Interesting. And clear that today's GOP seems to have forgotten that Reagan raised taxes, banned torture, and suggested reasonable foreign policy.
When Reagan now looks like a liberal Republican, what in the hell does that tell you about today's GOP?
2 comments:
At my age (50ish) I can remember when the Moral Majority began their march into politics in the late 70's. I remember older Pastors at the time warning of compromises to the Gospel, but as a young man, I disregarded them, and followed Reagan et al into the future. Now, some 30 years later into that future, I see the subltle error in my thinking and understanding.
I do not think Christians should exit from politics, quite the opposite, but when did it become OK to not act like Christians when we operate in the political world? How is it that we Christians can be on board with lying about an opponent, using fear and arrogance, knowingly making untrue accusations, forwarding emails that falsly smear our opposition, all with the idea of forwarding the Kingdom?
Whatever happened to the Christian Virtues of humility and not bearing false witness? Is it OK, just because you think the opposition does it? Do you tell your kids they can do it just because their playmates do?
In the 80's a man named Lee Atwater perfected the modern version of what has been called "attack politics", he won, but started a poison that infects our body politic to this day. Rush, Newt, Rove, et al are politcally descended from his style. How can anyone use hate to climb the rungs of power and might and call it Gospel living? No matter what, that is NOT the Gospel.
I feel like it isn't just a political party that has been damaged, it is the Church. We have been seduced by wealth and power, and put our faith in guns, bombs, and torture rather than God. It appears to me that we have forgotten the gentle Shepherd from Nazareth, and happily marched to war and torture with hardly a thought to peace or loving our enemies.
While being totally consumed with gays and Islam, we have forgotten those prisoners in our own gulags, and the thirsty world looking for Grace. Politics has stripped compassion from the Church, and we have given up our soul, our birthright for a meal next to the President.
Lee Atwater got a brain tumor and died, but before he did he repented of what he had unleashed in the Republican Party and our national political life, and he worried about "the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."
Yes, that seems quite right, we do have a tumor of the soul growing in our spirits, may God have mercy on us all.
I disagree that Reagan would face a hard time in today's GOP. He moved far to the right between being Governor of California and running for President in order to fit into the party.
I doubt he would have had some sort of crisis of conscience and been unwilling to move a little more to the right.
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