A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

A redated post.

This post is dedicated to the memory of David Baur, a friend of mine whom I recently discovered died of a heart attack last August. He sent me this during the 2004 election campaign.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

* written by Donna L. Lavins and Sheldon Cotler.

Is there a Christian Left?

Is there a Christian Left? Yes. 

Would a Romney Victory Advance the Conservative Cause?

Probably. But maybe not.

One problem you might run into is that if Obama goes to his left, Republicans will oppose him. But if Romney goes left, it has a better chance of sticking. If Hubert Humphrey had gone to China, he would have been called a communist appeaser and would have gotten zero bipartisan support. If Romney repeals Obamacare and replaces it with something equally socialistic, or supports an assault weapons ban, Republicans won't put up a pitched battle against him. If he goes "multiple choice" on abortion, he could do more harm to the right to life than Obama ever could.

I would maintain that an Romney election would probably advance the conservative cause more than an Obama re-election. But maybe not be nearly as much as most people think.

Meanwhile, the hard left can barely tolerate Obama.

Redistribution and parties

ADC wrote:


I'm more concerned with is how a particular candidate views the use government's monopoly on force. Will it be constrained to protection and defend individual rights - or unconstrained in attempts to shape and engineer a 'better' humanity?


VR: If this is your concern, then you cannot vote for members of either major party. Democrats believe in redistribution of wealth and income downwards, toward the poor and the middle class. Republicans believe in redistribution of wealth and income upwards, so that more money is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.  Neither party practices laissez-faire economics. There is no advantage in voting Republican as opposed to Democratic, if you are a real conservative. Both parties do the same thing, just in opposite directions. The difference between them is that Republicans pay lip service to laissez-faire economics, while Democrats do not. There is no lesser of two evils here. 


May I suggest the Libertarians? 

Class Warfare, or Common Sense? Elizabeth Warren on the social contract

"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."¹

 1. "Elizabeth Warren On 'Class Warfare': There Is Nobody Who Got Rich On His Own (VIDEO)," Eric Kleefeld, Talking Points Memo, 09-21-2011.

The Flip Side of 2 Thess: 3:10

Paul said, "For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."." (2 Thess 3:10) But is the flip side of this statement true? Do you think that those who either work, are attempting the best they can to work, or people who are unable to work should eat? In particular, should we make sure that children are taken care of?




It doesn't seem to fit well with the New Testament to think that, for example there is no problem with someone putting in a 40-hour work week and then sleeping on the streets or in their car. So a Christian can't very well oppose the goal of seeing to it that workers, or would-be workers, be able to make a living working. What they might oppose, however, is deputize the government and making use of taxpayer money to accomplish this goal. But how else could it be accomplished?

Rewriting History and Ignoring Facts

HT: Keith Parsons.

This essay accuses the right wing of just this. Hmmm, let's see how conservatives are going to respond. I know! With a tu quoque! We can produce a litany of where liberals have rewritten history and ignored facts. That will show that there is nothing wrong with what these conservatives have done.

Well, I really do think facts matter, so it does matter to me when facts are ignored, whether by Republicans or Democrats.

After 9/11 I was willing to cut the Bush administration quite a lot of slack. I was willing to concede that if Saddam really did have WMDs, and if there was any likelihood of handing those off to al-Qaeda, that a pre-emptive war might be justified. What infuriated me was that after a search of Iraq and WMDs were not found, the Bush administration didn't say "Well, OK, we thought, based on our best evidence, that there were WMDs, but there weren't. We were mistaken, but it was an honest error, based on probable cause." I could have respected that. But what we got was a bunch of stuff about what an awful dictator Saddam was, and that "freedom is on the march." In fact, Bush shot a video mocking the fact that there were no WMDs found. It was as if the WMDs mattered, and mattered profoundly, when we were justifying the invasion, but somehow didn't matter once we actually invaded.

