Should I Leave The Country?

I find that a good representation of how people across this country think comes from a program on C-SPAN called Washington Journal which runs from 700am until 900am or later if the House of Representatives is not in session. They will usually start with a question for viewers to answer and then they take calls alternating between three phone lines set up for basically left, right and others. I've been watching this program for several years now and find you can take a pulse of everyday people across the country with that benefit of being able to seperate political sides.

This morning I was immediately slammed by the first caller from the right. He ended his Bush love-fest diatribe with strong advice to the left, "move out of the country." I can't begin to describe how angry this threat against the left makes me feel. And I hear this type of hate periodically from the C-SPAN callers on the right. It is that simple statement that truly stiffens my backbone to understand this part of the Republican Party is not interested in uniting.

I heard this "get out of America" garbage when I was vocally against the Iraq War as many in the entertainment industry heard as well. Remember the conservatives burned Dixie Chicks albums when they made one statement opposing the war? And so many of these stealers of the word "patriotic" are those fundementalist Christians that somehow equate war and hate with Jesus. They have the gall to want me to be born again and follow Jesus who never proposed war or hate, then they exhibit all types of hateful messages to those that won't agree with them.

I was brought up in a Christian church, I don't need to be born again and I lose respect for anyone who tells me Jesus is on the side of warmongers. Jesus didn't hate and wouldn't have been proud of all those frothing crazies burning record albums. Jesus would have simply said "blessed are the peacemakers..." But these born again types can't even remember some of Jesus' most famous words. As long as they tell me to shut up or to leave the country or to follow their hateful warmongering ways, they are telling me that they loath me. That is their message, hate the left because they don't agree with us and our screwed up notions about Jesus.

One day after the Kerry conceded the election, I turn on my television and hear the first caller from the right tell me to get out of the country. Oh, yeah, we can expect all kinds of uniting (high degree of sarcasm).

I do wish the Bush haters would back off from their abhorance of the man. It is his policies we don't like. We don't need to be like these conservative haters. They falsely use God and Jesus as the reason they are allowed to hate. I will strongly disagree with their ideas, but I won't stoop to hating them. I won't tell them to shut up or leave the country (although I can privately hope for those things I guess), no the answer is to help them find their way out of their propagandized ideals.

The left has to reteach to conservatives what Jesus was really about. But the left doesn't want to delve into the Bible because of their openness to freedom for all religions combined with secular state thinking. This recent election, Republicans were distributing campaign literature claiming Democrats wanted to ban the Bible. How untrue. What Democrats would like is for conservatives to actually read what Jesus said. Start with the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatutudes, the parables, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And I might add, "...drop the first bomb."

Exit polling showed that the most important issue was morality, ahead of the Iraq War, terrorism, and the economy. You can bet that most of those who chose morality were from the religious right. Well I'm here to state that progressives care deeply about morality, we just haven't been able to communicate what we feel is immoral. Like poverty in the richest nation in the world, "blessed are the poor...". Or wars without reason, killing innocent people for what? Control of oil? Or not telling the truth as this administration has been practicing and as well the corporate world engaging in their deceptions of what is good for everyone in our economy.

I think this election has proven that the Republicans have cornered the market with their skewed version of morality. It is time for the left to stop shying away from using the word moral and then pound home the message of left morality. We on the left don't tell people to leave the country because they don't agree with us, we don't call the right unpatriotic. We already have the moral high ground, that really is our strength. I'm here to tell that C-Span caller that I'm here to stay, I'm not leaving the country. I'm staying because half of the country believes in the same morals as I do.