Sandy Hook Elementary, and Salt.

Fridays are my day off, so I'm generally disconnected from the world. I usually walk from my home in Cambridge, Mass., across the Charles River to Boston, where I get a slice of amazing pizza from New York Pizza. Yes, the pizza there is better than in New York.

Then I go to Starbucks, where I bury myself in magazines and newspapers I haven't had time to read due to work. I am perfectly content to let myself get lost in old problems or synopses, knowing that the world can't have changed too much to make what I'm reading outdated.

So by the time I arrived home late Friday evening to check the news for the first time that day, I was coming up on 12-hour-old information about what happened in Newtown, Conn., at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

I was quickly dismayed -- of course, by the news. But also by how I found out.

My social media feeds are sprinkled with Christians and non-Christians, blue-staters and red-staters, diehard liberals and old-school conservatives.

So what does it tell you that the first way I found out that 28 people had died is by one person going on about the Second Amendment and the other pressing legislation for gun control?

The best one was a former classmate from Liberty University, who posted a link to school killings in China, saying that happened without guns, so it wasn't time for restrictive gun laws. I also liked the many posts full of this original thought: "GUNS don't kill people -- people kill people!"

Right. Because on a day when people die, when children die, when the world has another gigantic reason to argue against the existence of God and the redemption of man, that is what we are worried about. That guns shouldn't be blamed. And that tragedy happens in repressive countries, too. (I'm sure God is pretty happy, too, that all those Chinese children died so my former classmate could have that great rebuttal to everyone who didn't like what he said about the Second Amendment.)

What does it tell you when the more sympathetic responses come from your non-Christian friends than your Christian ones? What does it say when the quickest solutions offered are about things like rules and laws, and not about the state of people's hearts? What does it mean when we are on Facebook instead of rushing to the site of the disaster, much like those parents rushed to find their children Friday morning, leaving their cars parked a quarter of a mile away, still running with the keys in the ignition, to push past policemen for glimmers of hope? Don't we, as Christians, have a greater, life-breathing hope, and a greater reason for urgency?

Christians, I am ashamed. And I ashamed again that you are most likely dismissing what I have written already. I understand that we see our freedoms being infringed upon, and our world turned away from what we believe is right, but get a grip. It's one thing to see the world deteriorate; it's another to use its deterioration to start whining about people who we think are wrong, and to suggest human solutions to fix outward effects of problems. We know a King Who says He wants to change hearts.

Since when were we called to rub it in people's faces when their sin leads them to heartbreak? Since when were we called to rub it in people's faces when other people's sin leads to their heartbreak?

Give me arguments about why we should be involved in politics and vote for this or that -- sure, I will listen. I'm not necessarily the biggest cheerleader when it comes to legislating morality, but I have voted for things that I think will give this country a better environment for good to win out. But it's one thing to carefully weigh issues and elect officials based on beliefs and creed. It's another to flood your Facebook feed with garbage about guns when hearts need healing.

If this entire country was overrun with gluttonous, arrogant, baby-killing socialist pigs, our response as Christians should still be the same as it is when we have a praying president. Love. Be kind. Share hope. Preach peace. Practice graciousness.

Be freaking salt in a world that needs it.

Do you think that it helps? Do you think that it helps when you tell people that guns don't kill people, people kill people? And not just the right wing -- left wing, you too. Do you think that it helps when we carp about mental health programs and bullies? Do you think that it helps when we act like legislation will change people's hearts?

Why are we not out there, binding up the broken-hearted? Why do we think any amount of law or crap is going to change people? Why are we content to just change outside forces and think that people won't feel pain anymore, or need our God in their lives?

People change by the power of Jesus Christ, and we as Christians have been called to share that very same Jesus Christ with a world that has no clue Who He is and what He really means. It's bad enough that we don't do this. But it's even worse that we lead people to think that Christians are obsessed with picking political fights when 20 kids get blown away at close range by semiautomatic weapons like the ones soldiers use in dusty wars in the Middle East. It doesn't matter if you're right -- kids are dead, and insensitivity will remain in people's minds for a long time.

It's one thing when Mike Huckabee gets up there and says what Christian leaders tend to say at times like this: That this happened because of a deterioration of values in life and the classroom. Personally, I may agree with him on a large scale -- we need God in this nation. But you don't say that, and you especially don't say it at a time like this, because you're not God, and you don't know that.

