Rick Perry only just announced his presidential run Saturday, but out here in the blue-blue City of Angels I am already detecting severe signs of PDS — Perry Derangement Syndrome.
Usually it goes like this: Okay, the economy is a little better in Texas than it is here (of course that’s the oil companies), but why does he have to be sooooo religious? What’s with all this Christ business all the time?
Most of this comes from liberal christians and jews (lower case deliberate) for whom public displays of faith are considered vulgar, even suspect. An Elmer Gantry lurks around every corner.
For the jews…okay Jews (I made my point)… their age-old knee-jerk response to evangelicals is heavily at play. This attitude is so outdated as to be laughable, but it is so ingrained in their psyches that these Jews have lost the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies. Even a cursory Google search reveals that Rick Perry is one of the greatest supporters of Israel ever to run for high office in this country. Of course, it’s quite possible that many of these Jews don’t care about that. But they should.
Nevertheless, who am I to talk? As the title of this essay indicates, I am an agnostic.
That may be one of the few things I share with the incumbent president since it’s hard to believe that he is even remotely devout. Recent liberal Democrats, Clinton and Obama, have a kind of wink-wink relationship with religion, largely attending church for political purposes. This is particularly true of Obama who, as we all know, rarely attends now, but spent two decades in the fold of the execrable race-hustler Jeremiah Wright, a man who would make Elmer Gantry blush. If his allegiance to the reverend wasn’t for political purposes, what was it? Let’s hope it was anyway. If he looked to Wright for spiritual guidance, Obama is suffering from some kind of delusional psychosis.
So what this agnostic observes is a general atmosphere of religious phoniness — a baseline hypocrisy — on the liberal side and what is often genuine religious faith on the conservative side. (Not all, of course. A number of libertarians are agnostic.).
Frankly, I prefer honesty. So I respect Perry for his faith. And, again as we all know, this country was founded on bedrock principles of religious tolerance, which some modern liberals tend to forget includes people who actually believe in God. Personally, I admire Perry’s belief, even envy it to some extent, because I am reaching the point in life at which I would be delighted if someone could convince me of an afterlife.
I salute you for this insightful column. I am not an agnostic, but rather a believing Jew who rejoices at the prospect, of good relations with Israel after what will be four deplorable years of bowing to Saudi Kings and dissing the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Israel, America’s only ally in the Middle East, and, at this rate, in the world.
Equally, I rejoice in Gov. Perry’s entry into the race because of his obvious love of his country and his enormous success in bringing jobs to Texas and balancing its state budget. I’m also greatly impressed by his splendid educational policies. I find him an extremely fine counterweight to Obama.
Not since John Kennedy raided the Ivy League have so many clueless academics been producing counter-productive memoranda that have resulted, as we can all see this time, in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
It is my deepest hope that Perry can unite a coalition of everyone from the Evangelical Christians to sensible Jews to sensible people of all religions, and of no religion, to gather together to oust this pompous anti-American from the White House as soon as possible.
Perry is our last best hope to make Obama a one-termer. Let’s get The One out on the international lecture circuit as soon as possible and get him out of the business of ruining our government and our great land.
I’ve never understood why Atheists and agnostics get nervous around openly Christian politicians.
I, personally, worry a lot more about the liberals taking away my right to attend church much more than I worry that some Christian right-winger will force me to go to church.
I am an atheist. Have been for years but I am also a big supporter of freedom of religion. I think a lot of people on both sides have forgotten what the First Amendment says. It’s not Freedom FROM religion, it’s Freedom OF religion. If I don’t want to go to church, that’s my choice. If you choose to go to church, that’s your choice. What church you go to, that, also, is your choice.
My unspoken contract with the rest of the world is “I won’t preach my choices at you, if you don’t preach your choices at me.” I don’t like being lectured at and I don’t lecture others. I love to debate but I try to stay away from religion. There’s no way to win that debate with a true believer.
A wish of “Merry Christmas” or “God Bless you” won’t hurt anyone and “In God we Trust” on the money certainly won’t do me any harm.
As long as we have people who believe in God serving in our government, we’re going to have God in our government. Period!
“I’ve never understood why Atheists and agnostics get nervous around openly Christian politicians.”
I think I can give something of answer to that. There are two basic reasons, I suppose, that atheists and agnostics get nervous, and both are somewhat justified. The first is that the very religious historically have tried to impose their sectarian morality on others when they gain power. Dancing has been banned in the past, or the birth control pill, or ‘racy movies’ (“The Moon is Blue”, for crying out loud???), or pop music, or, or, or. As the bumpersticker says, “Keep your church out of my crotch.”
The second is that the very religious will often deny reality or (worse yet) ACT on beliefs despite reality. Arguing that men and dinosaurs coexisted, or that President Bush could look into Putin’s eyes and “see his soul.” is incredibly disquieting. And since they also cannot agree with EACH OTHER on lots of stuff – polygamy, speaking in tongues, snake handling, faith healing – and even go so far as to always be saying that so and so isn’t a REAL Christian, it frankly makes them seem at best inconsistent and at worst ridiculous.
I have a great deal of respect for most religious folks and for the civilizing aspects of religion, but I also have a fear and horror of the damage it has done and could do again. I would never, NEVER vote for an ordained clergyman of any faith. I want an elected official’s first concern and allegiance to be the secular law of the land. We as mere mortals created our Constitution and subsequent laws, and can argue and implement them, without worrying about properly interpreting the unchanging and ineffable law of a deity. My answer to WWJD is to not toss in my personal two cents ans somehow rationalize that THAT is also God’s opinion.
Why do the nonreligious get nervous, because, for whatever reasons you choose to identify, a heckuva lot of stupidity and evil is done in the name of religion. And the people doing it are convinced it’s what God wants them to do. Damn right, that makes me nervous.
That said, any conservative that can walk upright is better than the guy we have now. I’ll trust to the system and Congress to prevent the advent of a theocracy, but I’d still prefer the guy/gal loved the Constitution more than they loved their bible. We can AMEND the Constitution when we see the need. It’s harder to pull that off with Leviticus.
You can say much the same thing about secular ideologies like Communism or even American liberalism, what’s rational about Leftist secular ideology, it’s much like a bizarre religious cult. I agree with Mr Simon, I don’t always agree with the positions held by such as Perry but I’ll take him over Obama & his ilk any day.
Oh, absolutely! I will always take the right over the left, and extremism is never spiffy. But the thing about personality cults, or totalitarianism, or whatever the hell the lefties agree with this past Thursday, is that those views (however religiously agreed upon TODAY) can be changed. The left told us we would all freeze back in the 60s due to global cooling. Now they’re wrong about warming. But religious views based on Scripture are meant to be eternal. Thus, “wrong-headed” views (and remember, they are only wrong-headed because a lot of agree they are) are almost impossible to shift.
It was only a couple of years ago that Mel Gibson released a high-tech passion play that made a zillion bucks. It was just as antisemitic as the ones they used to do in the medieval period, but the world still ran out to see it. The nutjob in Florida burns books. Before anyone calls these isolated incidents, may I remind readers that many Americans, including a large percentage of the people commenting on this very site, think something as utterly demonstrated to be true as evolution is false. It is still a common belief that homosexuality is an acquired behavior, despite the fact that NO reputable scientist says so. Someone reading this may even chime in with a comment (usually citing scripture) accepting these ideas. And I am meant to respect this foolishness merely because it has a large following among the devout? So did slavery and the Divine Right of kings, once.
Fiscal conservatism is excellent. Social conservatism (inasmuch as it promotes “decency” and “moral behavior”) is also good, but the question is why the religious make atheist and agnostic conservatives nervous. It IS possible to be a rock-ribbed conservative and not be religious. I don’t want to live in a theocracy wherein a select few interpret holy writ for the rest of us, be that writ scripture, the works of Marx, or any other source. The closest I want to be to “the final Word” is the US Constitution, and we’ve already amended that thing 27 times. Deeply religious people with lots of power make me nervous, and they should probably make YOU nervous too. They’re better than hippies, but they both bear watching and keeping in check, else the rest of are gonna start losing freedoms.
I agree with you but have a question re your statement about evolution: As originally posed by Ann Coulter, “If man evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?”
Always puzzled me.
Rambam1776,
Very smart reply to a very smart article. Kudos to you and Roger both.
To Fritzthecat, Man did not evolve from monkeys. Man evolved from an ancestor common to it and two species of apes, the chimpanzee and the bonobo. This ancestor lived about 7 million years ago.
It is mistaken to think that evolution simply replaces once species with another on some enormous ladder of life. We are part of a heavily branched tree of life. An ancestor species splits into two species or more. Those species in turn may also split. Along the way species die out.
Our common ancestor could be alive today. It just happens it is not.
Whatever the truth of evolution, your assertion that “No reputable scientist” disputes it, is an argument from authority, in this respect no different from a Catholic’s asserting the Church Fathers as his authority.
The truth of whether species evolve is an empirical question. That is what can supposedly be either verified or disproved by investigation. The explanatory hypothesis, with its reliance on randomness, however, is something much more conjectural. Perhaps not as conjectural as the images in the Book of Genesis, but a mental construct nevertheless. Stubborn insistence upon it is not all that different in psychological quality from stubborn belief in the doctrine of original sin. Each is a subject that separates the faithful from the infidel, only to become a bone of wrangling contention or a rally-flag to indicate whose side you are on in the sandlot battle of politics.
It would be better if politicians grounded their rhetoric first in the Constitution, for regardless of to what extent this is or was a (Judeo-)Christian nation, it is–or was–a constitutional republic. But Perry’s love of America, for all his political persona, does seem genuine. I think that all conservatives and most libertarians will prefer his enthusiasms to Obama’s cold and cavalier preference for socialism and transnationalism.
“It is still a common belief that homosexuality is an acquired behavior, despite the fact that NO reputable scientist says so.”
Uh, no. Robert L. Spitzer was the professor of psychiatry who led the effort to get homosexuality as a psychological disorder removed from DSM-III. And yet, in 2003, Archives of Sexual Behavior published a paper by Spitzer in which he acknowledged that about half of homosexuals who underwent reorientation therapy were successful in changing not just their behavior, but their sexual orientation: what turned them on.
There is also a bit of published work the last few years demonstrating especially for women, sexual orientation is relatively plastic: it can change.
As GK Chesterton astutely observed, those who quit believing in God, must believe in something. Environmentalists, anyone? Or social justice? Or unions?
Well, speaking as an atheist, I have to disagree about how much the religious control our lives. I suppose it’s a nice fantasy, and perhaps may have happened in the past, but Christianity hasn’t done much damage to most folks lately. It hasn’t managed to stop 1.4 million abortions a year, for example. Nor does anyone have any trouble seeing movies like “The Moon is Blue” now, or even back when it was released, or for that matter any trouble seeing any kind of horrid trash anyone wants to watch. I don’t find that life is much improved by all this freedom from alleged Christian meddling, frankly. I’d prefer the rabble had a good Pope of some kind, telling them how to behave, rather than behaving in their present feral fashion, wouldn’t you? Back when everyone went to church, London wasn’t burning, unless they were being bombed by Germans or something.
The idea of some “American Taliban”-type Christians causing trouble is a bit silly in my experience. I’ve been an atheist for years in America, and had no problems. I couldn’t enjoy the same experience in a Muslim country, believe me — they’re not known for the tolerance you find in traditionally Christian countries. I’d rather be an atheist in a Christian country than in, say, Iran.
I’m with the original commenter: I don’t understand how someone who understands that there is nothing to the beliefs they are confronted with being threatened by those same meaningless beliefs. In short, if it doesn’t exist, why are you threatened by it? Live and let live, as the Christians say.
Also I don’t understand Mr. Simon’s discomfort with people like Perry talking about what they find important to themselves. I want to know about those people, and if religion is an important part of their lives, that’s important information, particularly about political candidates.
The first is that the very religious historically have tried to impose their sectarian morality on others when they gain power.
So have the very irreligious — and in far worse ways. Where have you been for the last 30 years? You seem to have missed all the political correctness and speech codes that the atheist left has put in place in many institutions. They’ve even managed to get courts to recognize “repressed memory syndrome” and accept the claim that children cannot be doubted when claiming sexual abuse, creating Kafkaesque situations against which a defense is almost impossible.
The second is that the very religious will often deny reality or (worse yet) ACT on beliefs despite reality.
Yeah, like “we must ban cars because the polar bears are drowning (not) That’s not Sarah Palin’s view, friend. Or Perry’s.
To give you some historical context about which side tends to be delusional, Freud and Marx — both of whom have been the cause of decades of social destruction and both of whom have been entirely discredited — were both outspokenly anti-religious.
It is not the atheist who should be afraid of the religious.
We should always be afraid of the possibility that people with absurd ideologies will get too much power. People who believe the Earth is 6000 years old, people who believe that Communism can be great without Stalin or Pol Pot or Mao or whoever, people who believe that Ayn Rand was a great thinker, etc.
People who believe the Earth is 6000 years old,
If you think about it, that is far less ridiculous and infinitely less dangerous viewpoint than the belief that love is just a mere chemical reaction created by evolutionary forces to provide an competitive advantage for raising offspring.
And what terrible things is someone who believes the earth is 6000 years old going to do, pray tell? He will try and fail to incorporate it in public school curriculum. And that’s about it. Believing Genesis is literally true is not in itself going to lead anyone to strangle the domestic economy with Byzantine regulations, push the entire country to the brink of insolvency, or destroy the value of the currency. The things that these agnostic liberals do when given unlimited power are actually terrifying in real life.
Likewise, what’s a devout Randian going to do? Shut down half the federal government, most likely. We should be so lucky as to have an Objectivist President.
Like Obama?
Damn, I was just trying to troll for Objectivists, I guess they’re all over at Reason or attending one of their cult meetings. Seriously, though, if a real whacko religious nutjob was President (like say, Fred Phelps), that would be really, really bad. The problem is, leftist reactionaries pretend that every American who responds in a survey that they don’t “believe in natural selection” is some kind of crazy theocrat who wants to bomb abortion clinics and subject homosexuals to the Comfy Chair, and there is no way in H-E double hockeystixxx that a Christian religious looney could become Prez, given the fact that our venerable media would report on said insanity quite assiduously, and Americans won’t elect RELIGIOUS loons to powerful positions. I know it’s fun for people who congratulate themselves on being “freethinkers” to live in a fantasy world where Dubya OHMYDAWKINZ HIS INVISIBLE FRIEND TOLD HIM HE HAD A CALLING 2 BE PRESIDENT LAWLZ is the same as Torquemada, but it ain’t reality. Unfortunately, we the electorate are happy to vote for foreign policy and economic whackjobs (see Pelosi, Nancy and Obama, Barack). It is perhaps amusing that certain individuals are outraged over the Bachmann homosexual curing camps, but are either ignorant of or don’t seem to care about a certain chickens-coming-home-to-roost pastor SINCE WE ALL KNOW THAT OBAMA IS REALLY AN AGNOSTIC AND HE JUST HAS TO SAY HE’S A CHRISTIAN TO GET ALL YOU DUMMY AMERICANS TO VOTE FOR HIM BECAUSE YOU’RE “PRIMITIVE THINKERS”, or whatever it is that doctrinaire “New” atheists babble to each other in their online dungeons (UNICORNS = GOD = FAIRYTALES = JESUS DONTCHA KNOW?????). My amusement is grim.
