Ron Paul 2012: The Clear Progressive Christian Choice

Writing an article about Christianity and politics seems in many ways a fool’s errand. Evangelical Republican politicians have effectively poisoned the well when it comes to intelligent discussions of how Christian faith could (or should) influence citizenry and public policy. Who wants to get thrown in with folks who want to establish an American theocracy or think that homosexuality can be cured by prayer? But Christianity is something we need to address because it is a significant force in American life—to the extent that over 75% of Americans call themselves Christians.

Of course, calling oneself a Christian often means little when it comes to how we behave in daily life. The myriad of ways that professed Christians act contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ is self-evident. We regularly are quick to judge and condemn; we turn a blind eye to the suffering of others; we hold petty grudges and are slow to forgive—all of which feeds a discontent that nags at us but we try to suppress with conspicuous consumption, pharmaceutical drugs, or Johnny Walker, as though our unhappiness were beyond our control.

The disconnect between what we Christians profess to believe and what we actually do is similar to our relationship with the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Most of us profess a strong belief in the precepts of these documents, yet we have watched silently (due o fear or apathy) as our politicians and courts have willfully ignored their dictates and waged war on our civil liberties, while placing the power of the citizenry into the hands of corporations.

Furthermore, we have permitted our government to wage needless wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and children in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now more Libya. That blood is on the hands of every American taxpayer and citizen. And for those of us who claim to be Christians, that blood is no different than that of our own family members. That we have allowed our government to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of innocent people under the guise of fighting terrorism is another disconnect between what we profess to believe in and value (the sanctity of human life) and what we do–not to mention it is a horrible insult to the memory of those who died on 9/11.

There is a word for this disconnect between our beliefs and our actions. Hypocrisy. That’s a harsh word. A hypocrite is not something that anyone wants to be called. But there is no getting around the fact that we are hypocrites and that it is hypocrisy which drove Jesus to anger above all else. In our SBNR book the Lord’s Prayer,  we deal with how all people, regardless of their faith, can be less hypocritical and live more joyful lives on a day to day basis. The book does not however deal with political decision making, which is the main subject of this article.

How are we to be less hypocritical when it comes to our role as American citizens, and in particular, our role as voters in the 2012 presidential election? Among all the potential candidates, congressman Ron Paul is the clear choice for Progressive Christians and those concerned with the erosion of our civil rights. Why is he such a clear choice? Because he is the only candidate who (for decades) has consistently voted against spilling the blood of American soldiers and innocent civilians abroad in military adventures; who has consistently defended the rights and freedoms of citizens; and who has consistently voted against corporate subsidies and bailouts. In other words, Ron Paul is the only candidate whose political actions are always in line with what he professes to believe—and what so many of us profess to believe too.

Read the next article in our series on Ron Paul, Christianity, Ethics, & Politics: “Why Democrats Should Register Republican & Vote Ron Paul”.

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What was the Founding Fathers’ real take on Christianity & Religion? Read Living Hour’s Founding Fathers & Religion Series.

Why Dems Should Register Republican & Vote Ron Paul

There are many Democrats who agree with congressman & Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul when it comes to his positions on military interventions, the drug war, and the rights of the individual over corporations. The fact that progressive icon and consumer advocate Ralph Nader has discussed teaming up with Paul demonstrates how Ron Paul’s views often are compatible with those of liberal progressives. However, most Democrats argue that Paul’s libertarian stance regarding entitlement programs, taxes, and the role of the Federal Government prevent them from ever throwing their full support behind Paul, even if they agree with him on other issues.

By making this argument, Democrats seem to think that Ron Paul could simply do away with Federal programs and departments with the swipe of pen. While Executive power has increased in recent years, American presidents are not dictators. A President Paul would have two (likely hostile) halls of Congress to deal with in setting an agenda. Secondly, Ron Paul is a pragmatic libertarian, not a radical one hell bent on throwing the United States into a state of anarchy and kicking people off Medicare and Social Security. When dealing with domestic issues and entitlement programs, Paul has always talked about slow transitions from Federal control to the State and local level, and actually saving entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare from impending bankruptcy over the short term by drastically cutting military spending.

Democrats though will argue that we are in crisis mode with the economy and need an FDR style president to inject money and create programs to fuel job growth, not someone like Ron Paul who wants to reduce the size of the Federal Government. Even if one were to agree with this argument, it should be obvious to all Democrats that Barack Obama is no FDR, but a panderer of Wall Street who has repeatedly refused to use the office of the Presidency as a bully pulpit to push a progressive agenda through Congress and make the banking industry pay for its high crimes. Beyond Obama’s very obvious shortcomings, one must ask Democrats if beefing up Federal programs should be the deciding factor in their choice for the next President of the United States. Is that really the ethical and moral priority of our times?