I think it is a besetting temptation of anyone who believes in some particular ideology to put ideology over facts and information. This can happen on both sides of the debates in theistic and Christian apologetics. I'm going to leave it open as to whether Democrats or liberals are just as guilty as Republicans and conservatives in this matter. What I am going to contend, is that this is a temptation that has to be fought.

This is from the Wikipedia entry on Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop. Koop was an opponent of abortion who co-authored books like Whatever Happened to the Human Race with Francis Schaeffer. However,

Though Koop was philosophically opposed to abortion on personal and religious grounds, he declined to state that abortion procedures performed by qualified medical professionals posed a substantial health risk to the women whose pregnancies were being terminated, despite political pressure to endorse such a position.

In other words, facts and evidence mattered to C. Everett Koop, and he refused to subordinate them to ideology. What we need are more Koops on both sides of the aisle.

Does cutting the state budget require courage?

Ed Montini, the Arizona Republic columnist, doesn't think so. A state legislator thinks that people like him should stop whining.

What if

Would we feel any better about a pollitical leader who, after a sex scandal, came before the public and said "Yes, of course I had an affair. But this is really no problem, because my wife and I have practiced open marriage throughout our married life. "

72 years old, gay, and atheist? Don't run for president

A Gallup Poll on who Americans would never vote for.

A piece of political cynicism I put in the combox of an abortion discussion a few months ago

Both parties have turned abortion into a political football. The Democrats can count on a body of voters to vote for them to protect "a woman's right to choose." They benefit from the idea that abortion rights are truly in danger. The Republicans have their army of pro-life voters, and leaders like Karl Rove, who care nothing for fetuses, want to keep this army of voters voting and volunteering. Both sides at least say they agree that the abortion rate is too high, (safe, legal and rare, you know) but neither side wants to alienate their base by doing things that could seriously lower the abortion rate.


Too cynical?

Some holiday fun at Democrats' expense

More on the tone

Political posts, like other posts, are partly there to defend what I believe in, but they are also designed to generate critical thinking. I know this is a forum in which liberals and conservatives can enter the discussion. I also want people to realize that Christians can exercise some independence of mind when it comes to politics. I have seen this from both liberals and conservatives in the comment box.

When I talked about improving the tone of the discussion, it is important to realize that I mean for it to begin with me. I can't control Steve Hays or Ilion or anyone like him. I don't know what to say to people who think that anyone to the left of John McCain is an intellectually dishonest evildoer. I also don't know how to respond to people who think all Christians (or atheists, for that matter) are stupid, ignorant, insane, or wicked. That kind of certitude has always escaped me.

If my posts serve only the goal of political advocacy, they fail by my own standards. It's easy to hit easy targets.

On improving the tone of political debate

I don't know if any of you have been going over to Triablogue, but I have been treated over there to the harshest personal attacks I have ever received from anyone from Steve Hays. Compared to him, Steven Carr has been the model of politeness. To Hays, it isn't enough to say that I am backing the wrong candidate for President. I have been compared to Goebbels, called a Red Philosopher, a Baby Butcher's Best Friend, a poseur, a goose-stepping apparatchik for the left, a false philosopher and a false Christian, and even someone too stingy and selfish to help his own parents in their old age, since I said I was sure glad they got Social Security and Medicare when they advanced in age. He presumed that, all this time, I was a tenured professor, which, alas, I have never been. To him, this isn't a debate, this is a police interrogation. Anything you say can, and will be used against you.

I am quite sure I don't deserve this treatment. At the same time, I have to ask myself if I have done the best job I could, not merely for making the case that a Christian can support Obama, but really exploring the issues in a helpful way, encouraging critical thought, and not simply shooting at easy targets. This is a blog, not a set of publishable essays. I'm trying to open honest discussion, not speak the last word on matters of considerable dispute amongst Americans. In the philosophy of religion, I would like to think that my efforts have created a more civilized playing field, where people on both sides can discuss their differences. I may not have done so well on political matters.

