Republicans live a mythologic lie which corrupts their thinking and clouds their judgment. The lie is this - God helps those who help themselves. That may be the God of the Old Testament, but it certainly isn’t the Christian God. And the Old Testament God has no place in society, except in the very closed rigid isolationist groups of Hassidic, extreme orthodox and fanatics.
It is no coincidence that the absolute line of demarcation between Old Testament God and Christian God is the parable of the Good Samaritan; the concept - not of helping yourself, but of helping those in need. It is the primordial philosophical split between Jaweh and Jesus, whether we are to be a society of individual self-servers, or a community of people who care about one another. Republicans take the former position, and that what’s wrong with them.
There are very serious problems with that position. One, most Republicans are Christians, many are even fanatical psycho-Christians, but none of them follow the teachings of Christ. That means they’re all hypocrites; or they don’t know or understand what they believe in. Jesus is the Good Samaritan, and Republicans absolutely repudiate that philosophical concept.
Secondly, imagine there’s no God (it isn’t hard to do). Then the idea - God helps those who help themselves, equates to - the purpose of life is to help your self. A plausible, even attractive notion, if one is raised to believe that. But it has no ground, no real meaning. The idealist sees love as the fulfillment of being, but to the self-server, a lover is someone to fuck, someone whose role is to admire and please the self-server. There is no mutual giving of self, because to the self-server, no other selves matter.
Thus there is no community in the self-server’s world. Other people don’t really matter. There is no world-community for Old Testament God, only his chosen few. And that would mean that OT God made everyone, but He considered many or most of them to be disposable, inconsequential. Problem is, that’s absurd. There is no rationale to assume that a Deity would make some humans important and others disposable. But that is the only way a Republican God can exist - as an absurd contradiction.
Furthermore, OT God is clearly the God of War. The only way the Chosen Few can survive against the unchosen many is to be at a constant state of war, re-Israel and Republican America. We have set ourselves up as a nation of God’s Chosen People, and ladies and gentlemen, this means war! Class warfare? You bet yer fuckin ass.
My point is a very very simple one, and has nothing to do with the extensive writings and perverted thinking of the various religions of the world. The point is the philosophical basis of Republicanism versus Liberalism. Old Testament God, philosophically, is an exclusionist, an elitist "we are better because God chose us." New Testament God, philosophically, is an inclusionist "we are all God’s children."
Leprosy or poverty are not "punishments from God" but rather, ailments or afflictions that need to be addressed as things that we have the power to change; rather than ignored as that’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the way God made it.
Elitism serves the factory owner who becomes filthy rich off the labor of the factory workers. The belief is that the factory owner is one of the chosen, a different species than the laborer, a higher life form, as deemed by God. Liberalism contends that each human is as valuable as any other.
These are the philosophical differences, the core beliefs that distinguish Republicans from Liberals.