shaken, but not stirred

Man, I'm kinda bummed out that Hillary came in third in the Iowa caucus yesterday. On the upside however, at least Obama won it--I don't know much about the specifics of his platform, but from what I have read he seems like a pretty solid guy (albeit young), and I think that part of me is just yearning for our next president to NOT be a white male. White guys are so damn boring it kills me sometimes.

That being said, I am actually pleasantly surprised with the adequacy of the Republican front runners as well. Although I would prefer a Democrat because I'm a little more liberal and I think we just generally need a change in strategery (yeah, I said it) in the White House, we could do worse than to elect Huckabee or McCain. They both have strong views on education, tax amendment, and health care, which is great.

However, I think the reason that I couldn't ultimately support either one of them is that there is too much religion brought into the picture--too much basing the political future of a multi-faith nation on Christian values. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to come off as some sort of hedonist, but church and state are separated for a reason. When religion plays too strong a role in politics, you know what happens? The Middle East. Our mistake is thinking that because we are championing Christian instead of Muslim values, we are somehow exempt from holy wars and zealot fueled violence. This is really dangerous thinking, because when you really get down to it, every person in the world is exactly the same. The group of people most vulnerable to manipulation is the group that thinks "that could never happen to us."

And by the way, I keep hearing all this yammering on about how "America was founded on Christian principles." It wasn't. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, etc--all the key founding fathers were Christian, it's true...however, the principles that they instilled in our Constitution were overwhelmingly humanistic. As my dad once said, "The US constitution is just good common sense down on paper." After all, the concepts of fairness and equality are not copyrighted by Christianity--they just happen to be some logical, universally good ideas that Jesus taught.

Whew, I guess I'll step down off by soapbox now--I'm starting to get a little dizzy up here. Go Hillary!