Over the past several months, I have had some 50 conversations with Democratic women of boomer age. A female editor at a prestigious national magazine confided: “I should be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for Hillary’s candidacy, but I’m not.” I asked if she would vote for Hillary in the end. “I am waiting to see if Bernie wins Iowa,” she whispered. “If so, I’m right there!”
January 31, 2016
"Among those unlikables consistently repeated to me by women who are conflicted about her: not authentic; can’t trust her; she lies; she’s establishment; she’s a hawk."
Writes Gail Sheehy in a NYT op-ed "The Women Who Should Love Hillary Clinton."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
106 comments:
"We came, we saw, he died!" - Hillary Clinton
What's not to like?
They are right they can't trust her to be consistently left. For the rest of us, that's her one redeeming feature.
She was such a disappointment. The first co-president. She's slime and they don't care.
OTOH, any boomer who whines about "The Establishment" should look in the mirror and toddle off to their rocking chair. Dude, you're 70! You ARE The Establishment! stop sucking SS and Medicare dry for your eye tucks!
There is no way the Democrats will actually nominate Sanders. If Hillary collapses, there will be a brokered convention, and they'll probably ended up with a Warren/Kerry ticket.
Who are these ladies, exactly, who "should" love her, and why "should" they? Is the constituency old women who married their wealth and power and now have more money than sense?
Noted NY Times contributor, Gail Sheehy wrestles with the fall-out, but ultimately dodges the primary Hillary question:
In the modern era, What type of Professional woman allows her husband to blatantly and repeatedly cheat on her, without divorcing him?
To restate,What does it say about her: (1) to be cheated on so much and (2) to allow it to happen for over 40 years?
I remember when owning a vagina was the golden ticket - anything you wanted you got. But it was 19-year-old boys in abject pussy slavery, then. Fifty years later, we no longer care. Now it's 68-year-old women who condense all positive aspects of conduct and character to possessing a yoni. But, as with us decades ago, they grow restive.
Sometimes when I picture the future, I imagine Hillary Clinton stamping on a human face forever.
I also imagine the guy getting stomped will just be grateful Hillary never wears a skirt.
A Nation cruise populated with feminist boomers discussing the relative merits of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. I have seen a vision of hell. I wonder how many busboys will commit suicide on that awful trip.
A female editor at a prestigious national magazine confided: “I should be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for Hillary’s candidacy, but I’m not.”
Why, in God's Name, would one be enthusiastic about Hillary?
Is this the best the Dems can do? Really? This woman just stinks of corruption. Say what you want about the Republican "clown car", but they are a motley crew of the full spectrum of Republican political opinion & much more ethnic diversity to boot. None of them can be thought to be anywhere near as corrupt as HRC.
I find among my liberal friends who favor The Bern that there is no concern with HRC's corruption. It's all about policy, and they favor Sander's more lefty policies. It's almost as if, for the lefties, there's only "wrong" ideology, & personal integrity plays no part in the consideration of political worthiness.
Most women are not chauvinistic. Neither are most men. Their judgment, and vote, are not determined by the candidate's sex. Show us the merit!
Democrats have been electing criminals, even from their prison cells, since J Michael Curley.
Looks like this is our future.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/329241-europes-tragedy-merkel-immigration/
"She's slime and they don't care."
There's a big difference between "don't care" and "won't vote for the Party I despise." I mean, some of the commenters here really think Trump is slime, and yet you don't see them saying if he gets the GOP nomination they're voting Democratic.
"We came, we saw, he died!" - Hillary Clinton
"What's not to like?"
He was helping us with the war on terrorists and now the situation is much worse.
"It's almost as if, for the lefties, there's only 'wrong' ideology, & personal integrity plays no part in the consideration of political worthiness."
What do you expect, Young Hegelian? That someone would vote for a candidate whose policies they find destructive (perhaps to the nation, perhaps even to themselves personally!) because "well, at least the candidate loves their spouse and seems friendly and all"?
People ought to vote based on the policy views candidates manifest. The alternative looks more like voting for Prom King and Queen.
The comments at that piece seem to be about equally divided between readers who understand the meaning of the word, "liar," and readers who think the word "liar" is code for "hates women."
That says a lot about these senile 2nd wave feminazis running the show. Enough with identity politics. Seriously, your identification with gender is so strong that you can't even remember what the meaning of honesty is?
Absolutely incredible just how out of touch her cheerleaders are. At the risk of sounding like the sexist that they believe lurks around every corner, they might as well don striped sweaters with an "H" on them, whip out some pom-poms, and start choreographing acrobatics and chants written around her name and how awesome she is.
Who are these ladies, exactly, who "should" love her, and why "should" they? Is the constituency old women who married their wealth and power and now have more money than sense?
Sounds about closest to the only sensible theory.
Say what you want about the Republican "clown car", but they are a motley crew of the full spectrum of Republican political opinion & much more ethnic diversity to boot. None of them can be thought to be anywhere near as corrupt as HRC.
Good point. Republicans are much more open about the paymasters who own them.
Thoughts of Women Conflicted about Hillary
"... not authentic; can’t trust her; she lies; she’s establishment"
Thoughts of Women Not Conflicted about Hillary"
"... not authentic; can’t trust her; she lies; she’s establishment"
Who are you going to trust - me or your lying eyes?
Democrats have been electing criminals, even from their prison cells, since J Michael Curley.
Good luck finding me any Democrat who even knows who the hell that is, two-thousand-year-old man.
Seriously, your frame of reference for politics and social reality seem to be stuck in the iron age.
It must be tough, being transported to an age when Genghis Khan is no longer the one in charge of makin' stuff happen.
"Republicans are much more open about the paymasters who own them." Heh. The paymasters thought they would just nominate Jeb Bush. They are at their wits' end right now; they own nobody.
The Dems are in full fledged Socialist/Commie mode. And all over the world, Socialists and Communists believe the Ends justify the Means. Thus Hillary lying, obfuscating, and selling her influence is not a big deal. God help the USA.
It's so nice these "sophisticated" people wait to see what others think before thinking for themselves.
What!? no comment by Rhardin?
Hillary is a singularly poor candidate to be the first woman president for two reasons. One, she has ridden her husband's coattails to her professional accomplishments -- just as Lurleen Wallace became governor because voters were voting to support her husband. There are a lot of women who have equal accomplishments on their own -- Carly Fiorina, or any of the governors who became cabinet members for Obama, or Nancy Pelosi. Two, she was willing to attack the victims of her husband in order to move her career forward. That's a bad reason, and is an anti-feminist attitude toward victims of sexual harassment and rape.
