June 17th, 2009 -- Posted in politics, religion |
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.â€
~mahatma gandhi
i mentioned earlier that my computer meltdown ate the lengthy post i was composing on my latest read, “jesus for president” by shane claiborne and chris haw. while that quelled my desire to re-hash my thoughts for quite a while, it may have had a beneficial effect in that it gave me more time to mull things over, think about my opinions, talk with people, and dissect the book. in the comments of my last related post, my friend curtis pointed out that it seems that shane supposes the premise that christians should be pacificsts. and he does in a way, but the book is also devoted in large part to investigating the reasons WHY this should be our conclusion. but let me start at the beginning, in as much as i’m able. i knew i was going to like the book - at least a little! - when it started like this:
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June 9th, 2009 -- Posted in politics, religion |
Be conscious of God and speak always the truth
~ the koran
president obama used this statement in his speech in cairo last week - but then he also said in an interview prior to the speech that america was home to around 8 million muslims, making it one of the countries with the highest muslim populations.
truth: these numbers are hard to pin down. i found an interesting round-up of stats on politifact.com which states:
The Islamic Information Center, a group that educates people in the United States about Islam, says there are upwards of 8 million. And NationMaster.com, a Web site that allows users to compare different countries based on demographics, pegs the number at 6 million. … By the [CIA] World Factbook’s count, Muslims in the United States make up about .6 percent of the population. That’s around 1.8 million.
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May 16th, 2009 -- Posted in military, politics, religion, san francisco, the city |
as i’m in the process of re-constructing my “jesus for president” blog post after my computer met its tragic end, i wanted to jot down a few thoughts that don’t involve as much dissection and effort as the content of my extended post is turning out to. it’s promising to be quite the epic post - if i ever finish it.
as i’m reading”jesus for president“, i’m still working out how i feel about certain issues that are covered in the book. ryan stopped reading it part-way through because he thought it was too self-serving and i had another friend who warned me that it would make me a pacifist. in absence of the ability to construct super-deep thoughts on the subject right now, i decided to quote a portion of the book where one of the authors (shane claiborne) responds to an experience he had while working in baghdad. he’d been interviewed on CNN and been asked if - by being there and working on humanitarian aid missions while opposing the war - he and his group were traitors. he composed this response:
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May 1st, 2009 -- Posted in military, politics |
as i’ve mentioned, one of my favorite people to debate hot-button topics with is my friend curtis, who recently wrote a guest post for me on limited government from a more conservative perspective. curtis and i went to high school together, and to the same college for undergrad, but thanks to facebook (what else?!) we have re-connected and begun sharing our opinions (as i’ll do with most anyone who will listen :-).
curtis recently posted this article from one of the former heads of the CIA on the recent publication of the “torture memos.” naturally, it touches on the usual issues - national security, what constitutes torture, privacy, accountability, etc. and naturally it sparked an exchange. i’ve been planning on posting some thoughts on torture and these memos, and i thought publishing our dailogue might be an interesting and more well-rounded way to do so. i would LOVE to hear other thoughts and opinions in the comments.
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April 17th, 2009 -- Posted in guest post, politics |
(i’ve been thinking a lot about what limited government means to me, and i thought it would be interesting to get a bit of a different perspective, so i asked one of my favorite conservative friends/bloggers, curtis schweitzer, to contribute his thoughts on the subject. i think from his post you’ll find it easy to see why he’s one of the most thoughtful, well-reasoned republicans i know :-).
The concept of limited or government is a popular one these days, which is something that might seem odd considering the balance of power in Washington. And yet, when we look at the over-arching viewpoints of the two major U.S. political parties, it starts to make more sense. After all, the traditionally more populist Democratic Party has recently made the influence of wealthy lobbyists one of the keystones of their campaigns, and while the expansion of the government in certain arenas might be a necessary byproduct of their political and philosophical outlook, the politicians in the Democratic Party– in particular Barack Obama– realize that “small government” is very complimentary to their agenda, and thus have (rather brilliantly) embraced those aspects of it which allow them to champion it without seeming self-contradictory.
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