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BS ‘n’ About…
Faith in America
Faith has always been treated a little differently in America than anywhere else. Founded as we were by persecuted pilgrims, we’ve always been fiercely protective of our religious freedoms. As a result, we tend to mistrust too much faith on the part of our leaders. Separation of church and state and all that.
Faith in America is the sleeping bear over in the corner that no one can talk about. It can’t be used openly by our leaders to set policy. Nor can one faith be shown preference over another. The Constitution and all that.
Freedom of religion has provided a solid foundation for everything we’ve always stood for as a nation. That sleeping bear has kept us safe, protected us from our excesses, and helped us choose between right and wrong. When the Berlin Wall came down, we were a superpower that stood for everything that was good about our world. And then our faith was turned against us.
For the past twenty years, the Republican Party has trumpeted a ‘family values’ platform that must certainly rank among the most hypocritical agendas of all time. They kiss and hug our babies, then try feeding them ketchup and calling it a vegetable. They fiercely support Right-to-Life, then make it impossible to educate or find healthcare for those lives. They’re seen in church praying for peace while overseeing the biggest peacetime military build-up in the history of mankind. They decry Big Government, but only when it comes to Social Services, Education, Healthcare, or other things for the people. They say they are the Party of freedom, yet legislate a lot more rights for Big Business than for us little citizens.
Worst of all, by waking that sleeping bear, they’re threatening the Constitution and the very freedoms upon which we were founded. Freedom of Religion means Freedom of Religion. There can be no gray area. The minute we start using our spiritual beliefs to set government policy, we’ve stepped on the freedoms our ancestors fought so hard to attain. The minute we start using the Constitution to limit citizen rights we’ve become the kind of repressive regime we’ve always opposed. That is when people will start leaving America to find freedom.
It would be easy to assume at this point that the issue here is the proposed Constitutional Amendment to define marriage. It isn’t and that’s the whole point. The Amendment is an attention-diverting, spiritually-inflammatory issue that all parties involved know has no chance of passing. It is being used in the hope that this coming November we’ll vote with our faith rather than our eyes. It is being used in the hope that we’ll vote against our best interests yet again. It is being used to yet again paint the Democrats as bad guys because they oppose limiting freedoms. It isn’t about the issue at all. It is about how the issue is being used to manipulate us and our votes.
None of us should be using our faith to cast our ballots this coming November. Governing a people involves a lot of specific policy decisions which affect our lives, our wallets, our future, and this time around, the very lives of our children. We need to focus on the issues. We need to decide what kind of a nation and what kind of a people we want to become. We need to demand from those who want to lead us a little respect. Quit spin-doctoring us. Quit trying to tell us what you think we want to hear. Quit taking advantage of our beliefs in any way.
We, the People need to find our voice and become part of the process again. We need to use our faith to decide who we are, not who they are. Then we can use that faith to build a government which carries out the vision of what we see for the future of our nation. This can’t be done on faith. But it can’t be done without faith, either.
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