Hi and Happy New Year. If you missed my Grit TV interview with Laura Flanders check it out on the homepage of my website here. (Highlight, copy and paste the link).
http://www.frankschaeffer.com/
Also.. you can always contact me on that page too.
Best, in 2010
Frank
Friday, January 1, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Opportunistic Unpatriotic Republicans Cross the Line
By Frank Schaeffer (with a little help from Rachel Maddow)
I am the father of a Marine who served his country with honor in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that role -- as part of the military family -- I call on anyone who cares about this country to speak out against the Republican Party, its leaders and followers and tell the truth: they are trying to cash in on the Detroit/terror attempt in a way that has clearly crossed a line. They are over the line of not just good taste, but into an area that has to be called what it is: unpatriotic, un-American cynicism on a new level.
I was going to write a post on this but Rachel Maddow said it better on MSNBC last night...
Please watch and pass on. One last thing: why is Rachel Maddow the only journalist who seems to be doing her job on this (and so many other matters!) of actually fact-checking?
I am the father of a Marine who served his country with honor in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that role -- as part of the military family -- I call on anyone who cares about this country to speak out against the Republican Party, its leaders and followers and tell the truth: they are trying to cash in on the Detroit/terror attempt in a way that has clearly crossed a line. They are over the line of not just good taste, but into an area that has to be called what it is: unpatriotic, un-American cynicism on a new level.
I was going to write a post on this but Rachel Maddow said it better on MSNBC last night...
Please watch and pass on. One last thing: why is Rachel Maddow the only journalist who seems to be doing her job on this (and so many other matters!) of actually fact-checking?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Change Religion Before It Kills Us
By Frank Schaeffer
The media-labeled “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have put forward what they regard as the answer to religion: grow up human race and abandon your myths!
Most Americans and maybe even most people around the world, have another answer to the extremes of religion that infect people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who (allegedly) tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit: hunt down and kill the extremists.
I think just about everyone has missed the real point: religion won’t go away because – like it or not—people are spiritual beings.
Telling religious people to be moderate is not going to solve anything once they are convinced everyone not like them is the enemy of “truth.” Killing more people just makes martyrs. That being the case the way to confront religious poison is to change religion, not try to win by eliminating it. And that change means we have to try and get to the next generation before the fundamentalists do.
The only real solution to religious extremism is to change the conversation about religion altogether.
We urgently need to make that conversation center on embracing paradox rather than seeking – then trying to impose by force and or “reason” – our pet certainties on others.
How do we change the conversation about religion, roll back the violence done in the name of God (be that by gay-hating American “Christian” fundamentalists or world-fearing “Islamic” radicals -- and while we’re at it end the culture war here at home that divides us on everything from the existence of God to abortion and gay rights?
How do we live together in a world where some people fervently believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that gay men and women choose to be gay and can “change” if they want to, that Jesus will soon return (and thus that war in the Middle East is a good thing because it is a “sign” of the much-hoped-for “End Times”) while other people just as fervently believe that people who hold such views are dumb, evil and dangerous?
Do the New Atheist really believe that “Reason” (whatever that is) will win the day after people are indoctrinated? Good luck with that! Do they see signs of that happening? Or do the evangelicals like Pastor Rick Warren really believe that they will convince the world to sign on for a dose of Jesus-induced American middle class-style “values” by following Warren’s trademark narrow minded “purpose driven” model of fundamentalist Christianity?
Does raising the volume help as we shout at each other, mock one another and ramp up our own self-fulfilling “prophecies” of doom? Or is there an alternative?
Put it this way; what might have helped the misguided and inept young man – Abdulmutallab -- who allegedly tried to blow up that plane? Say he’d run into you or me in London when he was living there and studying how could we have talked him into another frame of mind other than that of absolutism and aggrieved confrontation with the “other”?
