Fornits
General Interest => Tacitus' Realm => Topic started by: Stonewall on October 06, 2010, 09:21:46 PM
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Islam’s Invasion Ideology
Friday, 01 October 2010 06:19 Martel Sobieskey
In the same way that a fake $100 bill is not legitimate currency, Islam is a counterfeit religion and therefore does not qualify for first amendment status. It is extremely incorrect to categorize Islam as a religion when its core literature and bloody track record prove a thousand times over that it is an -- Invasion ideology, a shrewd and cunning predator -- disguising itself as a religion.
Irrefutable evidence proves Islam to be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and a “Trojan horse” hell bent upon destroying all religions and nations worldwide. This irrefutable evidence is a book called the Koran where Allah commands that all Muslims must wage Jihad until the entire world and every single person is either converted to Islam, enslaved, murdered, tortured or abused.
“Fight them until all opposition ends, and all submit to Allah” (Koran: 8:39)
The Koran is a Manual of War
It is an error for anyone to call Islam a religion, but for those who insist, it’s best referred to as a “Religion of War” that has arrived on our shore as an enemy invader for the sole purpose of conquering our nation. This point cannot be overemphasized.
The Koran vows to vanquish all religions and nations worldwide. Allah himself is the protagonist who relishes the role of a “hit man” vowing to knock off every person who rejects Islam -- sending them to burn in everlasting hell. For Allah, there is nothing more heinous and loathsome than those infidels (non-believers) who refuse to convert, and there is nothing he will not do to eradicate them.
“I will terrorize the unbelievers. Therefore, smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off their fingers and toes.” (Koran 8:12)
“Allah wished to confirm the truth by his words: Wipe the infidels out to the last.” (Koran: 8:7)
Read the Koran for Yourself
Don’t take my word on it. Read the Koran. By so doing you will be outraged and ask, “Why in heavens name would any person with integrity and intellectual objectivity call such a blood thirsty and homicidally bigoted “tirade” -- a sacred and holy book?”
Below are two sources for authentic passages from the Koran. The first is entitled "Islamic Quotes" taken from prophetofdoom.net . It provides a few hundred quotes organized into 30 different categories and is very “digestible” giving immediate insight into the malevolence of the Koran and related Islamic texts. The second is an article by Citizen Warrior encouraging everyone to read the Koran, especially “An Abridged Koran” by CSPI. The advantage of the abridged version is that it eliminates monotonous repetition and provides commentary giving a comprehensive perspective and meaning to the text.
Neutralizing Islam
One does not need a crystal ball to foretell that Islam will turn America into a living hell if left unchecked. 9/11 was America’s initiation into the so called “religious rites” of Islam. Millions of Americans are outraged that the real culprit in this attack has been given a “free pass” to continue its rampage.
Since 9/11, the religion of peace website has documented 16,124 deadly attacks committed by Islam as mandated by the Koran. These prove that Islam does not deserve the status of a religion and that America has been hoodwinked by so doing. We need to face reality, and implement effective methods if we wish to protect our nation from this religious imposter.
One writer bringing clarity to the situation is Daniel Greenfield. In his article: “Can We Ban Islam? Legal Guidelines for the Criminalization of Islam in the United States” he states in the affirmative that America can legally ban Islam because:
“Organizations aimed at the overthrow of the United States can be banned and membership in them can even be criminalized.”
They key word here is “overthrow”. Any group that wishes to overthrow the United States can be banned. It is well past time for open debate and discussion upon this issue in regards to Islam.
To reiterate, Islam does not qualify for religion status in the USA because it an Invasion Ideology which absolutely mandates the conquest of the United States. Please see my related article entitled "Demoting Islam's Religion Status" it provides the basic elements for discussion and reflection. Also, a must see “you tube” video named "3 Things about Islam" provides a concise summary of the challenge we face. It is imperative for all Americans to learn the truth about Islam or it will eventually destroy us.
Martel Sobieskey has 36 years research experience in the field of religious conditioning and its relationship to warfare. He is greatly alarmed that American politicians, military commanders, educators, journalists, intelligence analysts, and security and police personnel have failed to comprehend the deeply entrenched jihadist conditioning inherent in all of Islam – moderates included.
Copyright © 2010 Right Side Publications, LLC
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010100111 ... ology.html (http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010100111804/editorial/rsn-pick-of-the-day/islams-invasion-ideology.html)
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Well Done, Stony, Well Done!
Perhaps the story of the afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband will begin to wake up westerners. Perhaps now we will begin to recognize the horror that we really , truly face. Maybe the 'feminists will come out of their closet and recognize evil for what it is. Maybe. Maybe people will begin to realize just how fragile the 'civiilzed' world really is, and remember the shoot-down on all grumman Ag-cats for four days after 9-11, or that all regional hospitals were on mandatory three- day lockdown, post event Maybe..
J.O.M.
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Well Done, Stony, Well Done!
Perhaps the story of the afghan girl whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband will begin to wake up westerners.
I'm awake and it's deplorable what they do.
Perhaps now we will begin to recognize the horror that we really , truly face. Maybe the 'feminists will come out of their closet and recognize evil for what it is. Maybe.
I think pulling out the 'feminist' card is unfair. The way that women are treated in a lot of Islamic countries is horrible. The way that the Mormoms view women is deplorable, although not as physically violent. The fundamentalist christians who think that women should "submit" to their husbands is deplorable and can lead to severe spousal abuses. I can't imagine having to live under that kind of rule. Thank god I don't have to.
Maybe people will begin to realize just how fragile the 'civiilzed' world really is, and remember the shoot-down on all grumman Ag-cats for four days after 9-11, or that all regional hospitals were on mandatory three- day lockdown, post event Maybe..
J.O.M.
I'm not saying that what is being done in the name of that religion is right. Of course it's not. I don't like or agree with ANY religion and think they're ALL oppressive, especially when you read the text - be it the Bible, Koran or whatever. What I can't pretend to be afraid of is that they're going to somehow install their laws here or take over the country. It's just not gonna happen, IMO. It wasn't so long ago in this country that people were scared of Catholics. And I mean literally afraid that they were stockpiling weapons, waiting for a signal from the Pope to take over America.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns ... cs/1127650 (http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/when-america-feared-catholics/1127650)
Sharon Davies
When America feared Catholics
By Sharon Davies, Los Angeles Times
In Print: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The mind-set is all too familiar: A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly and unapologetically, even proudly.
Today this description may bring to mind the flap over the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in New York, or recent calls for greater restrictions on Muslims in America, like banning their service on the Supreme Court or in the Oval Office. But in fact, it describes the year 1920, when the reviled group was Roman Catholics, not Muslims.
In the early 1900s, many Americans were genuinely frightened by the perceived religious threat of the Roman Catholic Church and the suspected imperialistic intentions of its leader, the pope. He was plotting the overthrow of the United States, warned the fearful, to "make America Catholic." His foot soldiers, tens of thousands of Catholic men who called themselves the Knights of Columbus, were busily stockpiling arms and ammunition in the basements of their churches, all in preparation for the day when their papist leader would give the signal for the violent insurrection to begin.
The holders of such beliefs were not just some fringe crazies. A number of state legislatures were persuaded to take steps against the perceived threat as well, mirroring the anti-Catholic fear in their "convent inspection laws." These laws authorized the warrantless searches of Catholic buildings — convents, monasteries, rectories and churches — for weaponry and for young women supposedly seduced into the nunnery by Catholic lies.
Religious fear on this scale had fatal consequences. Eighty-nine years ago in Birmingham, Ala., Father James E. Coyle was brutally slain. Coyle, a native of Ireland, had been sent to the United States to begin his priesthood. When he dared to stand up in defense of his faith, federal agents warned the bishop in Mobile about death threats on Coyle's life and pledges to torch his Birmingham church.
Such threats were not idle. During this same period, the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan exploded after it rebranded itself a "patriotic" fraternal organization dedicated to safeguarding America against the threat of Catholics, Jews and immigrants. This new klan attracted some of "the best men in town" — doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, even clergymen.
On Aug. 11, 1921, one of those men — a Methodist minister, the Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson — brought a loaded gun to the porch of Coyle's home and shot him dead in front of a street full of witnesses. About an hour earlier, the priest had committed the apparently unforgivable act of marrying Stephenson's 18-year-old daughter to a practicing Catholic wallpaper hanger of Puerto Rican descent.
The KKK raised funds for Stephenson's defense and hired his lead attorney, a young future Supreme Court justice, Hugo Black. Black, it was hoped, might persuade a Southern jury to see Stephenson as the community's champion rather than a bigoted killer. You can guess the outcome.
Stephenson walked out of the courthouse a free man, and he never so much as apologized. Black joined the klan himself 18 months later and, with its support, was elected to the U.S. Senate. Only years later did he calmly state that he did not share the klan's beliefs and was no longer a member, after a reporter revealed his membership as he prepared to take his seat on the Supreme Court. Black survived the ensuing scandal.
At the time, these men did not consider themselves religious bigots. They believed themselves patriots protecting the nation against a foreign threat they feared was intent on their destruction.
The anti-Catholic fever of the 1920s didn't truly end for another 40 years, when presidential candidate John F. Kennedy felt compelled to say directly that his allegiance was to the United States, not the pope. Today, the worst of the anti-Catholic fervor might simply be an embarrassment, were the consequences less dire and were there not so many signs that we haven't learned from our mistakes.
Sharon Davies is a professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and the author of "Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America."
© 2010 Los Angeles Times
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Tattoo on soldier who witnessed murders of Afghan civilians and his troopmates posing with their "trophies".
(http://http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/14/griffin.afghan.murder.soldiers.investigation/t1larg.afghan.killings.stoner.usarmy.jpg)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/14/gri ... tml?hpt=C1 (http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/14/griffin.afghan.murder.soldiers.investigation/index.html?hpt=C1)
Soldier silenced for testimony in Afghan killings probe
By Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston, CNN Special Investigations Unit
October 14, 2010 11:32 a.m. EDT
Seattle, Washington (CNN) -- First, Justin Stoner blew the whistle on his platoon. Now, the Army apparently wants to silence him.
In photos obtained by CNN, Stoner sports bruises and abrasions on his back, chest and near his neck -- the marks of a beating inflicted by fellow soldiers as payback for reporting their rampant hashish use, the Army said.
At the time, those close to the investigation tell CNN, Stoner just wanted the smoking in his tent and around him to stop. So he went outside his group and reported the drug use to his superiors.
But that move, and the subsequent beating he endured for being viewed as a snitch, triggered a wide-ranging criminal investigation that has left some soldiers accused of killing innocent Afghan civilians and others accused of posing in gruesome photos with the dead or keeping body parts as war trophies.
Now the Army is doing everything it can to limit the publicity its own explosive account created.
Stoner, a private first class now back in the United States, had agreed to speak with CNN about the torment he went through at the hands of fellow soldiers earlier this year.
But just three hours before the interview was to take place in Seattle, CNN received this e-mail from his military attorney, Capt. Ernesto Gapasin, Jr., abruptly pulling the plug on the scheduled interview:
"About two hours ago, prosecutors and I met re [regarding] the disposition of the case against PFC Stoner,'' the attorney wrote. "Based on this meeting, PFC Stoner will be given full immunity in this case and not be prosecuted for any allegations made against him, contingent also however, on staying away from the media."
The Army disputes that account, however, saying Stoner has not been given immunity.
"Discussing PFC Stoner's direct involvement in these hearings is inappropriate and could affect the outcome of these cases," Lt. Col. David P. Doherty, a spokesman for the Army's I Corps, told CNN in a statement issued Thursday.
"It is imperative that we follow the judicial process in order to provide the accused a fair and impartial trial, while at the same time serve justice," Doherty said. "PFC Stoner is currently not charged in these matters, nor has he been granted immunity by the convening authority for his cooperation in these ongoing investigations."
What is clear is the Army is scrambling to contain the news of an apparently out-of-control platoon.
The portrait of rogue soldiers at a forward operating base in Afghanistan has been painted by the Army itself in chilling charge sheets leveled at 12 members of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.
Five of the dozen are charged with pre-meditated murder in what investigators call the "staged" killings of three civilian Afghans. Those soldiers and the others face various other charges as well from unlawful use of illicit drugs, possession of a human skull, fingers and leg bones to the assault on Stoner.
Two directives have been sent to military and civilian attorneys representing the Stryker dozen. They involve grisly photos allegedly showing dead bodies and body parts, and soldiers posing as if they had killed a deer on a hunt.
One of the orders commanded military defense attorneys to return all "documents inadvertently provided by the government" on September 9. The marked exhibits, lawyers told CNN, correspond to the photos.
A number of lawyers have told CNN the photos are worse than those that depicted humiliating poses of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Those photos sparked outrage and riots in parts of the world.
Another directive apparently was meant for civilian attorneys and not only pointedly ordered the return of photos but further said defense and prosecution teams could only view them at Lewis-McChord.
Lawyer Dan Conway, who represents Pfc. Andrew Holmes, told CNN the order makes it difficult to represent their client, because it prohibits them from forensic testing and they are housed in many cases thousands of miles from where the lawyers are based.
Other attorneys have similarly complained to CNN that the Army is tying their hands in defending their clients to avoid more embarrassment.
Holmes is charged with premeditated murder in a January killing. Conway said his client is innocent of the charges and was denied representation for 20 days, despite repeatedly asking for an attorney while still in Afghanistan.
