A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on November 20th, 2008 in This blog

No, not that one. George Orwell.

I’ll let him have the microphone:

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, “I am going to produce a work of art.” I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

I’ve not yet written a book, but a collection of blog posts would be more than book-length. A friend asked earlier today how long I’d been doing this. It was the February of 2005 when I started my blogspot blog. I started contributing to Blue Jersey in October of that year. I’ve been writing at the Star-Ledger since July of 2007. Now I’ve launched a Jersey-centric blog of my own. In between, I’ve written about Texas politics in several places, New Mexico politics at a couple of blogs, and was invited to blog for The American Prospect during the 2006 mid-term election cycle. I also blogged for Congressman Steve Rothman for a year, but that was a bear of a different color.

I began blogging by stating that I felt as unwelcomed in some Democratic circles for being a faithful Christian as I did in some conservative churches for being a Democrat. That has changed, and Barack Obama is a large reason why. But I still feel too much an outsider in many partisan and ideological circles. Because, I believe, I am not pure enough.

I have written many times that I am a Democrat because I’m a liberal, and I’m a liberal because I’m a Christian. To the extent that party and ideology agree with my beliefs, I defend them. But when they don’t, I have no problem stomping on their toes. I won’t pretend to be a mover and shaker, but I’ve pushed a few changes here and there. Enough to know that I can be heard if I beat a drum long enough.

My two main problems with the Bush Administration has always been: 1) That they view reality through an ideological prism, skewing their view; and 2) They make victory their ultimate value, putting themselves above the law. I already see the seeds of these faults in the Progressives that are revelling in their victory. Of course, I stand by my statement from a year ago that Barack Obama is more closely a legacy conservative than a true Progressive, and that Progressives will be disappointed in his Presidency while the majority of the country will be happy with his leadership.

I know there is no context given for any of this, so it might be hard to follow what I mean. In short: I mean that I intend to be as hard on the changing power structure as I have been for the last four years. I will continue to insist on reality-based government and continue to insist that my beliefs will influence my politics until the day I die – and anyone who says otherwise about their politics is being less than honest with themselves, if not with others.

Basically, I don’t like being lied to, no matter who does the lying. From that place, I think I’ll have a lot to write about in the next four years.

Sphere: Related Content