Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism and American Politics

Re: Seperate topics


Good question. Answer: we're obviously in the business of forcing people to pay for things that are against their consciences.

But, weren't you a sharpshooter in the Army? You can't be that opposed to war.

War is Glorious.
It allows people to be heros. Killing our fellow human beings is
a worthy pursuit of population control. As I understand it the God in the old testament helped the Israelistes kill their enemies. Well, God is still instrucitng our President to kill people. It's all good, ain it?

If I recollect right, didn't Christians fund the freedom fighters in Nicaraqua so that they could kill those heathen commies?

Yeah, I was a sharpshooter and thought that was cool. When it occured to me that I may be reqired to kill another human I started to get confused about that notion. I am still confused about it. I never had to kill anyone so I still don't know if I could do so. It's a maybe sorta thang.

Atwood was writing a parable for the future -- although "1984" has past in chronological terms, it seems there are many passages in that book that are applicable to the control the religious zealots would like to put on society. They want to hold up those fingers and ask us how many we see. It anyone is watching HBO's "Carnivale," it's addressing these same themes in a different time frame. Or is it? Isn't mankind past, present and future unchangeable but for technological advances? Now if someone would invent the ideal society, that would be an accomplishment.

That seems pretty out in left field. I'm talking in generalities. The thread was centering on the Evangelical Right as a Political Action Committee--like the NAACP, AARP and so on. Some think the Religious Right has the same rights to forward their policies as the NAACP etc.. I do. I don't agree with much they want--but they are citizens and deserve the same rights to representation and to attempt to forward their views as any other group. IMO.

So, furthering that, I was trying to explain why they are so hellbent on some of their planks. It seems to be a shoving match with the Secularists. The Secularists are pushing for more personal rights (which I happen to agree with)-- Some here seem to think the Religious Right wants to Christianize the country. Some probably do. I think more, though, are motivated by not wanting to be forced to live in such a 'decadent' society.

That was why I used the analogy of the room, or the club. We're all stuck in the same society. While you are exerting your right, that action may impugn my right.

I'm just forwarding that idea to see if anyone has a viable solution.

Proust said it, alright in a very lengthy way but that was the point. We are all slaves to time.

Dinasours
Did they die out before Noah's Ark?

Are those remains of Prehistoric women and men fabrications?

Michael

In an earlier post you responded to one of the Texas Republican platform items thusly:




To which, Pistoff rightly responded:



Now in response to that, you wrote:





Seems there is a bit of inconsistency in your thinking here that you have not really attempted to explain.

Since so many people pull out that "I don't want my money funding abortions" mantra, I'd really like to hear how you, one of those many, resolve this.

Any considerations you can share?

but, but, but that's different you see...

Right Wing Organizations: American Center for Law & Just
I thought this an interesting insight into how the Christian Right spreads around it's operations for political and tax evasion purposes. ---BBB

Right Wing Organizations
American Center for Law and Justice [Updated January 2003]
P.O. Box 64429
1000 Regent University Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23467
www.aclj.org

Founder and President: Pat Robertson, founder of 700 Club, Christian Coalition
Date established: 1990
Executive Director/Chief Counsel: Jay Sekulow
Publications: Newsletter, education pamphlets, and reports.
Annual Budget: $12.1 million (2001)
Employees: 50

Media: Mr. Sekulow has been a popular guest on nationally televised news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Sekulow is also a frequent contributor and is often quoted in articles published in USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times.

Radio: "Jay Sekulow Live!" is a daily weekday radio show that is aired on over 140 radio stations in the U.S.

ACLJ's Principal Issues:
ACLJ's Activities:
About Jay Sekulow:
ACLJ Quotes:

ACLJ's Principal Issues:
ACLJ is a legal advocacy group "dedicated to defending and advancing religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the two-parent, marriage-bound family."

ACLJ has been involved with more than 30 cases before the United States Supreme Court and has been successful in many of its lawsuits.

ACLJ is a strong supporter of school vouchers and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the 2002 Cleveland voucher case before the Supreme Court.

The ACLJ supports the funding of faith-based social services, religious proclamations in the public domain, and often equates religious expression with patriotism. [10-9-01 news release]

ACLJ strongly opposes the right to legal, safe abortion and provides legal help to pro-life protesters who harass women seeking reproductive services.

The ACLJ challenges domestic partnership benefits for city and state employees, anti-discrimination ordinances that include sexual orientation, and generally fights against the right of gays and lesbians to be parents.

The ACLU's legal services are free.

ACLJ's Activities:
ACLJ gives free legal advice and counsel and maintains a national Christian Affiliate Attorney list for referrals.

Two of the Supreme Court cases argued by Sekulow have become benchmark cases in the area of religious liberty litigation. In Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (496 US 226), Sekulow argued the right of public school students to form Bible clubs and religious organizations on their school campuses. In Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, Sekulow defended the rights of religious groups to use public school property for religious meetings after hours.