In my opinion, this is just beginning to sink in among the "natural constituency" and it will snowball.
Hillary! more than unlikable enough!
if you google "unlikeable" the top hit is a book by Edward Klein: Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary.
Bay Area Guy said...1/31/16, 5:35 PM
To restate,What does it say about her: (1) to be cheated on so much and (2) to allow it to happen for over 40 years?
She's not so much a wife, as she is a co-conspirator. Or, you could say, women care more about emotional intimacy.
As I said on another thread, Hillary rises on the assumptions and complacencies of identity politics. She has no substantial achievements.
She dare not attack the preposterous policies and assumptions of Bernie, because she wants her party to believe that free, immediate, and excellent medical care is achievable at no cost to anyone other than the rich, that our sluggish economy is the result of a plan by moneyed interests to take down the American middle class to preserve their own power, and that a free college education is the right of every American at no cost to anyone. She plans to use these vagaries against her Republican opponent.
She is planning that her status as a woman will take her home to the Democratic nomination. When she meets the GOP nominee on the field of battle, she will ask him why he so hates the American middle class, knowing that the female editor at the prestigious national magazine will cheer her on without ever once challenging Hillary's assertions.
That's where we are, folks. The GOP better be ready.
"Good luck finding me any Democrat who even knows who the hell that is, two-thousand-year-old man."
Thank you for making my point better than I could have. There is this thing called "History." You should try some.
Ritmo, I am still laughing at that. Thanks.
YoungHegelian said...1/31/16, 5:47 PM
I find among my liberal friends who favor The Bern that there is no concern with HRC's corruption.
You can't be a good Democrat and buy into the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy at the same time! No, sir, they are not going to drink the Kool-Aid, even though it really is Kool-Aid - maybe not the exact same flavor as advertised, but Kool-Aid.
There are some people who do not like Republicans and think Hillary is bad - but they don't think highly of Sanders as an intellectual.
From the article:
“Shame on us — Democrats and particularly friends of Hillary — because we allowed Republicans and the media to paint a caricature of Hillary for far too long,” Ms. de Rothschild told me.
Mrs. Clinton is painting her own portrait this time — leaning in to her gender, especially as an argument against the charge that she is a Washington insider.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“Who can be more of an outsider than a woman president?” she has said.
For those who appreciate understatement, it's hard to think of a more damning indictment of Mrs. Clinton than that second paragraph. It's supposed to be a defense; an encomium, even. But if your defense is "this time I'm authentic" you've already exposed yourself as a fraud.
I cut and pasted and left "Advertisement" in there. It's the only honest thing in there.
There is this thing called "History." You should try some.
You mean the history of how the Republicans finally started winning elections in the South after 1968? Sure, go and tell me about how that happened.
Tell me the history of Lee Atwater.
You know. The history of things that dramatically impacted the Republican party, despite Republicans like you knowing nothing about them.
Apparently she's not likable enough.
Obama was wrong!
Harrogate: I believe the question being posed is not "why won't those liberals vote for my nice family-friendly Republican candidate?"; rather, it is "is there no level of corruption and incompetence that will deter liberals from voting for Hillary?".
Just as an additional data point, in my own personal ambit I do know of at least one Bernie supporter who recoils from Hillary precisely because this person considers her a corrupt member of the Establishment.
I did see a column in the New York Daily News on Thursday, January 21, 2016 by one Harry Siegel that said things against Hillary:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-slouching-des-moines-article-1.2503975
The Daily News has been really partisan and pro-Hillary, although it's more noticeable as anti-Trump. Maybe he didn't gte the memo about Hillary. He quotes the famous poem by Yeats about how the centre cannot hold..the best lack all conviction, while thw worst are full of passionate intensity.
Here's how he describes certain people:
Donald Trump: the trucker-hat sloganed standard-bearer for Americans who don't want teh world intruding in on them, who just want to win again, or at least have a president who's not afraid to repeat the word over and over.
Sarah Palin: the politician turned failed reality TV star endorsing the reality TV star turned politician.
Hillary Clinton: the best candidate, one indeed lacking all conviction, who's spun the straw of government service into a huge pile of family gold, who wants to give America it's own twist on Argentina's disastrous husband-and wife presidential dynasty and who made it to the White House last time after her husband vowed to get tough on black criminals and she got tough on the women who said he'd done them wrong.
Bernie Sanders: a shouty 74-year-old man who's promising trillions of dollars of free stuff that he's about as likely to deliver as a President Trump would be to get Mexico to fund and pay for that wall.
I particularly like it's own twist on Argentina's disastrous husband-and wife presidential dynasty and maybe can excse some inaccuracies (Clinton got in in 1992 by promisibg to get tough on black criminals? The one thing he did was not commute somebody's senetence to life imprisonment - someone who'd tried to commit suicide and damaged his brain. Clinton got in most important because of his "economic plan" which had been endorsed by Goldman and Sachs - which he never had any intention of following through on. And The Clintons probaly always had access to money - after his presidency, Bill Clinton just arranged to make it all legal and formal.
---You mean the history of how the Republicans finally started winning elections in the South after 1968? Sure, go and tell me about how that happened.
Lots of you Democrats don’t know that George Wallace and Bull Connor were democrats.
Michael K said...
Ritmo, I am still laughing at that. Thanks.
Michael K has missed you, bad.
@R&B,
You mean the history of how the Republicans finally started winning elections in the South after 1968? Sure, go and tell me about how that happened.
Actually, R&B, we're talking about history that really, actually happened as opposed to lefty talking points.
Take a gander at this site. Notice, that unless there was Republican landslide in the rest of the country (e.g. Nixon vs McGovern), was was no Republican solid South until 2000 & G.W. Bush. When given a Democrat from the South (Carter & Clinton), much of the South went Democratic.
There was a lot of water under the bridge in the years from Nixon's "Southern Strategy" & to 2000. Liberals would like everyone to believe that it's all about Southern racism, rather than have to face up to the fact that obnoxious liberals pissing in the face of much that Southern culture holds dear had anything to due with the South's defection.
This post relates to my previous one above. Once again, in the loss of the South, the liberals cannot see that it was as much about years & years of outrageous personal obnoxiousness more than ideology than drove the South from the Democratic fold.
Seeing Red said... [hush][hide comment]
OTOH, any boomer who whines about "The Establishment" should look in the mirror and toddle off to their rocking chair. Dude, you're 70! You ARE The Establishment! stop sucking SS and Medicare dry for your eye tucks!
Still mad at mommy, eh Red? Let me guess. Middle child syndrome?