Would he have changed his views if Rick Warren had handed him a copy of The Purpose Driven Life? And had he converted to Warren’s brand of Christianity would Abdulmutallab have also signed on – as did many of Warren’s followers in Africa -- to Warren’s homophobic campaign that (in Uganda) allegedly contributed to proposed legislation to impose the death penalty on gays? (Something that very belatedly Warren spoke out against when pressed by the media). What would have been the use of converting Abdulmutallab to the American moral equivalent of the Taliban’s brand of “Islam” -- a version of Christianity that excludes gays, Jews, atheists, and anyone else regarded as the “lost”?
Would Bill Maher have been able to mock the would-be bomber into a change of heart by making fun of his belief in “imaginary friends?”
Or could Christopher Hitchens have convinced Abdulmutallab to abandon religious belief based on a one-sided list of all of the evils in history ascribed to religion?
What if our radicalized and hate-filled American gun-loving, Obama-hating evangelicals with their gay bashing rhetoric could also have once been reached? If so how?
Evangelical/fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists and for that matter atheist fundamentalists who stick with their program are forced to try to reconcile the irreconcilable. That tends to piss them off! That tends to make them look for simple solutions from one line Maher-style punch lines to suicide bombs that will once and for all “answer” people with another point of view and shut them up!
Evangelical/fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists have bought into an idea that my evangelical missionary mother used to phrase as a dire warning: “If you pick and choose between verses in the Bible, the whole thing will unravel! If it’s not all true, none of it is!”
Because picking and choosing is what thinking is, thinking becomes a threat to people who are certain they are right. Who knows where asking questions might lead?
What Islamic, Christian and/or atheist fundamentalists won’t admit is that all fundamentalists do pick and choose, by necessity, when interpreting their beliefs.
Seen any adulterers stoned to death in a church lately? Somewhat less dramatically, but just as tellingly, if you are an evangelical/ fundamentalist churchgoer, have you recently heard that Bible verse in Genesis about how “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives” preached on? And if you are a Hitchens/Dawkins/Maher follower have you read any good essays by them on the weirdly symbiotic relationship between some bloodthirsty secular regimes (China anyone?) and atheist beliefs?
As I point out in my book Patience With God-- Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) Christian fundamentalists having elevated the Bible (or at least the nicer bits that they like) to the status of a magic book in which God is trapped and kept somewhat like a tame pet, can’t admit that the Bible has flaws and is just plain crazy in places. And try criticizing Dawkins on his website and see how the word “infidel” can be resurrected in spirit if not literally by “open-minded” atheists!
Is there another way to look at “truth” issues that might not lead to hate? Yes. It’s called apophatic theology and can be applied to both secular and religious ideas.
Evagrius Ponticus (a fourth century monk) summed up this view, saying “Do not define the Deity: for it is only of things which are made or are composite that there can be definitions.” In fact, a whole anti-theology came to be called apophatic theology, or the theology of not knowing, or negative theology. It speaks only about what may not be said about God. And this way of perceiving God is found not just in Christianity but in other religions too.
This theology takes a mystical approach related to individual experiences of the Divine beyond ordinary perception. It teaches that the Divine is ineffable, something that can be recognized only when it is felt, then remembered. And therefore all descriptions of this sense will be false, because by definition the experience of God eludes description.
Apophatic descriptions of God acknowledge (1) that neither the existence of God nor nonexistence, as we understand these words in the material world, applies to God, (2) that God is divinely simple and that one should never claim God is “one” or “three” or any “type” of being, (3) that we can’t say that God is “wise,” because that implies knowledge of what wisdom is on a divine scale, and (4) that to say that God is “good” also limits God to what that word means in the context of human behavior.
If we want to change the religion debate the same could and should be applied to all philosophy and even to science. There is a difference between opinion and changing/evolving information and absolute and changeless fact. If we’d divide the practical everyday “facts” from making huge and out-sized cosmological “conclusions” we’d all be better off.
