We need to bring Reagan back... to fight Japan.

[Bill Glasheen]

As you can see, the major McCain tax cuts go to the VERY wealthy.

Several problems with this...

1) IT'S NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S MONEY!!!!

2) Can you believe that Obama wants to take almost a million additional dollars away from folks making $2.8 million and above? That's highway robbery! What incentive is there for these most industrious and innovative to work harder? That's why socialist and communist economies stay uncompetitive in a world economy.

3) Do the math here, TSD. That's a voodoo bar plot. I should know, since I make a living visualizing data. A small percentage cut of a small salary is chump change. The middle class will not be impressed. And that amount of money is not going to stimulate an economy, buy a dishwasher, help people make house payments, etc.

4) The plots don't reflect the NET effect of what happens when you overtax the wealthy and you increase capital gains as Obama is proposing to do. This causes less income for both groups, which generates less government revenue overall. ASK JOHN KENNEDY! He understood the principle. Let people earn more and they generate more tax revenue - even at the lower tax RATE. Tax them more and the only thing you achieve is to make the socialists and communists happy.

5) The very last thing you want to do in a recessionary economy - and we're about to have a BIG recession - is to raise the tax rate. This just prolongs the recession.

What part of all this do you not understand? What does John Kennedy know that you don't?

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

However the base, the heart of the party, the ones Palin was brought in to revitalize, are poor and uneducated.

And all the blue collar union guys are Harvard grads, right? The unemployed and otherwise disenfranchised come from second tier schools like Yale and Princeton, right?

Riiiggghhhtttt!!!!

What the hell is the "base" of any party? You're all worked up about a handful of Evangelicals. Meanwhile, did it ever occur to you that there's something to this "Protestant work ethic?"

As far as I'm concerned, I'm a Jeffersonian. I believe in freedom of religion and freedom from religion. I'm not into this demonizing of the religious by the likes of Bill Mauer. After a while, I begin to wonder if any of these folks paid attention in history class.

Do to Jews or Muslims what many liberal thinkers are doing to mainstream Christians and be prepared for some major blowback. And frankly that's the way it should be for all religions. I just don't get why it's fashionable in this country for the "intellectual elite" selectively to bash Christians.

Sounds like intellectual intolerance and stupidity to me...

- Bill

[TSDguy]

What are you even going on about, Bill? I told you I agree with classic republican economic policies. Thread after thread you argue with me as though I support Obama, and I don't think I've ever said one thing in support of him other than he speaks well.

As to the christian bashing, your right. I think all religious folks are equally gullible. I don't care what their work ethic is. I do care that we've got people running around the country, say, running for VP, who think humans rode dinosaurs and the earth is 5000 years old. Excuse the offensive statement, but those people are stupid by any definition of the word.

[AAAhmed46]

I think all religious folks are equally gullible. I don't care what their work ethic is. I do care that we've got people running around the country, say, running for VP, who think humans rode dinosaurs and the earth is 5000 years old. Excuse the offensive statement, but those people are stupid by any definition of the word.

Maybe it's because im canadian, but i have never met a christian who believes that humans rode dinosaurs and the earth is 5000 years old.

[TSDguy]

Doesn't surprise me. The US has been embracing a spirit of ignorance for the past 8 years. A truly disturbing majority of people think evolution doesn't happen. My original point, which got sidetracked by republican stuff.

[fivedragons]

[fivedragons]

[IJ]

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm a Jeffersonian. I believe in freedom of religion and freedom from religion. I'm not into this demonizing of the religious by the likes of Bill Mauer. After a while, I begin to wonder if any of these folks paid attention in history class."

Bill, you would take people apart if they had "faith" in the absence of evidence that melon extract cured cancer, that an 80% tax with government wealth redistribution would fix our recession, or that they could behead someone with a shuto. Religion just gets a pass because.... that's the rules, you can argue politics and economics and so on, but you have to be polite and respectful of someone's beliefs if they're drawn from magic. Don't even dare to run for major office without at least making a strong case that some of your beliefs aren't founded in evidence. Yet you gave Ann Coulter high marks for ripping into 9/11 widows because they're ostensibly "off limits."

My view is: freedom of religion, freedom from religion is a great slogan, but right now the religious right is financing efforts to undo same sex marriage in California and several other states, and their opponents are just financing... their defense. And religious ideas shouldn't be exempt from examination just because faith inspired them. I'm with Matt Damon on this one--I want to know if Palin thought man walked with dinosaurs 4,000 years ago--because she's gonna have the nuclear codes (and the rest of the country). My duty is to make sure a rational mind is watching over them.

