of the CIA, congressman, senator, UN Representative, vice president, etc. It didn't help his campaign against Bill Clinton.

So our recent history of presidencies has been pretty thin with only Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton having served two full terms since Roosevelt. Bill Clinton's the first and only president to ever win two terms without ever having a majority of the vote (43% and 49%). Assuming nothing unusual happens, Bush will be the third.

Yes, I'm sure that Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt had very little do with the unpopularity of the Republicans in 1958. And, so far as getting very little done in his term goes, well, I'm pretty sure it was Eisenhower who pushed through our interstate highway system, ended the Korean War, and made nuclear weapons research a top priority.

My point in the post above was that we never know what a person is likely to do in the White House until they get there. No matter what they say in their campaigns, all bets are off when they actually take office. Surely you remember "Read my lips. No. New. Taxes."

I agree with you that you never know until the person actually reaches the White House. And I definitely agree with you that raising taxes sank the elder Bush. He essentially betrayed his Republican supporters who are very unforgiving on the subject of taxes.

McCarthy was dead by 1957. I suspect the economy held more sway over voters than McCarthy ever did.

Okay, I'm back. And leaving the brouhaha surrounding Barack Obama and Reverend Wright behind, I'll return to something you said, Roger, and which needs to be addressed:

Very good question. Yes, you are right, I do want to redistribute income. Do I want to do it no matter what the consequences to the economy might be? Am I willing to bankrupt society and throw society into a depression, or at the very least a recession, just so I can take money from the rich and give it to the poor? No. But unlike you, Roger, I don't think it is a prerequisite to a healthy growth of the economy that the rich get to pay lower taxes. Yes, I think that you are right in your belief that tax cuts for the rich may indeed prove to be a fairly efficient economic stimulus. But for one thing, I believe that there are other ways to stimulate the economy. And for another, if the boom resulting from a tax cut for the rich ultimately ends up shifting more of society's wealth from the average and median income earners to those who are already rich, then I do think that this is both harmful and unfortunate, certainly in the long run.

I believe that such a shift has indeed happened in the United States lately. Roger, you mentioned the IT bubble. I replied that I think that the IT bubble ended up benefiting a few rich people enormously, while very many low-income people suffered from the almost-recession that followed. To stimulate the economy and prevent a recession from happening, George W. Bush gave tax cuts to the rich. (And as I have said already, a tax cut for a rich person will bring in many more dollars to that person than a &#8220;same percentage tax cut&#8221; for a median income person.) So in order to fix the problems that happened as a few rich people made off with enormous IT loots and created huge problems for low-income people in America, George Bush gave tax cuts to the rich, including, presumably, those rich people who had created and benefited from the IT bubble in the first place. To help the poor, Bush gave economic breaks to the rich.

It is clear that the rich in America have grown so much richer during the Bush years, both in absolute and relative terms. But I have said, quoting New York Times, that the median income earners have actually become poorer, when you take inflation into account. Roger, you have replied that median income is up, but you have not said anything about inflation. I take this to mean that the median income earners do make more dollars now than seven or eight years ago, but because of the fall of the dollar, the median income earner can't buy as much for his salary today as he could at the end of the Clinton Presidency.

In other words, I am going to assume that I was right. Median income in America is indeed down, while the top incomes are up enormously. And in my opinion, a country whose median income is down has not had a good economic development, no matter how much its gross national product is up.

It could be the fact that I'm so interested in astronomy that makes me think that the problem of the rich becoming richer can't be solved just by making the poor richer, too. Okay, let me amend that. Yes, I do believe that it is possible to make the poor richer while the rich become richer, too. But I believe that this is a development that can go on for only so long. I am very strongly aware that all the riches and all the wealth that humanity owns put together all emanates from the Earth. Ultimately, it is our planet Earth that gives us all our riches. And as humanity grows larger in numbers and as we grow hungrier for resources and riches, the Earth, the source of all our prosperity, does not grow larger.

[img]http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=65046&rendTypeId=4[/img]

Because I don't believe in unlimited growth, distribution becomes very important to me. The idea that more and more of our limited resources should be deliberately shifted over to already rich people seems downright immoral to me.