Both orders were signed by Col. Barry H. Higgins, the brigade's commander. The second directive reads, in part: "Further I order that all such images may not be distributed to any persons outside of personnel assigned to CID. 'Human Casualties' are defined as dead, wounded or injured human beings to include separated body parts, organs, and biological materials, resulting from either combat or non-combat activities.''
Even without those photos surfacing, much has already leaked out about the case, spurred in no small part by the Army's release and description of grisly details in the charging documents.
And the headlines around the world about the rogue unit have created a backlash in a part of the world where the Army desperately hopes to win over hearts and minds.
The beating of Stoner and the murders of Afghans apparently just for sport and then staged to look like combat casualties- have been highlighted by some of the accused soldiers' whose own words captured on interrogation tapes obtained by CNN.
Tapes describe killings for sport
In one of those videotaped sessions, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock -- who has been charged in all three of the killings -- recounts how he and several other soldiers deliberately ambushed Stoner on May 5.
"So yeah, we walked into the room and locked the door behind us and a couple guys started talking to him, laying on him," Morlock told investigators.
Asked by investigator what he meant, Morlock replied, "Why would you rat out your guys, stuff like that."
He said Stoner initially denied he went to superiors, then admitted it as he was being confronted by their squad leader, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs.
"I think someone had grabbed him at that point and maybe punched him in the chest or something," Morlock said on the tape.
"He then made a comment like you guys can sit here and punch me all day long if you want and once he said that, Gibbs was like OK, grabbed him off his cot and threw him on the ground in his room and that's when a few guys got some licks in."
Morlock's attorney, Michael Waddington, said his client was on prescription drugs from the Army, high on hashish and suffering combat-related injuries when the crimes were committed.
The Army has recommended Morlock be court-martialed. Gibbs' attorney said he is not ready to comment on the case.
But Gibbs has been charged with the most crimes, and is depicted in the interrogation tapes made by some of the accused and in witness statements as the ringleader who reveled in his kills and dropped three human fingers in front of Stoner after the beating.
Other soldiers told investigators that Gibbs liked to collect fingers, teeth and leg bones as souvenirs.
Gibbs is also suspected of being a skinhead who kept track of his "kills" with skull tattoos on his leg.
Reports show Army sgt. tracked kills with tattoos
(http://http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/CRIME/10/14/griffin.afghan.murder.soldiers.investigation/story.afghan.killings.skull.tattoos.usarmy.jpg)
Above is the platoon leader's tattoos, keeping track of his 'kills'.
CNN has obtained investigators' photos of the tattoos clearly showing skulls and cross bones. One soldier, not charged, said Gibbs "associates with skinheads online.
"It's scary because they are worse than most gang members I've met," the soldier told investigators.
The photos are included in over 1,000 pages of evidence compiled by the Army and turned over to attorneys. They include witnesses' statements and depict a platoon where Gibbs ruled -- and anyone who didn't follow his rules believed they could end up like Stoner.
"I take that man very seriously," Spc. Adam Winfield told investigators in his videotaped confession. "He likes to kill things. He is pretty much evil incarnate. I mean I have never met a man who can go from one minute joking around then mindless killings. I mean he likes to kill things."
Winfield is charged with premeditated murder in a May killing of an Afghan civilian whose death was made to look like a hostile enemy battlefield death. His lawyer, Eric Montalvo, said his client is not guilty of premeditated murder despite what his client told investigators on the videotaped interrogation.
The Army is now investigating claims by Winfield's father, Christopher Winfield, that it ignored his attempts to warn them about Gibbs.
Warning may have been ignored
The elder Winfield told CNN that his son alerted him after the first killing, and he said two more men died needlessly after that because the Army would not listen to his warnings.
In addition, the Army reportedly is re-examining Gibbs' role in the 2004 shooting of two adults and a child in Iraq, near the city of Kirkuk. The shooting involved a car which purportedly was swerving towards a uniformed patrol.
Spc. Michael Wagnon is the fifth member of the Stryker platoon charged with premeditated murder. His attorney, Colby Vokey, said his client is innocent.
The Army, meanwhile, seems to have decided to let the charging documents be its official comment.
"I don't want to do anything that could in any way jeopardize the prosecution or their ability of the defendants in this case to get a fair trial, " Geoff Morell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters October 5.
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Dear Anne,
Your mistrust of religion IS your religion. And here, at least you're welcome to it. In islam, however, slavery, torture, the opression of women are not considered aberrant. That IS their religion. A counterfeit religion to be sure, the same as mao-ism and Nazi-ism and the rest of like philosophies.
A problem with evil is that it can't be quantified. It begs to be quantified, but it can't be. Is it less evil for me to enslave and torture one, than many? Is John wayne gacy less evil than hitler, because he only killed 33 boys, while hitler kiled millions and millions,fact is, murder is murder, and even the bible recognizes the difference between killing in war, and murder. That's a theolgical reference, but an important one none-the--less.
You have shown photos of men tattoed to prove their guilt. Maybe they are psychos, maybe they were ordinary men in a psychotic situation
and you have not shown photos of combat medics saving the lives of non- combatants, nor have you shown photos of combat engineers de-fusing bombs, or drilling wells, or buildng schools or power plants
J.O.M..
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Anne Bonney,
When you send soldiers to war this is what you get, in a lot of instances.
If we did to our captured enemy what this enemy does... Oh my.
This enemy is the most despicable we ever faced. As evidenced on 9/11.
You want to win this war? Do to this enemy what we did to the Nazi's. End their ideology. Kill their beliefs. Kill Islam.
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End their ideology. Kill their beliefs. Kill Islam.
Which can only really be done by doing what's done with cults. Cut off the head and remove control over communication. Problem there is that with Islam there really is no head. There is no real ecclesiastical structure or hierarchy. In certain countries the state could be considered the head but for the most part the people like living under sharia law. If you topple a rejieme and establish democracy, you'll end up with a democratically elected theocratic leadership. It's not a situation that's fixable. There is some hope with the internet, though. The more religious fundamentalists are exposed to uncensored information the more they'll learn to see other ways of life as more normal. Porn helps.
As far as doing with Islam what was done with Nazism? Does the west really have enough manpower, strength of will, and determination to subjugate (as they would do to us) an entire third of the world's population until they reject their ideology? Cause that's what it'd take. Either that or a whole lot of nukes, which isn't exactly a great option.
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Dear Anne,
Your mistrust of religion IS your religion.
Huh? That's like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
And here, at least you're welcome to it. In islam, however, slavery, torture, the opression of women are not considered aberrant. That IS their religion. A counterfeit religion to be sure, the same as mao-ism and Nazi-ism and the rest of like philosophies.
A problem with evil is that it can't be quantified. It begs to be quantified, but it can't be. Is it less evil for me to enslave and torture one, than many? Is John wayne gacy less evil than hitler, because he only killed 33 boys, while hitler kiled millions and millions,fact is, murder is murder, and even the bible recognizes the difference between killing in war, and murder. That's a theolgical reference, but an important one none-the--less.
You have shown photos of men tattoed to prove their guilt. Maybe they are psychos, maybe they were ordinary men in a psychotic situation and you have not shown photos of combat medics saving the lives of non- combatants, nor have you shown photos of combat engineers de-fusing bombs, or drilling wells, or buildng schools or power plants
J.O.M..
I said that what is done in the name of islam is horrendous and I mean that. The only thing I seem to disagree with people is that I don't think it/they're taking over our country. That's really it.
I posted that picture (the one questioning whether he was the good guy or bad guy) to show that some of our guys over there are questioning why they've been sent and what they're doing. That doesn't imply that I condone what the terrorists have done. It was just food for thought. And I do think that picture is of an ordinary guy caught up in a psychotic situation. I wish we'd bring home all our guys now. They're suffering unimaginably.
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Anne Bonney,
When you send soldiers to war this is what you get, in a lot of instances.
If we did to our captured enemy what this enemy does... Oh my.
Agree.
This enemy is the most despicable we ever faced. As evidenced on 9/11.
You want to win this war? Do to this enemy what we did to the Nazi's. End their ideology. Kill their beliefs. Kill Islam.
In that war we fought a country......Germany and the head of it's state, Hitler. In this one we're fighting an ideology. Very different circumstances. How will we know when we've "won"?
Guys.....I'm not cheering for "the enemy". I'm just as disgusted with what's being done as anyone else. The only thing I was saying is that I'm not scared that they're going to take over our country. You may feel differently, but I'm entitled to my opinion, yes?
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Dear Stony,
Speaking as a moderate,a humanist, a caring human being. I'm for nuking the place flat. Enhanced radiation warhead, of course,theatre or tactical nukes, to be sure.There's no need to be dramatic in my view.The suffering would be less.
In my view, Islam has no place in the modrern world. they have not advanced, not evolved in 1500 years.
I have no place for islam, as I have no place for nazi-ismn, as have I no a place for liver flukes or malaria
J.O.M..
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Dear Stony,
Speaking as a moderate,a humanist, a caring human being. I'm for nuking the place flat. Enhanced radiation warhead, of course,theatre or tactical nukes, to be sure.There's no need to be dramatic in my view.The suffering would be less.
In my view, Islam has no place in the modrern world. they have not advanced, not evolved in 1500 years.
I have no place for islam, as I have no place for nazi-ismn, as have I no a place for liver flukes or malaria
J.O.M..
:rocker: :poison: :rocker: :poison: :rocker: :tup: :tup:
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Anne Bonney,
When you send soldiers to war this is what you get, in a lot of instances.
If we did to our captured enemy what this enemy does... Oh my.
Agree.
This enemy is the most despicable we ever faced. As evidenced on 9/11.
You want to win this war? Do to this enemy what we did to the Nazi's. End their ideology. Kill their beliefs. Kill Islam.
In that war we fought a country......Germany and the head of it's state, Hitler. In this one we're fighting an ideology. Very different circumstances. How will we know when we've "won"?
Guys.....I'm not cheering for "the enemy". I'm just as disgusted with what's being done as anyone else. The only thing I was saying is that I'm not scared that they're going to take over our country. You may feel differently, but I'm entitled to my opinion, yes?
I know you are not cheering for the enemy...
The best thing to do, in my opinion, is leave all Islamic Countries. Pull out. Get out of the Middle East, get out of Afghanistan. Leave the Persian Gulf.
Stop all immigration of Muslims into the country.
Tell the absolute truth about Islam. Every news organization should tell the truth. The government should tell the truth. Try as best we can to get Muslims to leave their religion.
That is a start.
In the end I don't see how we avoid a major war in the coming decades.
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The highest court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ruled that a husband can beat his wife and young children "as long as the beating leaves no physical marks." How's that for civility?
The decision by the Federal Supreme Court shows the strong influence of Islamic law (Sharia). . . The court made the ruling earlier this month in the case of a man who left cuts and bruises on his wife and adult daughter after a beating.
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The highest court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ruled that a husband can beat his wife and young children "as long as the beating leaves no physical marks." How's that for civility?
The decision by the Federal Supreme Court shows the strong influence of Islamic law (Sharia). . . The court made the ruling earlier this month in the case of a man who left cuts and bruises on his wife and adult daughter after a beating.
Our Federal Supreme Court? And if so, what is the source for the statement that the decision was influenced by Islamic law?
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The ruling was reported on Monday in the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National.
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Got a link? I'd be very interested in reading it.
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I got it from some link off of google news, not sure which one.
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Got a link? I'd be very interested in reading it.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2 ... ble_m.html (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/18/2010-10-18_uae_high_court_rules_men_can_beat_wives_young_children_if_there_are_no_visible_m.html)
A quote:
Dr Ahmed al Kubaisi, the head of Sharia Studies at UAE University and Baghdad University, told the National that beating one's wife is at times necessary to preserve family bonds.
"If a wife committed something wrong, a husband can report her to police," Dr al Kubaisi told the newspaper. "But sometimes she does not do a serious thing or he does not want to let others know; when it is not good for the family. In this case, hitting is a better option."
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The only thing I seem to disagree with people is that I don't think it/they're taking over our country. That's really it.
I read your post about the fear of the RCC way back when. Your right that there was some concern a RC president would have the US answering to Rome as they did "back home" in Ireland. Your right that this was a bit silly. Your wrong however to think the present day concerns about Islam are comparable.
I don't worry that the USA will become an Islamic nation. The danger isn't that Obama will hoist an Islamic flag over the capital and the House and Senate will begin bowing to Allah 5 times a day. The danger is something like a thermonuclear bomb in New York, Chicago and LA; or small pox and anthrax - Because if they can get it they will use it. And if we don't take this danger seriously, deal with it seriously, stop with the rose colored glasses and the dream-scape fantasy that they can be negotiated and reasoned with, they will get these deadly things - and we will suffer and die.
I worry about insane levels of PC that forbid facing facts and dealing with the facts as they are. We ARE at war with Islam. Islam IS the problem. Moderate Muslims are responsible for not boldly standing up to the radicalized elements. Our "tolerance" and their silent, sheepish ways in the face of their prophets demands for blood will make creeping Sharia, with the brutality, murder and terroristic mindset and action that follows, virtually inevitable.
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The only thing I seem to disagree with people is that I don't think it/they're taking over our country. That's really it.
I read your post about the fear of the RCC way back when. Your right that there was some concern a RC president would have the US answering to Rome as they did "back home" in Ireland. Your right that this was a bit silly. Your wrong however to think the present day concerns about Islam are comparable.
