School House Rock: 'Sufferin' until Suffrage'

Looking for a good song to empower your daughters and teach the to vote? Allow me to commend the virtues of "Sufferin' Until Suffrage." It is a great song, one I am trying to teach to my own children.

Brought to us by the same people who brought us the rest of School House Rock, "Sufferin' Until Suffrage" is a celebration of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 recognized the right of women to vote. Delivered in the style of gospel music, the song features the powerful vocals of Essra Mohawk and name drops suffragettes like Lucretia Howe and Susan B. Anthony and celebrates the march of progress.

You might think that a song that celebrates something as foundational to our democracy as the right to vote would be uncontroversial. Alas, you would be wrong.

To my dismay, a rather conservative associate of mine complains that the song provides no justification for the anti-suffragette thinking that dominated the nation before the 19th Amendment was ratified. He complains that the video is dominated by supergirl, against the backdrop of grumpy old men. The video, he argues, simply furthers the liberal agenda by making supergirl virtuous and clean, and setting up her constructivist opponents as straw men.

Yes, he appears to have been serious. My associate is rather locked on the notion that whatever position was already present is superior to newer positions by virtue of its greater age, until it has been thoroughly established otherwise.

There us a simple reason the song doesn't try to explain why these dour old men thought the way they did: There was no good reason it. It's a familiar story, really. The System exists the way it does, and at some point, someone notices something is wrong with the System, and they call out in a loud voice, "Why are we doing things this way?" And no one can think of a very good reason, except that It's Always Been Done That Way, and Boy We Sure Were Happy Until You Mentioned It.

Dr. King got a lot of grief over this during the Civil Rights Era. He addressed it beautifully in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. There was simply no reason for segregation, no reason for denying blacks their right to vote, and yet this uppity black man had the gall to insist that the unjust system be stopped, and he outraged plenty of people, mostly because they had no reason for perpetuating the system they had.

I'm sure they had plenty of rationalizations to justify it, just as the establishment had plenty of rationalizations for opposing suffrage.

But no reasons.

conservatism and liberalism

Here's a news flash for everyone: Liberal is GOOD. Conservative is GOOD.

Simply put, liberalism looks to move us forward to a better future, a better world for our children and for ourselves, and it looks to right the wrongs that exist in our society and in ourselves. It is not a philosophy of bedwetters and crybabies as some have claimed it.

Also simply put, conservatism is a desire to hold onto what is good within our world and our society, to uphold our traditions and values, and to hold onto what makes us who we are. It is not a philosophy of heartless people who are fearful of change, as some have claimed it.

Both liberals and conservatives are concerned with justice and with fairness. Both groups want peace, prosperity, and on and on. Both groups want to have what our parents did: the belief that tomorrow will be a better day than today was.

Where we disagree in is where the problems are and how to fix them. Conservatives in the U.S. at times have had an appalling desire to hold onto things that should be got rid of, and at times liberals have been too eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater and excuse new injustices in their rush to correct old ones.

I don't believe either philosophy is inherently wiser, better, or godlier than the other, though I've met, talked with and even been related to a number of people, both conservative and liberal, whom I've wanted to ask, "How do you breathe with your head shoved that far up there?"

One of the things that I've admired about Senator Obama is that I think he's going to help us get past the last 20 years of self-righteous posturing about how The Other Side is ruining all that's Good, Decent and Righteous in America. Our national leaders have been fighting the battles of the Sixties way too long now.

The Right's full-court press to control the Supreme Court

Why is it that people who call themselves his followers engage in it so readily?


Christ came to set us free. When the Religious Right presses court in politics, the goal is not to liberate people as much as it is to make people behave in a manner that they consider acceptable (no gay marriage, no foul language, no obscenity, and so on). Controlling people is not what Christ is about. 

Belief.net has a well-written article by Marci Hamilton concerning the push from the Religious Right to determine the next Supreme Court appointment now that Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement. Hamilton has articulated fairly well one of my chief concerns with the insistence of the Religious Right that nominees conform to a narrowly defined list of behaviors, beliefs and attitudes, without exception.

