Sunday Discussion Group
Less than a week after Jerry Falwell’s death, Newt Gingrich appeared at Falwell’s college, Liberty University, yesterday to address the school’s 2007 graduating class. The former House Speaker and likely presidential candidate denounced the “growing culture of radical secularism.”
In a speech heavy with religious allusions but devoid of hints about his presidential ambitions, Gingrich drew applause from the graduates and their families in the school’s 12,000-seat football stadium when he demanded: “This anti-religious bias must end.”
“In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive,” Gingrich said, deriding what he called the “contorted logic” and “false principles” of advocates of secularism in American society.
“Basic fairness demands that religious beliefs deserve a chance to be heard,” he said during his 26-minute speech. “It is wrong to single out those who believe in God for discrimination. Yet, today, it is impossible to miss the discrimination against religious believers.”
Today’s Discussion Group topic has two parts: 1) What on earth are these people talking about? and 2) Just how much religiosity will it take before these people are satisfied?
Theists face “discrimination”? There’s a widespread “anti-religious bias”? Where? From whom?
Religious beliefs don’t have a chance to be heard? Since when? Whose religious beliefs stifled, and under what circumstances? (Gingrich insists the prejudice and intolerance is so obvious, “it s impossible to miss.” He then pointed to exactly zero specific examples of this pervasive, widespread anti-religion animus.)
The religious right movement is often referred to as the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party,” a phrase I’ve never been entirely comfortable with, in part because the Dobson/Robertson crowd rarely believes in literal violence. That said, the Taliban complained about an insufficiently religious culture and society in Afghanistan, so they created a state more to the group’s liking. What would Gingrich propose we do about his dystopian America where, allegedly, people of faith are denigrated and treated as second-class citizens?
I’m hard pressed to imagine what country Gingrich and the 12,000 people who applauded his worldview are living in. Out of the 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, the president, vice president, their cabinet, and nine Supreme Court justices, there is exactly one person — not one percent, just one guy — who does not profess a faith in God. If polls are to be believed, less than 5% of the population describes themselves as non-believers.
In the last presidential election, one candidate announced during a presidential debate, “My faith affects everything that I do, in truth…. I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith.” This was John Kerry, the more secular candidate of the two.
The faithful added religion to the Pledge of Allegiance. They added religion to American currency. Both chambers of Congress not only have taxpayer-financed chaplains, but begin each day with a prayer. So much public money is available for religious ministries from the government, they’re hiring lobbyists to get more. The White House now has an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Every year for the last six decades, presidents have declared a National Day of Prayer, and honor Christmas as a national holiday.
In our culture, religion is common in the media — I can’t remember any recent month in which Time and/or Newsweek didn’t feature religion as a cover story — almost exclusively in a positive light. In sporting events, celebrating athletes routinely express their religiosity. At awards ceremonies, entertainers routinely “give thanks to God” from the outset, usually to considerable applause.
Gingrich sees all of this and believes an “anti-religious bias” dominates U.S. society. Exactly how much more religiosity will it take before he’s satisfied? Or is it more likely that Gingrich and his receptive audience yesterday revel in some kind of delusional self-pity because a victim complex sells better than reality?
Religious belief isn’t inherently divisive. Gingrich and his ilk certainly are.
To be fair, I think English history bears out Gingerich’s point: England was hardly at all divided by religion, after the Jews were kicked out and all the Catholics were burned. 🙂
The followers of the religious right apparently need everything in society to support their particular beliefs. They want 24/7 in-your-face piety, combined with the degree of certainty about everything that comes only with faith and a religious patriarchy, all focussed most intently on people who disagree with them. The leaders all want to be Cardinal Richelieu, similarly with unfettered power over those who disagree with them.
I believe we should get rid of all “special privileges” for institutions involved in the business of so-called religion.
Tax-free status … Why? Exceptions to Equal Employment Opportunities laws … Why? Freedom from child molestation laws … Why? Invitations to address legislative sessions …. Why? Religious invocations at football games and college graduations … Why? Public bandwidth occupied at lower cost by con artist preachers … Why?
I am happy to live in a secular society. I’m glad our Founding Fathers fought to establish it. It’s bad enough that Christian religions don’t respect our Constitutionally guaranteed Freedom From Religion; I hate to contemplate what it will be like when, as is inevitable, we face similar claims to special privilege from non-Christian religions as well.
The most recent New Yorker reports that Unbelief is the fourth-largest persuasion in the world, right behind Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Even if people don’t know or care about our Constitution anymore, shouldn’t marketing numbers count for something?
