The Republican Party Is Going To Stop Loving Us

For many years, we have all known that the Republican Party is the party of love. They say only nice things about people so that everyone will love them. They gladly accept the label “bleeding hearts” for themselves because their hearts flow out with love toward not just the middle class and poor, such as the victims of bank robo-signing, but even toward the world of nature, you know, birds and stuff. They embrace the Bleeding Heart ideal because this term refers to the bleeding heart of Jesus Christ.

Nowhere has Republican love been more obvious than in the pronouncements of commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. For years, liberal writers such as myself have referred to them as “bloviators,” but we have been so wrong. Every word that has come from Rush Limbaugh’s mouth has been loving and nourishing, each an attempt to help his listeners by giving them truly constructive advice. Even Jesus himself would have a hard time matching the love that Republicans have showered upon their listeners. Where have you ever seen a more loving person than Donald Trump? When the Religious Right Republican commentators make it abundantly clear that everyone who disagrees with them in even the most minor detail is a Satan-possessed terrorist God-hater, this is only because they care about us and wish for us to be saved from hell by worshiping them. Pat Robertson, who pours his words of love from Trinity Broadcasting Network, is the ultimate Christian superman, and he consistently proclaims the Gospel of Republicanism.

So great has been their love that the Republican Religious Right fully deserves every last penny of their wealth. Paul and Jan Crouch, owners of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, have used millions of dollars of money sent by their worshipers to purchase numerous lavish mansions, a luxury jet, and then even have a $100,000 motor home for their dogs. Surely their mansions and the comfort of their dogs is more important than a few thousand children in Bangladesh—isn’t this what Jesus would have said?

But all of that is about to change. At the Republican convention, Governor Chris Christie said (as quoted by Fox News), “‘I believe we have become paralyzed, paralyzed by our desire to be loved.’ Christie said leaders chronically opt to do what is popular, ‘but tonight I say enough. Tonight, we’re gonna choose respect over love.’”

So the Republican Party is now going to command the kind of respect that one receives in the absence of love. What kind of respect could this be? It cannot be the respect that comes from doing a good job for your customers, since that is a form of love. Certainly it is not the kind of respect that comes from neighbors helping one another after a hurricane, such as the one that almost hit the Republican Convention. Both of those are forms of altruism, which Mitt Romney specifically rejected a couple of weeks before Christie’s Sermon on the Mound. It must be the kind of respect that comes from force and intimidation. The kind of respect that a schoolyard bully receives from the other kids whose faces have been beaten into the dirt. Limbaugh called student Sandra Fluke a slut. (Maybe I should call one of my unwed female mother students a slut, and see how long my tenure would protect me.) That, my friends, is love-speech. I wonder what respect-speech would look like.

And before you know it, the whole country will be dominated by the vast canopy of Republican respect. I am looking forward eagerly to all of us non-Republicans, and even moderate Republicans, being called a slut or a terrorist or a communist or a servant of Satan. I can hardly wait to live in this Republican utopia.

New political blog

There is a new political blog some of you might enjoy. It is www.republicanclimate.blogspot.com. It explains how the Republican Party is contributing to a climate of hostility, intimidation, and economic oppression. The blog also occasionally criticizes Democrats as well.

Well, If We Aren’t Christians, Then What Are We?

(Photo from Guardian.co.uk, 2008)

In the previous essay I explained by even Bible-believing “Christians,” much less agnostic “Christians” like me, cannot use the term Christian, since the far-right conservatives have defined the term to their satisfaction.

Well, then what term can moderate Christians, or agnostic followers of Jesus, use? I suggest “Bleeding Hearts.”

And why not? That is what the conservatives, especially the religious conservatives, already call us. They intend it as an insult. But maybe we should just embrace it. I remember a 60 Minutes interview of Studs Terkel back when I was a youth in the 1960s or 1970s. Mike Wallace or Morley Safer or somebody asked him what he thought of being called a Bleeding Heart. His answer was immediate and passionate: Terkel said that he was not offended by this term, because it referred to the bleeding heart of Jesus Christ, of which he was not ashamed.

Progressive Christians, and Christian agnostics, identify with the loving side of Jesus, as depicted in the gospels, which includes Jesus dying on the cross not as a theological technicality but pouring forth is life blood and love. This is what is meant by Bleeding Heart.