Two wrongs never, ever make a right. The excuse that “they do it to” is no better than “at least we aren’t as bad as them”. This country was founded by people who believe in self determination, not government imposed personal behaviors.
Horsepucky! At the time the Constitution was written the church community was a huge party of everyone’s lives. There was a code of behavior that was reinforced everywhere, in all aspects of life and if anyone broke it they paid a heavy social price. Consequences kept society polite regardless of a person’s private views. One only needs to look at the moral decay in every western country to see the correlating societal decay resulting in activities such as the riots in Great Britain and the flash mobs here in the US. Why, I can’t even stand to go to the mall anymore because it looks like a soft porn exibition with all the provocative posters! I grew up during a time when a woman’s bra undergarments were not even shown on a human being – but on a manakin. Jane Russel used to wear a bra on the outside of her clothing. I also remember how shocking it was to see underwear models for the first time in the 70′s. That ws the beginning and now our whole western world is one of smut.
This country was founded by people who believe in self determination, not government imposed personal behaviors.
This country was founded by people who believe that certain unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator.
@Lolly (no reply link under your post)
Your post explains why abortion, homosexuality, substance abuse, selling hardware on Sunday, God, and cow tipping are all so predominately mentioned in the Constitution. I prefer it the way it’s written rather than the way you apparently read it.
@Bill (no reply link under your post)
True the statement about the creator is in the Declaration of Independence, which, unlike the Constitution, is not the law of the land. Those same very religious people specifically kept religious reference out of the Constitution with the exception of the establishment of religion clause and the date being referred to as “year of our Lord”.
What you apparently support is Perry’s move to take those rights away from the individual and give them to the federal government via changing the Constitution, the antithesis of why our nation was founded.
JustAl
What you apparently support is Perry’s move to take those rights away from the individual and give them to the federal government
How do you figure that?
@Bill,
My apologies, I was also thinking about another post, too rushed in my break from work.
You might want to look at the laws that were in effect in every state when the Constitution was ratified. The statutes criminalized adultery, extramarital and premarital sex, and homosexuality (still a capital crime in most states). Many states still had established churches (government taxed the population to support one particular denomination). The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 directed the legislature to pass mandatory church attendance laws.
You want to try again?
@Charles,
Thanks for once again reinforcing my argument that these are not, and never were Federal issues. Back to the tenth amendment, no, not the ninth. The people who founded the states and wrote those Constitutions are not the same people who founded the country although I admit there is overlap in the subsets.
What nonsense. Your problem is that you think in the liberal way in which every degraded act under the sun is now a “right.” My point was merely that at the time of the founding most people were church goers who held to a code of conduct long since gone in this country. Moral decay is a result of a lack of respect for your fellow man.
Regardless, from what I’ve heard, Perry is a libertarian (as am I) who believes in states right regarding most “moral” issues of the day, including abortion and gay marriage.
@lolly,
So, to re-cap. You say you are a Libertarian, yet people should only have the rights to do things you think are appropriate. You say you are a Christian, yet you want to prevent what you consider “sins” with laws rather than reason or faith. So much for the free will I guess.
“JustAl
@lolly,
So, to re-cap. You say you are a Libertarian, yet people should only have the rights to do things you think are appropriate. You say you are a Christian, yet you want to prevent what you consider “sins” with laws rather than reason or faith. So much for the free will I guess”
I said none of the things you just wrote. I very much apoligize. I mistook you for someone who could read and could comprehend what you read. You have my sympathies.
Wow. You are referring to social standards not theological stance. Society at large dictates mores and norms. Churches debate theology. The atheist and agnostics have moral standards too.
I just read all of the Federalist papers and found only two references to God, one to “the Almighty” and the other to “nature’s God.” The Constitution, even before it was amended with the Bill of Rights, was an entirely scientific, secular document. The Federalist argued against the militarily and economically vulnerable, localist, Articles of Confederation that put the new nation in danger from both European powers and internal rebellion. It instead argued for a limited government that had a national standing army, that regulated commerce, and had the power to tax (at that time, mostly through duties on manufactured goods from Europe). Remember that the Founders were Protestants and deists speaking to other Protestants, arguing for popular sovereignty, arming of the people, and individual conscience. Our country was a product of the Enlightenment, and that meant educating the voters so that they would pick representatives who fought for their interests. Not trusting unaccountable arbitrary authority, their Constitution had checks and balances, detailed minutely in the Federalist Papers.
I am in agreement with those comments that understand the difference between a theocracy and a culturally pluralist polity.
Speaking of the Constitution as a scientific document I’d like to point out that science per se is an innovation of believers – the main scientific insight is that there is one law that holds everywhere and all the time, and in turn that flows out of the idea of there being one Creator. That’s why Europe was first to be so good at it. And today, you see the process going the other way – as science lets go of God, it can no longer say exactly what it is seeking, “truth” doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean “what God sees.” Scientists then go after consensus, and … we all know how that’s turning out. There’s no science without faith. It can’t hang on.
Yes, yes and yes!
Agree with all of the above. But, Independents will decide this election. And Independents recoil as if snake-bitten from the evangelical candidate who insists that gays choose to be gay and can be “cured.”
Michelle Bachman is an example of someone who will cause moderates not to vote Obama, but to stay home. The thought of another 4 years, during which he will finish destroying our country, makes my lapsed Catholic head spin like someone needing an exorcism.
But sheesh, she believes the world is 6,000 years old.
I will have to have 3 glasses of wine to vote for her.
Perhaps they wish to become slaves. It’s not hard. Just give in to everything, and withold your support at just the right moment. Slavery is, after all, the default setting.
Of course, dying in misery sucks. So I guess you’re relying on the rest of us to save your butt. What if we lose?
History is replete with people who caved at the wrong moment. We remember them not. But in all the millenia, we still remember the Spartans.
You choose.
I hear what you say, but one question, however: where do we draw the line on what is a properly enforced morality and what is not? All law is an attempt to enforce morality, morality by definition is a sense of what is right and proper, and what is wrong and to be avoided. I personally would not endorse Prohibition, but it did work at its stated purpose – the incidence of drunk and disorderly conduct went down overall. If we agree that the riots in the U.K and elsewhere are a result of, in part at least, single-parent families than is traditional marriage not a thing that should be encouraged, if not enforced, by government? (That’s a complicated issue, I know, and not the particular point here, per se). Seems to me that people complain about others “enforcing their morality” mostly when they don’t agree with the importance to society of doing so; otherwise it’s simply a natural thing to do.
When you have a person who is publicly committed to a religious worldview as is Mr. Perry (or at least he seems to be) then at least you know what he will do and have a standard by which to judge him in his office. You might not agree with everything that he says, but you will know where he stands. Even a committed atheist at least has a fixed set of moral principles to point to. It’s the people that have no such standard at all, that are flexible on all points, that you have to worry about.
There’s no way to win that debate with a true believer.
If you can’t win the debate you are probably wrong
I think that Atheism has become a religion for many. And it seems to be a particularly intolerant religion. They can not stand to have any other religion but their own even exist.
This does not apply to you. But, it does to many Atheists.
Atheists perhaps. Agnostics likely not so much. My differentiation is that an atheist doesn’t believe in god and opposes religion. An agnostic doesn’t believe in god but doesn’t give a sh&t if others do.
Exactly. A far morte cogent position.
Making “no religion”, the religion, is just stupid.
“I’ve never understood why Atheists and agnostics get nervous around openly Christian politicians. ”
Right now, the nervousness is mostly coming from left-wing atheists. A right-wing atheist, like John Derbyshire of National Review, doesn’t feel nervous about a Governor Perry. I’m not a Christian yet I don’t have a problem with Bachmann’s or Perry’s faith either.
Left-wing atheists have a socio-political agenda–unrestricted abortion on demand and legal gay marriage across the nation–that they know that religion is opposing. And that’s why they see it as an obstacle to be swept aside.
Notice that the Left didn’t feel that way about religion back when many religious people were engaged in left-wing causes: REVEREND Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights marches, Father Daniel Berrigan and his antipoverty activism and antiwar activism, etc. Nobody said Berrigan should be thrown out of the antiwar movement because he had been a priest. But as soon as the Left adopted a social agenda that put them on a collision course with religious teaching, they turned on religion and its adherents.
Many fundamentalist Christians do seem to have problems with some aspects of science, notably the Theory of Evolution. But the Left tends to overlook its own infatuation with pseudo-science, such as all the New Age nonsense, the unwarranted scares over Alar and EMF fields, and their totally irrational opposition to nuclear power while simultaneously telling us that global warming from fossil fuels will lead to catastrophe.
sinz…["I’m not a Christian yet I don’t have a problem with Bachmann’s or Perry’s faith either."]
I don’t have any problems either with their ‘religion’ but I do have a problem with why and how they publically ‘use’ religion.
Respectfully a couple more observations. When times are good and the money is flowing like champagne, Christians flow ‘from’ their churces and religion. When the times are tough, Christians flow ‘too’ their churches and country music.
Likewise, since one’s religion is not an informational criteria for voluntary abortions we really don’t have any way of knowing how many ‘claimed’ Christians use and abuse abortion procedures…but likely in equal or greater ranges of atheists and agnostics. A typical society of hypocrisy!
I’ve never understood peoples obsession with a church building. I rarely go to church (I like sleeping my weekend mornings), but I do make sure to keep up with my tithes, I pray to God in the name of His Son Jesus Christ several times a day and I read my bible everyday. My not going to church does NOT make me a hypocrit – it just means I’m anti-social.
You’re exercising your ‘religion’ in the precise manner of freedom granted to all by our constitution….within ones mind and ‘heart’ if you will. Good for you! A hypocrit is professing to believe one thing while their words and
action(s) define quite the opposite….which includes a very long list of hypocrisy in todays time among the people and the politicians.
Of great concern to me, is the congregational docrtrinal reformation among “churches” taking place and the attempt of some to use politics and the government to advance such some particular reformation efforts into societal dominance. The new wave of evangelical doctrinal reformation is of concern….to at least a few of us!
Heh.
I like Rick, but he’s already drawing some criticism that’s not so easily dismissed.
http://on.wsj.com/qk77e6
I would just like to point out that seeking spiritual advice from Wright is not the first, or worst indication that Obama suffers from delusional psychosis
I am an atheist who loves his country. Rick Perry is a Christian who loves his country.
Good enough, he has my vote.
“as we all know, this country was founded on bedrock principles of religious tolerance.”
Mr. Simon, aside from the issue at hand, I believe you have this reversed (bedrock/tolerance). Though widely held today, that is, to use “tolerance” in the intended universal acceptance of all, isn’t at all close to what it meant at that time, that glorious body.
But since you “would be delighted if someone could convince [you] of an afterlife”, a disorderly rancor for the faith tucks away the truth for one quite nicely. If one believes the lack of it doesn’t tie Providence’s hands of priority, think again.
I think Perry will handle his religious beliefs like Reagan, the Bushes, Palin, and many other conservatives in government to whom their faith wAS an important factor in shaping their political decisions, but are not about to try to convert anyone It is strange that both devout Socialists and the “elite” Republicans rant about theTV fundamentalist. citing violation of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers were not all religious but nor were they particular tolerant of non-Protestants. What they were united on was the abhorance of a government BY the CHURCH. They did not want a Pope, or a Cardinal Richeleau, or an Archbishop of Canterbury as the President’s Chief of Staff or hereditary cabinet member. No Church on the United States. They did not want any cleric to me a member of Congress just because he was a priest or pastor. That is why the wording is Church and State, not Religion and State.
Whic is why Islam should be opposed by every American. Their faith is based on the Church (Mosque) as Government and Law.
This is not particularly accurate. The Framers were very tolerant of non-Protestants, in the strict sense of the word: there was no punishment for those who did not agree. In many colonies, only Christians could hold public office, and in a few, only Protestants could hold public office. But religion was not a disqualifier from voting.
As Justice Joseph Story’s 1833 commentary on the Constitution observed:
Priests, politicians, and prostitutes – the world’s three oldest professions. Nuff said.
Prostitutes have more integrity, they perform a useful service. You shouldn’t lump them in with politicians, it’s not fair to prostitutes.
How easily the Idol chasers fall for another tarnished and cracked pot to gather around.The never ending religious pilgrimage to their latest shrine where they throw bundles of cash always leads in the same wearing results.
‘The people will labor in vain, And the nations, because of the fire;
And they shall be weary.”
Jeremiah 51:58
I am amazed at how the blind are so easily led by the devious and crafty religion of Politics.
Another hustler with a pretty face and a record of faking right and passing left and so many are gaga over him.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man.
Psalm 118:8
‘I would be delighted if someone could convince me of an afterlife’
Roger,
The majority get convinced too late because they sat on their hands instead of diligently seeking when they had all the time in the world.
And the Devil may quote scripture for his purpose. I could object to a conclusion or two here, or to the smug, self-righteous attitude it implies (people who ASSUME they know other people’s motives are usually wrong!), but let me ask this: Has this EVER worked?
In effect, this is how these scripture-laden posts always read:
ATHEIST – “I’ve read your book, and examined your ideas, and i think your are wrong, there is no God, and your book is man made.”
BELIEVER – “Well, since you reject my book, let me quote it at you non-stop in the silly belief that THAT will convince you it ISN’T false.”
If I told you that I hated the taste and smell of liver, would you demand I eat lots of liver because that would make me like it? Besides, any competent atheist could simply counter your quotes by quoting scripture that isn’t so pretty or logical, like the prohibition of wearing cloth made of two fibers, or the various rules condemning children to death. The non-believer does not care to debate scripture, as he has already rejected it. If I watched a movie and said it sucked, your asking me to watch it again and again will only REINFORCE my opinion that it sucked. I think this reveals a narrowness of vision and mind from people for whom scripture was a revelation – since it worked that way for THEM, perhaps they think it must work that way for everyone else.
Any teacher will tell you that if one method of instruction isn’t working you must try another. Personally, I am a practicing Jew, and read the Torah weekly, but I always skip posts that simply quote scripture as if that made the point. In fact, I think it simply reinforces the point I made earlier that many religious people like to state their own interpretations and then try to make it sound like God necessarily agrees with ME.
That right there is why the very religious with power make me nervous. It can and has often led to very bad things.
Good God! That is the most ignorant, poorly executed, and worst written argument I have ever subjected myself to. Not content to make your own argument and allow others to draw their own conclusions (or heaven forbid respond) you helpfully argue both sides! No time wasting for you or needless effort to understand or even hear another point of view simply tell someone you think you disagree with what they do and say.
I must say I wish I thought of this first! I could argue with people and even tell them their response. Heck, after showing them the error of their ways, I can have them contritely apologize and thank me for my wisdom.
Imagine all time I’ve wasted in court that I could have saved, “your honor they’re guilty and they agree they deserve the maximum sentence.”
