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Thu 29 Jan, 2004 05:59 pm
On December 30th USA Today ran an editorial cartoon picturing a check written from the Bush/Cheney Committee to Howard Dean for President with a memo that said "keep talking." Republicans think that Howard Dean as the Democrat front runner in the primaries is just a big laugh. I don't think it is funny, I think it is sad.
It says something about our nation that a great political party consisting of millions of Americans could possibly pick someone as mentally unstable as Howard Dean to lead their party and carry their banner into a national election. I have just made a comment about Dean (that he is mentally unstable) that has not been printed anywhere, but has been said privately in newsrooms and boardrooms across the nation. No one, not even Governor Howard Dean, can tell what is going to come from his mouth next.
I was shocked to watch him at a rally in San Francisco when he growled out loud that he wasn't going to listen to any preachers . That was a few weeks ago. Then in New Hampshire during an interview on Christmas Day with the Boston Globe, he stated that he would emphasize his Christianity as soon as he began to campaign in the South. What?
Let's take a closer look at Howard Dean and religion. His mother was a Catholic and his father an Episcopalian. He was raised in the Episcopal Church and pretty much stayed there until he met his wife in medical school. His bride, the former Judith Steinberg, is Jewish. He did not convert to Judaism and she did not want to become a Christian. He and his wife have stated that they almost became Unitarians as a compromise. Compromise? Unitarians do not believe in a living God. The basic belief of that "church" is sort of a fuzzy universalism ... "we are all a part of God." Most Unitarians are either agnostics or atheists and they surely do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ.
It gets worse: the Deans told their children to pick a religion, any religion, and that they would not get involved in their decision one way or the other. The kids did, and both chose Judaism, which should give everyone a good idea of the kind of witness for Christ Howard Dean has been to his two children. Sometime in the 1980's he left the Episcopal Church where he was a member over a dispute about the route of a public bike path through the church property. Excuse me? Now, I would leave a church if they ordained female deacons or recruited a homosexual music minister ... but a bike path? He then moved to a Congregationalist Church which he rarely, if ever, attends.
So Howard Dean is a Christian just like Bush the Methodist or Gephardt the Baptist? Not really. When asked about Christ he told the Boston Globe on Christmas Day that, "Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind." Dean said, "He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."
Christ was "someone", "a person", "an extraordinary example"? Nowhere in any of his comments can I find Howard Dean referring to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as a part of the Trinity, or being in any way divine. Indeed, he talks of Christ in the past tense, as if He had died in the human sense. Perhaps Howard Dean would have been better off in a Unitarian Church, but then he would have had trouble winning any elections as a member of a near atheistic institution.
Congressman Gephardt, Senator Lieberman and other Democrats do have a rudder of faith to guide them. Howard Dean lacks that rudder and this is precisely why his "deeply held beliefs" vary from day to day. One day he said he did not know if Osama bin Laden was guilty of 9-11 and that the man should get a fair trial. The next day he said Osama deserves the death penalty. He has stated that the United States should receive "permission" from the United Nations before waging war and then said that the Iraqi people must determine their own fate. Howard Dean is not of a single mind, he knows not where he stands on any given issue from one day to the next. The situation is not funny; it is pathetic and dangerous.
EXAMPLE: Suppose Dean gets the Democrat nomination and is trailing by 15 points when the President dies of a heart attack while running the Marine Marathon in October, 2004. Cheney, who is perhaps no more of a social conservative than Dean, becomes President and is at the top of the Republican ticket. The Christian right envisions Cheney's lesbian daughter being married to her female lover in the White House, and they just don't vote. The Muslims join with the unions, the gays, the socialists and the loony greens to vote Dean in, and we have a madman in the White House in January '05.
Now are you scared? You should be. The fact that Howard Dean can raise tens of millions of dollars and attract millions of supporters who really don't care what he says should scare all Americans and the rest of the world as well. While Karl Rove may be ecstatic over the Democrats picking Howard Dean as their standard bearer, I am not. Further, I am sure that President George W. Bush would prefer to run on his merits and his faith against a more worthy opponent than Howard Dean.