Conservative Christians identify mainly with the Jesus of Revelation, who rides a white horse and has a sword sticking out of his mouth. Conservative Christians look forward to the Battle of Armageddon in which the earth literally runs knee-deep in human blood. I am not making this up. I heard on Christian radio (the Bot Radio Network back about 2004). Their main, and almost exclusive, focus is on the Apocalypse, and their message is, Bring it on! Some of them literally—I know from firsthand accounts—think Barack Obama is the Antichrist of Revelation.

I think we should just call ourselves Bleeding Hearts, putting ourselves into clear opposition to the “Christians” who look forward to bleeding battlefields.

Who Defines “Christianity”?

Different people define the term “Christianity” differently. Back when I considered the Bible to be literally true, I considered myself a Christian. I’ve adopted the term Christian Agnostic now, since I consider the Bible to be inspired stories rather than literal truths, and I reject Christian doctrine, but remain an admirer of Jesus of Nazareth. The Apostle John said, “He who loves is born of God.” That would still include me.

But, as it turns out, the term “Christian” may never have applied to me, even back in my fundamentalist days. And there are millions of Americans who think they are Christians, but who are not. It has to do with the definition of “Christian.”

The definition of a word is based upon the way most people use it. The dictionary does not define what a word means. Some dictionaries, like the OED, incorporate all the ways that anyone has used the word (in print or online). And (at least where I live, in Oklahoma) what the majority of people who call themselves Christians mean by the word is that you give full, unconditional, passionate support to the Republican Party, even if that party is led by a Mormon whom they think is probably going to hell. To the majority of Christians in my geographical region, a Christian is someone who spews hatred toward those whom they brand, for whatever reason, as liberals. It is to be associated with a church at least some of whose members believe Barack Obama is the Antichrist. (I am not making this up.) Therefore, the definition of Christianity as used by most people in my area means Republican (but not Log Cabin Republican or even middle-of-the-road Republican). Therefore, those of us who believe or believed in Jesus the bringer of peace are or were not Christians. I have no right to determine whether I am, or ever was, a Christian.

I realize that the same pattern may not hold true in other parts of the country. I suspect that in California the definition of Christian would be different. I suspect that in California where the Republicans are more liberal than Oklahoma Democrats, even a Christian Agnostic might get away with calling him- or herself a Christian. Certainly in other parts of the world there is no necessary association between Christian and Republican. But, where I live, I do not feel I would be allowed to use the word “Christian” for myself even if I were still a Bible fundamentalist.

Bertrand Russell wrote a book, Why I am Not a Christian. Were I to write such a book, it would not be very long: because most Oklahoma Christians say that, as a non-Republican, I cannot be. There are plenty of Oklahomans who are progressive and call themselves Christians, but they are not the majority.

It's Official: Republicans Reject Altruism

Now for some late-breaking news about altruism. (By late-breaking I mean less than a week old. I usually get month or year old news to you.)


President Barack Obama made a statement that sounds like a completely non-controversial, common sense description of altruism as it plays out in our communities and in our nation. Here is the original quote. Obama was talking to small business owners: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

I cannot imagine that anyone would object to this. Businesses do not teach their employees how to read and write and add and subtract. Some businesses build their own private roads, but those roads connect to highways that are built by counties, states, and the federal government. If you’ve got a business, you did not build the schools and roads. (I plan to operate a small business myself soon, so I can say soon that Obama’s statement reflects the common sense beliefs of a small business owner.) Businesses and families can thrive only within stable communities, bound together by altruism, which is facilitated by reasonable regulations and reasonable taxes.

Altruism, as I have written several times previously, is doing well by doing good. One animal (such as a human) does good things to and for another animal of the same species, and both of the animals prosper as a result. There are innumerable examples of altruism, confirmed by observation and (thanks to people like Martin Nowak) mathematics. It is one of the clearest components of evolutionary theory. And it is intuitively obvious to all of us.

