The Basics

My core beliefs, for anyone who's curious

In recent years I’ve increasingly felt the need to explain who I am and what I believe. If you’re curious about that for any reason, read this and you will know me better. If you’re not (and if you don’t know me in real life, why would you be? I don’t blame you), feel free to keep scrolling. I feel like I’m not very good at explaining my positions or opinions in person, unless my nervous system is completely calm. So basically that means I can’t really talk about this stuff with anyone other than my sister, my husband, or a very small number of trusted friends without my emotions getting the better of me. My biggest insecurity in life is feeling misunderstood. But I’ve learned in recent years to protect my own peace and simply avoid conversations that I feel will end without my message being effectively communicated or received with an open mind. I still wanted to give those who are curious about how I form my opinions the opportunity to understand me better if they want to.

So, for anyone interested, I have a couple of different basic filters that I use to arrive at my conclusions about the world and my place within it.

Faith

I was raised to be a Christian, and that system of beliefs informs my positions more than anything else. I have been part of Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and non-denominational congregations or youth groups at various times throughout my life, and I’ve taken note of where the doctrines of different denominations vary (sometimes dramatically). The fact that even within Christianity there is a massive diversity of belief allows me to feel confident that there is no “best” way to interpret scripture, and no single set of beliefs that all Christians should ascribe to, politically or otherwise. For me, I test my beliefs against what I understand to be the example and teachings of Jesus. I do not believe the Bible is literally, factually, and historically correct on all things. It was written by flawed humans and is flawed in many ways itself. As a collection of religious texts written by many different people and over a long period of time, it was subjected to and altered by political forces during its development into what we know as “The Bible” and contradicts itself many times. The countless translations separating us from the original text have also been influenced by the political aims of the translators. Even if a perfect translation was possible, any ancient text can only provide so many literal commands that feel relevant or valuable in modern life, and the ways different groups of people choose to interpret those writings to guide their own choices and behavior is fine with me. I give the final word on all faith-related analysis to Jesus, because I choose to believe that the characterizations presented by the gospel writers of Jesus leave us with a clear picture of who He was and what we can learn from Him. So for me, the bottom line is what’s written in red letters (for those unfamiliar, in some translations of the Bible, the words of Jesus are printed in red). If Jesus didn’t talk about a topic that’s being presented as something Christians should be for or against, I seek additional context to inform my opinions on it.

American Values

I was also raised to be a proud American. I think learning and understanding history is important, not to get a literal prescription for modern life (because, as with the Bible, there are only so many applicable tenets that apply to both the 18th century and today), but to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I don’t think criticizing America’s flaws makes one unpatriotic; rather, I think blind loyalty to anyone waving a flag is more un-American than standing up to those who try to use our country’s symbols to oppress, demean, or belittle others, and to enrich themselves. I believe in the Constitution and in the progression of its amendments (because amendments were designed to change the parts that no longer serve us), I believe in the separation of Church and State, and I believe that the government should not be run as a business, but as a service to improve the lives of the people within our borders and a guide of how to use our resources.

Using that filter, here is my analysis of the preamble to the Constitution:

Text: We, the People of the United States, in order to
Analysis: Everyone has to work together on this list of goals for the government

Text: form a more perfect union
Analysis: Improving government is an ongoing project, not an end goal—even perfection isn’t a stopping point, because we must then make it “more perfect”

Text: establish justice
Analysis: The government needs to have a system for righting wrongs

Text: ensure domestic tranquility
Analysis: The government has a responsibility to keep the peace

Text: provide for the common defense
Analysis: The government has a responsibility to keep people safe from threats to their safety

Text: promote the general welfare
Analysis: The government has a responsibility to ensure people have the ability to meet their basic needs

Text: secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity
Analysis: Everyone has a right to freedom/liberty and that liberty has to be actively maintained for future generations

Well-meaning citizens can disagree about the best ways to accomplish those goals or what specific services would fall under the categories listed. These are legitimate debates with many possible answers. But from my perspective, the combination of my two filters has led me to believe the following:

We have a duty to care for everyone and a good government can represent and serve people of every race, religion, and gender. All people in a plural society have a duty to participate in that society, and to recognize people different from them as equal stakeholders. We should recognize the limitations of our own knowledge and welcome subject matter experts to guide policy because God created us all with different gifts to offer in the service of others. We should heed evidence of ways humanity is harming creation, and take steps to be better stewards of the Earth (not least because our own survival as a species depends on our stewardship of the planet).

I believe earthly laws are intended to create a well-ordered society and provide recourse for harm, not to enforce one religion’s standards of behavior on the whole country. Earthly laws concerning morality must agree on a minimum standard (and conveniently, most major philosophical and religious belief systems throughout history share many basic moral standards), and while the government has the power and responsibility to hold those who fail to meet the minimum standard accountable, all people are free to behave in ways they feel exceed that standard without imposing their higher benchmark on others who believe differently.

