I’ve been saying this for months: appeal to the egos of any coalition and exploit the cracks. People always choose self-preservation over the greater good, most of the time, with the belief that self-preservation is the greater good.
Newsweek provides yet another piece on this topic, one of a long succession of MSM articles breathlessly seal-clapping in anticipation of the catalyst which accomplishes this.
Blah blah blah – it was this that prompted me to write:
“Most evangelical Christian conservatives I know would at least be uneasy about the prospect of the government leaving the poor to their own devices and having churches pick up the slack,” he says.
Wrong. Heinously, irresponsibly, embarrassingly wrong. This from Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. His sound bites are all about stoking libertarians to feel like disenfranchised underdogs with the goal of rousing them to lash out at the big bully Christian conservatives.
What’s wrong with his statement above? Aside from this giant “rift” to which he alludes and desires? Most evangelical Christian conservatives I know would at least be uneasy about the prospect of the government picking up the slack of caring for the poor due to Christians’ abdication of their role in society as dictated by Scripture.
Lynn should perhaps study the faith before he attempts to try to emotionally blackmail the faithful. That’s precisely what should happen: churches should be doing more, people of faith should be doing more and want to do more because big government is an attempt to remove action from faith thus making the faith less viable. When taxes go up, tithing goes down. When the government assumes the role of the shepherd, the power of churches is diminished. It’s another way to attack religion and for the state to eradicate it from society. A society without a viable faith, a society that doesn’t recognize what it meant for our Founding Fathers to write:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable 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 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.” [my emphasis]
… is a society that will allow man to play God and remove the untouchable nature of our basic rights. That’s exactly the goal.
Leave no hole for government to exploit. People of faith have themselves contributed to this problem by not standing up more.
Coalitions between different groups who have various beliefs in common are instrumental to success. We can’t disrespect, by way discounting or misunderstanding our different sticking points, the beliefs of the various groups comprising the tea party movement, but we all have more in common with each other than we do with factions on the left: the communists, the socialists, the say-their-anarchists-but-are-actually-socialists. We know that the only way to securing increased civil liberties comes by way of our alliance and we must continue to hold the line and work together.
The groups on the right have accomplished so much by working together and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what all else we can accomplish, Newsweek be damned.
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