Posted on 11/07/2005 5:53:47 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
America risks becoming a theocracy because of the religious right's sway over politics, former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart warned Thursday in a talk in Denver.
At a lunch at the Oxford Hotel sponsored by the Denver Forum, the Democrat touched on his faith journey, took a few jabs at the Bush administration's foreign policy and reassured the audience that it's all right to be a liberal.
Hart, the author of some 15 books, was touting a slim new volume, "God and Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics."
"The language of politics in the last 10 years has more heavily gravitated toward faith and values," Hart said. "He who controls the definition controls the debate."
To illustrate the shift in religion's role in politics, Hart told of how conservative Protestants worried in the 1960s that President Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, would let the Vatican call the shots. In 2005, the Bush White House sought to reassure evangelicals that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was one of them.
Imagine, Hart said, the reaction if the Kennedy White House had sounded out the pope about a high-court nominee.
"Guess who would have gone up in orbit?" he said. "The religious right in America."
The country veers toward theocracy, Hart said, when religious interest groups hold so much influence.
"Once you get ... to that kind of insistence of veto power over the judiciary of America, you are in very, very dangerous grounds, and that's where we are," Hart said.
Hart was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, the same conservative evangelical denomination that claims Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson as a member. That is something Hart never would have shared on the campaign trail, he said.
"When I was in politics, I didn't like to talk about my religion," Hart said. "It wasn't because I was embarrassed by it. It was just private. Now, it's just the reverse."
Hart, who holds a Yale divinity degree, said he turned away from a rule-based Old Testament approach of "don't do that" in favor of the message of helping the poor and seeking peace that is embodied in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
"I am still a liberal," Hart said. "I believe in social justice. We've done pretty well by the middle class, but one in five children are in poverty in this country. We have a long way to go."
He said on Peter Boyles show this am that he is "evangelical!"
Even if one were to accept his basic premis (which would be a mistake because it is so wrongheaded), it should still be clear to even the casual observer that Gary Hart doesn't even understand the difference between taking direction from the Pope, who was not an American citizen, and taking direction from American citizens...
Reading this leads me to believe Hart has been drinking heavily since that Rice incidence. It obviously has negatively effected any critical thinking skill he may had.
Make that 'premise'...
Wonder who purchases this idiots books?
Let me get this straight Gary, you believe in being a liberal and put down others religion? Then you claim to follow the Sermon on the Mount?
I have follwed politics for a long time, and I have yet to hear of a person running for Congress who touted setting up a Theocracy.
JFK Wannabee (barf)
What is scary is the fact, there are people in the country who actually believe this nonsense.
Hart should and probaly bdoes know better, which tells me he is using this theocracy ruse as a tool to manipulate people or maybe for fund raising
Tell that to People for the American Way. ;)
Yeah....I guess the dems decided they weren't going to let a little thing like adultery get in the way of a Democrat in the White House after the Gary Hart, "affair"....LOL
Is Gary Hart still alive? Wow!
I would be the last to accuse the sainted Mr. Hartpence of flacking his cursory scribblings to the breathless masses. Caveat emptor.
"We've done pretty well by the middle class, but one in five children are in poverty in this country. We have a long way to go."
How many of those children are in single-parent homes?
Not a very bright man.
Hart is a hypocritical fear-monger.
And, btw, what is it about these Yale grads that makes them so goofy?
I believe he's been spanking his monkey again.
LOL- that photo was the result of Hart's dare to the press to catch him womanizing. Add "daring the press" to his "Don't Do That" list.
More adultery from Hart?
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