Being right is not the goal of Christianity. Reconciling mankind to God is, and that usually means providing help after people have messed up, not telling them they've messed up from a soapbox miles away.

We can tie everything bad back to politics. We can tie everything bad back to Christians not getting their way. We can tie everything bad back to things not happening the way we think they should. And you know what? Stuff still happens. People still get hurt. People sin and maim and die. And even if we're right -- even if we have the "I told you so" -- they're still lost unless we help them. (But please, keep track of the "I told you so" count, like any loving parents would when their kid burns his hand on the hot stove yet again. That is love.)

I took a moment from being ticked off Friday and talked to God, asking Jesus why all this had to happen, and what I could possibly do from my little, removed perch so far away. And all I could think of was when Lazarus died, and when Jesus showed up. He should have been there sooner. He could have healed him. He was about to raise him anyway.

And Jesus wept.

He just cried. He groaned in the spirit. He did that deep, guttural, heart-wrenching noise that lets someone know that you care, and that this should not have been.

He didn't chide them for not being good people. He didn't call them sinners. He didn't strategize about ways to change things. And He certainly didn't pin the deterioration of this world on a lack of gun control, mental health problems, or student supervision.

He just cried, His message to the world being that sin happens, but that He's there, and He cares.

So I cried, and then I slept on the seeds of this post for two nights and decided it was worth a shout.

I read stories of the Middle East every day, and I see that dozens of people get killed each day in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And I wonder what it must be like to live in those places, and to hear that a bomb has just killed 42 people. What do you do? It's normal, right? It happens, and you just have to move on.

I hope that random death never becomes commonplace for us here in America, where it's getting closer to that as office killings, school shootings, and other tragic events happen more and more, and at levels that were shocking just years ago. We may be getting into that type of situation.

If we are, may it shine a light on Jesus Christ, and may it highlight the followers of Him who weep when it is time to weep. May messages of hope be as synonymous with violence as the questions of why and attempts to solve the problems have been. (And remember, these "solutions" and feeble fixes are coming from people who have nothing else to trust in. It makes sense to try all they may.)

I find it odd that so many people out there think a bunch of liberals or conservatives could thwart God's plans -- that a gun law here or lax control there could ruin life in a way that 28 people dying could not. But that is where we seem to spend a lot of energy these days.

Being salt in this world is a radical idea, and difficult. I struggle to do it.

But consider this a challenge you can hold me to at any time, even if you won't pick up the call.

Obama and health care, part 2

This Slate column does a pretty good job of encapsulating what health care passage means for President Barack Obama, which I wrote about yesterday. The writer's greatest perspective is how Obama used his sway to pull the Democrats along like lemmings over a cliff, knowing re-election is going to be very difficult. But that only supports what Obama says he stands for (making this a bittersweet win-win, in fact): "Given that grim landscape, Obama and congressional Democrats are making the purest test of whether voters want what they say they do —politicians who follow their conviction no matter what the consequences."

The Republicans are already prepared for the next round of fights, working their angles to put the Democrats in a bad light just as much as the Democrats are trying to do the same to them. In this battle, it's become all how you frame the results, not what the results actually are.

And, in a nice, juicy tidbit, George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum explains why this whole health care debacle has hurt the Republicans a lot — and it was mostly their fault for letting it play out this way. Pay attention especially to how he reveals that the people who got most of the Republican base upset, the talk show hosts, aren't necessarily always looking for the Republicans to do well, either. By presenting an extreme angle in holding out on the Democrats, the Republicans ended up hurting themselves in the long run as health care was passed, when a more moderate approach may have led to some of their opinions making it into law.

Health care, as a measure of a president

The passage of health care legislation looks imminent, with a simple majority vote for reconciliation looking to be the deciding factor after the long, drawn-out process that resulted in the passing of two health bills in the two Congressional houses in late 2009.

But, while people dispute the merits and necessity of such legislation, and many point to the political implications for this fall, health care's main message points back to the man who got the ball rolling: President Barack Obama.

Much has been said about whether Obama is a successful president, or whether he is keeping his campaign promises. He said he'd bring bipartisanship and change people could believe in; critics say he's sticking with his party and doing more of the same.