We’d also be closer to the truth that we can’t know anything conclusively because we are evolving and not “there” yet (wherever there is!) and also we are part of the paradox we’re seeking to unravel. In other words rather than strapping bombs on ourselves to eliminate the other, we might instead “strap” on a bit of humility be that atheist humility in the face of tenacious spirituality or religious humility in the face of the very apparent contradiction of some of religion’s fondest beliefs by science.
Recognizing that paradox is the way things are is about more than theological conflicts.
Science (grudgingly) embraces paradox too. Take, for example, what seems to be the contradiction between Einstein’s proven Theory of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The first theory holds that if you know the initial conditions of a physical system with absolute certainty, then you can know the future outcome of the system you are modeling. Theoretically, then, everything in the universe is as predictable as the speed of light—if you have enough information.
The second theory (Quantum Mechanics) says that you can never know the initial conditions exactly and also that you can’t know what will happen in the future of any physical system. You can only know, to a greater or lesser extent, the probability of something happening because, for instance, some particles can be in two places at once. Quantum Mechanics might be described as the apophatic science of uncertainty.
The point is to agree on a better vision of where we want to evolve to, not just physically but also ethically.
That is a project that believers and agnostics and atheists can and should agree on. We don’t have to “fit” our ideas about how we perceive things together in order to work together. We can be the same “particle” but exist in two places at once.
If the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs of this world (of whatever religion or no religion at all) could be reached with an “evangelism” of paradox and blessed uncertainty before the people so certain that they are right get to them, we could change our world dramatically for the better.
Uncertainty is not to be “solved” it is to be embraced. That has to be our message as we press into the next decade of this so-far violent and disastrous century.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of PATIENCE WITH GOD: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)
The media-labeled “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have put forward what they regard as the answer to religion: grow up human race and abandon your myths!
Most Americans and maybe even most people around the world, have another answer to the extremes of religion that infect people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who (allegedly) tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit: hunt down and kill the extremists.
I think just about everyone has missed the real point: religion won’t go away because – like it or not—people are spiritual beings.
Telling religious people to be moderate is not going to solve anything once they are convinced everyone not like them is the enemy of “truth.” Killing more people just makes martyrs. That being the case the way to confront religious poison is to change religion, not try to win by eliminating it. And that change means we have to try and get to the next generation before the fundamentalists do.
The only real solution to religious extremism is to change the conversation about religion altogether.
We urgently need to make that conversation center on embracing paradox rather than seeking – then trying to impose by force and or “reason” – our pet certainties on others.
How do we change the conversation about religion, roll back the violence done in the name of God (be that by gay-hating American “Christian” fundamentalists or world-fearing “Islamic” radicals -- and while we’re at it end the culture war here at home that divides us on everything from the existence of God to abortion and gay rights?
How do we live together in a world where some people fervently believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that gay men and women choose to be gay and can “change” if they want to, that Jesus will soon return (and thus that war in the Middle East is a good thing because it is a “sign” of the much-hoped-for “End Times”) while other people just as fervently believe that people who hold such views are dumb, evil and dangerous?
Do the New Atheist really believe that “Reason” (whatever that is) will win the day after people are indoctrinated? Good luck with that! Do they see signs of that happening? Or do the evangelicals like Pastor Rick Warren really believe that they will convince the world to sign on for a dose of Jesus-induced American middle class-style “values” by following Warren’s trademark narrow minded “purpose driven” model of fundamentalist Christianity?
Does raising the volume help as we shout at each other, mock one another and ramp up our own self-fulfilling “prophecies” of doom? Or is there an alternative?
Put it this way; what might have helped the misguided and inept young man – Abdulmutallab -- who allegedly tried to blow up that plane? Say he’d run into you or me in London when he was living there and studying how could we have talked him into another frame of mind other than that of absolutism and aggrieved confrontation with the “other”?
Would he have changed his views if Rick Warren had handed him a copy of The Purpose Driven Life? And had he converted to Warren’s brand of Christianity would Abdulmutallab have also signed on – as did many of Warren’s followers in Africa -- to Warren’s homophobic campaign that (in Uganda) allegedly contributed to proposed legislation to impose the death penalty on gays? (Something that very belatedly Warren spoke out against when pressed by the media). What would have been the use of converting Abdulmutallab to the American moral equivalent of the Taliban’s brand of “Islam” -- a version of Christianity that excludes gays, Jews, atheists, and anyone else regarded as the “lost”?