There is every reason to believe that Rick Perry will behave like JFK, or Reagan, or Clinton, or Bush, or Palin, shaping their decision on their faith but not interfering with others’ or evangelizing. It is strange that the both devout socialists and the Republican “elite” are given to raging against the threat of TV style fundamentalism, citing the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers were well educated men. They differentiated religion from priesthood – the church. Not all of them were deeply religious, nor did any of them have much tolerance for beliefs other that Protestantism. They were united, however, in abhorence of church officials in government roles or political decision-making. They wanted no Pope, or Cardinal, or Archbishop, or Bishop, or Priest, or Pastor within the government. Nobody would get a seat in either body of Congress just because they were a cleric. No official Church of the U.S.A. But they hoped and trusted that members would be guided in their legislative decisions by Christian precepts. Separation of CHURCH and state, not Religion and state.
Which is why all Americans should be concerned about the inroads of Islam, whose core belief is that the Church (Mosque) must be both Government and the Law.
I’m in general agreement with Roger’s temperate column, and with your posts here @ 9 and @ 7, with regard to Perry’s, or Bachmann’s, or Palin’s, or other leading figures’ Christian faith. But regarding the legitimate concerns that you expressed in the closing remarks of your two posts, I would call your attention to this article by Pamela Geller that appeared today in American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/perrys_problematic_pals.html
I saw the front-page headline for this article, and was stunned to discover that I was seeing exactly the same conclusion to which I have come. As an agnostic, I find I prefer the company of the religious to that of most atheists (who, frankly, are being intellectually dishonest, since the existence of a creator is non-falsifiable, leaving agnosticism the only rational position for a scientifically-minded non-believer) and almost all Progressives.
Upon reading this article, I then discovered that Roger’s opinion of Perry is almost exactly the same as my own; my biggest gripe is his position on marriage, on which I suppose I must claim Libertarian leanings, as well. However, given the vanishingly small odds that any kind of constitutional amendment would ever pass defining marriage, I have no concerns about that issue, and feel that I can trust Governor Perry where it counts: Setting our nation back on course.
I used to be antagonistic toward people of faith; I may have the Left to thank for setting me straight, since their fine example showed me the error of that attitude. I find that Christians are much better company than, for example, the faithful of the Church of which AlGore is the Prophet. =^[.]^=
…most atheists (who, frankly, are being intellectually dishonest, since the existence of a creator is non-falsifiable, leaving agnosticism the only rational position for a scientifically-minded non-believer)
This is not strictly true. If you can show a valid argument for the existence of the universe that requires no god, the notion of falsifiability isn’t germane since “proof” has nothing to do with it. Instead, think in terms of what’s possible and the probabilities of what’s likely. There’s a wide swath of atheism that you might mistake for agnosticism since the conclusion of any gedankenexperiment re existence of a god results in an answer of “probably not, and who cares?” Atheism isn’t restricted at all to the notion of proof one way or another; unlike religion, atheism isn’t binary.
I classify myself as atheist although agnostics might assume I’m a fellow traveler in that I will tell you I have no proof either way. The path of man and science since the enlightenment has pushed all invented dieties from living in the sky (low earth orbit perhaps) and having a direct and observable claimed daily influence to the far fringes of the observable universe and the area of just “faith”, so even if god DID exist it’s simply too alien and surreal to have any real meaning. Maybe “apathist” is a better term.
Aside from this point I’m hearing you although I tend to vote with the right wing only in that the right has the tendency to have a better grasp on foreign policy (good for business) and business related issues (e.g. regulation.) The “conservative” blathering is just white noise.
I can understand your approach, however I view my Atheism differently than many believers – and many Atheists as well. By my definition: I do not believe in a magical God or Goddess, nor do I worship any deity. Laws are man-made, by the societies that imagine them. It really is that simple. It does not mean there can’t be another explanation, but that, rationally, I do not believe their god(s) to be the how.
Agnostic is uncertain and entertaining.
No qualms. I am an Atheist.
As others have suggested, yes, I do see my Atheism as a religion; non-god…surely, because it has from time to time become more than an afterthought. Especially when someone suggests (unfriendly assertion, -motivated legal intrusion) other faith-based belief systems be superior to mine, and that they should rule me by their esteemed limitations.
I do not have a problem with the God-fearing, only those who, among them, would insist that their practice be the sole allowed…that moral code only belongs to those who glean their instruction from holy scripture.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Everyone (including me) thinks themselves more correct.
Yes, religious folks have gone way too far in the past, but I think today’s Evangelicals are really starting to get the right balance between God and State. We are really beginning to embrace small government. There are those whose instincts are to force certain things, but they are countered by those who believe that you cannot force these things. Fundamentalist Christians are becoming self-policing. This is a very good development.
I am very Conservative, but I also embrace a good bit of Libertarianism. I think this is the right balance, in order to avoid trying to force things.
Would I like to see abortion banned? Absolutely. Can such be forced now, or must be bring people to it? I think we have to have people choose it themselves. I would like to see a gay marriage ban, via Constitutional Amendment. Cannot force that. It must be chosen. I think if we use a lighter touch, we will get results. Nothing else will work in this country.
God does not force us to believe in Him. We have to choose Him. he gives us free will, and all he wants from us is for us to give it back freely. He wants us to choose Him. He doesn’t want our faith to be forced. Force is what Islam does, not Christianity.
Mr. Radosh, yes, there is an Afterlife. Just seek out the miracles, if you really need proof. Or just see how much happier devout people really are. Palin is a really excellent example of this. She just glows from within. Reagan had that inner beauty which shined forth, too. Cain has some of it, too. It is also part of Huckabee’s appeal.
Go to the Hot Air video of Palin “Stealing the spotlight” in IA. Watch the long video. She radiates. Devotion to God does this. It is a reflection of Him. Moses had it big-time when he came down from the mountain. Agnostics, you CAN know God.
A well stated and reasonable position.
Very well put. As a Christian I share your libertarian views – let people vote which laws they want in place and those who disagree can vote with their feet. My problem is when people are not allowed to vote on such issues and legislatures enact laws by fiat. This was done on the federal level with regards to abortion which should have been a states rights issue and now with gay-marriage. Gay-marriage is also a states rights issue but legislators are refusing to let their people determine what kind of society they are to live in. People should have that right.
All three of you have expressed a desire for a ban on abortion. A strongly held religious view, I would think. But I have a question for all three of you. There are those within the religious right movement who want to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut after Roe v. Wade is gone. Where do you each stand on Griswold v. Connecticut?
As much as I find the law that Connecticut passed abhorrent, Griswold was wrongly decided. It found a right to privacy that was simply not part of the Constitution.
So, are you saying that the Constitution is an all inclusive list of citizen’s rights? The tenth amendment covers more than just states’ rights you know.
I think you meant the Ninth Amendment, not the Tenth Amendment.
Determining what rights are protected by the Ninth Amendment requires looking at what was considered a right in 1789. You might well be able to make a case that the right of a married couple to use contraception was recognized in 1789 by the absence of laws prohibiting such. But that’s not a general right to privacy. That’s why I say Griswold was wrongly decided.
Nope, I’m talking about the tenth, which reinforces the fact that the only limitations placed on rights by the Constitution are the rights of the Federal government, with all others being the domain of the states. . . and the people.
What rights are reserved to the people, then? If something was a criminal act in every state in 1789, it is hard to imagine that this was therefore a right reserved to the people.
I find this an interesting point of discussion.
Clayton, I have no doubt you know very much more than I about constitutional law, so a question to you.
Are our rights limited to only those specifically listed in the constitution? Did the founders consider the bill of rights to be comprehensive? Wasn’t the main argument, against including a bill of rights in the constitution, that it would be interpreted as precluding anything not listed? Does the constitution give us our rights or do our rights exist inherent to our humanity, independent and transcendent of human institutions?
You are correct that one of the arguments against a Bill of Rights was that leaving anything out might be misinterpreted as meaning that right was not present. Clearly, the absence of a right explicitly listed does not mean that no such right was understood to exist in 1789.
But when something is a criminal offense in EVERY state in 1789, can that actually be called a right? As an example, homosexual sex was a felony in every state in 1789–a capital crime still in many of these states. How then can this be a human right? To my knowledge, adultery and extramarital sex was a criminal offense in every state in 1789 (although I have not checked all the statute books for this one).
If some action was lawful in every state in 1789, you could make an argument that, absent other evidence, there is a presumption that there was such a right protected by the Bill of Rights. But if something is a criminal offense in many states or all states, it is hard to imagine that anyone in 1789 thought that this was a huamn right.
I said his position was well written and reasonable, not that I agreed with it in detail.
I do think abortions should have restrictions, minors must have the consent of their parents, none performed after the first trimester (except in the case of certain politicians in which case it should be the 8th decade), no government payment. But, more importantly, I think this issue needs to be handled at the state level.
It should be overturned as well. I’d think that the 4th amendment would protect people’s privacy. In any case, what I believe regarding abortion isn’t germain to the discussion. I believe it is a states rights issue. If you want it and the majority of the state do not, then you have the right to vote with your feet. I, myself, have journeyed 3,000 miles to find the state that holds to my values. I am very happy here and would move again if the state turned commie.
There is no contradiction between advocating federalism as the Constitution defines it and advocating a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion or to retain the traditional definition of marriage. Just as Article One gives certain powers to the federal government and others to the States, the concept of federalism was not destroyed by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which no longer allowed the States the option of permitting involuntary servitude and gave congress the power to make laws enforcing the ban.
The issues of marriage and abortion in themselves do not apply the the doctrine of federalism. How they are handled does. Let Congress legislate on them and federalism is attacked. Pass a Constitutional amendment and ipso facto they are treated constitutionally.
A careful person will want to distinguish between libertarian arguments on these matters and constitutional.
Correction: Article One gives certain powers to Congress. The Tenth Amendment reserves other powers to the States or to the People.
Marc…Well stated position! The Great New society we call America was founded politically and socially, upon a very delicate ‘balance’ between that of theocracy and anarchism. This great new America was, from square one to present, a “compromise for balance” between a church state and a free state. The founders, I’m afraid, placed far to much ‘trust’ in what individual responsibility towards the delicate balance of the new society would be going forward, but nonetheless, left it to the people to decide their own fate.
When economic times and excess are good, the people turn away from their churches and religion and shift more to the side of anarchism. When the champagne stops flowing the people return to their churches and religion and away from anarchism. A hypocritical society vascilating from one extreme to another and I don’t think thats what the founders had envisioned. Thats why the nation is a mess! A failing of individual and societal responsibility to that delicate balance the founders provided to us and our nation.
“Cain has it too”
An unfortunate phrasing for a post praising religious belief! Considering the unhappy position of Cain in the Bible, I think inserting the man’s first name would have helped. That would make him “Abel” to stand apart from the scriptural villain.
Sorry for the tangent, but that made me giggle.
Perry’s Problematic Pals
by Pamela Geller
“It was bad enough that Bush was close to Norquist. There is no way the GOP can again nominate anyone who is so completely and utterly clueless about the fifth column within. Ten years after 9/11, can’t we nominate someone who can speak to the ominous threat posed by Islamic supremacists in this country?
Rick Perry must not be the Republican nominee. Rick Perry must not be President. Have we not had enough of this systemic sedition?”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/perrys_problematic_pals.html
Norquist in general is a problem for Republicans. On domestic issues, he’s good; on foreign policy, especially Israel, he’s a lunatic and a bigot.
Kind of like Ron Paul without the cult following.
George Bush and Rick Perry are very far from being pals. The Bushes, Rove, et al despise Perry. Rick Perry is everything that George Bush claimed to be. Not perfect by any means but a real Conservative not a pretend one. Pamela Geller needs to do some more research and be a little less quick on the draw.
Pamela Geller did some very important research here. You’re the one too quick on the draw.
CAIR like Perry and Perry like Shira Law. Http://topics.dallasnews.com/article/0fn3b9gbtqaLu
The only people who’d believe a lie this stupid are stupider than the liar who posted it.
I know some people are indeed that stupid, but it’s got to be a vanishingly small percentage, and I can’t believe very many of them read Roger L. Simon’s blog or Pajamas Media. (Or can read.)
Not stupid..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Geller
As a Hindu, I believe there are Many Paths to the Mountain-top. Christians on the other hand do not and many will say so to your face so it becomes a bit too personal. I’m not nervous about Christian Politicians on the hand. They can’t afford to put off their political constituents.
Not all Christians believe as you suggest. Yes, Christ said “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except through me.” Yes, we believe it — but can we say where He is not? Indeed, wouldn’t it be a denial of both the omnipresence and justice of God to demand that He exclude good men from the reward appropriate to a justly and decently lived life, just because, for whatever reason, they never became Christians?
It’s observably the case that mutual oppression teaches mutual tolerance. We learn what Christ meant when He told us that as we judge others, so shall we be judged. And we move ahead — haltingly, with many stumbles, but nevertheless, we move ahead.
I agree with your sentiment, but do you see how it reinforces the point I made back at the top of all this? The religious will often claim that OTHER religious people don’t speak for all religious people, or claim that they aren’t REAL members of that group.
Y’all disagree with each other so much on so many issues, that it can make the non-believer nervous. If the people who claim to have talked to God (or at least get their marching orders from Him) cannot agree on key points, it leads to “issues” when they gain temporal power.
Europe’s various religious wars, anyone? Fun times.
Do genuine enthusiasts and persons of Superstition really respect those who attempt to appease them like this?
More important still, what do the non-genuine ones make of such drool?
Happy days.
Man is a superstitious beast by nature, and atheists are no exception in the slightest. Certain men will always yearn to impose theocracies … if they’re atheists, they’ll simply impose a self-deluding theocracy in all but name. Whip me such men out of politics, whatever their nominal religion!
Regardless, Perry doesn’t appear to belong in that class of fellows. And noting that garden-variety Evangelicals don’t belong to that class by definition … that’s not my idea of “appeasement.” More like “elementary sanity.” Which is always welcome in politics.
Superstition, eh? Your intolerance is showing. The whole point is that Christians really do believe in live and let live, while hard core liberal leftists do not.
Exactly wrong. The whole point of this was “why the very religious make atheists and agnostics nervous.” I don’t know where you got the idea it was anything else.
Further, I don’t think you can just blithely make a contentious claim that “Christians believe in live and let live,” for which I could offer TONS of cited refutation with little effort, and then walk away from it like anyone disagreeing with THAT was clearly nuts. In fact, that claim is so patently ridiculous as to SCREAM out to be refuted, suck as claiming day is night or water isn’t wet. How hard would it be to find historical examples of religiously motivated INTOLERANCE among Christians (or any other denomination)?
Seriously, are you kidding?
Really? How droll. You mistake people lusting for power over other people with Christianity? Do try to take a look at the early church and then get back to me, will you? Until you do ………
Mr. Simon, I expect you’ll like Perry even better if you research his position on the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He seems – so far – to be a genuine Federalist in the way the framers intended. That is, on a whole host of issues – especially social issues (gay marriage, etc), whatever his own personal beliefs might be, Perry thinks it’s not any business of the federal government to dictate what is and isn’t okay to the states. As an example, see his recent remarks on New York legalizing gay marriage (short version: he’s against gay marriage, but it’s up to the citizens of NY state whether they have it legal there or not). This may well cause him some problems with the political religious right, but it should help him with moderates.