But I think this health care process has shown that, although he may not have reached the Messiah-like levels the electorate was expecting in November 2008, he is keeping those campaign promises pretty well.

While he has not been able to achieve much bipartisan movement, much of that can be attributed to the vociferous immovability of the Republican side, which is more apt to denounce and hedge against plans rather than think up their own. Obama did, in fact, court Republican lawmakers at the beginning of the health care process, but once erroneous attacks were made (see: death panels) and the bickering stretched out for almost a year, he did what every leader has to do at some point: Stop being popular, stop being conciliatory, and get it done.

(Even after the seismic election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, which showed a big change in what the American people wanted, Obama called Republican lawmakers back to hear their suggestions. But no headway was made. Whether he could have done more to cooperate with them, I don't know, but there was an effort there. And, in a fact no one will dispute, Obama has not been nearly as liberal as most Democrats hoped he would be.)

That move by Obama, to be a leader and get it done, is how he has kept his second campaign promise, of change people can believe in. "Change" is a word that can be twisted and used in many ways, but Obama made it clear in his campaign that he had some very practical ways he wanted change to be applied to American politics and the White House. For him, the biggest practical application of change was health care for all Americans. He saw this as fundamental to changing the American way of life toward the better.

So, despite the many different views, all the bickering, and the chance that a renegade senator from Massachusetts supposedly representing an unhappy American populace were threatening the change he promised, Obama kept pushing. He didn't see the public backlash as a sign that he was wrong; he saw it as a sign that his message was being misinterpreted. As president, he has been elected to make the best choices for the country, and that is why, despite all the mess that this health care process has become, he has kept pushing health care. He really thinks it's important.

Throughout the campaign, Obama promised to be a person of character, a calm voice of reason, a bull-headed champion for what needed to be done. He did that with the health care process. He got everyone involved and heard everyone's complaints, but he still pushed forward with his bottom line: to get health care to everyone, somehow. His masterful regrouping after the effort seemed lost several times showed his leadership capabilities, and his drive to keep what he sees as his promises.

Whether health care is a good idea is an entirely different matter. No matter what the politicans say, it's going to cost way more, and a lot of people are still going to be lacking. Furthermore, required health care is the first government requirement a person is susceptible to by just being alive (whereas public-use facilities, other types of insurances, and taxes all depend on something being bought, sold, or owned). This is a definite advancement of the government declaring that it knows what's best for people, and that it can make those decisions.

But without the content of this health care deal muddying the picture, it is obvious that the long process has at least revealed this: Obama is serious about what he sees as the fulfillment of his promises, and in this case, the leader figured out a way to get it done.

Hey Obama, this is the "change" Americans wanted

In his latest for the New York Times, David Brooks explains that Barack Obama ran on two major points of "change": less partisan politics, and a more activist government.

And as Brooks argues, Americans wanted the less partisan, but they never said much about the activist part.

The problem is that in his first year in office, Obama has instead heavily promoted that second part (the activist government) while not making any inroads on partisan politics. Brooks suggests he flip-flops his agenda and give the people the change they want.

When Obama came into office, the press and other politicians were talking about Obama being the next FDR, but the American people were asking for economic recovery and jobs (two totally different concepts, despite them once coinciding during a war-time president's term). Obama's priorities instead focus on ushering America into a great new age, with new programs and fixes and health care and climate change and ah ah ah!

Now, as things are worse for the people, they just want some help. As Brooks says, "Voters are in no mood for a wave of domestic transformation. The economy is already introducing enough insecurity into their lives. Unlike 1932 and 1965 [when FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson brought similar "great new ages" to America through Democratic politics], Americans do not trust Washington to take them on a leap of faith, especially if it means more spending."

There's a reason Obama is having trouble floating bills out there that people like: "Voters are not reacting to the particulars of each bill. They are reacting against the total activist onslaught." They want a fix, not an agenda. Although Obama thinks he's giving them what he promised in his speeches, they insist on results now, or at least a president who is OK with setting aside sweeping changes to make sure people can get through the next few years.

Brooks' solution? "The next challenge is to find a new project, a new one-sentence description of what this administration hopes to achieve. It is obvious: President Obama will show that this nation is governable once again. He should return to the other element in his original campaign.
That would mean first leading a campaign of brazen honesty with the American people. He could lay out the fiscal realities and explain that voters cannot continue to demand programs they are unwilling to pay for."

