Politics, Current Issues, and the People's Voice Initiative
Beliefs have consequences. The more I questioned my beliefs the more confident I came away with their general truthfulness. Once my beliefs were more clearly defined I began the next task of trying to figure out how they applied to life, and in particular the life of the community.
When a group of people live together they become an entity that is more than just a bunch of individuals. They become a community. This community will then be faced with the challenges of normal life, and they need to make decisions. The process of making those decisions deserves some consideration.
Government = decision-making for a community. I don't know if this is too simplistic, but it seems accurate to me. In light of this, my approach to government in light of Christianity takes the perspective of how we make decisions. The first five articles elaborate on the following five themes:
- Decisions require a worldview, and Christianity is just as valid as any other worldview. Governments need to choose one worldview to use as their foundation for running a country, so why not choose Christianity?
- The decision-making process. Assuming we choose Christianity as the foundation for our society, what's the best process to go about making decisions? Of all the available options, democracy is the most consistent with Biblical ideals.
- The decisions. Once the process has been established, there's still the question of what's the best decision to make? Christianity has much to offer in this respect.
- Decision-making in practise. Democracy is a very old idea, and many aspects of our present system are equally old, but innovative new technologies could make democracy work far better than it presently does.
Spending decisions. We all hate the word "tax," and alternatives do exist to the question of how the citizens of a nation spend their hard-earned money.
The other side of the story
Do you trust the media to deliver the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts? You ought not to. As with government, media and journalism is comprised of humans and all humans are biased toward their own worldview. You're often only getting half the story, and sometimes major pieces of information are suspiciously missing. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's simple human nature. Depending on which media sources you rely on the bias could go in a variety of directions. What's important is to make every effort to get your news from numerous sources with different biases in order to get a balanced view of the situation.
If you are getting your news through the "mainstream media" then you are already getting one half of the story, as the following links illustrate.
Unfortunately the group-think bias exists not only in the media, but also in higher eduction facilities as well, so we are not only bombarded with this worldview in our daily lives, we're also formally taught under it.
In the links on the left I have archived some articles that show the other side of the story. On some issues I also include my own perspective. Below are some more internet resources exploring the other side of the story:
Various research projects
I like doing research on various subjects. I'm putting some of my misc political research here for anyone who's interested. I don't think that will be too many of you considering I now find the articles rather dull.
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