RG Martin is an existentialist. That is, he believes human beings have the free will to make decisions and take responsibility for their decisions. These decisions are important, especially decisions about which beliefs a person is going to accept and integrate into his thoughts, his actions and his personality.
Thus RG believes the decisions you make about the future of the country and your vote is important.
RG is a big fan of Joan of Arc, the first feminist, the first nationalist, and the first woman to stand up to the local Church. Like Joan — and like JFK, like the ancient Greeks, and like many Americans — RG is a realistic idealist. He believes that the spirit of America has always been one of idealism, but idealism synthesized with reality.
We all can be idealistic but still fully realistic and practical.
RG believes that policies based on pure idealism can be the most realistic, practical and efficient policies. It is the policies that were based on based on falsehoods, corruption, immorality, and dysfunctional thought that history has proven to be unrealistic, impractical, inefficient, and, in the end, destructive.
RG also believes that naive idealism can be just as destructive as false ideas. For naive idealism is the pursuit of an ideal with no consideration for reality. It ignores reality. It ignores experience. Naive idealism often even has contempt for reality and experience. It is neurotic. Naive idealism is a common fallacy in “progressive” and liberal political thought.
And how do we discern which ideas are realistic and which are naive idealism? We use the traditional scientific method. We test them! We see which ideas worked in history and which didn’t.
But just as neurotic as naive idealism is the belief commonly found in conservative thought that “we must bite the bullet.” This conservative Idea says we must accept reality as it is with no hope of making it better, with no hope of pursuing authentic, realistic ideals.
RG also believes, like Hegel and Joan, that the commandment to love God implies the commandment to try to understand God! This understanding implies the commandment to try to listen to God and try to understand what He is doing in history.
Loving God also implies loving his creation. Loving God’s creation implies accepting his creation as it is, and not how we think his creation should be. Loving his creation implies trying to understand reality, reality, as it is, not how a book says reality is — any book.
RG believes we should accept historical reality as it is and improve upon it as much as we can, always listening to God as he speaks to us in everyday life. As John Kennedy said, we must make God’s work here on earth our own.