Would Bill Maher have been able to mock the would-be bomber into a change of heart by making fun of his belief in “imaginary friends?”
Or could Christopher Hitchens have convinced Abdulmutallab to abandon religious belief based on a one-sided list of all of the evils in history ascribed to religion?
What if our radicalized and hate-filled American gun-loving, Obama-hating evangelicals with their gay bashing rhetoric could also have once been reached? If so how?
Evangelical/fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists and for that matter atheist fundamentalists who stick with their program are forced to try to reconcile the irreconcilable. That tends to piss them off! That tends to make them look for simple solutions from one line Maher-style punch lines to suicide bombs that will once and for all “answer” people with another point of view and shut them up!
Evangelical/fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists have bought into an idea that my evangelical missionary mother used to phrase as a dire warning: “If you pick and choose between verses in the Bible, the whole thing will unravel! If it’s not all true, none of it is!”
Because picking and choosing is what thinking is, thinking becomes a threat to people who are certain they are right. Who knows where asking questions might lead?
What Islamic, Christian and/or atheist fundamentalists won’t admit is that all fundamentalists do pick and choose, by necessity, when interpreting their beliefs.
Seen any adulterers stoned to death in a church lately? Somewhat less dramatically, but just as tellingly, if you are an evangelical/ fundamentalist churchgoer, have you recently heard that Bible verse in Genesis about how “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives” preached on? And if you are a Hitchens/Dawkins/Maher follower have you read any good essays by them on the weirdly symbiotic relationship between some bloodthirsty secular regimes (China anyone?) and atheist beliefs?
As I point out in my book Patience With God-- Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) Christian fundamentalists having elevated the Bible (or at least the nicer bits that they like) to the status of a magic book in which God is trapped and kept somewhat like a tame pet, can’t admit that the Bible has flaws and is just plain crazy in places. And try criticizing Dawkins on his website and see how the word “infidel” can be resurrected in spirit if not literally by “open-minded” atheists!
Is there another way to look at “truth” issues that might not lead to hate? Yes. It’s called apophatic theology and can be applied to both secular and religious ideas.
Evagrius Ponticus (a fourth century monk) summed up this view, saying “Do not define the Deity: for it is only of things which are made or are composite that there can be definitions.” In fact, a whole anti-theology came to be called apophatic theology, or the theology of not knowing, or negative theology. It speaks only about what may not be said about God. And this way of perceiving God is found not just in Christianity but in other religions too.
This theology takes a mystical approach related to individual experiences of the Divine beyond ordinary perception. It teaches that the Divine is ineffable, something that can be recognized only when it is felt, then remembered. And therefore all descriptions of this sense will be false, because by definition the experience of God eludes description.
Apophatic descriptions of God acknowledge (1) that neither the existence of God nor nonexistence, as we understand these words in the material world, applies to God, (2) that God is divinely simple and that one should never claim God is “one” or “three” or any “type” of being, (3) that we can’t say that God is “wise,” because that implies knowledge of what wisdom is on a divine scale, and (4) that to say that God is “good” also limits God to what that word means in the context of human behavior.
If we want to change the religion debate the same could and should be applied to all philosophy and even to science. There is a difference between opinion and changing/evolving information and absolute and changeless fact. If we’d divide the practical everyday “facts” from making huge and out-sized cosmological “conclusions” we’d all be better off.
We’d also be closer to the truth that we can’t know anything conclusively because we are evolving and not “there” yet (wherever there is!) and also we are part of the paradox we’re seeking to unravel. In other words rather than strapping bombs on ourselves to eliminate the other, we might instead “strap” on a bit of humility be that atheist humility in the face of tenacious spirituality or religious humility in the face of the very apparent contradiction of some of religion’s fondest beliefs by science.
