They don't hate us, they love their God

mesquite wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:
I shudder to think who they have brought into the Department of Homeland Security. Let's hope it's not some of our fanatics who believe that the Apocalypse IS now and that a flaming chaotic Middle East is a good thing because Jesus will appear on that shining cloud any day now.

As this thread showed, the highest levels of the pentagon are populated by fundamentalists.

The belief that natural Jews must inhabit Jerusalem in order to fulfill bible prophecy has strongly influenced British and American foreign policy.

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And look where that has gotten us.

Joe(Terrific idea to base a national policy backing persons who believe that burning bushes speak aloud.)Nation

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Burning Bush? That has a certain ring to it.

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Seriously, think about it, we Americans and the British have indeed based much of our Middle East Foreign Policy based on the prophecies of the Apocalypse. Now, in what other area of the world have we done anything remotely like that? Asia? South America?

Certainly we haven't based any of either country's FP on Christian doctrine when dealing with the nations of Africa.

How about the Cold War with the USSR? That was supposed to be about godless Communism versus the righteous Free World but it turned out to less a philosophical battle than an all out arms race which the Soviet Union lost from structural exhaustion.

So just what is our problem with the Palestinians? In a hundred years historians are going to look back at the creation of Israel and the refugee camps of Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank and say "What the hell were they thinking?" You displace one nation of a million or so with another of a million or so for what? A holy text that belongs to the second bunch says God gave them the land.

Right.

Luckily it didn't say that god gave all of Virginia and Delaware to the Jews or things would look a little different on the Potomac.

Joe(What's the round building, the Capitol? No, it's the National Synagogue)Nation

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Thank you, osso, that means a lot.

They don't hate us. They love their God.

ossobuco wrote:

I can see that premise. I can see a target for hate growing from that, though. Whoever THEY are, and that the target is particularized as time goes by.

You wrote that WAY back on page one of this thread. I didn't mean any particular they or any particular us. Anyone approaching the discussion brings their own.

And anyone reading what you wrote might have the first reaction of "Who us? Hate??? God, no."

The followers of Christ have a peculiar problem, they know what they must do, according to their own scriptures: they must love their enemies, sell all that they have and give to the poor. I don't when they just gave up on doing that and became something else entirely, but it seems like in was in the early days of getting organized. What they decided to work with was what was left of scripture, so they became very good at seeing the reams between the lines which also affected how we, I am including myself here, have conducted ourselves as a nation.

Women were relegated to second class.
(Jesus loved women, treated them as equals, Paul and the epistle writers, not so much. So it takes a hundred and fifty years of democracy to melt down the fiction and the myth.)

Slavery permitted and defended, embedded in the original US Constitution.
(Isn't that the oddest thing for a religion of love? Isn't that the oddest thing for the basis of a nation reputed to be the land of the free? Poor history scholars two hundred years from now! "What the? It's a democracy, but these inhabitants, apparently without having any rights of their own, are counted as a third of themselves in order to figure out proper representation???"

Science viewed with suspicion.
I don't know that became a Christian value but it did, resulting in years passing before blood transfusions, vaccinations, fluoridation, birth control, any many other things were accepted. Stem cell research is the perfect modern example, in the past the iron plow was derided from the pulpits as a poison to the soil holding up it's use for nearly a hundred years.
Luckily, we in the West have had enough people with enough power to tell the Churchmen to bugger off when it comes to science, otherwise, amongst other things we would NOT be doing are surgery, drilling for oil and flying in space.

Joe(There's more, but I have to go run.)Nation

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Don't forget, for it is written, that God is on our side.

That gives us the right to bomb the **** out of whomsoever we please.

Rolling Eyes

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mesquite wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:
I shudder to think who they have brought into the Department of Homeland Security. Let's hope it's not some of our fanatics who believe that the Apocalypse IS now and that a flaming chaotic Middle East is a good thing because Jesus will appear on that shining cloud any day now.

As this thread showed, the highest levels of the pentagon are populated by fundamentalists.

Additionally, there have been quite a large number of interns in the White House from Patrick Henry College, which on its "About Us" page, has the following mission statement:

Quote:

Institutional Mission, Vision, and Distinctives

The Mission of Patrick Henry College is to prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding. Educating students according to a classical liberal arts curriculum, and training them with apprenticeship methodology, the College provides academically excellent baccalaureate level higher education with a biblical world view.

The Vision of Patrick Henry College is to aid in the transformation of American society by training Christian students to serve God and mankind with a passion for righteousness, justice and mercy, through careers of public service and cultural influence.

The Distinctives of Patrick Henry College include practical apprenticeship methodology; a deliberate outreach to home schooled students; financial independence; a general education core based on the classical liberal arts; a dedication to mentoring and discipling Christian students; and a community life that promotes virtue, leadership, and strong, life-long commitments to God, family and society.

The Mission of the Department of Government is to promote practical application of biblical principles and the original intent of the founding documents of the American republic, while preparing students for lives of public service, advocacy and citizen leadership.

The Mission of the Department of Classical Liberal Arts is to provide students with a broad background in classical languages, logic, rhetoric, Biblical studies, history, English composition and literature, philosophy, science, and mathematics. They will encounter a multiplicity of ideas animating the world's great leaders and thinkers of the past in order to see how God has worked in and continues to work in His creation.

PHC was created specifically for home-schooled children, who otherwise ordinarily find it difficult to obtain the necessary certification to matriculate at universities or colleges which are not religiously affiliated.