Obama needs to remember that, for many people who voted for him, there was an intense desire to not so much change the way America's government affected life (which is what he's trying to do now) as there was to change America's government, period. (Once government changes, than its effects will, too.) Obama promised ditching partisan politics, and finding compromises, and helping everyone get along. He said there wouldn't be backbiting, and that one party wouldn't take over the process to push its way through (speaking against the Republicans then, but that's what his party is doing now).

People genuinely want that. And Obama has the speaking chops and leadership ability to bring it. But does he really want that? Or was that a campaign slogan he used as part of his grand scheme to usher in his Democratic system?

One of Brooks' suggestions is this: "Obama could serve as a one-man model for bipartisan behavior. Right now, the Republicans have no political incentive to deal on anything. But the president could at least exemplify the kind of behavior voters want to see in their leaders."

Or, in my own words: The politicians are going to fight, bicker, be self-serving, and shoot down any hope of progress either side has, so if most measures are going to fail, why not just take the high road? Be a new kind of person. Set a new kind of example. Show the politicians, stuck in their ruts, that there's a different way of doing business. Don't tell them; don't complain about them; don't whine when progress isn't made. Show them. Show.

This, of course, starts with the outlandish spending. There are cuts that can be made. (Imagine how much money could be freed up if the extremely expensive health care battle was shelved and, shock and awe, the President focused on reducing health care costs before trying to overhaul the system. He has said saving money was the point of the whole reform, right?)

As Brooks says, "If he really put aside the publicity gimmicks, he could illustrate the difference between responsible government and the permanent campaign."

That's what people are looking for: leadership, not more politicians constantly trying to woo people. Obama has the brain to think up new solutions, the leadership to unite people and charge into new challenges, and the communicating ability to reach out to politicians of both stripes as well as the populace. He could do much good in changing the political culture without ever passing a bill.

Isn't that what many Americans were voting for in November 2008?

A final word from Brooks: "We can spend the next few years engaging in kabuki bipartisanship, in which each party puts on pseudo-events to show that the other party is rigid and rotten, or somebody can break the mold."

For that person, I suggest the President of the most powerful country in the free world.

February book reviews, part 2

Continuing reviews of books I am currently reading.

Today: Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

I finished a great book about the 2008 election, Game Change, about a week ago, but due to the slog of going through a 436-page book over two weeks, I haven't put together my comments until now.

That doesn't mean, however, that this book wasn't knock-out terrific.

For anyone who is at least a remote fan of politics or current events, this book is a must-read. It takes the storylines so many people saw in public in the run-up to the 2008 election and balances them with what was going on behind the scenes. Don't worry, it's not a rumor-mill hype extravaganza. In fact, it's quite the opposite: An even, methodical, well-told narrative about the story that was the 2008 election.

The characters and main plot lines have long been known, but Game Change puts in the added elements of framing in text what the candidates and their campaign aides were saying and thinking while it all happened. Furthermore, with the dust settled from all the excitement around the election and the campaigns, this book provides a simple retelling of events that could often become muddled in the thick of the race.

Halperin and Heilemann are both well-seasoned reporters, and you can tell this by the care they take with constructing their themes, chapters, and patches of dialogue. They include enough detail and plot hints to carry the story along and inform the reader but not so many that the reader feels thwatched over the head by recurring points. Even better, Halperin and Heilemann have a knack for knowing which names and points to repeat (for those not in the middle of politics) while letting other big-brand names, with their history long etched in America's mind, simply speak for themselves.

No spoilers here, but there are tons of scintillating details in the book that reveal how much of the race was how it looked like on the surface, and how much was drummed up by a candidate's campaign or the press. (Ah, the poor press. That's a theme, too.)

And best of all, Halperin and Heilemann do it all using the candidate's words and stories. Especially riveting are the mental gymnastics inside the Clinton campaign, the lunacy that is John and Elizabeth Edwards, and the sadness of Sarah Palin admitting she had no clue what she was getting into. (They're pretty light on the Palin-bashing, preferring to use the classic media approach of, "We'll let Sarah incriminate herself by just talking.")