One thing that worries me is that this trend of shifting over money from low- and median-income earners to rich people has been going on for almost three decades now, since Ronald Reagan became President. While this has happened, people's way of thinking of the distribution of money between rich and poor people has changed. I strongly believe that more and more of us have begun taking for granted that rich people generally deserve the money they get, while we often question the welfare and subsidies that go to the poor.

It frightens me, too, how short our memories are. I have been questioned before for using a sort of all-inclusive &#8220;we&#8221; and seemingly speaking for members of these boards, so here and now I will only speak for the people I meet in real life here in Sweden, and for myself. It is frightening how short our memories are.

A couple of years ago I found a copy of my local newspaper, Sydsvenskan, in the attic.


This particular copy of Sydsvenskan was from 1987. I started leafing through it and came upon a short news item about unemployment statistics in Sweden in 1987. Unemployment in those days was &#8211; what??? It was 1.2% of the workforce?


Unemployment figures, though not from Sweden or from 1987.

I was flabbergasted. These days we in Sweden are used to the idea that unemployment is around 5% if we are lucky, and more like 8% if we are unlucky. How could it be 1.2% in 1987? How could our society have changed so much since then? And why didn't I remember what things had been like in the eighties? Since when had I started taking the new unemployment figures for granted?

I started to try to remember. And, yes, thinking back, I remembered that the Social Democratic government that we had back then used quite a bit of its tax money to employ people who couldn't really compete with other people for ordinary jobs. The Social Democratic government created its own &#8220;protected&#8221; job market for people who were physically and mentally disabled, people who were sick, or tired, or recovering from drug abuse or alcoholism, etcetera. People who couldn't find a job elsewhere, and who weren't strong enough to keep a job on the open market, these people had jobs created for them by the Social Democratic government. These people went to work every day, or as often as they were able to, and they got their pay checks like everyone else. I don't remember that we ever spoke ill of them or of the jobs they had. And Sweden had an unemployment rate of 1.2%.

Then Ronald Reagan was not only elected but re-elected in the United States. This created a political shift to the right in Sweden, too. In 1988, Sweden got a right-wing government. This government quickly lowered taxes, especially for the rich, but it didn't cut spending. This resulted in a terrible economic imbalance and a huge budget deficit for Sweden. The right-wing government lost the next election and the Social Democrats returned, but now the Social Democratic agenda had changed. &#8220;We have to cut spending to get our national finances back in order,&#8221; our Prime Minister told us, grimly. And cut spending they did. Suddenly there was no more money for the special protected jobs for the people who could not get or keep an ordinary job. Suddenly they all became unemployed. And then Sweden joined the European Union, whose statues say that people in Europe have the right to compete for jobs everywhere in Europe. Suddenly the special protected jobs that had existed for disabled people became illegal. These days it is illegal in Sweden to give a handicapped Swede a job that could have gone to a healthy Pole instead.

These days so many more people are denied access to the job market. They are dependent on welfare instead. Their lives are probably worse, and the welfare money they get is probably lower than the pay they got from their special jobs. Other people resent them more and mutter about lazy people who live off welfare. And everyone takes the present situation for granted. When I asked my colleagues at school and other well-educated people that I know, not a single one of them really remembered what things had been like in 1987.

We forget so quickly. We adjust to new situations so quickly.

I said that these days people in Sweden mutter about unemployed people who live off welfare. We have a right-wing government in Sweden again, because when George W. Bush was re-elected in America, this caused another political shift to the right in Sweden. The new government has begun cutting down on welfare for poor, sick and unemployed people. Have you been on sick leave for more than six months? Then you are not eligible for more of it, buddy. Have you got cancer? Can't you work? That's not our problem. Go get yourself a job.

What happens to a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Well, there are interesting examples of what happened in such societies in Europe in the past. In the late 1980s I bought an illustrated book describing life in the medieval English village of Gerneham, in the early fourteenth century. This village was owned, lock, stock and barrel, by a rich nobleman, Geoffrey Luttrell. Sir Geoffrey's ownership of the village was so complete that the author of the book, Sheila Sancha, called Gerneham &#8220;the Luttrell village&#8221;.


Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and his retinue.