It might be good if all Democrats (and Republicans for that matter) were to pause for a moment and imagine that the Federal government was regularly dropping cluster bombs on their communities to combat suspected terrorists. And that due to these bombings, scores of innocent people, including family members, friends, and neighbors, were being maimed and killed.

Now, also imagine that this same Federal government has banned alcohol. Get caught drinking a beer and get tossed into jail for years. One guesses that if this were happening in the United States, the priority of nearly all voters would be to vote for a new President who would stop killing innocent Americans and tossing folks into jail for drinking a Budweiser.

Well, that Presidential candidate is Ron Paul. That the accidental killing of thousands of innocent men, women, and children is happening in foreign countries (instead of at home) and the jailings are related to marijuana and other drugs (instead of alcohol) are arbitrary distinctions. From a moral and ethical standpoint, these crimes against humanity and assault on personal freedoms are the same. That is why Democrats should register Republican and vote for Ron Paul in the primaries.

Read our article: The Corporate Trolls Vs. Chris Hedges & Ron Paul.

 

What was the Founding Fathers’ real take on Christianity & Religion? Read Living Hour’s Founding Fathers & Religion Series.

Ron Paul & Broken America

If there is one thing that the majority of Americans can agree on is that the country’s political system is broken. Only 16% of Americans think the country is on the right track and only 14% approve of the job that Congress is doing—the majority wishing they could get rid of every single Congressman today. Meanwhile, the President’s approval rating continues to sink to record lows.

All of these stats are courtesy of Scott Rasmussen, arguably the country’s leading pollster, who having monitored America’s moods and opinions for many years writes that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18^th century…the American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center. They want to govern themselves.”

Considering this political climate, it should come as no surprise that Ron Paul, the anti-establishment candidate who wants to place more liberty and freedom into the hands of the people, essentially scored a first place tie with Michelle Bachmann in the Ames Straw Poll. All things considered, one would have expected to see Ron Paul on the Sunday morning talk shows and that print journalists would have covered him with due diligence.

That though was not the case. Most mainstream media outlets did all that they could to marginalize or ignore Paul—to the extent that a panel on CNN agreed that the media is freezing Paul out because they consider him unelectable—this despite the fact that polls have Paul ranking 3^rd among Republican candidates and statistically even in a head to head match up with Barack Obama.

Over the past couple decades Republicans have railed against the “liberal” media, but that criticism really doesn’t hold much water—especially when one considers how the mainstream media often fell in lock-step with what the Bush administration sold them (from the Iraq invasion to the introduction of the Patriot Act). Today’s mainstream media are driven not by a liberal agenda but “group think”. They have established narratives to sell, and those narratives involve maintaining the established order of things.

When a politician like Ron Paul threatens the political order, the media’s response will always be to label that politician as unelectable; that is, after they first try to marginalize them as an extremist, a crank, or whatever the ad hominem attack of the day is. It is a credit to Ron Paul’s integrity and message that these attacks have become progressively less nasty since his 2008 primary run. After all, it is tough to label someone as a crackpot when they have been so consistently prescient with regards to the economy and our military misadventures. It also is difficult to do so when Paul’s base keeps growing and his donors include more members of the military than any other candidate—unless the media wants to risk insulting all these supporters and tank their viewership even further.

So what are these bought and sold journalists to do? Answer: Get rid of the problem altogether. In a shocking affront to objective journalism, CNN’s Howard Kurtz claimed this weekend that the media is in the business of “kicking candidates out of the race.” That might have been the case in the past, but fortunately for Ron Paul, and American democracy in general, alternative independent media outlets have exploded in popularity in recent years, diminishing the MSM’s ability to maintain their group-think narrative regarding Ron Paul’s electability. In addition, social networking tools have made it simple and quick for Ron Paul supporters to share factual and thoughtful articles with their friends—who otherwise might have been sold a false bill of goods regarding Ron Paul or don’t really know him at all.

Ron Paul’s Facebook page, for example, has over 448,000 fans. When you consider that every Ron Paul fan probably as at least 50-100 friends (if not much more), it thus becomes easy to see how Ron Paul’s message of greater freedom and liberty can regularly be distributed to millions of Americans within hours, along with immediate responses to false attacks (see Paul Krugman) and bald-faced lies (see Candy Crowley). If these supporters are successful at doing that in the coming months, broken American just may get the fix it is looking for.

Read our article: “Why Democrats Should Register Republican & Vote Ron Paul”