Posted on 10/20/2013 6:57:35 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
So, the rhetoric level rises. All of us who disagree with the Democrats are now terrorists and traitors. What next?
Although it will probably say, "Forward" over the gate instead.
We already use drone strikes against terrorists abroad. We already have laws to detain terrorists indefinitely without trial or legal aid.
Unless they are Muslim, in which case, they are given all legal recourse.
As best as I can tell, this is a true statement on their part.
Whenever Democrats accuse Republicans of something, it is exactly what the Democrats are already doing. This tells us they are about to escalate the violence in our cities that they can then blame on conservatives.
Hey, thanks for making your novel available. It’s really good. About thirty pages into it and the set up is awesome.
We need to start acknowledgintg it's a battle between believers, Christians, and non-believers. And we have world opinion on our side. This fight needs a leader with the courage of a long-ago visionary---who sees the connection between the secular and the spiritual. Read on.
=================================================
PBS.ORG From persecuted minority to official imperial religion - what caused this extraordinary reversal for Christianity?
BY Shaye I.D. Cohen---Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University
CONSTANTINE'S CHRISTIANITY ---THE PATH TO VICTORYThe triumph of Christianity is actually a very remarkable historical phenomenon. ... We begin with a small group from the backwaters of the Roman Empire and after two, three centuries go by, lo and behold that same group and its descendants have somehow taken over the Roman Empire and have become the official religion, in fact the only tolerated religion, of the Roman Empire by the end of the 4th century. That is a truly remarkable development, and a monumental historical problem, trying to understand how this happened. Of course, pious Christians have no doubt about how or why it happened: "This is the hand of God working in history." And the Christians of antiquity already made this very point; the fact that Christianity triumphed is proof of its truth.
For historians, that answer, while maybe correct on one level, on another level it is not entirely satisfactory. We historians would like to find other explanations for the triumph of Christianity and indeed, ever since Gibbon wrote his famous history, historians have been trying to understand what it was exactly that pushed Christianity to the top. I can't fully answer that question myself, but we can clearly identify various stages on the path of Christianity to its ultimate victory. ...
The powerful Romans tried to beat down Christianity but failed. By the fourth century Christianity becomes the state religion and by the end of the fourth century it is illegal to do any form of public worship other than Christianity in the entire Roman Empire. There is a great mystery in how this happened -- how such an extraordinary reversal, that begins with Jesus who is executed by the Romans as a public criminal, as a threat to the social order, and somehow we wind up three centuries later with Jesus being hailed as a God, as part of the one, true God who is the God of the new Christian Roman Empire.
There is a remarkable progress, a remarkable development in the course of three centuries. ... It's hard to understand exactly how it happened or why it happened, but it is important to realize that we have a progression and a set of developments, and that Christianity by the fourth century is not the same as the Christianity that we see in the first or even the second.
One of the most surprising Christian heroes in the entire tradition, I think, is Constantine. He is, first of all, a successful general. He is also the son of a successful general and at the head of the army at the West. And he's fighting another successful general, struggling for who is going to be at the top of the heap of the very higher echelons of Roman government.
What happens is that Constantine has a vision. Luckily for the Church, there's a bishop nearby to interpret what the vision means. Constantine ends not converting, technically, to Christianity, but becoming a patron of one particular branch of the church. It happens to be the branch of the church that has the Old Testament as well as the New Testament as part of its canon.
Which means that since this branch of Christianity includes the story about historical Israel as part of its own redemptive history, it has an entire language for articulating the relationship of government and piety. It has the model of King David. It has the model of the kings of Israel. And it's with this governmental model that the bishop explains the vision to Constantine.
In a sense Constantine becomes the embodiment of the righteous king. And once he consolidates his power by conquering, eventually, not only the West, but also the Greek East where there are many more Christians [who are] concentrated in the cities, which are the social power packets of this culture, [he] is in this amazing position of having a theology of government that he can use to consolidate his own secular power. And it works both ways. The bishops now have basically federal funding to have sponsored committee meetings so they can try to iron out creeds and get everybody to sign up.
SNIP--More at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/why/legitimization.html
===================================================
REFERENCE At the Hay Literary festival in Wales, author and PBS historian, Niall Ferguson, spent much of his time dissing Obama's "smart power" speech delivered in Cairo in 2009......describing it as "touchy feely nonsense"... (POSTER'S NOTE: "Smart power" embraced by Hillary Clinton is also laughingly known as Democrats achieving foreign policy objectives without firing even a warning a shot.)
Ferguson has sent out warnings about Obama's failure to come to terms with what Ferguson sees as the potential rise of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt and the possible "restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia"........themes at the heart of this new book "Civilization: The West and the Rest"...............
Ferguson's standpoint is that Western dominance has been a progressive civilizing force.....his new book reinforces these arguments postulating that there were six killer "apps" which propelled the West to a position of predominance.
These were competition, science, property, modern science, consumption and work ethic, each with a dedicated chapter in the book.
Ferguson contrasts how China was the world's most advanced civilization in the 15th century but stagnated and was overtaken by Dutch mercantilism and the rise of capitalism employing the six "skills".
In his books, and on his compelling PBS series "Civilization," Ferguson lists "morality" as a strategic strength of Western Civilization. He points out the successful Chinese business city Wenzou also has 1,400 churches.
==============================================
NOTE Not coincidentally, it was China that joined Russia in decrying The Muslim Brotherhood's attack on Egyptian Christian's churches, homes and businesses.......Christian edifices the Egyptian military vowed to rebuild.
Dang, I thought we were all stupid, dirty raaaacists. Democraps who spout slogans like this are running on empty. It’s all they got. The prized program - Obamacare - is a disaster.
Reeducation camps.
There fixed your heading, it was sadly, incomplete.
please see message 14
concept by raybbr
Alas, your novel requires the reading comprehension of at least a primary school education (well, when literacy used to be a requirement).
Actually (don't laugh) you should put together a graphic novel/manga edition, and maybe even a video game too. Heck, I would be motivated to work on games again (currently right up there on the never again list along with insurance and gov't projects) for something like that.
Seems that I recall seeing video of nazi judges screaming at defendants about treason and traitors for opposing them.
Next will be when the LIBs put your body parts in a vise until you are liberated from your “terrorist” thinking.
The last time the dems started this talking points campaign against the TEA Party as violent terrorist there was an attempted car bombing in NYC which they tried to blame on the TEA Party because it was a fertilizer bomb like Tim McVeigh used, and the dems had told us in their talking points the TEA Party were a bunch of Tim McVeigh wannabes.
Don’t worry though, the dems also concocted a nice little story with the terrorist attack in Benghazi that the terrorist are so in tune with the news they can pick up on news stories and spontaneously plan and carry out a terrorist attack around the news story.
So you see, the dems didn’t orchestrate the talking points for the fertilizer bomb in NYC so they could blame it on the TEA Party.
No No No!
The terrorist simply picked up on the dems talking points about the TEA Party being a bunch of Tim McVeigh wannabes and spontaneously planned a fertilizer bomb around the dems talking points.
Yep, that’s what happened.
Domestic terrorists? Like Dohrn and Ayers?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.