I can't think of anybody in political history who has rubbed me the wrong way as much as Sarah Palin has. It may be my intellectualist bias; I expect my political leaders to have thought-through positions on issues. Maybe that's asking too much, I don't know. I know some would say that even if she doesn't have thought-through positions, at least she doesn't take the wrong positions. But from the first time she opened her mouth and tried to grasp the mantle of Hillary Clinton and the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, despite complete opposition to everything Hillary stands for, I have found this choice to be an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

Because I think Obama has health care right, the economy right, Iraq and Afghanistan right, and for a number of other reasons, I do support him for President. I'm not a simon-pure pro-lifer, but I would like to see more commitment to the value of unborn life than he has shown so far. Despite evidence that of pro-abortion extremism, I'd like to think that he is persuadable on, say, a partial birth abortion ban. (There's the audacity of hope for you!).

I'd like to see a grass-roots, bipartisan effort including both pro-lifers and moderate pro-choicers (the combination of these groups surely constitutes a majority in America), to get together to look for ways to minimize abortion. Maybe a Coalition to Minimize Abortion should be formed. Do a little community organizing. Because I think that with the current political deadlock, with "the right to life" and "a woman's right to choose" used as a means to get out the respective party bases, there is little chance of doing anything on the abortion issue that makes any progress from anyone's perspective.

Of course, if you think I have all the other issues wrong, this won't impress you. Fine. I do respect thoughtful conservatives like Bill Vallicella, in spite of my deep suspicion that the what has come out of the dominance of conservatives over the past 28 years or so has resulted in a lot of what I call corporate prostitution and the abuse of power. (These are subjects for more detailed discussion, of course). I don't think either party has a monopoly on good or on evil.

ACORN, the new Republican talking point?

I will have to admit that I don't understand this story. If I were trying to steal votes for the Democrats, this is not the way I would go about doing it. Of course we could go with a Democratic conspiracy theory; it's really the Republicans trying to discredit community organizing. But conspiracy theories are a last resort. So what gives here?

Barack: The Biggest Baby-Killer of them all?

Some of you, I fully understand, would not vote for Barack Obama because he is pro-choice. I understand the underlying viewpoint here. But there is an added kicker to this, and that is that it is alleged that Obama is something worse than pro-choice, he's actually a supporter of infanticide, since he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois State Senate.

First, last I heard, the laws of the State of Illinois made it illegal to kill infants. So was this legislation even necessary?

Second, the name of a piece of legislation tells you nothing. By this logic, someone who voted against the No Child Left Behind Act wants children left behind, or someone who voted against the Healthy Forests Initiative wants sick forests.

Third, when I suggested that pro-lifers have to be prepared to accept a greater expansion of socialism to care for all the would-be victims of abortion, there was a chorus of objections from pro-lifers. But this law, if the linked article is correct, mandated state funds to take care of these children as long as they were alive. It also abrogated the rights of parents and would have given lawyers an opportunity to "sue everything on two legs." But I thought Republicans hated trial lawyers. In other words, there appear to have been various reasons for voting against this legislation besides wanting the accidental survivors of abortion dead.

Some Questions for Conservatives

Do you support scrapping Social Security, either gradually or suddenly?

Do you hold to a general principle of laissez-faire capitalism, that the government ought to stay out of the economy. That principle is equally violated by a corporate bailout as it is by LBJ's War on Poverty.

Was the GI Bill socialism?

Do you oppose any and all government assistance to poor people?

And who do you think was last conservative President? If you say GW Bush I'm going to laugh. Ronald Reagan? Give me a break. Herbert Hoover? Maybe.

Are child labor laws justified? There's government intervention to be sure.

The leaders who have run the Republican party for years are not principled conservatives. They want government to back big business. Their hearts start bleeding at the sight of a failing multinational corporation.

Do you seriously doubt that many have benefitted from government involvement in the economic life of the public?

