RECENT READS Updated!

So it’s about time we updated the Recent Reads page with some new books that we’ve found really enlightening. There are some great resources on politics out there (not boring at all!) and we hope that you get a chance to check these out. 

 

 A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell – Ever wonder why conservatives and liberals disagree on almost if not every single issue? Thomas Sowell illuminates the underlying assumptions of these two political philosophies to make sense of this relentless rift between the two. One of the best foundational books on politics we’ve read!

 

 Ronald Reagan by Dinesh D’Souza – What’s with all the buzz about Ronald Reagan with conservatives? That’s what I wondered when I first began wanting to know more about politics. Well this wonderfully written book will introduce you to this great American president and how he inspired a generation and beyond of Americans with conservative values.

 

 A Bound Man by Shelby Steele – A renowned expert on race relations, also of mixed race, Shelby Steele gives a highly insightful and personal account of the white guilt complex that has plagued America since the Civil Rights Movement and how this phenomenon has accelerated Barack Obama to the national political scene.  Shelby Steele’s extraordinary eloquence makes this book an enjoyable read.

 

 Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George & Christopher Tollefsen – There are a lot of abortion books out there, many I’ve read. However, this one really outshines them all. Forgoing religious grounds, the authors find common ground with those of all sides, using purely scientific and philosophical reasons for the preciousness of life.

 

 What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us by Danielle Crittenden – Modern day feminism seems very attractive and empowering to women – forgetting marriage and children, living as independent women with careers and a string of boyfriends… However, how has a generation of these women ended up? Crittenden assesses the real outcomes of what feminist ideals have brought us and why happiness still eludes many modern women.

 

 FairTax: The Truth by Neal Boortz, John Linder, & Rob Woodall – A whole lot of politicians have been talking about scrapping the IRS and replacing it with the “FairTax”. What the heck is the FairTax and why is it a fairer, more transparent, cost-efficient, business-growing, incentive-driving, better tax system than the monstrous $350-billion-per-year one we have now? Find out in this very informative book!

 

 Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg – In the book’s own words, “Jonah Goldberg reminds us that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Fascism.” Fascinating, indeed! 

 

 Do the Right Thing by Mike Huckabee –  Mike Huckabee gives you his first-hand account of his phenomenal 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Despite finishing 2nd, his outstanding oratory gift, charisma, and humor caught the eye of Hollywood’s largest talent agency. Only a year after, this very talented former governor of Arkansas now has one of the most popular commentary shows on cable!

 

 Makers and Takers by Peter Schweizer - An extensive research by a Hoover Institution scholar on “why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic and envious, whine less… and even hug their children more than liberals”.  

 

 48 Liberal Lies about American History by Larry Schweikart –It is funny that I have to question and relearn almost everything that I was taught in U.S. history. During my high school days, I was subjected to the liberals’ total monopoly on history and given a very biased and manipulated account of it. This book gives a list of the most common liberal lies perpetrated by some of the most popular textbooks and refutes them one by one.

*These have been added to the RECENT READS page for easy reference.

How I Became a Conservative, Part II

Hey guys! Last time Lisa shared her story of how she became a conservative. Well now, it’s my turn.

It all happened about a year and a half ago. I started my senior year at a new high school, not expecting this last year to be anything significant, other than that it would be the year I would finally finish high school.

First semester, I was in a U.S. history class. My teacher was a middle-aged, gray haired, old dude whose job was to teach us a sweeping history of the United States. Having grown up in New Zealand and moved here only a few years ago, I was not too familiar with American history, so a lot of what he taught us in this class was new to me. At that point, I wasn’t very knowledgeable about political matters either, let alone know what Conservatism and Liberalism really stood for. I saw myself as somewhat conservative on social issues but for everything else, I was really unsure and I really didn’t care. As for most teens, politics was an irrelevant subject to me and not something I wanted to waste my youth over.