The movie was funny, too!

[Bill Glasheen]

Bill, you would take people apart if they had "faith" in the absence of evidence that melon extract cured cancer, that an 80% tax with government wealth redistribution would fix our recession, or that they could behead someone with a shuto. Religion just gets a pass because.... that's the rules, you can argue politics and economics and so on, but you have to be polite and respectful of someone's beliefs if they're drawn from magic.

Nope... Once again you pull the strawman argument. Once again I call the BS.

• Religion isn't about facts; it's primarily about faith.
• Religion isn't so much about the body and mind as it is about the spirit.
• It isn't so much about cognitive intelligence as it is about emotional intelligence.
• It isn't so much about capitalism as it is about the golden rule.
• It isn't about life as much as it's about the afterlife - or lack thereof.
• It isn't about law so much as it's about ethics and a moral compass.

You and Bill Mauer want to skewer religion because some groups of the religious don't ascribe to your views. Well excuuuuuuse meeeee!!! Just because some don't agree with you doesn't make their political opinions wrong.

Neither you nor Bill Mauer nor a Born Again can proselytize me into anything. Sorry... I did 7 years in parochial school, half a dozen years as an altar boy, yada, yada, yada. My lifelong best friend is a Jew turned atheist. My two favorite recent black belts to work with were an Evangelical and a Muslim who got along famously. And I grew up a scientist in a Catholic school environment. Go figure... Somehow I found the value in my experience without ever feeling compelled to drink the Kool-Aid.

Again... You and Bill Mauer need to get over what you don't like about people who happen to disagree with you. Maybe it's you! And maybe you both need to go back and read some early American history. This country is not a product of spontaneous generation. The spirit of the founders lives on.

I give you Thomas Jefferson's opinion on the matter - an opinion that evolved into parts of our Bill of Rights. (Emphasis my own. But the entire Virginia Statute is worth a read.)

- Bill

An Act for establishing religious Freedom.

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them: Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

[Valkenar]

• Religion isn't about facts; it's primarily about faith.

Maybe it should be primarily about faith, but the fact is that people in this country let their faith inform their facts. Evolution being one obvious example. The only reason people don't believe in evolution is because it conflicts with their faith (or at least they think it does).

[AAAhmed46]

On japan:




But the religious right wasn't always like this, for a while it was pretty stable if you think about it. Frank Schaeffer talks about it


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so5AK0JnySA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0_L1MRoXiU

(this is a very bias news source, but the interview is pretty good. I think he is grossly anti-McCain)

Despite the fact that this news source tends to have a low view on the religious right, it itself just put on a guest that talks about change among that group. If the religious right wasn't always so nuts, then maybe it's not the fault of the religious?

The youtube links don't talk about HOW everything got so extreme, maybe i have to read his book to find out. But if for so many years the movement was not so threatening, then maybe the wrong aspects of society are being feared?

besides, this was pretty telling:

FS:
That is absolutely correct. A lot of people in the evangelical and fundamentalist communities speak theoretically about homosexuality being no worse than adultery or divorce. However, in practice, they are not undertaking national campaigns to single out evangelical people who were married to somebody else at one time and got divorced. So actually there is a tremendous moral hypocrisy there because the whole gay issue has been singled out for special treatment. My dad literally practiced what he preached. He said that homosexual sex was on the same level as adultery, premarital sex and spiritual pride. He didn’t differentiate between all this and write people off on the basis of it. He actually believed and acted on what a lot of people in the Religious Right say theoretically. But he literally was that way. My dad didn’t see it as a special problem to be singled out from everything else. He didn’t see it as threatening. We had quite a few gay people come through L’Abri. As a child, I knew who they were and why. But my dad did not push them into programs where they were going to try to become straight based on special counseling. He didn’t see it that way. He just saw this as one amongst all kinds of challenges that face people humanly and was very compassionate about it. We had a number of people who came to L’Abri who were not Christians or were Christians who were gay who never changed their orientation, and they didn’t become less friendly with my dad as a result. He didn’t make a big point of it one way or another. That is how his attitude manifested itself to other people."

JW: Are you saying that Francis Schaeffer wouldn’t be part of the Christian Right?


