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Growing up, and through college, I was fairly conservative. Post-college I voraciously read books that sent me toward the liberal end of the theological spectrum. But as I began to move further and further left theologically, my conservative/traditional political viewpoints began to stand in the way. Since I believe that my theology should inform the rest of my life, I began to re-evaluate my political views. I began to form new political views in light of my newly found theological beliefs. What I learned, however, was that while my former answers didn’t work, neither did the new ones that were forming. 

So I began to think about the nature of freedom, human rights, and cosmic justice. Only then did I begin to understand the role of government versus the role of people. I soaked in every book I could about liberty, and it resonated with me completely. I felt liberated from my dilemma (no pun intended). I began to realize that, when dealing with the masses, there is no simple, efficient, and complete way to “make society work.” 

To put it simply, there are two options: freedom and control. If we are not free, we are forced to do things we do not initially wish to do. Only a modicum of government is necessary to protect the individual liberties of each member of society. For example, murder, rape, theft, and fraud are all protected against by the government because they are all an infringement upon our right not to have our lives, freedom, or property taken away. 

Sounds pretty liberal, right? But this is very different from the so-called “progressive liberalism” that has hijacked the Democratic party. In the name of progress, they believe that central planning can solve systemic injustice. Progress is defined by giving out so-called “rights” because some people have them and others do not, and they don’t like that. They believe that more government (read: more control over our lives) is necessary to protect the people from themselves. Contrary to this belief, however, is the notion that government cannot create equality. Government cannot provide equity. And it cannot take proper care of everyone. The best thing government can do for progress is protect our liberties. 

Liberals today do not value liberty; even worse, many of them disdain those who believe that “we the people” know best how to run our lives. They mock those of us who believe that we should be permitted to protect our families, eat what we want, and send our children to the school of our choosing. Sure, they claim to be “pro choice,” but only on the issues for which they want to permit freedom. Their platform is, “We know better. We are the ones who can look out for you. Trust us to provide for you the entitlements we think you deserve. We’ll punish the people who do things we don’t like and give you their wealth.” Apparently it doesn’t occur to them that this is incredibly demeaning and downright rude. It doesn’t strike them as hypocritical to defend a woman’s right to deny life to her unborn human (which violates the rights of that human), yet deny me my right to protect my family in my own home by bearing arms. It doesn’t occur to them that forcing some children to go to an underfunded school is denying those children the freedom to obtain the education of their parents’ choice. 

The bottom line is that no matter how well-intentioned the central planning, and no matter how much is promised by professional politicians, the government can never and will never create the perfect society. History has proven that when massive central planning has been attempted, it has failed miserably. History has proven only this: where freedom erodes, the country will continue to decline. Where freedom reigns, that nation prospers.

About 18 months ago, when Barack Obama was running as a candidate of change and hope because Washington was broken, I was very interested in finding out if he would be the first Democrat I could truly stand behind. He wanted to stand against special interest groups. He was young, fresh, and wasn’t part of the Washington establishment. And he had charisma. I was excited to learn more. But it turned out that the more we knew about him, the more we realized that he’s no different from every left-wing Democrat, with the same Marxist platform and socialist leanings. While he may be talking a lot about change, he’s not much different from the typical Washington politician. 

And while John McCain is more of a “maverick” than Obama (something Obama sort of promised that he was), I’ve just never been excited about McCain.  

For months I’ve thought, “Sarah Palin would be a great choice, but she’d never be picked,” so the instant I saw her face on the Drudge Report just after she was announced, I was completely ecstatic. John McCain’s decision, in this particular case, made a ton of sense to me almost immediately. 

Obama promised us he would be different. Palin is a cut-the-crap kind of woman who took on her own party, even running against an incumbent governor of her own party. Obama promises to protect life, but she has literally protected the life of her youngest son, born with Down Syndrome, and doesn’t waver on the issue. She’s cut wasteful spending and started a savings account for the state of Alaska. She’s a woman, but she’s not a feminist. She’s not the traditional, I’ve-spent-my-life-wanting-to-be-in-power politician. She has a strong energy policy because she lives in a resource-rich state. She’s young, vivacious, and she’s probably the closest thing to what our founding fathers wanted out of democracy—a citizen legislator. 

And my favorite part about her is that on her first day in office as governor, she sold the private jet on eBay. Now that’s a hot move!

Links about Sarah Palin:

• TimesOnline
• Wikipedia

Click here to read Ron Paul on freedom. I highly recommend it.

There’s a reason Al Gore is getting frustrated with the fact that his global warming message is not being well-received by the populace: despite all the fancy presentations, people aren’t willing to believe in something that feels more like a 1970s Pre-Trib Rapture scare film than it does a compelling encouragement to be better stewards our environment. 

The facts speak for themselves. In reality, the earth has warmed one degree in the past 100 years, and the warmest on record was 1997, over a decade ago (so “warming” is not occurring presently). The so-called “scientific consensus,” that is, the U.N.’s own IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report, has scientific articles that are noncommittal at best, but are largely not the consensus as Gore would have us believe. We also know (after Gore released his presentation) that CO2 emissions are always preceded by temperature increases, not the other way around (which would be like saying lung cancer causes smoking). Left out in most explanations of the problem is the fact that solar energy increases align more accurately with the Earth’s global temperature increases, as well as the fact that Mars and some moons on Jupiter are also experiencing global warming. More grossly exaggerated are the computer model scenarios, which have recently been debunked by the same scientists who created them. Even the IPCC data only estimates sea level rises to be a few inches, not twenty feet, as Gore predicts. 

