Letters to the Editor
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King Mob - You seem to be conflating Christians with Christofacists
Which is the equivalent of conflating Archie Bunker with Adolf Hitler.
Certainly they each shared certain views, but the views they differed on far outweighed and outnumbered the views they agreed on.
Likewise the fact that religion can be used to justify violence should never be confused with the fact that by and large religion admonishes one against violence.
By your reasoning our government supports communism by providing grants public liberal arts universities and eugenics by funding genetic research.
Certainly there are those in these groups who share beliefs with those who would do us harm, but to indict all genetic researchers as eugenicists or all university professors as communists misses the point entirely.
A university professor may feel that the workers should control the means of production that does not mean that they endorse the lynching of CEOs. Likewise a geneticist might agree that many physical and mental abnormalities can be eliminated through genetics that does not mean they endorse forced sterilization.
Likewise, a fundamentalist Christian might believe gays will go to hell, but that doesn't mean they feel they should hurry them along on their way.
I believe the vast majority of these monies for faith based initiatives are going to established religious charities like the Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation Army, which provide secular services to their communities.
While many people may dislike the Catholic Church, I don't think they are planning the violent overthrow of the United States government any time soon.
It is fair to ask whether or not tax payer dollars should go to programs administered by religious organizations, but that has little to do with whether or not these organizations are fascistic in their orientation.
Beware boogey men; they usually divert your attention from real monsters.
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Faithfully rendered
Likewise the fact that religion can be used to justify violence should never be confused with the fact that by and large religion admonishes one against violence.
For all the good such admonitions do in practice, which is what it all boils down to.
I'm reminded of Eric Rudolph, who was fleetingly termed a "Christian terrorist" before the press immediately clammed up on that, after people declared that such a concept was impossible, even in the face of the reality of Rudolph's actions.
So it goes with Christian tycoons and Christian fascists (and their rightist apologists) -- since we already know what their corrupt leadership wants, the success or failure of their movement will depend on whether the rank-and-file believers want a democratic nation or a kingdom of God (whether biblically literal God or the Almighty Dollar). In Cupidity We Trust?
By their actions ye shall know them.
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Glorious Worker's Paradise
Your points are all good and valid, but you're preaching to a bunch of paranoics who are incapable of clear thinking. They're blinded by their hatreds and are impervious to reasoning such as yours.
Nice try, though.
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okay, how's this?
the success or failure of their movement will depend on whether the rank-and-file believers want a democratic nation or a kingdom of God ... By their actions ye shall know them.
Okay, so do some actual research on these organizations and see how many of them encourage their people to vote, issue voters guides, encourage Christians to run for public office, etc. You'll see it's almost 100 percent of such organizations.
Now go to Leftist groups and see how many of them encourage their people to run to a friendly judge, file a lawsuit, etc. Quite a few. Just recently in Massachusetts the Boston Globe encourage the legislature not to fulfill their constitutionally mandated duty to vote on a citizen petition (re: gay marriage) that had been sent to them following all the requiremments laid out in the law, and notice also how many legislators said they had no intention of following their mandated duty.
Who, now, are the fascists?
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We Dead-Ender Posters Are On The Same Side...
1. Please note that the current christianist leaders are publicly, out-spokenly opposed to reason. And they are violently opposed to fairness, tolerance, and progress. I am not exaggerating
2. Please note that they are everywhere. It is not just a few kooky guys who inexplicably have national cable TV programs.
3. I have posted before, very hopefully, that these people have peaked, but I am not sure. The leaders seem not to worry that they get themselves tangled up with poop-in-a-suit such as Tom DeLay. The followers seem not to know.
4. There still are actual Christians out here. They probably are the best guides you can hire to hunt down the christianist man-eaters.
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Everybody I knew growing up...
... wanted to get out of the "hellburbs." Most of us have by now, or are working on it. I always technically had a Dallas address, and it bothers me when I meet people who are so scared of the city, or anything non-suburban. Sometimes it's just blatant racism: "It was a nice area until all the Mexicans moved in..."
I know several people who've moved to the NYC area, and I've yet to hear horror stories about "riff-raff," or whatever it is that scares A.J.
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good book tour interview, but short
Nice to see Salon posting something beyond dicks, tits and ass once in a while. Having said that, it was more of a book teaser than an informative piece on the issue. Seemed it had hardly begun when it ended.
I am curious about the book, who knows if I'll have time to read it on so little info. A bit more would have been welcome, and maybe Salon can invite the author back to expand a bit further on his thesis.
btw, is Salon really in dire straights financially? I'm wondering if they simply can't afford to pay for many good articles anymore, so they get fluff pieces and book tours and such "pot-boilers" to draw page hits for advertising. Are those even getting Salon's financials to a steady simmer?
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distorting the author's words
Mr. Hedges basically said that evangelicals are hopeless because they have a non-reality-based belief system which includes believing that Jesus has a plan for them and intervenes in their life. In other words, there is no such thing as a thinking evangelical because they are ignorant enought to believe in a fairy tale. Well, as far as I'm concerned, he just lost the "preacher's kid" cache
-- portroyalsound
That's a complete distortion or perhaps misunderstanding. You're taking it out of context and putting words in his mouth.
His point was that many people whose communities are devastated are turning to religion as a kind of escapism becasue it promises a purpose they find lacking in their decimated communities; and he also makes the very importantly point that certain Reconstructionist Evangelical leaders are exploiting that pain to manipulate them, and that's an unhealthy form of faith. Hius point isn't to blame the followers at all, but to point out the wrongs of the leaders and it's implicit that there should be better religious faith and better material help offered to those communities.
That's entirely different from the generalization he never made but you're attempting to attribute to him.