While I was reading a recent OS cover piece by Ted Frier about Rick Santorum’s relentless Catholicism, the realization almost bowled me over: I don’t do ideology well.
I am supposed to be Catholic, too. I was baptized, confirmed and indoctrinated. Eight years of Catholic elementary school made sure I learned all the thou shalt nots I needed to be guaranteed a seat near the right hand of God Himself. There were a few thou shalts thrown in, mostly in the form of commandments such as behaving, obeying, keeping holy and honoring. Good works were encouraged, so long as I didn’t have to enter a Protestant, Jewish or Muslim house of worship to do it. Those were forbidden places.
I questioned myself into the principal’s office so many times, I had my own chair there. My six-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the concept of blind faith. Logic was more my style, although I didn’t know that word at the time. I did, however, know the word precocious, because I was constantly being described that way to explain why I asked so many obnoxious questions. They weren’t obnoxious to me.
There was lots of talk about the Virgin Mary, for example. I knew Mary was a girl’s name, but what is a virgin, I asked. Told to ask my mother, as usual when I ventured too far outside the boundaries of first-grade query, I soon got a satisfactory answer at home. Which then made the concept of a virgin birth a little outlandish in my book.
Miracles? C’mon now, I’d think. You really expect me to believe that Jesus was successful in feeding throngs of famished people with five loaves of bread and two fish? I was Doubting Thomasine, the classroom pain in the nun’s heavily clothed behind.
It was impossible for me to reconcile a “loving God” with the notion that “Catholicism is the one true faith.” We were even taught that only Catholics had a chance of getting into heaven. That didn’t make sense to my immature but logical mind.
Although there don’t seem to be as many of them as others, Catholics are really prime candidates for Republicanism. The Catholic faithful are used to thinking in absolutes, eschewing gray areas of human existence. They have been taught the practice of exclusion and of thinking of what NOT to do, instead of what to do. The Catholic way is the right and only way; everybody else are sinners, blasphemers and the doomed.
When the time came for me to determine my political stance, I often found myself straddling a line between the two parties – socially inclined to make sure all were included in the American Dream, but firmly entrenched in the work ethic demonstrated by the adults in my family, who would walk 10 miles to work rather than miss a day. Money was not abundant, but it was managed so well by my grandparents, the families of my friends were convinced we were far better off than we were. Paying as you go, saving and sacrificing were family credos.
When someone like Rick Santorum preaches both banning birth control AND banning abortion, I want to scream. That is taking Catholic conservatism to an insane level for thinking people. If contraception is “dangerous,” as Mr. Santorum believes, and abortion is murder, can chastity belts and/or penectomies be far behind?
But there are other elements of the conservative way of thinking that make a lot of sense, at least they do to me. The government has proved to be a very poor manager in so many ways. The level of waste and redundancy in the halls of the U.S. Departments of Everything is staggering and maddening. Politicians spend so much time running for office, there is little left for monitoring the practices of bureaucracies that simply plod along, growing bigger and less effective each year.
I agree we need a smaller government. I just don’t mean the same thing the average Republican means when I say that. I do agree we could do without a lot of the agencies created during some political fracas or another to appease the opposition or postpone the matter indefinitely. I do not agree that taxes are evil across the board and must be slashed indiscriminately. How are we supposed to maintain the infrastructure of the nation without taxes?
When I listen to Ron Paul talk about our individual liberties, I say an enthusiastic yes – until he goes a bit further and I realize that those same liberties are the arguments used by people who want to be able to make a profit at the expense of employees, customers and competitors using whatever measures it takes.
But then Dr. Paul talks about the U.S. pulling the troops out of non-combat zones of the world,and he talks about America needing to stop trying to “fix” matters that are none of our business in other people’s countries, and I am back to yes.
I don’t appreciate being pigeonholed by others because of my position on a single issue. I don’t like the double solid lines on the ideological highway painted by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or the Tea Party. I want to be able to think through each issue, come to a conclusion and be able to vote accordingly. I cannot do that now – not in my state. I am required to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in primaries.
This morning I was driving on the Interstate, listening to a black radio station. I am mixed-race, but identify as black. The on-air personalities were discussing a new GPS feature they said was introduced by Microsoft, which allows the driver to “avoid ghettos.” They took umbrage with that concept, based on the assumption that the designer of the software was thinking “black neighborhood” when s/he used the term ghetto. They imagined the use of the n-word in the product’s development stages. One of the announcers went on to ridicule “white folks” because “they strap things on their car roofs, trunks and hoods.”
I don’t get this. I don’t get how we “black folks” can make such sweepingly stereotypical statements about other groups and expect to hide behind the ideology of victimhood in America. Ask Dr. Laura Schlessinger if she could get away with a similar commentary.
When people adopt an ideology which informs their every waking thought, they are surrendering their freedom to think for themselves. It makes them sound like parrots and robots and thoughtless boors. That doesn’t work for me.
