...FROM ANY KIND OF writing, hopefully the better to deal with an intensifying crisis of conscience that has ultimately to do with my political identity. The clash is between my compelling recognition of the need to maintain and even expand the social-safety net (the one point on which the Left is absolutely correct), and my equally compelling recognition of the need to defend America against Islam's 1400-year ambition to impose a global caliphate (the one point on which I am in total agreement with both the Lieberman wing of the Democratic Party and the clash-of-civilization Conservatives). But I damn sure can't abide the Left's moral relativity (aka moral imbecility), and I especially can't accept the Left's opposition to the First, Second and Fourth amendments β the politically "correct" efforts to impose thought control, disarm the population and erode the judicial presumption of innocence. Nor can I countenance the Right's equally determined war on the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments, and I am even more opposed to the Right's looming attempt to re-impose the two-class, plebeian -or-plutocrat Herbert Hoover economy from which Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued us all 70 years ago. Bottom line, I guess all these political conflicts make me politically homeless. And maybe I should just accept that fact β perhaps even revel in it β though it's surely not very comfortable living here under this ideological bridge. Itβs often miserably lonely too. Stay tuned...
Posted by Loren at December 16, 2004 05:54 PMI like that phrase: Ideological Bridge.
I too am becoming restless with some of the more strident voices on the right (the bellowing about Christmas over Happy Holidays is getting just a bit too bellicose for me...although I'm also impatient with the "tolerant, compassionate" left's inability to understand why Christians might want their holiday to be acknowledged, since they are happy enough to acknowledge Hannukah and Kwanzaa, two holidays that are meaningful but not really on the same page as the Incarnation. Whatever.
All I can say, Wolf, is that when I reach the point where I'm disgusted by too much of what is going on. When all of the choices seem unsatisfactory, I do what I should have been doing all along: I look at Jesus, only, and remember that He, too, lived in a complicated and volatile age. That doesn't solve much. But it brings interior peace, and sometimes, when the interior quiets down, along comes Wisdom, too. :-)
Posted by: TheAnchoress at December 21, 2004 03:20 PMExcuse the deplorable punctuation in the above, please. I am very tired and rushed, and perhaps carrying on about interior silence because I am so desperately in need of some. My schedule this CHristmas is starting to remind me of a Disney Vacation...it is leaving me in deep need of spiritual refreshment.
Posted by: TheAnchoress at December 21, 2004 03:22 PM