Gore hasn’t fooled the British. Not only have the court systems in England mandated that any presentation in public schools of An Inconvenient Truth be counterpointed with an opposing viewpoint, recent polling says that 70% of British believe that the warnings about climate change are simply propaganda for higher taxes. 

So what does this mean for Christians? Tony Campolo, in Adventures in Missing the Point, says that Christians should be leading the way in “creation care.” I think he is absolutely correct because the narrative of Christianity has (in my estimation) the best basis for creation care compared to every other narrative, especially Darwinian evolution. Unfortunately, however, many of our Christian leaders are selling out to the socialist agenda. While declaring it our responsibility and mandate to take care of the environment, credence is given to the far left global warming propaganda. As I was reading Jim Wallis’ The Great Awakening, I was eager to read about his creation care theology and why we as Christians should be taking better care of the environment. Because Wallis has typically been pretty fair to two sides that disagree, and tends to come to a “middle ground,” I was greatly disappointed that he succumbed to the same tactics used by Al Gore et al: claim it as undeniable truth, call any dissenters “out of touch,” and insist that the issue is “settled.” Brian McLaren does a much better job at encouraging creation care: he merely cites the passion with which Al Gore preaches his message, and hopes that we as Christians would have the same fervor. 

To be rather honest, I’m sick and tired of Christians standing alongside far left political leaders who have nothing to offer except socialist agendas dubbed as “solutions.” Why aren’t they standing up as Christian leaders proposing Christian solutions to a problem that Christians should be tackling? Why aren’t they standing up against non-Christian tactics and proclaiming the real reason to be engaged in creation care? Instead, they have partnered with those who have used fear tactics and name-calling to silence opposing visions, and smear them as “anti-environment.” 

If there’s any question about my role as a citizen of the world, a child of God, and a thinking (not brainwashed) human being, let me spell it out: God created the world for us to “tend and keep,” not rape (sorry, Ann Coulter!). God has endowed us with the skills and talent to take better care of the environment, and it’s about time we do a much better job. As human beings (and especially as Christians), we should be championing the way to better and more eco-friendly ways of living. We should be “evangelizing” by our witness and our conversations that this is part of our lives as followers of Jesus. Because we believe the world was created by God, we believe we are to take better care of it than we have. 

It’s pretty simple, really.

As it is today, I feel very little confidence in either Barack Obama or John McCain to do a good job as our next president. Whether they are right or wrong about an issue isn’t the point of this entry. Presently I want to point out that, in a democracy, we are to be voting for the person we believe would fulfill the role of President the way we would like them to. But what happens when we find no confidence in either candidate to do the job? Traditionally, we simply vote for a choice between two candidates, hoping that the things we dislike about them won’t play too big a part in what they will do in their role. 

That’s not how I want to spend my vote. I’m pretty tired of hearing about elections being about choosing between “the lesser of two evils,” which is an insult to each candidate. Somehow we continue to believe that we only have two choices because two candidates are getting all of the attention. Many of my friends on both sides of the political aisle have exclaimed that it’s too bad we only have two choices, and that we should have more parties in our country like there are in other countries. What I find ironic is that we fail to realize that we only have two choices because that’s all we continue to vote for. When a third candidate enters the race, we simply declare a vote for them a wasted vote, or we compromise our principles for a candidate who “isn’t as bad as the other guy.” Because we believe the third candidate seemingly doesn’t have a chance, voting for him or her is a waste of time. It’s just about as fallacious as the “one vote won’t matter” argument. 

The theory goes that if I vote for a third party candidate, or write somebody in, I’m voting for Obama. It goes without question that it isn’t a vote for McCain, but why not? Because the person stating so favors McCain, and assumes that’s a vote I would normally give to McCain. So when I fail to vote for McCain, I’m giving a vote for Obama. On the flip side, an Obama supporter might say my third party vote is a vote for John McCain. The reality is, it’s a vote against Obama and McCain, and a vote for the third party candidate. 

To not vote for somebody because they seemingly can’t win is simply perpetuating the so-called “problem of two choices.” So we choose between one party and the other party, and next election season, that’s all we have to choose from again. Then we again choose only those two candidates, and complain in the meantime about only having two choices. And so it becomes an endless cycle of choosing from the “top two” and then complaining there are only two to choose from. No wonder we feel “stuck” with only two parties! 

I do not believe that John McCain or Barack Obama will do everything in their power to promote freedom from the tyranny of controls. From what both of them are saying, government needs to play a larger role, spend more money on so-called crises, and fix all our problems or make them manageable. The truth is, our government is out of control with spending, borrowing, and wasting the people’s money. Barack Obama wants the government in more of our lives than ever before, with an unprecedented tax burden. All of his solutions involve bigger government, which means fewer freedoms. John McCain is only for small government unless he really thinks his way of getting the government into it is a bad thing. Both are bad for our future. 

I’ve agonized over this election. I’ve shed tears for our country’s future. But if we believe neither candidate can do the job, then we must vote for somebody for whom we believe can do the job (or we can simply not vote). It’s not a “wasted vote” because they might not win. It’s only a wasted vote when a vote is cast in spite of the voter not believing that candidate is the right person for the job.