I've never understood why anyone would find another religious beliefs any business of theirs. Who cares.
The presidential nominee is not running a religious entity, but a large complex business. His political, business and/or marketing skills should be of paramount importance. A country needs saavy leader not a religious puppet.
What excellent fools religion makes of men. For me, the single word "god" suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul and grotesque, oh, and silly. Regarding Unitarianism, I see it's only fault in being all too similar to Calvinism. I have known a number of Christians who demonstrated morals but I would not surmise it to be a dominate trait.
Reading this diatribe by kjvtrue has caused me to sit down and write a check to the Dean campaign. If people with thoughts like these are so vehemently opposed to Dean, that speaks volumes. Apparently the more stable people are on the other side.
Thus the check.
I think we should have a font that looks like words cut out of newspapers.You know, The kind that you use to send ransom notes.
The religious issues are the only ones that matter to me.
Seems like there has been another drive-by on the information highway. Sanity has been bushwacked.
What everyone else said!!!
I don't believe kjvtrue wrote most of that rant against Dean. I think she copied it from somewhere. It's not at all her style of writing. And, if I am correct, it was disingenuous of her (to put it nicely) to pass it off as her own.
Thank you for editing the name of the thread, kjvtrue. Now 'fess up.
Someone should inform kjvtrue that the president of the US is a secular position.
Re: About Howard Dean
kjvtrue wrote:The Christian right envisions Cheney's lesbian daughter being married to her female lover in the White House, and they just don't vote. The Muslims join with the unions, the gays, the socialists and the loony greens to vote Dean in, and we have a madman in the White House in January '05.
The Jesus of the Bible would
love this to happen.
- Jesus was a socialist. His teachings included admonitions against hording wealth and he commanded some of his followers to "sell all of their good and give to the poor".
- He surrounded himself with working men (the kind you would find in a union today).
- He associated with prostitutes and sinners (whether or not you include lesbians in this group is your business (I don't with apologies if this offends anyone))
- He admonished his followers (quite strongly) to worry about their own lives and not judges people around them.
... and many people considered Him a looney.
Furthermore, the people who really pissed Jesus off were the religous people who spent around judging other people.
When you suggest that diverse "common folk" of American joining together with those at the margins of society to get rid of a wealthy, war-mongering, overly-religious leader who doesn't care for the poor ... is a picture that I cherish.
The Jesus of the Bible would agree with me.
I will think about what e_brown has said, long and hard.
Re: About Howard Dean
ebrown_p: I'd also wager that Jesus wasn't terribly keen on capital punishment, either.
Eva wrote:I don't believe kjvtrue wrote most of that rant against Dean. I think she copied it from somewhere. It's not at all her style of writing. And, if I am correct, it was disingenuous of her (to put it nicely) to pass it off as her own.
Thank you for editing the name of the thread, kjvtrue. Now 'fess up.
King has trouble writing a coherent sentence. She's as likely to be the author of that piece as she is of being the author of the Declaration of Independence.
Oh, by the way...
...whoever did write it must have had one hell of a sense of humor to include the line that begins, "It says something about our nation that a great political party consisting of millions of Americans could possibly pick someone as mentally unstable as..."
If ya get my drift!!!!!
:wink:
:wink:
:wink:
Most of y'all know my standing in the political spectrum (Somewhat to the Right of Margaret Thatcher) and my religious standing (Founding member of the Torquemada fan club and author of
"The Salem Witch Trial Judges Were Misunderstood Geniuses" 
) But saying that, this article pegged my 'whacko meter' at
10.
The one thing that I remember about what Jesus taught us is the following:
'Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged'[/i]
I choose my politicians based on their standing on the issues and to a lesser extent, their character. I believe that someones religious beliefs are reflected in their character, but not always. Rants like this one give those of us who are open minded conservatives a bad name.
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