Sunday, March 27, 2022

These Days a Christian Republican is an Oxymoron

Defintion of Oxymoron - where contradictory terms appear in conjunction

Definition of Christian - a person who follows the teachings of Jesus.

The history of Christianity (like many religions) is conflict between two basic approaches to God.

1.  Those who think how we should live is dictated by God, and they know what that way of living is and are therefore authorized by God to enforce their belief.

2.  Those who think each person should find God, and be tolerant of the path other people chose in their life.

The first notion of God is represented in Leviticus in the Bible's Old Testament.  No reported words of Jesus support this first approach to God, and Jesus's Sermon on the Mount was an explicit rejection of this first notion of God.  Jesus was ultimately crucified because those who espouse this first view of God believed he was comitting heresy in rejecting their authority to dictate God's law.  Virtually every word reported to have been spoken by Jesus fits comfortably in the second view, that we must find God as individuals and our duty is to be tolerant, compassionate and kind towards others.

Which view is consistent with Republican party ideology?

Since the 1980's an alliance between many Christians and the Republican party has produced Republican policy dominance.  When one looks back on what Republican's have done with their power over the last 40 years it is apparent all they ultimately care about is tax cuts for the very rich.   Every single time the Republicans controlled Congress and the Presidency, they cut taxes on the rich.  To get elected they also have vilified gays, immigrants, people fearful of an unwanted pregnancy and once their tax cuts were in place made efforts to create laws to impact those folks.   But only after the rich political donors have been mollified.  

What did Jesus think of taking care of rich folks?   In Matthew 19:24 he is quoted as saying "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!"  He saw fundemental contradictions between the behaviors that make one rich and the values he promoted.  

What did Jesus think of the powerful being the only conduit to God?  The idea of using the power of the state to vilify or make illegal individual behaviors that have no impact of their fellow citizens is simply rehashing the notions in Leviticus that Jesus's rejected.

A compassionate Christian would value affordable and compassionate healthcare that is available to all.  But Republican's for 100 years have believed the best healthcare comes from folks seeking maximum profit, and if you can't afford it you don't deserve it.  As a result the US, the economic leader of the world, spends twice as much per person on healthcare, with statistically mediocre results - people in some dirt poor dictatorships have lower infant mortality rates and live longer.  When President Obama finally created a universal health care system, it was only after compromises that weakened its effectiveness, and it was then used to villify "Obamacare".  It became a talking point as they sought (successfully) to regain control of goverment.  They were successful and (of course) Donald Trump immediately cut taxes on the wealthy.

A compassionate Republican would want a tax law that produced a country that lifted everybody up.  We had that law from WW II until the early 1980's, we paid down the debt from World War II even as our economy grew consistently (an average of near 3% per year) and wealth was spread broadly across society.  But when Ronald Reagan bought into an Ivory tower notion that cutting taxes on the wealthiest would build a better economy the countries fortunes reversed course.  Tax cuts became the centerpiece of the Republican exercise of political power.  

In the early 1980's when Ronald Reagan started cutting taxes the National debt was at about 30% of GDP, down from a high of 116% of GDP at the end of World War II.  The National debt has gone up every year since and now is about 140% of GDP, by far the highest is has been in our countries history.   At the same time the super rich have attained unprecendented levels of wealth even as the numbers of people living an the margins of society, or destitute, grows each day.

Political activism has turned Conservative christians into the reincarnation of the Temple leaders who implored the Romans to crucify Jesus for challenging the Temple's right to dictate how people behave, and our country has been financially and morally weakened by their activities.