Stereotypes be damned: A Liberal Atheist Supports Mitt

I’m a proud non-believer and a socially liberal person. Because of this, many people are surprised to find out I’m a Republican. Most people assume that all Republicans or Democrats must be one way or another. This is ignorant and ill-informed. Society has fed these stereotypes and many people fail to research beyond the talking heads on Fox, MSNBC and Comedy Central. Not all Republicans are fundamentalists and not all Democrats are socialist. There are loud fringe groups perpetuating a typecast. Placing diametrically politically-opposed individuals face-to-face on a news talk show makes for interesting television and keeps ratings high. This is the current state of politics today—emotionally charged debates broken into to sound bites for consumption by the masses. “Democrats stand for the working man and love people. Republicans are greedy and hate people.” False and cannot be further from truth.

In reality, the Democrat Party has a long history of bigotry and hatred while the Republican Party has a prestigious history as being forward-thinking and progressive. For nearly 200 years, the Democrat Party was known as the party of the rich white landowner. It was a party that always had a close tie to industry and big business. Through decades long control in Congress, Democrats shaped laws to benefit the industrialists, corporations, and themselves—a practice that continues today. As America grew and became more diverse, the party tried to adapt and maintain power. To accomplish this, it had to consolidate various special interests: urban blacks, blue collar works, unions, and others. In order to maintain power over these groups, the party propagandized and manipulated them into thinking certain liberties were being infringed upon when in reality they were not. Enemies were manufactured and maintained to this day. Because of the ignorance of these groups, they bought and continue to buy into these lies.

Republicans on the other hand are the party of low taxes, minimal government and individual liberty. This is the party of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Green Ingersoll, Teddy Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater and even Martin Luther King, Sr. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the conservative, fundamentalist Christians became extremely vocal within the GOP. Many leaders felt it necessary to appeal to this particular constituency to consolidate power as the Democrats had with blacks et al. Yes, conservative Christians have tried to impose socially conservative restrictions on abortion and marriage, but to no avail. Although extremely vocal, they have become more and more impotent throughout the past 20 years. Despite this outspoken minority, the party is still home to those with the core principals espoused by its most prominent leads throughout the past.

I support the Republican Party and Mitt Romney, because I’m liberal in a classical sense. I believe individuals should be free to do as they please without infringing on the natural rights of others. From all I’ve seen and read of Romney and based on my reading of the party platform, the GOP believes individuals have a right to be free from government intrusion into their businesses and their bedrooms. Sure, there are some who vocally express disdain for homosexuality or abortion, but neither is illegal and there is no concerted Republican effort to end either. These are mere distractions manufactured by Democrats to instill fear in their pathetic, fractured coalition. Most Republicans stand for individual liberty as do I.

I’m a Republican because I’m an atheist. The GOP has a long history of appealing to atheists. Why? Because it is the Big Tent Party. It was the party that embraced religious and non-religious diversity. Where the Democrat party sees groups, the Republican party sees individuals with varying beliefs and perspectives. It is the party of the freethinker. Robert Green Ingersoll was a vocal agnostic/atheist Republican in the 1800s. He was opposed to slavery and any sort of oppression by individuals or government. He, Ayn Rand, Milton Freidman, and other atheists are held in high regard among Republicans to this day.

Mitt Romney has demonstrated through his work as governor of Massachusetts that he is a capable businessman who understands the importance of individual liberty. He’s familiar with the hard work that goes into starting and running a successful business. Sure, he’s a Mormon, but there are plenty of good men throughout history who were indoctrinated into a religion at a young age. Based his history of government service, it seems it has had zero affect on his ability to govern. Mitt is a Republican in the vein of all the other great ones before him.

The Republican Party welcomes all nonbelievers, liberals and freethinkers. It’s the party of liberty and limited government. It always has and will continue to be the mainstream party for me.

The State is my Shepherd

“Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ–who I think was the first socialist–only socialism can really create a genuine society.”--Hugo Chávez, Socialist dictator of Venezuela

Indoctrination comes in many forms, but religious indoctrination is certainly the most effective. In recent history, Socialism, the economic system and political philosophy, sought to replace Christianity with its government-based worldview. Vladimir Lenin, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution deliberately set out to recruit Christians into his political party in order to educate them in the spirit of the Socialist programs. He knew they were susceptible to indoctrination. Ludwig Feuerbach, a predecessor to Marxism/Socialism, advocated combating religion in order to renovate it and to invent a new, ‘exalted’ religion. I call this new religion the cult of government.

