Does Bush's religious faith inappropriately dictatate policy

Tartar, I sort of look at their actions vs their spoken words. c.i.

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Sound of both hands clapping loudly. Thanks, BillW, once again!

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Well, we seem unable to get around the digression, so I guess I'll just go with the flow for a posting.

I'd like to offer the opinion of Jesus on this issue:

Matthew 6:5

"When you are praying, do not behave like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in synagogues or on street corners in order to be noticed....Whenever you pray, go to your room, close your door, and pray to your Father in private."

Matthew 6:16

"When you fast, you are not to look glum as the hypocrites do. They change the appearances of their faces so that others may see they are fasting...when you fast, see to it that you groom your hair and wash your face. In that way no one can see you are fasting..."

I think it is evident that Jesus was counseling people not to wear their religions on their sleeves -- not to be ostentatious in their piety.

The touchdown scorer doesn't go down on one knee in the end-zone so that any GOD can see that he is grateful for his victory. That is done for the people in the stands.

I think George Bush is playing to the stands, because if he were half the Christian he is pretending to be, our troops would not be in position where they are right now.

Nothing Jesus ever said could even be misinterpreted to mean he would counsel going in to kill a bunch of people in order to get our way.

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Where do you think that strut comes from. If one visualizes its origin, one could only say it was an injury from his Skull and Crossbones initiation, or he has a corncob stuck up his ... to remember it at all times.

I believe that is where his faith resonates from, and believe me folks that is scary - did someone mention Illuminati?

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Let's face it, Jesus was a good guy who has been sadly betrayed by so many alleged followers. It would do Christianity as much good as it would our country if we outlawed any mention of religion in public life.

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Tartarin, it is suppose to be in government life. Maybe, the death penalty would do some good here - hmmmm!

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Bill -- This Skull and Bones stuff really bugs me because I've known quite a few Bonesmen and many of them are really quite normal. I think you can take all the recent gobbledegook about S&B with a tablespoon of high potency salt!

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BillW easy on the corncobs there - you're getting close to home. Wink

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Wouldn't it be funny if Attorney General Ashcroft found GWBush guilty of treason, and the penalty is "death?" c.i.

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Never know one - ie, a S&B. Read about them - talk about secret!

Found the following excerpt that I feel is pertinent, as it is one of the leading Federalist Society dilatant of today and shaper of the laws:

Quote:

Scalia apparently believes that Catholics, at least, would be unable to uphold, as citizens, views that contradict church doctrine. This is exactly the authoritarian stereotype of Catholicism as 'papist mind control' that Catholics have struggled against throughout the modern era, and that John F. Kennedy did so much to overcome. But Scalia sees submission to the authoritarian Church as desirable -- possibly even as the very definition of faith! He quotes St. Paul, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

As Scalia lamely tried to explain in Chicago, "The Lord repaid -- did justice -- through His minister, the state." [this betrays his inaccurate estimation of retribution as justice -- JW]

According to Scalia, his view once represented the consensus "not just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding the powers of the state. That consensus," he said, "has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy."

And now, most alarmingly, Mr. Scalia wishes to rally the devout against democracy's errors. "The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible," he said in Chicago.

Scalia is right about one thing: modern democracy did indeed upset the 'divine authority' of the state. Yet that has usually been considered by Americans to have been a step forward. The great 17th-century dissenter Roger Williams declared that government derived no authority whatsoever from God, but was "merely human and civil." Thomas Jefferson put matters equally bluntly in 1779: "Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than on opinions in physics or geometry."

That view prevailed among the framers of the Constitution at Philadelphia in 1787. Throughout their debates, even when they prayed for divine guidance, they rejected the idea that political authority lay with anyone or anything other than the sovereign people. The only extended discussion of religion in the Federalist Papers has James Madison listing zeal in religious opinion as one of "the latent causes of faction" that cause men "to vex and oppress each other" and that need institutional checks.

In Chicago, Scalia asserted -- not for the first time -- that he is a strict constructionist, taking the Constitution as it is, not as he might want it to be. Yet he wants to give it a religious sense that is directly counter to the abundantly expressed wishes of the men who wrote the Constitution.

That is not properly called strict 'constructionism'; rather, it is opportunism, and it threatens democracy. His defense of his private prejudices, even if they may occasionally overlap the opinions of others, should not be mislabeled as 'conservatism'. Justice Scalia seeks to abandon the intent of the Constitution's framers and impose views about government and divinity that no previous justice, no matter how conservative, has ever embraced.

http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/povertylaw-l/msg00076.html

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husker, them are good ole Texas cobs, flown in fresh daily (he goes through about a 12 pack a day) Smile

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Quote:

(he goes through about a 12 pack a day)

How much drinkin' are you doing, Bill?

