5 Reasons Why This Pagan Won’t Vote for Barack Obama
A man named Gus diZerega who describes himself as an “elder” of the Gardnerian Wiccan tradition and a “Brazilian shaman” wrote a piece for Patheos describing five reasons Pagans need to vote for Barack Obama. His arguments were basically MSNBC talking points devoid of any statements of faith. Republican theocrats hate women, want to destroy the environment, and live to transform America into a giant cathedral where everyone would be forced to buy copies of The Watchtower on pain of death.
This appears as the “Pagan” view but really only a subset of Pagans embrace these politics. There are in fact many conservative Pagans whose voices tend to be drowned out by the shriller and more activist Left; I know this because I’m one of them.
I have five reasons why I would never vote for Barack Obama — or any Democrat — and, unlike Mr. diZerega, my reasoning reflects the rational, political expression of my faith, not Internet memes popular among the uneducated.
The first reason is I believe in the freedom of all people to practice their faith and worship the divine as they choose. Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church is not just a political fight between pro-life and pro-choice. It is the government trying to claim the right to force people to betray their god and abandon his teachings. This is an outrageous and unconscionable breach of those Catholics’ First Amendment rights. The state must never be allowed to believe itself the arbiter of any groups’ theology or how it is expressed. Religion must be experiential; each person must experience the divine personally and be allowed to act in accordance with that understanding. Unless a religion is actually hurting other people, like say committing almost 20,000 terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11, the state has no business involving itself with adherents at all.
And I challenge liberal Pagans to name one time when the “theocratic” Right has not only demanded that you change your religious doctrine, but then passed a law forcing you to do something you thought ran contrary to your religious beliefs.
The second reason I won’t vote for any Democrat, including Barack Obama, is that I believe in life. I believe that life is sacred and the so-called pro-choice movement has devolved into a transmitter of nihilism and anti-humanism. Unlike some of my pro-life cohort, I don’t actually believe that abortions can ever be made illegal. More importantly, I believe the legality of abortions is a symptom of our unhealthy and unnatural views of sex, parenthood, and children. My generation was one of the first raised with the “pro-choice” message that children ruin lives, that pregnancy is to be avoided, and that sex is no more important or profound than a handshake with a stranger. My generation and the generations that followed have internalized this view and it expresses itself in our sexual neurosis, self-esteem issues, and self-destructive behavior.
Sex is sacred. It is a gift that two people share and the fact it can create life makes it more wondrous. And while I’m not quite prude enough to insist you should be in love with everyone you bed, I do think ideally you should at least respect and appreciate them. The mainstreaming of sado-masochism and violent pornography makes me feel I may be in the minority with those views. How do you raise healthy adults in a society whose rhetoric implies that most mothers secretly resent children coming into being because it “ruined her life”? And how can we expect to live in a healthy, moral society when one party’s platform involves trying to force the rest of us to pay for people to have unprotected sex with strangers?
What a doozy of a heartfelt plea. Best of luck to you on your path.
second wave femininism is pedophile grooming, anyway. it always has been. Simone de Beauvoir was fired from her first job as a secondary school math teacher for preying on her young, female students. The entire rest of her career was basically standing out in the street, calling to the young women on the balcony of their family home, to come out of the safe shelter of their parents, away from the safe embrace of their husband, out to her. she hated pregnancy and childbirth- she called it “rot” and “decay”- in the same way that a pedophile mourns a young boy growing peach-fuzz on his upper lip. it’s the same ‘rot’ and “decay” that a young boy’s voice cracking is.
She thought women could become “subjects” rather than “objects” by killing someone-anyone- but that the easiest to hand were their own infants. So, abortion is the female version of “The Stranger”- a random killing, to get to feel alive- that ought not be punished. She sings to serial killers- she tries to turn all women into killers.
It’s not random, or accidental- it’s the seed and the root and the tree.