For that matter Christianity Today has another article, about Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and how James Dobson and others on the Right have accused him of not being insufficiently pro-life. The ostensibly pro-choice positions they are taking issue with are positions Gonzalez has taken based on his understanding of the law, rather than on his personal beliefs. 

That is, of course, how our government is supposed to work. Issuing rulings based on personal beliefs  and not upon the rule of law is what the Right calls "legislating from the bench" and takes a good deal of umbrage at.

Of course, you should always blame the media

When all else fails, blame it on the media. Surely it's that the liberal media has it in for the pro-life movement and hates crisis pregnancy centers. There can't be any other explanation for why the silent work of crisis-pregnancy centers doesn't get more coverage, can there?

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we believe that the news media won't make any effort to present our story, we don't spend any effort reaching out to the media and giving them a story that they'll run with. So the news media doesn't report anything positive about crisis pregnancy centers, thereby proving that they are in bed with pro-choice activists.

Media outlets love heartwarming stories about people helping other people in need. That's a big part of liberalism, don'cha know?

Forget the rhetoric, take the time to develop a serious media campaign, and spend the money it would take to implement it properly, and pro-life groups will find they're getting more coverage of their activities.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm not just a liberal journalist. Let's pretend that I'm also a pro-choice liberal journalist. Chances are that I'm going to be one of those who just takes abortion as a for-granted position, and it's not an obsession for me at all, any more than auto insurance reform.

Every time I run into someone who is strongly pro-life, they rant and rave about how Planned Parenthood is killing babies, how the media are deliberately covering up the dangers of legal abortion to protect their allies in the abortion industry, and how we always go for the sensational stories that make pro-lifers look like idiots and ignore the things they quietly do to help pregnant women.

Every now and then I'll encounter other wackos who automatically assume that I'm going to hell and publicly call on people to pray for my soul, without even stopping to find out anything about my spiritual state.

That's a fairly rude way to treat someone. It irritates the real me, who has been pro-life since his teen years. I can only imagine how much worse it would go over with a pro-choice me.

This isn't just about publicity and marketing. A lot of it is about plain old-fashioned manners.

Want coverage of other aspects of the pro-life movement than the loudmouths at demonstrations and protests? Then find some way to make "business as usual" sound compelling. It's not that hard -- there are literally thousands of public relations firms that do just that for their clients, every day.

Get the local Birthright or some other pro-life group to hire me, and I guarantee I will start getting them into the newspaper, and not just little three-inch press releases, either. Most advertising money is money poured down the drain, anyway.

I can't begin to tell you how many times as a reporter and as an editor small-business owners called us up to let us know about what was going on, or just loved it when we used their business for a news story. Nonprofits loved it too -- it always drove up the giving and got their message out to the community.

Conservatives and churches have bandied about the term "liberal media" so much that they've created a divide that doesn't have to be there. Groups that could benefit tremendously from the news media just don't think about it because they've been told so many times that the media have it in for them that they believe it. And so, rather than being in the world but not of it, we withdraw further from it, and create our own media to broadcast our message loud and clear to people who already know it by heart.

It is within our ability to get the right horns tooted, but to do that we need to take the initiative to do it, and make a better effort to get along with the people who work in the news media. Complaining that it's not our fault doesn't accomplish either of those purposes.

jesus and politics

There's a piece in Boundless magazine by a J. Budziszewski that deals with the issue of whether Jesus should be considered a liberal. Budziszewski makes several points, which I'm going to address one at a time:

1) Jesus cannot be described solely as liberal nor solely as conservative. Absolutely. I've said that before, but it's also a rather facile statement, as the writer makes the point of later on. On most core values, conservatives and liberals in America generally are in agreement. Few conservatives favor segregation, letting the homeless starve, or beating gays to death. Those who do are regarded as a fringe group or (with the exception of indifference to the poor) are regarded as criminal. Similarly, I think it's safe to say that most liberals do not regard abortion as a Good Thing -- safe, rare, legal and rare is the mantra -- and neither do they hate Christmas and Easter, nor believe pornography should be in the hands of everyone.