From what I read, the conclusion of “anti-religious bias” comes about in a few different ways:
A scandal arises about a religious figure (e.g., Ted Haggard, pedophile priests) and there’s a public discussion of the role that religion or religious organizations might have played in it. This is not allowed.
Some judicial or legislative result (e.g., on abortion or school choice) conflicts with a belief deeply held by some religious faction. All the justifications for the result are rolled into one: bias.
Someone says or does something in public that actually demonstrates bias against a specific religion. I think that this is the rarest of these three possibilities.
What I find interesting is that when people say “anti-religious bias” I think they most often mean “anti-[my religion] bias”. Browsing through the Web sites that talk about such bias, for example, I haven’t run across condemnation of profiling based on adherence to Islam, outrage about the way Wiccan soldiers killed in the war were prevented from having their tombstones decorated in a particular way, or concern about Christian proselytizing of non-Christians in the military. It mostly seems to be about whose ox is being gored.
The hallmark of the Religious Right, I believe, is that an individual who does not submit to their worldview is discriminating against that worldview. For example, if I openly choose to not subject my children to what I interpret as a theology of hate, bigotry, and bloodshed, then I am automatically deemed an enemy of their “movement.” My bias is nothing more than my free choice to protect my children from what I, as a responsible parent, feel to be an unwholesome ideology.
Does the RR support hate? Yes—and I’ve got the transcripts of Falwell, Dobson, Hinn, Robertson, Phelps, Chick, and a whole lot of other “loving Christians” to prove it.
Do they promote bigotry? Yes—and those transcripts prove that, as well.
Do they promote bloodshed? Again, yes. Each of the names I’ve listed above—plus untold thousands more—have overtly promoted the imminent need to use violence against gays and lesbians, blacks, Mexicans, immigrants of all nationalities, Jews, South Americans, Europeans, and anyone even remotely connected with Islam. Most of those forms of violence possess the high-confidence potential to inflict death. And the vast numbers of mere citizens—all calling themselves “good Christians, mind you—who rabidly cheer when torture and war against Islam are promoted by gutless little fearmongers who want to be Pres(ide)ent—((there’s that “ide” thing again))—merely support the hypothesis that Christianity has become a “religion of violence, destruction, and death.”
If there are “Christians” who disagree with my theory, then let them deal with it. It is no more my responsibility to “fix” the problems within their ideology than it is to subject my children to it. It is theirs, as they bear the responsibility for empowering and enabling the Falwells and Gingriches of the current era.
Or should I refer to “Duh” Newt as “GinGRINCH?”
Keep your state out of my church and your church out of my state!
Gingrich and supporters such as those at Liberty and Regent Universities are making these noises because of one thing, in my view.
That thing is the perception that the idea of God, and perhaps religion in general, is arguably becoming less and less defensible because more and more people are becoming educated in science and reality, the discoveries within each then conflicting with doctrine, which often leads to the questioning of religion in the first place. Thus the end-game tactics, the scare-mongering, the finger-pointing at those ‘different from us,’ etc.
Religion is a comfort for many, and I recognize that. But get it out of my damn government.
Bad guys who think they are the good guys are a million times worse than bad guys who know they are the bad guys.
Does Gingrich really think he’s the good guy? If he knows he’s the bad guy and he’s just pretending to be the good guy, that’s even a trillion times more worse — bottom of the pack.
Some people, as CB outlined a day or two ago, are political because of their religion. Others are (or appear to be) religious because of their politics. No doubt which camp the Gingrichs fall into. Who’s fooled?
I wouldn’t assume a monolithic motive, despite the RR’s monolithic politics.
Some are obvious self dealers – Falwell, Robertson, and laughably here, Gingrich. Others are so insecure in their faith that they need to have it echoed around them, around the clock. The ID pushers largely fall into this category. Still others probably believe they are legitimately doing God’s work.
My answer to question 2 is they will never be satisfied. The self dealers’ greed and power-lust can never be sated. The 2nd group will remain rooted in their fundamental insecurity, while the third group sees it as a life’s work.
As for what they are talking about? The self dealers are playing the market. They are shaking down the other 2 groups for cash and/or political support. The 2nd group is blaming the world around them for their own failures and insecurities, while the 3rd group is indulging in old fashioned bible thumping.
It’s an unholy alliance, held together by a carefully cultivated culture of victimhood. As the saying goes, ‘The squeaky wheel gets the oil’. Squeaking in unison gets them all more attention. But while the squeaks and squawks may all sound the same, they’re all in it for separate and insatiable reasons.