[stands up and applauds wildly] Bravo, sir! Your arguments are beautiful and clearly and concisely articulated. I hope they will penetrate where other arguments seem to have failed — into the minds of liberal pagans, as you intend, and likewise into the minds of the secular, agnostic, and atheist lefties whose knee-jerk reaction to a conservative argument is to reflexively sneer at the “Christers”.
Two of my college friends are pagans now, of the type you describe in your opening paragraphs. I hope you don’t mind if I send them a link to your article.
Thank you!
Wow! Just wow! He lays it all out there doesn’t he?
Just goes to show that Paganism and clear-headedness aren’t mutually incompatible.
Blessed be.
If the Left cared about global warming, they’d move out of the cities, grow their own food, and ride bicycles.
They don’t care about global warming – they care about maintaining power. How many liberals do you know that ride bicycles? I don’t know any! They ride internal-combustion, fossil-fuel-burning vehicles (incl. jets & limos) and dictate to the rest of us how WE should live (toilets, light bulbs, shower heads, cars, et al). When I see liberals growing their own food & riding bicycles, I might then take them seriously.
When I first saw the headline I wondered why a member of a motorcycle club would be expected to vote for Obama anyway. Different kind of Pagan. Anti-Obamaism is definitely a ‘Big Tent’ movement.
Must dispute only your fifth point (points 1-4 make me smile and feel good for our future). “Sustainability” is, IMHO, a Trojan horse for (best case) state control of just about everything or (worst case) genocidal population control. True, small towns filled with gardens and surrounded by farms are sustainable; they also can’t support more than a fraction of the world’s present population. Vast economies of scale are necessary to feed billions; most alternatives are unthinkable.
“Vast economies of scale are necessary to feed billions; most alternatives are unthinkable.”
Bravo, Bravo, Bravo. The Naked Truth. Emphasis on “Vast”
In addition to your arguments, there is one part of Mitt Romney’s religion (and my own) that contains inherent protections for minority religions, as after all we Mormons were on the wrong end of government oppression on many occasions past. It is the 11th Article of Faith:
“We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where or what they may.”
Mormon children memorize the 13 Articles of Faith in our Primary Program; these beliefs run deep. While it is certainly possible that Romney will fail to live his religion, from past experience it is unlikely. Bishops who betray their trust are not later called to be Stake Presidents; they are usually reprimanded and perhaps even excommunicated. And nobody chooses these positions; you can’t lobby to be a Stake President or plead to be made a Bishop. You are called, and you can accept or decline. And it is most certain that it is sacrilegious for a Mormon to try and force belief on anybody. There are some who do, usually involving their teenaged children, but it is against our religion.
What might be considered the correct paradigm is my own father, who told me at the age of eleven that I should study other religions, and know what I was doing, before I became a deacon at age twelve. I’ve studied many religions since that day, and remain a Mormon over thirty years later. There is no virtue of any kind without free choice; forced obedience is the antithesis of virtue–it is slavery.
I think we can all see that the Democrats have conflated politics with religion, and are grimly determined to force everyone to adhere to their dogmas. Their beliefs revolve around resentment and hatred, as Mr. Taylor’s do not. Whether you believe in Wicca or not (and I do not), virtue is in the act. I honor Mr. Taylor for his courage in holding his beliefs up as a target for many, and hope that it will be accounted to him as righteousness in the Book of Life.
Excellent! Now if we could just get a sizable percentage of your brethren to take similar views that would be a great start.
Only quibble I have, as did another, is over the whole ‘sustainability’ issue.
There is an efficiency when you hit a certain scale factor. When you have each and every family growing their own food, you can’t support larger urban areas as there is no space for a garden in high density areas for each family.
However, one farmer on average can feed about 150 people, thereby freeing those individuals’ time up from growing their own sustenance to engage in other activities – like learning how to do clay pottery or brain surgery or whatever their heart desires. I’m not embracing corporate farming – but IMO there can be a happy medium between the two extremes.
Besides, not every one can farm successfully…even if their lives depended on it…lol.
