?Always wondered where the 144,000 number came from.
?Does Perlstein write for the Village Voice or is he simply the Village Idiot?
Barked? Perlstein's article is laughable. Obviously to him, Christians need to keep quiet and be the only group in the country who must never weigh in on any pertinent issues.
At least GWB is channeling God and not Eleanor Roosevelt!
"It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."
you see? Larouche was right!
morons at the village voice; that's not news
Talk about your HaterAde.
I guess the hippies at the Village Voice dont flow with Jesus too well. Oh well, despite the efforts of Men...'His' plan marches on undisturbed.
Fringe group, I don't agree with their theology, but they have the right to make their voices heard, just like the rest of us. Shame on the Village Voice for stirring up people into thinking that Christian fascists are the power behind Bush's presidency.
I couldn't wade past the first couple of hysterical, spittle-flying paragraphs -- is it that stupid throughout?
And rightly so, you stupid! Look at Bethlehem, once a predominantly Christian city. Since the idiotically Leftist Israeli government of the day handed the place over to the Pallies, Christians there were killed, maimed and squeezed away... and now they're a small minority. In the meanwhile, a huge pagan shrine of Muhammad 'The Polygamist Pedophile' dominates the birth place of Jesus Christ.
I don't believe in the Rapture. The whole idea was new in the nineteenth century, and before that it was never a belief of either Catholics or Protestants.
But I respect many people who do believe in the Rapture.
Where is the harm in Bush consulting with his base and reassuring them about his plans concerning Israel? In particular, what's wrong with his reminding them that none of the ancient biblical tombs are in Gaza? I would certainly be concerned, as a Catholic, if he handed the ancient tombs over to the Palestinians, because they have a record of defacing and destroying them.
Does this reader think that Democrat politicians have no extremists in THEIR base whom they have to placate? Clinton compromised almost everything, but he knew better than to compromise with what mattered most to his base: abortion and perversion. Those were HIS bottom line. Is that a more rational or admirable position to take?
What a gratuitous attack.
It is an amazing thing for a writer to prostitute his wares and annihilate his own credibility to the degree that this one has! It's even more amazing that people find his analysis credible.
He has managed to make the quantum leap from more or less successfully pegging a very aberrant sect (good job, it needed pegging, albeit, who could imagine what interest the Village Voice would ever have in it?) -- to tying that group to Evangelical Christianity as a whole, then proceeding from there as if the association were legitimate.
And, while Evangelical Christians believe the Bible tells what will happen just before Jesus returns, there's not a one of us who can by any means either hasten or delay those events. We just want our government to be for Israel and not against. And that is a position that is defensible not only spiritually, but also humanistically. Yet this turd convulses it into a characterization of our president as being manipulated by some lunatic fringe.
This was a very unfair and ill-motivated column, with the logical and rhetorical fallacies I have mentioned.
This article deals with a legitimate concern (tho I don't feel the author has proven it in Bush's case). Concerning Reagen's Armageddon theology, James Mills, formerly President Pro Tem of California Senate, quoted Reagan in August 1985 San Diego Magazine:
"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off." (Quoted by Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, Wesport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company, p. 5.)
"Everything is falling into placre. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people., That must mean that they'll be destroyed by nuclear weapons. They exist now, and they never did in the past." (Quoted by Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, Wesport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company, p. 45.)
"Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness agianst Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other p[owerful nation is to the north of Israel? none. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against god. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly." (Quoted by Grace Halsell, Prophecy and Politics, Wesport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company, p. 45.)
As much as I appreciate Reagan, the spectre of a president with his Scofield Bible in one hand and his other on the nuclear button causes me pause.
This is Ride the Whirlwind (7):
“Barked? Perlstein's article is laughable. Obviously to him, Christians need to keep quiet and be the only group in the country who must never weigh in on any pertinent issues.”
Of course Christians must andshould weigh in. That doesn’t mean every group gets two hours with top White House aides, especially a group that threatens our diplomatic relationship with the very state they seek to help. The article is about the judgement the White House makes, not the judgement this particular group of Christians make. What’s more, this group isn’t, despite its own claims, “Christians”--it’s a “fringe group,” as Ciexyz (12) himself admits, and “a very small group with serious deviations from classical evangelical orthodoxy,” as my Cookcounty neighbor says. But don’t you understand? By giving so much attention to the loud fringe, he takes away time from the non-fringe MAJORITY of Chrirstians.
Please consider the article’s conclusion seriously: “The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture.”
I mean what I say. Nothing wrong with meeting with Christians. It’s his duty. (33) especially gets it wrong. I don’t equate this group with Evangelicals (since many, theologically, don’t think they are Evangelicals, I don’t call them Evangelicals anway)--I specifically say that their ideas conflict with those of many Evangelicals.
To my friend Dead on Clinton’s claimed meetings with The World Socialist Party: prove it.
But Dead makes a reasonable point at (19): “His point that this group has an undue influence on policy in the Bush White House is so weak as to be nonexistent really. His entire evidence to that point is that the leader of the group hints at such, like any wannabe world-shaker would.” They cut my argument for the substance of the undue influence. If Elliott Abrams sells Bush’s disengagement from Gaza because Gaza “had no significant Biblical influence,” that raises the question of whether the White House is censoring ideas for Mideast policy that WOULD involve areas of “significant Biblical influence.” If they do, that would be a pretty serious breach of the First Amendment, in my opinion.
But Post (31) wins the stupid award, claiming I work for “an organization dedicated to the destruction of the nation of Israel.” If the land of Israel is desteroyed, it will be destroyed by a war helped along by people who consider illegitimate any kind of peace process.
As always, I welcome comments at rperlstein@villagevoice.com. I’m not going to have a lot of time today to check out this thread.
Regards,
Rick Perlstein
And yet, President Bush still supports a Palestinian state.
Nor is that the only issue on which he has bucked the religious right...note that he also carried out the execution of ax murderer Karla Faye Tucker over the objections of Reverend Billy Graham, et al.
So it is a disservice to pigeon-hole President Bush as being beholden to the religious right. President Bush is religious, but he also knows to firmly do what is right for America even if that disagrees with the wishes of the hyper-religious.
Here’s a blast from the past.