AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

A whole lot of presumptive claims there, okie. I hope those bringing the suit lose their shirt. This is America where tolerance is all part and parcel of the American Way. Intolerance and bigotry weakens our country, and our ideals.

No, it doesn't raise questions about it other than, it can't discriminate based on religion.

Now that is funny. I bet the court throws this out and the people filing it will be lucky if they don't get hit with a frivolous law suit penalty. They don't have any standing to bring a suit about procedural violations.

Now THAT is funny. An "environmental review" based on the character of the community?
Where did the ALCJ get it's law license? A cracker jack box?

The source for this is listed as CBN News which, as is made clear in the links, is Pat Robertson's 700 Club.
Tolerance of the beliefs of others does not fit in with his myopic take on religion.

You insult cracker jack. LOL

You might be confusing premise with geographical location here, but even so, accusing me of have the wrong facts is disengenuous at best. After all, if I have referenced the wrong GZ Mosque then perhaps you can be specific as to the GZ Mosque you are referencing so we can be on the same page.

JM

The problem with "geographical location" is its subjective nature. Bigots and losers include the whole US when it comes to building a mosque.

You are somehow unable to separate liberals from Democrats, which is an enormous failing on your part.

You also fail to recognize that both major American political parties changed constantly from decade to decade.

Originally, I thought of writing, "Stop embarrassing yourself." However, this is no more embarrassing than anything else you have written.

Interesting bit of reportage:

http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx/world/latinamerica/APNews/LatinAmerica/20100827/U_CB-Cuba-Castro-Bin-Laden

Ridiculed? Well of course you will be ridiculed, but you should look to those critisims that might disagree and then offer counter arguments backed up by reason and empirical evidence that seek only to inform you as to other valid opinions. You and everyone on this thread recognize such valid critisim when it is presented. Whether or not it is noted as such seems a matter of a political position that the viewer or respondent has already invested in. However, I think all posters should write as though there were an audience seeking reasons to land on one side or the other needing only that mixture of correct reasoning and facts to sway them thusly.

You are to be commended for voicing your opinions and the reasoning behind such. Posts such as these make the thread and its responses worth following. Please Continue.

Oh, about the left: The left's only hope is if it is in power. It is only when it is in power that it can use those levers to obfuscate that it has any hope of staying relevant. There are two different types of leftists that present a danger to liberty. The first is the one that is in power that sincerely believes in the power of the commune. The other is the politician that may or may not actually believe leftist doctrine but has a vested interest and uses the left to keep themselves in power. The second is much more dangerous to liberty than the first. The first (think young students formerly for Obama here) is much more likely to honestly examine facts and events and rethink their positions. The second know they cannot possibly survive by such rethinking and must use the first as their rubes to maintain their station. Of course there is a third danger and that is comprised of those that lean towards conservatisim but feel that they must 'compromise'. But if principles are to be valued and true why should they be compromised? Indeed the evolutionary product of compromises with the left is statism. The political battle to come, after the midterms, will be between those such as Alaska's Miller, Kentucky's Paul, SC's DeMint, and The GOP's McConnell establishment types. The future of America lies in that battle alone, any other will only yield statism and the ultimate downfall of the America we know, love, and wish for our children.

Be Happy!

JM

Is that your example of an argument backed up by reason and empirical evidence? If so, could you point out the empirical evidence you are using because I don't see any.

Don'tcha know? The right never seeks power for their own agenda.

They like to scare people into thinking the democrats are communists who is converting our economy into a socialist state. The government under democrats are going to take over Intel, Hewlett Packard, United Airlines, General Motors, Apple Computer, Microsoft, Dell, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, MMM, WalMart, Safeway, Exxon-Mobil, General Electric, AT&T, and all those other companies owned by American stockholders.

This is all going to happen after the November elections.

From wiki:

In October 1960, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a peaceful sit-in in Atlanta, Robert Kennedy telephoned the judge and helped secure King's release. Although King, Sr. had previously opposed Kennedy because he was a Catholic,[citation needed] he expressed his appreciation for these calls and switched his support to Kennedy. At this time, King, Sr. had been a lifelong registered Republican, and had endorsed Republican Richard Nixon.

You do know that early in his Senate career, that John Kennedy made a financial donation to the campaign of Richard Nixon.

The god that the Declaration of Independence is based on???!!!

What about the libertarians who are also atheists?