I don’t know enough about Perry yet to ascertain if his Christianity is real or a tool to help win the White House. What I do know, however, is that a true Christian will not force his/her beliefs on anyone , and are the first to admit they fail often in their Christian life. . . .Roger, check out the writings of CS Lewis. . . and keep searching.
I grew up in the “Bible belt” and can understand how its religiosity can feel oppressive. Nothing I experienced growing up there compared with the fervor of 2008-2009 and the worship of Obama.
That being said, I read Perry’s speech and watched him give it. What is refreshing is he doesn’t claim to be perfect. He says what he believes and while he is doing so, there is no off-putting, calculated division of time and energy between two teleprompter screens. No hesitant political calculation. His words are not poll-tested, clever deceptions for what he really thinks. We know more about his belief system in a few days than we still do about The Precedent. Oh, we can piece together who Obama is from his actions but he has long ago given over his storytelling to others. Starting with his “autobiographies”.
Here is what does not bother me about Perry. He believes in the American Dream, for everybody. He thinks you stand by your friends and allies. He thinks America’s best days are ahead, if we all work hard to turn things around. He thinks power does not come from Washington D.C. but from individuals working hard and pulling together.
I don’t know if he is the perfect messenger but he has the right message. He will shake up the race for the White House and no question there are probably truck loads of crap headed his way, loaded by the MSM and funded by the unions. Let’s have the discussion that is at the heart of the debate in the country, individual freedom vs. social justice.
For what it’s worth, I’m not worried about a person who tells me what they think. I always keep a close eye on those who will not.
Far-left liberals today would be horrified to learn that president Franklin D. Roosevelt actually led the country in prayer over national radio just before D-Day, praying for victory for our troops. Think about it, one of the biggest liberals ever produced by this country and he was actually a very religious man. Horrors of horrors, how can that be? Just shows you how far gone a political party has fallen when it ridicules people of faith that much. And it also shows you just how intolerent they really are.
In my (Christan) sect, it’s almost a part of dogma to be politically liberal. A good friend of mine posted last week on her FB about a march (sorry, a “peaceful walk”) on Austin in which she was going to participate, in order to protest (I mean, “bring people’s attention to some problems with”) Perry’s impending candidacy. The walk was to take place simultaneously with a prayer breakfast? or meeting? at which Perry was speaking. A priest friend of hers commented on her post that there were plenty of things to pray for in this country today, including “that Rick Perry NOT be elected President” – and that her, the priest’s, prayer priorities were obviously not the same as Mr. Perry’s. (My eyes had already been rolling; now they were practically spinning in their sockets.)
My friend’s follow-up comment: “You’re a good priest!”
It was all I could do not to comment, “So, Blank, the fact that your priest agrees with your politics is what makes her a GOOD priest?” But in the end, of course there was no point, since the priest thinks so too.
What the priest you quoted said is exactly why churches should not be any more tax-exempt than any other political organization. Of course, a flat federal sales tax without exceptions would be the best way to take care of that.
I have to be careful of upsetting people, or causing them to just dismiss my point of view as being tedious.
The easiest way I have found to address that point of view is with a question: Can order occur spontaneously in randomness?
Just because some enemies-of-truth/idiots have played around with concepts does not mean such concepts become automatically despicable.
By order I of course do mean all and any order. Such as gravity. Or Higgs bosun, or whatever.
Until one can logically bridge the gap between randomness and order, any definitive statement about anything is a manifestation of faith, not logic.
Personally, when I could face up to that divide, events in my life led me to the Lord Jesus.
I’ve always been fond of pointing out that it was science confirmed that there was an “In the Beginning,” with the big bang. Something they are able to see with a telescope and confirm with mathematics.
I think you will find that scientists are a lot more cautious in their statements than you are, lolly.
There is no consensus as to how the forces (order) of the Big Bang came about, or what it was that exploded.
Except that it is – isn’t it? Just as the bible starts out – In the Beginning – and there it was! Make fun of me if you want, but science more often than not merely confirms what is already stated in the bible.
lolly, I realise we are basically agreeing. More or less.
Personally I believe there is a very solid logical case for the existence of God if people can just get themselves to think past their prejudices. (I think that even most people who claim to believe in God in great sincerity are actually just “hoping against hope” and their actual real faith lies in modern, secular science.)
It seems to me that a good tool for probing reality is to examine the relationship between randomness and order.
If your POV is predicated on abject ignorance of everything then it’s easy to assume that there is mere randomness which of course makes everything pure philosophical navel gazing and not scientific in the least. On the other hand reading something regarding information theory would show that what you seem to think of as randomness is anything BUT.
It’s one thing to be in awe of the nature of the universe and be boggled by the notion that it works the way it does and wonder if this somehow was the result of a design. It’s yet another to come to jesus because you don’t grasp much.
This is where my lack of respect for religious people comes from; they’re adopting jesus (or islam or whatever) for absolutely no reason outside of raw ignorance and then calling it a day, as if questing to learn more is one of those liberal sciency things: dumb and proud to be so.
Can you god fearing types at least keep things entertaining by using Wolfram’s “New Kind of Science” or equivalent to lend some REAL awe inspiring majesty based on math and science?
Not everyone has the kind of mind for this. I read the stuff, time to time. It is interesting. I am adequate with math and science. Not everyone is. I am a dummy when it comes to art, for example, and they may be dummies when it comes to science. Sometimes, all you can do is have faith. Let those who can argue do the argufying. Others may have the ability, but they kind of have lives to live.
Your standard is unfair to other people. A bit of compassion, please?
Indeed.
From your point of view I would, absolutely, leave Jesus out of it, and just explore what I know.
And consider whether order and randomness have anything in common.
You certainly do not have to look at your navel or be swept away by any sense of awe.
Religious views are a personal prerogative. The biggest problem I have is mixing it with politics. Perry’s prayer meeting detracts from his legitimacy as a piece of (in my opinion) shoddy political theater. There seem to be many who want him in office only because he’s religious, others only because he’s from TX. So it would stand to reason there are those who oppose him for the same reasons.
Perry has said the right things about smaller government, social security, medicare, etc. And the modest tort reform accomplished while he’s been in office is a good start. But he’s also done some decidedly big government things like the TTC, the HPV vaccine, and in-state tuition for illegals. I stand by my position that he has had very little to do with how TX has weathered the recession as that is a function of Constitutionally limited government here in Texas.
He’s proven he give a speech, he’s proven he can pray (and make a big show of it). I’m waiting to see if he will actually stick to his controversial (yet correct) positions on social security and medicare.
His insistence that the tenth amendment be respected also flies in the face of his call for amendments on marriage and abortion, both tenth amendment issue. So he looks pretty inconsistent to me.
The single best thing about Perry is the fact that he would put EPA on a short chain and open up drilling. Every currency in the world is on a de facto petroleum standard. The only way to get out of the debt problem is to become a net exporter of oil in my opinion.
Actually his positions on abortion, gay marriage, and the 10th Amendment are not in conflict if you pay attention. What he said is that he doesn’t believe in either abortion and gay marriage but since the US Constitution doesn’t forbid either one it is a state decision. However, since he doesn’t believe either ought to be legal the only way to outlaw them is via amending the US Constitution and thus removing those issues from the domain of the states. He is perfectly consistent.
Sorry, there is nothing consistent about preaching small government while simultaneously taking away individual and state rights to give them to the federal government. Just because you agree with him does not make his words consistent.
The single most important thing to consider changing about the Constitution is the repeal of the 17th amendment. Perry has also stated this needs to be done, but he apparently wants his version of the nanny state in place first. These are not the desires of a small government proponent.
So, wait … in order to have “small government” cred, one should reject the possibility of amending the Constitution, by Constitutionally-specified means? Because if I understand Perry correctly, he was simply saying that that’s what it would take to outlaw abortion and gay marriage across the fifty states. I’m not sure what’s controversial about that observation.
Not at all. But amending the Constitution specifically to concentrate more power in the federal government is not compatible with a desire for smaller government.
An amendment specifically excluding federal social programs from the “general welfare” clause would be a welcomed amendment that would be consistent with the goal of smaller government, as would amendments preventing prohibition type programs like the “war on drugs”, and foreign aid.
It isn’t the process of amendment that I’m questioning, it’s the specifics of his proposed amendments. But, I think you already knew that.
“there is nothing consistent about preaching small government while simultaneously taking away individual and state rights to give them to the federal government”
Al, you have a fundamental misunderstanding here. A Constitutional Amendment does not “take away States’ Rights”. 3/4 of the States have to ratify an Amendment. It is still their choice. 1/4 of the States may oppose, but they are required to bend to the will of the overwhelming majority. This is not the FedGov usurping the States’ Rights. This is the States deciding.
2/3 of the House. 2/3 of the Senate. The President. 3/4 of the States. This is a very high bar to clear. Very, very high bar. That’s why the Leftists prefer to stack the courts instead. Roe v. Wade was a usurpation of States’ Rights. A Constitutional Amendment is just the opposite.
I understand the process Mark, what I am saying is that the “intent” and “result” of what he proposes result in a net transfer of rights from the states and individual to the federal government.
Semantics aside, are you telling me that taking the right to decide about marriage and abortion from the hands of individuals and/or states and transferring them to the Federal government will result in a smaller, less intrusive Federal government? Surely not.
I am much more comfortable with a person who gathers folks to ask G-d to Bless America than a person who joins with folks to listen to a ” preacher ” ask G-d to damn America.
The title of the article relates to athiests’s views of Perry. As one, I can assure you that I’m not very comfortable with either of your scenarios. Perry has established he’s religious, the more he beats that drum now, the more people he will drive away.
Reality is a harsh thing, but it’s what we invented government to deal with. In the case of the US federal government we invented one that made the base assumption that the individual knows best what is best for him.
I’m glad you find comfort in religion, but frankly, it dose not re-assure me about real life problem solving abilities of a politician. Perry’s rush to make homosexuality and abortion federal issues is a prime example of putting religion ahead of the Constitution in my opinion. These are things that existed when the document was framed and frankly, I don’t put Perry in the same league as the framers. Many of them were very religious, yet they conscientiously went out of their way to keep religion out of the Constitution.
You mean he’s going to drive away the perhaps 20% of Americans who are agnostics or atheists, of which the vast majority are liberals or progressives who are going to vote for Obama anyway?
So, you speak for everyone who is turned off by his religious/political theater? We’re all going to vote for Obama anyway, right?
Take another look at the Y2K election and get back to me on how unimportant 20% (or even 2%) of the vote is.
As I pointed out, at most 20% of the population is agnostic or atheist, and most of them are going to vote for Obama anyway. If you intend to vote for Obama just because he isn’t overtly a Christian, you aren’t going to vote for any of the other Republican nominees, either.
The GOP doesn’t have to drive people to vote for Obama to loose, only to stay home. Sound familiar?
If you intend to vote for Obama just because he isn’t overtly a Christian, you aren’t going to vote for any of the other Republican nominees, either.
Nice strawman. Few (if any) vote this way.
The notion of christians/politics where it drives off moderates is if the politician is concentrated on solving foreign policy (OK) or energy (OK) or other substantial issues (OK) or spend his/her time on gay marriage or some other idiotic non-issue.
If Obama were to close the EPA tomorrow and embark on a plan to provide cheap and plentiful energy via thorium reactors, his notion of the existence of god would play no part in me being all in.
The point is that it’s when everything else takes a back seat to religion or “conservative” notions of what’s proper based on religion, that’s when you lose the moderates.
Your argument would be a lot stronger if there was a large block of Republican voters who are going to be strongly turned off by a Christian nominee–enough to let Obama win re-election.
“gay marriage or some other idiotic non-issue”
What makes it a non-issue? You mean that there’s no dispute, no lawsuits over it, no courts forcing states to recognize it?
Or do you mean that don’t agree with Gov. Perry (and even, amazingly, a majority of California voters) and therefore are looking for an excuse to vote for Obama?
What makes it a non-issue?
Seriously? In an era of backbreaking debt and rampant unemployment and green boondoggles and $4 gas, whether or not Steve and Fred are getting hitched isn’t on the radar for sane people.
It is certainly not the most important issue, agreed. Nor does it require much energy to do something about it.
If the courts can rule that something that was an unimaginable action requiring the commission of a capital crime in 1789 is a constitutionally protected right, what can’t they find is a right?
Cramer — If the courts can rule that something that was an unimaginable action requiring the commission of a capital crime in 1789 is a constitutionally protected right, what can’t they find is a right?
Dr Greg Cochran is the guy promoting the idea that male homosexuality is largely a viral problem. Then again he’s also the guy who has said most every common malady we think of as lifestyle and/or environmental cause is actually biological. e.g. we’re talking stomach cancer caused by H Pylori and cervical cancer caused by an HPV strain; things that bear out what he’s been saying and prove him right time after time. Naysayers claimed he was out to lunch when he claimed that much of what we think of as “dietary” type problems (cholesterol) like heart disease were also viral in nature (because the pathology, looked at from an evolutionary standpoint, suggests this.)
Well freedom of thought may no longer be popular in the US whether suppressed by the left or right, but our future chinese masters seem to value it well enough that they did the actual research instead of arguing about it. Here’s what they found —
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.f4027ad3fcc2408e8dcbb1b13ccc42a4.761&show_article=1
The point, Cramer, is that Cochran has been proven to be right on everything he’s had a medical opinion on, and Cochran says homosexuality is caused by a virus. Bet against him at your own peril.
I suggest you reframe the question; your current framing makes the same mistake that the marxists make in assumption of technological stasis (i.e. the only way their idiotic argumens could make sense.) If you don’t factor knowledge gains, all you have is navel gazing.
Oh, and the chinese aren’t impressed by global warming much either. Looks like their takeover will be sooner than we thought. I hope you are working on your mandarin.
With regard to your comment immediately above (since for some reason there can be no “reply”): Perry is not searching for small-government “cred.” He is advocating federalism as the Tenth Amendment defines it. He is arguing for a smaller federal government, especially in economic affairs, but not for an absolutely libertarian minimalist state. You may object to his positions on abortion and marriage, but if you mean thereby to attack his position of federalism, you are flirting with misdirection.
A number of conservatives are, as well. And a number of libertarians are devout in one or another faith (I’m one). If there’s a correlation between political and religious affiliations, it seems to be weak. I think that’s a good thing, myself.
I’m growing very tired of hearing Christian politicians, pundits, and others equate “atheism” with Marxism, socialism and with even Nazism, and also of Christians claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. The second claim is an outright fabrication or lie. The Founders may have all been Christian in some form or another, but it was not for nothing that they exerted extraordinary intellectual effort to excise religion from the Constitution to separate church from state, and that was because of their observation of the destructive role of state religion in Europe and in history. The Treaty between the U.S. and Tripoli specifically states that the U.S. is not a Christian nation (that was to prevent Moslem pirates from attacking American merchant vessels), which was a statement of fact (not that the Treaty stopped Moslems from attacking our commerce anyway).
