Christ, for America in 2012.
Watching the vicious attacks that seem to be par for the course in US presidential elections, it got me wondering: Is there any candidate who could unite the great majority of Americans? Given that the great majority regard themselves as Christians, what about Christ himself? Obviously, I’m not talking the son of God, but a figure with the modern narrative and background of Christ in a modern context. How’d he do?
Christ, for America in 2012.
The first question would be, what party would he seek the nomination with? This isn’t as clear as you would think. It’s true, he’d probably be a social conservative and big believer in the Judeo-Christian destiny of the United States. Therefore, he’d have a readymade constituency in the Republican party.
On top of that, he comes from a small family business background, both he and his father being carpenters and contractors, again something putting him into GOP orbit.
But listen to him talk about the rich, and the acquisition of wealth, and he sounds positively socialist, declaring wealth a burden in a way that makes Michael Moore sound like Steve Forbes. Nor is he opposed to welfare or helping the poor. It’s hard to imagine him voting to cut unemployment benefit. What about defence, and all this stuff about turning the cheek and the meek? That’s not going to cut the mustard in the GOP either.
The great irony is that Jesus Christ would be too economically liberal for the GOP, and too socially conservative for the Democrats. Which must say something about America today, although I have no idea what it is.
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I read everything you write with the sharp eye of a meddling post-menopausal Aunt, Jason.
As to your question, my comment might be a hint to you that a comparison of that type isn’t just irrelevant by indecently irreverent to a domestically held tenet of all of those awful people you see walking down the street all day.
Maybe I’m just a little too much of a malaka to have detected the sarcasm in your posting, and that you see it the way I do: that assigning a party affiliation, or, say, a bowling handicap to Jesus Christ is silly.
My thought is that they only reason anyone tries to do it is driven by attention-seeking behavior normally practiced by those of an age that are afflicted with acne. If their notion is that all notions of authority are all the same, then sure, political figures are no different that the son of god I guess. Like. Whatever.
As to centrism, or whatever eccentricities pivot to each side of it, that’s just great. I tend to ignore the label and monitor the actual word, much of which from your sharp, mongoose-like cunning and wit is laudible. Except, maybe for thinking that there could be “something new” concerning the greatest figure in western civilization whose been dead, twice over, nearly 2000 years ago.
If you want to be literal, his eligability is in question. He wasn’t born on US territory, and wasn’t old enough at his time of death. This rules out a posthumous President Jesus the Christ, and avoids the kerfuffle of a dubious birth certificate or lack of college transcripts.
And since you seem so keen to vote in 2012 in the US yourself, I guess you’d be curious why someone like me would back Herman Cain. He’s got a lot of common sense, has no baggage, understands that small businesses are the cornerstone of the economy that we all live from, and knows what is really going on at the macro level too. He’s self-made in so many ways, and has a background in engineering and mathematics, not the vile, dark art of manipulating public images, “political science” or anything connected with the ‘takers’ who have been living off the ‘makers’ as postmodernist manipulators parading as academics.
Oh, I also support him because his balls clank. The smears and tricks the left uses just don’t effect him. He takes on hecklers planted in his speeches with enthusiasm. He’s also the genuine, Ike-like Conservative.
He is a citizen of middle America. He’s not a phony like Barack Obama, who as a candidate had varied networks with hundreds of volunteering academics and bien pensent clods to guide his oevre on every issue from international affairs to his accent that changes for every occasion.
You know Joe, I’m beginning to wonder whether you actually read anything I write, or do you actually just read what you want you think that I, as a centrist, should be saying and respond accordingly. I mean, I did say he’d be a social conservative. So why would he support Planned Parenthood? Tell me this, though. Of all the candidates in the current field, which one do you believe has values closest to Jesus?
He’d be oppressed in Palestine and a subject of Israel. So nothing new there, then.
You also realise that he was a Jew and a subject of the king of Israel, and not a Phillistine, from whom the name Palestine is based on. In Arabic and Aramaic (Syriac) Filistinieh refers to the modern Palestinians as well as the Philistines mentioned in the new and old testaments.
This is torturously used today in the context of trying to get the muslim arabs to accept christianity by trying to say that Jesus Christ was a Palestinian. He was not.
In fact if he was living today as a Palestinian, he would be part of an abused minority.
You’re confusing human generosity, the kind of thing you have to give of yourself for with Government Cheese. Would Jesus want government to fund Planned Parenthood ? Not likely for simple reasons that a Jew of that age probably would have though little of abortion and reasoned it to be a form of infantacide.
The flaw in your gin-up is no different that the ancient, stale, worn out saw that is supposed to shock mommy and daddy, that “Jesus was a Communist”, it is that of the moral component. While finding a few phrases here and there bandied about in the modern age that sound like biblical script, Jesus would not, likely, want government to fund abortion for the sake of abortion.
In fact, the biblical view of Tax Collectors could just as easily be used to say that Christ would prefer small government where civil society actively took care of those in need and who have fallen on hard times.
So that logical contortion, or torture of the written word is no different that any other one, typically tossed around by adolescents and other amateurs practicing recreational ideology: they are pointless, silly, and if you’re like me, are an abuse of catecistic practice and decontextualization of the bible for the sake of convenience.
It’s a sort of ideological drive-by shooting, and an attempt to employ others’ faith as a way to either throw mud in their eye, or get them to support something they otherwise wouldn’t logically arrive at on their own. It’s cheap and sad.
Jesus was a radical and a very disruptive figure- it is for those reasons he was put to death in his own time. He would be unlikely to be elected in any society that has ever existed.
See more here http://www.veritasbooksonline.com/jesus-social-revolutionary.html