Conservatives play the same rhetorical game, although they do less well at hiding their true intent - gaining and maintaining power. Using a gloss of "common good" rhetoric only poorly disguises the reality that they are far more interested in ensuring the social and economic status of corporate and military elites than in truly advancing social and economic welfare.
Being Christian, I am leery of those who seek power, under whatever guise. When I came across Nicholas Wright's answer to a truly stupid question - Would Jesus be a Democrat or Republican if he were to run for President? - it cut through much of the nonsense, and spoke to my own sense of the rot at the core of our current political life.
Jesus didn't run for anything. He acted as if he were a different kind of ruler altogether, with a 'kingdom' that didn't originate from the present world (otherwise, he said, his servants would fight to rescue him) but instead was meant FOR this present world, to transform and heal it. The present way we do politics and government is, alas, part of the problem, and he would have challenged it (its huge cost, its pretense of participation which is shamelessly manipulated by the media, its cult of personality, its ignoring, all too often, of the actual needs of the poor, etc. etc.) just as he challenged the power structures of his day.
The real question is, what sort of a cross would today's system be intent on using to kill him?
Be sure that he would be waterboarded first.
