WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRAT AM I?
Fri. September 2nd, 2022
One of the main recreations of
Americans in our time is stereotyping the opposite political party. In the hope of inspiring other moderate
people in both political parties to contribute to shrinking the power which
these stereotypes have over us, I decided to give any readers I might have a
picture of what kind of Democrat I am.
I hope that you will conclude that I am what you might call a "Chinese menu" Democrat -- a Democrat who chooses some values from column A, and other values from column B.
Summary of what follows:
Part One
1. I'm a Christian Democrat.
2. I'm a semi-Darwinist.
3. The Bible is my holy book, but I do not
believe in its inerrancy.
4. For me as an American, my proof text in
the Bible for belonging to the Democratic party is Isaiah 58:6 . . . [to] "set free those who are
oppressed, tearing off every yoke."
Part Two
5. I believe in taxation.
6. I do not believe in political correctness.
7. I respect the United States Constitution.
8. I believe that the Electoral College
should be respected by the people, until such time as it may be repealed by a
duly authorized amendment to the Constitution.
9. I believe that the farmer is the man.
10. I support gun control.
11. I believe that the legal term
"qualified immunity," used to describe the right of police officers
not to be prosecuted for what they do while on duty, means "limited
immunity."
12. I am opposed to revolutions.
13. I oppose the legal notion that
corporations and organizations have the right of free speech.
14. I believe drastic changes need to be made
in the regulation of people and combinations of people lending money to young
people so that they can continue their education.
15. I believe education is not a right; it is
something earned.
16. I am in favor of the death penalty for
murderers.
17. I believe global warming is an impending
doom which the human race should fight against, and pass laws to avoid it.
PART ONE
1. I'm a Christian Democrat.
I go to church for a number of reasons. The most important is to hear the words and deeds of Jesus read aloud over and over. The rock and roll songwriter Ian Anderson wrote in one of his songs "He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday." Anderson was talking about God. I agree that God is not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday. The point is, I'm the kind you have to wind up on Sunday.
I'll speak for a moment to the people who were not alive when the old clocks were in use. The old clocks did something which is called "winding down," meaning they gradually quit keeping time after a certain amount of time had passed. Taking the key of the clock and inserting it in the clock and winding up the mechanism once a week prevented the clock from winding down. Seven days was a good amount of time between windings. I remember my father winding up our clock in the sitting room (living room) on Sunday evenings.
There is nothing magical about the number seven. But, it is a very wise general compromise on how many days you should have to wait between one day of setting down the tools of your trade (as much as is humanly possible), and the next day for doing the same. (Minus one, of course. With a seven-day cycle, you have to wait six days between one day of setting down the tools of your trade (as much as is humanly possible) and the next day of doing the same.) -- "As much as is humanly possible" could be interpreted various ways, but I interpret it to mean that it is useful and good not to stop watering and feeding the animals, not to stop cooking, and not to stop policing and not to stop guarding the city gates, not even one day out of seven.
The Jewish religious leaders who caused the ten commandments to be copied and recited, and generally not forgotten, intended the day of rest to be a day for citizens to worship the ruler of the universe and think about the commandments they live by. But those things are in addition to it being a day of rest. Even people who do not believe in a ruler of the universe may pause to think about the commandments or principles they live by -- the fundamental things which apply as time goes by, to paraphrase the song with words and music by Herman Hupfeld.
Incidentally, Jesus never criticized the day of rest. He repeatedly criticized the nit-picking approach which some of the Pharisees took to the day of rest, but he never criticized the day of rest itself.
There are so many other reasons I go to church, besides being reminded of the words and deeds of Jesus by hearing readings from the Gospels. One is to sit quietly and admire the stained glass windows or the other works of art in the church. Another is to praise God, which is a discipline. Another is to be reminded that there is other moving and satisfying music besides patriotic music and music about the relations between men and women. Another is to hear exhortations to righteousness from my priest and deacon -- my immediate spiritual leaders, to speak more generally. Other Christians call them pastors or preachers, but it would be a mistake to spend too much time debating over which of these terminologies is best.
Needing to hear from my immediate spiritual leaders the exhortations, which on different Sundays focus on different parts and applications of our faith and beliefs, is an important part of me being the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
Another reason I go to church is to enjoy the fellowship of kindred souls, which many Christians call fellowshipping for short.
It is fair to say that most worship services do not work very well for wiggly people. From my standpoint, wiggly people are created by God just like the rest of us. That is why God created the Shakers and the whirling dervishes. The world has made provision for wiggly people to worship and celebrate God.