I don't worry that the USA will become an Islamic nation. The danger isn't that Obama will hoist an Islamic flag over the capital and the House and Senate will begin bowing to Allah 5 times a day. The danger is something like a thermonuclear bomb in New York, Chicago and LA; or small pox and anthrax - Because if they can get it they will use it. And if we don't take this danger seriously, deal with it seriously, stop with the rose colored glasses and the dream-scape fantasy that they can be negotiated and reasoned with, they will get these deadly things - and we will suffer and die.
I worry about insane levels of PC that forbid facing facts and dealing with the facts as they are. We ARE at war with Islam. Islam IS the problem. Moderate Muslims are responsible for not boldly standing up to the radicalized elements. Our "tolerance" and their silent, sheepish ways in the face of their prophets demands for blood will make creeping Sharia, with the brutality, murder and terroristic mindset and action that follows, virtually inevitable.
I agree.
There is no doubt that whatever mass atrocity Muslims can commit against the Western World, they will do so without blinking an eye about it.
Our government has failed utterly in regard to our foreign relations with the Islamic world. I would say that it began, the failure began with the Iranian Revolution. We failed to understand what the revolution meant and how the Sunni world would react to the Islamic Republic.
It radicalized the Middle East.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan played a part. The Camp David Accords played a part.
It really was a perfect storm.
Our war against Saddam, the first Gulf War, was a major blunder. We ran into that situation with very little knowledge of Islam. What we have done since then has worsened our situation.
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Got a link? I'd be very interested in reading it.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2 ... ble_m.html (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/18/2010-10-18_uae_high_court_rules_men_can_beat_wives_young_children_if_there_are_no_visible_m.html)
A quote:
Dr Ahmed al Kubaisi, the head of Sharia Studies at UAE University and Baghdad University, told the National that beating one's wife is at times necessary to preserve family bonds.
"If a wife committed something wrong, a husband can report her to police," Dr al Kubaisi told the newspaper. "But sometimes she does not do a serious thing or he does not want to let others know; when it is not good for the family. In this case, hitting is a better option."
Yeah, but that doesn't have anything to do with our laws or our court. That's what I thought Frod was saying.....that our Federal Supreme Court ruled that way. My misunderstanding. But thanks for the link. :)
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The only thing I seem to disagree with people is that I don't think it/they're taking over our country. That's really it.
I read your post about the fear of the RCC way back when. Your right that there was some concern a RC president would have the US answering to Rome as they did "back home" in Ireland. Your right that this was a bit silly. Your wrong however to think the present day concerns about Islam are comparable.
I think they're quite comparable. The fear is the same....the religions might not be, but there was the same palpable fear. People freaked out when Kennedy was elected. It was a HUGE deal that a Catholic was in office.
I don't worry that the USA will become an Islamic nation. The danger isn't that Obama will hoist an Islamic flag over the capital and the House and Senate will begin bowing to Allah 5 times a day. The danger is something like a thermonuclear bomb in New York, Chicago and LA; or small pox and anthrax - Because if they can get it they will use it. And if we don't take this danger seriously, deal with it seriously, stop with the rose colored glasses and the dream-scape fantasy that they can be negotiated and reasoned with, they will get these deadly things - and we will suffer and die.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I worry about insane levels of PC that forbid facing facts and dealing with the facts as they are. We ARE at war with Islam. Islam IS the problem. Moderate Muslims are responsible for not boldly standing up to the radicalized elements.
Yes, just as I believe that some of the radical elements in our own political system are.
Our "tolerance" and their silent, sheepish ways in the face of their prophets demands for blood will make creeping Sharia, with the brutality, murder and terroristic mindset and action that follows, virtually inevitable.
And you don't see any similarities in the Christian Bible's demands for blood, stoning etc.? Or the Orthodox Jewish Torah? Do you really believe that every single Muslim is that extreme or radical? That's like saying that every single Christian is like Fred Phelps.
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Our government has failed utterly in regard to our foreign relations with the Islamic world. I would say that it began, the failure began with the Iranian Revolution. We failed to understand what the revolution meant and how the Sunni world would react to the Islamic Republic.
It radicalized the Middle East.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan played a part. The Camp David Accords played a part.
It really was a perfect storm.
Our war against Saddam, the first Gulf War, was a major blunder. We ran into that situation with very little knowledge of Islam. What we have done since then has worsened our situation.
:nods: :tup: :tup:
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And you don't see any similarities in the Christian Bible's demands for blood, stoning etc.? Or the Orthodox Jewish Torah? Do you really believe that every single Muslim is that extreme or radical? That's like saying that every single Christian is like Fred Phelps.
There are some similarities with the Livitical law and Sharia - but the differences are many and very significant.
Where did I say every single Muslim is a radical? I said the moderates beir the responsibility of allowing the radicals to flourish and function. I also say I recognize why they find it so difficult to do otherwise. I'll add I do think most privately condone the radical actions even if they personally have no desire to take part; quite unlike 99.9% of Christians who find Mr. Phelps and his congregation an appalling abomination.
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And you don't see any similarities in the Christian Bible's demands for blood, stoning etc.? Or the Orthodox Jewish Torah? Do you really believe that every single Muslim is that extreme or radical? That's like saying that every single Christian is like Fred Phelps.
There are some similarities with the Livitical law and Sharia - but the differences are many and very significant.
I'd disagree there. The Bible (moreso the Old Testament, but even the 'new and improved' version) is incredibly violent.
Where did I say every single Muslim is a radical?
Ok, maybe you hadn't said it yet, but your comment below (bolded) pretty much says it.
I said the moderates beir the responsibility of allowing the radicals to flourish and function. I also say I recognize why they find it so difficult to do otherwise. I'll add I do think most privately condone the radical actions even if they personally have no desire to take part;
What is the basis for that belief?
quite unlike 99.9% of Christians who find Mr. Phelps and his congregation an appalling abomination.
How 'bout Timothy McVeigh? There's a large number of the "militiamen" (all extreme right-wingers) that openly condone what he did and even more that aren't open about it. Are we to judge Christians by his actions?
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There are some similarities with the Livitical law and Sharia - but the differences are many and very significant.
I'd disagree there. The Bible (moreso the Old Testament, but even the 'new and improved' version) is incredibly violent.
All I can do is repeat myself here - the differences are many and significant. If this were not so, you'd have Jews and Christians acting like the jihadist.
Where did I say every single Muslim is a radical?
Ok, maybe you hadn't said it yet, but your comment below (bolded) pretty much says it.
I said the moderates beir the responsibility of allowing the radicals to flourish and function. I also say I recognize why they find it so difficult to do otherwise. I'll add I do think most privately condone the radical actions even if they personally have no desire to take part;
What is the basis for that belief?
The basis is personal experience with a moderate muslim from Jordan, combined with the fact that moderate muslims living in the US, where they are relatively safe from Sharia law, still refuse to speak out against it, or Jihad. I believe this is for the reason I stated. Still - saying I think most silently condone the terror isn't the same as saying I think all would commit such terror.
I'll add, I'll never forget as long as I live watching the film of people dancing in the streets shrilling praises to Allah after 9/11 - which also supports my POV that even those who refrain from taking such action themselves often condone it. There are enough to fill a cities streets who go so far as to celebrate it.
quite unlike 99.9% of Christians who find Mr. Phelps and his congregation an appalling abomination.
How 'bout Timothy McVeigh? There's a large number of the "militiamen" (all extreme right-wingers) that openly condone what he did and even more that aren't open about it. Are we to judge Christians by his actions?
I'm pretty far to the right myself and I have never, not once from anyone, ever heard McVeigh or his actions condoned. I don't claim to have personal knowledge of what faith - if any - McVeigh followed, but I have read repeatedly that he was not a Christian. It is often written that he was an atheist. I did read once that he followed a kind of Christianity that is similar to what the modern Klan teaches - which is so drastically warped and bastardized it bears no resemblance to Scriptural Christianity. But in any case, his actions were not a result of any religious belief, but rather a hate of the US government. And even if this were not so - He is one man who was part of one very small group - acting alone and against all accepted morals, ethics and beliefs of the society he lived in and attacked - Quite unlike the Islamic terrorist who is acting according to strict application of his societies very foundation and laws. There is no valid comparison what-so-ever.
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All I can do is repeat myself here - the differences are many and significant. If this were not so, you'd have Jews and Christians acting like the jihadist.
And I think that's due to the beauty of living in a secular society. We're not beholden to a religious text that is out-dated with the world and it's realities. You're comparing apples to oranges. The Middle East is a third world country whose political leaders rely on religion to keep the population "in check". If people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the like had their way, we'd be living under the "law" of the Christian Bible and would end up, after time, being much like the Middle East.
The basis is personal experience with a moderate muslim from Jordan, combined with the fact that moderate muslims living in the US, where they are relatively safe from Sharia law, still refuse to speak out against it, or Jihad. I believe this is for the reason I stated. Still - saying I think most silently condone the terror isn't the same as saying I think all would commit such terror.
So, you're basing that belief on your experience with one person.
I'll add, I'll never forget as long as I live watching the film of people dancing in the streets shrilling praises to Allah after 9/11 - which also supports my POV that even those who refrain from taking such action themselves often condone it. There are enough to fill a cities streets who go so far as to celebrate it.
I don't recall any Muslims in America rejoicing. In fact, I remember seeing clips of devastated family members of Muslims that were killed when the Towers came down. Again, I think that's the beauty of living in a secular society. You can't realistically compare America to the Middle East.
I'm pretty far to the right myself and I have never, not once from anyone, ever heard McVeigh or his actions condoned. I don't claim to have personal knowledge of what faith - if any - McVeigh followed, but I have read repeatedly that he was not a Christian.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=98 (http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=98)
It is often written that he was an atheist.
I've never seen that anywhere.
I did read once that he followed a kind of Christianity that is similar to what the modern Klan teaches - which is so drastically warped and bastardized it bears no resemblance to Scriptural Christianity.
First, I completely disagree that it bears no resemblance to "Scriptual Christianity". As I said earlier, the Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah/ Tanakh are filled with extreme violence and horrible hatred.
Second, how is that any different than Muslims claiming that the extremists in their religion have "drastically warped and bastardized" Islam?
But in any case, his actions were not a result of any religious belief, but rather a hate of the US government. And even if this were not so - He is one man who was part of one very small group - acting alone and against all accepted morals, ethics and beliefs of the society he lived in and attacked - Quite unlike the Islamic terrorist who is acting according to strict application of his societies very foundation and laws. There is no valid comparison what-so-ever.
Because we live in a secular society. If we lived in a nation that adhered to the Bible as strictly as Muslim nations adhere to Islam, we'd have similar situations here. But, thankfully, the FF knew that a theocracy was dangerous.
The regular people in the Middle East are virtually in a cult BECAUSE it's a theocracy and therefore subject to the whims of the extremists who end up in power. America is a free society, for the moment at least, and has access to reality.
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The basis is personal experience with a moderate muslim from Jordan, combined with the fact that moderate muslims living in the US, where they are relatively safe from Sharia law, still refuse to speak out against it, or Jihad. I believe this is for the reason I stated. Still - saying I think most silently condone the terror isn't the same as saying I think all would commit such terror.
One more thought on this aspect......most of the moderate Muslims living in the U.S. still have family that are in the Middle East and are very much afraid that what they say here will effect their family members still living over there.
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. . .we'd be living under the "law" of the Christian Bible. . .
You ARE living under the law of the Christian Bible b/c the FF insisted upon it - and very lucky you are to have it so.
I've not got time to say more just now. Maybe later.
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. . .we'd be living under the "law" of the Christian Bible. . .
You ARE living under the law of the Christian Bible b/c the FF insisted upon it - and very lucky you are to have it so.
Bull. Shit.
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Sorry, but the "FF"...? ???
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Sorry, but the "FF"...? ???
Founding Fathers. She's saying that the Founding Fathers meant for us to live under Christian Law. If so, I should have been arrested long ago. Premarital sex, eating shellfish, wearing mixed fabrics......there's a whole lot of shit that we'd ALL be in jail for if we were under "Christian Law". Although incest apparently is perfectly fine. Just ask Lot.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. Genesis 19:32-36
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I believe in the separation of church and state.
Prayers in school should be optional.
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I believe in the separation of church and state.
I figured as much, but Buzz is telling me that we live under Christian law.
Prayers in school should be optional.
That's one minor example, but yes. Did you know that in the Pledge of Allegiance the phrase "under God" didn't appear until 1954?
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. . .we'd be living under the "law" of the Christian Bible. . .
You ARE living under the law of the Christian Bible b/c the FF insisted upon it - and very lucky you are to have it so.
Bull. Shit.
http://americasrabbi.com/opinion.art.php?pID=423 (http://americasrabbi.com/opinion.art.php?pID=423)
His unnecessary claim that "America is not a Christian country" is true only in the sense that we are not a theocracy. It is, however, completely misleading when over 86% of our population identifies itself as Christian and is more so wrong in that even those here who may not identify as Christians perceive this country as being guided by a Judeo-Christian ethos that has been here since our nation's founding and continues to animate our values. Many non-Christians are delighted that this country lives not by Islamic principles but Christian ones.
http://www.donfeder.com/articles/0502chrisAmerica.pdf (http://www.donfeder.com/articles/0502chrisAmerica.pdf)
YES -- ONCE AND FOR ALL -- AMERICA IS A CHRISTIAN NATION
By Don Feder (posted, February 16, 2005)
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post (February 10, 2005) charging that some well-known Jewish conservatives are doing incalculable harm to their people by affirming that America is a Christian nation.
