The Moderate Republican: Merry Christmas!

What the Moderate Republican Stands For

Republicans came to power as the party of big ideas, and without returning to that model they could be looking at a long winter. Additionally, those big ideas need to focus on Middle America. Three issues that could work are conservation, reform and localism.

Conservation- a return to the Teddy Roosevelt model of conservation. One doesn’t necessarily have to buy into global warming to appreciate the need to protect the natural resources we have.

Reform- the federal government is bigger than ever, and won’t be getting any smaller over the next four years. Republicans need to fashion themselves as national reformers. Much of Middle America wants the government as safety net, but bloated bureaucracies breed corruption that needs to be dealt with.

Localism- this is the lynchpin that brings it all together. If we bought our food locally, shopped locally, governed locally, many of the issue we now have to deal with would go away, or at the least become manageable.

Below is a collection of writers who speak about the things that matter. Some are Right, some Left and some Center, but all intelligent and rational voices.

One of my regular reads is Thinking Faith, the online journal of the British Jesuits and for this Christmas holiday I anted to share a recent article on the first Christmas and what it means.

Can we ever really know what happened in Bethlehem at the first Christmas? Nicholas King SJ suggests that while they may not provide a historical account of the birth of Christ, the gospel narratives still ultimately convey the meaning of the event that we celebrate on 25th December.

Short excerpt after the jump:

As Christmas approaches, it is not surprising, and not at all a bad thing, that Christians long to imagine what the first Christmas was like. Indeed, in the Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius Loyola suggests a very charming contemplation of the Nativity, inviting the retreatant to imagine themselves as ‘a poor and unworthy little servant’, who will see to all the Holy Family’s needs. St Francis of Assisi likewise encouraged the faithful to contemplate the crib at Christmas; and it was he, apparently, who added to the Nativity scene the ‘ox and ass’ that he had discovered in Isaiah 1:3, where the prophet is unfavourably comparing Israel’s relationship to God with that of dumb animals to their owners (the animals recognise that God is Lord, Israel doesn’t). Or if you find yourself visualising camels looking down their supercilious noses at the Christ-child, that is because generations of Christians have meditated on Isaiah 61:6 by way of filling out the details of Matthew’s story of the Magi.

So there is nothing at all wrong with imagining the scene of Jesus’s birth, and paying prayerful attention to what it might have been like. Indeed, I should warmly encourage you to do so, to encounter the mystery towards which our Advent is journeying; and if you find yourself using the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to set the mood, then you will be doing just what Christians, including the evangelists, have done before you at this time of year. But just don’t think that means you know precisely what happened at midnight on December 25^th in the year 0.

But what, you clamour restively, can we actually know about the circumstances of Jesus’s birth? Not a great deal, I have to admit. Luke and Matthew are each pursuing their own theological agenda, telling the gospel story to their contemporaries as they know best; and it is almost impossible to reconcile their two narratives.

The Moderate Republican

What the Moderate Republican Stands For

The American Conservative » Rod Dreher

Via Meadia

Front Porch Republic

David Brooks

The Soap Box

Merry Christmas!

Click here for the complete article.

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