So at first I didn’t take much notice of what he taught us and just took the information at face value. However, as the semester progressed, it became clear to me that he was really one-sided, favoring everything liberal and disparaging anything conservative or religious about America’s history. He taught us as fact that America was not founded on anything religious at all, early Americans were intentionally genocidal, big government had solved all economic problems in the past, it was capitalism that had caused the Great Depression, and FDR saved America with his vast government programs. His account of history was also very anti-American. In every conflict in foreign policy, it was always: blame America first.

He talked long and hard about how great the Democratic presidents like FDR were, but dismissed or denigrated all the recent Republican ones. Reagan was not so great a president as the conservatives claimed; no, he was just a B-list actor who had been incapable of doing anything great, let alone actually won the Cold War. Nixon was just a crook, Bush I was pretty bad, but Bush II was the worst and stupidest president ever to hit the face of America.

Now, this kind of anti-American, anti-conservative, anti-religious description of America really went too far for me not to take notice. However, having spent a good many years in public schools which taught its students along this liberal line, I really didn’t know what to believe or know what the other side of the story was. Coincidentally, around this same time, the elections were gearing up to begin, with the presidential nomination races for both Democrats and Republicans already in full force. So with these events in the horizon and with some questions brewing in my head, I thought, perhaps it was time I figured out something about politics.

So what did the conservatives think about these issues? Were Republican leaders really that dumb, as this teacher portrayed? Were there any great Republican presidents at all? And which candidate should I support for the next elections?

Luckily, my older sister, Lisa, had recently gone on a craze reading about politics to prepare for the 2008 elections. So she was all too eager to share her knowledge and books with me. Lisa gave me a copy of Letters to a Young Conservative, by Dinesh D’Souza, the book, she said, that had really opened her eyes to conservative ideas and changed her life. Lofty claims, I thought. So I gave it a go.

Well hate to admit it but she was right. It actually changed my life too. Once I started understanding Conservative ideas a little more, I realized they validated a lot of what I already thought about the world and was very much in line with my Christian beliefs. It spurred me to read a whole bunch of books that got in depth about why the ideas of Conservatism were a whole lot better than the ideas of Liberalism.

I realized that Conservatism is a political ideology that is much more in line with reality and therefore, creates a political system that works. Why does it work? Because it is not afraid to admit that we live in a world where bad things happen and people are imperfect and evil and prone to doing bad things, especially when there is no one around or no one to stop them. Was this true? Well, human history is, unfortunately, filled with examples like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, and Mao Zedong who have ruthlessly killed thousands or millions of people.

Liberalism maintains that humans are actually really good inside, so when bad things happen it must be because bad people who seem to do these bad things were misunderstood and just needed some rehabilitation to get them on the right path. They think that by talking things out, like what Neville Chamberlain did over and over again to appease Hitler, that that would be enough to solve all the conflicts and wars that have plagued humanity since the beginning of time.

So their great 20^th century solution was to create the United Nations with this high hope. It was indeed an honorable aspiration. However, has it worked? No, it has not. It was based on a flawed assumption that we could magically get rid of this badness in people when we can’t because it is just, unfortunately, inherent in humans. It seems that when I turn on my T.V., the news everyday still tells me a heck of a lot of bad stuff is going and I have no reason to think that that will ever change. However, Liberalism still likes to maintain the fairytale that humans are making progress, sticking its head in the sand and pretending that reality doesn’t say anything different. Of course there is a need to talk and that should be our first option. However, talk without action is useless. When countless millions of human lives are at stake by what governments do and don’t do, we cannot afford the luxury to think that evil people like Kim Jong Il or Saddam Hussein can be rehabilitated while they go on killing hundreds of thousands of their own people.

Conservatism understands that humans are driven by incentives and do things for their own self-interest. For example, if Best Buy were giving away HDTVs, that would be a good incentive to go get your free TV. Would there be many people lining up at Best Buy? You better believe it. Along the lines of this idea, Conservatism creates a government that would create incentives for people to work hard and be productive by lowering taxes, while deterring them away from laziness, crime, and other harmful activities by instituting consequences. Liberals on the other hand give incentives for people to rely on the government and penalizing those who are most productive. If the government gives me money for not working, what’s the point of my occupational efforts? Also, if government raises taxes so high that it’s not profitable for me to start a business and hire other workers, why would anyone start a new business?