A few other examples of ACLJ cases: ACLJ defended a group of parents who drove a transsexual teacher out of her job in Minnesota, has supporting a Kmart pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills, and has pursued litigation over various claims that children are being told that they cannot pray on school grounds or talk about their religion.

About Jay Sekulow:
Jay Sekulow helped draft the Defense of the Marriage Act, which passed both houses and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. DOMA allows states to reject the legitimacy of same-sex marriage licenses awarded in other states, although, to this day no state offers marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Sekulow helped draft DOMA "at the request of several pro-family legislators, and

Tax exempt status
Maybe I should get one of those minister licences and start my own church then I can gather a bunch of money and be politically active and have it funded by my flock and never pay taxes. All I need to do is say God speaks to me and so does Jesus. I can say whatever I want that slants everything my way and attribute it to God and Jesus Hey! Cool!!!!

None, that is the American way........... You also now qualify for President <sigh>

fishin

Sorry for delay, been busy.

As I mentioned earlier, I am unsatisfied with the metaphor of a seesawing opposition between right and left. We commonly (if not mostly) use metaphors to think with. But they can cripple or deceive as much as reveal, because we can assume without reflection that they represent real states of affairs appropriately.

Just as a quick example, in the area of education discourse, it's not at all unusual to hear people talking of schools as a garden and kids as plants...just water and add nutrients, and you get blossoms and lush shoots. It's a metaphor that is simple, easy to communicate, and which bears some connection to reality, but which is also so disconnected from the actuality that its use and acceptance becomes a real impediment to thinking more completely, or accurately, about how a school ought to be designed.

I believe that the metaphor of a right/left seesaw is likewise problematic, and an impediment to thinking more clearly about what's going on.

To start, it contains an implicit notion of unchangingness. Rather like the Dodgers/Yankees rivalry, it assumes one side will be in ascendance at a given period, then the other will take its place. It assumes the teams' goals are singular and unchanging (to win) and that the game itself is unchanging (same rule book, same playing field, same equipment, etc).

The ways in which politics and social dynamics are UNLIKE the above ought to be investigated. (Let me add as an aside here that I think the two party reality of the US sets us up to readily swallow the seesaw metaphor, as the rhetoric of anti-communism and the cold war sets us up to swallow the right/left metaphor).

Political parties are not unchanging, they evolve, and can evolve significantly. 'Conservative' means something now (in american political discourse) which is quite different from what it meant 100 years earlier. 'Liberal' also has come to represent, in the last two decades or so, some notions which the term did not suggest previously (there was a lovely piece I linked somewhere earlier of Bill Kristol and others fessing up to a purposeful redefinition of what 'liberal' meant).

We've agreed that not all interest groups in a polity are equally benign, that some can have goals or employ means which are effectively subversive - that is, as with a totalitarian-minded philosophy, they seek to bring about a playing field which is exclusionary, which will permit them advantages and the opportunity to gain and maintain power or critical influence.

Lola's argument is that there is an element now present in the polity which is of this nature. I think she's right.

As dys has pointed out, there is a rich tradition in US history, from its beginnings, of evangelism as a movement which has influenced americans' thinking regarding how society ought to be ordered. But it has always been held at arm's distance from determination of social policy through (I think) both an understanding of what your framers intended, and by a somewhat broad appreciation of the enlightenment values which informed them (the Puritans, for example, were big on education and set up your first universities).

Lola is presenting a case which suggests that the Republican party, and thus the country, is presently influenced by a uniquely aggressive and exclusionary element which has intentions that are effectively subversive.

That this element is somewhat amorphous doesn't defeat the thesis. It merely makes it tougher to understand if the thesis is valid and to argue that it may be. But as a large number of her quotations here (and on an earlier thread) point out, this amorphousness is not merely a matter of complexity, but also a consequence of direct intention..."Lay low, don't be explicit about what we are up to."

The seesaw metaphor, or your and timber's thesis that it is merely a loss of power by one 'team', immediately limits our understanding of what is going on (or at least, of what might be going on) because it presents but two options...good old Dodgers or good old Yankees...still good old baseball.

I gotta say, the significance of that ad hominem, flipped like a cowchip frisbee from the keyboard of the moderator, isn't lost on me.

And shouldn't be lost on anyone else. "Poke at the issues, not at each other," I seem to be hearing...

BTW: nyaaa, nyaa to you, too.

(You're really not such a bad guy, fish, but that opinion up there continues to reek of some of the most absurd, partisan, Limbaugh/Coulter/O'Reilly-inspired drivel ever posted in this forum. I suppose your choosing not to defend any of it, indeed just posting the tacky little playground response above, tells us all we need to know. So there. )