And, quite the contrary, Marxists, socialists and Nazis were as mystical and “God-fearing” as Pat Robertson, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry or any Muslim. Marx’s “god” or ghost was “dialectical materialism,” some form of ethereal power that governed human action; socialists and welfare statists believe that reality can be bypassed by wishing that impoverishing the rich and middle class will “somehow” create prosperity, and if the prosperity doesn’t happen, it’s sinful man’s fault; and Nazis believed not only in the traditional God, but the magical power of race, welfare state economics, and the power of the “will.”
“Jefferson”: You should get nervous about politicians who are openly Christian. You should mind very, very much. All the welfare state legislation, from subsidized housing, to educational subsidies and programs (and controls), to the anti-abortion movement, to the voluntary-mandatory “service” programs in schools, to the income tax (shall I go on?), is ALL founded on the Christian, altruist idea of sacrifice and selflessness and “giving back.” And the party in this country that has enabled all that involuntary servitude has been the Republican Party, at the behest of the Democrats.
And given the religious fervor of the current line of GOP presidential candidates, it looks like it’s going to be a battle for America between one group of mystics and another over whose “caliphate” is going to be established here: a Christian one, or an Islamic. Reason? Capitalism? Individual rights? These have no place in Christian or Islamic politics.
Uh, no, they did not separate church and state. The First Amendment’s establishment clause provision is quite different. Read the quote Justice Joseph Story that I added as a comment elsewhere here.
The treaty to which you refer does contain that statement. But oddly enough, different copies of the treaty exist that do not contain that statement! And it is definitely an extreme outlier for how Congress operated in that period. See http://www.claytoncramer.com/AmericanReligion/UnderGod.html for a detailed examination of the relationship between government and Christianity in the Revolutionary period.
["no, they did not separate church and state."]
Are you certain of your terminolgy? “church” vs. Christianity and religion” I think the below citations accurately define the difference and is the common opinions of the courts and of the founders intent. The problem today is, that the newer vs. older congregational “churches” find themselves in the midst of doctrinal reformation for dominanace. And in this mix, comes a public ‘political’ endeavor on the part of some….such as the Bachmans and Perrys. I’m not so sure they are representive of the constitutional position on religion and the state.
“….we find that in Updegraph v. Com., 11 Serg. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that, ‘Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; … not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.’ And in People v. Ruggles, 8 Johns. 290, 294, 295, Chancellor KENT, the great commentator on American law, speaking as chief justice of the supreme court of New York, said: ‘The people of this state, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity as the rule of their faith and practice; and to scandalize the author of these doctrines is not only, in a religious point of view, extremely impious, but, even in respect to the obligations due to society, is a gross violation of decency and good order. … The free, equal, and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious….”]
I only throw in the following for reference to the last line…..”we mutually pledge to each other….”
["the declaration of independence recognizes the presence of the Divine in human affairs in these words: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident......
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.']
I am quite sure. First of all, that phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution. It is in a letter from President Jefferson to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association, commiserating with them that there was nothing that he or anyone else could do about the fact that Connecticut taxed everyone to support the Congregationalist Church.
Secondly, as I have pointed out before, the establishment clause was intended to prevent any particular denomination from receiving special privileges or advantages from the national government. State government could and did so, into the 1830s. Not a good idea, I would say, but it ended because the people of those states decided to end it–not because the Constitution required it.
Thirdly, as I pointed out with the quote from Justice Story, the intent of the establishment clause was NOT to put a wall of separation between Christianity and the government in the sense that the ACLU wishes, but to guarantee that no particular denomination of Christianity had special advantages.
Thanks! I’ve long been aware that “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution. However, would you be so kind to provide citations for your legal conclusions — “…NOT to put a wall of separation between Christianity and the government in the sense that the ACLU wishes…”
Seems the ACLU has achieved a rather decent record in the courts and I’m just curious how that is so, given your legal conslusions. I’m also even more a bit curious over your use of “Christianity” vs. “church” in your above quote. I thought I was making the point that relevancy lends to “Christianity and Religion” and not “church’ though, maybe I was not clear. Thanks!
I am amazed at how the blind are so easily led by the devious and crafty religion of Politics. Another hustler with a pretty face and a record of faking right and passing left and so many are gaga over him.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man.
Psalm 118:8
‘I would be delighted if someone could convince me of an afterlife’
Roger,
The majority get convinced too late because they sat on their hands instead of diligently seeking when they had all the time in the world.
What annoys me the most about the obessiosn with candidates’ religion is that it is so transparently biased. Bush was often referred to as a “fundamentalist” though he was a conventional Protestant, like a huge number of Americans. Clinton ostentatiously carried a big 10-pound Bible with him to church without giving liberals the fantods. Obama claims to be a devout Christian (though he went to a kooky cult church). Even Michael Moore flaunts his version of Christianity. The folks on the left have a record of imposing their beliefs on society. Social conservatives may wish to do the same thing. However, those on the libertarian side of the right do not do so out of principle. On network news, after Perry joined, I saw picture after picture of him praying and saying grace – treated as though he were snake-handling or walking on hot coals. I’ll take my chances with him (or with Romney) over any leftist (religious or not) who wants to immanentize the eschaton.
Publicly professing your faith in the prober context (see I Peter 3:15) is both courageous and commendable. What Governor Perry did at “The Response” is neither. I call it pandering of the lowest order. Watch the YouTube video of him praying to the cameras and then read Matt chapter 6 and see if Perry stands up to the standard he so loudly proclaims.
I am agnostic, shall we say, as to whether Obama is a practicing Christian. But I don’t buy the notion that Bill Clinton’s Christianity was insincere. I recommend “In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography” for more on this. In short, from the age of 10 or 12, IIRC, Clinton walked over a mile to church every Sunday, alone, while his mother, who had no interest in attending church, was sleeping in or drinking. The book talks a lot about his psychological needs being met by attending church, and singing in the choir, etc,., as well as by less uplifting activities.
You can’t really know what’s in someone’s heart.
It is pretty safe to say, though, that Clinton handily won the secular vote while the church-goers went GOP.
What I think a lot of non-Christians don’t realize is that most Christians, of all stripes, strongly support Israel. We have a president, ( who knows whether he is Christian or whatever) who does not support Israel, yet he gets the Jewish vote! What’s the matter with people? And Perry certainly is a supporter of Israel.
Most non-Christians DON’T support Israel, are the ones calling for a two state solution and consistantly call Israel a terrorist/aparteid state.
There are 11 practicing Jews in the US Senate. They are all Democrats/Indies. You figure it out from there. It leads to an ugly conclusion.
That’s it time for affirmative action?
There are some excellent articles on the Liberal/Jew question. What it comes down to is that’s how they were raised. Reminds me of my late mother in law who I all respects was very conservative, but consistently voted Drmocrat because “we’ve always been Democrats, the working man’s party.”
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, POLITICAL POWER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
The 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Candidates
One of the trends I find “exceptional” about the USA today is the number of religious sects and cults participating directly in the electoral process. The leading contender for the Republican nomination for President, Gov. Mitt Romney, is a Mormon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), a religion considered heretical by many mainstream Christians like nearly all mainstream Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas began his Presidential campaign by organizing a “Christian only” evangelical, and “dominionist” prayer meeting called “The Response: a call to prayer for a nation in crisis.” “Dominionism” is the belief that holds the Holy Bible as dominant over laws made by man. For an examination of the relationship between Gov. Perry and the controversial “New Apostolic Reformation” movement, see the Texas Observer’s article “Rick Perry’s Army of God” http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/rick-perrys-army-of-god. “The Response” was a gathering of the different tribes of American fundamentalism – Christian Zionists, prayer warriors, apostolic and prophetic types, etc. – under the umbrella of political and spiritual revival, see Rachael Maddow’s special report: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908//vp/44098787#44098787
Like Governor Perry, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann espouses a “dominionist” religious perspective and spent her student years in law school studying the “dominionist” approach to society, law and government, see John Chait’s article in the New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/90014/michelle-bachmanns-worldview.
Gov. Sarah Palin is a member of a “The Wasilla Assembly of God.” The “Wasilla Assembly” is a member of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1914, in the United States. The ‘Four Core Beliefs’ of the Assemblies of God are Salvation, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Divine Healing and the Second Coming of Christ. A dramatic insight into Pentecostalism is found in the 1997 film, The Apostle written, directed and starring Robert Duvall, as a charismatic “Pentecostal” preacher. Pentecostals are known to “speak in tongues:” see a clip from Duvall’s movie, The Apostle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FwMu9WW_bg.
The Apostle’s main character” Sonny” is what social scientists once politely referred to as “Other Protestants.” Sonny was actually a preacher in the traditional holiness movement, distinct from the Pentecostal movement, which believes that the baptism in the Holy Spirit involves speaking in tongues. Many of the early Pentecostals were from the holiness movement, and to this day many “classical Pentecostals” maintain much of holiness doctrine and many of its devotional practices, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiness_movement.
Modern “dominionism” is largely unknown to most Americans. The list of unknown schismatic sects, cults, groups, exotic beliefs and churches, which the contenders for the Republican nomination belong to or are in agreement with, is “exceptional.” The religious fringe, it seems, has become the Protestant mainstream.
Today’s Republicans could be re-branded the “Christian Republican Party.” The center core of Protestant faith has migrated from “Liberal Protestantism” to an entrepreneurial-style, evangelist and fundamentalist faith, which votes heavily on the Republican Row. It was once believed that such sects originated mainly among the religiously neglected poor. Clearly, this is now no longer the case. It has been argued by social scientists that insecurity, differential status and anxiety characterize these religious movements. The effects of the Great Recession and the affects of geographic relocation and workplace displacement have contributed to a sense of anxiety and anomie among the American middle-class.
Ernst Troeltsch, the major historian of sectarian religion, has characterized the psychological appeal of fundamentalist religious sects in a way that might as appropriately be applied to extremist politics. A direct connection between the social roots of political and religious extremism has been observed in a number of countries. It was observed by the American sociologist S. M. Lipset, as early as the 1960s that, “the point here is that rigid fundamentalism and dogmatism are linked to the same underlying characteristics, attitudes, and predispositions which find another outlet in allegiance to extremist political movements.”
Many western democracies have “Christian Democratic Parties,” the US, because it is “exceptional,” has a “Christian Republican Party.” The candidates for the Republican nomination have made their religious views of scripture known, by degrees. To discover what these candidates deeply and sincerely believe requires the investigative work of a “large metropolitan newspaper.”
The ascendancy of the “nouveau fundamentalist Protestant elite” to high leadership positions in the Republican Party needs to be understood as a serious step toward a profound redefinition of church and state in America. The ascendancy of hard-core chronic “know-nothing-ism” and “anti-intellectualism,” so eloquently written about by Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter, and sectarian belief systems, is undoubtedly “exceptional” for a modern mass political party with governmental responsibilities. While it is argued that Europe is experiencing a “crisis of faith,” the United States is experiencing a revivalism parallel with the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s.
The decline of mainstream Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Episcopalians as forces affecting the direction of the Republican Party, has been statistically significant, and the rise of “Other Protestants,” and sects, has marked a realignment of voting patterns and political commitment.
Is it possible to image Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy organizing a 30,000 person “Catholics only” prayer service as a campaign launch? One of the famous quotes from Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, during the 1960 national election, was, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.”
Spot on! The nation is being consumed by self serving extremes!
“…as we all know, this country was founded on bedrock principles of religious tolerance, which some modern liberals tend to forget.” The liberals are not the only ones with short or selective memories – the same is true for most people claiming to be Christians. The “principles of religious tolerance,” as provided for by the Constitution’s polytheistic-promoting Amendment 1, is just another way of saying it was okay for the constitutional framers to provide for violations of the First Commandment. It’s time for Christians to wake up to the fact that the Constitution is not the godly or Christian document we have been duped into believing it is. See “Amendment 1: Government-Sanctioned Polytheism” at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt11.php.
As someone who believes that our existence is part of an eternal/perpetual evolution of stable states, I have never had a problem with theists who attach the label God to that which is fundamentally beyond our ken. That said, Rick Perry is a true theist and is also a hard-core politician. As such, he would be a great conservative President if, and only if, the public elects a sufficiently conservative congress to keep him on the right path.
Roger, I think you’re missing the point here. Name a successful conservative or republican who hasn’t gotten the Two Minutes of Hate. I’m including figures like McCain (in 2000 a hero, in 2008 a villain– and the only difference being whether he was convenient to the liberal cause) and George HW Bush (loved while he trashed Reagan, reviled until he was safely out of office, now loved mainly as a way to bash the current GOP).
Lefties don’t examine people and then suddenly (for a select few) realize that there’s some horrible thing that outrages them. Instead, the Left identifies someone they see as a threat (ie any conservative or libertarian who stands out) and finding some reason, any reason, to make them a focus of their hate.
In the short run, it works very well. Most republicans are caricatured as buffoons (Ford, Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin) or blackguards (Bork, Thomas, Gingrich, Cheney, Bachman). A couple harmless ones are held out as “good Republicans”, mostly to prove to themselves that they really aren’t unthinking partisans. Such “safe conservatives” are actually moderate liberal republicans, chosen mostly for their spoiler potential.
In the long run, though, seven decades of Alinskyism and liberalism is more of an enemies list than an ideology. The Idealists have been replaced by the Professional Left– but even the amateurs are mostly voting to get the most goodies for their interest group. Conservatives make liberals cross-eyed with rage, but it’s hard to see what liberals are actually for these days, other than slogans like “social justice” that could mean anything or nothing.
I don’t think you are quite right about Clinton. Not that the man wasn’t a sinner, but I’m pretty sure he knew he was one. And Clinton never showed the contempt for ordinary, religious, Americans that Obama shows. His religiousity may indeed have been insincere (what about him was not insincere?), but I think he respected religious sincerity in others.
Mr. Simon let me be importunate and tell you why I believe in a world beyond this one. I cannot fathom how we could have concepts such at “beauty” or “honor” or even “goodness”, etc. if there wasn’t something beyond this mortal coil. We are not like the dogs in the street and there must be a reason for that.
His faith is not the issue with Perry but, his getting mad at Arizona’s Governor and their lawmakers for their get tough stance on illegal aliens and then going to Mexico and pretty much telling them that he supports illegals in his state and then on top of that he’s in the back pocket of the muslims. He supports the building of the mosque in New York. He is NOT the best choice for President. He’s a socialist hiding behind the Republican name. Check this out for yourself if you have doubts.
Everything you’ve said I’ve been hearing about for years. That he’s an absolute RINO – talks to the right and votes to the left. If he’s our candidate then we’ll for sure have a mosque at ground zero (even though it should be a states/cities rights isse) and illegals will have amnesty. He’s definately a no-boarders guy. What a disaster he’ll be!
“Ease up on the PDS”?
You ain’t seen nothing yet. Obama and his lackeys will be in full vilification mode any day now. And you know it will be all over the radio and TV and whatever newspapers are left, since they are part of the slander mechanism that is in vogue, and functions so well.
What “we” have left is the blank stares and lack of evidence of Obama’s past participation in anything but Wrights “church”, which we all know to be nothing but a ‘hate whitey’ cult.
