it is time for us to be prophets

I am an unabashed liberal.  I have been reading in a number of places and hearing from a number of people that now, on the other side of political victory, it is time to lead our nation to heal, to draw us back together into a single community. 

It is not. 

No, it is time to press our advantage for all it is worth and remind our opponents--by which I don't mean Romney-supporters but supporters of hurtful policies and beliefs who may have supported Romney or not but certainly supported the losing side--that they are finally, undeniably, irrecoverably wrong.

We should model ourselves on the prophets of the Older Testament who did not suggest that the way to save the Hebrew people was for everyone to get over their differences and see one another's point of view.  Deborah reminds the general Barak(!) that victory comes to the one who takes presses a situation's advantage.  Amos directs his angry words at the "fat cows" who "oppress the poor and crush the needy."  Jeremiah railed against the false prophets and their followers, "They were not even ashamed at all; They did not even know how to blush...I will pour out their own wickedness on them." 

It is time for us to be prophets, to tell them that they are wrong.  Those who believe Fox News tells them the truth; they are wrong.  Those who are convinced the president was born in a foreign country and is an illegitimate leader; they are wrong.  Those who behave as if "God helps he who helps himself" is a Biblical teaching; they are wrong.  Those who are certain that a ring and pledge of purity will somehow keep teen pregnancy at bay; they are wrong.  Those who think that their casual racism is somehow protected self-expression; they are wrong.  Those who feel themselves "taxed enough already"; they are wrong.  It is time to stop being humble about our views, as if they are somehow less-realistic, less-rigorous, less-accepted by the American people. 



We won and we won big.  We saw more clearly where the country is headed and what people are concerned with.  We must not be embarrassed by our having been right.  We are the ones with vision and we are the ones who have been proved right.  We may not be right in the future--in fact, about some things we are as certain to be wrong in the future as we are right now.  But we are right today.  Own that.