In a rather kvetchy column about Jews who defend the public celebration of Christmas and Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of Christ," the rabbi rhetorically inquires:
"Is it not highly misguided, not to mention erroneous, for Medved and Lapin to openly speak of America as a ‘Christian’ nation, something bound to make Jews feel like they are guests in someone else’s land." The author here speaks of syndicated talk-show host Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition.
Does Boteach also believe we shouldn’t speak of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, because to do so will make Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus "feel like they are guests in someone else’s land"?
Does "one nation, under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance (and "In God We Trust" on our currency) make atheists and agnostics feel like outsiders? Other than the ACLU, who cares?
Do Israel’s Christian and Muslim minorities feel alienated living in a Jewish state?
Individual comfort-levels aside, is it "erroneous" to say that America is a Christian nation? That depends on what you mean.
If it’s meant to signify a country whose people are overwhelmingly Christian, the characterization is correct. As a percentage, America’s population is more Christian than India’s is Hindu or Israel’s is Jewish.
If by "Christian America," we mean that those who shaped our national consciousness subscribed to the tenets of Christianity, that too is
true. From the earliest settlements on these shores until the last few decades, our leaders saw America as a reflection of a Christian worldview.
The Mayflower Compact (1620), precursor to the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, proclaimed that the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the Americas was intended for the "advancement of the Christian faith."
In a message to his troops (1778), George Washington observed: "To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian."
The first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Jay, wrote in 1816 that it was in the interests of "our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
As late as 1931 (historical revisionism would set in a decade later), the Supreme Court observed in U.S. v. Macintosh, "We are a Christian people."
Woodrow Wilson told a campaign rally in 1911, "America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture."
In a 1947 letter, President Harry Truman (who was instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel) assured Pope Pius XII, "This is a Christian nation."
Even William O. Douglas, that most liberal justice of the liberal Warren Court, was forced to admit that Americans are "a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." By a religious people, Douglas did not mean Scientologists.
The foregoing is a very broad overview. Until the secular revolution of the 1960s, none of this was considered remarkable.
America has never had a state church. (Thank God.) At the federal level, there has never been a religious requirement for citizenship or test for public office. (Although the first Congress hired a chaplain and appropriated
sums of money to support Christian missionaries to the Indian tribes. It was 1860 before a non-Christian clergyman opened a session of Congress.)
Clearly and manifestly, the American ethos is based on the moral code found in the Torah and New Testament.
Without Sinai there would have been no Philadelphia in 1776 and 1787. Absent Protestantism, there would have been no Pilgrims and Puritans. Without the evangelical Great Awakening of the 18th century, no Lexington and Concord and no "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."
America was founded on the moral patrimony of the West -- that Bible-based code called the Judeo-Christian ethic. Whether they do so out of malice or ignorance, those who attack the idea of a Christian America are really attacking this.
Finally, we must ask if America is a Christian nation -- in the sense that our laws still are shaped by Christianity. Alas, no.
A Christian (or Judeo-Christian) America would not have legalized abortion. It would not be inching toward euthanasia. It would not be on the verge of homosexual marriage. It would not have no- fault divorce, rampant promiscuity, state-sponsored illegitimacy, government-condoned pornography or any of the other myriad delights of a post-Christian culture.
Everything must be something. As Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington pointed out in his seminal work, "Clash of Civilizations," all great civilizations are intimately connected to a religion. Culture is derived from cult.
In his most recent work ("Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity") Huntington writes: "Americans have been extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian throughout their history."
Huntington further observes that America’s national identity is based on Anglo-Protestant culture, including "the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, the rights of the individual; and dissenting Protestant values of
individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create heaven on earth, a ‘city on the hill.’"
Those who believe America can turn its back on our heritage and succeed as a secular civilization are sadly mistaken.
The choice isn’t Christian America or nothing, but Christian America or a neo-pagan, hedonistic, rights-without-responsibilities, anti-family, culture-of-death America.
As an American Jew, I never felt like a "guest in someone else’s land." America is a product of a process that began when a Mesopotamian named Abram (Abraham) left his land at God’s behest.
That launched the Western world on a journey whose footfalls may still be heard. And here we are, almost 4,000 years later. We may worship the Master of the Universe differently, but I identify body and soul with my countrymen who share the lofty vision of Washington and Adams, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.
And so, I feel very much at home here.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelM ... page/full/ (http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/10/03/the_founders_intended_a_christian,_not_secular,_society/page/full/)
The Founders Intended A Christian, Not Secular, Society
By Michael Medved
10/3/2007
Senator John McCain’s recent comments about America’s heritage as a “Christian nation” ignited an ill-tempered blast of self-righteous condemnation – a reaction that highlighted the widespread misunderstandings, distortions and downright ignorance surrounding the nation’s founders and their view of religion’s role in society.
Asked a question about a recent poll that showed 55% of the public believing that “the Constitution establishes a Christian nation,” McCain responded: “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, ‘I only welcome Christians.’ We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.”
The National Jewish Democratic Council, a partisan group affiliated with the Democratic Party, denounced McCain’s remarks as “repugnant.” The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the Arizona Senator’s comments went “against the traditions of American pluralism and religious pluralism and inclusion.” The general counsel of the mainstream American Jewish Committee declared that “to argue that America is a Christian nation… puts the very character of our country at stake.”
Meanwhile, Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, made the most sweeping and profoundly misleading comments. Regarding the poll that provoked the McCain controversy in the first place, he noted that its results “suggest that a great many people have deeply misunderstood the Constitution. The framers clearly wanted to establish a secular nation…”
Like so many other commonly held convictions about the role of faith in the nation’s founding this politically correct contention isn’t just confused and unfocused; it is, rather, appallingly, demonstrably and inarguably wrong.
In order to put today’s church-state controversies into proper perspective, we must first clear-away some of the ubiquitous misinformation that pollutes are present public discourse. Honest historians and fair-minded observers will acknowledge eight undeniable and sometimes uncomfortable truths:
1. THE FOUNDERS NEVER “WANTED TO ESTABLISH A SECULAR NATION.” In fact, they repeatedly and insistently averred that the survival of liberty and the prosperity of the United States required a deeply religious society and a populace passionately committed to organized faith. In his Farewell Address of 1797, President Washington (who had also served as presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention) unequivocally declared that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle…Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” His successor as president, John Adams (also known as “The Atlas of Independence”) wrote to his wife Abigail in 1775: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.
A patriot must be a religious man.” Thomas Jefferson, who disagreed with Adams on so many points of policy, clearly concurred with him on this essential principle. “God who gave us life gave us liberty,” he wrote in 1781. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?” Jefferson’s friend and colleague, James Madison (acclaimed as “The Father of the Constitution”) declared that “religion is the basis and Foundation of Government,” and later (1825, after retiring from the Presidency) wrote that “the belief in a God All Powerful, wise and good…. is essential to the moral order of the World and the happiness of men.”
Far from insisting on a “secular nation,” the founders clearly believed that any reduction in the public’s fervent and near universal Christian commitment would bring disastrous results to the experiment in self-government they had sacrificed so much to launch. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, who served as President of the Continental Congress in the last stages of the Revolution (1782-83 wrote: “Our country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies of the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be the introduction of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society.”
2. THE FOUNDERS DIDN’T EVEN WANT A SECULAR GOVERNMENT, AS WE UNDERSTAND THAT PHRASE TODAY. John Marshall, the father of American Jurisprudence and for 34 epochal years (1801-35) the Chief Justice of the United States, wrote: “The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.” His colleague on the court (1796-1811), Justice Samuel Chase, delivered an opinion (Runkel v. Winemill) in 1799 declaring: “Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion, and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.” These judicial opinions make clear that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment never constrained early judges from classifying the United States as an enthusiastically Christian society.
In fact, the same Congress that approved the First Amendment gave a clear indication of the way they understood its language when, less than 24 hours after adopting the fateful wording, they passed the following Resolution: “Resolved, that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceable to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.” It never occurred to this first Congress in 1789 that their call for a government sponsored day of “thanksgiving and prayer” would conflict with the prohibition they had just adopted prohibiting “an establishment of religion.” Not until the infamous Everson decision of 1947 did the Supreme Court create the doctrine of a “wall of separation between church and state,” quoting (out of context) from an 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. President Jefferson created the image of the wall in order to reassure the Baptists that government would never interfere with their religious life, but he never suggested that religion would have no role in government. In 1803, in fact, Jefferson recommended to Congress the approval of a treaty that provided government funds to support a Catholic priest in ministering to the Kaskaskia Indians.
Three times he signed extensions of another measure described as “An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for Military services and for the Society of the United Brethren for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.” Jefferson also participated every week in Christian church services in the Capitol Building in Washington DC; until 1866, in fact, the Capitol hosted worship every Sunday and, intermittently, conducted a Sunday school. No one challenged these 71 years of Christian prayer at the very seat of federal power: given the founders' endorsement of the positive role of organized faith, it hardly inspired controversy to convene worship at the Capitol. In fact, at the time of the first Continental Congress, nine of the thirteen original colonies had “established churches” – meaning that they each supported an official denomination, even to the point of using public money for church construction and maintenance. These religious establishments – clearly in contradiction to the idea of a “secular government” – continued in three states long after the adoption of the First Amendment. Connecticut disestablished its favored Congregational Church only in 1818, New Hampshire in 1819, and Massachusetts in 1833.
Amazingly enough, these established churches flourished for nearly fifty years under the constitution despite the First Amendment’s famous insistence that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Their existence reflected the fact that the founders never wanted to secularize all of government, but intended rather to allow the states to handle religious issues in their own way while avoiding the imposition of any single federal denomination on the diverse, often quarreling regions of the young nation. Joseph Story, a Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1845 (appointed by President Madison) and, as a long-time Harvard professor the leading early commentator on the Constitution, explained the First Amendment with the observation that “the general if not universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.
An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation. The real object of the First Amendment….was to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.” As Stephen Mansfield comments in his invaluable book on the Establishment Clause, “Ten Tortured Words,” Justice Story’s “understanding of the meaning of the First Amendment should be taken as definitive.”
3. EARLY SETTLERS DID NOT FLEE ENGLAND AND BUILD NEW WORLD COLONIES IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH “FREEDOM OF RELIGION.” For the most part, those Colonists motivated by religious conviction more than a desire for financial gain wanted to establish faith-based utopias that would be more rigorous and restrictive, not less zealous, than the Mother Country. The Puritans behind the original New England colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire) and two later states (Vermont and Maine) wanted strict enforcement of Sabbath rules, mandatory attendance at worship services, tax money to support religious seminaries (prominently including Harvard and Yale), and other rules befitting a “Christian Commonwealth.” If anything, they distrusted the Church of England for its backsliding, corruption and compromises rather than its vigorous imposition of religious standards. Other denominations (Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland) founded their colonies not to create secular or diverse religious environments, but to provide their own versions of model communities and denominational havens. Among the original colonies, only Roger Williams’ Rhode Island made a consistent priority of religious tolerance and pluralism.
4. THE REVOLUTIONARY GENERATION DID NOT FIGHT TO ESTABLISH “RELIGIOUS FREEDOM” OR A SECULAR SOCIETY. The favored marching tune of the Continental Army wasn’t “Yankee Doodle” (which achieved its wider popularity only after the Revolution) but “Chester,” adapted from a beloved church hymn by Boston composer William Billings. Its words proclaimed: “Let tyrants shake their iron rods/And slaver clank her galling chains/We fear them not, we trust in God/New England’s God forever reigns.” The army’s Commander in Chief felt no discomfort at all with this explicitly religious rhetoric. In 1776, for instance, General George Washington issued the following message to his troops: “The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger. The general hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”
Two years later, Washington proclaimed: “The commander in chief directs that Divine service be performed every Sunday at 11 o’clock, in each brigade which has a Chaplain….While we are duly performing the duty of good soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of a patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian.” The war emphasized a long standing difference between America and Europe noted by the leaders of the Patriot faction, future visitors like Alexis de Tocqueville, and even contemporary pollsters and demographers; the United States has always displayed greater religious intensity and fervor than Great Britain or the other nations of Western Europe.
5. THE FOUNDERS WEREN’T ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS OR SECULARISTS; THEY WERE, ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION, DEEPLY SERIOUS CHRISTIANS. The comments of John Adams might count as typical of the Revolutionary generation. In a July, 1796 diary entry, the then-Vice President of the United States declared: “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity….” He strongly supported the use of tax money in Massachusetts to support church construction and religious instruction. Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and leading Colonial physician, in 1800 wrote sketches of his colleagues in the Continental Congress in which he evaluated them based on their personal religiosity.
About Sam Adams of Massachusetts he wrote: “He considered national happiness and the public patronage of religion as inseparably connected; and so great was his regard for public worship, and the means of promoting religion, that he constantly attended divine service in the German church in York town while Congress sat there, when there was no service in their chapel, although he was ignorant of the German language.” About Sam’s cousin John Adams, Rush wrote: “He was strictly moral, and at all times respectful to Religion.” Of Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Rush observed: He was not less distinguished for his piety than his patriotism. He once objected to a motion for Congress sitting on a Sunday upon an occasion which he thought did not require it, and gave as a reason for his objection a regard of the commands of his Maker.” Rush praised his Pennsylvania colleague James Wilson who “had been educated for a clergyman in Scotland and was a profound and accurate scholar,” and Charles Thompson as “a man of great learning and general knowledge, at all times a genuine Republican, and in the evening of his life a sincere Christian.”