Who, and under what circumstances, are religious beliefs stifled?
I know just what he’s talking about. When you’re a Christian, but you happen not to believe in gay discrimination, be anti-abortion, or not be Protestant, a bunch of people say you’re not really a Christian.
They pick and choose what scripture they adhere to, but don’t allow you to interpret scripture yourself.
What we need is a war on Fox News that spawns endless trivial culture wars in the name of God, but in the service of Rove.
1) What on earth are these people talking about? — his worldview
His worldview? I’ve got it- his Weltanschauung:
1) Hostility to the Treaty of Versailles.
2) Anti-semitism.
3) Anti-communism.
4) The “Leadership Principle”- absolute obedience to the Fuhrer
5) Lebensraum- livingspace for the “sturdy sons”- whatever that means- of America
That about sums it up.
Hate masquerading as Love. That pretty much summarizes it.
“It is wrong to single out those who believe in God for discrimination. Yet, today, it is impossible to miss the discrimination against religious believers.””
wrong again Gingerich, he left out the all-impotent word Extremist, extremist religious believers.
It is right to single out those who believe in Extremist God views for discrimination. For many of those religious believers rely on hate, fear and control toward others instead of the basic spiritual principles of love and tolerance toward others.
As I read through these comments it seems obvious to me that most who have commented are able to see through the demagoguery of Gingrich and hypocrisy of the religious right. But who are we? And how many are there of us?
Would any of the graduating class Gingrich spoke to be reading this item or the comments following it?
I wonder. I read the comments of people like Christopher Hitchens, an avowed atheist, I read Richard Dawkins’ book, and I read the items sent out by the various secular and humanist groups and I also wonder how many of us read them. My mind and the minds of many of those who added comments above seem to be open to new ideas.
But one of the most alarming characteristics of “faith-based” organizations is they automatically shut-out any other points of view that might challenge their faith. How do you convince a man who won’t listen?
And I sincerly wonder if those who identify themselves as having no belief constitute a mere 5% of the population.
People who we now call the Religious Right have been around for a long time. I wonder if their numbers and influence are increasing, or if they’re just getting more noisy.
Does anybody know?
JM
Is it really worth arguing the case here? I mean, is it really worth the time and emotional energy?
CB has said it all, perfectly. He’s answered his own questions, beautifully. Is there anything more to be said? Of course, it’s a delight to read expositions like Steve’s @5 — most reassuring. For that alone it’s worth having the discussion. But, come on, the RR’re so way off the scale what’s the point?
It’s interesting, though, to note that comments here on religious issues far outnumber comments on any other topic. Could be interesting to do an analysis of topic categories against comment volume. Takers? Mr. Carpetbagger?
However — discussion points:
1) What on earth are these people talking about? They’re talking about their own insecurity. If you have genuine faith in a particular religious belief, whether theist or non-theist, and sincerely try to put into practice its tenet and methods, you’ve basically got no time, far less inclination, to yak off at high volume about other people’s perceived failings or your own great goodness. So, ‘these people’ reveal their hypocrisy, irreligiousness and general ignorance by mouthing off such divisive and harmful rubbish. Devout? — my foot. Compassionate? — my foot. Wise? — my foot. Dump them, ignore them and forget them. Not worth the time of day.
2) Just how much religiosity will it take before these people are satisfied? No system of measurement exists in the entire Universe that could encompass and satisfy their greed and insecurity. Again, forget them. Have a laugh, that’s about as much as it’s worth.
[Of course now they’ll claim ‘persecution’. So what.]
Two observations. First, there is and has been genuine religious bias in this country and it is practiced by the religious against one another. At the turn of the twentieth century the Catholic immigrants from countries like Italy, Poland and Ireland and the Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe were discriminated against by the WASP majority. Today the scapegoat de jure of the new religious right, a coalition which brings together the old Catholic enemies with their WASP persecutors, is Islam.
This bias, of course, is not what Gingrich and his ilk are yammering about. The bias which they conjure up of secular government and institutions discriminating against the religious is clearly a political construct. It was constructed as a foil by racist who were under fire for their own discrimination against blacks. By invoking religious discrimination they transformed themselves from victimizer to victim. Hence they too just like the blacks whom they had subjugated needed special treatment from the government. It has been a rather successful con.
Hitler’s playbook requires a fictional oppressor to justify the authoritarian take over. First create a history of injustice in the people’s mind to justify the grab for absolute power. Faith based strawmen demons are the necessary creations of those who want to become faith based strongmen dictators.