If Wrights “church” is credentials enough to get Obama elected, then Perry’s religious participation makes him eligible for the Commander In Chief as well. (But, then again, where’s the Jewish and muslim candidates to fit your theory, Roger?).
The largest negative I can see from Perry’s religious participation is that there is no “hate” being preached. Isn’t that what “religions” are for these days?
“Obama and his lackeys will be in full vilification mode any day now. ”
Through their surrogates like Huffington Post, they’ve already started. The HuffPo has set up an entire section just to publish dirt on Perry:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rick-perry-2012
Here you will find:
“Rick Perry’s Con Job”
“Rick Perry’s China Problem”
“Perry: On a Mission From God”
“Rachel Maddow: Rick Perry is the Face of a Movement Seeking Political Domination” [I thought that's what political parties were for]
“Will Hispanic Voters Say ‘No’ To Rick Perry?”
and more.
These fools are getting direct payouts and support from the Democrat Party and Obama himself to perform their journalistic abortions and scorched earth campaigns. You can plainly see this in the exact terminology and expressions they put on their condemnations.
They should be against abortion so they would have more infants and afterbirth to eat.
If we don’t take back OUR Congress and OUR White House next election, it could be the last “real” elections America ever has until after the next Civil War.
Agnosticism is a quasi-intellectual position designed to offend a few people as possible in the political sphere. It’s a mediocre term that stands in line with the old adage, “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”.
Perry’s faith doesn’t represent anything to respect. He’s a Fundamentalist with is left over from the Pilgrim’s, who still burned people at the stake–while the rest of Christianity was moving beyond that sort of barbarism.
Obviously Mr. Simon has fallen for Perry’s crap.
Burned at the stake? In America? Not bloody likely. More like they be hanged for witchen.
Name for me one instance of any church in Texas burning someone at the stake during the tenure of Rick Perry.
Heck, even better: name for me an instance of Rick Perry burning someone at the stake, here in TX!
The only thing he has killed (and talked about in public) was a coyote attacking his dog, with a shot from his handgun.
Heretics? I’ve lived in TX for thirteen years, and I have seen none of the sort of “Christians” you rant and rave about. However, I have seen the hate coming out like a dragon’s breath from Leftists and even Marxists.
If anyone here’s practicing Two-Minute Hate, it is not Rick Perry, but you.
I have read quite a bit about Pilgrim history. I am not aware of anyone burned at the stake in Pilgrim Plymouth. There were slaves burned to death (over a slow fire) in New York City for murdering their masters. There is one slave executed in Connecticut by having his sexual organs pulled off with red-hot tongs after several months of torture–but that was for castrating his master’s son. (Read Legal Executions in New York and Legal Executions in New England for some really grim stuff.) If anyone was ever burned at the stake in the American colonies for religious reasons, I am unaware of it, and I am quite never by Pilgrims.
Mr Yakov,
Your sincere and tender plea is moving. Thank you.
Hear! Hear! As a fellow agnostic I say that I don’t WANT to live in an atheist country. The religious foundation that built this country, and the entire West, was what made it so successful for so long. It has been the decent into atheistic Liberalism that changed the West’s course to self-annihilation.
The evil ones have had too much time,freedom and tolerance to weaken and crumble a once solid foundation.
I think you and the rest are too late,the cracks in the foundations of society and the decay,not even the government or police can stop
http://youtu.be/bHyug2PvpB8
unless the wishful dictator declares martial law.
That would make a 2012 election a non issue.
2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, AND WILL HEAL THEIR LAND.
“…as we all know, this country was founded on bedrock principles of religious tolerance, which some modern liberals tend to forget.” The liberals are not the only ones with short, selective, or programmed memories – the same is true for most people claiming to be Christians. The “principles of religious tolerance,” as provided for by the Constitution’s polytheistic-promoting Amendment 1, is just another way of saying it was okay for the constitutional framers to provide for violations of the First Commandment. It’s time for Christians to wake up to the fact that the Constitution is not the godly or Christian document we have been duped into believing it is. See “Amendment 1: Government-Sanctioned Polytheism” at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt11.php.
No one can serve two masters.
If a president places their Faith and beliefs above the Constitution, all is lost. Fundamentalists should concern and maybe even frighten people, regardless if they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc. Believing that your system of Belief is right above all other considerations, might be considered sociopathic if applied to any other environment.
On the other hand a President believes in the Constitution above their Faith, yet runs as an evangelical Christian, then he is a consummate politician and willing to use religion as a political tool. What does this say about the individual, and what will happen when evangelical base is abandoned as it must be, The office of President exists to compromise political decisions.
No individual can serve two masters. Anyone stating they place religious belief above the Constitution cannot be elected to the office of the Presidency, the general voting public will fear the conflict and not support it.
Anyone stating they are fundamentalist Evangelical Christian cannot place Politics above Faith, but the election process will force hard answers to hard questions and the minute compromise occurs which it must, the evangelical base will see the candidate in reality.
Rick Perry will generate Buzz, and may get early traction, but he serves two masters and they cannot be reconciled. He will fail in his bid roughly halfway through the race as people begin to realize conflict of Nature.
” No individual can serve two masters. ”
When people find out that I am both an American and israeli they throw that same question at me.
I always ask them a question in reply, ” Don’t you think it is possible to love both your mother and your father? ”
In fact the love of one is a sign of respect for both.
Ah! You are an Anglo-Israeli? I consider myself an Anglo-Italian. MMMMMMM, pasta!
You made me hungry!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53N7gYE6UFM
I was trying to remember something unique to both Israel and Italy, but nothing yet. There must be a pastry of some kind.
I did have BBQ in Tel Aviv in 1999. It was good BBQ, just like you’d find here in Texas or South Carolina.
I’m sorry now I don’t remember the place. I was there on business and it was a little intense.
The video may have something.
Thought you might find this interesting Cybergeezer.
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/italian/palatucci/giovanni-palatucci-italian/
A special man who is not known well enough even amongst Italian Americans. Palatucci was a moral giant.
Perry faith is not in competition with the Constitution. And nowhere is there any indication that he would take his “marching orders” from God, even if it violates the Constitution.
It’s disappointing that you fail to acknowledge that our nations founding document, The Declaration of Independence explicitly acknowledges that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” and that you have not realized that the primary purpose of the Constitution (as our nations governing document)is to ensure that government cannot stand between all men and their natural rights.
You are making up a conflict where none exists.
I grew up in South Texas in a town that was overwhelmingly Hispanic. I’m white. When I was in school, sometimes I used to get myself all worked up over the fact that sometimes in the cafeteria, some groups would talk Spanish and I was certain that they were talking about me. Then, I grew up and realized that I am not the center of the world and, just because someone happens to be talking Spanish, it’s not because they are talking about or conspiring against me.
This example parallels your comment. You’ve got yourself so concerned about the fact that Perry is “talking Bible” that you think he’s out to get you and, if he gets elected, he’s gonna walk all over the Constitution and demand that you accept God. Come on! You’ve never really made a case. You’ve just fallen hook, line and sinker for the wedge issue!
Believe me, I’ve been there before and if you want to test my street cred, I’ll be happy to talk Voltaire, the argument by design, Bertrand Russel, the paradox of the stone or Nietzsche with you. I’ve walked that road before and it’s a path to nowhere.
These days I’m married to a gorgeous Mexican woman and I still don’t understand Spanish. But even though I don’t understand, it’s so damned hot when she speaks it. I don’t think I ever want to understand. Our differences are the things that really make us one.
No man can serve Yahweh who serves the Constitution – the two are diametrically opposed to each other. See “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/blvc-index.php.
Ted….why is that you suggest folks read ["“Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective”]? Is not the Bible sufficient without the need to read some author interpreting according to his/her own self serving motive(s)?
No Individual can serve two masters – I get tired of that statement. Christ himself gave us separation between church and state when he said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
There’s a John Derbyshire column I read about every two months about just the sort of thing that Roger is talking about. It’s a little dated, but the theme remains relevant. Key graf:
Invited to choose between a president who is (a) a patriotic family man of character and ability who believes the universe was created on a Friday afternoon in 4,004 B.C. with all biological species instantly represented, or (b) an amoral hedonist and philanderer who “loathes the military” but who believes in the evolution of species via natural selection across hundreds of millions of years, which would I choose? Are you kidding?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/206665/pseudoscience-vs-snobbery/john-derbyshire
What is the deal with all of the cockroaches exiting the woodwork and joining the Perry camp? Is America only getting it news now from the TV? You are an agnostic and therefore Perry is OK? People, Perry more than doubled the budget of Texas while Governor, so far. Perry was so on the payroll of big pharma that he tried to make the HPV vaccine mandatory for little girls. Don’t forget Perry’s liberal democrat past as Al Gore’s Texas campaign manager.
Ago Solvo
You lost all powers of persuasion by labeling a group “cockroaches” for disagreeing with you. Perry was never a Liberal even Asa Democrat, which I was until I grew up. And as a measure of his courage, he never embraced Gore’s man made global warm g stuff.
Who is your candidate?
It’s been quite a while since I have read an article that so closely matches my sentiments, it’s as if Roger has read my mind. So far I have only one beef with Perry: He sounds like a minister at times; only people truly of the cloth should sound as such IMO. This is a very minor issue though. I am thinking Perry just might be that dark horse many of us have been praying for.
I am discouraged that so many of the comments add nothing except anti-Perryianism very thinly cloaked in the pretense of knowledge and reason, setting up lots of straw men.
” Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports…. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle. ”
… from the “Farewell Address ” of George Washington.
Religion or non-religion is not something I’m looking for in a national political leader.
Fiscal responsibility, an appreciation of states’ rights under our Constitution and an understanding that the federal government should stick to its limited, assigned duties is what I’m seeking in a candidate.
Morals and principles matter (what I appreciate about Michelle Bachmann is her emphasis on principles), but I think “social conservatives” get it wrong when they go for, or don’t go for, an individual candidate solely on the basis of their socially conservative views.
Roger,
I ask one favor, as a fellow Jew and rightist/Republican.
I know you like Perry. From what I’ve seen of him, I like him too. But please, give the other Republicans (apart from Ron Paul) a fair shake.
The real goal is to oust Obama. Whoever replaces him from the GOP (apart from Ron Paul) is strictly secondary.
But please, give the other Republicans (apart from Ron Paul) a fair shake.
The other Republicans (apart from Ron Paul):
Sarah is not in the race.
Michele’s resume is about as thick as Obama’s.
Cain is losing traction and has looked weak in the debates.
Newt? Be serious because he’s not.
Huntsman? Dittos.
Santorum? No chance.
And then there is Mitt. If you are looking for a candidate willing to stand on principle, and you want to overturn ObamaCare, Mitt is really not your guy.
well, harumph
Herman Cain has a very likable, apolitical, self-deprecating style. Plus, he’s funny and I like some of his bizness ideas very much, such as overhauling and simplifying the tax code.
Although Perry’s 11 or so years as governor are definitely a plus in terms of administrative ability, I am not at all dissuaded by Michelle Bachmann’s so called “thin” resume.
My candidate: Anybody but Obama
(over and out)
If either Herman or Michele is the nominee I will HAPPILY vote for them.
Heck, I’d even probably vote for Mitt (although it wouldn’t be happily).
“Sarah is not in the race.”
So far, at any rate.
“Michele’s resume is about as thick as Obama’s.”
No – she’s run a business, has 6 years in the House, and 8 years in the Minnesota House, and is an attorney with a master’s in taxation and is very well versed on that issue. She’s also had 20+ foster children with all kinds of problems, and grew up in a poor single-parent household.
Michele has lived in the real world, managed in the real world, and not only grew up in the school of hard knocks, has tried to help a lot of children who have grown up under similar circumstances.
Is she my first choice? No, and not even my second. But frankly, you owe her a very humble apology for saying she is as thin on experience as Obama.
If the choice is Obama or an empty paper bag the paper bag gets my vote. Two reasons, first the paper bag will do less damage. Secondly, the paper bag knows its an empty paper bag.
An agnostic? Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic with insomnia? He laid awake all night trying to figure out if there really was a dog.
If (Obama’s) allegiance to the reverend (the Bullfrog Jeremiah) wasn’t for political purposes, what was it?
As I recall, the cool collected Barack was told he needed a church to continue the shaping of the image.
And so, un-churchified Barack alighted on JWright’s little Black Liberation Theology/I love Louis Farrakhan/America-hates-the-black-man venture.
Plus, Michelle (la dominatrix) Belle made him go; they got married there and had those cute little girls baptized there.
I will give two more reasons why the non-religious conservative-libertarian should not only not worry about Gov. Perry’s outspoken faith, but be encouraged by it. The first is that it is genuine, not “pandering” to a constituency. I can personally attest to this. I met Gov. Perry browsing in a Barnes & Nobles some 5 years ago in Houston. He was bending over some bookstalls. His security team assured me that he loved to talk with people, so I did. He had made some bad decisions at the time and his numbers were negative, and I brought the subject up. He was very frank. I was quite surprised. I am a pastor, and at the end of our amiable chat of 15 minutes or so, I asked him whether he would let me pray for him. What I found was a genuine, humble believer, not using faith as a political tool, rather as a source of strength and integrity for a difficult, gut-wrenching job. The pressures and temptations of high office are staggering. Why not a man of true faith who will pray rather than resort to drink, the golf course and endless vacations, or affairs?
The other reason is that fundamental Christianity provides a philosophical truth that is utterly vital towards wise policy and the understanding our founding principles. While many or most of our Founders were not evangelical Christians, they were in total agreement on one facet of fundamental Christianity – the existence of evil and the fallen nature of man (ie. his proclivity to do evil.) In fact, our Constitution was specifically designed around two pillars of evangelical Christianity – that only God grants human rights, not governments, and that power corrupts because of man’s nature. Hence our Constitutional democratic Republic.
The erosion of those two bedrock principles due to the stranglehold of imperious Rousseauan Leftist dogma in academia and the media is largely responsible for our current crisis of law, morals, and vision, as well as for the silly putty attitude towards the Constitution and other vital issues, not only on the part of the Left but on the Right as well. While Ron Paul has some valuable things to say on economics, his suicidal foreign policy of appeasement and acquiescence to all kinds of evil is just as blinkered as Obama’s is, if not more so. It is no coincidence that Leftist extremists like Bill Maher, Code Pink, ETC., love Ron Paul, and at the same time, he attracts the most virulent Anti-Semites that you didn’t think still existed. A man like Perry who understands the common sense truth, if not Biblical truth, that evil exists and must be dealt with accordingly, would be a welcome relief to the self-destructive gobsmacked insanity that currently prevails.
I think even agnostics will have to recognize a certain truth to the doctrine of Original Sin, even if they should consider it only as allegory. Just look around. Where is a man or woman, whatever the content of his or her ethical principles, who has not at least once, in some matter grave or small, violated at least one of them? The Founders were wise to recognize this and to incorporate this recognition in the designing of the Constitution.
I believe it was G.K. Chesterton who observed that the doctrine of Original Sin is the only empirically verifiable tenant of Christianity. Believer and unbeliever alike would be wise to ponder the implications of this assertion.
