One of the most maddening things for me about contemporary politics is that liberals and progressives choke on words like God and Jesus and Judaism, or even spirituality. This of course hands the whole field over to the Falwells of the world, not to mention that nut-case military officer who said that God had raised George W. up to lead us. George himself acquiesces in these offerings.
Kim Campbell, former Canadian PM, made an interesting observation on Bill Maher's show: "Americans don't appreciate the fact that a political candidate who says that the jury is still out on evolution and who says that God told him to run would not stand a chance of being elected in any other modern democracy."
She also made a plea to Nader not to disenfranchise his followers, i.e., to join with Kerry.
Anyways, why do democrats talk about God like Baptists talk about sex? Yeah, we believe and all that, but can we not talk about it? Whom are we afraid of offending? Now we know there is a large Jewish contingent on the progressive side of things, and they are nervous about religion. And with good reason. But atheists surely cannot be holding us up for ransome here.
Just because we have different views on spirituality doesn't mean we don't have them. I thought the whole modern progressive movement was about finding common ground. If we can accomodate diverse views on abortion, war, raising taxes and a host of other issues, why can't we accomodate different views on God. Screw the atheists. They need to appreciate my firm conviction that God exists as much as I need to appreciate their right not to believe. Anyway, in my view, scratch an atheist and you find a very angry person witha huge authority problem. This is of course due to having Yahweh (the god of fire and brimstone) rammed down your throat instead of Sermon-on-the-Mount Jesus, but more on that later.
The most important result of this failure to acknowledge God is horrible bad karma. After all, he/she/it is only the groundmass of existence, the BIg Kahuna, the source of existence/consciousness/bliss, and the giver of life. Hey, but what do I know? Go ahead and rank him somewhere below recycling in the political scheme. I'm sure he doesn't mind, being so humble and all. I'm sure that the Holy Spirit will continue to guide the country,even though the Founding Fathers would puke at our current spiritual cowardice. It borders on apostasy, actually.
But as noted above, the more important thing is that millions of spiritual people are left out. Just because you are spiritual doesn't mean you are anti-gay, anti-feminist and pro-abortion. What I am saying is that those groups who demand that their special issue be addressed need to grant the same favor to those who think the spirituality of our people needs to be addressed. And the spiritual among us need to quit being shy and demand recognition by the democrats.
If this means finding common spiritual ground with the Jews and non-denominational souls in order to make the progressive movement complete, then so be it. The post-denominational age is coming anyway. Get used to it.