What's In A Word?

I’ve talked about this before, but I feel that it may require mentioning again.

I’ve heard others talking and speaking and they’ve used words like “theocracy” and “fundamentalists”. They weren’t talking about our foes on the other side of the ocean. They weren’t talking about Iran. They weren’t talking about Islamic terrorists.

It’s easy to understand why they use these words. Somewhere, a little group of regular citizens were sat down with some little electronic devices and they were shown a tape, or listened to a speech or were just fed some words, and they’d click this little button or the electrodes would take readings of their pulse when they heard those words. The marketing research recorded that they all had negative responses to those words and they reported it to the people who run the party and they passed it down to their little speech-writing folks who then figure out how to incorporate those words in the speeches of whatever group or person they are working for.

Those words are powerful words indeed because they are associated with some of the worst incidents in American history.

From the Iran Hostage Crisis where the revolutionaries installed a “theocratic” government and held our hostages for 444 days to the continuous chants from then on of “Death to America” to the fall of the towers perpetrated by men who were “fundamentalist” Islamists whose own propaganda desires to install a world wide Islamic “theocracy”. These words are embedded in the American psyche as equal to “evil”, “oppression”, “terror”, “anti-freedom” and “death”.

These words are used now to prick the American conscious in new ways, but for the same purposes: to instill fear of something that has no real public face, nor stated agenda, nor leader. The ethereal. It cannot be defined with a specific organization and a defined membership with a list that can be explored and reviewed. The organization is loose knit with many “cells” and they don’t always proclaim themselves in the open.

This organization is loosely associated by their shared faith. They are often active in politics, but work largely behind the scenes, associating with actual political groups and working to put their own views forward in the political scene, trying to influence society.

The people they want you to fear are not aliens, nor subversives, nor foreigners. They are American and they call themselves “Christians”.

They want you to believe that these people want to take away your freedom. They want you to believe that the “morals” and “values” that they believe in are anathema to American values.

This must be the most ironic, if not outrageous, implication ever made.

Not only have I heard this from political forces, but common people who have had their common fears, funneled and re-channeled, away from the real threats of fundamentalists and theocratic governments, back towards their own citizens. I’ve seen editorials, articles and words written on the inter-net, denouncing these alleged “Christian Fundamentalists” as something that must be feared as much as, if not more than, those that truly seek to use their “fundamentalist” religious beliefs to stir up sectarian anger, attack our citizens and install a government based on religion, a “theocracy”.

I’ve also heard people who normally identify themselves as Christians, backing away from their identity. They say, “I’m a Christian, but I’m not one of THOSE,” fearing that they will be identified with this mythical, American “subversive” group that these others claim are waiting in the wings to take away our freedoms and make us adhere to some form of religious laws. What these laws are, no one knows since there is no codified law, nor list nor single list of laws adhered to by all Christians.

Well, who are “those” Christians that they all speak of? Who are they that seek to impose this invisible, unknown religious law?

I am a Christian. I will never say that I am not one of “those”, because I don’t know any of “those”. They don’t exist. They are the bogeyman made up to make you afraid; the invisible monster in your closet. They are the unknown meant to make you look the other way, make you forget that some of the things that they, who point to this bogeyman, have pressed for in the past as “freedom” have actually lent towards the destruction of “good society”. They have codified it, forced precedents that insist that, above the common sense of “good society”, these freedoms must be allowed.

Abortion. The concept of “rehabilitation” of criminals and that certain sentences are “cruel and inhuman” because they are too long allowing criminals to be back on our streets.

As a matter of fact, I recently saw a ticker on the news that proclaimed, “prison populace increases even as crime decreases”. What a concept. They’d have you believe that there is something wrong with this picture.

The irony of pointing to Christians and shouting about theocracy and fundamentalists is that it was Christians, devout Christians even, who came here and developed the very concepts on which this land was created, on which this government exists. It was they, these fearful Christians, who actually created the idea of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, today, you are to fear these same people as those that might actually destroy this thing called freedom.

The further issue here is that some how, some way, Christian ideas do not have a place in guiding our society. This from the simple idea of “freedom of religion”, that now religion and any moral ideals or values that might be gained from it are NOW an anathema.

Fear morality. Fear values. Fear Christians.

That is what they want you to believe.

Why? It is so simple. It is about marketing. It is about publicity. It is about politics. It is about the last election.

In the last election, after the party that is proclaiming your need to fear these “subversives” lost the last election, they were viewing the exit polls and the reason people most often gave as the reason they voted as they did was “values” and “morals”.

This literally put the fear of “God” into them.

Immediately, the media and the party that lost began to ask, “Who are these people? Who are these people that say that they were voting for values and they did not vote for Democrats? Who are they that say that we do not have morals or values? They must be extremists, fundamentalists…*gasp*…they must be “Christians”!”

