“Do we really have to do this again?” was my thought when I first read about Otero County Republican Women Chair Marcia Stirman calling Barack Obama a Muslim and asserting that Muslims are America’s enemies.
Apparently, we do. So here goes.
Stirman wrote a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News about why she’s a Republican. In it she hit on familiar topics: She believes “in a sovereign God who sometimes gives us what we deserve.” She opposes abortion and supports the death penalty. She backs fiscal responsibility, small government, personal responsibility, spanking children, women raising “their own children” and men paying “for the children they’ve produced.” She believes marriage is between a man and a woman and that “illegal aliens should go home.” She endorses guns, lower taxes and voter ID.
Amidst all of that are these statements: “I believe Muslims are our enemies. … I believe war is a fact of life and we should always win. … I believe there is a moderate and a socialist in this election. I agree with a two-party system, but Obama isn’t a messiah or a democrat. He’s a Muslim socialist.”
She’s wrong. Here are the facts:
• Obama isn’t a Muslim. He’s a Christian who has darker skin, a less common name (at least in
• A February Gallup poll of 50,000 people in more than 35 predominantly Muslim countries found that 93 percent condemned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and only 7 percent supported them. That 7 percent justified their beliefs with political, not religious, reasons.
Understanding different viewpoints
In flagrant disregard of those facts, Stirman appears to have placed God and the truth in a neat little box that upholds her view of the world. But God doesn’t fit in anyone’s box. As a Christian, that’s a lesson I learn over and over.
I grew up in a fairly liberal home without religion. When I became a Christian in college, I spent a lot of time around a largely conservative group of people. I felt out of place and suffocated. I couldn’t understand where they were coming from and I didn’t like most of them. It took years of hard work, communication and faith to reach a point where I could understand their viewpoints, even when I didn’t agree with them. I now count some conservative Christians and some secular liberals among my closest friends. (I should point out that there are plenty of secular conservatives and liberal Christians, and I’m not trying to imply otherwise.)
I believe understanding viewpoints that are different from our own is one of the most difficult tasks in life. Every day I struggle with understanding the liberal world in which I grew up, the conservative world I joined in college, and the blending of the two worlds that younger generations like mine is forcing on
Dems were forced to embrace diversity
The Democratic Party didn’t begin to learn that lesson until recently. The party was largely intolerant of anyone who didn’t agree with its platform. Though it talked about diversity, the party ran stuffy, uninspiring white men for president in 2000 and 2004. Couldn’t they find anyone better?
Losses to the Republican Party in the presidential races in those years, largely at the hands of the evangelical Christians who overwhelmingly supported George Bush, pushed Democratic Party to the brink, and it had to change.
The Democratic Party had credible black, female and Hispanic presidential candidates this time around. Equally important, it had more diversity of thought among its serious candidates. For example, the party had a candidate with an A rating from the National Rifle Association — Bill Richardson — standing alongside two candidates with liberal views on guns — Obama and Joe Biden.
The Democratic Party is also working to bring more people of faith, people who oppose abortion and fiscal conservatives into its fold. And that is dramatically changing the party of the left.
The GOP has resisted such change
Stirman’s letter, on the other hand, exemplifies what’s wrong with the Republican Party in 2008. She wrote in the letter that, “People believe lies because it’s much easier than finding the truth.” She’s right. It’s easier to think of people as the enemy than it is to try to understand their views and recognize them as people who are, like us, trying to find their way through this life.
But having compassion for and seeking to understand people is what the God of the Bible calls us all to do. And our nation’s God-inspired Constitution requires that we work to find common ground and reach compromise so society can progress. The Bible says our struggle is not against other humans, but against evil spiritual forces.
It’s a free country, and Stirman is certainly entitled to thinking that is ignorant, divisive, hateful and inciting. But if she chooses that path, she’ll be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
There is hope for Republicans
Thinking like Stirman’s in the GOP is a primary reason for the shift to the left that promises to give Democrats a huge majority in
“What she should have said is, ‘I believe radical Islamic fascists are our enemies.’ We’re fighting them in multiple theaters in the war against terror today,” Weh, a retired Marine colonel, told the Journal. “I’m a guy who spent almost a year in
And check out this video from American News Project of supporters of John McCain chasing people with thinking like Stirman’s away from a McCain rally in
There are people within the Republican Party who understand the truth. They must spend the next few years redefining the party as one that fully embraces that truth; otherwise, the conservative principles the party claims to care about will continue to lose ground in a society that is designed to thrive on political balance.