Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....
....[Republicans are the spawn of Satan. They are callous, selfish, heartless, and cruel, with no morals nor scruples whatseover. The world would be a better place if they had never been born.].....
I can understand how you might feel that way, and if you were merely venting to fellow cognoscenti, that would be fine.
If you are trying to persuade people to see things your way, however....
suppose you have an undecided person, he hears what you say. then he turns to his right, and that person is saying exactly the same thing you are saying, except only one word is different: wherever you say "Republican", she says "Democrat."
Now what is this undecided person to make of that? Don't vote for them, they are awful, vote for us because we're not that bad." Really? Nice message: "anyone who disagrees with me is evil, corrupt, and morally bankrupt. Only those people who agree with me are reasonable and ethical." How does that persuade others of anything?
Now suppose, just for a second, that you are a moral person. You want people to believe that you arrived at your positions through reflection and consideration. Why are you so reluctant to concede that just maybe, someone who has arrived at a different viewpoint may actually have gotten there because they interpret moral teaching in a different way than you, yet they also have morality and decency on their side as well.
"A hand up is not a hand out" really
is a moral point of view
if you spend your life teaching other people to be self-sufficient, isn't it?
We believe that Social Security legislation, now billed as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the idea of force and compulsion. We in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam," and that citizens justify what they get from the state by saying, "We got it coming to us."
One of those Republican trogdolytes, right? um, not quite....This is from a 1945 column by Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, in which she complained about how state intervention limits personal freedom and responsibility. Day's skepticism about government was reflected in her nickname for it: "Holy Mother State."
A far-left critique of the welfare state!! How about that!
These words were quoted in today's Wall St. Journal in
a story about Paul Ryan's address to Georgetown:
what drives Mr. Ryan's religious critics bonkers is not his numbers. It's his claim that his policies reflect Catholic principles. At Georgetown he summarized one of the differences he has with the protesting professors this way: "I do not believe that the preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government."
....
let us stipulate that those of us who incline to Mr. Ryan's application of Catholic social teaching—not least Mr. Ryan himself—do not assert we enjoy any monopoly. Plainly others applying the same principles can and do reach very different conclusions. When that happens, the obvious thing to do would be to have an honest conversation about which path has proved better at achieving its goals.
That's just what Mr. Ryan asked for at Georgetown. He put it this way: "If there were ever a time for serious but respectful discussion, among Catholics as well as those who don't share our faith, that time is now."
Alas, a "serious but respectful discussion" is the last thing Mr. Ryan's critics want. For one thing, the critics don't have a real alternative: Democrats haven't passed a budget in years precisely so they won't have to defend their spending philosophy.
More to the point, a "serious but respectful discussion" would have to concede something Mr. Ryan's religious opponents are loath to do: that conservative Republicans advancing market-oriented answers are as serious about their moral case as liberal Democrats are about theirs. [Emphasis added]
Given your formulation, how can anyone possibly have a serious conversation with you if your first step is to accuse them of crimes against humanity before the conversation even begins?