This understanding of human nature is what makes capitalism work so well. The age-old liberal attack on capitalism is that it’s a system that rewards greed and self-interest. However, greed and self-interest is just a fact of human nature. Capitalism didn’t make those up. The purpose and genius of capitalism is that it provides an economic system which channels those undesirable traits for productive ends.

Society needs entrepreneurs, inventors, medical researchers, and valuable citizens like that. These people invent and sell products that improve our lives and raise our standard of living. Just think of how much better life is with commodities like cars, electricity, the vacuum cleaner, dishwashers, computers, the Ipod, etc. However, it isn’t just an improvement in our standard of living, but many of the products that businesses manufacture are medicines and other lifesaving products that make life even possible for some people.

Perhaps some good-willed individuals would spend countless hours producing those products for others for no reward at all; however, most of us mortals aren’t so altruistic. For most of us, the incentive for making money from our efforts is the easiest and most guaranteed way for us to get off our butts and do something productive for humanity. And that is what Adam Smith realized when he engineered this whole brilliant system of capitalism.

Having said that, I acknowledge that corruption happens all the time with businesses and there is no way to condone it. However, corruption and wrongdoing are not restricted to the business world alone; it is a fact in every sphere of society, including government. It is the corruption that we need to get rid of and the wrongdoers that need to be punished, not the entire system itself.

Well, after having learned so many new and eye-opening things about Conservatism and Liberalism like this, I also learned that a large portion of what I had learned in history classes were a whole bunch of lies and half-truths that made liberalism look a whole lot better than in reality. If you want to know more, check out the book I’m pretending to be reading so intensely in the picture above: 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School).

In an effort not to fill your brain up with too much information that you can’t keep it all in, I’ll stop right here and finish this up. So, in short, that is how I, Aaron Wong, came to be a political conservative.

 

[AW & LS]

How I Became a Conservative, Part I

Hi folks! A lot has happened since we last updated. The new Obama administration has taken office and within only two weeks, so many momentous events have sprung up in the world of politics that they necessitated the end to our blogging hiatus.

So, if you have been keeping up with the news, you will have observed that the Obama administration has begun its plan of taking this nation toward a significantly different political and ideological path from the last presidency. In our previous posts, we never explained why we opposed a far-left Democrat president, as Obama is indeed turning out to be. So it is with great tardiness that I present you this next post, devoted to how I, Lisa Smiley, became a political conservative.

Co-writer of this blog, my brother, Aaron, and I grew up in the little islands near Australia and Antarctica, formally known as New Zealand. New Zealand is a beautiful little country, just as good-looking as what you see in the thrilling movie trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

Anyhow, New Zealand’s government is a bit more socialist in comparison to what we have here in America. For example, government mandates comprehensive social security, unemployment benefits, child support benefits, and socialized healthcare. But all of this, I was totally unconscious of throughout my juvenile years, being the typical youth.

So my eighteenth birthday came around, and what do you know? It was election year! So off I went to vote for my favored party and I voted proudly for the Labour Party! Our equivalent to the Democrat Party here. Well, that was kind of a no brainer – I was young and the rightist National Party was just too uncool for a high schooler like me to vote for. Moreover, those Labour people stood for values like helping the poor, making sure the rich don’t get too greedy, and giving money to students like me to go to college. The opposing National Party, I heard, was just all about businesses getting their way… or something like that.

You see, New Zealand in general is pretty socialist and liberal. Religion there holds hardly a place in the public or political arena. When I became a born-again Christian at the age of 16, I could count about three other believers in the whole grade of around 150 students. Furthermore, I did my share of America-bashing. Americans were sooo stupid! And everyone but the celebrities was overweight. When Bush won the U.S. presidential election in 2000, I remember thinking, “that’s the end of America!” I prayed to God He’d have mercy on that nation.