Jesus' defining personality trait was compassion. He regarded compassion for the suffering as so holy that it was the best way to honor the sabbath; he gave of himself even when he was exhausted and had gone away to get a moment's rest; and his followers included a motley bunch of insurrectionists, traitors, religious zealots, the educated, working class laborers and so on. He would go out of his way to spend time with a tax-collecting Gentile female prostitute with leprosy.

As far as Christians go, the chief distinction between Right and Left is the question of how to demonstrate that compassion. Like many conservatives, I believe that the best response to the growing disparity between haves and have-nots is personal relationships and involvement with other people. Unlike me, many conservatives consider increased government effort in that arena to be wrong, because of the risk of an entitlement mentality. (I don't consider it very good, but I think it beats the pants off letting people languish without what they need.)

2) "Good" Christians. I'm uncomfortable with Budziszewski's statements about what someone can do and be a "good Christian." Yes, choosing a political philosophy or lifestyle that is in conflict with Christ's character eventually will force a person to choose between the two, but the assignation of "good Christian" and "bad Christian" based on belief usually matches up with our own personal biases. There are degrees of maturity, but that maturity usually comes in different areas of our life at different rates. It strikes me as proud and judgmental to designate others as "good Christians" or "bad Christians" based on bits of their behavior that we can see, especially in as sweeping a manner as Budziszewski does here.

I'll probably lose points for this, but a person's position in Christ is unaffected even by being a Nazi, being a slave-owner and supporting abortion on demand. It's Christ alone who makes any of us good Christians.

While it's a fair statement to say those things are grossly inconsistent with the character of Christ and that someone who is following Christ eventually is going to find a conflict between faith and practice, if those practices make someone "not a good Christian," then I have no basis for saying that I'm a good Christian because my own sins are pretty foul, themselves.

My point is that all of us are sinners, whether we're Nazis, Republicans, Democrats or unable to tell a difference. If I say that you're not as good a Christian as I because you commit a sin that I don't sin, I'm forgetting my place.

Obviously everyone who is following Christ wants to be in his will. My experience has taught me that being in his will often has less to do with external circumstances (the touted "calling") than with the inward heart and how it aligns with Christ. Working for Acme or Friz Cola often is less of an issue to God than how I serve Christ during my employment at either of those places.

So can you be a Nazi, a slave owner, or an abortionist and be a good Christian? As surely as you can commit adultery and be a good Christian, get a divorce and be a good Christian, tell a lie and be a good Christian, or hold a grudge and be a good Christian. It's only by the grace of God that any of us may hope to be considered good in heaven's eyes.

3) The abortion issue. No dispute here -- almost. I think Budziszewski is oversimplifying the position. I'm against abortion, except when it is medically necessary to save the mother, but I remain unconvinced that the massive political effort we've put in through the pro-life movement is the best way to end abortion. One of Bush's best position statements on abortion was that a country that can pass a constitutional ban on abortion doesn't need one.

It's possible, although fairly unlikely at this point, I think, that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. That is not going to change the predominantly pro-choice belief of America, particularly in states like New Jersey where ANY attempt at modulation is seen as undermining abortion rights. That's because Americans by and large haven't had the spiritual awakening to see abortion for what it is, and such moral and spiritual strengths not only must be earned instead of being legislated, they are undermined when we attempt to mandate a policy through legislation.

So yes, I'm pro-life. I've attended marches on Washington. I've marched in front of a hospital that performs abortions in Allentown, Pa., and I pray for abortion to end. I've yet to be convinced by anyone that the ongoing political effort to end abortion is going to accomplish that goal, nor that it won't cost us dearly on many other fronts.

A far superior way to that end is through compassion and personal involvement. That's how the first-century Church ended infanticide in the Roman Empire, after all. Not by getting the Senate to condemn the practice, but by making nightly trips through the city and rescuing abandoned infants, and then raising them.

Compassion has a moral force that politics can't even come close to.

4) The judgment issue. Okay, here's the part that mildly cheeses me off even as I acknowledge there is some truth in what the professor says. It's a writing issue. Yes, a liberal could be saying "Jesus was a liberal, because liberals are more than those no-good stinking conservatives." However, the professor character, who appears to speak for Budziszewski, never acknowledges the flip side of the coin: A conservative could say, "Jesus was a conservative, because conservatives are ore than those no-good stinking liberals." And because the liberal character the top is knocked down easily here with no chance for reasonable representation, I see him as a caricature, and find that the article is less reasonable/balanced than it pretends to be.

