Politics

From my understanding based on what I have gathered from the media (credible news papers, radio stations, and other news outlets), talking to people from all over the country (USA) and abroad, and just my own observations, the US and some of the rest of the Western World in particular, although not specifically, seem to think it is important to separate religious beliefs and ideology from political practice. This doesn't make any sense to me. What does make sense is allowing for theological and religious freedom in a country, and even more, having a government that encouraged the pursuit of truth and God. What do we need to embark upon this pursuit? Just listen. That's it. God already did all the work, all we have to do is listen to him. If people go into politics, and state that they need to separate their political views from their religious views while they "work" as politicians, how well founded are their religious views? For me, God is the most important part of my life. If I became a councilmen, a governor, an ambassador, president, congressman, senator, or held any other position in government, no matter how small or big, I could not pull the importance of God away from myself while "at the job." Honestly, my religious beliefs and loyalty to God would influence all my decisions, at and away from work. This, I know for a fact, shows that I have consistent and strong beliefs, and that I would be a good politician, because if I can continue to hold onto my beliefs and not waver in an environment that tends to try to push those beliefs out, than imagine how strongly I would also hold onto and stay consistent in all of my other beliefs and morals. This is because everything is religious for me. By this I mean every issue that could ever come about somehow stems back to my religious beliefs, and therefore, it is impossible to ignore or replace them, because without them, I would be nothing. This does not mean I would discriminate against people who disagree with my views. In fact, I would say many people disagree with my views. However, my views inspire me and guide me to want to learn as much about the background, beliefs, and traditions of others, and to be tolerant of them. On another but somewhat related issue, I am socialist. It is hard for me to connect myself to one of the already predetermined categories of socialism, since there is such a wide range of it. Many people look down upon this and dislike it, for different reasons, either out of misunderstanding, fear, disagreement, or some combination of these feelings, or possibly other feelings as well. First of all, these are very understandable feelings. Many people can become scared or fearful of socialism, especially in the US, because allowing for a system which is more socialized than the presently existing one would cause many small and huge changes, some predictable and others that are unpredictable. Between anti-Communist propaganda taught during the Cold War, current propaganda spread by organizations such as Fox, and just pure ignorance are some other of the sources of fear of socialism. First of all, Communism and socialism are not the same. They have similarities, but are not the same. This is like saying the actual sun at the center of our solar system and the various light bulbs available at a hardware store are the same. The sun represents Communism, and the light bulbs represent socialism. There are different kinds of socialism, just like there are different kinds of light bulbs, but the qualities of the sun is an extreme of those held by any and all of the light bulbs. In a similar but not completely same way, the qualities of Communism are an extreme position based upon some ideas in socialism. One of the fears coming of the sources of anti-socialism movements also states that it is anti-Christian, immortal, or goes against the teachings of other religions. Mainly modern American Conservatives hold these views. Firstly, as someone who was raised a Catholic Christian, and as a person who has studied not just the history of Christianity but also the teachings, structures, and histories of other religions, and as a person who does have God (the God of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition) as the most important part of his life, I am socialist BECAUSE of my religious beliefs. If you look at the history of socialism, it derived from the early Christian Church, where Christians belonged in tight-knit communities and trusted each other and shared with each other in order to work towards the common good and success of the community. It is important to succeed and prosper for your work, and you can prosper and succeed more when you do so as a community, and work as a community, and when members of said community do so willingly. Also, it is important for people to obtain as much education as possible, have some level of private property and privacy, and to have some extra comforts in addition to what they need to live dignified lives. It is just as bad in my opinion to have an unjust lack of necessity or comfort as it is to have an equally unjust over-supply of personal collections, although it is bad in different ways. Yes, things are much different not than it was 2000 years ago, and yes, a lot of good things have come about because of non-socialist systems, but it is important to work towards working for the betterment of the community and the future of the community that it is to work solely for the self.