Letters to the Editor
-
I Get Up In The Evening
And I ain't got nothing to say,
I come home in the morning,
I go to bed feelin' the same way,
I ain't nothing but tired,
Man I'm just tired and bored with myself.
Hey there Hillary,
I could use just a little help.
You can't start a fire,
You can't start a fire without a spark,
This gun's for hire,
Even if we're just dancing in the dark.
-
Right
And more to the point, the sooner that we stop using the rules of specific versions of Christianity to drive our political decision making and start sticking to principles (which are pretty common across religions), the better off we'll be.
-
Bye Bye, Mitt
I'm a conservative and an athiest, and Romney just lost any possibility of earning my vote. His statement that "freedom requires religion" is outrageous, but apparently it is reflective of the new normal in American politics.
The Republicans have fielded a truly oddball team of candidates this year. Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution. Romney believes that freedom doesn't exist unless God says so. McCain is so obsessed with foreign policy that he has no ideas about how to actually govern. Ron Paul is simply not electable. Good grief, autocratic Rudy Giuliani is starting to look like the best of the worst...
-
It scares me too
I have been an atheist my entire life. I would have no difficulties in voting for a mormon in a presidential election. I voted for Mitt Romney for governor in 2002 because I thought he was the best candidate. I accept that most people in the USA are religious, and most of our elected officials are christian. I don't care about a candidate's religion as long as they can do the job without pushing religion on the rest of us.
In this election, Mitt Romney is trying to cast himself as just another concerned christian. He is telling conservative christian voters that they should not be view him as the enemy because of his mormon faith. He tells them they should view him as an ally against the secular state. An ally against me. That scares the hell out of me.
-
Thanks
Thank you for the comment about seeing the need for the current defenses of atheism. I find Dawkins not at all strident on the subject, but a necessary caution against just this kind of danger, the intolerance of the non-praying, which can come at us faster than we imagine.
Hitchens is such a sensationalist poser that I prefer to just skip anything he writes now. (When he actually parroted the line "Novak saw Valerie Wilson's name in 'Who's Who', and thus didn't out her", I finally gave up all hope that he was anything but a verbose imbecile.)
So I wouldn't lump them together, I realize it's an easy cipher but it's really not fair to Dawkins.
-
Will they face up?
I'm not sure the Republicans will ever "face up" to their dependence on Christianists, just as they will never "own up" to the Southern Strategy.
The basic problem is that both strategies work and they are likely to work for the foreseeable future.
I know that there are stacks of books out there that talk about things like the "coming Democratic majority," etc., but they all seem dependent, to my mind, on the optimistic idea that Southern racism and Christianist activism are stagnant, undeveloping forces--hangovers from some other age.
Au contraire. Unfortunately, racism and religious anti-secularism are dynamic, constantly self-reinventing forces that are quite capable of doing things like 'converting' new immigrant populations and catching the fire of the young. Just the other day my college newspaper published a mystical, almost speaking in tongues piece by a young woman, who said that like it or not, the reality is that we must all bow down to Jesus as savior. To look at her picture, you'd think this is a hip, twenty-something New Yorker of the metrosexual type. But no. She's a thoroughly modern young woman of a distinctly millenial stripe.
Liberals and progressives have to beware thinking that progress is going to take care of the current anti-secular, authoritarian brand of Republicanism, because it won't.
-
excellent quote
"..the sooner the Republican Party faces up to the destructive cost of its electoral dependence on religious extremists, the better off our country will be."
best thing I have heard in a LONG time. Thank you!
-
There's Something Happening Somewhere Baby
I just know there is.
-
Corporatism is their only true Religion...
The only Religion all these Republicans actually practice is Corporatism..!
International Corporatism over the weak, the poor, the sick, and those who yearn for righteousness..
Sadly many Democrats have also converted to this vile cult like sect such as Hillary Clinton who is mother superior of the Holy Church of Military Industrial, Actuarial and Pharmaceutical Latter Day Saints Against Jesus..!
Simple as that..
-
Gah....
I am so tired of god.
Really.
I find it to be one of the most depressing things about humanity.....this huge and pervasive belief in utter nonsense, and the persecution of those who don't believe something utterly unbelievable.
This godless heathen usually just keeps her mouth shut on this subject. As Dawkins says, there is this unspoken cultural tradition that one simply cannot say something against someones religion...its given a modicum of respect that is granted few other ideas. Me, I just dont want to fight.
But I look around and see vast sums of money, time, resources and lip flappage to something that is unprovable, unreal, untrue.......and I dispair.
We will never have an atheist president. And how sad that is.
-
Rejoice
"Maybe his speech reassured evangelical Christians, but it scared the hell out of me." You have been saved. Go in peace and sin no more.
-
I used to think this site should temporarily give Giuliani a free pass
because he was the most beatable republican nominee, and I hoped he won the primary. I've now started to think that way about both Romney (only-pay-attention-to-my-religion-if-you- like-it-praise-jeebus and I-have-no-more-illegal-gardeners) and Huckabee (Arkansas-skeleton-hiding anti-evlolution-neanderthal). they are all the worst the republicans can come up with, and good luck to them all.
-
Romney is an idiot
Freedom requires religion? What garbage! In fact, religion is the exact counterpoise to real freedom!
Religion's stupid and antiquated ancient dictates circumvent freedom at every turn. Worse, because they are so antiquated and aren't updated according to changing global conditions (e.g. the world is now overpopulated, so "be fruitful and multiply" is an injunction for extinction) they present enormous impediments to humanity's advancement.
The bottom line is that religious bullshit (including bullshit scriptures) should not enter at any level in the political arena. The fact that it does, now more than ever, shows the extent of ignorance of most Americans about policies and issues.
Thus, they have to invoke stupid proxies like "shared values", religion, and potential for social shmoozing ("I'd have a beer with him!") to make their absurd choices.