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
I never waste my time. The world doesn't revolve around those lacking critical thinking skills who necessarily arrive at illogical conclusions.
Nor does it revolve around the intellectually dishonest. I do recognize the fact that some are willingly ignorant.
I think they would have been happier if you had turned out to be one those nasty hate-spewing conservatives. Spit a little tobacco juice, talk about your gun collection, and how you'd like to git yerself some of them there queers. Libs need demons to keep them going. If they find out that 98% of conservatives are the helpful person down the street or next door who doesn't much care what you do in the privacy of your home, they'd have to rethink their whole mental universe. Much better to have nasty bile-spurting haters to hate back. In short they need a cause, Maybe the two people you mentioned are different. But from the looks of places like DU and other lib insane asylums, the reverse appears to be true.
self-awareness is a good thing, congratulations.
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