I'm going to visit my in-laws this weekend. I love my in-laws. But I'm a great deal more liberal than they are, and more to the point, much more casually religious. The reason I still like them, though, is because they're very much the kind of Christians I think the country lacks: the ones that recognize that Jesus was a humble, kind, hard-working person that didn't judge needlessly or haughtily. He absolutely knew where he stood on issues, but didn't run around knocking people's heads together when they disagreed with him.
Regardless, I'm going to be there a week, and I'm sure that politics is going to come up at some point or another; after a discussion about how torture is bad with her brother, my wife got an email from her Mom about the war in Iraq.
I don't mind. Being pressed on my beliefs forces me to inspect them.
Thankfully, my belief that the Bush administration is incompetent, unjust and shameful got an amazing proof yesterday: Scooter Libby, who was convicted of conspiracy and then perjury to cover it up, got bailed out of jail by Bush by having his sentence commuted. Bush hasn't used the Presidential (or even gubernatorial) power to pardon or commute a person's sentence pre-mortem almost at all - including an oft-criticized decision not to pardon a born-again Christian her death penalty. He even, in his own book, said that he didn't think it was his job to alter the rulings of the court; he then signed the death sentences.Labels: Bush, family, in-laws, politics, rant |