Still, I’d love to have this conversation on a larger scale. I grew up on a farm and would prefer more people know what it is like to grow and raise the food that ends up on their tables.
They might learn to value it a bit more.
I think the points about sustainability you and others bring up are good ones but it seems to me that if the majority of the population of America grew and obtained at least a part of their own food supply through traditional methods which urban liberals don’t allow – keeping chickens and small livestock, large gardens, hunting and trapping – then you wouldn’t need to worry about scales of anything. I didn’t go into this idea enough I admit but I agree with people Jim Rogers. No society can sustain itself when only about 2% of the population grows the food for the rest.
I think I get your point, and I agree to a certain extent for different reasons of my own – but I just don’t think it’s practical on a national basis for everyone to grow their own food unless you get rid of high density urban areas.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m of two minds on such areas myself. I see good points and bad points in them. Good point is it allows consolidation of higher tech and higher quality services within limited areas which in turn tends to lead to improvements via competition while at the same time minimizing commute times as much of lifes necessities end up within walking distance.
On the other hand, I don’t have a high opinion of packing literally thousands of people to live within a single city block. My gut feeling is it degrades civility and fosters dependence on government.
But then I think of how many of those people could actually survive if they had to grow, raise, or hunt their own food.
If I am in need of the services of a brain surgeon, I could care less if he also knows how to raise a stand of corn and have no problem if he instead purchases all of his food from people who do know how to farm. This has not been an unusual circumstance throughout human history and has had the benefit of stimulating commerce.
I think such self sufficiency would lead to a rapid reduction in the population were it to become a widespread necessity in a short span of time due to some type of catastrophe.
Then you have the fact that if you take all those people living in a high density area and spread them out over a larger area so that each could have their own home and a garden out front, you end up flattening out the population in those high density areas – and places that were once forest and stream end up being something of an odd combination of subdivision and village with vegetable gardens in each yard.
Imagine what kind of area a city like NYC would end up covering if you did flatten and spread out the population like that. Per the 2011 Census, there were 8,244,910 people living there in an area of 305 square miles.
If you gave each one a 1/4 acre lot to live and grow their own food on, that same population would cover an area of about 3,220 square miles – then you have to add more acreage to account for infrastructure, gas stations, clothing stores, various businesses, harbor facilities and all of the other niceties of modern civilization.
That land is going to have to be taken away from currently undeveloped/underdeveloped areas wherein reside wildlife.
Not trying to argue, and this response is longer than I intended, but there has to be a better way to get people back in touch with the basics of where food comes from than everyone going to back to growing their own.
It would be an interesting conversation to have….
Good points. I would like to add that if all the urban and suburban dwellers took up hunting, just as a hobby and not even for survial, I dare say there would be no wild animals left after a season or two, and probably half the livestock would be dead as well.
Your Indoctrination
The Truth Never Told
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&list=FLJT4f0vR0X4yjpiKwN_HIgg&v=4fj6Qamu0JY
Instead of sustainability the way you describe it, I prefer the idea of regionalized localization. To some extent, you need specialization to free up individuals to take on specialized skills like medicine, construction, some technologies, etc. These things can be done on a localized scale including the production of all goods and services needed by a local/regional population.
In fact, there was a panel of five survival experts talking about our future on a mass scale and the challenges to our survival as a species. They all had differing ideologies and approaches and believed that society was under threat from different angles. However, the one thing all agreed on was that localization rather than centralization would prove our best bet for salvation.
That opening paragraph doesn’t even make sense: cathedrals are Catholic and the Watchtower is published by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Yes, the opening paragraph was a joke at the expense of leftists who see all Christian denominations as the same.
Oh don’t be such a picky ass. Can’t you appreciate the overall sincerity of this man? I think he’s very brave and an awesome person. Religious beliefs aside!
As I Christian I could have written the same article–wouldn’t have changed hardly anything. Truth is Truth, no matter where it originates. Truth resonates with the Reasonable and the Honest. Thus the faith-”less” and the faith-”full” converge to mutual political and cultural benefit. Thanks.