When it comes to policy, I believe government inefficiency can be combated by adequately staffing and equipping departments to perform their intended functions--cutting funding to necessary government services is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It only serves to increase the problem, which in turn lets critics justify scrapping the whole thing without even trying to improve it. (We see tactics of “undermining by underfunding” in action throughout the federal government right now—in the IRS, the USPS, and education, just to name a few.)

Similarly, the possibility of a few bad actors taking advantage of government programs isn’t reason to deny those programs to people who need them. On the contrary, depriving people of basic needs increases the likelihood of them resorting to desperate measures to survive. Poverty is the number one contributing factor to crime. Most people are good and when their basic needs are met, they have the ability to better themselves and contribute to society in ways great and small.

Regulatory agencies are needed to keep the public from being exploited, defrauded or harmed--because corporations will never put the public good over their own profits, and lawsuits after the fact cannot restore someone’s life or health to them. Capitalism is very useful to incentivize innovation through competition, but unfettered capitalism sacrifices humans and resources at the altar of profit every time.

I believe that investment in public education leads to a more engaged, informed, and thoughtful electorate. I also believe that it contributes to a shared cultural identity when kids go through school together and have similar basic formative experiences as kids across the country. It gives them a baseline commonality that can help transcend racial, religious, or economic divides which would otherwise make it more difficult for them to understand each other as adults. Prejudice and hatred isn’t human nature—it’s taught. And teaching it is easier when kids grow up isolated from people different than them.

It seems that many conservatives yearn for the 1950s, for the last time they believe America was great. What made postwar America great? I’d argue that it was investment in the people. Affordable education that enabled many people (though not all) to seize the opportunity to advance in society. Economic policies that fostered the creation of a strong middle class. Pension programs that allowed people to build a career at one company and know they could retire comfortably. How did they pay for the robust social programs of the mid-20th century? A top marginal tax rate of 90%. Sure, rich people were slightly less rich than they could have been. But they were still VERY rich. And today there are people who have more money than any human can ever hope to spend in 100 lifetimes, and companies using government bailouts on stock buybacks, and corporations exploiting legal loopholes to avoid paying living wages and benefits (for example: a shameful number of Wal-Mart employees are on food stamps or other assistance because Wal-Mart doesn’t pay them enough to live. They keep them on limited work schedules to ensure they stay defined as part-time, and are therefore ineligible for health coverage or other benefits. “Welfare queens” aren’t the ones exploiting government assistance; corporations exploit that assistance by using it to subsidize their payroll). And all of them expend an inordinate amount of effort and resources to pay as little in taxes as possible while their profits grow exponentially. Economists who have analyzed proposed tax plans against the costs of policies like universal childcare, healthcare, and education conclude overwhelmingly that we can pay for the programs everyone wrings their hands about without even needing to replicate the top taxes levied in the 1950s. It just takes the billionaires and corporations paying into the system rather than continuing to exploit it.

Despite what you may think at this point, I do not believe the solution is for Democrats to take everything over and to be a one-party government. I believe multiple parties are necessary for a healthy democracy. I would actually prefer ranked-choice voting and a multi-party system that requires the formation of coalition governments in the absence of a sole majority winner. Systems like that in other countries seem to help avoid rapid and seismic political swings every few years. True conservative policies can help keep the pace of progress from outstripping the public’s ability to adjust to change. But I think that bad faith actors have hijacked both conservative and Christian identities in America and are weaponizing those identities for their own personal benefit. I think they’re weaponizing fear and mistrust in marginalized groups who have no power, and have convinced their audience that those marginalized groups are the source of all their problems and want to destroy them. I think true conservatives need to retake the Republican party from MAGA and enable a restoration of reason in the party.

I believe in the promise of America. I believe most people want the best for this country, but I think a lot of people have been misled into believing that the best isn’t possible for everyone and that they have to preserve what they can for themselves. Are my beliefs idealistic? You bet they are. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing or inherently less valid than beliefs based on pessimism about human nature. Allowing myself to feel unapologetically idealistic has made me so much more positive about my place in the political process and hopeful that what I believe in is achievable. There’s a place for realism in the implementation of one’s ideals, in the process of working to achieve one’s goals. But when thinking about who God calls us to be as Christians? When choosing who to vote for? I’m going to pick the candidates who will take us closer to my ideals every time, not the ones who believe that a fair and just society with opportunity for all is impossible. The table is big enough for everyone; there is enough to go around so that all are fed, as long as we all help take care of each other.

So that’s basically it. There are so many things I didn’t touch on here, but I could literally go on forever and I had to stop at some point. Even though it’s not my first post here, I consider it the “title track” of this substack, so to speak. I can provide evidence for any factual claim made above, so if you have questions about any particular point please let me know and I’ll be happy to share my sources. There will also be more about my information gathering process to come in a future post, because the ability to seek out reliable information and filter that information through one’s belief systems to arrive at a reasonable conclusion is vital to effective civic engagement. I think it’s important to share, so that others can feel as confident in their abilities to cut through the noise of the modern information ecosystem with their sanity intact as I do most of the time.

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