And these Christians are much more scary than terrorists. Terrorists they have ideas on how to fight. Christians and other people with “values” they have no idea how to combat except to make you fear these “values” voters. Put names to them, use words to equate these same “values” voters with the very people who actually did harm America.

This ought to be telling to those of us who do believe in “values” and “morals” and who call ourselves “Christians”. They don’t understand these “values”. It would be simple to say they have no “values” and, if you look at some of their actions in the last couple decades that have led to the destruction of what was once considered “good society” it would be so easy. But, then, I’d turn into them and be telling you to fear them. I believe each person can decide for themselves.

They tried to glom on to this “values” base and recognize their own “Christianity”. Their party leaders started talking about their own beliefs, their own base in Christianity, started quoting scriptures. But, they sounded so fake that, when the marketing groups and pollsters checked how this was playing in the populace, they found that this “values” group did not believe them. They did not get the boost from the use of this language.

Instead of understanding how their policies and ideas did not jive with the general populace and “values” so they could change their policies, they decided to attack it now with flaming rhetoric. Theocracy. Fundamentalists.

If they can’t join them, they want to beat them.

Well, I’ve been to plenty of Christian meetings and organizations and I have yet to hear anyone talking about how we Christians are going to take over the government and install a theocracy. Maybe I’m just too low in this “subversive cell’s” command structure to know that this plan exists?

Values are not wrong. Values based on religion are not wrong. Values based on Christianity are not wrong. Many people in this society have gotten their ideas about values from both religion and through the functioning of “good society”. They aren’t Christian values alone. They are the values of common people that work everyday and live everyday in this country, deal with society and have a fine tuned sense of what these values ought to be.

What are the basic values? Well, we think that society has gone to the dogs. People don’t appreciate each other. They aren’t courteous. Lying is okay. Cheating is okay. Everything is excusable because where someone was born, how someone was raised. Dangerous criminals aren’t just treated with compassion they are given free passes in attempts to “rehabilitate” those that good society and common sense would otherwise deem to be non-productive citizens who endanger society. There is the continual spread of sexual diseases and alarming numbers of unwanted births and abortion, even though, through the auspices of public money, we have sex education, free or very cheap birth control, health programs, welfare systems.

This says to those of us who believe in “values” that there is something wrong with those other ideas and they are not working. Somehow, because we question these policies adhered to by the so-called “liberals” (libertines), we are now the subversives that mean to take away freedom.

It is we “values” voters that recognize that legislation does not make society better, but understanding of “good society” and the peer pressure of those with “values” can actually improve society. We don’t believe that it’s the government’s job to tell people that promiscuity can be dangerous to your health. We don’t believe that it’s government’s job to cure social ills like unwanted births and abortions. But we do believe that the government should not make any laws that enforce ideas on the public that “good society” does not deem to be in its best interest and may actually lend to the creation of social ills.

We don’t believe that we should pat people on the head and tell them not to worry, they didn’t really do anything wrong and there will be no consequences. We believe that experiencing consequences, understanding that they exist and there is a price to pay for going outside of the law, or what society in generally excepts, is what keeps people from doing it in the first place. Not laws or programs that belay the consequences after the fact. We believe this actually harms society and is very costly.

This is, in effect, the social policies and laws that have been forced upon us for years in the alleged attempt to create a more free and open society. We believe people should have all the freedom they want, but that society should not have to pay for their mistakes and it is in societies best interests for people to try with all their might, not to make these mistakes.

Strangely, in these subversive meetings of Christians that I’ve attended, no one has actually put forth the idea that we should re-institute stoning for adultery, hand chopping for theft, public stocks, scarlet letters, burning at the stake, drowning witches, branding convicts, covering women from head to toe, veils, or forcing women to go back into the kitchen, completely subjugated to their husbands, barefoot and pregnant.

As a feminist, if I heard that last one, I’d laugh myself right out of our little subversive meetings.

What I believe as a “values” voter is that we need leadership that actually stands up and says, yes you have the freedom to do what you will, but you have a responsibility to insure that you do not harm yourself or society and there are consequences if you do.

We want our children to be safe, not worried about whether some repeat pedophile has been released and living down the street because they are considered “rehabilitated” by a penal system that does no so thing for a problem that has no such solution. We don’t want to have to worry about being robbed and shot at the grocery store because someone who was seventeen when he shot his last victim, got out of juvenile jail when he was 21 and now is shooting us when he is 22. We do not want to worry about being raped and killed by someone who has been in prison for ten years for raping three other women, whom he did not kill, but now he escalates, because he was not “rehabilitated” in a penal system that does no such thing.