Funnily enough, my family decided to move over here right after I finished high school. When I arrived I was still the typical liberal young person. In moral matters, however, I was a pro-life, pro-one-man-one-woman-marriage advocate due to my Christian faith, but that had nothing to do with politics.

2004 came around and it was election year again in the Americas. Having caught up a bit on politics at church, I realized one party was for abortion and the other was against. One party wanted to redefine marriage and the other wanted to leave it that way. I never thought these moral issues were so political, but I guessed I was wrong. So I decided to root for those Republicans that year instead. Not that I could vote, but I showed my support by telling everyone else to.

However, being a two-issue voter was kind of a blow. When someone would bring up economics, I was scrambling to make something intelligible up. One person brought up how Bill Clinton was such a great Democrat president since he had gotten rid of the whole national debt! Wow, I thought, Republicans couldn’t beat that. And all along, not knowing that I had been duped by a liberal Clintononian lie.

So I retreated into inner contemplation. I was a Republican-supporting dummy with no good answers to give to anyone except that Republicans liked babies and wanted marriage to stay the same. Everywhere around me I was being closed in on. The news media, newspapers, family members, all wanted me to hate conservatives! But I realized I had become one just by being pro-life…

When the Republican Party won the 2004 election that year it was a sigh of relief. Politics faded out of my mind and I got back to living my normal life.

Then about two years ago, I was at Barnes and Noble looking through the current events section. A lot had happened since 2004. I had gotten married and was then pregnant, taking a break from school and working some temp jobs while waiting for the delivery date. So I had lots of time on my hands. That’s when I came across the savior of my life. It would redeem me from my political ignorance and forever change my view of the world. It came in the form of the book: Letters to a Young Conservative, a primer on Conservatism for young people by an immigrant like me named Dinesh D’Souza.

Wow, I was so excited that there was so much more about Conservatism that resounded with my other values and made so much sense! My interest for understanding the roots of Conservatism and Liberalism was piqued from that day. I read it and reread it and tried to get my husband, my brother, Aaron, and everyone else to read it too. Aaron, who was not much into politics back then, thought naturally I was crazy… all over a measly little book.

Letters to a Young Conservative taught me a lot. I was beginning to realize how much garbage I had been fed throughout my impressionable years. Were the ideas of Liberalism really compassionate towards the poor? No. I realized their leaders talked a lot about helping the poor but when it came to their own personal lives, they sure didn’t do that with their money. Joe Biden was a prime 2008 example who gave less than 1/4% of his income to charities in the last ten years while other much hated Republicans like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Dick Cheney so generously and quietly gave many, many times over that percentage. 

But it wasn’t just the empirical data. Ideologically, the liberal answer to solving the issue of poverty was essentially flawed. It’s not that they want you to help the poor. They want you to give heaps of your money to the government, who will then decide how they will do that. They are the middlemen who demand you pay your taxes and not be so greedy, so you do (unless you’re an Obama appointee), and then someone else receives this “free” money who never knew how hard you worked for it for it to be taken away by the government, who then takes all the credit. Furthermore, when government is so heavily relied upon to “solve” these social issues, it takes the personal responsibility for either a giver or a receiver out of the picture. If the government is expected to solve poverty, then I don’t have to do anything about it. If the government is giving me more money for holding a lower paying job or not working at all, there’s no incentive for me to strive any higher. Many liberals are outraged when they hear about poverty or some other dire social situation. They get so angry, demanding the government to fix it.

Conservatism resounded a lot more with my values. It emphasizes the strength of the individual; they say you are the maker of your own future, giving you incentives to work hard and be self-sufficient, and trust that you know how to spend your money better and more efficiently than the government. If you see a bad situation in society, why not you get your hands dirty and do something about it and not expect the government to? Conservatism understands the limits of government. You can do more for your future, for your life, and for others than the government.