I have nothing to say to anyone who's so much of a partisan apologist and so much of a tribal/regional apologist as to insist that the strategy attested to by someone as important to the Republican party as Lee Atwater, did not happen.
The defection took a good decade or more because, despite what you would believe, no social change is 100% all or nothing - and giving a chance to a good ole boy like Carter was probably a part of that. For that matter, your precious Southern pride is not 100% perfect, either. Right now the Republican party is learning that they're not necessarily a party of purity. Likewise, no region of the world and no culture is perfect, either. Not northern U.S., not southern U.S., not western, not Judeo-Christian, not secular, not traditional, none of it. NONE OF YOU FUCKERS ARE PERFECT AND NONE OF THE THINGS YOU HOLD DEAR IS PERFECT, either. Hate to break the news to you. Get some of that Christian humility and wake up to that fact.
Or, go ahead and hold your head in the sand and pretend that white resentment against black social programs wasn't more pronounced in the south and more easily exploited, no matter what other "pride" issues you (and they) pretend to bristle at - (Not that you apologists will ever define them, in any event. Pride for what? Pride for chicken fried steak? Pride for Gumbo? Pride for a flag that you'd convince yourself had NOTHING to do with a racially-based armedinsurrection? No, really. Go ahead and tell me what it is about being from the south that you're so proud of as to resent being "pissed in the face" of... whatever it is that the south did right, well, proudly and by such a wonderful example)
So, you already heard it from me. It wasn't only about out-and-out racism, even if more of what it wasn't "about" was about what ignorant people thought they weren't being racist about.. (i.e. "other people's" welfare). But again, I'm not saying everything is all-or-nothing. That every cause has a single reason or that every reason is 100% good and right or 100% evil and wrong.
But I do think there is better and worse. And I do think if you want me to become the kind of southern apologist that you are, you should tell me what your pride is based in. What's so morally and politically great and special and wonderful about the south...? So wonderful that people have no reason to be anything but resentful and outraged by "obnoxiousness" at the suggestion that they or their history is less than perfect?
So, you go ahead and answer me that, and maybe there's a conversation worth having. But in the meantime, I look at your southern superiority/inferiority complex the same way Wafa Sultan did the Muslim superiority/inferiority complex. Tell me what you did and are doing that's so great, before you demand that I defer some type of unearned respect to you based simply on a fuzzy, questionably meaningful regional identity and all the pride you seem to have invested in it.
Go on. Tell everyone here what it is that isn't being respected, that wasn't respected, and that needs to be respected. Go and tell us what is so great about your pride... so much greater than anyone else's pride.
Time's a wastin'.
"You mean the history of how the Republicans finally started winning elections in the South after 1968?"
Ritmo, the world did not start in 1968. You don't even realize how ignorant you sound. You remind me of the Vox idiot who said the Constitution is 100 years old and so it doesn't mean anything.
Of course he did graduate from UCLA yesterday so I understand.
There is nothing funnier than an ignoramus who keeps proving it and is unaware.
Read a fucking book that doesn't have pictures !
YoungHegelian wrote:
"Actually, R&B, we're talking about history that really, actually happened as opposed to lefty talking points."
Lefties talk about 'Nixon's southern strategy' like it was a real thing and it is standard, conventional history instead a made-up thing to make themselves feel superior. In one sentence you have 'southern' and 'Nixon' and 'Strategy'!
The party that changed dramatically post 1968 was not the GOP, it was the Dems.
I am old enough -- just barely -- to remember the days when the Dems were the pro-labor party, and the GOP was the pro-business party. Neither party was considered more socially conservative than the other, neither party was considered more pro-military than the other, and neither party was considered more patriotic than the other. There were mainstream democrats in those days (I am talking pre-'68) got to their feet and put their hand over their heart when the flag went by at a parade.
These days they boo the boy scouts, and boo mentions of God.
Hey R&B,
How about the history of the very popular (to democrats) ex President Clinton. He won most of the south too.
Let's see, he executed a man who was so retarded he left part of his last meal to eat later.
Oh yeah, he was the man who created the sentencing discrepancy between cocaine and crack and ruined a generation black males.
He and Hillary wanted to put their rich Hollywood friend in charge of the travel office. So they weren't satisfy ruining the life's of the career workers. No, they had to go after them with false criminal charges.
The Clintons perfected crony capitalism and made hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves selling government access.
Shall we go on. . .
"outrageous personal obnoxiousness"
I love these meaningless resorts to personal insult as an affront to "honor", whatever that means. This is the same language that could have and would have been used against the Union response to Fort Sumter, against the election of Lincoln, against the outrage over the caning of Senator Sumner. It goes to that whole problem of "honor" being a catch-all term that describes a defense of anything the South as a regional bloc wanted to do, despite the Southern inability to account for whatever issue is at the core of that oh-so-proud "honor".
The honor-pride-shame model of human behavior is less advanced than the model of universal human dignity and rights embraced by the revolutions of 1776 and 1789. You can feel free to argue against me, if you like. But hearkening back to Scottish "honor" in the 13th century highlands of Northern Britain is not the same rebellion against monarchy and tyranny that occurred five hundred years later. The U.S. revolution as an enlightenment act, borne in the liberal fold that saw all men as potentially free, equal and capable of reason - was a far cry from the regional/racial/nationalistic and "honor-"based understanding of freedom endorsed by William Wallace's heirs in DIxie. The south still thought they were fighting the Anglo-Saxons, but it wasn't about that.
It's similar to the problem of today, when other honor-pride-shame-based societies today have trouble coping with the concept of "rights" and freedom, such as the Arab Muslims. The whole world tells them that they have a problem treating people (including themselves) like humans with responsibility as well as dignity and agency, and they respond with "Shut up! We'll show you what a proud people we are. We'll do whatever we like!" They don't get it and neither do you, apparently.
Ritmo, the world did not start in 1968.
No one said that. But I'm sure your straw man is a really nice one, with all sorts of fancy adornments and dress.
How the hell does Vox survive? They should have been laughed out of town when they wrote about how those awful joos closed the bridge between Gaza and West Bank.
How embarrassing.
@R&B,
Thank you for proving my point about the personal obnoxiousness.
You made an historical point. I showed that historical point to be incorrect, and gave proof. The point about the "solid Republican South" has been debunked at many other venues over the years. Clearly, you missed all of them.
Go on. Tell everyone here what it is that isn't being respected, that wasn't respected, and that needs to be respected. Go and tell us what is so great about your pride... so much greater than anyone else's pride.