I am supposed to be Catholic, too. I was baptized, confirmed and indoctrinated. Eight years of Catholic elementary school made sure I learned all the thou shalt nots I needed to be guaranteed a seat near the right hand of God Himself. There were a few thou shalts thrown in, mostly in the form of commandments such as behaving, obeying, keeping holy and honoring. Good works were encouraged, so long as I didn’t have to enter a Protestant, Jewish or Muslim house of worship to do it. Those were forbidden places.
I questioned myself into the principal’s office so many times, I had my own chair there. My six-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the concept of blind faith. Logic was more my style, although I didn’t know that word at the time. I did, however, know the word precocious, because I was constantly being described that way to explain why I asked so many obnoxious questions. They weren’t obnoxious to me.
There was lots of talk about the Virgin Mary, for example. I knew Mary was a girl’s name, but what is a virgin, I asked. Told to ask my mother, as usual when I ventured too far outside the boundaries of first-grade query, I soon got a satisfactory answer at home. Which then made the concept of a virgin birth a little outlandish in my book.
Miracles? C’mon now, I’d think. You really expect me to believe that Jesus was successful in feeding throngs of famished people with five loaves of bread and two fish? I was Doubting Thomasine, the classroom pain in the nun’s heavily clothed behind.
It was impossible for me to reconcile a “loving God” with the notion that “Catholicism is the one true faith.” We were even taught that only Catholics had a chance of getting into heaven. That didn’t make sense to my immature but logical mind.
Although there don’t seem to be as many of them as others, Catholics are really prime candidates for Republicanism. The Catholic faithful are used to thinking in absolutes, eschewing gray areas of human existence. They have been taught the practice of exclusion and of thinking of what NOT to do, instead of what to do. The Catholic way is the right and only way; everybody else are sinners, blasphemers and the doomed.
When the time came for me to determine my political stance, I often found myself straddling a line between the two parties – socially inclined to make sure all were included in the American Dream, but firmly entrenched in the work ethic demonstrated by the adults in my family, who would walk 10 miles to work rather than miss a day. Money was not abundant, but it was managed so well by my grandparents, the families of my friends were convinced we were far better off than we were. Paying as you go, saving and sacrificing were family credos.
When someone like Rick Santorum preaches both banning birth control AND banning abortion, I want to scream. That is taking Catholic conservatism to an insane level for thinking people. If contraception is “dangerous,” as Mr. Santorum believes, and abortion is murder, can chastity belts and/or penectomies be far behind?
But there are other elements of the conservative way of thinking that make a lot of sense, at least they do to me. The government has proved to be a very poor manager in so many ways. The level of waste and redundancy in the halls of the U.S. Departments of Everything is staggering and maddening. Politicians spend so much time running for office, there is little left for monitoring the practices of bureaucracies that simply plod along, growing bigger and less effective each year.
I agree we need a smaller government. I just don’t mean the same thing the average Republican means when I say that. I do agree we could do without a lot of the agencies created during some political fracas or another to appease the opposition or postpone the matter indefinitely. I do not agree that taxes are evil across the board and must be slashed indiscriminately. How are we supposed to maintain the infrastructure of the nation without taxes?
When I listen to Ron Paul talk about our individual liberties, I say an enthusiastic yes – until he goes a bit further and I realize that those same liberties are the arguments used by people who want to be able to make a profit at the expense of employees, customers and competitors using whatever measures it takes.
But then Dr. Paul talks about the U.S. pulling the troops out of non-combat zones of the world,and he talks about America needing to stop trying to “fix” matters that are none of our business in other people’s countries, and I am back to yes.
I don’t appreciate being pigeonholed by others because of my position on a single issue. I don’t like the double solid lines on the ideological highway painted by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or the Tea Party. I want to be able to think through each issue, come to a conclusion and be able to vote accordingly. I cannot do that now – not in my state. I am required to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in primaries.
This morning I was driving on the Interstate, listening to a black radio station. I am mixed-race, but identify as black. The on-air personalities were discussing a new GPS feature they said was introduced by Microsoft, which allows the driver to “avoid ghettos.” They took umbrage with that concept, based on the assumption that the designer of the software was thinking “black neighborhood” when s/he used the term ghetto. They imagined the use of the n-word in the product’s development stages. One of the announcers went on to ridicule “white folks” because “they strap things on their car roofs, trunks and hoods.”
I don’t get this. I don’t get how we “black folks” can make such sweepingly stereotypical statements about other groups and expect to hide behind the ideology of victimhood in America. Ask Dr. Laura Schlessinger if she could get away with a similar commentary.
When people adopt an ideology which informs their every waking thought, they are surrendering their freedom to think for themselves. It makes them sound like parrots and robots and thoughtless boors. That doesn’t work for me.
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