As a Christian and an American citizen of Iraqi heritage, I want to address a point raised in John Burtka’s recent article defending First Things. Namely, the impact of the War in Iraq on Christians in the country and conservatism in America.
“We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy,” wrote Christopher Lasch. For me, men like John Henry Newman, Christopher Dawson, Christopher Lasch, and others like them, are models of a life open to intellectual change, to growth, soul-searching. Thinkers willing to learn and change. I do not mean vacillating between opinions, but being willing to self-correct.
I had not been in America a full year when Iranian college students under the sway of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the American embassy and took Americans hostage. The first election of Ronald Reagan was celebrated in our home even though we couldn’t vote. When Reagan’s second election came around, my father was allowed to vote. By this time we had been in America long enough for him to recognize that although the Democrats were good at providing financial assistance, the Republicans were better at providing job opportunities. It’s not that he believed a person doesn’t need help or shouldn’t receive help if they truly need it, but he saw that even people who could work, didn’t work, relying on government assistance. He thought that a job in general, is better for a person—and he wanted a job—he still refuses to truly “retire.” And so our household became Republican.
Read the article at The American Conservative