I suggest we all buy Jon Meacham’s book ‘American Gospel’. If we like it buy another to give to friend with the provision that if the friend finds it of merit (s)he must buy a copy and give it to a friend with the same provision.
It is a short easy read full of quotations from prominent people in our history about how public religion must differ from private belief if we are to keep our republic. What the religious radicals want is most definitely not what was created, and supported in this country.
I think I left out:
-hostility to the Weimar
-creation of a Folksgemeinshaft, or racial national community
My responses to this question are totally facetious, of course.
For those who don’t get the historical reference, I’m naming a bunch of stuff Hitler and the NSDAP (Nazi party) campaigned on. Gingrich might want to throw in having nasty, Hitlerish haircuts. If Gingrich has advocated adopting a lot of the Hitler/Goebbels campaigning strategy, including name-calling and demagoguery, maybe he’s emulating the Fuhrer’s look too, if that’s a tactic. /snark
way too many right-wing christians.
not nearly enough lions!
Step one to launching a presidential bid: find an audience and give it an enemy that threatens the very existence of the group. Whip said group into a fenzy and voila! Instant base and donations to campaign coffers.
Step two: tell newfound base not to look into candidate’s sordid past for incongruities with their belief system. Tell base all such attacks are from the vile enemy that wants to bring them down. Soak base for more donations. Rinse. Repeat.
Well there used to be prayer in schools. And there used to be the ten commandments and the nativity scenes on public property. So some change has occurred.
There may be 95% believers, but most of those don’t believe in having a theocracy.
We keep discussing things like Gingrich sucking up to the religious right because they are always pushing their agenda and the Republican presidential candidates can move their agenda forward like Bush has.
Like a commenter said yesterday, we took them too lightly before and now major barriers protecting the state from the church have fallen.
Why doesn’t Gingrich write the next insane tirade in Chinese or gibberish so that he can communicate more easily with people- Chinese mainland authoritarians or mentally ill persons- who will be more amenable to becoming part of his base and hearing his message?
I would like to add to my previous comment. Catholics and WASPs were once bitter enemies. They were brought together by an animus toward abortion. Of course motivations are complex but I think that the primary motivations of the Catholics and the WASPs for opposing abortion are different. For the Catholics it is only one component of a rather bizarre set of beliefs concerning sex which are rooted in paternalism.
For the WASPs the opposition to abortion is again rooted in a reaction to the civil rights movement. Supporters of civil rights had seized the moral high ground. They stood for the rights of the oppressed. The oppressors used abortion as means of finding moral high ground of their own. They too now stood for the rights of an oppressed group, a clump of cells, and those who championed for civil rights now stood, for the most part,against this oppressed group,
Swan (#12, 20), don’t feel that your point was not understood or well-taken. It was, certainly by me; and it throws most clearly into perspective the real danger of ‘these people’ getting a toehold in the American republic.
When there is such a danger it is not “totally facetious” to recognize it. On the contrary, it’s our obligation to take cognizance and consider possible responses and neutralization. The problem is that the more you respond the more you appear to authenticate their Weltanschauung. ‘These people’ are not either going to listen to or be influenced by anything others may try to say. The best response, to my mind, is to work diligently and skilfully — but unobtrusively — to thoroughly stymie and neutralize their vile game plan. That’s why I’m inclined to favor ignoring and sidestepping their inciting invective, while being acutely aware of it.
Otherwise, great analysis here.
Catholics and WASPs were once bitter enemies. They were brought together by an animus toward abortion.
Catholics and WASPs were brought together by a congeries of factors, in addition to abortion, including support for the Vietnam War (urban ethnic blue collars and Southern sons of the Confederacy sharing this), and opposition to integration, especially to busing. The Southern Baptist Convention, for pete’s sake, was pro-choice, albeit in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-exultation mode, until after Roe.
Abortion was the the one common factor that was talk-about-able in public, jingoism, racism, and a generalized dread over loss of status not being quite so presentable.