What, in your view, constitutes principled conservatism? This isn't just a rhetorical attack. I'd really like to see what conservatism is really all about. The "conservative" ideology that has run the Bush administration seems to be an ideology that looks out for big business first and foremost. If that means government involvement, then government gets involved. It that means reducing government, then government is reduced. But I see no commitment to limited government as an overall governing principle. That is why, if you really convinced me that conservative principles were true, I would register, not Republican, but Libertarian.

More statistics: Did Clinton Lower the Abortion Rate?

Got statistics? Here you go!

Who is the party of fiscal responsibility?

Why I am a Democrat.

Let's get down to the real point of this little piece on Joe Republican. The conservative belief that the government should not regulate the economy, that it should not take an interest in the welfare of less-privileged citizens by constraining the greed of large corporations, presumably because the better the big companies do the more jobs they'll create, therefore benefitting the rest of the world, looks just false to me. It looks as if historically, interventions by government have at least on many occasions been a good thing. Social Security was identified with Socialism when it was proposed, and it is sometimes attacked today as a Ponzi scheme. But I can't forget how much things better were for my mother and father, both political conservatives, once they started receiving it. In my childhood Medicare was attacked as Socialism, but again, it has made a huge difference to many people, including my parents. So much so that Bush wanted to expand it when he got into the Presidency.

Bill Vallicella once criticized my use of this little piece by saying that it commits a diachronic fallacy; it implies that because liberals might have been justified in going for government assistance to the economy in the past, it doesn't follow that the kinds of things liberals propose today are justified. As Palin would say, perhaps so. Nevetheless the general principle that government should keep its filthy laws off our collective economic body seems just false, and there can't be any greater proof that what we have seen this past week. The bitter fruits of deregulation have been reaped this past week, and now one of the leading deregulators, a member of the Keating Five, wants the job of cleaning up the mess?

The Bible says those who won't work should not eat. But those willing to work should eat, and the weakest members of society, those who are too young, too old, or too sick, or too disabled, to work, should be able to eat as well. It would be wonderful it trickle-down actually worked, or if in particular Christians were so generous enough so that government action was not necessary. The evidence suggests otherwise.

The Day in the Life of Joe Democrat mentions mostly things that Rush Limbaugh, in his worst nightmares, images liberals as advocating, not the actual accomplishments of real liberals.
Let's take a look at something that was enacted in the Clinton years, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was for the purpose of preventing companies from firing mothers who took of to have babies and spend time at home with their children before going back to work. I was pleased to see that McCain voted for this legislation, but I remember Limbaugh and other conservatives railing against it. But gee, if you're pro-life and you want women to carry their babies to term and not abort them, how can you be against this sort of legislation? Is overturning Roe all you can think of when you think about lowering the abortion rate?

For reasons I have presented earlier, while I don't subscribe to what I think is a doctrinaire commitment to "a woman's right to choose," I don't think that is an area where the President can make a direct impact. I am being told that if McCain is elected, we'll get a fifth pro-life justice on the Court, Roe will be overturned, and abortion will at least be prohibited the the red states. I think that won't happen; I think the abortion rate will actually rise if McCain is elected and fall if Obama is elected. So pro-lifers should vote Democratic this time.

In foreign affairs, again I am actually a conservative, I am very conservative about the traditional Just War theory, and skeptical of modernists who think that that its provisions are "quaint" because we live in a "post 9/11 world." Iraq was, in my view, a completely unjust war, and when I get in a bad mood I actually think it's a war we deserve to lose, since we invaded the country immorally to begin with. (Yeah, I don't like the sound of what I just said either). I don't care what the justification is, there are things you don't do to prisoners of war and things you don't do to criminal defendants, and the people we picked up off the battlefield in Afganistan should not have been put into some "neither fish nor fowl" category so that they we could do what we wanted with them.

So these are some of the main reasons why I am a Democrat.