Obnoxious democrat and republican attitudes

Pro choice 'secular' thinkers of the democratic party have protested that religion does not belong in the government or in the schools. They want separation of church and state, and the republicans representing pro life have been pictured as too ignorant and uneducated (Sarah Palin) to be entrusted with governing our nation. Religion has come to be associated with the more ignorant and uneducated of our society, while pro choice is perceived as progress by the intelligent educated democratic 'liberal.'
I became a registered democrat after years of staying neutral when the Kennedys were struggling to advance civil rights for blacks, a movement which resulted in the assassination of black leaders such as Medger Evans and Martin Luther King as well as the assassination of the Kennedy brothers most associated of any white democrats with civil rights. Nobody talked about secular thinking when the nation was dealing with these murders.
Perhaps things have gone so well since then for liberals a belief in God does not seem necessary. As a child I thought God was my only friend and his son Jesus when I was dealing with constant crisis. I saw my alcoholic suicidal father near death many times. His oldest brother was found under suspicious circumstances suggesting suicide. I thought it would spell disaster for our family if our capable hardworking father succeeding in killing himself, too. I felt so sorry for my cousins having to do without a breadwinner since their mother had never even worked while she was having a family of seven. Every single day I would speak to God. That was my only comfort because I did not have anybody else I could talk to about the terrible things happening in my family.
My belief in God was born out of great need. It helped me to survive. So in 1973 I was not willing to accept legalized abortion which spelled death for the fetus without any judgment of wrong doing. I spoke to God and he concurred the country had taken a wrong turn. For years after that when I prayed each day and asked my creator what problem he needed me to work on the most, the answer was always legalized abortion. That answer was hard to hear and the work of being an abortion protester painful, but I could see that a violent solution requiring death for someone was a turning away from the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill," which had been violated when our president was shot, when Medger Evans, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were shot.
Justification for violence could only lead to more deaths, more violence. I felt that the supporters of legalized abortion were not being logical in their justifications. There is a still small voice within that answers prayers if directed to God. We don't hear much about that still small voice anymore, but if we ask for a higher power's answers, we very often get a difficult answer we might not like to hear. That is the way you determine that it is God speaking to you and not the devil. God's directions are a lot harder to follow.
Martin Luther King preached non violence, but I think this lesson was so hard for people to accept, that they rejected it. Abortion is a violent solution. There is simply no way to get around the fact that it takes a death and blood shed to accomplish it, and if a nation accepts this as a necessity it has turned away from non violence and reverted to actions that are more primitive. Legalized abortion is violence unleashed and protected by law. Yet man has a history of passing laws that are very violent in nature. The death penalty continues to take its toll of wrongly convicted criminals as well as the guilty. It is the old Testament law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Christ introduced the idea of turning the other cheek, of a soft answer turning away wrath. Many think that philosophy is too soft and cannot endure it.
George Bush was obviously not a believer in non violence when he attacked Iraq with the first blow, and he paid the price in an eventual loss of credibility since he had also endorsed pro life. The Iraq war proved to be extremely costly and took all minds off any possibility of undoing Roe vs Wade for this president. I doubt if McCain with his militant philosophy of war had much influence with his pro life stance either. These two presidents were of mixed minds, even as the Kennedy brothers dismayed us with their cavalier attitudes toward marriage and flagrant affairs.
So our leaders may be flawed. Both republicans and democrats can have repugnant attitudes that disillusion those who wish to respect and follow them. I would say that both party members need to take responsibility for being contradictory and not quite sincere about what they profess to believe. They need to be willing to concede all drawbacks to their solutions or they cannot call themselves reasonable men and women.