I'm running the 1st Annual OC Marathon on December 5th, 2004. I'm fundraising for Olive Crest, an Abused Children charity. Please Contribute if you can.

“We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.”

-----W.H. Auden

"Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern." - The New Name, Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays, 1917

"I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel." - The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, Act III

-----G.K. Chesterton

In my 13 years as a registered voter, I've never been more troubled by a Presidential election. I've spent the last year and a half pouring over just about everything I can get my hands on to try and get to the bottom of why the present administration has done what it's done. . . and more importantly to make a determination as to whether those actions were in the best interest of the country or not. As an independent voter, a follower of Christ and someone that believes less government is ultimately better government, I did not come to the following conclusion lightly: the conclusion is this, come November 2, 2004, I'm casting my vote for John Kerry.

What follows is my shotgun logic for voting against Bush. In the coming weeks preceding the election, I invite your comments. I don't think we've had an election quite as important to the future direction of our country in at least half a century. The differences between the visions of these two candidates couldn't be more stark or have more far reaching implications for the next 50-100 years in our nation's life. We have some tough questions to ask ourselves about who we are and what we want to be in the new global century.

So here goes:

1) President Bush is an overly ambitious politician that appears incapable of expressing or feeling wholesome doubt about the policies he sets. Worse than that, I've read story after story that he's consulting advisors less and less on big decisions. When asked if he talked to his Father about the presidency or the war he said, "I ask my heavenly father," which seems to have become a dangerous way of saying, "I don't need to talk to anyone, God endorses what I do." He has increasingly isolated himself, refused the counsel of others, acted in a cavalier manner and then attempted to endorse that as good leadership. Worse yet, he uses God as his excuse for not engaging in any of those activities that we expect from our leaders. Even now that the cat is totally out of the bag about the run up to war in Iraq and the failures that have followed trying to win the peace, Bush still refuses to admit his failures or to change course. His reasoning, "I don't want to show weakness to our enemies." Instead he just keeps plugging along shouting that more certainty and resolve is what we need for his bad decisions. Anyone that's followed what's gone on can't help but resonate with Kerry's charge in the first debate: "You can be certain, but you can also be certainly wrong."

2) I have fundamental differences of opinion with Bush about how the US should act within a global economy. Bush seems to be stuck in the cold war mode of thinking: He wants nationalism first, war, threat of force and armament against nations, the viral expansion of freedom through conquest; in other words, "empire" in the traditional sense (whether overt or not). But I think a global economy demands a great deal more cooperation, diplomacy and sacrifice on our part. (Not to mention that, but it's clear that future terrorists resent having their families blown up). Don't let Bush scare you into thinking that this means we'll somehow have to seek approval from other nations to defend ourselves. It's simply not true. Who would do that? Bush continues to spurn international treaties, international governing bodies, international courts, international environmental laws and on and on. What does he think causes terrorism in the first place, and how does he think going to war and not planning for peace will solve the problem rather than exacerbate it?

3) John Kerry has the right plan for executing a war on terror and he has the diplomatic skill and toughness to carry it out in a way that doesn't exchange our goodwill for more terrorists. Anyone that doubts his fortitude needs to watch the speech he gave to congress at 27 years old after coming back from Vietnam. It was so persuasive and forceful that Nixon and Colson started a smear campaign against him and called him "another Kennedy." For those of you willing to take time to hear what he has to say, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find out that his plans are just as forceful as President Bush's with the added bonus that they are much more far reaching and progressive. Kerry understands that the war on terror is more than states clashing. He knows that poverty and fair trade and diplomacy are all intimately tied to America's perception around the globe. I believe he will try to do much more to eradicate the root causes of terrorism than George Bush.

Here are a litany of quotations from respectable people that you should read which I think bolster my larger points:

This first one comes from one of Bush's aides. Couple this with the neo-conservative plan for America that was developed in the 90's by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others and you've got a damn spooky ideology. Did you know you're country was being run by guys that talk like this?:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore, ' he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left just to study what we do."

This comes from Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a non-Partisan Christian publication:
"When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking," Wallis says now. "What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year---a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.. . . .Faith can cut in so many ways. If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King Jr. did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness--that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection. Where people often get lost is on this point. Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflections and not--not ever--to the thing we as humans so very much want." And what is that? "Easy certainty."

What Kerry has to say about doing things differently:
"No President, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Bush claims he's making us safer by warring in Iraq:
"In the meantime, Iran and North Korea, Iraq's original partners in Bush's 'axis of evil,' have heard the President's message differently, and have advanced their nuclear programs significantly since the American takeover of Baghdad; the North Korean state news agency has cited Iraq as an example of what can happen to countries that can't defend themselves with nukes."

John Kerry again:
"I want to restore America's reputation as a country that listens, is sensitive, brings people to our side, is the seeker of peace, not war, and that uses our high moral ground and high-level values to augment us in the war on terror, not diminish us."

"The war on terror is not a clash of civilizations, it is a clash of civilization against chaos, of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future."

Senator Bob Kerry, 9/11 panel member:
"We've got to do something to acknowledge the gulf that exists between the dispossessed Arab world and us, because it's huge. We don't have enough money, we don't have enough parents who are willing to give up their sons and daughters, to win this with our armed forces. We don't have the bodies to do it. So if you don't have a real agenda of hope that's as hard-headed and tough as your military and law-enforcement agenda, we're not going to win this thing."

Colin Powell:
"The war on terror is intimately tied up in the war on poverty."


Closing Thought by Ron Suskind:
"Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance--sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion---deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one man's faith? What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the President feels he has with God---a colloquy upon which the world now precariously trusts?"


What if Bush is more King Saul than King David?

"In the end, there are basically two attitudes that we can adopt to life. We can see it as meaningless, something which has no real purpose. In this case, the most that we can hope for is to make the best of it while we can, trying to help others less fortunate than ourselves and distract ourselves from the fact that it is all pointless. Or we can see life as a glorious gift, something that is good in itself--yet points to something even more wonderful that is yet to come. Even in this life, hints of the promised future break in, allowing us to anticipate what lies ahead."

--Alistar McGrath

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Friends, all kidding about alien working girls aside, please take 30 seconds of your day today to use World Vision's petition generator to send a note asking the Pres and members of Congress to fully fund Bush's AIDS bill. This is the easiest letter you'll ever send. . .just go to the link and fill in your info and then let it autopopulate who you want to send it to. It literally takes 30 seconds. There are 25 million orphans in the balance. Let the love of Christ compell you.

AIDS Letter

How to tell if your Prostitute is an Alien

Wisdom from Ken Schmidt, Harley Davidson's marketing chief that engineered the turn-around of the company in the mid-80's and speaker at this year's Ingram Micro National Sales meeting:

--"Make a different noise."
--"Don't be rational."
--"When everybody's saying the same thing, no one is listening."
--"Make people feel good about themselves, give them something to belong to."
--"When what we see matches what we've been lead to believe, we believe even stronger."
--"World class product is not enough to compete with."
--"I'd rather have my sister in a whorehouse than my brother on a Honda."


This guy, best chapel speaker EVER!

"If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy (God) Himself we (Demons) are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment."

-----C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters", letter IV