Recognizing that paradox is the way things are is about more than theological conflicts.
Science (grudgingly) embraces paradox too. Take, for example, what seems to be the contradiction between Einstein’s proven Theory of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The first theory holds that if you know the initial conditions of a physical system with absolute certainty, then you can know the future outcome of the system you are modeling. Theoretically, then, everything in the universe is as predictable as the speed of light—if you have enough information.
The second theory (Quantum Mechanics) says that you can never know the initial conditions exactly and also that you can’t know what will happen in the future of any physical system. You can only know, to a greater or lesser extent, the probability of something happening because, for instance, some particles can be in two places at once. Quantum Mechanics might be described as the apophatic science of uncertainty.
The point is to agree on a better vision of where we want to evolve to, not just physically but also ethically.
That is a project that believers and agnostics and atheists can and should agree on. We don’t have to “fit” our ideas about how we perceive things together in order to work together. We can be the same “particle” but exist in two places at once.
If the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs of this world (of whatever religion or no religion at all) could be reached with an “evangelism” of paradox and blessed uncertainty before the people so certain that they are right get to them, we could change our world dramatically for the better.
Uncertainty is not to be “solved” it is to be embraced. That has to be our message as we press into the next decade of this so-far violent and disastrous century.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of PATIENCE WITH GOD: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Re Obama, responses to my pro-Obama piece, and responses to the responses.... etc. Note that Andrew Sullivan says it well in the Atlantic. So rather than go back through everything again and again for the Obama critics here it is from Sullivan. (The Atlantic Dec 23, 09).
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/meep-meep.html#more
By Andrew Sullivan
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/meep-meep.html#more
By Andrew Sullivan
My own view is that 2009 has been an extraordinarily successful year for Obama. Since this is currently a minority view and will prompt a chorus of "In The Tank!", allow me to explain.
The substantive record is clear enough. Torture is ended, if Gitmo remains enormously difficult to close and rendition extremely hard to police. The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound. The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage our war on Jihadism. Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling. The US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a bang - a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops. Iraq remains dodgy in the extreme, but at least March elections have been finally nailed down.
Domestically, the new president has rescued the banks in a bail-out that has come in at $200 billion under budget; the economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year; the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year. A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and probably did more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen. Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent - a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades, impossible under the centrist Clinton, but won finally by a black liberal president. More progress has been made in unraveling the war on drugs this past year than in living memory. The transformation of California into a state where pot is now more available than in Amsterdam is as remarkable as the fact that such new sanity has spread across the country and is at historic highs, so to speak, in the opinion polls. On civil rights, civil marriage came to the nation's capital city, which has a 60 percent black population. If that doesn't help reverse some of the gloom from Prop 8 and Maine, what would? And, yes, the unspeakable ban on HIV-positive foreigners was finally lifted, bringing the US back to the center of the global effort to fight AIDS as it should be.
Relations with Russia have improved immensely and may yield real gains in non-proliferation; Netanyahu has moved, however insincerely, toward a two-state solution; Iran's coup regime remains far more vulnerable than a year ago, paralyzed in its diplomacy, terrified of its own people and constantly shaken by the ongoing revolution; Pakistan launched a major offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in its border area; global opinion of the US has been transformed; the Cairo speech and the Nobel acceptance speech helped explain exactly what Obama's blend of ruthless realism for conflict-management truly means.
The Beltway cannot handle all this. And that's why they continue to jump on every micro-talking-point and forget vast forests for a few failing saplings.
But when you consider the magnitude of shifting from one conservative era to one in which government simply has to be deployed to tackle deep structural problems, the achievement is as significant as his election year.
I remain, in other words, extremely bullish on the guy. There is a huge amount to come - finding a way to bring down long-term debt, ensuring health insurance reform stays on track and reformed constantly to control costs, turning the corner on non-carbon energy, reforming entitlements, finding a new revenue stream like a VAT, preventing Israel from attacking Iran, preventing Iran's coup regime from going even roguer, withdrawing from an Iraq still teetering on new sectarian conflict, avoiding a second downturn, closing Gitmo for good, ending the gay ban in the military ... well, you get the picture.
Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it.
Yes, we have. And yes, we still are the ones we've been waiting for - if we still care enough to swallow purism and pride and show up for the less emotionally satisfying grind of real, practical, incremental reform.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
My NPR Interview on Faith v. Atheism
I think this interview worked out well. So much BS is on the web about what I'm supposed to believe these days or am saying -- written by people from all over the ideological/religious map. At least here I get to say what I think. Pass this on if you know anyone who might be interested. Here's the link, and below is how NPR describes the interview.
LINK
http://www.wbez.org/content.aspx?audioID=38958
Thanks,
Frank
PS Merry Christmas!
Atheism and Christian Fundamentalism Miss the Mark on Faith
http://www.wbez.org/content.aspx?audioID=38958
LINK
http://www.wbez.org/content.aspx?audioID=38958
Thanks,
Frank
PS Merry Christmas!
Atheism and Christian Fundamentalism Miss the Mark on Faith
When it comes to the role of religion in the public square, there's a big argument over what's too much and what's not enough. The so-called “New Atheist” thinkers like Christopher Hitchens believe religion is more than just a policy hindrance, it’s a danger to civilization itself. Others, like Evangelical Christian leader Rick Warren, say we need more faith in the public square and thinks atheism and secularism are the world’s big dangers.
Frank Schaeffer believes both sides of the argument miss the mark. Schaeffer is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. He’s also a novelist and contributor to The Huffington Post. Frank's new book is called, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism).
http://www.wbez.org/content.aspx?audioID=38958
Monday, December 21, 2009
Obama Will Triumph — So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer
Before he’d served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President. Why?-- because he is succeeding.
We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.
Obama’s steady supporters will be proved right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.
The Context of the Obama Presidency
Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left.
As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.
The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy”-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!
Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:
# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries
# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral
# The worst economic crisis since the depression
# America’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history
# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war
# A health care system in free fall
# An educational system in free fall
# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)
# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left
# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration…
And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk!
“Help” from the Right?
What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!
They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) “commentators” from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.
The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!”
In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!
“Help” from the Left?
What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history!
Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minuets of the President taking office, they’d been “betrayed”! (Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never that mind he signed a new hate crimes law!)
Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!
And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… “Governing”?! What the hell does that world, uh, like mean?”
The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!
The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas—say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office… twice!
Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months -- President Obama:
#Continued the draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Restored America’s image around the globe
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”…
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!
Who actually has failed...
...are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.
Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors!
The Future Looks Good
After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.
Just because we didn’t get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.
Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, depending on your point of view) to everyone!
PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president please pass this on and hang in there!
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “Patience With God – Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion (Or Atheism).”
Frank may be contacted at Frankschaeffer.com
Before he’d served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President. Why?-- because he is succeeding.
We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.
Obama’s steady supporters will be proved right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.
The Context of the Obama Presidency
Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left.
As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.
The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy”-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!
Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:
# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries
# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral
# The worst economic crisis since the depression
# America’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history
# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war
# A health care system in free fall
# An educational system in free fall
# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)
# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left
# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration…
And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk!
“Help” from the Right?
What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!
They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) “commentators” from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.
The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!”
In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!
“Help” from the Left?
What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history!
Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minuets of the President taking office, they’d been “betrayed”! (Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never that mind he signed a new hate crimes law!)
Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!
And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… “Governing”?! What the hell does that world, uh, like mean?”
The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!
The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas—say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office… twice!
Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months -- President Obama:
#Continued the draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Restored America’s image around the globe
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”…
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)
Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!
Who actually has failed...
...are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.
Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors!
The Future Looks Good
After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.
Just because we didn’t get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.
Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, depending on your point of view) to everyone!
PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president please pass this on and hang in there!
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “Patience With God – Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion (Or Atheism).”
