Who else is a Bible-believing Democratic voter?

mark kennedy said:

I've always been a Democrat and I've been a Christian for almost 40 years. The times I've voted Republican I can count on one hand.

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Have you ever felt, umm, lonely? Or has it just not been that important?

camille70 said:

I can't think of a rw comparison for [Rachel Maddow]. I don't think it's Limbaugh tho, he lies and everything is over the top

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I used to listen to Limbaugh approvingly, and I still think he says a lot of things that are true and make sense. What changed was when I began to realize the parts that he was leaving out. You see, most of the things that Christian Republicans favor, I also favor, such as:
Personal accountability
Personal righteousness
Personal freedom
Equal opportunity (not results)

The thing is, I have found that most of what I see on "Progressive" web sites reflects the very same values. No, not all, but mostly. What I see over there is people who want somewhat more rather than less government involvement. It's a matter of degree, not kind. What Bernie Sanders calls "Socialism" is not the same as Communism. In fact there is an article at the World Socialist web site (where they do think that "socialism" and "communism" mean the same thing) that denounces Sanders as not a socialist at all. The article asks, "But is Bernie Sanders really a socialist? This question raises a related one: What are the basic principles of socialism?" It then goes on to define "socialist" as somebody who advocates all of the Communist Manifesto (which Bernie does not). It concludes with, "As a comparison of Sanders’ positions to these core conceptions of socialism makes clear, his 'socialism' is a ruse to prevent the emergence of the real thing."
Here is a link to that article: Is Bernie Sanders a socialist?

As far government involvement is concerned, I used to agree with Ronald Reagan, who famously said, “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem.” I discovered that this was an overstatement and a serious distortion. There certainly is inefficiency, and waste, and outright corruption in government, but the idea that such waste and corruption does not exist in “free enterprise” America is a fairy tale. Corruption is found everywhere where human beings run things. I also asked myself one day, “Howcome so many Christians want to shut down welfare programs because of fraud and waste, but they don’t want to shut down the Department of Defense, which is probably the world leader in waste? (Remember those $600 wrenches and $3000 toilet seats that became briefly famous back in the 80’s?) I concluded that the answer is not really about waste, it’s that conservatives are simply opposed in principle to welfare, but they support national defense. And I realized that while I do support national defense (my father was career navy and I have a family member now who is a chaplain in the army, of which I am proud), I also now support the intervention of government to prevent the abuses of the "Ayn Rand" style capitalism advocated by Rand Paul and some others. And the more I studied it, the more I saw that the opposition in principle to welfare was a mistake. That story about Congressman David Crockett happens to be not even true. More later on that, but for now, I believe that the extreme anti-welfare, anti-tax, “let them die!” mindset of many conservatives (those words were actually shouted out by the crowd at a Rand Paul rally) helps to support a system that the Apostle James strongly condemned. I side with James.

I’ll come back to the proper role of government in another post.

seeking.IAM said:

Please explain how you see Republicans favoring personal righteousness. That one is a stretch for me.

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I mean it as a broad generalization. Republicans tend to be viewed as the "party of morality" (conservative values) while the Democrats are the "party of immorality" (you know. . .drugs, free sex, gay rights, that sort of thing). But when challenged on the "morality" of ignoring the poor, the Republican emphasis is on personal righteousness, not social righteousness.

Of course, a serious issue I have with that point of view is that Republicans in general have morals that aren't distinguishably different from Democrats. Republicans at a business convention in Las Vegas are going to do all the same things that Democratic businessmen do. Now, Christian businessmen will behave differently, but for Christians to think that all (or even most) Republicans will be different is a mistake. Yet some Christians seem to believe exactly that.