The book is heavy on the Democratic side of the race, which makes sense considering it had more candidates, was a lot closer, and was basically repeated in the general election. But the book also gives a fresh view of John McCain that Republican diehards will appreciate when wondering what happened in November 2008.

And, to top it all off, there are some glimpses of Barack Obama that show he's not as fallible as everyone thinks. A year later, people are beginning to grasp that. But Halperin and Heilemann also capture it in their book.

The project is an excellent benchmark for closing up the 2008 scrum and looking ahead to the future, whatever that may be.

Bipartisanship: Change Obama no longer believes in?

Some gleanings from Joe Klein's column in the Feb. 1 issue of Time magazine (released before President Obama gave his State of the Union address).

-I love the idea of killing partisanship, of everyone getting along, of politics getting tossed out the window...but I've always been concerned with how Obama thinks that's actually going to happen. From early on, his way of making "change" and "hope" happen always went back to people, and as he's seen in his first year of office, people like the way those concepts sound on their ears but don't necessarily know what they'll look like in reality (or like them when they do show up in reality). Or, if they're politicians, this happens:

[Joe Klein writing] "I asked Obama how he thought his Administration was perceived by someone in the Boston suburbs who had supported him a year ago, looking for "change" — and now saw the President making deals with everyone from Joe Lieberman to the labor unions to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (whose special Medicaid deal was a public embarrassment) to the pro-life forces, not to mention the drug and insurance companies. 'When I promised change, I didn't promise that somehow members of Congress weren't going to be looking to try to get a project in their district or help a hospital in their neighborhood,' the President said halfheartedly."

-Klein points out that Obama hasn't done much this year to see people in their current plights, experiencing economic hardships. I agree. The ever-present campaigner hasn't been hanging out with everyday Americans very much, and what ever happened to him being like FDR and using the Internet to have fireside chats with the American people all the time?

-The health care agenda Obama so vociferously pursues is "peripheral to most Americans, who have relentlessly told pollsters, by huge majorities, that they are happy with the health care they currently receive and far more worried about other things." Exactly. Why the heck is Obama still letting Pelosi run rabid on this one? It's not like he birthed this bill himself; it's an amalgamation of all he says he hates about Washington, waiting for his signature. And the people don't even want it.

-"His has been a serious and substantive presidency. But the question, a year in, is whether it has been politically tone-deaf — and why the best presidential orator in a generation finds it so hard to explain himself to the American people." For all the things the Republicans are complaining about, has anyone noticed they're not complaining anymore about how he woos people with his words?

-One of Obama's biggest obstacles was that, even if he did want that bipartisanship thing, he wasn't even getting token participation from the elephants in the room:

"Obama came to office attempting bipartisanship. The Republicans weren't buying. 'The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus,' the President said, 'and finding out that [minority leader John] Boehner had already released a statement stating, We're going to vote against the bill before we've even had a chance to exchange ideas.'"

If John McCain was the President, those Republicans would have wanted the Democrats to jump on board, since the economy was in the crapper and needed some kind of fix. But the Republicans were playing us-against-them from day one (and the Dems have been, too).

-And the clincher: Is bipartisanship the kind of change Obama no longer believes in?

"By August, the President was saying privately that he didn't know if bipartisanship was possible when the polls said that a third of the opposition party didn't even think he was an American citizen."

-Obama's comment on a question about the Middle East peace process is telling as to how his perspective has changed:

"...if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations so high."

Whew.

My gut reaction is that Washington is going to stay partisan, and the Republicans are going to remain critical (of his policies, his star power, his speaking) — so why doesn't he just do his best to connect with the people? Because if they want bipartisanship enough, wouldn't they vote for others like him?

(Or did he blow that chance by being, ahem, partisan and pushing a very liberal health care bill through?)

Year two will be interesting.

Shades of Brown

When I first moved to Boston, I wondered if would ever understand the area: How these people thought, where their convictions lay, and why they supported what they did.

Sixteen months later, I think I can say I do understand quite a bit, and that's why I want to comment on the Scott Brown election.

The election of a Republican to "the seat of Ted Kennedy," in "the bluest of blue states," has jolted the nation, and many are saying it's the end of the Democrat's upswing and a new surge of support for Republicans.