FS: Yes. He has been used by people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and others to give some respectability to points of view that really were not his. What made my dad’s heart beat fastest was talking about people’s philosophical presuppositions and how they lived. He wanted to put people’s lives back together again, people who had problems. The politicized view of him is illegitimate.What I can say is that there would not have been a Religious Right as it became known, including the make-up of the Republican Party, without the involvement of my dad, myself, Dr. C. Everett Koop, you and those of us who were in on all this at the very beginning. My book discusses some of the unintended consequences. My father never would have pictured a day when his work would help lay a foundation for the anti-gay, anti-homosexual campaign being carried out by people like James Dobson and others. Those were not his issues. They were not his concerns. Dad was very narrowly focused. The issues that got him, me and people like you involved were very narrowly focused. And it was Roe v. Wade and all the fallout that came from that court decision.JW: Would he be happy with the way they use his name today?


FS: Absolutely not. The idea of watching himself on The 700 Club or a replay of him preaching from Jerry Falwell’s pulpit would not please Dad, given the direction all this has gone.


JW: When your father was on The 700 Club once, he called me right after the show. He was so upset. He said, “Do you know what they did to me? I was on that show talking about all these important things such as abortion and other issues, and they followed me with Christian jugglers.” It blew his mind. He saw it as a crazy world, but he would see it as even crazier today.


FS: Yes. He saw it as a crazy world. He would say things like he thought Pat Robertson was out of his mind or that Jerry Falwell was harsh and inhuman. But he realized there were larger issues. Sometimes you work with people you disagree with because the issues are so important. You’re simply hoping to help. But the Francis Schaeffer I grew up with loved the arts. He was a philosopher. The idea that he was somehow a creature of the Religious Right is ridiculous.JW: You note in your book that you slowly realized that the Religious Right leaders you were helping to gain power were not necessarily conservatives at all in the old sense of the word. They were anti-American religious revolutionaries.


FS: I personally came to believe that a lot of the issues that were being latched onto by the Christian Right, whether it was the gay issue or abortion or other things, were actually being used for negative political purposes. They were used to structure a power base for people who then threw their weight around. The other thing I began to understand is that in dismissing the whole culture as decadent, in dismissing the public school movement as godless, in talking about anybody who opposed them as evil, the Religious Right was only a mirror image of the New Left. Thus, the Religious Right and the New Left are really two sides of the same coin. What gets left out is a basic discussion about the United States and the reality of living here, the freedoms we enjoy and the benefits of a pluralistic culture where people are not crushing each other over beliefs. This gets lost. Thus, the kind of harshness you see in left and right-wing blogs today, for instance, such as it’s red state, blue state America, I just got sick of it. In other words, the Religious Right was as negative and anti-American as anybody I ever talked to on the Left. So the people we had coming through L’Abri in the late sixties and early seventies bashing the United States in a knee-jerk way over the Vietnam War was exactly the same kind of thing that you would hear in a different way from Falwell and Dobson and these other people.
JW: Are you an evolutionist?


FS: Oh, I certainly believe in evolution. But I always have. Even my dad in the early days of L’Abri said he didn’t care whether the world was created 600 million years ago or 6 million or 6,000. He was very open to the idea of a kind of theistic evolution. Where I disagree with the Darwinian view is that I think it is too limited. How something happened is not an answer to why it happened. The why is because God created it to happen. That is an interesting subject, but my faith doesn’t feel threatened by the world being 600 million versus 6,000 years old. Those things really don’t interest me.





My dad remembers in Pakistan, passing a 'gay street' in Pakistan where homosexuals would frequent quite openly in fact. Don't know if THAT particular street is still around, but if you visit Pakistan, Hijras are a very common today. And Pakistan is a very religious country.

[fivedragons]

Gather 'round children, and let me tell you a little story about what it means to be a human being.

Human beings have brains, and the brain can be separated for scientific reasons into several sections, that all play their own individual, but holistically communal role.

By "holistic", I mean "whole". You might call it "healthy", or maybe just "a real boy". That's what Pinnochio became.

People in China might call it "balanced".

"Balance your chi, Pinnochio, or you won't become a real boy!"

Okay, so we've got the mind, the body and the spirit.

If we forget about all that hocus pocus for the moment, what do we have left?

Teacher, teacher, the answer is each other!

More to follow, and it won't be pretty.

Ever learn history from someone who isn't a history teacher?

[AAAhmed46]

REAGAN SMASH breaks that all!

Reagan smash!!!!

[fivedragons]

Let's start with Greece, just for the hell of it.

Fables, mythology, democracy.

The Iliad, the Odyssey, republicanism.

[fivedragons]

Wait a minute, I forgot about our forefathers.

"But I don't understand, how come our new improved trap didn't bring us much good meat?"

"Well, you have to understand son, we can only do so much. We do the best we can, and the mammoth does the best he can."

"The universe will provide."