We are appalled that 1.4 million abortions happen every year in this country. Not only because of the question of life, which we find sacred, not just religiously, but in the miracle of biology that creates it, but because it says something very wrong about our society. It says that there are no consequences for not behaving responsibly. It says that no amount of sex education or free clinics takes the place of the censure of the public for irresponsible behavior.

We are equally appalled at the number of children that are born and abandoned, neglected or simply given away for adoption. Not because we have no compassion for these children or do not want them to go to good homes where they will be loved and cared for, but because it means that there is something wrong with society when this practice is an acceptable replacement for responsible behavior. Behavior that is, again, not mitigated no matter the amount of public resources we pour into education, clinics, welfare systems, etc.

We value our freedom and those of others. We know that that freedom does not exist in every country as we have it here. We do not believe that Communist China or true Theocratic Iran or despotic Syria or fake democracies in Africa are equal to this free society. We believe that this gives us a unique place in this time and space to lead the free world and oppose tyranny in its every form. We believe that we need to protect this freedom and that we should be viewed as strong in our freedom, but a society based on common values that are looked up to not ridiculed for not being whom we said we were or acting on what we believe.

We believe in wrong and right. We know that there are reasons that things happen, but we don’t believe that those reasons always mitigate the actions or that “nuances” should render us unable to act.

This is what they cannot understand about the “values” voters. This is why they have chosen to use market tested words in the public like “theocrats” and “fundamentalists” so that they can put fear into the hearts of the common man and make them believe that there are people out there who don’t really share their values but want to impose some extreme ideology on them, far beyond these shared values.

This is, very simply, an attempt at “divide and conquer” using scary words with scary meanings. Don’t listen to those Christians. They want to invoke a theocracy here and we all KNOW what a theocracy looks like, don’t we? They are “fundamentalists” who want to enforce their “values” on us and take away your freedoms. Why, tomorrow, they might even demand that everyone has to go to church and worship God through Christ. If those terrible Christians have their way, it will be the LAW. So Al Gore says. Mark his words. He knows. He invented the inter-net after all.

And, they’ve got people scared. Afraid enough to be running away from their ideas in an attempt not to be associated with these alleged subversives trying to take over the country. Yes, asking people to take some responsibility and saying that government programs to date have not helped the situation and that a little application of “values” might go a long way to fix it, is subversive.

Every time I hear someone proclaim themselves a Christian, but not one of “those”, I get a picture in my head Christians hiding their services in caves so they won’t be crucified by Nero. Or, better yet, Peter, also called Simon, who fulfilled the prophesy at the last supper and denied Jesus thrice before the cock crowed.

Usually, I’m amused when I hear the words “theocracy” and “fundamentalists” spilling from the mouths of people who are beating on pulpits and preaching like a hell fire and brimstone pastor at the Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Where ever did they learn those oratory techniques anyway?

I’m simply not finding it amusing anymore because it is quickly leaving the confines of hilarity and foolishness for fear mongering and persecution.

I am equally amazed at people who decry “religious cultures” and point here to the US as if it had any equivalency to a Saudi Arabia or Iran with religious police. We are a country that was founded on the backs of Puritan Christians and it was they who gave us the foundation for creating this free society and no amount of trying to wash it away will make it otherwise. It is wise to remember that, without this foundation, the United States would never have existed. Without this foundation, we’d either be an anarchic country constantly in revolution, a country controlled by a tyrant or a bunch of little colonies owned by many different countries without a constitution that stated specifically, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” recognizing that these rights came from something more powerful than the silly and often greedy desires of men.

So, to my fellow Christians, stop huddling in dark corners and fearing to speak about politics without first denouncing your Christianity. We have every right, just as a person of Jewish faith or Muslim or Buddhist or Atheist to talk about politics, to put forth ideas about how to govern our “good society” and improve it. Using values based on our religion and up bringing to create these ideas is not wrong nor without precedent.

To all those who are worried about “those fundamental Christians bent on a Theocracy”; they don’t exist. They are the bogeyman created to scare you away from examining the idea that “values” might be important and those who are screaming “fundamentalists” and “theocrats” might not actually share your values and that some of their policies don’t jive with your sense of morality. These words are meant to frighten you into believing if you step one little toe over the line of “values” you are in danger of losing your freedom.

You can be both a person of faith and a person who values freedom. A person that has values based on his faith that guide his political idealism without fearing that the ill winds of a theocratic state follow your every decision.

Stop hiding in your cave. Stop denouncing your Christian brothers and sisters.

Stop looking for the bogeyman. He’s just a ploy to take your mind off the real problems like looming social security insolvency or real terrorists and tyrants that wouldn’t blink an eye at your Christianity before really taking away your freedom.

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" --Thomas
Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.

"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.

"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have
no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

"I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Augustus B. Woodward, 1824.

"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806.

"It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Findley. 1801.

"Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

See also, The Extreme Christian Right: The Rottweiler