Of course, there are conservatives who are religious fundamentalists, the folks who demonstrate militantly against the teaching of evolution as well as the folks whose religious practices have yet to reach the Middle Ages(snake handlers; the polygamists).

I have seen too many examples of people who espouse conservative politics who live dreadfully unethical lives. In fact, I associate conservatism with a lack of ethics.

When you and I were in of middle school/junior high age, American conservatives were described as followers of John Calvin, whose beliefs in no way parallel those that gave rise to the Declaration of Independence. Calvin promoted the idea of predestination. Although Calvin reconciled predestination with free will, your statement below looks like you believe in predestination:


(I will refrain from commenting on your syntax.)



Prove that liberals do not believe in god.

I dislike the idea of morals and prefer ethics. I have explained this hundreds of times over the past decade or two. Morals are so often used by hypocrites to pardon their hypocrisy. Morals are inherited, there is no need to strive for them or to understand them. A person who is ethical understands why he does what he does. He lives a better life than someone who accidentally does what is right or does right things for wrong reasons.



Them refers to liberals. okie, you lack the intellect, the reading, the social awareness and the sense of history to make such a sweeping statement.

Was the truth that Jim Crow laws were an abomination difficult to accept for those who participated in Freedom Summer?

You just write in order to have something to do.

pom, I am surprised you are puzzled by this. Here is a very crucial statement of belief or principle of the Declaration of Independence on which our entire country is founded upon:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Now, I don't know who else the "Creator could be that they were referring to besides the one God I mentioned in my post that you questioned?

What about atheists? I cannot tell you about atheists except to say that they will just have to accept the fact that the founders of the country in which they live did believe in God, that in fact God is the source of our basic rights instead of government, and in fact they founded the country upon that principle. If they are too offended by that, then perhaps they need to move to some other country? After all, we cannot rewrite history to please them. What has happened has happened, and the entire concept of America should not or cannot be changed to please a few people, and after all they can still enjoy the benefits of freedom and liberty afforded by this country.

Goddamnit! I am not puzzled! Tone just goes over your head, doesn't it? Please, please, please, sign up for a remedial reading class!

The FF's were largely Deists:

Deism is a theological position (though encompassing a wide variety of view-points) concerning God's relationship with the natural world which emerged during the scientific revolution of seventeenth century Europe and came to exert a powerful influence during the eighteenth century enlightenment. By virtue of this, deism as a theological doctrine has had a great influence on the character of the modern world. Deism stood between the narrow dogmatism of the period and skepticism, they rejected atheism, but often were called "atheists" by more traditional theists. There were a number of different forms in the 17th and 18th century, in England deism included a range of people from anti-christian to un-christian theists.

Deism holds that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way, allowing it to run according to the laws of nature that he configured when he created all things. God is thus conceived to be wholly transcendent and never immanent. For Deists, human beings can only know God via reason and the observation of nature but not by revelation or supernatural manifestations (such as miracles) – phenomena which deists regard with caution if not skepticism.

pom, liberals have spun Deism into an argument that the founders were not actually religious or believed in God, and nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the vast majority were Episcopalian/Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Quaker,Dutch Reformed/German Reformed, or Lutheran. See the following link which lists the founders religions by percentage. If you believe anything else, you have been brainwashed by liberal professors that have not presented you the facts.

Besides, common sense tells us that if they had not believed in one God being the source of our basic rights, they would never have written the Declaration of Independence as they did.

A quote from the website below:
"The signers of the Declaration of Independence were a profoundly intelligent, religious and ethically-minded group. Four of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were current or former full-time preachers, and many more were the sons of clergymen."

http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

Here's some commentary from Joan Walsh on beckapalozaa!

Where to begin telling the story of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's "Restoring Honor" rally, on the site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I have a dream" speech exactly 47 years later? As promised, we published Sarah Palin's 8/28 speech alongside King's, and Mark Benjamin reported from the event. I'm excited Beck announced his "Black Robe Regiment"; it's long past time to retire the white robes.

Since Beck insists the gathering wasn't about politics, but about religion, let's take a look at a couple of the religious figures there.

I was surprised when, early Saturday morning, Beck introduced a rabbi onstage with him. As I wrote earlier this week, Beck expressly said he wouldn't hold his rally on a Sunday, so as not to force people to work on the Sabbath -- and since the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday, I observed that maybe Beck wasn't looking for Jewish involvement. But there he was, introducing a rabbi! God bless him. Then the rabbi stood silent, while Beck's first religious speaker praised Jesus Christ our savior.