You managed to miss the theological points I made, preferring invective to argument. I will not take the time to discuss with someone who begins so dishonestly or incompetently. Learn to deal with arguments rather than fantasies and you’ll do a better job of communicating more than with an echo chamber.
Quite to the contrary Gus. The author disagreed with your thesis and then made cogent arguments to support the counterpoint. That you choose to call his characterization of your thesis “invective” sounds a bit like kettle and pot projection does it not?
Issuing faux offense and avoiding the exercise of refuting any of Mr. Taylor’s points makes you sound small and of having dull-edged political axes. Perhaps the “invective” was appropriate.
We have 24 hours to rid ourselves of the obamas. Keep remembering that Obama was elected by only 30% of registered voters. There was a 58% turnout and of the people who actually voted, 52% voted for Obama. Multiply 0.58 and 0.52 and you get 0.30. Just 30% of registered voters saddled us with Obama. Forget about the polls and just vote. It’s that simple.
After a long route through religion into atheism, I also appreciate having the freedom to follow the dictates of one’s conscience. Without that freedom, whatever one was forced to believe (or not believe) would be meaningless.
I agree with all the other points mentioned except the use of the word “sustainability”. That word, and the concept conveyed by it, is a creation of the criminal control-freak environmentalist Nazis represented by the U.N. So of course it’s one of Obama’s favorite words! I wouldn’t stoop to entertain the notion, any more than man-made global warming or the rest of the crap contained in “Agenda 21″. Follow that path and nothing will be “sustainable”, on the contrary, life will become just the opposite, which is what they want – to eliminate humans from the planet, with the exception of themselves, of course.
Well said! I know that we all tend to see other “groups” as monolithic, so I must admit that I tended to see athiests as the ones so vehemently portrayed by the radical left–the ones who insist upon mocking religion.
I’m happy to read your comment and to know that I was wrong, and not all are like that. We can embrace our common humanity and respect alternate views of religion/athiesm. I like it.
Sally, it is so refreshing to hear someone actually get the message that Liz delivered and appreciate it. Like Liz, I came to atheism after plenty of religious exposure. Unfortunately atheists are lumped into stereotypes by most conservatives. As you can imagine, we aren’t welcomed with open arms here in my home state of Kansas. However, there are plenty of us (probably around 18% of the population, just like everywhere else in the USA).
Interestingly, I can’t think of a single atheist that I know (there are many) who will vote for Obama today (there may be a Libertarian vote in the mix, but the vast majority will be for Romney). Most of us hold fiscally and socially conservative values typical of our region and mirror much of what was mentioned in this article. Frankly, I think the Republican party is missing out on a loyal demographic in conservative atheists, but they will never pursue us for fear of upsetting the evangelical pocket books. For some reason many conservative people think atheists would like to remove religion from society. Of course there are zealots in any group that tend to make noise in the media, but again, every atheist I know of deeply values the Freedom of Religion (we call it Freedom from Religion, but that’s just semantics). We are fully aware that without that constitutionally protected freedom, we would be the first ones persecuted.
Happy voting everyone!
As a former third degree Gardnerian “witch” (not “Wiccan”), I can tell you that Mr. diZerega is no “elder” of the “Gardnerian Wiccan tradition,” because there is no such tradition. The terms “Wicca” as the popular name of a religion and “Wiccan” as an adjective date from the late 1960s and early 1970s, long after Gerald Gardner’s death. “Wiccan” is actually the plural of Old English “wicca,” and means “witches.” “Wiccans” is a grotesque misnomer.
Wicca is a mass-market imitation of Gardner’s Hampshire “witchcraft” (supposedly a survival from ancient times), having none of its inside information, no valid claim to its history, and failing to meet its tests of authenticity, unbroken lineal initiation being a first requirement. “Wiccans” are NOT initiates of the witch cult; they are no more “witches” than Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill are American Indians.
Orthodox English witchcraft, including Gardnerian, does not embrace ANY political causes, and does not support political candidates. It is not “green,” and has no spokespersons.