Well, there's a large swath of the "cultural arm" of the Left that always & everywhere has it in for Christianity. This is a recent development in the Democratic Party, since the previous Democratic Party had not only Southern Protestants, it also depended on Northern ethnic Catholics. Compare the "abortion-love fest" that was Obama's 2012 convention with Clinton's 1992 "keep abortion safe, legal & rare" to get the flavor of the change
Lefties like to pretend that this is all about issues of "personal autonomy" like abortion & homosexuality. The only problem with this is that the classical Marxist Left was extremely puritanical, and had no truck with issues of bourgeois notions like "personal autonomy", and yet it was still anti-Christian. Why? Because communities of faith are bulwarks against the power of the state, & their claims to transcendent moral claims above & beyond the state endanger the expansion of state power into the moral realm. One must forgive the average believer who views the history of the Left & thinks that the Left's modern concern for sexual liberation is but a stalking horse to push the religious world-view out of the public forum so that political morality can be shaped that maximizes state power.
Often my lefty friends go on & on about "the racist history" of the South or the US. I ask them if they believe that the US/South is embedded in a history/narrative of white supremacy. They always say yes. I then ask them, "So, what history/narrative is the Left embedded in? Or, have you guys figured out how to jump over your shadows..."
Deer in headlights look always follows.
"Someone as important to the Republican Party as Lee Atwater"?
That was one amazing guy to single handedly represent the entire party while being dead at age 40. Never mind that the supposed evidence that even he was racist is completely ripped ojt of context, and later on in the same interview he states explicitly that race was NOT an issue.
Meanwhile, the most senior Democrat member of the Senate, third in line for the Presidency as of a few years ago, and a high ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, that doesn't say anything about Democrats, not one bit.
You are slime, R&B. Truly.
Shall we go on. . .
Yeah, sure. Keep going; knock yourself out. Throw as many red herrings out there as you want. Clinton was an aberration, a consummate opportunist with no core convictions other than his own political success and survival (like his wife). But if you want to see him as emblematic of a series of much larger political and ideological and regional and social phenomena, make sure your dissertation is footnoted appropriately and handed in to the professor no later than by 8 AM tomorrow.
Any woman voting for Hillary because she is a woman should be embarrassed.
I do not understand why any intelligent woman would not tell whoever asked that she intended to vote for the person she believes will be the best president, without regard to whether the person is a man or a woman.
Oh, and the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats means nothing either. Liberals will tell you that while being perfectly happy that their propaganda has been so successful that 90% of the population thinks its the other way around. Because it isn't relevant, so they have to brazenly rewrite history to make sure no one knows it. Makes total sense.
"The honor-pride-shame model of human behavior is less advanced than the model of universal human dignity and rights embraced by the revolutions of 1776 and 1789. "
How would you know ?
The point about the "solid Republican South" has been debunked at many other venues over the years.
Some people (the honest and "honorable" people of today - the information age), consider misrepresentation to be the height of obnoxiousness. It doesn't appear that you're one of them, with your need to make a white-or-black/all-or-nothing "pure" fallacy as one that somehow disproves the larger trend everyone notes that I'm talking about - which it absolutely does not. I already told you nothing is 100%. Put on those rebel greys and learn to see shades of grey already, FFS.
"The honor-pride-shame model of human behavior is less advanced than the model of universal human dignity and rights embraced by the revolutions of 1776 and 1789. "
How would you know ?
It's a widespread presumption based on the fact that history has become less violent and more free and more enlightened since. Most people agree with it. I think if you want to take the position of saying that the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man should take a backseat to Og and Grog Use Club to Prove Bigger Dickishness, the responsibility is incumbent upon you to prove how the latter system is superior.
"Nothing is 100%"? Really? You're going to stand on that while resting your entire case on a single guy who was dead at age 40 without ever having a chance to answer the charges against him that were conveniently only made after his death? And that single guy turns the entire Republican Party into evil racist villains... and you think you aren't engaging in "black and white/all or nothing" purity tests? LMAO. Your self awareness couldn't fill a thimble.
Clinton was an aberration, a consummate opportunist with no core convictions other than his own political success and survival (like his wife).
The Democrats sure love themselves some aberrations. It might even be part of their identity. Remember. Even Obama had to call out the racists Bill and Hill. The Dem candidates are all white and the Repubs have huge racial and gender diversity. So it looks like the Dems are the racists.
Shame on you for supporting a bunch of racists.
Well, there's a large swath of the "cultural arm" of the Left that always & everywhere has it in for Christianity.
Total bullshit. Secular humanists and liberal Christians rightly note that they are the successor and likely superior to a cruder or form of Christianity rooted in literalism and fundamentalism. The sort that guys like you apparently like to champion.
This is a recent development in the Democratic Party, since the previous Democratic Party had not only Southern Protestants, it also depended on Northern ethnic Catholics. Compare the "abortion-love fest" that was Obama's 2012 convention with Clinton's 1992 "keep abortion safe, legal & rare" to get the flavor of the change.
That reflects the change in popular opinion - including a number of Catholics - whom you would prefer to see as "ethnics" instead of just voters who are split among groups some of which are often at odds with the instruction of the Supreme Celibate.
Lefties like to pretend that this is all about issues of "personal autonomy" like abortion & homosexuality. The only problem with this is that the classical Marxist Left was extremely puritanical,
Talk about obscurantist and recondite history.
...and had no truck with issues of bourgeois notions like "personal autonomy", and yet it was still anti-Christian. Why?
Because most people live in the real world instead of the one you construct around your obsession with philosophical history.
Because communities of faith are bulwarks against the power of the state,
Or so those that call themselves that would like to self-congratulatorily presume.
& their claims to transcendent moral claims above & beyond the state endanger the expansion of state power into the moral realm.
Again. The above is just more philosophy - and less real-world examples of this.
The founders and their generation were more secular than those that followed them. Not a coincidence.
One must forgive the average believer who views the history of the Left & thinks that the Left's modern concern for sexual liberation is but a stalking horse to push the religious world-view out of the public forum so that political morality can be shaped that maximizes state power.
Jesus Christ is this abstruse. I can't even read what the hell you're saying. But the sexual fixations read through loud and clear. Was it a Vatican-approved statement? Or just approved by the disgruntled objectors to the 2nd Vatican Council's reforms?
Whichever it is, it reads like a damn manifesto to a catechism that was never popular at the founding or even for a couple centuries - until your guy JFK made it seem "not so bad."