Of course, many of the Founding Fathers held religious beliefs that challenged the Orthodoxy of their day, but they continued the assiduous study of the Bible (as a lifelong passion in the case of Jefferson and Franklin) and showed little sympathy for the excesses of the French Revolution with its denunciation of Christianity of proclamation of a new “Age of Reason.” Even the most radical of the Founders, pamphleteer Thomas Paine, would fit more comfortably with today’s religious conservatives than with the secular militants who seek to claim his as one of their own. This restless Revolutionary traveled to France to take part in their Revolution and wrote a scandalous book “The Age of Reason,” which proclaimed his “Deism” while attacking traditional Christian doctrine—a position that alienated and offended virtually all of his former American comrades (including many who have been mistakenly identified as “Deists” themselves). Nevertheless, in 1797 he delivered a speech to a learned French society insisting that schools must concentrate on the study of God, presenting his arguments with an eloquent insistence on recognizing the Almighty that would delight James Dobson of Focus on the Family, but mortally offend the secular militants of the ACLU.
“It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin,” Thomas Paine declaimed. “Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles. He can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short, and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only, and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the author of them.” In short, even the least religiously committed of the founders wanted to approach public education in a manner that would deeply offend today’s uncompromising separationists, and those who ludicrously claim that the designers of our Constitution intended a “secular nation.”
The ludicrous indignation about Senator McCain’s recent remarks remains an expression of both ignorance and intolerance, and a mean-spirited refusal to recognize the simple truth in his statements. The framers may not have mentioned Christianity in the Constitution, but they clearly intended that charter of liberty to govern a society of fervent faith, freely encouraged by government for the benefit of all. Their noble and unprecedented experiment never involved a religion-free or faithless state but did indeed presuppose America’s unequivocal identity as a Christian nation.
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A whole lot of quoting of Right Wing websites
As soon as you can provide me with some actual facts and not opinions from Right Wingers, I'd be happy to discuss the notion that we're governed by a Christian nation.
Edited to add: I mean, Townhall??? Really? That's "objective"??? :rofl:
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A whole lot of quoting of Right Wing websites
As soon as you can provide me with some actual facts and not opinions from Right Wingers, I'd be happy to discuss the notion that we're governed by a Christian nation.
Edited to add: I mean, Townhall??? Really? That's "objective"??? :rofl:
Medvid/Townhall - Sorry - but Medvid makes some good points. Its a good article on American History. If you mistrust his sources and quotations then check them out - but your doing yourself a dis-service not to give the article consideration just b/c it is from a conservative source.
And what is your gripe about the Rabbi's editorials?
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A whole lot of quoting of Right Wing websites
As soon as you can provide me with some actual facts and not opinions from Right Wingers, I'd be happy to discuss the notion that we're governed by a Christian nation.
Edited to add: I mean, Townhall??? Really? That's "objective"??? :rofl:
Medvid/Townhall - Sorry - but Medvid makes some good points. Its a good article on American History. If you mistrust his sources and quotations then check them out - but your doing yourself a dis-service not to give the article consideration just b/c it is from a conservative source.
And what is your gripe about the Rabbi's editorials?
They're opinions. I'm asking you to provide me with facts to back up this comment of yours.....
You ARE living under the law of the Christian Bible b/c the FF insisted upon it
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
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I would argue that it is a fact that America's founding - it's principals and idea's of justice and personal liberty - are Christian in origin. It is certainly a fact that the Founding Fathers said so, and meant it to be so, and that it was unquestionably recognized as such until very recent history.
The articles I posted make the case better than I can which is why I posted them. They do present facts for your consideration - should you really wish to consider facts.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Indeed so. But this did not mean they intended a secular government or educational system or population. Keeping in mind the history from which our revolution sprang - and the persecutions, wars and murders that had raged in Europe since the reformation and the 8th King Henry's determination to have things his own way (all the product of man's pride and wilfull nature; not anything in scripture) and you can see why the Founders insisted there be "no law establishing religion". This did not mean that there could be no acknowledgment of God or Christ in government or schools - but that the new nation would never be declared a Catholic, or Protestant, or Humanist nation, to the advancement of one and the determent of all others. The government could compel no one to attend mass or a church service; nor could it in any way discriminate from those who attend or abstain. This was as revolutionary at the time as the refusal to have a monarch one must bow to.
As I said "This did not mean that there could be no acknowledgment of God or Christ in government or schools" - This is proven by the indisputable fact God was acknowledged in our nation's founding documents; prayer in Christ's name took place in the Congress and in the public schools; the Bible was the primary document used to teach reading as well as morals and values in the public schools - and the nations Judaic/Christian heritage and values where taken as a matter of course.
As one of the Rabbi's I copied said, we are not so much a Christian nation now as we have been through most of our history - but this is not a good thing. I am sure you disagree, but as the slide becomes an avalanche away from Biblical values and principals I'm predicting you'll come to agree. You'll agree at least that things are not so good as they where, tho you may not understand why.
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I would argue that it is a fact that America's founding - it's principals and idea's of justice and personal liberty - are Christian in origin.
And I'd argue that you're wrong.
It is certainly a fact that the Founding Fathers said so, and meant it to be so, and that it was unquestionably recognized as such until very recent history.
No it's not.
The articles I posted make the case better than I can which is why I posted them. They do present facts for your consideration - should you really wish to consider facts.
Should I really wish to consider facts? ::) A little sanctimonious today, aren't we?
Then I'll answer with the same.
First, the facts......should you wish to consider them.
Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[3]
Tenth president, John Tyler, in an 1843 letter: "The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent -- that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgment. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma, if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions."
George Washington in a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790: "The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy -- a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support ... May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants -- while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."
Article VI of the Constitution states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in the United States."
Jefferson In his "Notes on the State of Virginia," he wrote: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"In God We Trust" was inserted on our money during the Civil War in 1863
adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War in 1954
Second, an opinion piece, complete with sources.
The Christian Nation Myth
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... /myth.html (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html)
The Christian Nation Myth
Farrell Till
Whenever the Supreme Court makes a decision that in any way restricts the intrusion of religion into the affairs of government, a flood of editorials, articles, and letters protesting the ruling is sure to appear in the newspapers. Many protesters decry these decisions on the grounds that they conflict with the wishes and intents of the "founding fathers."
Such a view of American history is completely contrary to known facts. The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible.
These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as "the father of the American Revolution." To this day, many mistakenly consider him an atheist, even though he was an out spoken defender of the Deistic view of God. Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe.
Fundamentalist Christians are currently working overtime to convince the American public that the founding fathers intended to establish this country on "biblical principles," but history simply does not support their view. The men mentioned above and others who were instrumental in the founding of our nation were in no sense Bible-believing Christians. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. In a letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes, The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371). In a letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith, he wrote, "It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest" (August 6, 1816).
Jefferson was just as suspicious of the traditional belief that the Bible is "the inspired word of God." He rewrote the story of Jesus as told in the New Testament and compiled his own gospel version known as The Jefferson Bible, which eliminated all miracles attributed to Jesus and ended with his burial. The Jeffersonian gospel account contained no resurrection, a twist to the life of Jesus that was considered scandalous to Christians but perfectly sensible to Jefferson's Deistic mind. In a letter to John Adams, he wrote, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise" (August 15, 1820). In saying this, Jefferson was merely expressing the widely held Deistic view of his time, which rejected the mysticism of the Bible and relied on natural law and human reason to explain why the world is as it is. Writing to Adams again, Jefferson said, "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (April 11, 1823). These were hardly the words of a devout Bible-believer.
Jefferson didn't just reject the Christian belief that the Bible was "the inspired word of God"; he rejected the Christian system too. In Notes on the State of Virginia, he said of this religion, "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites" (quoted by newspaper columnist William Edelen, "Politics and Religious Illiteracy," Truth Seeker, Vol. 121, No. 3, p. 33). Anyone today who would make a statement like this or others we have quoted from Jefferson's writings would be instantly branded an infidel, yet modern Bible fundamentalists are frantically trying to cast Jefferson in the mold of a Bible believing Christian. They do so, of course, because Jefferson was just too important in the formation of our nation to leave him out if Bible fundamentalists hope to sell their "Christian-nation" claim to the public. Hence, they try to rewrite history to make it appear that men like Thomas Jefferson had intended to build our nation on "biblical principles." The irony of this situation is that the Christian leaders of Jefferson's time knew where he stood on "biblical principles," and they fought desperately, but unsuccessfully, to prevent his election to the presidency. Saul K. Padover's biography related the bitterness of the opposition that the clergy mounted against Jefferson in the campaign of 1800
The religious issue was dragged out, and stirred up flames of hatred and intolerance. Clergymen, mobilizing their heaviest artillery of thunder and brimstone, threatened Christians with all manner of dire consequences if they should vote for the "in fidel" from Virginia. This was particularly true in New England, where the clergy stood like Gibraltar against Jefferson (Jefferson A Great American's Life and Ideas, Mentor Books, 1964, p.116).
William Linn, a Dutch Reformed minister in New York City, made perhaps the most violent of all attacks on Jefferson's character, all of it based on religious matters. In a pamphlet entitled Serious Considerations on the Election of a President, Linn "accused Jefferson of the heinous crimes of not believing in divine revelation and of a design to destroy religion and `introduce immorality'" (Padover, p. 116). He referred to Jefferson as a "true infidel" and insisted that "(a)n infidel like Jefferson could not, should not, be elected" (Padover, p. 117). He concluded the pamphlet with this appeal for "Christians to defeat the `infidel' from Virginia"
Will you, then, my fellow-citizens, with all this evidence... vote for Mr. Jefferson?... As to myself, were Mr. Jefferson connected with me by the nearest ties of blood, and did I owe him a thousand obligations, I would not, and could not vote for him. No; sooner than stretch forth my hand to place him at the head of the nation "Let mine arms fall from my shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone" (quoted by Padover, p. 117).
Why would contemporary clergymen have so vigorously opposed Jefferson's election if he were as devoutly Christian as modern preachers claim? The answer is that Jefferson was not a Christian, and the preachers of his day knew that he wasn't.
In the heat of the campaign Jefferson wrote a letter to Benjamin Rush in which he angrily commented on the clerical efforts to assassinate his personal character "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." That statement has been inscribed on Jefferson's monument in Washington. Most people who read it no doubt think that Jefferson was referring to political tyrants like the King of England, but in reality, he was referring to the fundamentalist clergymen of his day.
After Jefferson became president, he did not compromise his beliefs. As president, he refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, a fact that Justice Souter referred to in his concurring opinion with the majority in Lee vs. Weisman, the recent supreme-court decision that ruled prayers at graduation ceremonies unconstitutional. Early in his first presidential term, Jefferson declared his firm belief in the separation of church and state in a letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptists "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
Before sending the letter to Danbury, Jefferson asked his attorney general, Levi Lincoln, to review it. Jefferson told Lincoln that he considered the letter a means of "sowing useful truths and principles among the people, which might germinate and become rooted among their political tenets" (quoted by Rob Boston in "Myths and Mischief," Church and State, March 1992). If this was indeed Jefferson's wish, he certainly succeeded. Twice, in Reynolds vs. the United States (1879) and Everson vs. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court cited Jefferson's letter as "an authoritative declaration of the scope of the [First] Amendment" and agreed that the intention of the First Amendment was "to erect `a wall of separation between church and state.'" Confronted with evidence like this, some fundamentalists will admit that Thomas Jefferson was not a Bible-believer but will insist that most of the other "founding fathers"--men like Washington, Madison, and Franklin--were Christians whose intention during the formative years of our country was to establish a "Christian nation." Again, however, history does not support their claim.
James Madison, Jefferson's close friend and political ally, was just as vigorously opposed to religious intrusions into civil affairs as Jefferson was. In 1785, when the Commonwealth of Virginia was considering passage of a bill "establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion," Madison wrote his famous "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" in which he presented fifteen reasons why government should not be come involved in the support of any religion. This paper, long considered a landmark document in political philosophy, was also cited in the majority opinion in Lee vs. Weisman. The views of Madison and Jefferson prevailed in the Virginia Assembly, and in 1786, the Assembly adopted the statute of religious freedom of which Jefferson and Madison were the principal architects. The preamble to this bill said that "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical." The statute itself was much more specific than the establishment clause of the U. S. Constitution "Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise [sic] diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities".
Realizing that whatever legislation an elected assembly passed can be later repealed, Jefferson ended the statute with a statement of contempt for any legislative body that would be so presumptuous "And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with the powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable, would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right" (emphasis added).
After George Washington's death, Christians made an intense effort to claim him as one of their own. This effort was based largely on the grounds that Washington had regularly attended services with his wife at an Episcopal Church and had served as a vestryman in the church. On August 13, 1835, a Colonel Mercer, involved in the effort, wrote to Bishop William White, who had been one of the rectors at the church Washington had attended. In the letter, Mercer asked if "Washington was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal church, or whether he occasionally went to the communion only, or if ever he did so at all..." (John Remsberg, Six Historic Americans, p. 103). On August 15, 1835, White sent Mercer this reply
In regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth requires me to say that Gen. Washington never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister. Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant.... I have been written to by many on that point, and have been obliged to answer them as I now do you (Remsberg, p. 104).
