Inside The Mind Of Someone From The Other Side

So I'm torn on a particular interesting topic . . my wife has a number of people that interact with her in the community that are full-blown Republican nutjobs. Nice people (as long as it's not politics), good members of the community, but full-on, "Democrats, or the Democratic name-of-the-week, will bring socialism to America!", sorts.

Recently one sent my wife an email on an slightly related topic church topic and jumped the tracks into a full-on political statement, and I'm going to provide a few exerpts. Because sooner or later one of these yahoos is going to corner me at coffee time, and I'd rather destroy them here than in the church basement.

You probably have surmised that I am pretty conservative, politically.

I actually think you've done everything short of march up and down Main Street with a sign in large letters. Our barber can't even watch CNN without you going ballistic - he has turn on Gilligan's Island when you walk in.

I think that the leftward turn of our denomination is certainly one of the reasons for our decline.

Well, that's your entitled opinion, but I think it has to do with the lack of engagement the denomination on a whole has had with it's children and teens probably has more to do with it than theological stances. But I'm also just an apostate born and married into the denomination.

I am very much in favor of Christian charity. We should preach and encourage it. “Extravagant Generosity,” for example.

Excellent. So what's your contribution record to the church & mission and relief projects?

But we should not ask our government to serve the function of charity. The only way for government to be charitable is to take resources from some people and give them to others.

So is it charity that the government pay for goods and services it uses in governing? Because I think the defense contractors would argue with us about that.

A government that takes from one to give to another can not stand forever.

You still haven't answered my question. Does the government pay for the labors and materials is consumes?

The very process pits the “classes” against each other.

I thought our necessity for consumption and the competition for classically-defined scarce resources did that. And are you denying that a man in poverty and a woman earning six-figures have different wants and needs?

Eventually, that re-distribution process runs out of resources. I saw first-hand that result in Russia in the late 90’s.

Did you go to the Soviet Union in the 1990's? I didn't know that. But didn't the Soviet Union collapse in 1992? And the shortages and poverty that followed didn't have anything to do with the governmental collapse, but were the product of the former system redistributing wealth?

Our America was founded on the principle of treating every individual the same way. “We’re a Free Country.”

No, we America was founded on the principle that a bunch of colonists whom had limitless potential at extraction wealth were sick and tired of their government being out-of-touch, demanding a portion of the wealth without services, and ham-fisted bullies enforcing a perversion of justice. The Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment didn't come into being until after the Civil War and caused such a damn fuss that the South had to be left to its own perversions of it for 100 years following. That there's still a huge fuss over electing our first racially ethnic citizen to president this year is a gross demonstration of the non-equality of our citizens in the government.

Then everyone could be enthusiastic about our government, and Americans were proud to be Americans.

I've never understood this pride thing. Both I and you are by coincidence of birth, Americans. Or really, Usonians, since all Brazillians and Mexcians too are Americans. But you're confusing pride in state & country with pride in government. It's why state and government in the modern British-derived parliamentary systems are separate powers. The government must never be trusted with the affections that citizens have for country. I love

There were no persons destined to be givers, and none destined to be takers.

Destiny is a tricky thing. Is it all pre-ordained and we're just following a script? Is free-will an illusion? Or do I have a choice in arguing with you?

A great American once said: “When the number of receivers (of government distribution) is greater than the number of givers, our system is doomed.”

That's funny, a search of the Internet, which is full of political cranks of all flavors, can't tell me who said that.

I am all for Christian charity. I am not for using the police power (confiscation and imprisonment) to serve a Christian function.

Oh, so you believe that the taxation of citizens is a Christian function? There's a disconnect here. Taxation is a necessary function. We practiced free-will offering in government once from 1776 to 1787 during the Confederate Articles where the states ponied up according to how they felt collectively about how to pay for the debts of the national Federal government. What was paid by the states was still collected through the taxation of state citizens - even the states weren't dumb enough to try free-will donations. Taxation, as Christ pointed out, is not Godly but a apparatus of man, sure to come about as soon as the ruler mints coin.

Iowa is not a state that depends on government to enforce its morality. Iowa is a state of individual responsibility.

And if the state doesn't enforce individual responsibility, who does? And who's definition of responsibility are we talking about here? If we were using some people's definition, I'd be married to my ex-wife, abusing and being abused, and some interpretations of Christian morality would consider me justified.

This is the classic outrage of Americans toward taxes, and then greater outrage when those taxes are used for something you personally don't approve of. I'd slash the defense budget by 2/3rds at least. You'd kill every social services program you can lay your hands on, including the one that feeds my son at school and the state office that tracks child support payments. Guess what? I'm still paying my taxes even though I despise some of what my government does because I make a decision that it's not about criminality, but my belief that I belong in community with my fellow citizens, and that community carries the responsibility that I suck it up and do it. My taxes however give me every right to bitch, whine, fight for changing my government for the better.

Your issue is your refusal to understand that government has an moral and ethical right to protect its citizens, not only from without, but from the worst effects of human society - poverty and it's enablers, abuse, addiction, infirmity, and worst of all, stupid human choices. What I can't believe is that someone as smart as you can't see that we've tried Christian charity as the basis of social support in an industrialized society before - and it fails miserably. Dickens wrote of it in Britain, & we have the entire history of the 1870's-1930's.

It's not perfect, I don't have all the answers. But I know this - if you don't pay as much in donations to the institutions of your Christian faith as you do in the taxes you whine about, you've got no fucking leg to stand on you fucking millionaire wealthy snob. Your tax bill alone would be one-tenth of this church's annual budget. The last time I checked, this church alone is short by at least one-quarter of its budget. Where's your statement of donation?