didn't look at this thread until today
looks like I missed the fun,
Brownback's a Senator from Kansas, where I live, and I haven't seen a single bill he voted on that I agreed with or could get behind. So you can say, politically, he doesn't represent me or my ilk. He says he wants to bring back decency and Christian virtue back to America. But that's a slogan aimed at the heartstrings that he knows are connected to the pursestrings. Not saying he doesn't BELIEVE in the flag and the pie and gideon's bibles and abortion protesters and the visiting-inmate-program and saturday night revivals. Of course he does, that's the slice of America he's most fond of. Fair enough.
But what he sees as the right road is based on the 'Should-Be' of how he and his church think we all (that is, the rest of us, too) should act, according to their belief of their God. That's where they start, 'the 'should-be' of 'thou shalt'; the should-be of new wine; the should-be of John Calvin, John Milton, Thomas a' Kempis, Martin Luther, Georg Hegel, Max Weber, Karl Barth and Billy Graham; the should-be implied in Matthew 7:15-27; or M't 5:22-26 or the should-be stated in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25;
. . . Here Jesus and Paul use the same word 'moron' (in the greek texts available . . .) to describe two kinds of fools and foolishness.
which one are you, gracious bloggerhost? someone who calls his brother a fool or someone who calls himself a fool for Christ? what does it mean to be a fool for Christ? "Whooooo could imagine?"
On the other hand, there is a growing pedigree of peoples who prefer to start out looking at things from a What-Is perspective, rather than always comparing to some 'should-be' that might not be so readily agreed upon, by everybody. The people who open their eyes and their ears and try to apprehend What-Is from What-Is-Not. It's been empirically documented somewhere that things can be built and accomplished with what-is and that knowledge of the what-is is more useful in the long-term than striving after a should-be that might not (re)materialise.
An interesting thought is that the Apollo missions to the moon, i.e. the moon landing, was accomplished thru a combination of both. Using science (a product of the What-Is standpoint) with a sense that we should-be able to put men on the moon.
The ancients had their go at this duality of ideas too. Plato was into apprehending the light itself, outside of the cave, not just the shadows on the wall : read: should-be enthusiast. Aristotle wasn't sure if anybody'd discovered that there WAS light outside of the cave, . . . the sources seemed to be suspect.
and so it goes.
some notable adherents to the What-Is:
Lenny Bruce, Frank Zappa, Albert Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson
another notable should-be adherent: L Ron Hubbard and Pope John Paul II
the thing is, is to see that both the what-is and the should-be adherents NEED each other to survive, in order to get heard at all . . . while they kill each other off in the process
and THEN put a motor in Yourself
" . . . On the outside now . . ."