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Sheila Samples, a former Army Public Information Officer, has an excellent essay on this topic. Link below, excerpt next:

I don't know about you, but I'm hearing looney tunes from one end of this administration to the other -- and all in the name of Jesus Christ. I want to stand up and shout, "Hey! I know Jesus Christ! Jesus is a friend of mine. And the guy you're hiding behind, the one you're wagging in everybody's face for political gain, is no Jesus Christ!"

But all I can do when Bush or his legions blaspheme the name of Jesus and order God -- like an unbottled heavenly genie -- to wreak Old Testament vengeance, is clap my hands over my ears, rock back and forth in agony, and burst into uncontrollable tears. How can Christians stand by, mute, and allow the world to be savagely sodomized, allow millions of innocents to be slaughtered -- and allow it all to be blamed on the spotless and gentle risen Savior? How?

Having displayed neither the interest nor the ability to lead, it seems Dubya asks only that those who are actually in control allow him to be called the leader: a noble and self-righteous dictator, protecting his subjects, killing his way to peace. This seems little enough to ask, not only of those who control him, but of those who selected him for this high office. In a May 2002 article in First Things magazine, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that God-chosen leaders must "seize power in conflict," thus demonstrating that God (not the USSC) chose them over others.

"It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies," Scalia wrote. "It is much more difficult to see the hand of God -- or any higher moral authority -- behind the fools and rogues...whom we ourselves elect to do our own will..."

Scalia knew. They all knew that the people cannot be trusted with the freedoms of self-government. Like all of history's madmen, they knew if you inundate the people with a relentless wave of confusion and fear, if you amp up the sound until it shatters all reason, if you stir a vengeful God into the mix, that the fools and rogues will come to you and lay freedom at your feet.

They will beg you to take it.

Onward Christian Soldiers

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Quote:

Sheila Samples, a former Army Public Information Officer

Whose army was she in, and if it was ours, was she thrown out for treason?

I am always suspect when people misuse the term "sodomize".

You should be too.

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From the link, since you cannot be bothered to click on it:

"Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former U.S. Army Public Information Officer."

Don't know about the treason part. Doubt it.

I think the metaphor is apt.

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I found the article very thought provoking, albeit a tad dramatic. Now diddie, you know anything that provokes thought is gonna rankle the bushophiles.

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(The introduction to the editorial series "Bombing His Way to Armageddon", at Buzzflash.com)

Of all the Bush lies and betrayals, of all the breaches of faith, Bush's usurpation of God to advance his political agenda is perhaps the most heinous of his sins. By asserting that he can better discern God's will than the leaders of his own faith (Methodist), his father's faith (Episcopalian), his brother's faith (Catholic), and the leaders of virtually every denomination in the United States, short of the Southern Baptists and Evangelicals, Bush is committing the ultimate arrogance. They all oppose the war that Bush claims is being committed in the name of God and Jesus.

Bush stands virtually alone in claiming that God is on the side of his little war.

Bush's betrayal of the public trust through the manipulation of Americans by the use of fear and lies is a betrayal of men and women. His attempts to use God as an advocate for his pending 'Guernica' bombing of Iraq -- with the resultant deaths of civilian Iraqis -- is a betrayal of the almighty.

It is unforgivable to hijack the government through a rigged Supreme Court vote. It is unforgivable to split the world of nations apart -- to pit ally against ally through threats, intimidation and bribery like a mob enforcer -- in the pursuit of a self-serving war. It is another thing altogether to use God as if he were your personal servant.

For that sin, Bush will be held accountable in the hereafter.

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I posted a response to PDiddie about 15 minutes ago -- and for some reason, it isn't here. I'm just posting a test here to see if it goes through. I'll re-post my other remarks in a bit.

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Not sure what happened -- but...

...in diddie's last post, he mentioned that Bush should be held accountable.

It seems to me that there may be an even larger culprit involved here -- the Senate of the United States.

The Constitution places responsibility for declaring war in the hands of the Senate -- not the President.

Where is the Senate in all this?

I understand that the president must be empowered to act if there is not time for the Senate to act -- but that hardly is the case here. They've had more than enough time to at least start some discussion on the issue.

But as Senator Byrd has pointed out -- only silence prevails on this issue in that chamber.

And while we're at it -- where are all the strict constructionists? Why are they not in high dudgeon over the fact that Bush is running roughshod over the Constitution?

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PDiddie

The Samples piece is a fine one. My grandparents, in many ways my main role models for good personhood, were active and believing Mennonites. They would have taken young mister Bush out back of the woodshed and talked about the sin of pride, about throwing stones, about 'thou shalt not kill'. They would have done everything in their power, were they still here, to argue against him and to do assist in removing him from power. They, though pacifists, had given permission to each of their sons to go to war in Europe, being able to discern for themselves the gravity and threat of that situation. They cared not a hoot for what political leaders said. They cared almost as little for what leaders of their own church said.

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Does Bush's religious faith inappropriately dictatate policy

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