As this article at the New Scientist points out, the students and graduates of this institution are represented out of all proportion to the size of the student body.

Quote:

It worked. By 2004, PHC students held seven out of 100 internships in the White House, a number even more striking when one considers that only 240 students were enrolled in the entire college. Last year, two PHC graduates worked in the White House, six worked for members of Congress and eight for federal agencies, including two for the FBI.

As this article from the New Zealand Herald reports, student aren't simply provided with an educational opportunity, but must hew to a doctrinal line.

Quote:

Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia is not your average American university. The students - about 75 per cent of whom have been taught at home - sign a statement before they arrive, confirming (among other things) that they have a literal belief in the teachings of the Bible. Students must obey a curfew, wear their hair neatly and dress "modestly".

Earlier this year, almost a third of the full-time faculty walked out claiming a lack of academic freedom, and this article at the online version of PBS's Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly interviews one of them, Professor Erik Root.

The current administration has actively attempted to inject conservative christianity into our otherwise justifiably secular government.

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All this despite Jesus' steadfast refusal to participate in the politics of his day.

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Joe Nation wrote:

Seriously, think about it, we Americans and the British have indeed based much of our Middle East Foreign Policy based on the prophecies of the Apocalypse. Now, in what other area of the world have we done anything remotely like that? Asia? South America?

I disagree completely. I have no doubt that the politicos sell such a message to their constituents, as it is convenient, but historically, there has been another agenda. The British originally attempted to interest the Zionists in settling Uganda, but they weren't buying, and using their own considerable resources, they had established several fairly successful settlements in what was then Turkish controlled Palestine by the 1890s.

After the Great War, the English and French were forced by that fait accompli to accept that there were a Zionist state in what became the Mandate of Palestine and the Transjordan. But the focus for first the English, and later the Americans, has always been petroleum.

The English fought a bloody insurrection in "Iraq" for more than a decade, beginning more than 80 years ago, because Balfour and Churchill cobbled together that abortion of a nation so as to combine the best petroleum resources west of Persia and north of Arabia into one "nation." Harry Truman may have chosen to recognize the State of Israel in 1948 for electoral reasons in what appeared to be (but in the result, wasn't) a close race for the White House. But American foreign policy has only been linked to Israel in a morganatic marriage which on the surface attempts to ameliorate the public opinion of American Jews and fundamentalist christian. Actual policy decisions have been far more closely wed to the pragmatic consideration of dealing with an Arab world sitting atop the world's largest reserves of the most highly valued grade of crude oil. Truman would recognize the State of Israel, despite that nation's violation of every responsibility given them by the United Nations for the treatment of "Arabs" within Palestine, but he would not back their play in the Sinai against the Egyptians. Eisenhower was willing to back the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Persia (Iran) in 1953, because he threatened to force the Shah's abdication and to nationalize the oil industry. But in 1956, when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, he not only refused to back France and England when they dropped paratroopers on the canal, he sent a naval and Marine task force to the Lebanon and warned the Europeans off, and told the Israelis to withdraw from the Sinai or face the loss of all American aid. With a Republican Congress, he could get away with it, too.

The Israelis learned, though, and when they were virtually at war already with Syria, they violated Jordanian and Syrian air space to attack an Iraqi column in Iraq which was moving to support the Syrians. As the famous Six Day War broke out with all of their Arab neighbors, they attacked the Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian air forces preemptively on the ground, and poured into southern Lebanon and the Sinai, and drove most of the Palestinians across the river into Jordan--and they didn't ask American permission in advance. In the event, they won their gamble--Lyndon Johnson faced a majority Democratic Congress (they controlled the House and two thirds of the Senate), which although it may have been "his party," was swept along with the wave of popular opinion in favor of "brave little Israel" and would have brooked no sanctions against Israel. I was living in Virginia across from DC in those days, and before the war was even finished, you could "joke books" in the shops which ridiculed the Arabs.

For public consumption, with the ironic exception of the only self-declared devout christian President, Jimmy Carter, American politicians have publicly voiced support for Israel. But don't be fooled: American and English foreign policy with regard to the middle east have for more than 80 years been conditioned solely by the world's largest proven reserves in Arabia and Iraq of "light, sweet crude."

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neologist wrote:

All this despite Jesus' steadfast refusal to participate in the politics of his day.

Why render unto Caesar when you can simply co-opt his bureaucracy?

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Neo, once you start believing in a myth you want to inject it into everything you touch or touches you. You can't let a little thing like reality stand in your way. Who was the Bush staffer who boasted that the administration was making it's own reality? Any bets where he goes for spiritual guidance?

Joe(The text is then transferred directly into the President's Intelligence Briefing.)Nation

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Joe Nation wrote:

Neo, once you start believing in a myth you want to inject it into everything you touch or touches you. You can't let a little thing like reality stand in your way. Who was the Bush staffer who boasted that the administration was making it's own reality? Any bets where he goes for spiritual guidance? . . .

I don't hang out with those guys.

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Yeah. You do. Everytime you engage in promoting that particular myth you cling to, you do, because it allows others to cling to their skyhook, their fiction, their faith in the great Promise tah da da da.... .

Joe(and we edge closer to madness)Nation

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What you refer to as my myth is not the same as your myth or their myth.

You are mythtaken. Thath wot.

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Lots of mythpelling...

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thpell chek owt

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Mythtaking yourself?

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Francis wrote:

Mythtaking yourself?

I was once mistaken for a silverback gorilla. If you ever saw me you would understand. . . Sigh.

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God was such a tyrant for you...

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They don't hate us, they love their God

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