On the other hand, modern day liberalism and socialism upholds a victim mentality – liberal leaders tell us we shouldn’t expect ourselves to accomplishment these great things without the help of the government, they tell us to rely on the government for our futures, that we should expect someone else to pick up the tab for our healthcare, education, and childcare, never emphasizing that every single dollar that’s used for these “free” services actually come from its citizens. With a communist streak, they uphold the poor and vilify the rich, despite the fact that most of their revenue comes from the latter. Furthermore, why should I trust that the government will come through on its word? It mandates that a portion of our every paycheck go to social security and then the government changes its mind when it realizes that the whole system is going to be bankrupt in the next decades and so we probably won’t even reap the benefits of our investment when we really need it.

Everyone knows how inefficient and bureaucratic government is. It wastes millions and billions of the public’s money and when that’s all gone, takes out huge trillion dollar loans against our futures to pay for the most ridiculous projects. The $800 billion bailout bill is a primary example. $300 million for contraceptives? $5.2 billion for the horribly corrupt, voter registration fraud driven, “non-profit”, ACORN? Forgive me if I don’t see how that’s going to save our economy. And sadly, George W. Bush did not stick to conservative values when he instigated the first failed bailout bill. 

Yet President Obama and the Democrat leaders want more and more of this inefficient, debt-ridden, bureaucratic system? Can you imagine what that would be like? Going to the doctors and being treated like you’re at the DMV? Government-owned hospitals that are run down because the state’s budget had to cut renovations? Having to wait a year to see a neurologist, another three months for an urgent MRI, then dying three days before the MRI appointment? As a matter of fact, it’s already a reality in some Western European nations like England which adopted socialized healthcare long ago.

Ahh I remember when I was a 17 year old teen in New Zealand, stricken with severe adolescent acne. I went to my family doctor who told me it was going to be over a year before he could get me an appointment with the hospital dermatologist. A teenager can’t wait a year for this kind of thing to clear up! Well, thankfully, there was a private dermatologist in town who was able to see me in two weeks and saved me from further complexion humiliation that year. Good healthcare is not free, and whenever government steps in it will definitely not be good!

Well that is just the beginning of what I started learning about the real ideologies of conservatism and liberalism. I was indeed shocked and humbled to see that simple ideas had such reverberating consequences on our society and specifically our lives. And we have only scratched the surface. There is much more about these philosophies that needs to be explored and discussed.

On a side note, as a female minority who grew up in a Chinese immigrant family of eight who moved to New Zealand with parents who spoke no English, I am in no way downplaying the hardships of poverty or dismissing the real disadvantages that many people face as it has been my first-hand experience.

Are you a conservative who also has a story of conversion? Are you a moderate who is still undecided or wavers between the two opposing political ideologies? A gung-ho liberal who won’t change your mind? Leave a comment and let us know!

[LS]

The Outcome of the ‘08 Elections

Hi friends,

I would first like to thank all those who have shown great support for our new blog concerning God and politics. We’ve received some incredibly encouraging comments in just the first two weeks that it has been active. Now that the elections are over, what next? Indeed, Barack Obama did win the presidential race, but is that all? Will we just stop there and concede all that Lisa and I have been fighting for? We didn’t start this blog just to talk about the elections, though it was conceived out of the urgency of this election. No, we feel our mission to influence society and change the hearts and minds of Americans for conservative principles has only just begun. We will not stop just because this election cycle is over. 

Is there anything to celebrate in this election? Yes, there is. In Arizona, Florida, and our home state of California, the people have voted in the ballots to define marriage as between one man and one woman. This is awesome news! We are congratulating the campaigners who did a magnificent job getting the word out about this crucial issue. In an influential state like California where we live, we are especially proud that Californians have decided that marriage is deserving of Constitutional protection. 

We will continue fighting for the ideas and principles that will preserve and prosper our country. In doing so, we pledge to support the president of the United States because we are one nation. In doing so, however, we will not compromise and lay down our convictions. We will continue to convene for God and politics. 

We’d be honored if you’d join us in this cause. Thanks for reading!

[AW]

Why it’s NObama ’08 for me, Part 2

 

Well, this election has sure been a rollercoaster ride! I still recall the high level of enthusiasm during the Iowa caucus in January and thinking to myself “I can’t believe the elections aren’t even until November!” And now here we are, only a week away from Election Day.

