Red VS Blue.... Incompatible ideologies?

[Bonnie]

Chuck Colson

August 1, 2005

Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll announced that both political parties—Republicans and Democrats—are now held in low regard by the American people. Usually if the fortunes of one party decline, the other party increases—sort of a zero sum game. Now, however, for the first time in polling history, both parties come up in negative territory.

Why would this be? Well, the driver who took me to do a CNN broadcast recently gave me a hint. He didn’t know who Karl Rove was, and he didn’t know who all the people up on Capitol Hill were who were calling for his scalp. Nor did he care. He dismissed it as just politics, that is, ideologically driven politics.

When ideology begins to replace revealed truth as the basis for governing a society, you inevitably have the kind of polarization we have in America today, Reds vs. Blues. Ideology is a man-made political formulation for how people should live their lives together and is, therefore, from our perspective as Christians, inherently flawed. And it’s dangerous when a society becomes so polarized over ideology that it lacks a frame of reference for agreeing on the common good.

This all started when moral relativism took root in America, beginning in the sixties on the campuses and then invading popular culture—back when Time magazine asked that provocative question, “Is God dead?” When this happened, the overarching standards of truth and moral behavior historically governing our society were undermined. And forty years of aggressive secularism since then have simply erased the idea of moral absolutes—no such thing as truth; everything is a matter of personal preference.

This eliminates the possibility of reasoned, intelligent discourse. Since people are attracted to different ideologies, all we can do is clash. So every issue about how we govern ourselves, or what our standards ought to be, ends up in a titanic wrestling match.

The American public is rightly disenchanted with this poor excuse for a political process. And while I would like to blame the politicians, I can’t. They are simply reflecting what has happened in our broader culture—the death of truth, the lack of any common standard by which we can judge what we do. The tragedy is, of course, that politicians will continue to lose stature in the public’s eye with the over-the-top rhetoric we saw in the Karl Rove case. With no agreed-upon standards, you just start shouting more loudly. Public discourse becomes course, unreflective, harsh, and when you don’t get your way, it becomes shrill. You set out to destroy your political enemies, because power is the way to win an argument. Obviously, people are going to be turned off by this.

As Christians, we should be the first to recognize that ideology—substituting human schemes for revealed truth—is the enemy of the Gospel, and the enemy of historic conservatism: conservatism not as political ideology, but as a respect for tradition, custom, a reliance upon the past, a belief in natural law and the religious underpinnings for society.

Well, how do you change a culture? You change it one person at a time. We start explaining to our neighbors why things are happening the way they are, why they are disillusioned with politics. We have a special obligation to talk about how the death of truth and the secularizing of America are paralyzing the political process, and we had better get busy and make our case quickly, because the way we are going, America could become ungovernable.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/chuckcolson/printcc20050801.shtml

 

[Gabriella84]

I've never had those problems. Must be the fundies who can't get over their hatred.

 

[Hobbit]

I've never had those problems. Must be the fundies who can't get over their hatred.

It's not about the citizens. Few citizens are like this. It's about the gridlocked politicians who see their goal as gaining power for their party, rather than try to benifit the country.

 

[Bonnie]

It's not about the citizens. Few citizens are like this. It's about the gridlocked politicians who see their goal as gaining power for their party, rather than try to benifit the country.

That is exactly what this is about!! Unfortunately power goes hand in hand with doing the people's bidding. In a perfect world the war would be won in the arena of ideas thus uniting the country a little more.

 

[Adam's Apple]

I think Colson has arrived at a fairly accurate analysis. The divide is between the religious (Red States) and the secular (Blue States), with the secular having done a pretty good job of foisting its values onto society as a whole, especially the young. For a number of years, the religious let the secular do their thing with no challenge whatsoever. Now with the religious openly trying to counteract what the secular has been preaching (somewhat belatedly to say the least), all hell breaks loose. Name calling, character assassination, and casting aspersions on the religious intellect leads one to believe that "never the twain shall meet."

 

[Hobbit]

Of course red and blue can't get along. I mean, just look at them. One's red, the other's blue, and they have flags of the same color? That just doesn't work.

http://www.redvsblue.com

Oh, and this is also reminding me of the "purple" election maps from the last election. I had almost forgotten that joke of an effort by the liberal tv stations to somehow let themselves still think they won.

 

[ThomasPaine]

The left tried to kill God but only resulted in killing their own spirituality and their ability to set priorities. One soul at a time is the way to heal this. Mr. Colson has been doing the work of twenty men in this regard over the last 30 years. That the left denies the Islamic terrorists exist on a global basis is perhaps understandable given their own inability to understand why anyone would want anyone else to convert to a "religion". The left hates the very idea of God and despises the thought of submitting to a higher power and its' moral code. After all wouldn't want Little Joe Leftie to alter his hedonistic lifestyle just to follow the Lord.