Posted on 11/26/2004 10:42:12 AM PST by Former Dodger
Religious zealots riding high after W's win
Less than a month after the national elections, the mullahs of America's religious right are in full swagger. Dispensing with pretense, they are openly reconfiguring American government in the service of a narrow version of fundamentalist Christianity. For weeks, the press has focused on how a vast mobilization of evangelical voters helped President Bush to reelection. That's missing the disturbing sequel to the story: an explicit, organized campaign to erode the nation's status as a modern, secular and constitutional democracy.
Consider the following events, all of which have taken place since Election Day.
In a letter dated Nov. 3, the president of Bob Jones University, the politically influential Bible college in South Carolina, sent Bush an open letter, posted on the school's Web site.
"In your reelection, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," wrote Bob Jones 3rd. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."
A few days later, James Dobson, the archconservative founder of Focus on the Family, a lobbying group, bluntly notified the nation that he expects Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to be an errand boy for the religious right.
Specter committed the sin of suggesting that Bush would have problems winning Senate approval of Supreme Court nominees who are determined to overturn Roe vs. Wade and outlaw abortion.
Dobson promptly went on national television to issue a political fatwa. "He is a problem, and he must be derailed," Dobson said.
Senate leaders hastily patched together a compromise that will let Specter keep his job. "He will assume his new position on a very short leash," said Mullah Dobson.
In case any other slow learners in Congress needed help, Dobson gave clear marching orders. "Especially, especially, putting conservative judges on the judiciary, that is the key to everything," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Speaking of the judiciary, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made two appearances this week that confirm his oft-stated intent to erase traditional lines separating church and state. "We are fools for Christ's sake," Scalia said at a Red Mass, a tradition for Catholic lawyers, in Illinois. "We must pray for the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."
A few days later, addressing Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, Scalia dropped the Christ references but kept the message touting government support of religion.
"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," he told the congregants, according to The Jerusalem Post. The true goal, he said, "is not neutrality between religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of religion."
In a 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, then-Sen. John Kennedy described the restraint and neutrality that government leaders should exercise with regard to religion.
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," said Kennedy. "Where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.... I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair."
America in the age of the mullahs has strayed a long way indeed from Kennedy's wise words.
Originally published on November 26, 2004
E-mail: elouis @edit.nydailynews.com
"formerly served as associate editor of The New York Sun"
What is up with that? The Sun is endevouring to be NY's conservative non-tabloid paper.
I'm confused!
Lotta "formerly" this and "has done" thats in his bio. I think reading between the lines spells out "unemployed."
Boo!
Mullahs of the religious right? If the writer is so stupid that he can't tell the difference, I can't bother to read any further.
Hate, hate, hate, hate. That's all these people can spew. They hate God, they hate freedom, they hate anyone who disagrees eith them, they hate the Declaration of Independence, they hate babies, they hate REAL liberal education, they hate this country. The true religiously intolerant people are the far left wackos who censor and insult anyone who disagrees with their worldview.
Guess what, they lost, they're the minority, they have no ideas for making this country better, they are the enemies of America. They have nothing in their hearts except for the same old tired slogans and hate for the majority of wise people who saw through their lies and intolerence. They are bigots of the highest order. Go cry somewhere else, I'm not listening.
Consider the following events, all of which have taken place since Election Day.
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Posting an opinion on a web site qualifies as an event in this jokers world. The libs are still in denial that they got their ears pinned back Nov. 3.
Kennedy was a tax cutter as well. The left never recognizes JFK's conservative side.
Just a note: Kennedy said his "wise words" during a campaign where one of his biggest stumbling blocks was that the non-Catholic public was fearful of him becoming president. Rumor was that he would just be a figurehead for the Vatican. Kennedy was trying to dispel that feeling and get himself elected.
The City Sun
The City Sun Publishing Co., Inc., GPO 560, Brooklyn, NY, 11202; 718-624-5959.
Which was pretty hard core left wing,although he might have left the NY Sun when it started to swing right.
Of the four words he used to describe the US, only one - "constitutional" - has any validity in describing our system. While our founders did adopt democratic forms, they certainly were not concerned with being "modern" or "secular". Forget about erosion, how about obliteration?
I agree that these two occurances are examples that should not occur, but your using secularism as a religion is I hope sarcasm. The belief in something that calls for the ouster of religion in civic matters or the holding of a philosophical view to exclude religion, would only oddly be held to be a religion.
Ok I think I get it. Its ok for them to force their twisted perverted silly ideals on us but we better not try to mention God. Wayyyyy to dangerous. They have never really explained how God is a danger to people. Its strange, too, cause He created the very people who hate Him.
Can we stop the idea that it is somehow a religious values clash that divides.
It is socialism, pure and simple, that is causing the rift.
I dispise the socialist agenda. In fact, I don't need religious polemics to argue against the socialists, and that is what the democrats are: SOCIALISTS.
We are fighting socialism and its ilk.
Time to diffuse the left's playbook because while they can and will make a mockery of religion and religious people, and hide behind this cloak of obfuscation, we need to make them understand that the jig's up. The real agenda is out there.
I met my cousins lesbian "partner" yesterday at thanksgiving dinner. They seemed a little concerned about being in the same room with such a dangerous "right winger" as myself. I like to think that I planted a small seed of reality in their heads.
They didn't find the raging homophobe gay basher they obviously expected. What the found was a rational person with a different opinion.
Secular Humanism IS a religion, complete with the sacraments of homosexuality, depravity, hubris, indolence and, of course, abortion. (I may have left a few out.)
Per our earlier conversation.
you can call it whatever you like, that doesn't make it true. We are just as guilty of bastardizing the language as the left when we do this.
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