In his Annals of the American Pulpit, The Reverend William B. Sprague, D.D., wrote a biographical sketch of the Reverend James Abercrombie, the other pastor of the congregation Washington attended. In this work, Sprague quoted Abercrombie in confirmation of what White had written to Mercer
One incident in Dr. Abercrombie's experience as a clergyman, in connection with the Father of his Country, is especially worthy of record; and the following account of it was given by the Doctor himself, in a letter to a friend, in 1831 shortly after there had been some public allusion to it "With respect to the inquiry you make I can only state the following facts; that, as pastor of the Episcopal church, observing that, on sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit services, went out with the greater part of the congregation--always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other communicants--she invariably being one--I considered it my duty in a sermon on Public Worship, to state the unhappy tendency of example, particularly of those in elevated stations who uniformly turned their backs upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper. I acknowledge the remark was intended for the President; and as such he received it" (From Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. 5, p. 394, quoted by Remsberg, pp. 104-105).
Abercrombie went on to explain that he had heard through a senator that Washington had discussed the reprimand with others and had told them that "as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station" (Ibid.). Abercrombie then said that Washington "never afterwards came on the morning of sacramental Sunday" (Ibid.).
Here is firsthand testimony from the rectors of the church that Washington attended with his wife, and they both claimed that he never participated in the communion service. Writing in the Episcopal Recorder, the Reverend E. D. Neill said that Washington "was not a communicant, notwithstanding all the pretty stories to the contrary, and after the close of the sermon on sacramental Sundays, [he] had fallen into the habit of retiring from the church while his wife remained and communed" (Remsberg, p. 107). In this article, Neill also made reference to Abercrombie's reprimand of Washington from the pulpit, so those who knew Washington personally or who knew those who had known him all seem to agree that Washington was never a "communicant." Remsberg continued at length in his chapter on Washington to quote the memoirs and letters of Washington's associates, who all agreed that the president had never once been known to participate in the communion service, a fact that weakens the claim that he was a Christian. Would preachers today consider someone a devout Christian if he just attended services with his wife but never took the communion?
As for Washington's membership in the vestry, for several years he did actively serve as one of the twelve vestrymen of Truro parish, Virginia, as had also his father. This, however, cannot be construed as proof that he was a Christian believer. The vestry at that time was also the county court, so in order to have certain political powers, it was necessary for one to be a vestryman. On this matter, Paul F. Boller made this observation
Actually, under the Anglican establishment in Virginia before the Revolution, the duties of a parish vestry were as much civil as religious in nature and it is not possible to deduce any exceptional religious zeal from the mere fact of membership.* Even Thomas Jefferson was a vestryman for a while. Consisting of the leading gentlemen of the parish in position and influence (many of whom, like Washington, were also at one time or other members of the County Court and of the House of Burgeses), the parish vestry, among other things, levied the parish taxes, handled poor relief, fixed land boundaries in the parish, supervised the construction, furnishing, and repairs of churches, and hired ministers and paid their salaries (George Washington & Religion, Dallas Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 26).
A footnote where the asterisk appears cited Meade as proof that avowed unbelievers sometimes served as vestrymen "As Bishop William Meade put it, somewhat nastily, in 1857, `Even Mr. Jefferson and [George] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence'" (William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1857, I, p. 191).
Clearly, then, one cannot assume from Washington's presence at church services and his membership in the Truro parish vestry that he was a Christian believer. Is there any other evidence to suggest that he was a Christian? The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, preached a sermon in October 1831 in which he stated that "among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism" (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15). He went on to describe Washington as a "great and good man" but "not a professor of religion." Wilson said that he was "really a typical eighteenth century Deist, not a Christian, in his religious outlook" (Ibid.). Wilson wasn't just speaking about matters that he had not researched, because he had carefully investigated his subject before he preached this sermon. Among others, Wilson had inquired of the Reverend Abercrombie [identified earlier as the rector of the church Washington had attended] concerning Washing ton's religious views. Abercrombie's response was brief and to the point "Sir, Washington was a Deist" (Remsberg, p. 110). Those, then, who were best positioned to know Washington's private religious beliefs did not consider him a Christian, and the Reverend Abercrombie, who knew him personally and pastored the church he attended with his wife flatly said that Washington was a Deist.
The Reverend Bird Wilson, who was just a few years removed from being a contemporary of the so-called founding fathers, said further in the above-mentioned sermon that "the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson] _not a one had professed a belief in Christianity_" (Remsberg, p. 120, emphasis added).
Dr. Wilson's sermon, which was published in the Albany Daily Advertiser the month it was delivered also made an interesting observation that flatly contradicts the frantic efforts of present-day fundamentalists to make the "founding fathers" orthodox Christians
When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it.... There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity.... Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian (quoted by Remsberg, pp. 120-121, emphasis added).
The publication of Wilson's sermon in the Daily Advertiser attracted the attention of Robert Owen, who then personally visited Wilson to discuss the matter of Washington's religious views. Owen summarized the results of that visit in a letter to Amos Gilbert dated November 13, 1831
I called last evening on Dr. Wilson, as I told you I should, and I have seldom derived more pleasure from a short interview with anyone. Unless my discernment of character has been grievously at fault, I met an honest man and sincere Christian. But you shall have the particulars. A gentleman of this city accompanied me to the Doctor's residence. We were very courteously received. I found him a tall, commanding figure, with a countenance of much benevolence, and a brow indicative of deep thought, apparently approaching fifty years of age. I opened the interview by stating that though personally a stranger to him, I had taken the liberty of calling in consequence of having perused an interesting sermon of his, which had been reported in the Daily Advertiser of this city, and regarding which, as he probably knew, a variety of opinions prevailed. In a discussion, in which I had taken a part, some of the facts as there reported had been questioned; and I wished to know from him whether the reporter had fairly given his words or not.... I then read to him from a copy of the Daily Advertiser the paragraph which regards Washington, beginning, "Washington was a man," etc. and ending, "absented himself altogether from the church." "I endorse," said Dr. Wilson, with emphasis, "every word of that. Nay, I do not wish to conceal from you any part of the truth, even what I have not given to the public. Dr. Abercrombie said more than I have repeated. At the close of our conversation on the subject his emphatic expression was--for I well remember the very words--`Sir, Washington was a Deist.'"
In concluding the interview, Dr. Wilson said "I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges him self as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more" (Remsberg, pp. 121-122, emphasis added).
In February 1800, after Washington's death, Thomas Jefferson wrote this statement in his personal journal
Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice....
I know that Gouverneur Morris [principal drafter of the constitution], who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed him self to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did" (quoted in Remsberg, p. 123 from Jefferson's Works, Vol. 4, p. 572, emphasis added).
The "Asa" Green referred to by Jefferson was probably the Reverend Ashbel Green, who was chaplain to congress during Washington's administration. If so, he was certainly in a position to know the information that "Asa" Green had passed along to Jefferson. Reverend Ashbel Green became the president of Princeton College after serving eight years as the congressional chaplain. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a prominent figure in the colonial Presbyterian Church (Remsberg, p. 124). His testimony has to be given more weight than what modern day clerics may think about Washington's religious beliefs.
Dr. Moncure D. Conway, who was once employed to edit a volume of Washington's letters, wrote an article entitled "The Religion of Washington," from which Remsberg quoted the following
In editing a volume of Washington's private letters for the Long Island Historical Society, I have been much impressed by indications that this great historic personality represented the Liberal religious tendency of his time. That tendency was to respect religious organizations as part of the social order, which required some minister to visit the sick, bury the dead, and perform marriages. It was considered in nowise inconsistent with disbelief of the clergyman's doctrines to contribute to his support, or even to be a vestryman in his church.
In his many letters to his adopted nephew and younger relatives, he admonishes them about their manners and morals, but in no case have I been able to discover any suggestion that they should read the Bible, keep the Sabbath, go to church, or any warning against Infidelity.
Washington had in his library the writings of Paine, Priestley, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and other heretical works (pp. 128-129, emphasis added).
In a separate submission to the New York Times, Conway said that "Washington, like most scholarly Virginians of his time, was a Deist.... Contemporary evidence shows that in mature life Washington was a Deist, and did not commune, which is quite consistent with his being a vestryman. In England, where vestries have secular functions, it is not unusual for Unitarians to vestrymen, there being no doctrinal subscription required for that office. Washington's letters during the Revolution occasionally indicate his recognition of the hand of Providence in notable public events, but in the thousands of his letters I have never been able to find the name of Christ or any reference to him" (quoted by Remsberg, pp. 129-130, emphasis added).
The absence of Christian references in Washington's personal papers and conversation was noted by historian Clinton Rossiter
The last and least skeptical of these rationalists [Washington] loaded his First Inaugural Address with appeals to the "Great Author," "Almighty Being," "invisible hand," and "benign parent of the human race," but apparently could not bring himself to speak the word "God" ("The United States in 1787," 1787 The Grand Convention, New York W, W, Norton & Co., 1987, p. 36).
These terms by which Washington referred to "God" in his inaugural address are dead giveaways that he was Deistic in his views. The uninformed see the expression "nature's God" in documents like the Declaration of Independence and wrongly interpret it as evidence of Christian belief in those who wrote and signed it, but in reality it is a sure indication that the document was Deistic in origin. Deists preferred not to use the unqualified term "God" in their conversation and writings because of its Christian connotations. Accordingly, they substituted expressions like those that Washington used in his inaugural address or else they referred to their creator as "nature's God," the deity who had created the world and then left it to operate by natural law.
Moncure Conway also stated that "(t)here is no evidence to show that Washington, even in early life, was a believer in Christianity" (Ibid.). Remsberg also noted that Conway stated that Washington's father had been a Deist and that his mother "was not excessively religious" (Ibid.).
Christians have often claimed that most non-Christians make death-bed professions of faith when they realize that they are dying. These claims almost always turn out to be unverifiable assertions, but Conway made it very clear that Washington, even on his death bed, made no profession of faith
When the end was near, Washington said to a physician present--an ancestor of the writer of these notes--"I am not afraid to go." With his right fingers on his left wrist he counted his own pulses, which beat his funeral march to the grave. "He bore his distress," so next day wrote one present, "with astonishing fortitude, and conscious, as he declared, several hours before his death, of his approaching dissolution, he resigned his breath with the greatest composure, having the full possession of his reason to the last moment." Mrs. Washington knelt beside his bed, but no word passed on religious matters. With the sublime taciturnity which had marked his life he passed out of existence, leaving no act or word which can be turned to the service of superstition, cant, or bigotry" (quoted by Remsberg, pp. 132-133, emphasis added).
Some Christians were of course involved in the shaping of our nation, but their influence was minor compared to the ideological contributions of the Deists who pressed for the formation of a secular nation. In describing the composition of the delegations to the constitutional convention, the historian Clinton Rossiter said this about their religious views
Whatever else it might turn out to be, the Convention would not be a `Barebone's Parliament.' Although it had its share of strenuous Christians like Strong and Bassett, ex-preachers like Baldwin and Williamson, and theologians like Johnson and Ellsworth, the gathering at Philadelphia was largely made up of men in whom the old fires were under control or had even flickered out. Most were nominally members of one of the traditional churches in their part of the country--the New Englanders Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, the Southerners Episcopalians, and the men of the Middle States everything from backsliding Quakers to stubborn Catholics--and most were men who could take their religion or leave it along. Although no one in this sober gathering would have dreamed of invoking the Goddess of Reason, neither would anyone have dared to proclaim that his opinions had the support of the God of Abraham and Paul. The Convention of 1787 was highly rationalist and even secular in spirit" ("The Men of Philadelphia," 1787 The Grand Convention, New York W. W. Norton & Company, 1987, pp. 147-148, emphasis added).
Needless to say, this view of the religious beliefs of the constitutional delegates differs radically from the picture that is often painted by modern fundamentalist leaders.
At the constitutional convention, Luther Martin a Maryland representative urged the inclusion of some kind of recognition of Christianity in the constitution on the grounds that "it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." How ever, the delegates to the convention rejected this proposal and, as the Reverend Bird Wilson stated in his sermon quoted above, drafted the constitution as a secular document. God was nowhere mentioned in it.
As a matter of fact, the document that was finally approved at the constitutional convention mentioned religion only once, and that was in Article VI, Section 3, which stated that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Now if the delegates at the convention had truly intended to establish a "Christian nation," why would they have put a statement like this in the constitution and nowhere else even refer to religion? Common sense is enough to convince any reasonable person that if the intention of these men had really been the formation of a "Christian nation," the constitution they wrote would have surely made several references to God, the Bible, Jesus, and other accouterments of the Christian religion, and rather than expressly forbidding ANY religious test as a condition for holding public office in the new nation, it would have stipulated that allegiance to Christianity was a requirement for public office. After all, when someone today finds a tract left at the front door of his house or on the windshield of his car, he doesn't have to read very far to determine that its obvious intention is to further the Christian religion. Are we to assume, then, that the founding fathers wanted to establish a Christian nation but were so stupid that they couldn't write a constitution that would make their purpose clear to those who read it?
Clearly, the founders of our nation intended government to maintain a neutral posture in matters of religion. Anyone who would still insist that the intention of the founding fathers was to establish a Christian nation should review a document written during the administration of George Washington. Article 11 of the Treaty with Tripoli declared in part that "the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..." (Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States, ed. Hunter Miller, Vol. 2, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931, p. 365). This treaty was negotiated by the American diplomat Joel Barlow during the administration of George Washington. Washington read it and approved it, although it was not ratified by the senate until John Adams had become president. When Adams signed it, he added this statement to his signature "Now, be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said treaty, do, by and within the consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof." This document and the approval that it received from our nation's first and second presidents and the U. S. Senate as constituted in 1797 do very little to support the popular notion that the founding fathers established our country as a "Christian nation."
