The whole scenario stinks of the trappings of “Empire”. Find a “national faith” that isn’t too speciifc, talk about “Jesus of the heart” and you can, in the case of many, easily ignore and dispose of and denigrate the Jesus of the masses, the Jesus of justice, the Jesus who told us to love our enemies. You can wrap all of the justifications up in the flag festooned with a cross, and talk about how we’re making the world a more godly place in the end, but you’re simply not allowing the WHOLE Jesus to change your heart. You’re simply using Jesus to put a divine blessing on what you already belive, and what you really want.

Now one can either a Democrat or a republican, and do either; follow the “Jesus of the Heart” (that is, as the “heart” is portrayed by those who speak of Jesus and the heart in individualistic and “inner” terms, and speak little if at all about the ways and places in which the Inward and Outard Journey intersect; and how NEITHER the Inward NOR the Outward are healthy without the other.

Frankly, I tire of the Democrats reciting the mantra “a Womans’s Right to Choose”, since that clearly refers to abortion, and seems to suggest that there is no responsibility for that unborn, potential life that they have had a hand in creating. No less a responsibility for the woman as for the man. But to say “it’s her choice” seems to cloud the more uncomfortable details about the value of life (or even a “potential life”, which as a precursor and prerequisite to unquestioned life, has its own special level of sacred-ness.) I do not agree with the “pro-lifers”, because they are hypocrites, in that they define life only in terms of abortion issues, and ignore the “choice” the US and other war-making countries in carrying out campaigns that they KNOW will cost the lives of innocent people, regardless of age. But I absolutely shudder at the phrase ” a woman’s right to choose” because it seems to imply that the Choice is more important than the life. I am not a fundamentalist on this. I simply feel that both sides oversimplify the issues. So where does that place me on the political spectrum?