Evans Liberal Politics, Date of Republication June 27, 2011, completely revised. Fully revised and updated March 27 and March 31, 2011, originally published November 27, 2010 under the title, “(The Reason For) Evans Liberal Politics is ‘Pride in the Name of Love’”:

I feel that the message in this article specifically about addiction is important enough so that I rewrote it and am bringing you a new version, having revised it again. There is some personal stuff in this but then this is a one man blog. I am currently looking for someone to help me with this website/blog and if interested, please email me.

"Pride in the Name of Love": Is there anyone who doesn’t know this song by U2? I cried the first few times I heard this and it is still the most inspirational song I know: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy — and yes, this song — are the reason I do a liberal blog (that few read)… Pride in the name of love – that’s how I used to feel, at least, and to some extent that’s still very valid. It was pride that I took in trying to make the world better. I feel now that to a certain extent I had that wrong. I feel more humble now than to say I have pride about my efforts, although, to be honest, to a certain extent I still do of course feel pride — or at least fulfilled — about my efforts.

I think Christianity warns us about pride, especially false pride, but still, I am proud of my efforts here. I have worked very hard at this blog almost every day for two-and-a-half years. I have tried to bring you the truth about what’s going on in news and politics, insofar as I am able to see the truth. I do think that any one man has a limited view of what’s going on in the world today, and I do feel more humble than I used to. A lot.

A Word About Addiction and Blogging:

Let me just say this: in most cases, if someone close to you has drug and or alcohol addictions, and/or is abusive, do NOT think you can handle it yourself. People who have these problems are NOT acting rationally and will often act without any true caring. And this is not even because they are not caring people. It is a DISEASE and you are not competent to cope, or heal the person with love and kindness yourself.

Get the person treatment. The real problem here is that, many times, until the addict “hits bottom,” (and sometimes not then), they will not seek treatment at all or allow you to arrange treatment. Sometimes, if you can’t get the person help, you need to get yourself out of the situation. Loving someone can sometimes cost you up to your life. What I have learned is that you are usually not helping the person with the disease with your love and caring in terms of their addiction. Yes, perhaps the person has never really known unconditional love, but that will not help them, almost always. Usually. Only treatment by trained professionals can help.

Let me just say that, up to 99 percent of the time, love will not alone be enough to reach someone with any kind of abuse problem. (By someone with an “abuse problem” I refer to the substance abuser – drugs or alcohol – or someone who has an abusive personality). Once in a great while, through the tender mercy of almighty God, love will find a way. But ONLY IF the problem person is ready to make that huge, painful change in their life. If not, get them help any way you can, and remove yourself as an enabler, and stop trying to think your own heartfelt love can make a difference. It might, but usually it doesn’t. Sometimes the process can go on painfully for years.

The old saying may apply here: sometimes, it takes a village. Yet in my experience people with drug and alcohol addictions are shunned and avoided almost universally in society. The very people who most need our love and help are left without resources, to circle the drain and oftentimes go under, sometimes for good. That is so hateful in our society, and needs to change. We need to completely rethink our individual and collective attitudes towards all of society’s outcasts: “What would Jesus do.”

A huge part of the problem is an almost universal refusal to help an addict, because for God knows what reason, helping an addict is somehow thought of as fueling the addiction. The authorities — both the police and the social workers and counselors who make a pretense of helping addicts — even have a name for helping addicts. It is called ENABLING, and anyone who helps an addict is an enabler.

This is one of the cruelest, most unChristian and also universally applied attitudes I am aware of in western society. Do not addicts hurt and bleed if they are cut? It really makes me angry as I have run up against this brick wall trying to get my friends to help me help people who badly needed it. It seems absolutely stupid and cruel to quote a few authorities who have made this attitude universal and use that as justification to not help someone in dire need — because this is ENABLING the addict. I’m sorry, for the very first time I have ever done so in an article of mine, I am going to take an angry tone here:

If I hear the word “enabling” one more damned time, well, the words do not exist which would properly describe my reaction to this universal attitude. Let’s see, children: you see a man, he is lying on a bench by the side of the road. He looks scruffy, almost derelict, and he is obviously thin and you think he might be dangerous, because that’s the way the world is, these days. I know what most of you would do: you would go to the length of taking a different trail through the park to avoid even having to come to terms with whether or not you should or would help such a person. I can’t for the life of me remember which scriptural verses describe this exact situation, but, believe me, if you are looking for God’s approval, you need to help a person in a situation like that.

Personally, because I have refused NOT to help some addicts in my life, and because I would not cease reaching out to my own friends for assistance in helping these people, what happened to me is that I lost virtually every friendship that mattered to me. And you know what? All of those so-called friends who dropped me out of their sight, all got to feel that they were doing the right thing, because helping me was, they thought, enabling the people I loved who were addicts. They all got to think that they were doing the right thing. And, with no exceptions that I am aware of, all those “friends” still feel the same way, and now they avoid me, and I am also shunned by those who have mattered to me.

They forgot, I suppose to ask “what would Jesus do.” If they ever in their heart of hearts believed in Jesus (or truly living the Golden Rule) at all. Unless you want to make me really, unreasonably angry, don’t talk to me about enabling. So far as I am concerned, that whole attitude is complete and total bullshit.

People who need help, need help.

Please say a prayer for the drug addicts, alcoholics, abusers, and all those who have “something wrong with their head”. Do not doubt that God loves heroin addicts just as much as policemen, or that they are just as good as you are. HELP THEM as you are able. For God’s sake buy them a pack of cigarettes, or give them a little gas, at the least. Without help they would eventually die a miserable death.