I am a Christian and I am here to help you. I hope I have your attention. I am only going to say this once then I will step back and you are free to do what you can with the information. There is in fact scripture to support everything I am going to tell you, but I won’t trouble you with it unless requested.
Very interesting article and even more interesting comments. Do you not know that everyone who calls themselves Christians are not? MOST are not. Genuine Christians are humble. We do not need to impose our beliefs on you, even if that were possible. I did not become a Christian because I chose to. We believe that man is so utterly vile he will never turn to God unless God intervenes and draws him. God does not expect me to impose this on you. He does expect me to tell you this: there is one God, and the only way to know Him is through His Son Jesus Christ.
The message is very simple. God is a great King, worth of and desiring eternal worship and praise. He created a world and creatures for that purpose. He even created evil and sin so that He could demonstrate mercy, love, grace, judgment and justice. Everything He has done is for His eternal purpose and glory. Now you say, “Your God has such an ego!” I say you are correct. He has a God-sized ego. We believe that as the Creator that is His right.
According to God’s law all men fall short and God’s penalty is eternal punishment. That is to demonstrate his God-sized wrath, justice and judgment. Christ died to take the punishment I deserve in my place. He was a substitute for me and for all who believe and trust Him, confess and turn from their sin. We are still sinners, but receive an undeserved, divine pardon. That makes REAL Christians humble because we know what we deserve. This is what the Christian term “grace” means. This way God displays His mercy and love. Remember we believe ALL deserve eternal punishment, but God spares some because He chooses to, and that is His right as creator.
You say what about those who never heard of Christ? God took care of that, but to explain it would make this post too long. If you are still reading, then I want you to know this: what a true Christian believes. We believe abortion, homosexuality, adultery, stealing, hating, coveting and lying are wrong simply because God says so. We DO NOT believe the world will “clean itself up” until God intervenes in the future.
I am not interesting in passing laws to prevent you from sinning. That is not possible because sin comes from our hearts. But I reserve the right in this democratic society to vote and live under the rule of law. Christians believe that we must obey civil law and the authority of the government unless it would cause us to break God’s law. If we have to break the law to be obedient to God, we are taught that we must willingly take the punishment meted out by the civil government. The best way to stop abortion, and gay marriage, if you want to, is to pray that people become Christians. They don’t stop being sinners, but God begins to teach them the truth. I cannot make anyone become a Christian.
Now if I make you feel threatened or anxious that I am going to use my faith to coerce you or steal your freedom, I genuinely do not understand it. Explain it to me. Remember that a fake Christian does not represent my views.
“Now you say, “Your God has such an ego!” I say you are correct. He has a God-sized ego. We believe that as the Creator that is His right.”
I don’t know about that. After all, He puts His Word (rules) above His Name and He does not break His own rules.
We’re a coalition of adults.
All believers and non-believers are welcome as long as they believe in America.
Religion belongs in the churches, the home and families ‘hearts’ but certainly NOT in politics and government. The individual ‘character’ of folks will indicate their religious values whether a believer or not. Public religion by anybody and certainly including politicians, to me, is a true indicator of a person who’s ‘using’ religion as a self serving leverage. I will avoid those kinds of persons like the plague!
Hypocrisy in religion abounds! I beleieve God had an opinion of Cains hypocrisy. I beleive Christ has some thoughts about hypocrisy in at least these categories and more:
Giving to the poor to be recognized by others
Praying in public to be recognized as “God’s man”
Letting everybody know you are fasting to get recognition by others
Complaining about other’s behavior when yours is even worse.
Pretending to honor God through lip service only
Testing other people to try to make yourself look superior
Repressing the poor and widows
Tithing (giving to the church), but neglecting justice and mercy
Doing everything for show, while really being self-indulgent and unrighteous
Treating stock animals better than fellow human beings.
IF you know and judge favorably, your preferred poltical candidate only from some of those items listed above well…….
If the federal government does not define marriage then there is no stopping polygamy. You know the argument for polygamy will be the same as for gay marriage–consenting adults. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Those whose knowledge of Rick Perry consists only of what they have heard from MSNBC or Alex Jones should at least spend the time to read the following article before giving the election to Obama via a Romney candidacy:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/erikajohnsen/2011/08/15/if_a_picture_is_worth_1,000_words
Yes, it is
(probably compare and contrast that picture of Barack with just about anybody, but wot the heck, it is telling)
The problem is that the Christian right comes with a social agenda and a geopolitical agenda that are largely rooted not in the Constitution, but in their own inflexible interpretation of a religious text.
If you believe the State should be able to force any intelligent, adult woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy to the birth of a child, without consideration for her OWN reasoning and her OWN moral deliberations on the matter, then these could be the people for you.
If you want considerations of biblical prophesy to shape the hasty deliberations of the person who’s in control of America’s nuclear arsenal in some moment of dire international crisis, then these could be the people for you.
I respect those who humbly pray for guidance. I’m deeply suspicious of those who genuinely believe that they’re being guided.
Ah, but if it should happen that an embryo is a human being–and, considering what happens when it is left unmolested, one must be quite the sophist to assert that it can be anything else–then terminating its life, no matter at whose hand, is homicide. Even a quite secular state will have a legitimate interest in determining under what circumstances committing this homicide will be subject to criminal penalty.
An embryo has only the POTENTIAL for becoming a human being. That potential is not separate from the body of the woman within which that potential arose. SHE ALONE has sovereign authority over her own body. It isn’t the business of the State to dictate whether or not she gives birth to a child. It most certainly isn’t the business of someone else’s church.
Dr. Tiller, on the other hand, was a living, breathing human being.
I really must disagree. Biologically the embryo is an actual human being. It is still a member of the species. You might say that an infant is potentially an adult. Do we possess, like the ancient Greeks, the right to expose it? Besides, until women bud parthenogenetically, the embryo is just as much the father’s as hers, despite the contingency that her body nurtures it.
But all this is to treat mothers and fathers as if they existed in isolation from the families and nations of which they are members. Only on Crusoe’s island would an individual, man or woman, be sovereign. In the real world sovereignty belongs to nations, and rights are civil rights. Homicide is not a civil right.
Your belief that an embryo is “human” at some very early post-conception point is based entirely on religious views that obviously aren’t shared by everyone. “Biologically the embryo is an actual human being” is a very misleading statement; it deliberately conflates the simple matter of a biological identity with a whole gamut of realized potentials–qualities, characteristics, and behaviors–that constitute a living person having individual rights. You would have the State impose your own religion-based understanding on everyone else, thereby depriving female adult human beings of their fundamental right to privacy, and of a fundamental right to control the destiny of their own bodies.
I don’t know why some comments allow for replies and others only for links, but a few words about Cowberry’s reply to my previous:
First of all, how can you possibly know that my assertion about the humanity of the embryo is based in a religious view? Actually, it is more of an Aristotelian view that every entity has a distinctive essence by which the intelligence can differentiate it from others, and that individuals exist not just in isolation but as instances of a species. It is no simple matter or conflation but rather a reflection on the very concept “human being.” A quality cannot be realized unless there is the potential for it prior either in time or in logic. The life of an individual is an arc the rises from potential and, if unmolested, achieves actuality, but it is the same life all the while.
Obviously, this is a view that not everybody shares, but the whole point of politics in a republic is to try to persuade others to adopt one’s point of view. Interference by the courts inhibits this republican endeavor.
As for your “fundamental right to privacy” as applied to abortion, this is an invention of a Progressive supreme court, some fancy footwork with the 14th Amendment that did not pass without dissent. It has no basis whatsoever in the long-abiding understanding of the police powers of the states in a federal system.
Thanks for your replies on abortion, with which I agree – both in their Aristotelian sense and in their biological sense.
The biological fact is that our species goes through a number of phases in its Formation; the first is of course, the embryonic pre-birth phase. It can’t be separated from the post-birth phases. Both are phases of one species: the human species. This is a biological fact; drugs etc can affect the unborn fetus and effect its post-birth nature.
To declare that the fetus is merely part of a woman’s body is biologically and morally incorrect; it is a human being, in phase one of its existence. A cyst, in contrast, is part of a woman’s body and not a phase in a biological lifeform.
At conception when a males DNA combines with a woman’s a new human being is formed in that instant. It has DNA distinct and apart from its parents. This is not a piece of trash to be thrown away by the mother nor is it a slave where a woman has life or death power over it. It is a human being that deserves life just like anybody else.
This is scientific fact – not feelings and not religion. I even used to attend a church that believed in abortion – that life began with first breath. I used to be a liberal who believed in abortion until I listened to doctors. With scientific advancements even they were convinced that abortion was murder.
Mr. Simon, I have an analogy that may convince you that there is an afterlife. If you are interested, please contact me via my email, submitted with this comment.
I too am an agnostic Jew who has no problems with sincere Christians. When this issue comes up with my liberal Jewish friends, I ask them, “if you’d had the chance, would you have voted for Thomas Jefferson? Abraham Lincoln? FDR?” Of course, they say yes. And of course, all of these presidents (like many others) were devout Christians who had no problem invoking God or their religion if they saw fit. It’s also good to note that Nixon was a Quaker, a religion which preaches pacifism and non-violence. Need I say more?
Jefferson actually considered himself a Deist, he was non-practicing when it came to Christianity. A number of the founders were Unitarians, inlcuding both Presidents Adams.
Unitarianism in John Adams’ time was far closer to orthodox Christianity, and far less whacky, than after its merger with Univeralism. Jefferson was definitely a Deist, however.
Well, he called himself a Christian
I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.
–Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Charles Thomson, Jan. 9 1816)
I’ll grant you that since he didn’t accept the miracles most Christian denominations would not recognize him as such.
You are correct that Jefferson probably thought of himself as a Christian, but he was a Deist in believing in God as divine watchmaker, uninvolved in the day to day affairs of man.
@ JustAl
“True the statement about the creator is in the Declaration of Independence, which, unlike the Constitution, is not the law of the land. Those same very religious people specifically kept religious reference out of the Constitution with the exception of the establishment of religion clause and the date being referred to as “year of our Lord”.”
Sorry buddy. This does not work. The constitution also says “…to secure the BLESSINGS of liberty..”. Stop and think. Were the founders somehow already in the vein of the ACLU – the declaration mentions the Almighty but the Constitution purposely excludes him? Nonsense. I seriously doubt that there was any meaning for the concept of “blessings” that was anything other than something bestowed by God. Stop listening to the fools – like CNN reporters – who say this. It is stupid.
Bless you! So, I guess now I’m God, huh?
Talk about reaching for straws to hold onto. Maybe there is something to fear from the religious in politics since they can not only read the minds of the living, but also the long dead. It’s hard to remain civil when people use such stretched arguments then insist they know what I think, and where I heard it, since, obviously I can’t think for myself.
You sir, are being ridiculous.
No he’s not – but you are. You misquote everybody and then are surprised that people correct you. You seem to be a liar who only wants to discredit people. In other words – you are a liberal.
What is this “Einstein’s Unified Field Theory” of which you speak?
I’m not sure “convincing” is quite the way to go, for deciding about the afterlife. If you honestly state what you believe, then G*d has a chance of being present- G*d is truth, right? You cannot assent to a lie, and sleep comfortably. And if you are stating what you think is true, even if it is despairing, painful, and grief-filled, then G*d can possibly be heard on that radio frequency- I’m not making sense? Ecclesiastes and Job are both books of despair. Habakkuk is of the pain of betrayal.
And for second, why not test what people say can bring a sense of the divine presence? Volunteer in some fashion- and see if it brings you a wobbly joy. attend a service of some kind, where you are the stranger, and see if it brings you something to notice. they aren’t guaranteed elevators- but they are the practices that people have noticed bring them a clarity, assurance, joy and so on. You could fight with Isaiah, reading and arguing and pleading, that seeking, too. I’m not sure ease and joy are quite the same as assurance that G*d lives. It is possible to remain in a very angry, very strong relatioship with G*d for decades.
You are speaking honestly, you are confessing your truths, I don’t know that you can short-circuit your struggle. I am wishing kindnesses upon you, you sound like you could use some.
Although I am an agnostic, I have no objection to referrals to God or the various Christian holidays. What I do object to is the constant preaching, the votes by school districts to teach creationhism. I don’t like being called a murderer because I am pro choice. I don’t like the feeling that many “Christians” seem to have that their way is the only way. I believe that religion is a private matter and should be kept that way. As a child in New England, I grew up in an atmosphere in which no one’s religion was not mentioned. No one I knew went to the bible thumping churches and I feel very uncomfortable when confronted by national leaders who think that is perfectly ok and, frankly, I don’t like it!
Oh wah! Put a sock in it! Quite frankly, it’s people like you that bother me. Those who think we should all be put in a closet and shut up. You may have been raised that way – but most of us weren’t! To us abortion IS murder. It’s not a choice because you certainly aren’t giving that child a choice to live. To us God IS real and we talk about Him just like we talk about seeing our Uncle Fred or Aunt Tilly! People used to be comfortable with expressing their Christianity. Now, people want us locked up for it!
In one sentence you admonish someone to “put a sock in it”, in the next you complain that others want to “put you in the closet and shut up”.
Now who’s intolerance is showing?
You’ve lied about everything I’ve said and you’ve made sure to comment on most of my posts. I must really frieghten you. Good!
“As a child in New England, I grew up in an atmosphere in which no one’s religion was not mentioned. No one I knew went to the bible thumping churches”
And almost all of NE is totally Liberal, the result of religion being shut away. These very people are those who have brought us to this juncture in our country. Religious Conservatives did not bring us here. You and yours did.
Yet, you castigate us for airing our religious views. We cannot both be right and we cannot both be wrong. One of us is wrong. Since me and mine did not cause this mess, my money is on you being wrong.
You grew up with this Big Lie. They told you to check your values at the door. This is the result. Yet you cling to this dogma. You are offended when people bring out religion and violate this rule you grew up with. “It’s just not done!” Big Lie.
Yes, they purposely, sneakily, shut away religion in order to give themselves a free hand. You bought it, and you still buy it. It never occurs to you that you might have been lied to. A little self-reflection might be in order.
From what I can tell, Perry is a Muzzy loving Jihad enabler…
Naive and dangerous is how I would describe a Perry Presidency. We can not afford such a man in the white house, especially under the conservative banner. He will necessarily (by total accident) lend assistence to Jihad and endanger America.
I realize that Texas has created more than a 1/3 of the jobs during this so-called “recovery”. I also understand the national security implications of a poor economy and the rest of it. But, he is apparently lost on Islam, has an unhealthy relationship with the ideology, and a far reaching delusion about what Islam in this country means.
Just say no!
“On behalf of the people of Houston, and 21 million Texans, I want to extend our great appreciation to His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th hereditary imam of the Shia Muslims, and Her Highness the Begum Aga Khan, for your visit to our state and nation. AS YOUR FAITH TEACHES LOVE, CHARITY AND PEACE AMONG MEN, certainly no one embodies those goals more than His Highness and Her Highness.” -Rick Perry (source:http://i.fat-wa.me/pcYWGh)
There’s also a salon.com artcile…
http://i.fat-wa.me/PerrySalon
My advice is to read that will the appropriate level of skeptisism, considering the source is what it is. Either way, can’t deny the quote from Perry sheds all the light you need to understand why he is not the man we need given the times we live in and the situation we find ourselves in.