My mother's favorite priest, David Yates, said that church is a spiritual filling station. I come from an intellectual family. and this saying kind of stood out as a non-intellectual saying in my family when I was growing up, but the consensus of my parents was that it was right on the money.
2. I'm a semi-Darwinist.
I believe in evolution, but I reject the notion that "survival of the fittest" is an appropriate pattern for human behavior.
I take my belief in evolution second-hand. I have not read The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or any of Darwin's other books, or the books of his fellow-scientist and co-developer of the theory of evolution, Alfred Wallace. I received my belief that evolution is a scientifically justified theory -- a current and non-superseded theory -- from the science textbooks I was given to study in school; with the support of my parents, who could not have single-handedly changed what textbooks my school adopted, but who did approve of the choice to teach evolution as a factual theory.
But survival of the fittest is not a pattern for the dealings of one human being with another. Darwin did not intend it as a moral law. He intended it as a scientific law: a statement of fact, not a statement of desirable behavior.
That puts, for me, the survival of the fittest in the same category as the dominion of people over the other animals described in Genesis chapter 1 at verse 26:
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make human beings
in our image, after our likeness, to have dominion over the fish in the sea,
the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves upon the earth."
In my Christianity, Genesis 1:26
is not a statement of what is desirable; it is a statement of fact.
The survival of the fittest is the same kind of formula. It is a statement of fact, for creatures living in a state of nature. It is not a statement of what is justifiable or desirable.
Recently I read in Wikipedia that the female Tasmanian devil gives birth to a litter of around ten babies of their species; but the female of this species has only four nipples. Again, if there is any truth at all in that, it is as a statement of fact, There is nothing desirable about it. If true, it is a disgusting fact about the world we live in. Natural science is not an invitation to cease having any beliefs about what is desirable and righteous.
For the relations between two or more human beings, the teachings of Jesus supersede the formula of the survival of the fittest. The teachings of Jesus render the survival of the fittest null and void as a statement of how human behavior should be conducted and guided. Religious people of every religion are commanded to orient their behavior toward the way things ought to be, not to the way things are. For Christians, that is the behavior laid down by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, at verse 33:
Matthew
6:33 ". . . seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness . . ."
3. The Bible is my holy book, but I do not believe in its inerrancy.
Biblical inerrancy means believing the doctrine that the Bible is one hundred percent free from error. In terms of the first two chapters of the Bible, which tell the ancient Jewish story of the creation of the world, not believing in Biblical inerrancy is a necessary condition for believing in evolution as Darwin and Wallace formulated it.
But as for me, wanting to believe in evolution is not my main reason for disbelieving in the inerrancy of the Bible. I have written at length and fierily about my main reason for disbelieving in Biblical inerrancy in my prophecy, On Healing Ancient Wrongs. (Since it has not been published, I will add that if you need to find that file on my computer after I die, it is the file called Prophecy of Francis Newton Jr in the directory called \DadGathering\.) This is my reason for disbelieving in inerrancy: I disbelieve that God commanded Joshua to kill all the men, women, and children of Jericho after Jericho's walls fell down.
The killing of the men, women, and children of Jericho is commanded in the Bible. The Bible verses in question are the Book of Joshua chapter 6, verses 17 and 20 to 21, and the supporting verses in Book of Deuteronomy (believed by many Christians to have been written before the Book of Joshua) -- Deuteronomy chapter 20, verses 16 to 18.
Christians cope with these Bible verses in various ways, but none of our ways of coping with these verses is honorable. These verses are what the Muslims call sword verses, meaning, verses which justify massacres.
One way of coping is to say that that is the way people behaved around 1000 B.C., but the message of Jesus means (among many other things) that we are no longer to behave that way.
My prophecy is that the Bible words commanding the massacre of the Jerichoans are not the words of the Lord. That means that Biblical inerrancy cannot be a correct teaching or belief. From that, it follows that how long it took the world or the universe to be created is not something that Christians need to worry about.
But I have received a supplementary vision concerning Biblical inerrancy which, to my knowledge, other liberal Christians have not studied; and I have not studied it as much as it needs to be studied. Here it is: conservative Christians believe in Biblical inerrancy because the belief in Biblical inerrancy simplifies the work of children's Sunday School teachers. Conservative Christians believe that the idea that the Bible is not inerrant is unsuitable for children's ears. In a denomination which believes in Biblical inerrancy, the task of children's Sunday School teachers is greatly simplified. They simply teach children what the adults in their denomination believe.