In our last post, Lisa made some noteworthy points about Barack Obama regarding his radical pro-abortion record, his vast plan to increase government spending, and the negative overt and covert effects of his proposed tax plan for America.

But is that all we need to be concerned about with Barack Obama? No, regrettably, there are more troubling issues that cause us to pause and think twice about voting him into the presidency.

For one, we all know that Barack Obama is a gifted orator and very persuasive. His campaign hails him as a unifier who will pull down party lines to bring hope and change for this country. He claims he is a different kind of politician; a reformer, unshackled by the corruption of the Washington establishment. But does he even have a record of being this kind of leader?

As of late, there have been countless cases brought to our attention surrounding Obama’s campaign ethics. Take the news revealing the campaign’s online donation fraud. Obama’s website has at various times deliberately lowered their credit card security checks, permitting anyone with a credit card to make a donation. Columnist Mark Steyn reported one such incident. A reader of his tested Obama’s donation system by making a donation with his Mastercard using the name “Adolfe Hitler” of “#1 Reichstag Building, Berlin, Germany”. The system accepted it and he even received a welcome email which began “Dear Adolfe, thanks for joining this movement…” Fake names and addresses have gone through Obama’s online donation system breezily. On the other hand, McCain’s online donation system has not been so easily fooled.

Foreign monies have also been funneled into Obama’s fund through illegal means such as this. As stated in the National Journal, the Federal Election Committee (FEC) website has recorded approximately 13,000 unverified or overseas donors to Obama, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars. Campaign law prohibits anyone who isn’t a U.S. citizen or permanent resident from making donations. The Obama camp has done little to stop this before word got out.

Blatant violations of campaign finance law have caused an official investigation to be brought to the FEC against Obama’s campaign by the Republican National Convention.

Additionally, Obama camp’s reported that over $200 million of their campaign money was raised with donations of $200 or less, thereby not requiring the disclosure of the donors’ information. The New York Post reported that no presidential candidate has ever raised that much money with so many small donations. How do we know that millions of this money weren’t raised with false identities like “Adolfe Hitler”? With Obama’s deliberately low level of checks and balances, he has invited such illegal practices to prevail.

Is Obama a new kind of politician, transparent and free from corruption? Many of you may recall the part of Obama’s biography about his many years spent as a “community organizer”. It turns out his community organizing work was heavily intertwined with the crime-ridden group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). What is ACORN anyway? ACORN is a nationwide non-profit “community organization” which claims to be non-partisan, and seeks to represent the poor and registers voters. But in reality, it has radical leftist origins, working to further liberal, socialist causes by specifically seeking only to register democrats. It has also been heavily involved in suing banks to force them to make bad loans to unqualified recipients, accusing banks of racism against minorities. Obama’s campaign has created websites to counter the ‘accusations’ about this association. Why is Obama trying to distance himself from this group now? In the past he has praised ACORN and even on his website he’s quoted as saying, “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

To be heavily associated with ACORN right now is something for Obama to be worried. It already has a history of voter registration fraud in many states. Right now, It is under investigation from the FBI for countless charges of voter fraud nationwide, many of its employees have been indicted and convicted, and it has admitted to fraud charges. The charges and evidence are astounding. Witnesses testify they used tactics like harassing citizens on the street to vote numerous times (one citizen registered to vote with them ten to fifteen times). Workers claim that this kind of practice is encouraged by ACORN’s supervisors. Investigations also found that its employees had registered many convicted felons, the dead, underage kids, and fictitious characters under false addresses. For example, investigators became suspicious of ACORN’s voter registration in Indiana after discovering that 105% of Indianapolis County’s population was registered to vote. In 2007 in Washington state, five workers were convicted of voter fraud. Over 1,700 of ACORN’s registrations were fraudulent in one Washington county alone, and 450 were registered at one address.