What about the people who lived in Gerneham, in the Luttrell village? Judging from Sancha's book, the largest group of people who lived in the village were called &#8211; no, I'll not tell you what they were called just yet. But this is how Sancha describes them:

This is how Sheila Sancha describes this group of people in her glossary:

The people I have described were a kind of serfs, who can almost be compared with slaves. This is how Wikipedia describes the reasons and ceremonies that turned medieval European people into serfs:

According to Wikipedia, people were sometimes intimidated into becoming serfs by a threatening baron. &#8220;Be my serf, or else&#8230;!!&#8221; Or people might be forced to become serfs because of poverty. If they could not support themselves any other way, they had to, well, sell themselves as laborers to a lord in exchange for the right to grow a bit of food for themselves on his land. And not only did the serfs sell themselves to their lord, but they sold their children and grandchildren and all their future descendants as well.



Medieval serfs.

So what were these special serfs called, then? Okay, I'll not keep you waiting any longer. They were called villeins. I guess the name has something to do that they always had to live in the village. But I suppose that the name, villeins, reminds you of something else. Villains. So how did the poor rural serfs in medieval Europe give a collective name to lawbreakers and criminals and people of ill intent everywhere? This is Wikipedia's explanation:

So villeins could escape their bondage by running away from the village where they were kept &#8220;prisoners&#8221; and escape to a city and live there for more than a year. But since the villeins were dirt poor and had almost no means of supporting themselves, they were sometimes forced to take to crime for survival. And the city people apparently strongly disapproved of them. Instead of asking themselves if they could help the villeins support themselves by honest means, and without forcing them into serfdom, the city people reinterpreted the designation of villein so that it came to mean criminal people of bad character and ill will.



Villain.

Speaking of crimes, and who was defined as a criminal, it is interesting to ponder the question of crime and punishment in medieval Europe. What punishments were meted out for what crimes? And did it matter if you were rich or poor?


A page from Äldre Västgötalagen, the oldest known Swedish law.

This is one page of the oldest Swedish written law in existence, Äldre Västgötalagen, laying down the law in the Swedish province of Västergötland in the thirteenth century. Äldre Västgötalagen states that if a person commits murder, he will have to pay a fixed fine for this. However, if a person commits theft, he will not only be tortured and executed, but he will also mangled and cut into pieces after death, and he will not be buried in consecrated earth. Moreover, he will be damned forever, and the priests will not pray for his soul. Any earthly property that he owned could not be inherited by his children or relatives.

If you think of this a bit, you can easily see that this law was made specifically to meet the needs of rich people. The law was frankly written so that rich people could get away with murder. And the richer they were, the less the fixed fine would hurt them, and the more people they could afford to kill. A really rich person could therefore become a mass murderer and still remain totally respectable. A murderer was not condemned by the church, was buried in consecrated earth and could leave all his property to his heirs.

Why, then, were thieves punished so cruelly? I'd say that this was because thieves threatened the foundation of rich people's power &#8211; the thieves threatened the rich people's wealth. Rich people were so incredibly powerful because they were so rich. They could buy themselves splendid property, they could buy themselves protection, they could buy themselves hit men, they could buy themselves suitable wives, and they could buy themselves spokesmen, soldiers, workers and priests. But take away their wealth and they can buy themselves nothing. Suddenly, they are nothing. And nothing could be worse than robbing a rich man of his wealth and power. Therefore thieves (and their families) were punished so cruelly, while rich murderers got away with a slap on their fingers, if that.




There are thieves in the manor.

But let us stop and think for a while. Are these examples from the Middle Ages the least bit relevant for us? Do they have anything to teach us today? Back then, democracies did not exist, and there were no such things as legal human rights. We have democracies and human rights here in the West. Our laws forbid us to turn people into slaves. And surely we will never sentence people to harsher punishments just because they are poor?

I believe &#8211; yes, I do &#8211; that the very existence of democratic constitutions and laws that recognize human rights constitute a very strong and important protection for people who are poor and powerless. Our modern Western societies are not comparable with those of medieval Europe. What happened back then, in those societies, can't happen here. Not for now, and not in the same way.

But I said earlier that people's memories are short. Unless we make an effort to remind ourselves of our history and the lessons it has taught us, I don't trust us to just remember. I don't trust us to, well, just naturally fight for the idea that all people have the same value. I fear that if some people keep getting poorer and more powerless in our own countries, here in the west, many others may start assuming that these bums don't have the same worth as the rest of us, and they can't really ask for the same treatment.