Often my lefty friends go on & on about "the racist history" of the South or the US. I ask them if they believe that the US/South is embedded in a history/narrative of white supremacy. They always say yes. I then ask them, "So, what history/narrative is the Left embedded in?
The correct response is what one has to do with the other? I mean, other than absolutely nothing.
You dumbfucks keep forgetting that racism was the DEFAULT social presumption all the way through the early 20th century. It probably only achieved widespread opprobium after that great Catholic Adolf Hitler showed where it led. But until then, racism was always alive and well.
What wasn't alive and well however was cruelty or opposition to the idea that some men or cultures might learn to perfect themselves. Lincoln didn't think negroes were exemplars of the human condition. But that doesn't make Jefferson Davis his inferior. You keep forgetting that being anti-bondage was a movement of human universal concern, not that it had to propose blacks to be social equals. And it didn't have to. Abolition in itself made their cause superior - unless you have a problem with abolition. Abolition of race-based slavery.
Or, have you guys figured out how to jump over your shadows..."
Deer in headlights look always follows.
What a pity that you not only have such affectation for these colloquialisms, but think in them.
Instead, learn to reason.
It might make you less antagonistic to the politics of reason.
Shame on you for supporting a bunch of racists.
Shame on you for being an animated talking point.
Your party has enough of its own problems. I don't need to waste time with a rank partisan who has no deeper thoughts than what he learned on FOX the whole last few years.
BTW, it should have read "superior" in the 8:56 post instead of "inferior". Typo.
I'm sure well-intentioned people will have figured that out.
Hahahahah. Run away little boy.
Hahahahah. Run away little boy.
I always make it a point to run away from stupid people with too much time on their hands.
You are slime, R&B. Truly.
And you are forgettable. Truly.
But Lee Atwater did make it a point to repent of what he did in his dying days on his death bed. I'm sure there must have been a reason for that.
A reason that you, no doubt, will proclaim yourself capable of personally absolving him of.
Hillary is the tuna salad left in the refrigerator for too long.
"I think if you want to take the position "
Goodness, Ritmo is on a roll. The minimum wage must have been increased!
"Total bullshit. Secular humanists and liberal Christians rightly note that they are the successor and likely superior to a cruder or form of Christianity rooted in literalism and fundamentalism."
R&B, you know nothing about this topic.
Really, you're dense as a neutron star on the topic. You don't understand Christian theology, Christian history. You are ignorant. This statement in particular shows your ignorance.
Not at all Full Moon, just a tail-end Boomer sick of my elders. Yap yap yap they've never shut up!
crikey, he's gone full otto, from 'fish called wanda'
Look, R&B, I'll go to the trouble of trying to explain Christianity to you.
Christianity is not progressive. It doesn't 'improve' over time. It doesn't evolve. The Truth does not change. If you believe the Truth changes, or God changes, you may be a religious person, but you are not a Christian.
Human nature does not change. We are the same people we were thousands of years ago. All of what we call human nature is a result of original sin. The broken thing called man doesn't improve over time. He doesn't become unbroken because he has figured out how to make antibiotics and electricity.
Look, R&B, I'll go to the trouble of trying to explain Christianity to you.
Christianity is not progressive. It doesn't 'improve' over time. It doesn't evolve.
That's nice. Morals however do. Interpretations do. There were pro-slavery Christians and anti-slavery Christians. It sounds like you would have been the former, based on your fundamentalism and inability to see Christianity as a progressive development thousands of years ago, let alone compatible with progressive developments in 1865 or 2016.
The Truth does not change.
Wanna bet? Interpretation changes. The "CHURCH" taught that it was heresy for Galileo to popularize the notion that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa. I guess you think that was one of their more admirable moments. Even though they later backtracked.
If you believe the Truth changes, or God changes, you may be a religious person, but you are not a Christian.
So what? I don't give a fuck what a dunderheaded fundie like you says. If Christianity means that Terry is Jesus or his spokesperson, then you're right. I'm not one. But I'll gladly be able to side with the majority of Christians who aren't fundie idiots like you. With them, things can get done. As has always been the case. While you sit in a room and read your bible and tell anyone who cares about the world and the state of affairs that they're bad people.
Human nature does not change.
Human behavior can and does. Human knowledge does. Human intelligence does.
Believe it or not, not everything people do serves the purpose of justifying your backwardness.
We are the same people we were thousands of years ago.
You don't know that. And again, you're stating as a religious faith something that may have some merit, but not to the degree to which you overstate it. People are a foot taller (at least) than they were thousands of years of years ago. They have more complex languages and societies. They have indoor plumbing. They have civilization.
Perhaps you don't.
But that doesn't make you the representative voice for describing human reality in 2016, that's for damn sure.
All of what we call human nature is a result of original sin. The broken thing called man doesn't improve over time. He doesn't become unbroken because he has figured out how to make antibiotics and electricity.
Then go focus on your sinfulness, like your self-righteousness and presumptuousness above. Yes, there will always be ignorant lecturers in the world, like yourself. But that doesn't mean the rest of society has to go on making things easier for scolds and guilt-trippers. It probably gets harder for them in fact, which might explain why you're lashing out.
Have some humility and move off of me. I'm not going to indulge your theology-centered understanding of human history. There was probably no Great Flood or Adam and Eve, and if you're just another creationist trying to weasel your way into a discussion about history, take it to whichever church indulges you in that.
Really, you're dense as a neutron star on the topic. You don't understand Christian theology, Christian history. You are ignorant. This statement in particular shows your ignorance.
I know enough to know that Pope Paul V is your role model.
Oh looky there! Christian theology changes! (350 years later). Wow. Bad church! Never change doctrine! Horrible, horrible church. Horrible Christians!
YH refers to "the Left that always & everywhere has it in for Christianity" and R&B calls that "Total bullshit" in the very same comment in which he sneers at the Pope as "the Supreme Celibate" and in the very same minute (8:56pm) in which he writes (in his next comment) of "that great Catholic Adolf Hitler". It appears that Leftie bigot R&B "has it in for" at least two very large section of Christianity: fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholics. It's also amusing how he urges his opponents to show more "Christian humility" while wallowing in the most repulsive arrogance and obnoxiousness himself. Hint: Faith and Hope may (may!) be unnecessary for non-Christians, but Charity, Humility, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and Wisdom are virtues that anyone of any religion, or no religion, should try to practice.
I don't know hold old R & B is but being there in 1972 Nixon's Southern Strategy was simple; it was George McGovern. Nixon carried all 49 Southern States that year. As for Lee Atwater and the Southern Strategy of 1988, again it was nothing more than Michael Dukakis. Incase R & B didn't know this, Willie Horton was brought to the public's attention by one Albert Gore Jr.