Confronted with evidence like the foregoing, diehard fundamentalists will argue that even if the so-called founding fathers did not purposefully establish a Christian nation our country was founded by people looking for religious liberty, and our population has always been overwhelmingly Christian, but even these points are more dubious than most Christian-nation advocates dare suspect. Admittedly, some colonists did come to America in search of religious freedom, but the majority were driven by monetary motives. They simply wanted to improve their economic status. In New England, where the quest for religious freedom had been a strong motive for leaving the Old World, the colonists quickly established governments that were just as intolerant, if not more so, of religious dissent than what they had fled from in Europe. Quakers were exiled and then executed if they returned, and "witches," condemned on flimsy spectral evidence, were hanged. This is hardly a part of our past that modern fundamentalists can point to as a model to be emulated, although their rhetoric often gives cause to wonder if this isn't exactly what they want today.
As for the religious beliefs of the general population in pre and post revolutionary times, it wasn't nearly as Christian as most people think. Lynn R. Buzzard, executive director of the Christian Legal Society (a national organization of Christian lawyers) has admitted that there is little proof to support the claim that the colonial population was overwhelmingly Christian. "Not only were a good many of the revolutionary leaders more deist than Christian," Buzzard wrote, "but the actual number of church members was rather small. Perhaps as few as five percent of the populace were church members in 1776" (Schools They Haven't Got a Prayer, Elgin, Illinois David C. Cook Publishing, 1982, p. 81). Historian Richard Hofstadter says that "perhaps as many as ninety percent of the Americans were unchurched in 1790" (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, p. 82) and goes on to say that "mid-eighteenth century America had a smaller proportion of church members than any other nation in Christendom," noting that "in 1800 [only] about one of every fifteen Americans was a church member" (p. 89). Historian James MacGregor Burns agrees with these figures, noting that "(t)here had been a `very wintry season' for religion every where in America after the Revolution" (The American Experiment Vineyard of Liberty, New York Vintage Books, 1983, p. 493). He adds that "ninety percent of the people lay outside the churches."
Historians, who deal with facts rather than wishes, paint an entirely different picture of the religious composition of America during its formative years than the image of a nation founded on "biblical principles" that modern Bible fundamentalists are trying to foist upon us. Our founding fathers established a religiously neutral nation, and a tragedy of our time is that so many people are striving to undo all that was accomplished by the wisdom of the founding fathers who framed for us a constitution that would protect the religious freedom of everyone regardless of personal creed. An even greater tragedy is that they many times hoodwink the public into believing that they are only trying to make our nation what the founding fathers would want it to be. Separation of church and state is what the founding fathers wanted for the nation, and we must never allow anyone to distort history to make it appear otherwise.
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc. Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
But hey,.. maybe 9/11 never really happened...they say the Holocaust may have been a myth, too.. ::)
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc.
You're right.....we got off track. The "relationship" between the Saudis and America IS scary as all hell and damned if I know what to do about it.
Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I understand that, I really do but would you have been as squeamish if it was Muslims handing out Islamic literature at a Christian Festival? Cuz that's what happened. Christians went to a Muslim Festival specifically to hand out Christian literature. Why? What did they hope to accomplish? Was it just stirring the pot? How well would that have gone over if it was switched around? That's supposed to be one of the beauties of this country....that you're free to worship as you see fit, or not at all. I'm also reminded of the famous Ben Franklin quote.....They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
Agreed. But I think we're way to PC with a whole lotta shit.
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I understand that, I really do but would you have been as squeamish if it was Muslims handing out Islamic literature at a Christian Festival? Cuz that's what happened. Christians went to a Muslim Festival specifically to hand out Christian literature. Why? What did they hope to accomplish? Was it just stirring the pot? How well would that have gone over if it was switched around? That's supposed to be one of the beauties of this country....that you're free to worship as you see fit, or not at all. I'm also reminded of the famous Ben Franklin quote.....They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Their intention is neither here nor there to me...it's the fact that it happened, that the cops ran them off for nothing that i find troubling (and that goes for either way, hypothetically; if it had been the other way, that is fucked as well). So who cares what their intention was. That is not the point at all. A couple of the Christians were Arabs that had converted to Christianity. As far as Islam, they're brainwashed to reject any religious literature that isn't Islamic...and this is why the cops were alerted..
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I understand that, I really do but would you have been as squeamish if it was Muslims handing out Islamic literature at a Christian Festival? Cuz that's what happened. Christians went to a Muslim Festival specifically to hand out Christian literature. Why? What did they hope to accomplish? Was it just stirring the pot? How well would that have gone over if it was switched around? That's supposed to be one of the beauties of this country....that you're free to worship as you see fit, or not at all. I'm also reminded of the famous Ben Franklin quote.....They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Their intention is neither here nor there to me...
It's of interest to me.
it's the fact that it happened, that the cops ran them off for nothing that i find troubling
Me too, fwiw.
(and that goes for either way, hypothetically; if it had been the other way, that is fucked as well).
Cool.
So who cares what their intention was. That is not the point at all.
Well, like I said....it's of interest to me. It seems like some of the people just want to provoke a reaction. While that doesn't excuse the reaction, the live and let live attitude appeals to me a lot more than poking the bear.
A couple of the Christians were Arabs that had converted to Christianity. As far as Islam, they're brainwashed to reject any religious literature that isn't Islamic...and this is why the cops were alerted..
And JudeoChristians aren't?
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Not to that extent they aren't; apparently it's written into their book to react like this... I don't know, maybe someone else has more info on this.
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc. Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
But hey,.. maybe 9/11 never really happened...they say the Holocaust may have been a myth, too.. ::)
Talk about squeamish, they gave up the idea of capturing and killing Bin laden because of well over 50 years of business with Saudi Arabia. My opinion.
France came up with a great solution for young women wearing head scarfs ("Hijab's'')in schools, the answer was no. Basically they said as a country, we are France and we enjoy who we are and if you want to reside here in this country there are certain rules we have, please abide by them or move back to your country of origin.
We are a country founded on Judea Christian values, this is not to say we are all Christians.
We need to stop being confused about who we are and stand up and reclaim are American values.
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Not to that extent they aren't;
Depends on the person. I've met plenty that are.
apparently it's written into their book to react like this... I don't know, maybe someone else has more info on this.
See, that's just it. I keep hearing people say that, and it may very well be true, but whenever I ask for a citation all I get is "some Muslim told me.......". I'm just asking for the citation so I can read for myself.
France came up with a great solution for young women wearing head scarfs ("Hijab's'')in schools, the answer was no. Basically they said as a country, we are France and we enjoy who we are and if you want to reside here in this country there are certain rules we have, please abide by them or move back to your country of origin.
I completely agree with that. I read about a Muslim woman who didn't want to take hers off for her driver's license photo. Bull. Shit.
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc. Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
But hey,.. maybe 9/11 never really happened...they say the Holocaust may have been a myth, too.. ::)
OK - Anne and I can take our current debate elsewhere if she wants ;-)
I have read your latest and do have a comment or two - but I'll leave it for now.
As to the cops being called on the Arab Christians trying to witness their faith to their muslim brothers and sisters and the "what would Christians do" table turn question. . .
I am sure it would varie a great deal. Some Christian groups are seriously closed to all outside debate while others are much more open. The tightly closed sectarian types might very well call the police. The more open to dialoging would probably be delighted for the opportunity to witness to the Muslims.
But how would the cops respond? My guess is they'd tell the up-tight Christians to shut up or risk arrest themselves.
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc. Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
But hey,.. maybe 9/11 never really happened...they say the Holocaust may have been a myth, too.. ::)
:bump:
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This is all very interesting (I mean that sincerely; there's a lot of good stuff here). Now let's focus on Islam and the correct political response to events in recent years. We have to examine the big picture -- the fact that the U.S. & Saudi Arabia have been doing business for more than 50 years, etc. Where does America go from here? I find it unsettling to hear about how squeamish the media can be about all of this, and I don't like hearing about stuff like that bullshit that went on up in Dearborn MI...(people getting run off for handing out Christian literature on the street).
I think we are kissing ass too much. Way too worried about offending people, when we should be concerned for our safety...
But hey,.. maybe 9/11 never really happened...they say the Holocaust may have been a myth, too.. ::)
Saudi Arabia is actually a very good example of what Muhammad wanted to create. Worldwide. As it stands the Kingdom is a very good example of Islam and what Islam creates and what Islam is all about.
You have a King who has the final word on all things. You have an Islamic Judiciary who carry out what they understand in regard to Islamic Law. The King can pardon anyone if public opinion rises against a decision from the Courts, or world opinion becomes involved. It is not a the same type of theocracy that Iran employs.
Saudi Arabia has been our "friend" since WWI. Through WWII, when that was not the policy of the Arab World, or Iran, who were Pro-Hitler. Also, during the Cold War they stood by us although the Arab World stood mainly with the Soviet Union. Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc..
The 1967 War was a Soviet instigated event. And, a major disaster for the Arab World. Having lost the West Bank, Gaza, The Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Israeli Armed Forces decimated their foes.
Several major events have led us to this point. And, the only way to "fix" this is to understand what led us here.
Nasser went to war, in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood. Expelling their leaders and many of their followers. Expelling them to Saudi Arabia among other places. Osama bin Laden was trained, in ideology, by Muhammad Qutb. His older brother, Sayyid Qutb, is the most influential Islamic leader for Al Qaeda types. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.. He was hung by Nasser, but his brother fled to Arabia and became a teacher to Osama bin Laden. After Nasser's death Anwar Sadat made a peace with the Muslim Brotherhood and began a war of attrition with Israel, dating between his taking over Egypt and the 1973 War.
So, the ideological basis for Al Qaeda is the Islamic thinker, Sayyid Qutb.
The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution, and the Camp David Peace Accords radicalized the Middle East. Camp David was enormous because it ended any possibility that the Arab World would defeat Israel using Arab Nationalism as a political force. No way could Israel be defeated without Egypt going to war against them. Sadat was Arab Nationalist. Not an Islamist. He was killed by Islamists.
The rise of the Islamists are the times we are living in.
Saudi Arabia has used this time very effectively. The support financially the building of Mosques and madrassas, worldwide, that teach their version of Islam. Sunni Islam. Salafi.
Hindsight is 20-20. The first Iraq War was a huge mistake for the United States. Allowing veterans from the Soviet Afghan War into the U.S., and Europe, was a mistake. The Arab governments refused to allow some radicals back into their countries and Europe took many of them, we took some. Omar Abdel-Rahman. A good example.
We cannot continue to fight this ideology using Political Correctness.
We have to get over this idea that there is a moderate Islam. And, an extreme Islam. There is only one Islam. There are those who follow Islam and there are those who don't. Yet both of those still call themselves Muslims. Really though it is a game being played with us.
I don't even understand what a moderate Muslim is? What is a moderate Vegetarian? One who eats meat? An extreme Vegetarian would be one who never eats meat? What is a moderate anything? Are moderate cannibals those who don't eat human flesh, they just trade recipes?
Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
Then they go off... like this guy:
Suspect in plot to bomb U.S. subway was quiet, suburban Muslim (http://http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/suspect-in-plot-to-bomb-us-subway-was-quiet-suburban-muslim-106286318.html)
Hell of a nice guy...
Another good article I have seen recently...
Think Again: A double standard for Islam (http://http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/Article.aspx?id=193073)
Before we can figure out what to do, we have to be honest. No more PC. That does not mean attack Muslims, or seek to even harm them them at all. Just tell the truth. Learn the truth and have no fear in telling it, no matter where or when.
:)
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Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
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:notworthy:
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Saudi Arabia is actually a very good example of what Muhammad wanted to create. Worldwide. As it stands the Kingdom is a very good example of Islam and what Islam creates and what Islam is all about.
You have a King who has the final word on all things. You have an Islamic Judiciary who carry out what they understand in regard to Islamic Law. The King can pardon anyone if public opinion rises against a decision from the Courts, or world opinion becomes involved. It is not a the same type of theocracy that Iran employs.
Saudi Arabia has been our "friend" since WWI. Through WWII, when that was not the policy of the Arab World, or Iran, who were Pro-Hitler. Also, during the Cold War they stood by us although the Arab World stood mainly with the Soviet Union. Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc..
The 1967 War was a Soviet instigated event. And, a major disaster for the Arab World. Having lost the West Bank, Gaza, The Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Israeli Armed Forces decimated their foes.
Several major events have led us to this point. And, the only way to "fix" this is to understand what led us here.
Nasser went to war, in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood. Expelling their leaders and many of their followers. Expelling them to Saudi Arabia among other places. Osama bin Laden was trained, in ideology, by Muhammad Qutb. His older brother, Sayyid Qutb, is the most influential Islamic leader for Al Qaeda types. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.. He was hung by Nasser, but his brother fled to Arabia and became a teacher to Osama bin Laden. After Nasser's death Anwar Sadat made a peace with the Muslim Brotherhood and began a war of attrition with Israel, dating between his taking over Egypt and the 1973 War.
So, the ideological basis for Al Qaeda is the Islamic thinker, Sayyid Qutb.
The Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution, and the Camp David Peace Accords radicalized the Middle East. Camp David was enormous because it ended any possibility that the Arab World would defeat Israel using Arab Nationalism as a political force. No way could Israel be defeated without Egypt going to war against them. Sadat was Arab Nationalist. Not an Islamist. He was killed by Islamists.