I agree that Biblical errancy is not a suitable doctrine to put into children's ears. But for my denomination, the Episcopal or Anglican denomination, which is in the camp of liberal Christians -- I am oversimplifying a little, but I will not go into detail -- the doctrine that the Bible contains mistakes means that the beliefs of the adults in my denomination are not in harmony with the teaching duties of children's Sunday School teachers.
In other words, there is a tension between what adult Episcopalians believe and what Episcopalians like me consider suitable for children to be taught. For me, this is in line with my belief that it is not appropriate to teach children about the Holocaust of the Jews. That teaching should be reserved for the teenagers. What is taught to children should be things that they may take for granted when they grow up. But no one should take for granted the Holocaust of the Jews. The Holocaust should be an object of fear and loathing for every future generation. The way to make that so, is to postpone the teaching of it until the children have become teenagers.
The teaching of children's Sunday School in the liberal denominations like mine seems like a difficult problem to me. But I do not have any more light to shed on it.
4. For me as an American, my proof text in the Bible for belonging to the Democratic party is in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 58, at verse 6:
Isaiah 58:6
. . . is not this the fast that I require, to loose the fetters of
injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke, and set free those who are
oppressed, tearing off every yoke?
In this Bible verse, God is speaking. That is, the prophet writes down the words God spoke to him: because this verse falls under the heading of Isaiah chapter 56, at the first verse: "These are the words of the LORD."
For Christian Democrats, Isaiah 58:6 is the proof text for supporting liberation movements, after one is convinced that any particular liberation movement is not a sham.
In my lifetime, I have witnessed many liberation movements. I have welcomed them. All liberation movements involve inconvenience. But for the long run, the work of people who believe in tearing off every yoke is to prune away the inconveniences so that the liberation will stand by itself, without laying undue burdens on people already free; without assumptions which do not follow from the premises; and specifically without assuming that the group of people whose yokes are being torn off are correct in every detail about what needs to be changed.
This concludes the religious portion of What Kind of Democrat Am I? I put the religious portion first, because for me, with my beliefs, the religious portion orients and stabilizes the rest.
PART TWO
5. I believe in taxation.
It is appropriate for nations to tax their citizens. Adult citizens owe financial support to their country, just as young adult citizens owe military duty to their country.
The purpose of taxation is to make the nation strong. The doctrine that the least possible taxation should be imposed does not make the country strong; it weakens the country.
Taxation in support of institutions that administer justice fairly and honestly makes the nation stronger. Taxation that supports the fair administration of justice creates citizens who are willing to fight for their country. Taxation which is invested for the public good in multiple projects to address multiple needs and inequities of our society is an investment to make it unnecessary for our nation to hire mercenary soldiers. Mercenary soldiers are undesirable, and they make our country stink in the nostrils of foreign countries, which is also undesirable.
6. I do not believe in political correctness.
Correcting other people's political correctness is no more virtuous than correcting other people's grammar. Huckleberry Finn, the main character of Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, calls the black man Jim a nigger, but Huckleberry Finn has a conscience. The fact that Huck's conscience works -- it does what a person's conscience is supposed to do -- is more important than Huck's vocabulary.
Investigating a person's vocabulary is much easier than investigating their conscience, but it is also more childish than investigating their conscience. When the Bible says God looks at the person's heart, we should not take that to mean that it is impossible for human beings to look at another person's heart. True, we are not very good at looking at one another's heart, but that should not stop us from trying; trying, but not primarily for the purpose of condemning the other person.
I try to avoid words which other people find offensive. But purity in terms of avoiding offensive words is a very minor form of purity, if the heart of the person whose speech is called offensive is in the right place.
Political correctness will shrink in importance; it will become no more important than it deserves to be. I would also add, that the majority is not obliged to change the name they use for a minority every time the minority changes their preference for how they wish to be called.
7. I respect the United States Constitution.
I believe our Constitution is a highly desirable constitution, and deserves to be respected by our people, in addition to being protected and defended by our leaders, as they are sworn to do.
8. I believe that the Electoral College should be respected by the people, until such time as it may be repealed by a duly authorized amendment.
The Electoral College is written into our constitution, and the respect our Constitution commands and deserves should comprehend respect for the Electoral College; until such time, as already stated, when it shall be written out of our Constitution by a properly approved amendment.
The reason why our founders instituted an Electoral College is plain and obvious, and the opponents of the Electoral College should not pretend that our founders adopted it on a whim. It was written into the Constitution to protect smaller states of the union from being pushed around by larger states. In our generation, that can only mean that the Electoral College is part of our political system in order to protect rural states of the union from being pushed around by urban states.