"Over the past several months, I have had some 50 conversations with Democratic women of boomer age. A female editor at a prestigious national magazine confided: “I should be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for Hillary’s candidacy, but I’m not.” I asked if she would vote for Hillary in the end. “I am waiting to see if Bernie wins Iowa,” she whispered. “If so, I’m right there!”
Unfortunately for these woman Rosa Luxemburg isn't running this year.
"The "CHURCH" taught that it was heresy for Galileo to popularize the notion that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa."
Really, genius? Then explain Copernicus. You know, the person who actually came up with the idea that the earth revolved around the sun, the one Galileo based his work on. The guy who was a Canon, which is just shy of a Bishop in the "CHURCH". The guy whose works and theories were taught in Catholic universities for years. The guy whose studies were funded by the Church.
Galileo was labeled a heretic because he was the asshole progressive of his day, who made a lot of pronouncements on purely religious matters deliberately designed to provoke the Church.
But it IS really funny how, as previously noted, you claimed the idea that progressives regularly treat Christians with contempt as "total bullshit", and then go on a rampage of the exact same sort of contempt being described. I'm agnostic, personally, but the worst Christian I ever met is worth a thousand of you.
And Atwater's "deathbed confession" had nothing to do with racism, it had to do with him bringing up that an election opponent had had electroshock therapy after a suicide attempt as a teenager. How the hell does that support your notion that anything the single, sole personage of Lee Atwater could possibly ever have done is sufficient to simultaneously exonerate the Democrat Party for slavery and Jim Crow, and attach all the free floating guilt therefrom to the party of Lincoln that made passing the Civil Rights Act possible?
I'd think you were certifiably insane, but you're not. You know you're lying. But in your philosophy, that's okay as long as it works towards the goals of the Party.
"“I am waiting to see if Bernie wins Iowa,” she whispered. “If so, I’m right there!”
Now that's leadership.
Hilary's a hawk? How can anyone know? She's never had to make a direct decision about military force. Her Senate votes on matters of military action have been self-serving and contradictory. She is unwilling to accept personal responsibility for anything that goes wrong, a trait that makes people overcautious not overaggressive. In short she is both unknowable and unpredictable on matters of military force. She doesn't even know whether she is a "hawk."
"Morals however do."
That explains atom bombs and death camps!
"pro-slavery Christians and anti-slavery Christians. It sounds like you would have been the former, based on your fundamentalism"
It's an absolute fact that fundamentalist Christians were the leaders of opposition to slavery. They also were leaders in opposing eugenics which was supported by "progressives" like Woodrow Wilson and yourself, the same kind of racist progressives who founded Planned Parenthood and who are wiping out the blacks in America. Those who deal in musty stereotypes will be horrified by Illiberal Reformers:Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era Thomas C. Leonard which will be out Feb 2 and is already being discussed.
What is scary to me is that any of these Boomer women would vote for Hillary. It just shows how vacant the left is these days in terms of morality. She is, I think, very clearly, the most corrupt politician on the American scene today. Significantly more so than some other Dems, Senators Torticelli, Corzine, and Reid. Corzine may have beaten her in total amount scammed, but his reign of corruption was nowhere as long or sordid. At a minimum, we can look back to the $99k in cattle future profits garnered while she was pregnant with Chelsea. That was obvious enough a bribe by one of the biggest companies in the state her husband was running at the time. She should have done jail time for her role in the Whitewater mess, but didn't because of her husband's position. And, more recently, she appears to have sold American foreign policy for cash for her husband's speeches and to the foundation that now bears both of their names (plus that of their daughter). We are talking essentially hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent most likely to buy influence and change American policy in favor of those giving the money. The level of corruption almost beggars belief. Imagine a Hillary Presidency - would the Clinton family finally make it into the billionaire category? Make the Forbes 500? As Sec. of State, she could only sell foreign policy for personal (and family) gain. Imagine her being able to sell the entire federal govt.
And, then, ask yourself why anyone with a modicum of honesty and character would vote for this woman, even for dogcatcher.
Bruce Hayden wrote:
"And, then, ask yourself why anyone with a modicum of honesty and character would vote for this woman, even for dogcatcher."
Because they ache for an aristocracy, Bruce Hayden. They want to bend the knee to a social superior, and they will accept Hillary as a social superior, but not some jumped-up bourgeois like Cruz, Rubio, or Trump. They will only bend the knee to an idealized version of their self.
@wildswan:It's an absolute fact that fundamentalist Christians were the leaders of opposition to slavery.
And among the leaders of supporters of slavery. The Bible, after all, contains not one word condemning slavery. Not saying Christians are bad people, just saying that history is what it is and there is not an issue that has only villains on one side.
Slavery in the 19th century became the most critical moral issue dividing Baptists in the United States. Struggling to gain a foothold in the South, after the American Revolution, the next generation of Baptist preachers accommodated themselves to the leadership of southern society. Rather than challenging the gentry on slavery and urging manumission (as did the Quakers and Methodists), they began to interpret the Bible as supporting the practice of slavery (see Slavery in the Bible) and encouraged good paternalistic practices by slaveholders. They preached to slaves to accept their places and obey their masters. In the two decades after the Revolution during the Second Great Awakening, Baptist preachers abandoned their pleas that slaves be manumitted.
After first attracting yeomen farmers and common planters, in the nineteenth century, the Baptists began to attract major planters among the elite. While the Baptists welcomed slaves and free blacks as members, whites controlled leadership of the churches, their preaching supported slavery, and blacks were usually segregated in seating.
@Bruce Hayden:We are talking essentially hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent most likely to buy influence and change American policy in favor of those giving the money.
I am 100% certain that the Clintons are not even honest enough to be bought. I am 100% certain that money was given to them in the hope of buying influence, and 100% certain that the Clintons went ahead and did whatever it was they intended all along.
Hah! Turns out women may not be as gullible as Hillary thinks they are.
Actually, I thought they were that gullible too.
"You mean the history of how the Republicans finally started winning elections in the South after 1968? Sure, go and tell me about how that happened."
I'll tell you how it happened--southerners had less influence over a Democratic party that became more dominated by liberals and identified with civil rights. However, the GOP didn't make significant headway in the South until much later when the GOP became a more solidly conservative party and the Dems became more solidly liberal. But it wasn't a sudden "hey the Dems are too nice to blacks, let's all become Republicans" move--it was far more gradual. You'll notice Ike started making headway in "near south" states (e.g., Kentucky, VA, NC) during his landslides, and this reflected a lot of support among northern transplants. Ike had a strong civil rights record, as did Nixon at the time. But southern Democrats still dominated the region for decades, only really going extinct in the '90s, long after civil rights were still issues. And by that time it had more to do with the rise of the Christian Right and its place in the GOP, as well as the GOP stances on defense spending.