I have loved people with bad addiction problems in my life. Here are two YouTube music videos I want to share in honor of one very special lady whom I care about a great deal: The Black Crowes, She Talks to Angels, and Hootie and the Blowfish, Let Her Cry. As a mental patient for these many years, I have a perhaps uncommon insight into the shunning and rejection by society of people with addiction problems. This is because, while I do not have a drinking problem or use hard drugs, I have felt shunned in the same way society makes addicts outcasts in our culture. Don’t try to tell me that an addict, alcoholic or mental patient gets any kind of a fair chance in our culture: I know better.

Kids, this is for you: I have seen heroin, morphine, methadone and other addictions close up. You are the biggest fools you have ever met if you start using any of this stuff. A cop one told me, believing every word he said: “The only cure for heroin addiction is death.” And 90 percent of the time, say the statistics, that’s true.

PERSONAL NOTE: I have fouled up my life in many ways, and sometimes I have even betrayed those who love me and depend on me in ways large and small, even without meaning to. And I was not even aware of the extent to which my personality is messed up due to mental illness. I can only hope for everyone’s forgiveness, especially God’s. The Serenity Prayer as used in Alcoholics Anonymous programs, does provide me with some relief, and I have always thought they were good words to thoroughly really understand, thus the video, below.

I’m 54 years old and so I have trouble learning new behaviors. I messed up in my life and they tell me it is not my fault, it is my mental illness. Now it’s almost too late in my life at age 54 to do anything but try my hardest from this point on and “hold on” despite my own pain and sadness. It’s also true that in this society, like addicts, mentally ill people are not given that much of a chance to “make it.” But sometimes it is frustrating beyond measure to have these limitations.

I can truthfully say I used to feel something like “Pride in the Name of Love” and that was why I ran Evans Liberal Politics. Now I feel much more humble than prideful, and I want to admit to you that, since I reach only a small audience, and make defacto zero dollars from this blog, I basically blog because I don’t know any other way to be, how I could possibly live my life any differently. It’s how I have lived for the last 2 1/2 years. In other words it is its own form of addiction. Even so, while I admit to an unreasonable amount of time spent blogging and wish for changes in my life, I still enjoy blogging and also I am grateful for the small enjoyments that come my way every day.

Also, I am peace loving and hate violence to the extent that, perhaps I would not defend my loved ones, much less myself, in the event I needed to. (I never really have had to.) I am in some ways a meek person. But I have felt my meekness to almost be cowardice, a few times, and that has been difficult for me to take. And at other times, like anybody, I am angry when I shouldn’t be. I really don’t know, I just hate all forms of violence. This is a sort of overall confession, I realize. I am so very tired of my inadequacies. But to those I have hurt in this life, or disappointed, and for the various ways I have fallen short, I confess it and am sorry.

*****

UPDATE of March 27, 2011: In my own defense I want to quote an article I wrote back on April 5th, called “What Gets Me About Spam Commenters and a Warning for Them: A Rant,” where I state that “the entire message of Evans Liberal Politics is about CARING and building a more caring society so that I put all the work I do into our site simply in order to get that message out.” No matter what I have said above, that’s still very true.

Moreover, I really enjoy bringing you Evans Liberal Politics: I enjoy finding content and authors for republication, I enjoy writing the occasional article, I like doing the coding for the articles, and even the typing. (You’d think that would get repetitive, but not really for me.) It gives me pleasure to bring to you a hopefully helpful and politically true and correct vision and accounting of what’s going on in the world today, even if I have a really small audience. And I like to do it in an artistic and aesthetically pleasing presentation – that especially is fun, and that’s where you get into the programming, which I enjoy.

Some people I know who care about me have said that this website is an obsession or an addiction for me, and that it is not healthy for me. Maybe so. Still it give me a great deal of enjoyment and it doesn’t hurt anyone or anything for me to spend my time this way. I think that I would rather spend most or certainly a lot of my time with a nice lady who cares about me, doing various fun activities, but here I am stuck running a news and politics website, hey, it gives me what meaning I have in life, however sad that may be or not be.

*****

Politics is depressing. In that regard, my old friend Betsy sent me a wonderful article which I want to share with you, called “Across the Universe: The Power of Disillusionment and the Politics of Despair, OpEdNews, March 15, 2011, by Chris Floyd. A young man is disillusioned, somewhat depressed, and even contemplating drinking or suicide because his Mom’s hero Barack Obama is complicit in so much that is wrong. Instead of simply making a comment of some encouragement, Chris Floyd makes this commentary in its own article, of which I wish to quote part:

You have to remember that politics is a toxin. It will make you sick, taint your mind, poison your soul, blight your life if you let it. One has to deal with politics as a form of waste management, just as you need to have some kind of sewage system in your home or community to prevent disease.

Politics — the machinations of the stunted, damaged souls and third-rate minds who hanker for power — is just a small part of life. It entirely lacks the tragic element; nothing tragic or depthful about politics and power, it’s just brute force, greed, ignorance and spite. So there is no deep meaning to be found in it. No tragedy; no real joy either. Even the greatest moments, the epiphanies — and they do happen in politics on rare occasions, one must admit — will lead very quickly back into the sewage. And that’s OK, that’s the way it is; sewage, waste management — it’s part of life. But it’s not where meaning, joy, tragedy, the salt and savor of existence can be found. So why let the evil done by third-rate goobers drive you to despair of life itself? By hook, crook, lies and murder they’ve already amassed all kinds of power; why give them power over your very soul?

Sigh…. I believe I am gonna have more social interest articles up here and concentrate a little less on the political angles. Probably will get me more viewers, anyway.

May God grant you the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have: three meals a day for their bodies, – education and culture for their minds – and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — And that’s why I am a liberal. ~ Paul Evans (From my page of Liberal Speeches & Quotes).