Vintage Newt…
[1995] Newt set strategy for Religious Right — 10 years ago!
http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/9502/newt.html
Newt On Robertson…
“Pat Robertson is an extraordinary institution builder and visionary. I believe when the history of the 20th century is written, there are two preachers who, in fact, shaped much of the domestic/political debate of post-World War II America. One was black. One was white. One was Martin Luther King, Jr., and the other Pat Robertson. They had an enormous, profound effect.” — Newt Gingrich
In my view, every thinking person MUST “discriminate” [“recognize a distinction; differentiate”] between those who profess no know absolute truth–on the basis of no evidence whatsoever–and will claim that anybody who asks for proof, let alone refuses to let fairy takes rule his belief systems, as immoral, damned, a heretic or worse. To say “no evidence” is actually unfair; the evidence they cite are a collection of writings, themselves self-contradictory, which have multiple versions and editions which also don’t agree; also, all fail to take into account anything that wasn’t believed to be true less than several thousand years ago within a few hundred miles of their origins.
If I wished to impose my beliefs on you, and gave no reasons worth the name why my ideas should be more valuable than yours (or common sense, for that matter), I would expect you to be discriminating enough to be suspicious, why don’t ‘believers?’
I have to add, pace Goldilocks, I aver “religious belief” to be inherently divisive. Believers strictly divide people on the basis of immutable (or so they claim) ideas, and will not admit to any change in these ideas, no matter how ludicrous they turn out to be.
***Is it really worth arguing the case here? I mean, is it really worth the time and emotional energy?***
————Goldilocks
Yes, Goldi—it is worth the time and emotional energy, if for no other reason than that which Dale reminds us of in the last line of Post#23:
***Like a commenter said yesterday, we took them too lightly before and now major barriers protecting the state from the church have fallen.***
It cannot be emphasized enough that the Republic has dodged a huge bullet here, and by only a hair’s-breadth at that.
There is also an irony to all of this. Viewing all the referneces to Hitler’s effort of the preceding century, one can only note that the beginning of his failure was in jumping off against Poland before his massive war machine was at its peak readiness-state (the German General Staff had planned for hostilities to commence in late 1942/early 1943; not 1939). Just as Hitler began his drive for total domination far too soon, while there was still enough resistance to thwart him until the opposition could rally back—so, too did the RR jump off too soon in their drive to an American theocratic state. Imagine if Falwell and his legions had been “blessed” with another four years of “preparation” before Bu$h—or a competent version of Bu$h—had come into the national political arena.
We might not be having this conversation—or at the very least, we might not be having it so openly.
This could still happen again, though. Another “edition” of Gingrich; a “Version 2.0” of Falwell; a “nexgen” Robertson are all still entirely possible—if we ever “take them too lightly” again….
Jay Magoo’s point and question (#15)
Numbers aren’t everything. I believe several tens of thousands of people visit TCR daily, so Steve’s work does not go unnoticed.
Numbers aren’t everything also because what happens in these blogs is learning, sharing and clarifying ideas and options. That generates a lot of knowledge and power, and informs actions and discussions in the big world. It’s an osmotic effect.
Third, numbers aren’t everything because our thoughts have influence. I know that’s a rather esoteric and adventurous notion for some, but it’s true.
So Newt done got religion. Lord, save me from the saved.
Knowledge is power but only if you use the knowledge. If you get a warning that something bad is going to happen and then don’t do anything to protect yourself – what good was the warning?
[2000] Bush’s secret religious pandering
http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/0009/bush.html
When winger politicians make their claims of an exclusive Republican connection with God,
we can respond with the host of earthly disasters that our faith-based president hath wrought.
If God IS a right wing evangelical, then that God must love disaster movies and slapstick comedy scenes where Moe pokes Larry in the eye.
Bush who destroys all he touches, has also destroyed God’s reputation as a competent Republican.
Rege, I think you’re promoting the right’s point by saying that Catholics and Protestants are somehow brought together. I think it’s more like, and it always has been, that a bunch of Protestants hate Catholics and Jews and everyone else, and use right-wing Jews and Catholics while trying to let those people forget that the Protestants all think they’re servants of the devil and going to burn in hell.
I think it’s really just (among the Catholics) an interest group working in the name of Catholicism, on the one hand, and Protestants who are trying to control everything and who think they’re controlling everyone on the other. Sure, it’s the official view of the policy makers of the Catholic church that abortion is wrong, but there are many official views of the president- as a policy maker for the U.S.- that a lot of us don’t share, as Americans.
I think you are really promoting the propaganda fantasy that a lot of these Protestants want us to hear and believe if you write that Catholics and Protestants are united over this.
It’s about forgiveness, tolerance, and understanding…not condemnation. It’s about building christian medical schools not christian law schools. It’s about being of service to the sick and the poor. the hopeless and downtrodden, not demanding they be of service to you. It’s about allowing God to be God, not you doing it for him. It’s about freedom for all not just yours. It’s about the constitution not the bible. It’s about the Bill of Rights not the ten commandments. It’s about government of and by the people not just for the people because you think you know what is best. It’s about treating each other like brothers not like the “other” who needs to be corrected.