Nixon's "southern strategy" was never an appeal (blatant or otherwise) to racism. It was simply a recognition that the Dems were splitting and southern Dems might vote for the GOP at the top of the ticket as a result. That does not mean Nixon had to make any racial appeals, "dog whistle theories" notwithstanding. (Hint--"law and order" is only a racist appeal if you assume only blacks are the criminals, and that would say more about your own assumptions than the person making the statement).
Considering this is how the people on a "Nation" cruise are talking, this doesn't bode well for Clinton. And who can be surprised? We saw just what a paper tiger she was in 2008, when Obama burst that bubble. Why on earth would anyone think she somehow got better since then? Shame on the Dems for not making this a serious race.
If she somehow wins this November, it will be by default.
"the Clintons went ahead and did whatever it was they intended all along."
I think Bill selling technology to China was in return for something. We may never know the whole story. The new Chinese jet fighter looks just like the F 35.
Of course, this might have been a brilliant ploy because the F 35 is a dog but I don't think Bill knew that at the time.
"They are right they can't trust her to be consistently left. For the rest of us, that's her one redeeming feature."
I'm curious as to when she has ever uttered or acted on any "left" position.
She was a Goldwater girl growing up, and she has always been one, (except she lacks Goldwater's humanity and integrity).
Gabriel - The Clintons appear to me to be able to keep to the terms of a quid pro quo deal. Think back to when Bill left office and issued a bunch of pardons. Quite a number of them seemed to enrich some member of the family. Most notable, of course, was Marc Rich, on the FBI's most wanted list. Paid for by various expenditures by his ex-wife to the Clintons, his library, etc.
I think that you posit too much honor with the Clinton family. I just don't see it. My impression of them is that the two of them are shameless. I would not be the least bit surprised that if and when a criminal referral is sent from the FBI to Justice, that it includes charges of public corruption, with quid pro quo deals where moneys to the Clintons (and, esp. their foundation) resulted in favorable treatment by the State department. We shall see.
"The Dems are in full fledged Socialist/Commie mode."
Hahahaha! The Dems are merely less obviously--but no less--abject servants of Wall Street and the plutocratic owners of our country. Saying "socialist/commie mode" is like saying "ooga-booga" or "Raaarrrggghhh!" It is word salad meant to scare children and emotionally or mentally impaired adults.
Cookie: "Saying "socialist/commie mode" is like saying "ooga-booga" or "Raaarrrggghhh!" It is word salad meant to scare children and emotionally or mentally impaired adults"
Certainly no worse than dangling an "October Surprise" claim before any standard issue mentally-impaired lefty.
"October Surprise" = ooga-booga!!!
Brando: Nixon's "southern strategy" was never an appeal (blatant or otherwise) to racism. It was simply a recognition that the Dems were splitting and southern Dems might vote for the GOP at the top of the ticket as a result. That does not mean Nixon had to make any racial appeals, "dog whistle theories" notwithstanding.
Yup. The "Southern strategy" is "racist" to exactly the same extent that appealing to the concerns of (aka pandering to) blacks, Hispanics, or Asians is "racist".
Funny how the party that is supposed to be ashamed of this strategy when it is directed at white voters is heartily encouraged - by their own advisors as well as liberal concern trolls - to racially pander to non-whites.
"I'm curious as to when she has ever uttered or acted on any "left" position."
She did attempt (as an unelected, unappointed party) to spearhead the Clinton health care reform in the '90s, and while that flopped as with everything else she touches, it was a major leftwing initiative.
She accomplished no left wing goals, but then she accomplished really nothing. But she is certainly mouthing the standard leftwing party line now, in an attempt to cut off Sanders.
I don't believe this is because she truly is a leftist, but rather that she and her husband are and always were corrupt opportunists who saw leftism as the perfect vehicle for their power hungry goals.
"I think Bill selling technology to China was in return for something. We may never know the whole story. The new Chinese jet fighter looks just like the F 35."
One shameful part of the '90s scandals was that so many were taking up headlines that the China leaks were never fully investigated. Perhaps there was nothing there, but if there was this was much bigger than anything else Clinton was accused of (most of which involved personal corruption rather than national security).
"She did attempt (as an unelected, unappointed party) to spearhead the Clinton health care reform in the '90s, and while that flopped as with everything else she touches, it was a major leftwing initiative."
Why? Sez who? As with Obamneycare, rather than propose a simple single-payer plan, she contrived a convoluted, overly-complicated and costly proposal that was intended to keep the private health insurers involved, thereby insuring the continued flow of consumer dollars to for-profit private entities.
Take that away, though, (as you and others will continue to insist it--and Obamneycare--despite all evidence, are "left" policy initiatives), whatta ya got?
"I don't believe this is because she truly is a leftist, but rather that she and her husband are and always were corrupt opportunists who saw leftism as the perfect vehicle for their power hungry goals."
This is much closer to the truth, though I don't think either of them has ever even given lip-service to "leftist" principles; at best, they have pretended to a weak liberalism that is essentially a more genteel establishmentarianism.
"Why? Sez who? As with Obamneycare, rather than propose a simple single-payer plan, she contrived a convoluted, overly-complicated and costly proposal that was intended to keep the private health insurers involved, thereby insuring the continued flow of consumer dollars to for-profit private entities."
Well her plan never even got to the stage of proposed legislation before it was scuttled, but as a move forward it was considered a major leftist initiative. I'm sure those farther on the left of the spectrum--as I presume you are--would consider it not far enough.
But yes, besides that she really didn't have any accomplishments. The story of the Clintons has been the story of following polls and focus groups, and selling out leftists at every turn. With allies like that you people don't need Republicans.
"...but as a move forward it was considered a major leftist initiative."
"It was considered" is passive case, and doesn't demonstrate or prove the accuracy of the assumption. The notion that either Hillary-care or Obamney-care is talked about as "reform" simply reveals the bankruptcy of our political and media culture. "Reform" suggests that a problem will be ameliorated somehow, if not eradicated entirely. "Obamneycare" may make health insurance available to some who could not afford or qualify for it previously, so it is, perhaps, in the most minimal sense, a feint at "reform," but the means it does so--as would have Hillary-care--simply further cements the private health insurers--the greatest source of the failings found in hour health-care system--into the foundation of the extant system.
