{"id":3886,"date":"2008-10-22T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/gop-shouldnt-tolerate-anti-muslim-rhetoric\/"},"modified":"2009-08-22T14:46:39","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:46:39","slug":"gop-shouldnt-tolerate-anti-muslim-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/gop-shouldnt-tolerate-anti-muslim-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP shouldn’t tolerate anti-Muslim rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo we really have to do this again?\u201d was my thought when I first read about Otero County Republican Women Chair Marcia Stirman calling Barack Obama<\/a> a Muslim and asserting that Muslims are America\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Apparently, we do. So here goes.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Stirman wrote a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News<\/a> about why she\u2019s a Republican. In it she hit on familiar topics: She believes \u201cin a sovereign God who sometimes gives us what we deserve.\u201d She opposes abortion and supports the death penalty. She backs fiscal responsibility, small government, personal responsibility, spanking children, women raising \u201ctheir own children\u201d and men paying \u201cfor the children they\u2019ve produced.\u201d She believes marriage is between a man and a woman and that \u201cillegal aliens should go home.\u201d She endorses guns, lower taxes and voter ID.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Amidst all of that are these statements: \u201cI believe Muslims are our enemies. \u2026 I believe war is a fact of life and we should always win. \u2026 I believe there is a moderate and a socialist in this election. I agree with a two-party system, but Obama isn\u2019t a messiah or a democrat. He\u2019s a Muslim socialist.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

She\u2019s wrong. Here are the facts:<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u2022 Obama isn\u2019t a Muslim. He\u2019s a Christian who has darker skin, a less common name (at least in America<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place>) and more liberal views than Stirman.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u2022 A February Gallup poll<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n

Understanding different viewpoints<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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\u2019t fit in anyone\u2019s box. As a Christian, that\u2019s a lesson I learn over and over.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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\u2019t understand where they were coming from and I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019m not trying to imply otherwise.)<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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 America<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place> in the 21st Century.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Dems were forced to embrace diversity<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Democratic Party didn\u2019t begin to learn that lesson until recently. The party was largely intolerant of anyone who didn\u2019t agree with its platform. Though it talked about diversity, the party ran stuffy, uninspiring white men for president in 2000 and 2004. Couldn\u2019t they find anyone better?<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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<\/a>, pushed Democratic Party to the brink, and it had to change.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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<\/a> — standing alongside two candidates with liberal views on guns — Obama and Joe Biden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The GOP has resisted such change<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Stirman\u2019s letter, on the other hand, exemplifies what\u2019s wrong with the Republican Party in 2008. She wrote in the letter that, \u201cPeople believe lies because it\u2019s much easier than finding the truth.\u201d She\u2019s right. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But having compassion for and seeking to understand people is what the God of the Bible calls us all to do. And our nation\u2019s 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<\/a>, but against evil spiritual forces.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a free country, and Stirman is certainly entitled to thinking that is ignorant, divisive, hateful and inciting. But if she chooses that path, she\u2019ll be part of the problem, not part of the solution.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

There is hope for Republicans<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Thinking like Stirman\u2019s in the GOP is a primary reason for the shift to the left that promises to give Democrats a huge majority in Washington<\/st1:state><\/st1:place> on Nov. 4. The GOP is going to have to do some soul-searching and redefine itself after the coming shellacking. There are some signs that could happen. State GOP Chairman Allen Weh told the Journal that Stirman\u2019s comment about Muslims was \u201cuneducated.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat she should have said is, \u2018I believe radical Islamic fascists are our enemies.\u2019 We\u2019re fighting them in multiple theaters in the war against terror today,\u201d Weh, a retired Marine colonel, told the Journal. \u201cI\u2019m a guy who spent almost a year in Iraq<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place>. I know Iraqi Muslims I served with would have taken a bullet for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

And check out this video from American News Project<\/a> of supporters of John McCain<\/a> chasing people with thinking like Stirman\u2019s away from a McCain rally in Virginia<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>:<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo we really have to do this again?\u201d 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\u2019s enemies. Apparently, we do. So here goes. Stirman wrote a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News about why she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haussamen-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}