Mitt Romney, however, had to attack Barack Obama for this statement. Obama clarified that he meant that if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build the schools, roads, and bridges. On August 13, Romney attacked even more vigorously, saying that this context was even worse than the original statement. Perhaps Romney, and therefore the mainstream of the Republican Party, envision a future in which America consists of individuals who do not help one another out but just fight and struggle with one another for dominance. Gated communities that are entirely self-contained? I cannot believe that Republicans are stupid enough to believe this. I suspect that Romney simply attacks anything Obama says without even thinking about it. If Obama said the sky is blue, Romney would say that this is Obama’s Democratic bias, and that the sky is really Republican red. Long ago John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” and until now pretty much everyone accepted this as true. Welcome to the Republican vision of what America should be like. Or not; as I said, I think Mitt spoke without thinking.

Mitt Romney is not the only one to speak without thinking. When Joe Biden said, this week, that the Republicans want to put people (he was speaking to a largely black audience) back in chains, he easily won the Stupidest Statement Award. Where did Obama find this clown anyway? Biden is the same one who emailed all of Obama’s supporters and said that if Obama did not win the election it was their fault for not giving more money. As one of those followers, I emailed my response: that this was an offensive statement. But while Joe Biden is destroying altruism by clownish incompetence, it appears that Republicans are destroying it deliberately.

If Mitt Romney makes a big deal about attacking Obama on the issue (previously, non-issue) of altruism, I can only wonder if he has any ideas of his own. Perhaps American businesses can prosper by investing their money in overseas banks the way he does? If Romney makes the rich richer, will this automatically lift up the middle class? The rich have been getting richer, and the middle class has been getting poorer (especially by debt burden). Raising up the rich has not raised up the middle class in recent years, and there is no reason to expect that it would in the future.

This is just one more example of Republicans taking on what should be a non-partisan topic—something confirmed by science—and attacking it. Evolution, global warming, stem cells, and now altruism. As a biology instructor, what can I do? Do I need to ask the Republican Party whether carbon atoms really exist before I teach about molecular structure? The Bible does not, after all, say that carbon atoms exist. I can only hope that this example is extreme; but I would never have guessed that altruism would be treated as a dangerous theory either.

Good luck to all of you altruists.

A similar essay appears on my evolution blog.

Sam Harris and The Moral Landscape

I realize that I am adding my voice to the discussion about Sam Harris’s book, The Moral Landscape, long after its initial publication and after many others have spoken. My excuse is that I have only now read it.

Harris spends a lot of time in his book going over what I consider the prolonged and painful contemplation of the obvious. Of course there is a difference between right and wrong. Of course we should all act in ways that contribute the most to the general well-being. I am astonished that cultural relativists still exist and stand ready to exonerate evil practices simply because one society or another may consider them a cultural norm. If a tribe somewhere practices human sacrifice, it is simply wrong, even if it is a cherished tradition within that culture. I am astonished that some liberals defend the right of Fundamentalist Mormon polygamists to invite thirteen-year-old girls to be one of their many concubines (unofficial wives). (The mainstream Mormon church abandoned this practice in the late nineteenth century.) The thirteen-year-old girls cannot freely choose to be “multiple wives.” They are too young to understand what they are doing, and are easily overwhelmed by the powerful church leader who tells them that they will go to hell if they do not submit to being a multiple wife. (I obtained this information from a different book, Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.) We all know this and there is no point in wasting time discussing such points with cultural relativists. They have had a field day attacking Harris with their own brand of fundamentalism: the unswerving belief that there is no absolute morality. So one problem I had with Harris’s book was that it defends an idea nearly all of us already know.

But there was a problem with Harris’s approach. He said that science can determine what is right and wrong. I do not believe that science is equipped to do this. I suggest that it is much easier if we take an evolutionary approach. Perhaps our major human evolutionary adaptation is altruism. Therefore, for our species, and probably for all other intelligent social species in the universe, things are good if they promote general altruism, and bad if they erode it. By general altruism, I mean for everybody, not just for your own rapacious tribe. Altruism can be scientifically studied. The only assumption we have to make is that this adaptation is not only successful but good. We have to start with some assumption somewhere. Harris points out that scientists assume the scientific method is good; that it is good to be honest about data and to be logically consistent about reasoning.

So I believe that Harris reached the right conclusion, and did so by the right path. He just apparently misnamed the path, calling it science instead of altruism. And we can scientifically study the degree to which any given behavior enhances altruism. Anyone who questions the goodness of altruism does not understand our species very well.



This entry will also appear in my evolution blog.