Mr. diZerega comes across as a fake, and a very uninformed one at that. No wonder he loves Obama….
Are you informed enough, “Florida,” to know that Gus di Zerega is by profession a political scientist? Do you think that might have informed his reasons for writing a piece that lays out his excellent arguments for choosing one particular candidate over another? :-/ Is everyone leaving comments here under 30, naive, and completely unaware of the potentially dangerous undercurrents currently fermenting in the patriarchal, theocratic super right-wing of the Republican Party? Dismiss this danger at your own peril, because if they gain power at some point, you, particularly as Pagans,will heartily wish that they had not. Do not imagine that the relatively comfortable social environment you enjoy now will stay that way forever, no matter what. It can be snatched away pretty fast.
Specialization is necessary for real sustainability. Specialized farmers grow more food, and thus, can feed more people. Other specialized fields allow longer life, and so forth.
No, what is needed is for those in urban environments to just get out more. They need to spend some time on a farm, or in an abbatoir, or in a mine, or machine shop, or the like. They need to learn to respect working with one’s hands. They need to learn that stuff does not just magically appear. It’s this lack of grounding in the real world which leads to their magical thinking. They do not know how things actually work, and this leads to all the broken policies of the Left. Obama is just the symptom of the disease of urban fantasies.
I met a black guy on the bus one day. He was struggling to find work, even though he was a college graduate. His field? Agronomy, aka, farming and husbandry. He did not want to go to flyover country for work. He wanted to stay in the urban environment. I laughed at him. “Dude, you’re a farmer. Go where the farms are.” Nope. Could not, would not, leave his urban life, because, well, parties, and clubs, and hip-hop, and hot chicks. Magical thinking and crazy priorities.
forgot the sixth reason, he’s a liar.
Personally, I’m voting for the guy who has as one of the primary tenets of his religion, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all other men the same privilege, worship who, how, or what they may.”
As a Heathen (Nordic Pagan) I have to agree with you. You are saying things I’ve said for many years. You are also close to copying the Nine Noble Virtues of my faith.
The nine noble virtues have been influential in my articulation of my faith and my conviction that there is a unified Western tradition that is a continuum of spiritual thought. I’ve never met a Christian, for example, who has disagreed with them.
After reading your essay, here is my comment.
Well…you had me until you proclaimed (basically) you are pro-life and that a woman does not have a right to her body…i.e., abortions. Why stop there? Why not say that we have no rights. Basically, this is what you are implying…You don’t come right out and say that, but in the following excerpt I think everyone can see it clearly. For your information, women are PERSONS. We are not fodder for any politics or religion. As Americans, we also have a right to our liberty, that would also include A RIGHT TO OUR WOMAN BODIES. I WILL SAY TO ALL WOMEN…VOTE AS THOUGH YOUR BODY PARTS DEPEND ON IT!!!! Your words show utter disrespect toward women…
“The second reason I won’t vote for any Democrat, including Barack Obama, is that I believe in life. I believe that life is sacred and the so-called pro-choice movement has devolved into a transmitter of nihilismhand unnatural views of sex, parenthood, and children.”
Then you go on to state about morals…”Morality shouldn’t be a political issue, but it is. The Left rejects the very basic foundation of morals — that we treat each other with respect, that we don’t take what isn’t ours, that we don’t inflict ourselves on others..”
So, are you saying, treat each other with respect and [that we] don’t inflict ourselves on others…or, in fact you are saying treat only men with respect. Any woman I know reading your words would disagree that you respect women…at this point, I will just say, you have a right to what you believe, according to our legislature and bill of rights and constitution, this is a free county. I will say that I have a right to speak my truth also…and from my current standpoint…you have no respect for women.
Thank you, Rob Taylor! I was under the impression that pagans all were mostly atheistic, aging Leftist former hippies,pro-abortion,and pro-urban, and it is a wonderful thing to find out I was wrong. Thanks for the enlightenment!