In some ways, de facto slavery already exists in the West. Some years ago I saw an episode of 60 Minutes, which described the lives of some illegal immigrants who worked at an orange plantation in Florida. If I remember correctly, the workers were not paid cash, but instead they were given some sort of tokens that could be exchanged for food, clothes and other things in the store that was owned by the plantation manager. After labouring for a season, picking fruits, the plantation manager announced that his workers were in debt! They owed him money! Well, because they had bought too much in his store, or so the manager said anyway. And the only way laborers could pay back their debts was to stay on for the next season and pick fruits for nothing. In effect, these illegal immigrants had become serfs.

Okay. There people were illegal immigrants. If they don't even have the right to be in the country, it is not so strange if they aren't protected by the same laws as those people who are citizens. On the other hand&#8230; we are not talking about a handful of illegal immigrants, but of huge numbers of them. Many industries and producers in the West are totally dependent on these &#8220;paper-less&#8221; workers who are treated almost like slaves. The oranges we buy wouldn't be so cheap if they had been picked by American citizens who were paid at least minimum wages.



One interesting thing that happens all over the West, and particularly in countries where the poorest people are relatively well paid, is that rich people who own companies move those companies to countries where wages are lower. One such country that has attracted many Western investors is China.

Several years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I remember that there was a horrible fire in a toy factory in China. About two hundred workers, almost all of them young girls, died in the fire. They died because the doors of the factory were locked, so that the girls could not get out. The fire called attention to the fact that the workers at toy factories were normally and regularly locked up inside the factories, and not only during working hours, either. They were locked up in the factories day and night, because that way their employers could squeeze a maximum amount of work out of them. It goes without saying that a country that treats its workers like that doesn't worry too much about human rights.



Workers in a Chinese toy factory, perhaps mostly young men in this case.

Only a few years ago, probably two or three years ago, Chinese authorities decided that employers in China would have to clean up their act. Chinese workers would be granted at least minimal human rights by law. But guess what? According to New York Times, this provoked sharp protests from many American investors in China. Why, said these Americans, would they want to build factories in China if the workers there could ask for at least minimum pay, and if they could refuse to work more than a maximum number of hours per week? In other words, if the (rich) Americans were not allowed to treat Chinese workers as slaves, why would they want to employ them?

Rich Americans are already moving their factories abroad, where they can treat their workers more or less like slaves. If poor people keep getting poorer here in the West, can we be sure that our democratic constitutions and jurisdictions will protect them from being treated like slaves in our own countries? Do democracy and human rights really work in a situation where the poorest people of a society just keep getting poorer? Do they work in a situation where people forget, as they tend to do, that there used to be a time when society was different?

Let me end this post by addressing those of you who call yourself Christians. Do you take the words of Jesus seriously? Remember that Jesus spoke out quite sharply against rich people many times. No, I really don't think that he described worldly wealth as something that will necessarily make a person evil, but yes, I do think that Jesus describes the collective of rich people as a negative force in society. Judging from what Jesus says in the Bible, I think it is out of the question that he would support the idea that rich people should be given extra millions of dollars because of tax cuts that are based on a percentage of their taxes. Those of you who are Christians, do you think that the warnings that Jesus directed to rich people are irrelevant? Those of you who might describe yourselves as belonging to the religious right, do you think that Jesus would share your political views?

Ann

I realize that posting(or even reading) on this thread is bad for my blood pressure and my acid reflux, but seeing the direction the topic is going I just felt compelled to submit this article from IMAO about
Liberal Churches that was pretty freaking succinct per this quote.

Also everyone has been asking about why Barak Hussein Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Wright is such a big deal. Frankj at www.IMAO.us also explains that pretty well in this article:

Relationships and the Fourth Dimension

Thank God for writers like Frankj, even if his wife is a snarky brat.


TEEEEEEEEJ

Jesus also preached things like "Love thy neighbor as thyself," "Turn the other cheek," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Thou shalt not kill," "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and so on.

It can be hard to mesh such teachings with the pro-war, pro-torture, anti-gun control, pro-death penalty, etc etc views often associated with the "Christian Right." Not to mention the more extreme leaders McCain referred to as "agents of intolerance."