What's the message readers are going to take away from this article? I see three of them in this section: Liberals don't have a good reason for supporting the social programs they do; liberals don't have a good reason for opposing war; and liberals are judgmental hypocrites (although I'll allow that I'm overstating that one myself).

To sum up, my reading of the article is that, although it claims to present a balanced view of things, it still reflects a brias toward one side of the debate. As I said, I could easily write a piece where the grad student -- who really does act like he's in high school -- is confused because a friend of his had a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus was a conservative."

And really, what prompted this piece? It's the growing number of people in the U.S. like me who identify themselves as liberals and as Christians -- and the reminder that Jesus doesn't belong to the Religious Right, which I think is the presumption we've seen played out for the past few presidential elections. The truth of course is that both Religious Left and Religious Right belong to the Lord, and woe to any of us who try to own him.

When it comes to a liberal profession of faith, I have no shame

I have it on good authority that I am going to hell when I die.

Amazingly, this isn't because I watched "The Last Temptation of Christ" back when I was in college. It's not because I drive too slowly in the fast lane, and it's not even because I think a foot-long ponytail looks good on a 34-year-old man. No, I'm going to hell because I have the audacity to call myself a Christian and a liberal at the same time. I'm a member of the Religious Left.

Despite the seeming oxymoron in a term such as Religious Left, the truth is that religion and liberalism actually have a long, shared history in this country, beginning with abolitionism.

Socially liberal religious groups such as the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers, formed the backbone of the Underground Railroad, risking arrest, fines and harassment-by rescuing blacks from slavery in the South and smuggling them north to freedom in Canada.

In the years since, the Religious Left has been at the forefront of issues such as women's suffrage and the Civil Rights movement. While the establishment has pounded the drums for war, religious liberals have manned humanitarian efforts in the middle of battle zones to make sure that the wounded innocents are cared for.

In Dallas, the Trinity Foundation has challenged churches and synagogues to meet the needs of the homeless head on, by providing them with a place to stay and helping them find jobs. The Trinity Foundation also keeps tabs on hucksters who use religion as means to make themselves wealthy at the expense of the vulnerable.

In Chicago, the Jesus People, a religious commune on the wrong side of the tracks, has fought to1 protect the people who depend on low-income housing by fighting efforts to gentrify neighborhoods behind the guise of redevelopment.

And while President Bush four years ago was incredulous when an interviewer asked him about hunger in Texas, former President Carter — like Bush, a professed born-again Christian — is a major figure in Habitat for Humanity, an organization that has made tremendous strides in providing affordable housing to the poor.

Equal rights for women, civil rights for minorities, support of hate-crime legislation, affordable housing, food and clothing for the homeless, civil unions for same-sex couples, education for those in prison, an end to capital punishment — these are all liberal causes, and they're all causes I support as a Christian.

During the last 20-odd years, the Religious Right has been the dominant voice from Christian groups, as it has claimed a monopoly on truth, and its interpretation and application. Depending on whom you listen to, any deviation from the party line — which increasingly has meant the Republican Party line — is unpardonable.

Contrary to what many on the Right, both religious and not, would have us believe, liberalism isn't a cancer eating away at the core of an otherwise healthy society. It isn't about undermining traditional family values, about eroding the foundations of our nation, hating America, or giving people a free ride at the expense of the public.

Liberalism is the simple belief that everybody deserves the same basic opportunities and respect as everybody else, regardless of the social, economic, religious or racial position they were born with. That's it.

If it means some people will take advantage of the system, so be it. In the long run, I'd rather be taken advantage of than to throw a family out on the street because they couldn't pay the mortgage in a sour economy. I'd rather have less money in my own pocket than leave employees struggling to get the health care they need. I'd rather face disappointed shareholders than reward years of company loyalty with job outsourcing.

"Whatever you do to the least of these," Jesus says, "you do to me."

I'm religious, and I'm a liberal. Let my heart bleed.