Defend Freedom
http://www.defendfreedom.info/
http://nemesis.defendfreedom.info/
http://threatmatrix.defendfreedom.info/
Fatwa On Islam
http://www.fatwaonislam.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/JihadSubversion
http://www.facebook.com/FatwaDirectory
If one is looking for answers recommend a series called The Truth Project by Dr Del Tackett.
Remarkable and scholarly examination of Christianity, History through the ages, historical- scientific- and legal revisionism in America since 1856, America’s founding, etc etc.
Whether one is religious or not, this series presents thoughts, events, ideas hidden from public life and is presented in a sourced, substanciated manner.
The tours you take through The Truth Project are astonishing.
Let me second that. Some churches have presented The Truth Project as a Bible study, but it seems to be a bit too much like college for many.
We have to choose between a:
Lawyer,
A Governor who tried to force girls to get a risky vaccine because of his connections to a drug company,
A Governor who forced socialized medicine down Massachusetts citizen’s throats,
And this is the Republican ticket?
Dear Mark,
Yo u forgot about RON PAUL! He was an AIR FORCE Flight Surgeon, a practicing OB?GYN (delivered 4,000 babies) held a house district in Texas for 35 years for which he NEVER took an “ear mark” AND he kept being elected! What did his constitutients KNOW that WE DON’T? They knew that he would NEVER vote against his people or his principles. He NEVER voted to raise the debt ceiling! The US
was downgraded by S&P BECAUSE we allowed the government to borrow more money and also wouldn’t put $4 Billlion cut into the “saupposed” deal to avoid default. There would NOT have been a default — all the politicians in Washington D.C. would have paid most of thge bills– It was all a huge scare tactic! There is much more that you will be hearing about Ron. The Media is ignoring him BECAUSE they are really afraid of him. He wan ts to get us out of wars, STOP sending our (which we don’t have) money to countries that really don’t like US –unless we have our hand–
Just watch.
Let’s not forget that Atheism is a religious choice, and liberalism and its offshoots like communism and environmentalism are a religions without explicit gods.
This article expresses exactly how I feel about Rick Perry. I’m an agnostic, and an independent, but I have no problem with Rick Perry praying in public or talking about God. He has all the qualities we need right now to get us out of the mortal danger we are in as a nation and that’s good enough for me. I hope he picks a good VP, but really, he could almost pick anyone, and I’d be okay with it.
Roger Simon —
Please carefully check out Perry’s stand on growing Sharia influence and inroads into our nation. I’ve read some odd things lately.
I believe Perry is extremely loyal and doubt that it’s deliberate on his part … but rather Bush-like … might have … misplaced good intentions.
Maybe you could ask him his views.
Like you, Roger, I am more or less an agnostic. On the other hand — this may seem odd — I don’t feel threatened by a religious Christian as president. I like the idea of a somewhat religious person in the presidency and, for the most part (not all) the good influence that has on our citizens. At this vital and dangerous crossroads in our history, social issues like gay-marriage and abortion really must take a back seat. Your article was good — helpful. I hope you keep writing on this subject. But, surely, too much speaking about religion from a politician will frighten a number of independents — how many remains to be seen.
I like Perry for president. I like him much more than Romney, who comes off as just too slick. Perry seems like a good man in so many ways. He’s impressive — believable — has the “presence” … he has the oratory skills. He has great ideas, and has an excellent chance.
Yes, the economy is #1 — we will be helpless without a strong economy … but equally important is the containment of Islamism. Every politician will speak against “Radical Islam — or Terrorism” — but it’s not enough without a deep understanding of the inherent intentions and threat of Sharia law — it’s every U.S. leader’s responsibility to educate themselves thoroughly on this.
Perry’s support of Israel notwithstanding, if he’s slack on studying up on the destructive influence of stealth islamism in our courts, schools, culture — and doesn’t plan to do something to impede it … it’s not good.
Please, Roger, write him and ask about his views on this — ask him if he understands Bush’s errors in this regard. And what are his plans re Iran?
I agree with you 100%, Aqua, and join you in asking Roger to back off his snap judgment and look into this matter as seriously as he would any other critical issue before our country. He should read Pamela Geller’s article thoroughly, and hold searching conversations with her, and with Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson, and others he respects who make it their task to look into this area of national concern.. Pamela Geller is not a sensationalist, nor are the others I’ve mentioned.
This is not to assume that Rick Perry is a bad guy, not in the least. But politicians, like everyone else, may, can, and do have blind spots, and stealth jihad is a very real and very serious matter, and one not so openly discussed, confronted, and dealt with as so many other serious matters are.
I am a believer, a Christian, try to humbly wear it but still choose to share it, and always will. And for all you agnostics and atheists, most of you have actually made my day.
I am glad there are many of you who share my politic and my understanding that there is a difference in a secular nation (we are not) and a nation of religious freedom (that we are), including individuals that have no desire to worship anything.
I gladly allow you freedom and will respect your wishes to be free from proselytizing, in return for you allowing me the freedom to openly worship my savior without insult or coercion. Seems like the most reasonable way to partner up and restore America to her rightful place of greatness.
This article was so well written. And to be honest, I feel that way about political views as well. So many people are conservatives because it benefits them. Others are liberal because it benefits them (hello collective bargaining.) Very few are what they are because of a philosophical belief in what is right. If I could find a politician that practiced that I’d be delighted.
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/video-podcast-media/video-god-instinct-are-faith-and-religion-rooted-our-genes
Many folks here are both kind hearted and supporters of Israel and the Jewish people. I hope Roger will permit this post to remain and I hope those who have a little extra will share their blessing with a hungry child. I personally vouch for this organization. Thank you for your kindness. May G-d Bless you and hold you gently in The Palm of His Hand.
http://www.yadezra.net/about_e.php
Mr. Simon: thank you. I agree that what America needs is moral and inspirational leadership. I am so secular that I guess I am agnostic, but I was moved by Gov. Perry’s readings from the Bible at the Response prayer meeting. And took a real bashing for writing that at TNR, the worst bashing was from the strong pro-Israel commenters. Yeah, PDS is a virus!
One of my TNR comments last week was that our military deserve a CinC they can respect. I was very glad to hear Perry say exactly that in Waterloo last night.
Not sure he should be so focussed on a Balanced Budget Amendment, but amending the Constitution is certainly one way to encourage a national dialogue.
RE : lolly
“No Individual can serve two masters – I get tired of that statement. Christ himself gave us separation between church and state when he said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Part of the problem people have with the Bible is they remove a verse from its context and environment, and then spin it any which way they want to fit their own Personal viewpoints.
The verse regarding what is Caesar and what is gods refers to a question of paying TAXES, which Jesuss asks the questioner whose picture is on the Coin he is holding. When the reply is Caesars picture, then Jesus responds with the most misunderstood verse in the Bible.
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
This verse is strictly a response to a question regarding taxes, and has ZERO to do with separation of church and State.
If you wish to understand what the Bible says regarding two masters, please read Luke 16:13, or Mathew 6:24
The Bible is clear regarding no one can serve both God and a political / money / world machines. Anyone claiming otherwise has either never read the Bible or does not understand what they have read.
Thanks – I understand the bible very well. Christ was actually talking about the LAW. We are to follow the LAW of the land unless it directly causes us to disobey God’s law.
Perhaps it is you who needs to brush up? Like reading the whole thing and not just a verse here or there?
PDS is an absorbable monofilament suture. I did as I sometimes do and skipped to the bottom to read the conclusion, and then wondered what was so controversial about a suture. Then I skimmed the article and am still wondering what is so controversial. People have beliefs and ideas have consequences. And the safest place in the world for a Jew to live is next door to an armed American evangelical. There is NOTHING controversial about that.
” And the safest place in the world for a Jew to live is next door to an armed American evangelical. ‘
Appreciate the support however I respectfully disagree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIScMjray0U
…”because I am reaching the point in life at which I would be delighted if someone could convince me of an afterlife”.
Roger, in the event that you were at least half serious, here’s a few non-religious links to start with. Websites like these ended up getting me thinking about the continuation of consciousness. These may not be your cup of tea, but if you strike out on your own search, and manage to get past the New Age hustlers and MSM sensationalizers, there’s some seriously honest information out there. I’ve found that the actual search for straight information can be exciting and enlightening in its own right, especially when you start coming up with your own answers. You might want to try these links for a start, then blaze your own trail. There’s a lot of legitimate stuff out there.
‘nother tip: look for the websites that don’t want your money. They may have a blogger “tip jar”, or a book to sell, but you’re big boy. I’m sure you have a strong horse-squeeze filter. Keep an open mind, good luck, and have fun!
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page
http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/markh.html
http://www.nderf.org/bobbi_d_nde.htm
http://iands.org/home.html
“Prostitutes have more integrity, they perform a useful service. You shouldn’t lump them in with politicians, it’s not fair to prostitutes.”
They’re sort of similar. They both take your money, and they both screw you.
Personally, I admire Perry’s belief, even envy it to some extent, because I am reaching the point in life at which I would be delighted if someone could convince me of an afterlife.
Ah, Roger, far be it from me to try to convince anybody of the afterlife, but whaddya say we make a date to meet there for a cold one and discuss it then?
This atheist (absent compelling evidence to the contrary), currently stuck on Fantasy Island, aka San Francisco, CA, is a large Rick Perry admirer and, more specifically, a supporter of private sector job creation, the engine that pulls a healthy economy. If another state has done it better while not piling up debt they’re not on my radar. To quote Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, we face the red menace of red ink. Rick Perry is the anti-Obama, and that’s my cup of Tea.
I can live with religious conservatives as long as they are also small gov libertarian conservatives on economic issues. That appears to be the case with Perry. His speech in SC when he declared as a candidate dealt entirely with economics, and from a libertarian perspective. I especially loved his line about “making government inconsequencial”. If Perry continues to strongly support Tea Party economic goals as his primary focus, he will probably get my vote.
I only have a problem with social conservatives when they use their social conservatism to prove how conservative they are, while they sell us down the river on spending and size of gov issues, as Bush and Buchanan often did. I only have one measure for conservatism, do you beleive in small gov libartarian free market economics. Your views on social issues are mainly irelevant to me, and while I prefer social moderation, I wont demand it, but I will demand libertarian economics.
One other thing. Many commentators continue to portray the Tea Party as extreme conservatives. But they are only really conservative on economic issues, on social issues they are moderate. For example, there were not a lot of Tea Party protests when dont ask dont tell was repealed, and gays allowed in the military, and many Tea Party people objected when a gay repub grou0 was excluded from conservative gatherings. So for those liberals that are worried that the Tea Party will have preachers telling you what to do, dont worry. The real goal of the Tea Party is to NOT have gov burocrats telling you what to do.
You say it’s “the oil companies” haha, you’re funny. Since when did having a lot of money make you good at budgeting? In my experience, it’s been just the opposite.
This is a great article. If you want to be convinced of the after life….Give Jesus 6 months. Find a church to go to and read your Bible consistently for 6 months. Get involved in church activities for 6 months. Seek out what you are looking for. Jesus died on the cross because he loves you and wants you to be with him in eternity. I know it’s hard to wrap your head around, but it’s true. If I can come around any one can come around. I’ve done most of my life without Jesus and asmall time with him. In the short time I have known him he has done some amazing restoration of things that I destroyed on my own. Thank you for this article you had a good perspective. I hope you find what your looking for.
Praise hte Lord!
Such a wonderful post! If PJM will hopefully read this post, I must recommend Dnesh D’Souza’s book “What’s so great about Christianity”. He wants to be convinced about the afaterlife. I am an 80 yr old former history teacher and ANY of these obviously intellectual people who comment must SEE, if they are old enough and know the history of civilization worldwide, the decline of our culture has been precipitous since 1946. The TV and other means of communition have “LED US DOWN THE GARDEN PATH”. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER and that is why the masses of the world are rising up against tyranny. Military cannot hold them back indefinitely. In 1954 when I graduated IU I said that when communication, information, and transportation got widespread, the 3rd world would not be content to accept their slave status SOOOO IT HAS COME and will continue. Steven Hawking –the great athiest in England and expert scientist– says “I am convinced that Christianity needs to be supported when I see that Christians don’t harm, kill, and pass laws to restrict persons.” You see Shria Law is making inroads in some comunities in UK.
The afterlife? What about the kingdom of heaven? That was the focus of Jesus’ ministry. The Christ came into the world in order to inaugurate a true way of being human. This means a new way of living in community, a new way of doing our politics, and an allegiance to The One whose gracious rule will never end. You enter into this by being born anew, as it were, by the life renewing power of God’s Holy Spirit as one trusts in the sin-atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (Good Friday) and his resurrection from the grave on the third day (Easter). As the Apostle Paul says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5). God made peace with this sin-cursed world through Christ so that he might pour out his blessing upon all who are open to receive it. The afterlife is frosting on the cake. The cake is the kingdom of Christ, the one way of being authentically human in the here and now. The way is open now to be forgiving as you have been forgiving, to serve one another in love as God has served you. What to do? Be reconciled to God. Come out of the dark and into the light! Find your true life.
I just read a well researched article giving Perry’s pluses (it was suggested as required reading on another blog and I agree with that.).
The link is:
http://tinyurl.com/3u2xcl9
If you have concerns about Perry, read this with an open mind and I challenge you to refute the facts in the article.
If you are already a Perry supporter, this article gives you plenty of ammunition for debates with others.
After reading this article, I think Perry can crush Obama in 2012. Not only that but I think he can help pull Republicans back into the House and maybe a few senators as well.
Remember…we have to retain the House majority, get a majority in the Senate (hopefully even filibuster proof), and win the presidency to turn this country around.
And here’s an article that refutes most if not all of the “negatives” being brought against Perry:
http://tinyurl.com/3s6gfzn
Again, it’s required reading with an open mind.
Barack Obama … Never Again
FritzTheCat: We still have monkeys because government planning commitees have to have a talent pool to draw from in the millenia to come. Look for more macacques to go into commerce regulation, bonobos into environmental laws, and spider monkeys into education.
I am a lapsed Protestant and my husband a lapsed Orthodox Jew. We both consider ourselves religious. Gov. Perry is the best candidate who has declared (though we like Chris Christie and Jeb Bush too). We need someone who is not afraid to wear his religion on his sleeve and also who is an unabashed patriot. And he was even in the Air Force! And whatever the MSM says, he’s not “stupid.” It’s time to get back to our core values.
Do you mean it when you say you would like some proof of an afterlife? If so, I recommend F. W. H. Myers’ “Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death.” It was written more than a century ago and is considered a classic. Myers was a Classics professor at Cambridge and one of the founders of the British Society for Psychical Research. Some of this colleagues in this venture were William James, Edmund Gurney, Sir Richard Crookes, Oliver Lodge, and Charles Darwin’s brother-in-law. The book is filled with case histories from seemingly irrefutable sources, mostly but not all upper class English men and women. It’s available at Amazon.