The rise of the Islamists are the times we are living in.
Saudi Arabia has used this time very effectively. The support financially the building of Mosques and madrassas, worldwide, that teach their version of Islam. Sunni Islam. Salafi.
Hindsight is 20-20. The first Iraq War was a huge mistake for the United States. Allowing veterans from the Soviet Afghan War into the U.S., and Europe, was a mistake. The Arab governments refused to allow some radicals back into their countries and Europe took many of them, we took some. Omar Abdel-Rahman. A good example.
We cannot continue to fight this ideology using Political Correctness.
We have to get over this idea that there is a moderate Islam. And, an extreme Islam. There is only one Islam. There are those who follow Islam and there are those who don't. Yet both of those still call themselves Muslims. Really though it is a game being played with us.
I don't even understand what a moderate Muslim is? What is a moderate Vegetarian? One who eats meat? An extreme Vegetarian would be one who never eats meat? What is a moderate anything? Are moderate cannibals those who don't eat human flesh, they just trade recipes?
Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
Then they go off... like this guy:
Suspect in plot to bomb U.S. subway was quiet, suburban Muslim (http://http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/suspect-in-plot-to-bomb-us-subway-was-quiet-suburban-muslim-106286318.html)
Hell of a nice guy...
Another good article I have seen recently...
Think Again: A double standard for Islam (http://http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/Article.aspx?id=193073)
Before we can figure out what to do, we have to be honest. No more PC. That does not mean attack Muslims, or seek to even harm them them at all. Just tell the truth. Learn the truth and have no fear in telling it, no matter where or when.
:)
Excellent read, thanks.
Islam does present a problem for the USA. When we try to fight them we have liberal theologians crying, why are we subjecting Islam to bias. This is what it must of felt like millenniums ago. When the Christian Crusades (Popes) were ruling the lands, no one could fight them politically or militarily.
Moderates are also dangerous, they muddy the waters.
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Excellent read, thanks.
Islam does present a problem for the USA. When we try to fight them we have liberal theologians crying, why are we subjecting Islam to bias. This is what it must of felt like millenniums ago. When the Christian Crusades (Popes) were ruling the lands, no one could fight them politically or militarily.
Moderates are also dangerous, they muddy the waters.
Perhaps a lot of it is media driven. CNN and other major media also operate inside Islamic nations and they have to figure that into their reporting back home. Even if that means creating a false illusion about Islam to America, it saves reporters 'over there'.
For whatever reason we are being deceived by the media. And to many people what the media opinion is, it is also their lazy opinion.
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Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
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:notworthy:
See, now this is what makes me feel like I'm supposed to hate all Muslims and if I don't, I'm a "traitor". I've been called that to my face because I wouldn't join in harassing and degrading a woman dressed in a hijab (sp?) who was shopping.
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Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
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:notworthy:
See, now this is what makes me feel like I'm supposed to hate all Muslims and if I don't, I'm a "traitor". I've been called that to my face because I wouldn't join in harassing and degrading a woman dressed in a hijab (sp?) who was shopping.
This is why I try to hate ALL religious people, whenever possible.
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Moderates are useless. All they do is seek to confuse the issues while providing cover for those we call extremists.
[/size]
:notworthy:
See, now this is what makes me feel like I'm supposed to hate all Muslims and if I don't, I'm a "traitor". I've been called that to my face because I wouldn't join in harassing and degrading a woman dressed in a hijab (sp?) who was shopping.
This is why I try to hate ALL religious people, whenever possible.
Partially agreed. I don't want to hate them (although some of them I do), but I just try to live by the "live and let live" credo. I think that's most of what bothers me about them (all religions).....they're trying to convert or save people, for their own good (sound familiar??). That just strikes a Straight nerve with me. I've been "helped" almost to death. If religion works for you, great.....but that doesn't mean you've got to "save" everyone else. Leave me the hell alone is what I'm saying I guess.
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Excellent read, thanks.
Islam does present a problem for the USA. When we try to fight them we have liberal theologians crying, why are we subjecting Islam to bias. This is what it must of felt like millenniums ago. When the Christian Crusades (Popes) were ruling the lands, no one could fight them politically or militarily.
Moderates are also dangerous, they muddy the waters.
Perhaps a lot of it is media driven. CNN and other major media also operate inside Islamic nations and they have to figure that into their reporting back home. Even if that means creating a false illusion about Islam to America, it saves reporters 'over there'.
For whatever reason we are being deceived by the media. And to many people what the media opinion is, it is also their lazy opinion.
:tup:
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This is why I try to hate ALL religious people, whenever possible.
I was raised Catholic, so I hear ya on this...plus I liked (and still like) punk from the early 80's (if this doesn't tell you something, you should do your homework), but this is a sophomoric attitude when you think about it. Rage-driven, for the most part. Hell, I like Jesus jokes as much as the next free-thinking young American, but I've gotten over having senseless rage toward people who have not earned it. Don't get me wrong, some religious nuts can really get under my skin (the evangelistic types, especially), but to say I hate all religious people would not be true, not anymore.
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This is why I try to hate ALL religious people, whenever possible.
I was raised Catholic, so I hear ya on this...plus I liked (and still like) punk from the early 80's (if this doesn't tell you something, you should do your homework), but this is a sophomoric attitude when you think about it. Rage-driven, for the most part. Hell, I like Jesus jokes as much as the next free-thinking young American, but I've gotten over having senseless rage toward people who have not earned it. Don't get me wrong, some religious nuts can really get under my skin (the evangelistic types, especially), but to say I hate all religious people would not be true, not anymore.
The Christian Church is directly responsible for holding back the intellectual progress of every nation under it's influence. How much farther along would we be if the church had not forbidden scientific research and imposed a complete monopoly on education? They believe in a lie, period. Lies are the enemy of truth.
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The Christian Church is directly responsible for holding back the intellectual progress of every nation under it's influence. How much farther along would we be if the church had not forbidden scientific research and imposed a complete monopoly on education? They believe in a lie, period. Lies are the enemy of truth.
The church isn't the only problem with education.
I stated my belief in the separation of church and state somewhere else on here.
Some religious people are misled about some things, and some are not.
I don't need a church to commune with God.
God is within, we are without.
God is at home, it is we that have gone out for a walk.
Only the Hand that erases can write the true thing.
The only "lie" is this world in which we now exist.
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This is why I try to hate ALL religious people, whenever possible.
I was raised Catholic, so I hear ya on this...plus I liked (and still like) punk from the early 80's (if this doesn't tell you something, you should do your homework), but this is a sophomoric attitude when you think about it. Rage-driven, for the most part. Hell, I like Jesus jokes as much as the next free-thinking young American, but I've gotten over having senseless rage toward people who have not earned it. Don't get me wrong, some religious nuts can really get under my skin (the evangelistic types, especially), but to say I hate all religious people would not be true, not anymore.
The Christian Church is directly responsible for holding back the intellectual progress of every nation under it's influence. How much farther along would we be if the church had not forbidden scientific research and imposed a complete monopoly on education? They believe in a lie, period. Lies are the enemy of truth.
From these two articles...
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/06/23/tex ... gree-suit/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/06/23/texas-judge-rips-creationism-group-in-science-degree-suit/)
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_ ... lArticle=y (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/court_rules_against_creationism_degree_96926154.html?showFullArticle=y)
Dallas-based Institute of Creation Research sought the right to grant a master’s degree in science from a biblical perspective. Aimed at aspiring Christian schoolteachers, the curriculum critiques evolution and champions a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation. :eek:
And then there's this.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/educa ... texas.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html)
Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: March 12, 2010
AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.
The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.
In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.
Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.
Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”
“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.
The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.
There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
It was defeated on a party-line vote.
After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”
“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.
Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.
Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)
“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.
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Interesting stuff, but the thread is about Islam....
Funny how we start talking about Christianity whenever the subject of violent Islam comes up.
Maybe you guys could find it in your hearts to stop kissing the ass of politically correct America and address the topic for a change?
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Interesting stuff, but the thread is about Islam....
Funny how we start talking about Christianity whenever the subject of violent Islam comes up.
Maybe you guys could find it in your godforsaken hearts to stop kissing the ass of politically correct America and address the topic for a change? :rofl:
It's totally related. You guys are acting like Islam is the only violent religion. We're disagreeing with that and saying that they're ALL violent. I'm as sick as you are of political correctness. It's not about that, for me at least. It's about people seemingly (not just you guys) trying to get me to hate every single Muslim simply because they're Muslim. WWJD? Do you think he would advocate hating or killing all Muslims?
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Shit, start a "I hate all Muslims" thread if you don't want to hear any disagreement.
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It's about people seemingly (not just you guys) trying to get me to hate every single Muslim simply because they're Muslim. & Shit, start a "I hate all Muslims" thread if you don't want to hear any disagreement.
That is not the point at all - not as far as I'm concerned - and I suspect most others with realistic views of Islam will say much the same.
I do not hate Muslims. Not even a little bit. I hate Islam. I feel the vast majority of people living under Islamic rule to be as helpless and victimized as the Cambodians under Pol Pot, or the Russians under Stalin. They are trapped in a ruthless totalitarian system that murders anyone who expresses a thought or preforms a deed that is non-supporting of Mohamed and/or Alah. Islam is evil.
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It's about people seemingly (not just you guys) trying to get me to hate every single Muslim simply because they're Muslim. & Shit, start a "I hate all Muslims" thread if you don't want to hear any disagreement.
That is not the point at all - not as far as I'm concerned - and I suspect most others with realistic views of Islam will say much the same.
I do not hate Muslims. Not even a little bit. I hate Islam. I feel the vast majority of people living under Islamic rule to be as helpless and victimized as the Cambodians under Pol Pot, or the Russians under Stalin. They are trapped in a ruthless totalitarian system that murders anyone who expresses a thought or preforms a deed that is non-supporting of Mohamed and/or Alah. Islam is evil.
I do not hate Jews, I only hate judaism. Its followers have proven to be the most racist people who ever lived. They drop American made bombs on muslim schools and day-care centers. Murdering innocents deliberately while dismissing it all as "collateral damage". Judaism teaches its followers that they are the true master race - hand picked by god to rule. Did you guys know that judaism teaches its followers that its perfectly ok and not a sin at all to lie to non-Jews. In fact Judaism is one of the only religions I know of that pre-forgives wrongdoing. Do what you want, its already forgiven! I don't hate Jews though. I just hate Judaism. It is the most evil religion of them all.
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You guys are acting like Islam is the only violent religion.
How am I "acting like" Islam is the only violent religion? Show me where I said anything like that; pics or it didn't happen. Anyway we've been talking about the danger Islam presents in this day and time. We all know Christianity doesn't have the best track record (thanks to those who hijack Christianity to their own ends). We get that.
No, Jesus would not advocate the use of unnecessary violence. In a perfect world, America should just get the hell out of the Middle East, cut off all economic ties with them whatsoever (we don't need no hands across the sea), and find another way to fuel our cars. Let the Arabs go, like the plague. Of course, the administration will not do this when there is so much blood money to be taken from the Saudi government; we have been in bed with them for far too long now for that to happen, unless something extremely revolutionary takes place within the power structure of our own country.
Meanwhile I guess we should just keep kissing their collective ass, talk about how other religions are violent too, and let them continue to run Christians off the street. Maybe we'll even help them set up internment camps.
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You guys are acting like Islam is the only violent religion.
How am I "acting like" Islam is the only violent religion? Show me where I said anything like that; pics or it didn't happen.
Point taken....I guess it just felt that way to me.
Anyway we've been talking about the danger Islam presents in this day and time. We all know Christianity doesn't have the best track record (thanks to those who hijack Christianity to their own ends). We get that.
I don't think it's just because of the hijacking.....it's written in the text, just as it is in damn near every religious text, with the possible exception of Buddhism, but I'm not that familiar with their text.
No, Jesus would not advocate the use of unnecessary violence. In a perfect world, America should just get the hell out of the Middle East, cut off all economic ties with them whatsoever (we don't need no hands across the sea), and find another way to fuel our cars. Let the Arabs go, like the plague. Of course, the administration will not do this when there is so much blood money to be taken from the Saudi government; we have been in bed with them for far too long now for that to happen, unless something extremely revolutionary takes place within the power structure of our own country.
I couldn't agree more.
Meanwhile I guess we should just keep kissing their collective ass, talk about how other religions are violent too, and let them continue to run Christians off the street.
See, now that's where I get confused. I'm not seeing anything close to that. It reminds me of this pic....
(http://http://api.ning.com/files/qbQtG0SwmJVQIpRFqCXWReTENi1nnccT-cm29RtMQ79DSWXmtWJrBb7tA8iI5fSSVQhytMVRdH6xKTKZ*G3aK-Zv0MUrINo6/christian_oppression_pie.png)
Maybe we'll even help them set up internment camps.
It seems that a lot of people here (in this country, not Fornits) would like to set them up for all Muslims.
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Shit, start a "I hate all Muslims" thread if you don't want to hear any disagreement.
Disagreement... As long as it is based on reality, I'm all for it.
Please... Disagree.
There may be good Muslims, but there is no good Islam.
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Shit, start a "I hate all Muslims" thread if you don't want to hear any disagreement.
Disagreement... As long as it is based on reality, I'm all for it.
Please... Disagree.
There may be good Muslims, but there is no good Islam.
:tup: