Democracy requires us to be "Of this World"

From my latest article on Outraged Citizen:

It is a huge problem in a democracy to say you care only about a possible next life and nothing about this life. That makes you traitors to democracy, that precious gift of self-determination and self-governing. In effect, if you don't care about solving the problems of this world, other than abortion and gay marriage, you are living as the peasants of the Middle Ages lived, uneducated and ignorant, guided only by religion, and caring little about the well being of your fellow citizens who depend on you to make wise choices about many things in elections.

In addition, you set yourself up to be used by those who say they agree with your moral position on issues like abortion, but do little or nothing to accomplish the goals you wish to accomplish. Instead, they use these issues as wedges to divide you from your fellow citizens and to convince you to vote for them so they can implement their greedy trickle down economic ideology and fill their coffers and those of their friends with the money they steal from the Middle Class.

Our democracy was never meant to be an institution that was controlled by clergy or the Bible. It was created to allow citizens to govern themselves, through representatives who would enact policies to ensure safety and prosperity for all. To participate responsibly in a democracy, one must be "Of This World," at least to some extent. One must care about what happens to one's country and fellow citizens in this world, not just what happens in the next.