I waited for a week before writing anything on the election because I wanted to see how durable my first impressions of the outcome would be. My first impressions turned out to be pretty durable; I am still happy with the outcome for two reasons. First, it represents our best chance to plot a stable and moderate course toward reducing the deficit by sharing the burden across the entire spectrum of American people and not simply forcing the poor to pay for the whole thing. Second, it makes it clear to republicans that their attitude toward resident aliens needs significant reform. This is a faith based website, so I will talk faith here. These two issues were by far the most significant spiritually, and the re-election of Obama tilts us ever so slightly toward some very important biblical perspectives on them.
We read in Leviticus 19:33 that “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as a citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” One reason California has gone so strongly democratic the past several elections is that when Pete Wilson was governor there he sponsored, and got passed a referendum denying undocumented people all rights to public schools and medical care. This draconian measure was ultimately thrown out by the courts, but it created a lasting, and accurate impression, that the GOP simply had no compassion whatsoever on people who took enormous chances simply to create an opportunity to survive. When President George W. Bush proposed what most people believed were common sense immigration reforms, he was torpedoed not by the democrats, but by his own party. Moreover, 2012 was remarkably embarrassing from this perspective. Whether on his own or because he felt forced to it, Romney ended up to the right of Rick Perry on this issue. It got him the nomination, but destroyed any credibility he might have had among Hispanics voters, and it should have. Of the two major parties, it is the democrats who have come the closest to the biblical value we see in Leviticus and a number of other places in scripture.
Similarly, by declaring that they would not under any circumstances countenance even a single dollar of tax increases to reduce the deficit and balance the budget, and at the same time declaring that nearly every entitlement for the poorest Americans would be subject to very strict scrutiny, the republicans declared the fiscal problems of this country are going to have be solved by the poorest Americans. The claim of course is that these folks don’t pay taxes, but what the GOP has yet to understand is that a 10 percent cut in benefits, for example, would be the equivalent of a 10 percent tax hike on that group of people. It is fun to quote Amos, so I will join the fun, “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals — they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth…” Now I readily admit that for me to invoke this example is hyperbole, and inflammatory hyperbole at that. But I do it to make a point. The Obama Administration’s attitude toward the poorest Americans is much more “biblical” than that of republicans in general, and Romney specifically. Obama is arguing that the poor must not alone be responsible for the deficit; everyone must share the burden. The GOP has generally said that defense spending and tax hikes are not on the table, an attitude that runs clean contrary to the plain sense of the overall attitude of scripture.
I am well aware that “biblical values” have long been the stronghold of evangelical protestants, but I believe it is high time liberal Christians began to dispute that perspective. We hold to some very strong and clearly pronounced biblical perspectives, and find them championed more effectively by democrats than by republicans. I, for one, voted my faith this last election, and that is why I voted for Barack Obama. This country has never come remotely close to disintegrating over “family values” but it came perilously close to complete destruction over the question of exploitation of the poor and the dehumanizing of the alien. Approximately 650,000 Americans died between 1861 and 1865 in a war fought, in the end, over that very question. Lincoln, our first republican president, made it very clear in his second inaugural address that he understood this very well indeed. Today, we need to understand that as well as he.