If you think a liberal church is contradictory, consider how easy it is to paint Jesus as exactly the sort of long-haired, sandal-wearing, forgive and forget, peace and love, almost hippie-like liberal that the "Christian Right" leaders so... disagree with.

But there are so many different brands of the religion. So many different ways you can look at things, or choose to look at them. So many different teachings and revisions and reinterpretations.

Ultimately, you have to find the views and angles that suit you, I think. (And remember that other points of view can also be valid. That one is easy to forget.) And, as many preachers, Left and Right, are saying... maybe it's best for preachers and congregants to check Earthly politics at the church door.

I think what a lot of liberals forget when they try to make this comparision is that Jesus is... God.

The same God who blessed folks like David, Deborah, Gideon, Joshua, and Moses, all Warriors and leaders of warriors.

The same God who inspired David to write "Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, Who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle."

The same God who took out Sodom and Gamorrah in a rain of fire because it was full of deviants who'd rather screw the new guys in town than Lot's daughters.

The same God Jesus who said in Matthew chapter 10 verse 34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword."

The same God who is going to destroy the earth with fire and condemn all who denied Him and His forgiveness to Hell for all eternity.

I don't ever recall reading anything about how long Jesus' hair was, though I realize a bunch of medieval painters who favored that hair style liked to depict Him that way, and as far as sandals go, I'm sure that was about the best, most practical type of shoe He could afford for the climate He lived in, but I'll bet His clothes weren't tie-dye, since dyed clothing was probably another expense He didn't care to engage in. The point is Jesus is God, and God is a strict disciplinarian. I realize Jesus did say "Blessed are the peacemakers." He meant that, and I submit that the guys who dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were peacemakers who ended WWII; I believe the men and women who are stationed in Iraq are trying to bring democracy and PEACE to that region. They should be blessed, God bless 'em.

As far as Ann's question about what Jesus would think of rich folks, let me point out that one of Jesus's most famous parables is of a master who gives money to his servants and the servant who uses that money to make MORE is the one the master rewards the MOST, which to me seems that Jesus is comparing the spread of the word of Salvation with *HELLO* Prosperity!

That's right, God encourages prosperity, check this out.

In 1 Chronicles 4:10 Jabez says "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request.

In Malachi 3:10 God says, "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,

“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it."

I see that as God encouraging prosperity so long as a portion (a tithe) is given to His works and believe me, I can do that tithe thing without the help of my nanny state government, thank you very much.

I don't mind leaving religion out of politics at all, but unfortunately I've noted that these earthly politics somehow try to involve religion anyway and as long as they do that, then they're going to have to deal with my right thinking point of view on that as well.


TEEEEEEEJ

It may be stupid of me to post more here, but TEEEJ, I couldn't resist the link you posted about liberal churches. You quoted this from that site:

When I looked up that link, I'm afraid I only found short opinion-posts, not any in-depth analysis of what Jesus actually said in the Bible. When I read the Gospels myself, I found extremely little there which made Jesus resemble a right-wing Christian. I really found a lot more that would make him look quite liberal. Therefore, if people think that he really was like a right-wing Christian, I would very much appreciate it if they could point me to the chapters and verses in the Bible where Jesus expressed those right-wing views. After the right-wing Christians tell me where in the Gospels they find the justification for their beliefs, I will be happy to look up those particular Bible passages myself and discuss them with the conservative Christians. But if the conservatives just claim Jesus for themselves and then don't show me any Biblical evidence to support their belief in a right-wing Jesus, how can I have any sort of rational discussion with them?

What pastor is what liberal church has said this about Jesus?

I myself will keep sticking to my belief that Jesus was very liberal in many ways. After all, what sort of people did Jesus most often defend? I'd say it was the poor people in general, plus the "sexually questionable" or "fallen" women, plus the tax collectors. Imagine that.

Ann

EDIT: In all fairness, I don't think Jesus was completely liberal in all his views. Although he never mentioned or alluded to abortions, I agree with those who believe that he would have been strongly against them. More troubling, in my opinion, is that Jesus sometimes seemed to hold questionable and uncompassionate views about slaves.

D'ja even read my post above, the one about Jesus bein' God? About God being the strict disciplinarian? The one with Matt 34:10? All that up there, or is it just too harshfully truthful to deal with right now?