In the West, Socialist dogma is presented as an alternative to Christianity. The similarities between Christianity and Socialism make this possible. Socialist thought is rooted in Christianity. Karl Marx, the father of Marxism/Socialism, was deeply impacted by religion. Although Marx’s father was Jewish, the family became Christian when Marx was young. Judeo-Christian concepts were instilled at an early age. In one school essay, a young Marx reveals his early Christian indoctrination and his solidarity with the oppressed by writing, “Who should not gladly endure sorrows, when he knows that through his continuing in Christ, through his works God is honored?”

As a young man, Marx was introduced to the work of Friedrich Hegel, who he cited consistently
throughout his life. Marx was part of the Young Hegelians, a group of influential leftists who promoted their particular interpretation of Hegel’s work. Because of his religious upbringing, there is no doubt Marx was drawn to the Hegel’s use of Christian vocabulary.

Hegel concentrates on the sinful aspects of man’s condition. He cites the Christian apostle Paul who spoke of humankind being alienated in their thinking because of sin and ultimate redemption through Jesus. Marx saw the oppressed as needing salvation from the evil capitalists just as Jesus and Paul voiced the need for salvation from this world of sin. Both offered a plan of redemption—one though the State and the other through vicarious redemption.

While Marx ultimately distinguished himself from Hegel in many ways, the foundation of his dialectical materialism and other concepts are rooted in Hegel’s concepts, which were laden with rich Christian concepts of oppression, alienation, submission, and redemption. Hegel’s Master-Serf dialectic mixed with Marx’s inherited Christian empathy for the oppressed assembled a foundation from which the Marxist concept of class struggle was built.

Socialists see humankind as corrupt and in need of guidance through laws and regulations while Christianity sees humans as alienated from the supernatural realm and in need of “spiritual” guidance. Both attempt to legislate morality according to their precepts and standards. Just as religion uses threat of a torturous afterlife as a deterrent from its moral standards, many Marxist or left-leaning governments dictate morality through threats of imprisonment, bans and Pigovian or “sin” taxes. The idea of a sin tax is to place an excessive tax on a product or service as a means to deter their use. In many communist countries, pornography is entirely outlawed. In the United States, a progressively democratic-socialist state, there are numerous sin taxes, such as the excessive tax on cigarettes and environmental laws. In recent years, the US has instituted countless new sin taxes and proposes countless others—such as “fat” taxes on fattening food and carbon taxes on companies to reduce pollution. This cult of government, as religion, seeks to shape the morals of its citizens to conform to State-sanctioned morality through taxes and bans.

Christianity and Marxism/Socialism are nearly identical. The only glaring difference is one
postulates a supernatural utopia and the other an earthly one. Both must manipulate and control their adherents to achieve their utopias. Human freedom must be suppressed—whether it’s through new laws and regulations, through an unfeasible religious moral code or through fear and intimidation. Each has setup elite groups to facilitate the methodical overthrow of individual freedom and replace it with a collective morality, which leads to tyrannical behavior by the
leadership in the end.

In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty”, the great 20^th philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin describes how governments seek to control its citizens as children and how they ultimately fall into tyranny and dictatorship, thus destroying freedom and brutalizing its individuals. This has been demonstrated throughout history with the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, the Crusades, the Taliban, and other Islamic governments. He states facetiously about the British Empire in an interview, “Human beings are children. We must first herd them together, create certain institutions, make them obey orders, and we hope later they will see how well we’ve done for them.... It always leads to bad consequences in the end.”

Marx, Hegel, and Feuerbach understood the value of Christian indoctrination. Christianity emphasizes empathy toward the poor and downtrodden. It teaches people to be dependent. They play on fears and demonize individualism. Marxists/Socialists have seized these doctrines and incorporated them into their dogma. They view us as children and the goal is a massive nanny state, whose ultimate end is totalitarianism and tyranny.

A freethinker opposes both religion AND socialism.

Example of Christian Anti-Intellectualism

Yesterday, I was discussing with a Christian the lineage of Christ as outlined in Scripture. The lineages appear in Matthew 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–28. If one were to compare Jesus’ bloodline side-by-side, one would see it is completely and utterly inconsistent. However, Christians do not read the Bible in this manner.

Christians normally read the Bible in a devotional manner rather than comparatively and intellectually. They select a passage, read it, and use a dogmatic view instilled by their pastor or other Christian leaders to interpret—essentially justifying anything that might stand out as a contradiction or error.

When I pointed out to this individual that the lineages were inconsistent, he said, “I will go and find a book written by a Christian that discusses this.” I implored him, “No, go to the Bible and look for yourself.” He refused. He plans to read a Christian justification of this contradiction before viewing it for himself.

This is pure anti-intellectualism of the highest degree and demonstrates the depth of indoctrination.