Isolated Democratic complaints, after the 2016 presidential election, that the Republicans "stole" the 2016 election by winning the vote in the Electoral College after losing the popular vote, are the direct cause of the groundless Republican complaints, after the 2020 presidential election, that the Democrats "stole" the 2020 election. People who commit verbal excesses will bring unwanted consequences upon the cause they claim to be supporting.
9. I believe that the farmer is the man.
Farmers are a vital part of any nation, and command respect, because they raise food for all the people to eat. That is why I support the rights afforded to rural states in our Constitution.
10. I support gun control.
Self-protection is a reasonable right. But many people with guns kill people without guns, not because the person with the gun is in any kind of danger, but because the person with the gun is under the delusion that they are in danger. Being under the delusion that one is in danger is not a justification for society not to punish a person who kills another person. On the contrary, the full force and penalty of the law should fall upon the person who kills another person because they are under the delusion that they are in danger. The fact that it only takes a few seconds to kill a person, if you have a gun, does not justify the delusion -- it is not a justification if the delusion only needs to last a few seconds in order for the other person to be dead.
For civilians to be wrong about the need to kill someone is a severe and extreme form of wrongness, and should be punishable.
11. I believe that the legal term "qualified immunity," used to describe the right of police officers not to be prosecuted for what they do while on duty, means "limited immunity."
Qualified immunity means that a presumption of not having committed a crime attaches to the action of police officers while on duty. But presumption does not mean that a police officer is protected from inquiries, or from prosecution, when evidence is available to people suggesting that the police officer did exceed the limits of their duties, or when evidence is withheld from large numbers of people as to whether the police officer did or did not exceed the limits of their duties.
Kneeling on a suspect's neck until the suspect is dead is not behavior which is protected by qualified immunity. Citizens are obliged to respect the police, but citizens are not obliged to hold police officers harmless when police officers engage in reckless and irresponsible behavior. There are a few bad apples in almost any line of work. The bad apples should not be shielded from punishment, if they injure people while disregarding the norms of their profession. There is no immunity for priests who molest juveniles. There is no immunity for Air Force officers or men who pilot an airplane in such a way that the airplane severs the ropes of a ski lift in the air at a ski resort, plunging skiers to their deaths. There should be no immunity for police officers who behave with reckless disregard for the lives of suspects, or open fire at the wrong house.
12. I am opposed to revolutions.
I hold that the success and enduring value of the American Revolution was a fluke. The overwhelming majority of revolutions fail to achieve their objectives, and end in bloodbaths and the death of many innocent people. With almost no exceptions, it is foolish to support a revolution in one's own country, and meddlesome to support a revolution in somebody else's country. A song by Bob Dylan says there was "revolution in the air" in a certain decade of American history (not the 1770's). Anytime a revolution is in the air, the best thing to do is to suck it out of the air. That is done, above all, by reforming the aspects of the political system, and the defects in the management of the nation, which are inclining people towards revolution.
Some other, non-political revolutions have also been the occasion of grievous and hateful oppressions. The Industrial Revolution is an example. A period in which large numbers of people go to work in factories for the first time, without any legal restraints on the factory owners, is going to be a period of oppression -- a time when new kinds of yokes and shackles spring into existence.
13. I oppose the legal notion that corporations and organizations have the right of free speech.
If you are paid by someone else to speak, your speech is paid speech, not free speech, and it should not be protected as free speech.
An organization which exists only so that people can pay other people to speak for them is, by definition, incapable of uttering free speech, does not deserve any protections given by the Constitution in the name of free speech, and is not in the public interest. It should be taxed, and be required to give a public accounting of what persons give it money, and how much money is received from each. It should not be permitted to receive money given by other organizations and not traceable to a specific human being; it should be required to make public when it was organized and by whom, and the date it ceased operation if ceased.
But political parties, which do not go out of existence when a particular political goal is accomplished, should not be subject to taxation.
Even an organization which can be shown to have other purposes besides existing so that people can pay other people to speak for them, should not be permitted to utter anonymous speech. A list of the organization's chief officers should be attached to, and reproduced with, any statement of the organization's beliefs or positions on political issues, and should continue to be available to be read after the organization ceases operations. It should give names of officers in a long enough form that the person named cannot be equated with a long list of other people of similar names.
14. I believe drastic changes need to be made in the regulation of people and combinations of people lending money to young people so that they can continue their education.
It weakens our nation when we allow an enormous group of young people, twenty-two-year-olds, to be saddled with debts which will need thirty years to repay. It weakens our nation like a grievous wound.