But, as with most political issue, this is not red or blue. There are shades of purple, or in this case, Brown, here.

A proper understanding of the state will help with realizing what really happened when Brown won, and it will aid anyone looking to make definition assertions for elections in the future.

First of all, understand that Massachusetts is still as Democratic as ever, and this vote does not mean that Bay Staters don't want health care or don't support Democratic ideals. That's the last thing you can draw from this election. Instead, consider this: Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts three to one, meaning that you can count on a 75% blue vote to 25% red. So, in order to even that up, all you need is one-third of Democrats to jump ship (not the entire state) to even up an election...and that's not even counting independents.

Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans in New England run in varying stripes. Yes, Massachusetts has been electing Republican governors like crazy in the last half-century (as duly noted by all the fast-breathing media voices). But those are extremely moderate Republicans, and it's because even Massholes know that they need some kind of balance in government (or so my Democratic friends tell me).

So, it's not like this attention was once-in-a-lifetime. Statistically, it could happen. And the main reasons it did, and the ones that should be scrutinized going into future elections where Republicans hope to pull upsets, are two-fold:

1. Bay Staters are liberal, but they're not blind.

Massachusetts-dwellers have seen the mess that's been happening in Washington as the Democrats try to push health care through, and they're not happy. The senator from Nebraska got free Medicare for his state, and the Maine senators have been courted more in a week in Washington than they were in all of high school (reference Google images). It's corruption, and although Boston love corruption as much as the next sin city, this corruption hasn't resulted in much good for anyone. The bill that has been produced is a mess; it's not very likely to help people; most people oppose it; it's super-expensive.

Forget Ted Kennedy's legacy; I think most Bay Staters were happy they had a chance to shoot
down this albatross. This isn't what Ted wanted, some think.

On top of that, NEWS FLASH: Massachusetts already has universal health care. So, this is not a vote against liberal ideology; it's a message that this form of liberal ideology isn't sufficient.

If the current health bill passes, Massachusetts residents would see their health care costs increase, and, worse yet, they'd have to start shelling out money to welfare-ize the tobacco-chewing, french fry-eating other (read: Southern) states whose governments are so conservative that it's going to take serious money to get health care plans going.

It's simple math, and Massachusetts voters didn't see why they should have to pay for having the foresight to do this idea a few years ago.

[Side note: The Massachusetts plan has yet to be financially profitable, much less balance out. That's a bit of a harbinger.]

[Another side note for red-staters: You know who the governor of Massachusetts was when his administration pushed health care through? Mitt Romney. That's right, as in I'm-running-in-2012-and-likely-speaking-against-ObamaCare-as-the-crux-of-my-campaign Mitt Romney. I'm telling you, Massachusetts politics isn't as clear-cut as you think.]

2. Martha Coakley blew it.

Now, my red-state friends have been saying, "It doesn't matter if Massachusetts was voting against Coakley; they were still voting for someone!"

Well, yeah, but let me explain the concept of "the lesser of two evils" here.

Martha Coakley led by 30 points in the polls one month before the election. Martha Coakley blew three other decent senatorial candidates away in the Democratic primary months before the special election and had the majority of observers wondering why she was still campaigning at all. Martha Coakley was to Ted Kennedy what Cape Cod is to...well, cod. Martha Coakley was endorsed by Ted Kennedy's widow, a blemishless figure in the Massachusetts lexicon whose last public appearances before the endorsement included her standing outside all day thanking the thousands who came to Ted's wake.

They're not calling her "Chokely" around here for nothing.

How could she blow it so bad? Just think of the worst possible things you could do in a campaign, and she probably did them.

Falsely accuse your opponent of not helping rape victims? Check. Suggest that Curt Schilling, the man who bled through his sock to lead the Red Sox back from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees and break an 86-year curse, was a Yankees fan? Check. Go Beacon Street on everyone, looking down your nose at your hard-campaigning opponent and ask, "What am I supposed to do? Stand outside Fenway Park? Shake hands? In the cold?"

Yes, Martha, that's what you were supposed to do.

Completely out of touch. She also suggested that there are no terrorists left in Afghanistan.