The basic model for Obamneycare was first put forth by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, and championed by Newt Gingrich. It's funny how a right-wing policy initiative becomes "left-wing" when it is taken up by the Democrats, ain't it?
""It was considered" is passive case, and doesn't demonstrate or prove the accuracy of the assumption. The notion that either Hillary-care or Obamney-care is talked about as "reform" simply reveals the bankruptcy of our political and media culture. "Reform" suggests that a problem will be ameliorated somehow, if not eradicated entirely. "Obamneycare" may make health insurance available to some who could not afford or qualify for it previously, so it is, perhaps, in the most minimal sense, a feint at "reform," but the means it does so--as would have Hillary-care--simply further cements the private health insurers--the greatest source of the failings found in hour health-care system--into the foundation of the extant system."
I am guilty of passive-voice, but my point still stands--from a middle of the road POV, that health care initiative was leftist--maybe not as left as you and others would have liked, but you're ignoring the right and center-right which wanted a very different sort of reform or no reform at all. That initiative, along with the tax increases, gun control law, and attempted stimulus were the only left-leaning moves by Clinton (which ended with his triangulation post 1994).
"The basic model for Obamneycare was first put forth by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, and championed by Newt Gingrich. It's funny how a right-wing policy initiative becomes "left-wing" when it is taken up by the Democrats, ain't it?"
I don't speak for Heritage or Newt, but the ACA is in many ways leftist and in many ways corporatist--whether that's "left" or "right" will depend on where the critic is coming from. Regulating what insurance plans have to cover and what employers have to provide and what individuals must buy certainly doesn't sound "free market" to me. Likewise, giving more power to existing insurers at the same time is hardly a leftist dream, so I see why the Sanders acolytes attack the ACA from the Left (not to mention that it does not actually guarantee health coverage for everyone). But that's sort of like how the Iraq War was opposed by some on the libertarian and paleo right for different reasons why it was opposed by the anti-war left. There are different avenues for attack depending on where you're coming from.
Bill and Hillary are two people that the left should never trust, because they've betrayed them and their causes repeatedly. But that does not make them right wing, either. These are people with no true ideology, just an opportunistic bent who were willing to use leftism and sometimes rightism for their ends.
It's an absolute fact that fundamentalist Christians were the leaders of opposition to slavery.
Cite it.
Cite this "absolute fact."
YH refers to "the Left that always & everywhere has it in for Christianity" and R&B calls that "Total bullshit" in the very same comment in which he sneers at the Pope as "the Supreme Celibate"
So, unless you think mandated celibacy for a leadership fixated on instruction in marital matters is a wonderful idea, then you're anti-Christian? Got it.
And unless you agree with the idea of an authoritative hierarchy for supporting infallible dogma with a supreme leader at the top, then you're also anti-Christian? I didn't know this, but thanks for the insight.
...and in the very same minute (8:56pm) in which he writes (in his next comment) of "that great Catholic Adolf Hitler".
Do you think it's a coincidence that Hitler's supporters were strongest in Austria and southern German states like Bavaria? Or that the Nazi leadership had a greater proportion of Catholics than the rest of the country?
Do you think it's a coincidence that 90% of concentration camp guards were Catholic? Or that their church donations were deducted automatically by the Nazis from their pay?
Do you think it's a coincidence that Hitler writes admiringly of Jesus in Mein Kampf mostly when it comes to championing the idea of triumphalist conflict against his Jewish co-nationalists? That he sees Jesus as a positive figure only insofar as he can be seen as a figure for denouncing Jews?
Or that Hitler was as obsessed with purity as he was? Or with "race" - especially that of the Jews? A concept that was introduced to humanity by the Church 450 years earlier during the Inquisition?
Learn your history, Mr. "non-bigot".
It appears that Leftie bigot R&B "has it in for" at least two very large section of Christianity: fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Only "traditionalist", Mel Gibson-type Roman Catholics - who probably don't make up more than a 3rd of them. The rest are all way too enthralled with an institution that is inevitably corrupting - because of the authority it demands to command, but they are not bad people. Just decent or unobtrusive, much like the majority of the populace living under Soviet tyranny.
It's also amusing how he urges his opponents to show more "Christian humility" while wallowing in the most repulsive arrogance and obnoxiousness himself.
Maybe if you were a less prideful person you wouldn't find well-supported criticisms to be "arrogant" or "obnoxious".
Hint: Faith and Hope may (may!) be unnecessary for non-Christians, but Charity, Humility, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and Wisdom are virtues that anyone of any religion, or no religion, should try to practice.
And as the one pretending to not only defend Christianity here - but to speak for it, how are you setting that example?
I suspect the answer to that won't be forthcoming with any responses to my challenges above.
Hmmmm. The unnamable troll whose comments are always deleted has been calling people 'fag' on another thread. That offends me. According to R&B logic, that makes me gay. Apparently he can't handle the concept that anyone else might object to mistreatment of a group to which one does not belong.
I have said nothing here to imply that I'm Catholic myself, and haven't set foot in any church in years, nor do I claim to "speak for" Catholicism except in so far as any decent person will want to dispute obviously bigoted misrepresentations of the truth about any religion.
Do I think it's a coincidence that R&B can't be bothered to link to any source for nine-tenths of his ignorant slanders? No, I do not.
Do I think it's a coincidence that he claims (in his only linked statement) that 'purity of blood' was invented in Spain by the Inquisition when similar ideas are found throughout human history? One well-known example: in ancient Athens, you could not be a citizen unless every ancestor on both sides was an Athenian citizen. Resident aliens ('metics'), even those who were proven to be 63/64ths Athenian blood, whose families had lived in Athens for 6, 8, or 10 generations, still could not vote and had to pay special taxes. Sounds a lot like 'pureness of blood' to me. I have read that, until very recently, ethnic Koreans whose families had lived in Japan for 4, 5, 6 generations still had to register with the police once a year just because of their ancestry. Again, sounds a lot like 'pureness of blood' to me.
Do I think it's a coincidence that he thinks Mel Gibson represents up to 1/3 of Catholics when he doesn't represent even 0.1%? No, I do not.
Do I think it's a coincidence that R&B claims that being Catholic is like living under "Soviet tyranny", as if the Pope will hunt you down with guns and dogs if you don't show up for Mass on Sunday? No, I do not. He really is that ignorant.
It's a clever way to feel smugly superior: if Catholics are all idiots, and only Catholics object to you saying so, then obviously you're right! I don't know what logical fallacy that is, but it is a logical fallacy.
Post a Comment