Considering the hypocrisy of Newt why would anyone applaud his non-sensical ramblings. Sounds like these people would have clapped at anything marking them as future “saviours” of “the others”.
Goldilocks wrote: “Is it really worth arguing the case here? I mean, is it really worth the time and emotional energy?”
For me, I find it worth the discussion at the very least to try and understand the right’s hucksterism and why it is so successful. The only way demagoguery will be beaten back is by people who understand the way the tactics are used and expose them to the light. Put into a metaphor, the only way you can take away the power of a two-bit street con man is to show people how the three-card monty scam is worked.
Also, it is good to have as many places as possible where dissent from the RR’s dumbass views are readily available for reading.
Steve, I think you’re right that Goldi is being an idiot here today, but I’m a little skeptical of assertions that the religious right is doomed to fail, from poor planning or otherwise. I tend to think in the long run, yes, they are doomed to fail, but in the short run, maybe not, and they can do a lot for a few decades. This is because they are already so well positioned in terms of strategic advantage. They definitely have the high ground now, as far as influence, and that’s not just words- it makes a big difference. I don’t mean they have a lot of popular support- I’m not spouting their message for them. I mean they’ve got a firm grasp on means of influencing people, on communication, and they’ve got a system for using it. To any extent they are shaken from this strategic position left wingers are going to have to take advantage of it well and promptly. That means recognizing the opportunity and then acting on it, and not just waiting to see what everyone else who is liberal is going to do, first.
jhm #29 : I have to add, pace Goldilocks, I aver “religious belief” to be inherently divisive. Believers strictly divide people on the basis of immutable (or so they claim) ideas, and will not admit to any change in these ideas, no matter how ludicrous they turn out to be.
I guess I was taking a more comprehensive interpretation of the term ‘religious belief’. The word ‘religion’, unfortunately, has become synonymous with ‘Christianity’, or some perverted version of same. I’m not a Christian. I find the methods and philosophy taught by Buddha very helpful, for example. So, I’m sorry, I constantly make the mistake of using the concept of ‘religion’ in an insufficiently partial way. I find it hard and somewhat distasteful to have to squeeze the meaning of a noble word into such a bastardized constraint.
Otherwise, point taken.
Swan, I doubt that anyone would argue that our current SCOTUS is one breath away from being taken over by the wingnuts. What religion are those winguts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts and Alito? Catholic. Who supported the ascension of these authoritarian corporatists? Dobson et. al. Who was, until recently, in charge of faith base intiatives in the White House? James Towey a former associate of Mother Teresa and a current Catholic college president. You can argue whether these allies truly like each other, but that doesn’t matter so long as they cooperate with each other.
Several responses:
“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
GEORGE ORWELL
“Politics and the English Language”
and:
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
Mark Twain
and:
”Naturally, the common people don’t want war…but, after all it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you haveto do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” – Herman Goering at
Nuremberg trial in 1946
Movements like the Christian Right and “movement conservatism” always work best when they consider themselves a “persecuted minority” who know The Real Truth. Newtie was just working from Hitler and Goebbels’ best insights about The Big Lie:
“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people.”
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933
of which the best is this – which is probably tattooed on Newtie’s frontal lobes:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State
to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-Joseph Goebbels
And, in closing:
”In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
H. L. Mencken
Secularists are just the low hanging fruit that godCo as a cabal can unite on bashing before getting back to their internecine hatreds. My not believing in any god is just a step away from not believing in the right god.
But overall, it has less to do with god and everthing to do with self enrichment of the high priests at the top whether they be wearing robes or tailored suits. The amount of religiosity in society will be “enough” when society says that the hairless ape in the fancy hat and colorful cloak/bespoke suit is an earthly manifestation of a concocted entity and would you be so kind as to bend over O holy one so we can kiss your ass. We’d also like to place this alm in your holy golden bowl and if you’ve issued some stock recently, well we’d like some of that too.
Mammon is the true god. Religion is jealous of the corporation’s ability to scam huge money while hiding behind the corporate veil. The corporation is jealous of religion’s ability to compel blind obedience with the greatest marketing hammer ever devised. If they can hang together and beat up on the non believers, maybe they’ll each get a little closer to their goal of sharing, (see how long that lasts), bottomless money and power.
related, but not right on topic…via DKos:
Whose Freedom?
