When I place some of my posts that deal directly with political debate in the “Democracy” category, there is always a profound crossover or overlapping to “PeaceChurch” and other of my blog categories. Bust in “categorizing”, I also run the risk of associating criticism of Bush with Democracy (even though I feel that true Democratic ideals have been disdainfully shoved aside in the priorities of the Bush administration), or of equating or placing on an even plane, the categories of Democracy and the Kingdom of God. I do not hold, especially while reading A People’s History of the United States, that the idea of “Democracy” as proclaimed and practiced by the Democratic Party, or even those ideals to which either party, to varying degrees pays lip service without policy implementation, is synonomus with justice or the Kingdom of God. I prefer to elevate talk of “Democracy” as MLK did, always aware that what he sought, as well as that which those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” also seek, is something beyond what this category can encompass. The fact that , as Zinn chronicles, many if not most of the most avid “Democrats” of history have still been, at the most basic level, maintainers of the status quo; yea, even benefactors from it and products of it in their upbringing, does not for me dispel the notion that the “principles” are still lofty, and can be “enhanced” and “appropriated” by the Church to serve as a rhetorical tool to point to the values of the Kingdom of God over and gainst those of the power structures of this world. It is a given that these very powers are often pulled in both directions, but finally convinced that they represent these principles at their core.

Violence and Money (economic power) are the twin demonic influences which pull various attempts to represent democracy or justice away from purity under those ideals, and toward self-interest, and maintainence of one’s own advantages (or to seek more). To fail to recognize this historic and cosmic battle for the soul is to fall prey to a variation on the old adage: “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”