Obama’s connection with ACORN is closer than he has led us to believe. For example, he represented this group in some significant lawsuits, he worked as Executive Director of Project Vote in 1992 alongside ACORN, he has trained its workers in voter registration techniques, and not surprisingly, was endorsed by ACORN for president. He represented ACORN in a lawsuit against Citibank to force them to lend subprime mortgages to the unqualified. When he served on the boards of the non-profit Woods Fund along with former terrorist Bill Ayers, he approved grants for ACORN. Just earlier this year, his campaign paid an ACORN subsidiary organization $800,000 for voter registration services. 

So is this the kind the President we want in the White House? One who has close ties with an organization that has committed countless felonious accounts of voter fraud? I’m not sure that this was the “hope” I was looking for.

Well there you have it! We haven’t even touched on all the troubling issues surrounding Obama, but I hope this much gives you a truer idea of who Barack Obama really is. So what to make of this candidate? He has created a public persona of embodying hope and change and promising reform to the old kind of politics. But considering all the staggering finance fraud he’s facilitated and the numerous problematic associations, not only with ACORN, one needs to reconsider what kind of President he will be if elected. That combined with his radical leftist stances on key issues, is why it’s NObama ’08 for me today.

[LS & AW]

WELCOME TO KEEN TO CONVENE!

Hi friends!

This is Lisa Smiley and Aaron Wong writing from Southern California. We are siblings, dedicated Christians, who felt the urgent need to start a blog concerning the current events of our time.

There are many blogs out there about current news, politics, and the Christian faith. Why did we feel the need to add another blog to the thousands upon thousands already in existence?

Well, both of us are avid readers of current news and politics. However, it seemed to us that there was not much discussion in the blogosphere or on the internet about political issues through the eyes of young Christians like us. There seemed a lack of introductory information about how Christians should approach politics and think about the major events currently happening in our nation and abroad. Even we, keen readers of the news, were confused about why this or that Christian leader was telling us to support this law or vote to overturn that law or support such and such person for the presidency. What were the reasons to compel believers to take an active stance on topics like the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage? Why weren’t other equally important topics like poverty or education discussed with such frequency?

Hence began our journey to figure out the Christian basis of political participation. In the last year or so, since the exciting race for the presidential nominations began, we have been poring through a whole host of political and philosophical books and sorts. We were amazed at the magnitude of information available to us. Our excitement could not be contained and we began sharing these things with our friends and family. But alas, it became too clear that much of it was uncommon knowledge. Here we were, only a few months away from the elections and many of us were ill-informed or misinformed about the most pressing issues happening politically. Our hearts grew heavy. We discerned a pressing need to share and discuss these findings with other believers.

In short, that is why we resolved to start this blog. Too much of what is happening right now on the national scale is either being ignored, misunderstood, or disdained by Christians. But this should not be so! Nonetheless, it seems that many of us don’t know how politics or social issues have anything to do with being a Christian.

Many may ask, is it not enough to share the gospel and live a quiet, peaceable life, as is commanded in the Bible? Unfortunately, it is not. Like other Western nations, America was built upon democratic values. Our democratic society demands of us active participation in the governing of the nation, in enacting laws, and in steering the future of this country. We Christians cannot retreat into our own circles when the opportunity is given to us to uphold righteous values and principles that preserve freedom and maintain justice. As citizens of this nation, we cannot forfeit this right and duty.

We are living in a record era of political and social change. It is of prime importance for us believers to sit up and take notice of what’s going on in our present nation and engage ourselves in these issues to discern the right Christian response.

So, we are calling fellow Christians to join us in involving ourselves in the political conversation of our nation. Indeed, this is a right and duty we cannot forfeit. Will you join us for this purpose?

In the upcoming weeks and months, we will explore different issues that are at present being discussed, debated, and decided upon in the political and social arena. These topics include the presidential race, the Iraq War, the economy, the sanctity of life and of marriage, healthcare, and many others. Furthermore, we will discuss the reasons why Christians should engage in politics, the differences between liberalism and conservatism, and why one or another political stance seems more in line with biblical, Christian principles.

We would love for you to convene with us. Thanks for reading!