Political Standing

Last week at my caucus meeting I met Cliff Lyon. Bob mentioned him earlier this week. We had an interesting conversation. He suggested that I start or join a more politically oriented blog (probably not going to happen). Cliff also said he was interested in how I converted from being a republican to being a democrat. I think I'll share...

The first key, is that my political party is not my religion. This moots the term "Conversion". I switched because I had 2 options. One party that has a platform I agree with, but doesn't follow it to the extent that I disagree with the actions of its members. Or, a party that I may disagree with sometimes that actually sticks to its platform. I also believe I am in a better position to be heard and to be able to do things to get meaningfully involved in a smaller party.

I guess the moral of what I have learned is that if fewer people made their party their religion we would have better competition. Besides, the democrats aren't exactly perfect. They nominated John Kerry of all people when they had a fully operational Howard Dean sitting around.

I would like to say one final thing about confusing politics and religion. It happened in Germany. Having a leader that claims to be a Christian, but who does not act like a Christian is very dangerous. Continuing to vote for them, even more so. People ignore too many things that are wrong when they believe someone is a Christian. Lets take warrantless wiretaps. It's pretty easy to establish that they happened. The trouble is that we have to follow the rule of law. Let this slide and it won't be such a big deal that other laws are broken. I can't stand TV shows and movies about what the president does because those often show the president as being above the law. Bad move...

So here I am, Shaun the democrat. Lets just hope that whoever I back I don't become Shaun the oppressed. I see it coming plain as day so lets stop voting for people who abuse power in any level of government.

Shaun