I get your point about Him hanging with the prostitutes and sinners too. Do you remember why He said He was hanging out with them? Because He wanted to HEAL them, FIX them, MAKE them stop sinning, by His example.

Yes, Jesus commanded us to live in peace with our neighbors. This is the same Jesus(GOD) who DECREED back in Genesis that the children of Ishmael would NEVER get along with their neighbors; the same Jesus (GOD) who punished Israel time and again for doing stupid stuff like worshiping false idols and taking advantage of widows and orphans(Hello Al Gore!) and the same Jesus(GOD) who assisted them when they were fighting their enemies and kicking people out of Canaan.

The reason He commands us to live in peace is because that's what He wants; it would make His job so much easier, life better on earth and all that, but human nature, being the sinful nature that it is, will never ever ever allow the Earth to be at peace, not until Jesus comes back anyway, and He knows this or He wouldn't have made any provision to come back, and I promise, when He does arrive, He won't be singing "kumbya". There's war, death and pestilance left in His wake.

I get that this line of reasoning is hard to grasp and again it's wearying on me to continue to go over the same points while someone's got their fingers in their ears and screaming "not listening". I suppose Jesus felt the same sort of frustration with the Pharisees and the scribes of His day, so I guess I should follow His example there and go kick the dust off my sandals.

TEEEEEJ

I didn't read it, sorry. You hadn't posted it when I started to write my reply, and after I posted it I didn't check if you had posted another reply in between. I have read it now.

This is an interesting and valid point, but it is also one that I don't agree with. I realize that it has to do with faith. I know that Jesus says this in John 10:30:

That would seem to clinch it. However, it is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus actually claims to be God. He doesn't say that in any of the other three gospels. If that had been an important part of Jesus' actual teachings, I think it would have been mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke as well. Since it isn't, I believe that this is the interpretation of John the Evangelist rather than any actual words of Jesus himself.

Well, if Jesus is indeed the same person as God, then it was Jesus who rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. It was Jesus who drowned almost the whole world under the Flood. It was Jesus who tortured and killed little children in Egypt because Pharaoh wouldn't release the Israelites. It was Jesus who accepted that the warrior Jephthah killed his own daughter and sacrificed her to God - that is, to Jesus - as a burnt offering. It was Jesus who stood by and watched how the Israelites slaughtered all the women and children of the the city of Gibeah because men in Gibeah had raped a Levite's concubine. And it was Jesus who spoke through the Prophet Samuel and ordered King Saul to kill every last living being of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15:3:

Yes, we can choose to believe that Jesus is identical with God, so that whatever God did, Jesus did in equal measure. But I think there is scarce Biblical evidence for this idea, apart from John 10:30. Nevertheless, it certainly is possible to interpret that passage as proof that Jesus is a deity who kills women and children and who is very warlike. (As for that passage from Matthew, Matthew 10:34, I have always believed that Jesus talked about the role he thought he would play as the Messiah, the King of the Jews, who was certainly supposed to attack the Roman occupiers. Another interpretation, equally probable, is that Jesus meant that his own teachings would bring strife to humanity, as some people would believe in him, and others would not.)

This is one of parables of Jesus' that I myself find the most troubling, because here we really see Jesus' lack of compassion with the slaves. This is how the parable goes (Matthew 25:13-30):

Jesus talks here of the punishing of an "evil and lazy slave". It is, of course, a parable meant to describe how God will deal with sinners at the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is interesting that some prophets in the Old Testament describe how men punish sinful women, and the prophets turn this woman-beating into a parable of how God's righteous wrath will strike all sinners. In other words, some of the Old Testament prophets turn men's punishment of women into a metaphor for God's punishment of sinners, and this comparison actually justifies men's punishment and ill-treatment of women. Jesus never talks about God's wrath as something that is directed at women (with the possible exception of the parable of the wise and the foolish bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-12). Therefore Jesus never justifies men's punishment of women in any way. Instead, Jesus uses the slave-owner's punishment of his slaves as a methaphor for God's punishment of sinners, and thereby Jesus sort of justifies the slave-owners' bad treatment of their slaves. I wish that Jesus hadn't done that, even though I am extremely grateful to him for not putting women in the position as "whipping-boys" or "whipping-girls".

