Okay, a simple-minded and seemingly sexist member of a thrash metal band is enamored of an administration that feeds him a steady diet of cock worship and pointless violence, and NRO thinks there's a contradiction there? That's not a contradiction. You want a good shot of holy-shit-that-can't-be-true contradiction, try this on for size: Huge numbers of people who call themselves followers of a gentle spirited prophet who preached that the meek shall inherit the earth keep voting in war-mongerers who have a hard-on for fucking over the poor. That's more of a jaw-dropper.
September 20, 2005
She might be on to something here
Amanda makes an observation:
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13 comments:
Not a contradiction: idiot sexist supports violent and sexist administration.
Contradiction: people who purport to follow the beneficient teachings of a pacifist support a party whose two major achievements since they came into power have been making the tax code even more regressive and starting a textbook example of an unjust war.
Better?
So, do certain conservatives just not understand any sentence that has 'bad words'? That's a pretty fucked-up handicap, especially if you're trying to hold any kind of casual conversation with an adult.
Or is it that you think anyone who uses 'bad words' is automatically an intellectual child, and therefore anything they say can be dismissed as meaningless or naive offhand? I know you've said as much to a couple of liberal commenters over at Dawn's blog. Then I guess your question here was rhetorical.
I'm going to go with the handicap theory, for two reasons. First, I'm sure you wouldn't be so dumb as to try to get a blatant ad hominem past this crowd. Second, I find the idea of such a handicap most amusing.
I'm going with the ad hominem theory, Noumena, but I agree the jury is out.
I'd would also just like to add that, like Amanda, I am also surprised that Christians support conservative administrations so much. When we're talking about evangelicals, that's one thing. But I'm a Democrat because of my Christian upbringing, not in spite of it. I always naively assumed that people who followed the teachings of Jesus would naturally be Democrats as well.
I've learned otherwise, of course.
Bah, that was not a productive comment. Guess that's what I get for trying to post before my OJ!
Drew, I think you meant fundamentalists, not evangelicals per se. It's easy to get them confused, because there's a lot of overlap, but there are plenty of progressive evangelicals -- one of my favourite bloggers, Hugo, is a progressive evangelical.
Wikipedia article on evangelicalism. Evangelicalism places an emphasis on the more 'mystical' and personal aspects of faith: being born again into Christ, the Bible (as opposed to tradition) as the source of religious authority, and salvation by virtue of faith rather than works. Depending on what one chooses to emphasize in reading the Bible, and how literally this is done, this can a politically conservative, moderate, or liberal faith. Evangelicalism is also somewhat given to charismatic worship, but it is not necessarily anti-intellectual (Hugo, for example, is a historian).
Fundamentalism involves a much more literal reading of the Bible as a rejection of 'modernity', and as such is fairly uniformly politically conservative.
Sorry Colleen, I was unclear in my use of tense. I have learned that Christians do not tend to support Democrats as I believed they would when I was a child (and a Christian). I do think it's odd that Christians don't support Democrats more, since the Democratic Party seems a much better fit to me, I realize that many others disagree.
I would just like to point out that I never said anything about "necessity".
Noumena, I stand corrected. Thanks for the link.
Hang on, Colleen, are you saying that the Bush Administration has not made the tax code more regressive? I don't know what "shortcomings" you mean, but that's the point Noumena made, and he's right. It does seem odd that Christians would support an administration that tilts so heavily toward the wealthiest, when Jesus seemed to be much more focused on the poor.
And if not a pacifist in absolute strictest sense, JC definitely had pacifist leanings and espoused a lifestyle based in peace, loving, and understanding. I see the platform of the Left as more in line with those teachings than the platform of the right.
Good point, MosBen. And it's not like the Democratic Party is pacifist either. With respect to Iraq, it's not even anti-war in any real sense, much less pacifist.
Wikipedia article on the Beatitudes
#7, Matt. 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
Oh, and #5, two verses earlier: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."
Even if Jesus wasn't a pacifist, he blessed pacifists. Plus there's that whole 'turn the other cheek' thing, which I'm not going to track down right this moment. That certainly sounds like a pacifist statement.
Where exactly did he bless the warmakers?
Incidentally, Just War theory is closely tied to Catholic political thought, and was the grounds on which JP2 condemned the invasion of Iraq.
Uh-oh! The guy who uses 'fuck' in casual conversations is actually rather knowledgable about various things!
The sentence you've picked out can be read to require political leaders to reflect on and be obligated by the criteria laid out in the same paragraph before engaging in war, not abrogate all moral authority to those leaders. Indeed, I find your suggested reading, that the government/government officials is/are ever above moral condemnation on the part of citizens, to have disturbingly totalitarian overtones that I reject out of hand (cf my post on the State of Nature).
Here's a link to a translation of the catechism, since you haven't provided one for us.
Who said I had any interest whatsoever in following any form of Christianity?
This is an example of trying to understand your beliefs on their own terms, that Principle of Charity thing you rejected by virtue of being on the 'winning' side.
Without taking a position in this particular instance, I've found about equal amounts of people on both sides of the aisle that just can't take a joke. Personally, I think it's really just a biproduct of getting riled up and not seeing a joke when it's presented as well as a simple reality of the internet.
Still, I tend to find conservative humor distasteful more often than liberal humor. For instance, see Bush's "Still looking for WMDs" video from his press speech from a while ago.
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