The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea
By George Lakoff
This book is about more than freedom in the political and patriotic sense. It is just as much about free will, about how we have begun to lose it and how to regain it. Parallel to the right-wing political machine is a right-wing mind machine.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/20/112622/592
Final point (of caution) since I’m glad to have stimulated a vigorous call to arms. Over there it seems to be worse than I realize. Certainly it has to be disabused and reverted. No doubt.
The feeling I was having was more to do with method. If you watch a snake hypnotizing a rat or a fox hypnotizing a chicken you can see what I was getting at. The concern I had was not to be hypnotized. There’s a lot of glamor and razzmatazz that these vermin exploit. The danger is to get sucked into it and get bamboozled. I’m not saying that fate would befall anyone here, I’m just saying there’s a danger.
Keeping their myopic ramblings at arms length is specifically for the purpose of preserving perspective and sanity — not to bury one’s head in the sand about the dangers, past, present or future. Only with a clear head, true vision and sound knowledge can action to defend and defeat be effective. Other than that I find everything being said here spot on and great stuff.
As I said: final point, and Best Wishes!
“The religious right movement is often referred to as the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party,” a phrase I’ve never been entirely comfortable with, in part because the Dobson/Robertson crowd rarely believes in literal violence.”
The very essence of these beings is literal violence. What holds them back is they don’t have a “winning” position. AKA, if they start the war they cannot be assured of winning. But make no mistake, these people want another Civil War and will stop at nothing to achieve one. If you think their constant inroads into the business community (for supplies) and military (for soldiers) is just politics, then you’re not paying attention.
The Talevan squawks about the limits on their religious rights, TWAC and ravening hordes of gays and lesbians because it all these chickenshit SOBs have left. So to answer your question, what will satisfy these arsehats? Nothing.
If every single person who does not follow their rules were to disappear from the planet tomorrow (rapture?), by Thursday the Talevan would be locked in a nasty war over something. Maybe it would be the brown eyed v. the blue eyed. Or the People who wave the Bible in their left hand v. People who use their right.
They need to complain about and hate something. African-Americans are out, (at least in public) but 30 years ago or less they would have been talking about the looming threat to the sacred white way. Immigration issues give them some outlet but that isn’t enough for your average Talevangical.
For Gangrinch, anti-Semitism would be hazardous to his career. He backed off his Spanish is the language of the ghetto bullshit for the same reason. Standing up and talking about family values would have invited derision from every semi-alert reporter on the planet. What’s left for the hypocritical divorce pro to talk about?
Why, we can’t shove our religion down the throats of every one in America! How unfair! Boo fucking hoo. Yawn.
Fuck ’em.
Such a good post and interesting comments that there’s not much I could add except to post some favorite lyrics on the subject…
Religion is the opium of the masses
Karl Marx
The elite of the Republican party is bleeding this country with it’s wars, tax shelters for major corporations and the wealthy.
They have defied our constitution, broken our laws and are breaking down our infa structure.
To the poor, uneducated and the rest, they have “given” the struggle for religion wich unites them.
1) What on earth are these people talking about?
I’m cynical enough to believe that Newt was just playing to the crowd, and that the crowd was so eager to hear what they wanted that they didn’t notice they were being played to.
I have been at a loss for quite sometime to understand the paradox of the religious right. They cannot be religious. Ok, that is harsh. Let me rephrase. They cannot be Christian, at least not the Jesus I know. I think they skipped the gospels and went straight to the epistles. Just like there is nothing worse than a reformed smoker, Paul is an annoying born again. Both usually do a better job of making their intended
victimtarget increase the packs per day or, in Paul’s case, vow to avoid whatever it is that cat is preachin’.Jesus says over and over again “Don’t put on a show for me. I’ll see through it”. If you have to tell me a you are a “real true Christian”, are you really?
2) Just how much religiosity will it take before these people are satisfied?
As for how much religiosity it will require, I am reminded of a scene in one of my favorite movies (Independence Day). The President is in Area 51 talking to the alien that Will Smith caught. The alien is using the vocal cords of the scientist it just killed to talk back. The President basically asks if the two can coexist. The alien reply? “DIE”.
My theory on why that is? Lots of people are running around trying to find something to fill themselves, to fill this deep emptiness inside. Some choose alchohol, some shopping, some drugs. Whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter as long as it is done to excess and masks the emptiness.
