Political questions from the middle

Tummi was the only one left after the great Gummi schism...

I received the following email forward from a dear friend of mine who is a lifelong Democrat and sent it to a number of people after an election where the Left did quite well at the polls.  My response is an attempt to raise a few key questions from those of us who are not aligned with either the Right or the Left.  Here is the original text of the email:

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you. Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting agood example for the rest of the world.

 12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

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Here is my response...

A Follow-up from a Biblical Non-Partisan

To my Liberal Brothers and Sisters,

I received your letter and want to thank you for your promises and your grace to our friends on the Right.  Congratulations on your newfound influence; I hope you do an excellent job in governing wisely and according to our Lord's desire as expressed in Romans 13:1-7.  I found myself in agreement with much of what you had to say and am encouraged by many of these promises. 

However, I do have questions about a few of them that I would like to ask in return:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic"...

While we agree that it is absolutely wrong to be labeled unpatriotic because of disagreement, will other labels likewise be abandoned when describing those with whom you disagree?  Such as "Fanatic", "Fundamentalist", "Close-minded", or "hate-monger"?  This would certainly cut through much unnecessary rhetorical fodder between you and those you oppose, would it not?

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is...

Love expressed in Marriage is indeed a wonderful gift! 

But I would like to know if you will be willing to uphold this pledge for a fellow American who wishes to express his or her love in marriage to a sibling or close member of the family? 

Also, you would surely agree that if love is good, then more love is better, correct?  Thus, you will be allowing those Americans who overflow with love and cannot confine it to one spouse to find other like-minded lovers and enter into marriage with them as well, correct?  This is the open-minded and consistent position, don't you think?

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live...

Thank you for your dedication to our children--that is a subject that we will return to shortly.

But what if you do deem a threat dangerous enough to act and only after having acted come to find out that the leader of the country issuing the threat (say, for over a decade) was in fact bluffing--to the point that even many within the country's leadership believed otherwise?  Will you allow yourselves to be called "liars"?

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill...And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures...

We Biblical Non-Partisans too long for everyone's health needs to be taken care of and we applaud you for this desire!

However, do our desires to live healthier lives of a purer and higher quality give us the right to perform medical experiments on embryonic human beings?  If so, should this right not also apply to fetal human beings?  And if to fetal human beings, why not condemned human beings on death row?  Surely human beings who are not valued by society--such as pedophiles and those in vegetative states--should be utilized in our efforts to keep the rest of us healthy, should they not?

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

This is quite a newfound sense of freedom!  Thank you so much! 

Surely this means that Americans may engage in prostitution in the privacy of their own bedrooms, correct?  Also, if consenting adults want to gather in their bedroom and use recreational drugs such as LSD or Heroine, will that be allowed as well?  And if two consenting individuals want to express their affection for one another, will it matter then if one of them is a teenager and one a legal adult?  Again, we stand ready to applaud your consistency in this matter.

Will you also be giving ethical, philosophical, biological, and theological justification for overturning the near-universal concept that what is developing within the womb of a mother is a human being in actuality, not merely potentiality?  Will you demonstrate why a child that is only inches outside of the birth canal in the doctor's hands is a person whereas a child who has not fully emerged from the birth canal is a non-person and therefore able to be terminated via Dialation and Extraction (commonly known as "partial birth" termination)?

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies,"...

This is good to hear.  Thank you for honoring all faiths. 

Will you therefore actively seek to promote other radical religious beliefs such as "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you," "I knit you together in your mother's womb," "Speak up for the rights of those who cannot speak" and "in the Image of God He created them"?

Will you also provide a clear line of demarcation between these "radical" religious beliefs you are going to protect and the ones that warrant the label of "fanatic" upon those who hold them?  It's a fuzzy line, but we can be confident that through secular wisdom you will be able to provide such guidelines and end such pesky things as objective morality and non-relativistic religion, right?

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people...

We Biblical non-Partisans are certainly glad to hear this!  Our friends on the Right have been playing the hypocrite far too long! 

But by "corrupt", are we to assume that you are referring strictly to matters of finances and criminal activities?  Or will you be consistent and apply such honorable standards toward those who's corruption lies in the realm of ethics and morality as well--those who, for instance, engage in adultery?  If so, then we will stand with you gladly in holding high the standards for those who serve in public office--realizing that what one does in private affects who one is in public.

We thank you for your promises to our Conservative friends and we Non-Partisans are anxious to see you exercise your newfound power with justice and responsibility to all...regardless of whether or not they are breathing the fresh air of the middle America, the dry wind of the country they are stationed in, the stale air of their prison cell or the amniotic fluid in their mother's womb.  We long for such a Democratic Republic where EVERYONE is cared for. 

Sincerely,

Those in the middle