But indeed, TEEEJ, you have located one of the passages from the Gospels that trouble me most, and which can be seen as showing Jesus as a man who approves of the oppression of slaves, and who is a supporter of the idea of giving ever more riches to those who are already rich, while making the poor ones ever poorer.

One very definite possibility is that the rich man in Jesus' parable should not be regarded as any rich person here on Earth, but rather as God himself, who will punish those of his servants that he is dissatisfied with. In that case, this parable wouldn't be a general defence of prosperity. But it might be just that, of course.

Anyway, while I won't try to argue that Jesus absolutely did not hold the views that seems to be inherent in this parable, I still maintain that most of the time, he spoke out sharply against the rich and defended the poor.

Jesus is rarely seen lecturing the fallen women. He usually defends them instead, like in this passage (Matthew 21:31-32):

When I talk about what Jesus did and said, all I read is the Gospels. I realize that you may choose to regard everything that God did as Jesus' handiwork, too. But if you read the Bible that way, then it seems to me that you very much play down what Jesus actually said and did while he lived and walked on this Earth. Nothing about Jesus becomes more uninteresting than the (compassionate) human being that he actually was. The focal point of Christianity becomes so "diluted" that the opinions of Paul, King David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi etcetera all matter more than the words of Jesus himself. But what would Jesus have been if he hadn't come to the Earth as a human being? If he had stayed up in Heaven forever and only spoken through the Prophets? And what would Christianity have been without Jesus, the man who came from Nazareth and who lived here on Earth?

Ann

John 8:10-11
10 When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”
11 She said, “No one, Lord.”
And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

maybe He didn't need to lecture her, because *she* figured it out after the FIRST telling. :rolleyes:

TEEEEEJ

I guess she figured out for herself that committing adultery again would be a bad idea, because next time she would surely be stoned for real. Considering the perceived severity of the crime she had committed, Jesus certainly didn't lecture her very harshly. Compare Jesus' words to the woman accused of adultery with the words of Ezekiel, as he condemns two women he calls Aholah and Aholibah (Ezekiel 23:43-49):

I never said that Jesus never lectures "fallen" women at all, but compared with what the rest of the Bible says about "sinful" women, Jesus' admonitions are mild indeed.

Ann

I hadn't even peeped in this thread for awhile (not much into politics) but Jesus and Christianity is something I definitely like talking about so...

I didn't read way up into the thread so I just wanted to comment on a couple of things I read in one of Ann's recent posts.

Not at all surprising, I agree with Teej. I believe that Jesus is God, God is Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is also both. I've heard this explained fairly well with this analogy. An apple has seeds, it has a core, it has the part you eat; all different parts but still one apple. I realize that I probably can't change your mind on this but just thought I'd throw that in there.

The Holy Trinity is one of the reasons that Muslims hate Christians. Because they see Christians as Polytheists. But when I pray to God, I am also praying to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but He's all the same person to me.

I believe the entire Bible is God breathed, God speaking to us. I hold the Old Testament in as high esteem as I do the Gospels. I think it's awesome that you think so highly of Jesus. But it's important to remember, that God the Father, sent Jesus here to Earth to do all the things he did. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us, to be the ultimate sacrificial lamb. That is why after Jesus' death, the Rabbis did not have to sacrifice animals anymore to atone for the people's sins; Jesus had done that with his death for all people, for all time. To me, God sending Jesus for us shows what a loving God He is. To quote one of my favorite verses: John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. That whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.

And this does not have to do with the discussion so much but just want to share my favorite favorite verse in the entire Bible. 1Peter 1:8-9

8Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

TJ, I'm glad that you've felt able to join in the debate again. It's good to see different views aired and explored.

Can I just ask, though, that you avoid comments like this:

I know you believe very firmly in the views that you hold. People who don't agree with you also believe very firmly in the views that they hold, and they might respond by saying that they are listening, but they disagree. They might well also feel that people who disagree with them are also "not listening", but throwing this kind of comment around really doesn't help the atmosphere of civil debate.

Thanks!


Wendy
Boards Admin Team

This comment on supply-side economics and tax cuts for the rich is from today's New York Times (March 26, 2008; the article is by LOUIS UCHITELLE). This is a quote from the article:

According to New York Times, supply side economics either doesn't work, or else it doesn't work very well. Again according to New York Times, supply side economcs does not work better than the kind of economics that rises taxes for the rich.

Ann