The form of Christianity that is most visible today is the “Real True Christian”. It is almost the antithesis of a Christian. We will know they are Christians when
they cometell us with a fish on their car, a WWJD bracelet, or whatever symbol they picked up at the checkout at Walmart.These folks go to church on Sunday, with about 10,000 others in the same service. They listen to the sermon, but they shake their heads acknowledging the truth of it in someone elses life. It doesn’t apply to them, for they are “Real True Christians”.
Someday they will figure out that it doesn’t really fill the emptiness and move on to “the next big thing”. Too bad they don’t actually listen and apply it to themself. It might actually work. Instead they are left holding on to beliefs that they themselves don’t really believe. That is why they must have everyone else agree with them, otherwise, their belief cannot stand on its own.
If their goal was simply religious freedom, they have more than they need. The problem, and the reason they are not satisified, is that their real goal is to impose their religious views on others. So far they have limited success, but are failing at that.
More on this in a post today at Liberal Values:
http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=1559
***Steve, I think you’re right that Goldi is being an idiot here today,….***
————–Swan@38
Now unless I’m missing something, I seem to be the only “Steve” who’s responded to Goldi’s question. So tell me—where did I declare, state, infer, suggest, or otherwise insinuate that Goldi “is being an idiot?” She threw out a question and I answered it. Does answering someone’s question now make that someone an idiot?
And yes, Swan, they did jump too soon. They had the Congress, but not SCOTUS. By the time they had a tentative grasp on SCOTUS, they were already on the verge of losing their grasp on the Congress. They’ve lost steam in numerous state legislatures, a good number of governor’s mansions, and a whole fleet of local issues. They’re bleeding from the throat now in school-board control, and their Taliban-esque efforts in public libraries is now a joke.
They no longer possess the high ground of influence, either. They’re spending themselves into bancruptcy on lobbying efforts just to prevent “a la carte” servic packages for cable and satellite broadcasts—because they know what happens to their broadcast revenues if people have the opportunity to “ban” blithering idiots like Robertson and Hinn from their homes. They’re screaming bloody murder for government funding now, because they can see the writing that’s already on the wall. This most recent “Tausent Yahren Reich” is—in short—in its death throes.
And it is our responsibility to see that it never—EVER—has the opportunity to rise from the grave again.
PERIOD.
Steve @ 50, you’ve got to calm down, man.
I’m not disputing that they jumped too soon at all; I think you may be right about that. My point was in addition to your point.
Steve, my point was just this:
Let’s say you’re participating in the French resistance to the WWII Nazi occupation, or the Jewish resistance to the Nazis, and now let’s say, on this occasion- on just one occasion- the success of the resistance depends on you and on nobody else but you doing something. You’ve got to get out of the hideout, walk down the street, and do things, X, Y, and Z, in 1-2-3 order. And everyone els has taken this risk before. This time it’s got to be you.
No matter how scared you are, and how much you would like it to not be you, that doesn’t change that no one else can do it but you when it’s your time to make the difference, because everyone else is occupied or pinned down. Your wanting and pleading for everyone else to take it off your shoulders doesn’t change the fact that things are going to turn real bad if you personally do not do what you have to do. When that situation comes up we lefties have to be able to face up to it or else we will suffer real losses every time that situation happens.
Gingrich is trying to put the old anti-liberal, Christian white male coalition back together by finding new ways to define and exclude liberals. Quite simply, if you disagree with Gingrich’s crazy portrayal of anti-religious bias, you’re a radical secularist and a liberal.
Gingrich is trying to bait Democrats into arguing publicly with him. Rather, we should try to paint Gingrich’s world as an alternate reality that doesn’t explain how the US really works and where the country needs to go with new leadership.
Gingrich proves that leopards don’t change their spots.
If you strip away from an evangelical their martyrdom, then what you have left is a less motivated, less focused political activist.
Born Again Christianity’s Jihad on America
Ummm..Swannie, you still haven’t answered the question. Kindly refer to comment 50, and explain—to me, and to everyone else—where I did what you’ve accused me of. Until then, you’re just a childish freeper with a penchant for fabrications….
But religious belief IS inherently divisive! Christianity in particular. But many others as well.
Typically, its entire premise is “either you believe what I believe or you are going to hell.” What could possibly be more divisive than that?
If we could somehow get religion and business completely out of politics, only then could we get down to the business of governing for the benefit of all society. Until that happens, profits and prophets will rule the world.
Let’s start impeaching Newt now, just in case.
The Christianists would like to go back to the good old days, when people could be boiled in oil in the public square, simply for disbelieving.
Until we get back there, they won’t be happy.