Values Based Living

03/30/2008

Values Based Living


Paul Munnis


Democrats who live in Rochester are in a funny position. Most of the media is Republican owned and controlled and thus political news is shaded pretty well to the right. The right has not hesitated to tell us how to think, to worship, and to behave, and of course how to vote.

Now most people don’t think in terms of left, or right, or center. They think in terms of issues and they weigh an issue against their own value system. If an issue comes out different from what their values tell them it should be then they rightfully cry “foul.”

Minnesotans have always had a set of shared values since the Conestoga wagons first left tracks on our territory and so there were shared values, dreams, and a consensus of morals. But then the ideologues came and they brought with them a different set of values and a scheme to manipulate people’s values and it soon divided our community, then the region, then the State, and sadly even our country then became divided and people became at odds with one another. People who should be in solidarity became contentious.

To take one pretty simple example there was the issue of gun control. Now anyone who thinks about this for more than 30 seconds knows that gun controls have to be different for different places. The same rules needed for varmint control in rural Montana are not good rules for crowded New York City. With such a diversification between urban, rural, and suburban areas, the values of gun control are not going to be shared except within a region. Thus political manipulators have a nice issue that they can split the electorate over and then use the resultant upset to their political advantage. This was the genius and sad effect of Karl Rove who specialized in finding and developing these types of divisive issues. His craft destroyed community and replaced shared values.

There was abortion, there was euthanasia, there was flag burning, there was classroom prayer, and the list went on and on. Soon it got to be that all I had to do was look at my book of Christian Service and I could anticipate the next moral issue to come down the political highway.

The political science behind it was simple enough. If you could divide people into groups of 50 – 50 over an issue then you only had to win one percent of the other side over to your side in order to win any political contest. Winning at all costs was the value system used and in their minds the ends justified the means. Using that stratagem the GOP managed to divide and conquer America. In the process they destroyed our community of shared values.

Now, as people have woken up to these things they are on their guard and more wary thus it is getting harder and harder to use the divide and conquer stratagem. Slowly but surely people are thinking about their shared values and are moving back to their own center where those values are once more a good yard-stick for exercising balanced judgment. People are listening more to their own minds now than to the siren voices of division.

As this happens some other wonderful things are happening. The shared values notion says its wrong to discriminate against women – thus a Hillary Clinton can become a candidate for public office and have a decent chance at winning. In similar fashion a black can run for the presidency and have a decent chance of winning the Party nomination too. Suddenly the division is set aside, we acknowledge our humanity, and we turn to our shared value system to guide us once more.

This is something to celebrate; that once more we are returning to a shared value system. In time it will bring back bi-partisanship to politics and government, in time it will bring back qualities of mercy and charity. A new generation is discovering some important facts about our political life and they are asserting them in values based terms just as they were taught from childhood. All those who taught Sunday school, all those who lectured on morality, all those who taught life lessons, all those who sermonized, those who wrote letters to the editor, those who spoke out quietly at work to their fellows, you should all rejoice. You are seeing your work effort now bear good fruit.

Legislative members are voting their conscience instead of the Party line and that is disturbing the Party bosses who are losing control. The Party bosses are retaliating against men and women of conscience and it is waking the rest of us up to injustice.

I have compared America to a listing ship that was taking on water and in danger of foundering; but now the bilges are being pumped dry and the ship is righting again and starting to sail along proudly once more even in heavy seas.

We saw this change begin about six months after the 2004 election when people realized something was really wrong with government. They tuned-in and by 2006 elections they had found their way through the ballot box challenges. All signs are that this will continue through the 2008 election and once more our Ship of State will be set right. Candidates who want to win in 2008 had better be values based for that is where voters are now at. Value based judgment is influencing the city council to the U.S. Senate

Thus the good news is that people are once more listening to their own common sense and values. They are realizing that we must tax ourselves in order to make ourselves stronger. They are realizing that compromise is not a term of weakness but a show of inner strength. I could go on and on with this but you get the idea. The rugged individual that was always the hallmark of America is back on the scene and thinking for themselves. As a result they are not so easily manipulated and not so easily scared into compliance. Americans have faced a lot of spiritual storms in the past eight years and have emerged stronger for the battles fought.

I am glad about that and I hope that you are too.

What does this have to do with a GOP controlled media? It nullifies the effect of that media making it secondary to shared values thinking and thus our shared values triumph over propaganda and political manipulation.

America is coming back into its own. It was a close call for awhile.