I don't care if you hate George W. Bush, if you think the wars over there are a mistake, if you're anti-Cheney, anti-Palin, anti-involvement. You're still scared about America being threatened by terrorists, especially after somebody tries to bomb the country on Christmas and the woman who's running for your Senate seat is taking the day off (and assuming Afghanistan is full of poor, lovely, peaceful poppie farmers).

In summary: Massachusetts is more purple than you think; Bay Staters are still liberal but want sane liberalism; and Martha's campaign is now the biggest choke job in New England's history, supplanting even that game against the Giants in 2007 (I won't utter the words).

The lesson I take from all this, though, is that as much as I want to explain this race and say what effect it will have on future voting, we can't really know until those races come up. There's a lot of time until then. Sure, the Democrats have ticked off enough people to get a backswing.

But isn't that what always happens?

Here's my point: Instead of Karl Rove saying there's going to be a Republican majority forever (2000ish) or pundits saying the Democrats are in charge for a while (uh, 12 months ago?), why aren't people focusing on what the people are actually saying?

The election of Scott Brown was not a mandate for right-wing Republican policies. The guy is an environmentalist and supports Roe v. Wade. Yeah, that's right.

(Although his quickness to shout about the availability of his young daughters does make me think of several Christian college campuses where I have lived.)

The election of Scott Brown was a message from a liberal state that the Democrats had gone too far, overplayed their hands a little bit.

I think it was the same with the 2008 election: People were sick of the Republicans doing whatever they wanted and forcing their way on people.

What do people really want? It's in the middle, of course...a shade of purple. And instead of declaring Republican mandates and Democratic mandates, let's back away from swinging from one side to the other and let the balance stick sit for a minute, waiting to see where the bubble slides to. On some issues, the American people may prefer a more liberal approach. On others, it will be conservative issues.

(It's safe to say most Americans are not happy about health care, but many Americans also want a liberal-like equality when it comes to controlling the financial sector. Purple.)

Finally, I want to take a shot at the national psychos who have been trying to pigeonhole the Massachusetts election: Get your facts straight.

I think the Boston Globe did a great job of covering its home turf well, and much of what it reported lined up with what I was hearing from my friends (a mix of conservatives, Republicans, and "I vote for whomever has the less annoying adds").

But the national media (here's pointing at you, Fox News and MSNBC) once again played partisan and blew it out of proportion. And unfortunately, many people I consider level-headed took the bait.

It's not red state versus blue. There are layers here, and it's worth the time to look at the layers.

[I will note the Time magazine article especially, which was mostly correct and had a great headline ("Mass Mutiny") but incorrectly reported that Brown's daughter was a four-year starter on the Boston College basketball team (she still is, not was) and engaged in hyperbole when talking about some voters drawing Brown's nickname in a snowbank in a photo caption. Oh, and they acted as if Brown's early advertisements comparing himself to John F. Kennedy were a good idea when anyone within a 200-mile radius of Boston will tell you they most certainly were not taken well, and were stopped a month before election day.]

Scott Brown's win was a big one, and it had big implications. But in a world of Roves, Palins, Pelosis, and Reids, the sane people cannot lose sight of the other 300 million people who don't necessarily want to dump their lives into the farce that is politics, of all its manipulation and bargaining and half-accomplishments. They just want their actual concerns to be heard among those with the power and the money.

Brown kept saying it was the "people's seat," not Kennedy's. What I'm interested in is how this new senator will help the Bay Stater I have recently become.

We're a state, and a nation, not of red and blue. What will Brown do for the purple?

There's four sides to every debate

I didn't read this column for the New York Times beyond its lead, but what I did read reminded me that most issues we debate today are not one side against the other, no matter who wants to pitch them as such.

Today's news media, and the piles of bloggers and pundits surrounding it, loves to act as if the way of Congress is the same way the nation is: red vs. blue, Republicans vs. Democrats, partisanship.

But I think there's a lot more variety of views out there, and something needs to be done to recognize them rather than having two very different sides alternate declaring victory over each other, even as the actual people they serve (who have mixed views) don't necessarily get what they want.

Here's an example of how a variety of different views can be approached not for their two poles but rather for the many different views within them.

In Christian realms, one of the hottest debates is that of determinism: Calvinism vs. Arminianism, predestination vs. free will. It's as high-powered a debate as, say, abortion or health care is to the American political divide.