Different forms and degrees of debt forgiveness for college loan debt are possible and thinkable. There is no need to exclude from such a program of debt forgiveness young people saddled with debt because of other unsuccessful but legal ways in which they tried to improve their career opportunities. And there is every justification to exclude from this portion of taxation every person who has paid off a debt of similar size, starting with family resources of a similar size. Under our Constitution, there will not be a law punishing people for some deed committed before the law against it was passed: an ex post facto law. But the makers or lenders of college student loans will be deprived of nothing requiring compensation, and will be subject to no punishment beyond deprivation of future revenue which they have not in any sense earned.
Usury, the charging of excessive interest, was a sin in the Middle Ages, and is still a sin today. A legal system which ignores usury is like a legal system which ignores robbery. There should be laws against it, and it should be punishable by law.
15. I believe education is not a right; it is something earned.
Neither the government nor the nation has done any wrong if they do not provide financial assistance to all citizens seeking higher education.
Not every citizen benefits from prolonged education. Higher education is a crap shoot. There is no way to know if it will benefit a particular person, short of trying it. But if the financial resources to pay for college are not available to a given citizen, or to their family, then they should proceed into adulthood without a higher education. It does not make the nation stronger -- not in the slightest degree -- to offer higher education for free to all citizens.
Furthermore, there is and should be a military cast to higher education. The student is not being shot at, and is not putting their life on the line for their country. But the student does owe a duty of obedience to their teachers, and students should be subject to discipline if they fail to obey their teachers, discipline as far as being expelled from college with a record of misconduct. And the student who cheats, caught or not caught, is guilty of conduct unbecoming a college student, and deserves to be punished. As in military training, the teachers, not the students, dictate the speed at which higher education is taught. Requiring students to stand when their teacher enters the classroom is no more unreasonable than requiring soldiers to salute in the presence of a superior. Requirements set by teachers can be belaid by higher-ranking school officials, but only under very extraordinary circumstances. A school administration which discourages teachers from giving lower grades is acting improperly.
This should not be interpreted to mean that there should be no punishment for students who ignore the authority of teachers in the course of education before college.
Education is the result of studying. If a citizen does not study, they have neither earned nor received an education. If they have attended school and have not studied, they have not been deprived of anything which can be called a right.
People who say that they are bored in school have no complaint. School work is work, and homework is part of school work. The young person who is "bored" in school is in exactly the same position as the young person who is "bored" by feeding and watering animals on the farm. In both cases, the only proper recourse is to run away. Claiming that you have been deprived of a right when you are bored has no legal merit. From a right young age, a child owes work to their family or self-support to society -- work in a form which the child is capable of. Education if seriously pursued by a young person is a way of satisfying the obligation to work.
16. I am in favor of the death penalty for murderers.
The government which puts citizens to death when they have been convicted of murder in a fair trial is providing a service to the nation. This service can be called, briefly, the heading off of vendettas. Citizens who do not believe that criminals are fairly punished will take the law into their own hands, and justice handed out by citizens who take the law into their own hands is very bad justice: crude, inconsistent, and heavily biased in favor of the strong. Our nation's system of justice is completely justified when it acts in such a way as to head off vendettas.
The people of the nation who are unaffected by a murder owe a debt to the family of the murdered person, and that debt is paid by not stinting the punishment of the person proved guilty of the murder. The Bible is completely correct when it says that the blood of a murdered person cries out from the ground.
The finding that black people convicted of murder are put to death more often than white people convicted of murder in our country does not mean that fewer black people convicted of murder should be put to death. It means that more white people convicted of murder should be put to death. People who believe in the impartial administration of justice should work to see that more white people convicted of murder are put to death.
17. I believe global warming is an impending doom which the human race should fight against, and pass laws to reduce it.
The issue of global warming is an issue of trust in scientists. I trust the world community of scientists to get their facts straight on global warming. That is, I trust that scientists already have gotten their facts straight on global warming.
I feel sorry for the owners of land which, it is forecast, will sink beneath the ocean waves. But they have no right to delay the fight against global warming until they have sold their land to some more gullible person.
Global warming can only be opposed by international cooperation. I will vote for politicians who believe that the United States needs to sign treaties which dictate the behavior of nations with respect to global warming, including the behavior of our own nation. There is a time for nations to come together and cede, every one of them including ours, some of their sovereignty for the sake of saving the planet. The human beings alive today are living in one of those times.
Conclusion
I have tried to make a case that I am a Chinese menu Democrat, taking some beliefs from column A, and other beliefs from column B. I rest my case.
I did not intend to write such a long essay. But it is what it is, until I figure out how to write a shorter version, without leaving my beliefs completely undefended and unexplained.
Frank Newton
