my answer to SPT...I post something real! (536 hits)
Category: NoneRating: -0.29 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by checkyourmail (View user info) at 2004-07-08 20:24:36 EDT
:: some things in this may be old news, but I feel like posting this fairly old essay of mine here anyway ::
When is it that things get so bad that it doesn't work anymore just to be an optimist?
When all in the same week things get unspeakably bad in Iraq—and then get even worse. When the president of Chechnya is murdered, and just a few days later the head of the Iraqi Governing Council is also killed in a suicide car blast in Baghdad. When gay marriage is not just predicted but finally legalized and practiced in Massachusetts. When the average price of a gallon of gas tops $2.00, and $3.00 prices are seriously predicted for the end of the summer. When the mainstream media wear their biases blatantly on their sleeves. When Ted Kennedy pointedly insults his own countrymen, and nobody seems to care.
And perhaps especially when the pollsters begin to say that a growing majority of Americans don't see much point anymore in resisting or opposing all this.
I'm not talking just about the polls that now show George W. Bush slipping behind John Kerry in the presidential race later this year. If the election goes that way, the consequences for our country and our culture will be profound enough. I am talking instead about the larger slippage in our national conscience—a slippage that makes even a presidential election seem like a minor issue.
Francis Schaeffer used to refer to this mindset as a fixation with "personal peace and affluence." He said it had already become the dry rot not just of our culture in general, but of evangelicals as well. And he said it would be the ruination of us as a people before its work was finished.
Evidence of such a mindset creeps in from every side. On the issue of abortion, pro-life organizations ranging from sidewalk protest groups to crisis pregnancy centers say they have to exert twice the effort these days to get half the response they used to. On the issue of homosexual marriage—almost unthinkable just a year ago—most evangelicals say they're opposed, but have profoundly disappointed conservative political activists by remaining largely silent on the issue. "The phones in Washington just aren't ringing," says Matt Daniels, author of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would limit marriage to a union of one man and one woman.
And when I noted in another essay four weeks ago that evangelical young people are just as likely to download music illegally from the Internet as non-Christians are, I had a bigger response than to any column I've written this year. Disappointingly, more people wrote to defend such actions than to agree with me about the ethical deficiencies involved.
All of which is pretty depressing. It's especially hard in a presidential election year not to think of all those issues primarily in terms of their impact on the electoral college map. I suggest that however important that may be—and it is—what's far more important is how such a mindset will play out for the next generation. It's not just the choice between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry in 2004. Far more critical is the old adage that in any political setting, people tend to get the leaders they deserve.
User Reviews
Submitted by doctorj24 (user info) at 2005-06-30 18:32:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
have a +2
Submitted by Slovin (user info) at 2005-04-28 17:04:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:51:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
read it. it was even worse.
Take the hint and leave, I've never seen anyone get such a negative reaction such as you have.
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:45:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by Yams (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:37:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
7|2v |)47. That is to say, "Tru dat." You put thought into it, and it wasn't overly angry.
Submitted by checkyourmail (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:36:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
hey shitfuck...read it before you rate it jackass...and who says I'm a Christian? All I'm pointing out is that the traditional "morals" are slipping at a rapid rate.
Submitted by AndraSidan (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:31:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
hmm...at least you put some thought into it. And to all you haters, it seems to me that checkyourmail is knocking "evangelicals" more than he is defending them...the digust at the moral slippage seems to be directed at Christians to me. I personally think it is well placed.
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:29:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
You post something real all right...
real shitty.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:28:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Just so you know, I didn't read a single word of this shit post, I saw your fucking name and came here to shove my cock down your bible reciting throat.
Die.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:27:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
You are one fucking pathetic cunt, do you know that?
A perfect representation of a christian. A dumb cunt.
Die.
Submitted by I_Have_a_Kristen_Fetish (user info) at 2004-07-08 20:26:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment