'Gary Hart in NYT: 'When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political'

[checks-n-balances]

(hope this isn't a dupe!)

November 8, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political
By GARY HART

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/opinion/08hart.html?pagewanted=print&position=

<snip>
I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination founded a century ago as an offshoot of American Methodism, which, the church founders believed, had become too liberal. I graduated from Bethany Nazarene College, where I met and married my wife, who was also brought up in the church. I then graduated from the Yale Divinity School as preparation for a life of teaching religion and philosophy.

<snip>

A neglected thread of church doctrine was the social gospel of John and Charles Wesley, the great reformers of late 18th-century Methodism. The Wesley brothers preached salvation through grace but also preached the duty of Christians, based solidly on Jesus' teachings, to minister to those less fortunate. My political philosophy springs directly from Jesus' teachings and is the reason I became active in the Democratic Party. Finally, in the qualification-to-speak category, I will seek to pre-empt the ad hominem disqualifiers. I am a sinner. I only ask for the same degree of forgiveness from my many critics that they were willing to grant George W. Bush for his transgressions.

<snip>

There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it. Surely Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. But there are quite a few of those still around and no one is advocating eliminating them. Neither Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the world's avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to destroy concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of Americans with a sense of their own history.

<snip>

If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a faith of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and accountability. In the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O America."

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. .

[T Roosevelt]

2. Good editorial

friend of mine emailed that to me this morning...

[Crunchy Frog]

3. The first candidate I ever supported.

Back in the 1984 primaries.:cry:

[Senator Lamb]

4. if only not for that blonde bimbo

[Crunchy Frog]

5. Yup, he really blew it with that one.

Too bad. I think he would have done much better against Reagan than Mondale did. He couldn't possibly have done worse.

[GATOR MONROE]

6. I still have my hart button from that one

he would have beat out poor old ronny raygun.