The interesting thing about the determinism debate, however, is that it's usually not one side against the other. Yes, you have your extreme Calvinists and Arminianists, but most people draw a position somewhere in the middle. Going in line with the helpful acronymn that strict Calvinists hold to, "TULIP" (each letter standing for one of the five main tenets of Calvinism), people declare themselves four-point Calvinists, two-pointers, ULIPs, LITs, or TULPs...whichever fits the points with which they agree.

I have a feeling that many of the harsh debates filling American politics are the same. As the Times column suggests, climate change is not one side against the other. Most involved see right and wrong in both sides. (And many are sick of seeing the issue covered by media sources who act as if one side is right, ignoring that there are financial movers behind the two main views.)

Abortion is another tricky issue, where people say you have to be one or the other. But with the variety of people out there in different situations, and 50 different states and all kinds of health care plans, can you really say one way is right all the time without providing concessions for people coming from a different place than you? (I'm ignoring the morality of the issue here, which I believe is conclusive, and instead talking about the practicality of getting a nation of 300 million people to get somewhere on a topic.)

It's easiest to divide the country into red and blue, to polarize people and options through hyperbole and limited portrayal of views, but I think it may be best to apply a TULIP approach to the weightiest issues of our times.

I'd like to see the news media find a way to flesh out the varying shades of the many debates, rather than following the political leaders that try to create a me-versus-them divide. Chances are, there are a lot of people trapped in the middle with a combination of views whose voices aren't being heard.

Discussing large issues may be a hard place to start doing this, but an easy place to start would be the idea of "mandates." For example, when George W. Bush became President in 2000, Karl Rove declared that the nation had a conservative mandate. He used Bush's narrow election (in which he actually lost the popular vote) to say conservative issues should be railroaded through. Eight years later, Barack Obama's election had liberals declaring he had a mandate of his own (although his win was still by a relatively slim margin).

In fact, a little flare-up occurred when conservative (psycho) Ann Coulter dared to say this year that America was a mostly conservative nation. Democrats pointed to election results to say the country was mostly liberal. But with the vote so close, why is either side declaring ownership? A mandate comes from a wide majority, and too many factors went into this election to be able to declare much of a mandate for anything. This is especially true when you look at public opinion now toward a lot of Obama's principles; people like some of what he supports, but that doesn't mean they want him to do whatever he likes.

Throughout the election season, it was revealed again and again that there are a heck of a lot of independents out there, and it's less about political divides than individual principles. Hence, TULIP.

Mandates? No. A definite answer what to do about climate change? No. Health care? Well, that one you can label a win for the Dems, since they had to basically use their party majority to override since they didn't want to be the group that didn't close the deal on such a controversial domestic issue once they got the numeric advantage.

Let's challenge those discussing our nation and its issues to get rid of red and blue, instead finding out a way to figure out what all this purple is saying.

Liberty censors again

Liberty University just shut down its latest form of free speech, closing the college Democrat club. As a school that says it is training Christians to be successful in all areas of life, the place is pretty restrictive on what it tries to keep students from talking about.

Students are going to vote for Barack Obama, and they're going to have different ideas than the administration; they're people, not robots. Funny how a school that adheres to a religion celebrating the dichotomy of a sovereign God and man's free will feels the need to suppress anything that's not totally in line with its moral checklists.

Liberty wants to be the premier Christian university, but there are plenty of universities out there that allow, and even thrive with, views other than their preferred ones springing up on campus. The faith is better defended when challenged, and God is bigger than man-made laws and restrictions.

Liberty has the chance to become THE PLACE for young Christians, and their education, and the future of the religious right, for that matter. But censorship like this (and the stuff that's been going on in leadership down there, not to mention the heavy censorship of the joke of a newspaper) will only keep the school from taking off. Instead, you're going to get a student body that either goes with the flow and never challenges man's renditions of God's Word, or you'll get a wildly rebellious campus. Funny, but Liberty's basically made up of those two groups right now.

Side question: How many Liberty students live in "secular" cities such as Boston and New York and survive/thrive with the Liberty perspective? Has anyone done it? Is this lifestyle of censorship and single-mindedness feasible in the real world? Liberty's leadership has seen great things done for God on its campus, but it's always been under the wing of religious organization. How good is this system in reaching the rest of the world for Christ?