Who was the silent rabbi? Not surprisingly, it was right-winger Daniel Lapin, friend of convicted Republican felon/lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay, too. Media Mattters digs up Washington Post profiles of Lapin that make sense of why he was there. A 2005 Post profile detailed Lapin's web of Republican buddies:

Every few weeks or so Rabbi Daniel Lapin finds a reason to fly east from his home in Mercer Island, Wash., near Seattle, and spend a few days here. He might be leading a Bible study on the Hill, having dinner with his "close friend" House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, breakfast with Karl Rove. Last year he came for a private Shabbat dinner with President Bush. "The president recognizes my enthusiasm for his faith," says the rabbi.

Usually on these trips Lapin stays with Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who is an old friend of the Lapin family….Abramoff is under investigation for allegedly defrauding his Indian casino-owning clients and for allegedly breaking lobbying laws. In a stack of e-mails released this week by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, several scandal sidekicks made unexpected cameos. Among them were Daniel Lapin and his younger brother David, rabbis from South Africa who are heirs to a 200-year-old rabbinical dynasty and very updated ambitions.

A 2006 Post article revealed that Abramoff moved client money he wanted to hide through Lapin's foundation:

E-mails show that Abramoff also moved client money through a conservative Jewish foundation called Toward Tradition, run by longtime Abramoff friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin. In January 2000, when [Ralph] Reed sent Abramoff an $867,000 invoice to be billed to a Choctaw official, Abramoff responded: "Ok, thanks. Please get me the groups we are using, since I want to give this to her all at once." Reed responded: "Amy, Grover, Lapin and one other I will get you."

Talk about restoring honor! Later in the rally, Beck featured the Rev. John Hagee, the bigoted right-wing minister who called Hurricane Katrina "the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans" because the city hosted a gay pride parade. What a way to commemorate the fifth anniversary of that tragedy. Hagee also called Catholicism "the great whore" and said all Muslims "have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews." Poor John McCain welcomed Hagee's endorsement in 2008, only to have to reject it as more of his hateful proselytizing came to light. I certainly hope the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, who bashed Hagee in 2008 and called on McCain to reject his backing, will denounce Beck and Palin as well now.

Speaking of McCain, Sunday is the second anniversary of his greatest accomplishment, making Sarah Palin a national figure. How did Palin do Saturday at Beck's big party? Well, the two preening GOP titans seem to disagree about big issues. Where Beck described his rally as "the beginning of the great awakening in America" and said Friday night, "This is going to change everything," Palin rejected those who want to "fundamentally transform America." Who's telling the truth? Of course Palin wasn't just contradicting Beck but violating the alleged non-political spirit of his event by attacking President Obama with everything but his name; she has repeatedly chided Obama for saying his campaign was about "fundamentally transforming" the country. She's so sly.

As Mark Benjamin reports, nothing terribly interesting went on at the Beck event. That's at least partly thanks to everyone who rose up to denounce it, and forced Beck to revise his plans, and make the day about honoring the military and religion and avoiding politics. Organizers asked attendees not to bring signs, so they wore T-shirts instead, and you can judge whether politics was involved, thanks to Think Progress. Beck got goofy talking about how he related to King because "we haven't carved him in marble yet. He's still a man."

But let's remember, also thanks to Media Matters, all of Beck's self-important delusional pronouncements when he was trying to compare his cause to Dr. King's:

In March, after healthcare reform passed, he told his radio audience:

"[W]hile Martin Luther King had to face German Shepherds, we have to face SEIU and leftist thugs. That's okay, we will continue to stand. We will continue to march forward. We will not pick up a weapon because our greatest weapon will be God." Beck also stated, "You may destroy me, but you will have to kill me to stop me from speaking out."

In April, Beck told his Fox audience:

" wouldn't be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and firehoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, some of us go to jail, just like Martin Luther King did, on trumped up charges. Tough times are coming."

On May 26, he said about his 8/28 event:

"This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down because we must repair honor and integrity first, I tell you right now. We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties, and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement because we were the people that did it in the first place."

"We were the people that did it in the first place." Yes, that's a quote. So when the predictable mainstream media voices say, hey, Beck wasn't so bad, remember that's because he was caught before he could be.