Frank may be contacted at Frankschaeffer.com
Friday, December 18, 2009
Why God Hates Republicans (Hint: "Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord thy God in Vain")
By Frank Schaeffer
"Herod care" anyone?
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference led last night's "prayercast" co-sponsored by the Family Research Council.
In the "prayercast," Rodriguez prayed:
If you're backing health care reform you're a new Herod. Obama (and presumably all Democrats and sane Republican voters, is (accordingly) trying to kill babies, the innocent, as did King Herod who did a preemptive strike against all male children after he decided to kill the baby Jesus.
So a big "Merry Christmas" from your friendly evangelicals, now using this holiday to quash a bill designed to help the poor. And another example of how some evangelicals on the right are willing to trivialize and demean their scriptures in their anti-Obama crusade.
Okay, there may or may not be a God. But if there is and he's the God the religious right claims to worship, then he is probably not pleased with them. I say this judging by their own oft-stated standards, not mine.
If the God described in the Bible exists and if the fundamentalists are correct that the Bible describes his likes and dislikes then the greatest sin is taking God's name in vain and using God for non-holy purposes -- say, grandstanding in the Senate against health care reform and dragging God into it.
Maybe God doesn't want to become a shill for the insurance industry -- as have the Republicans and the "preachers" who support them.
I was raised by an evangelical leader of the religious right and was his sidekick for a bit before coming to my senses. So this is home territory for me, the stuff I was literally taught at my mother's knee. Like Mom said: "Never take the Lord's name in vain!"
According to scripture humans may not call upon God to place a curse on any individual. To call on God to curse or damn a person or situation (say to call for Obama's death by quoting Psalm 109:8 on T-shirts), or for the defeat of health care reform is therefore a vain attempt at usurping God's power. In the Bible people get eaten by worms for stuff like this.
So when the Republican far right "pro-life" and pro-insurance industry lobbyists took a time out to be led by some of the nation's biggest religious flakes, paranoids and hysterics in "prayer" to delay and defeat health care reform they were playing with eternal damnation (if their theology is correct).
From the evangelical point of view, our words must be well pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ who purchased us with His own blood "that He might redeem us from all iniquity [lawlessness] and purify unto Himself a peculiar people [a people of His own], zealous of good works" (Titus 2:14). May the fruit of our lips always honor "that worthy Name by the which ye are called" (James 2:7)
Religious Right leaders and their supporters in Congress attended a "prayercast" Wednesday night held by the Family Research Council. Attendees asked God to kill the bill.
James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, spoke to the group by phone hookup. According to Rachel Maddow, he said, "I just pray that you will frustrate the plans of the Evil One, and revive us again with conviction and forgiveness. Republicans Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas) was there too with Rep. Todd Akin (Missouri) who spoke by video. He said the Pilgrims believed "that the Bible was a blueprint for all of mankind... to tell us about economics, to tell us about education, to tell us about government."
The Family Research Council held the one-hour webcast. Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN), Jim DeMint (SC), Sam Brownback (KS) and Rep. Randy Forbes were there. Tony Perkins (well known paranoid and delusional moralist leader of the Family Research Council) prayed:
Dobson referred to President Obama as: "I just pray that you will frustrate the plans of the Evil One [Obama and/or Satan take your pick]." Pastor Jim Garlow made the case that the reform "violates nearly all Ten Commandments."
Bachmann's contribution? -- "And we say oh Lord we deserve your wrath. But would you yet give our nation mercy? We ask for your mercy. We cry out to you oh God this is our moment and this is our time Lord. We are at the end of ourselves and now we need you. We need you Lord."
All this to stand up for the insurance industry against the widows and orphans! Quite a stretch for "Christians" wouldn't you think?
I'd hate to still be an evangelist these days (as I used to be when -- sad to say -- as I young man I was my late religious right leader father's sidekick back in the 70s and 80s.) How could I ever tell anyone about Jesus now when the public image of Christ has been hijacked by the Republicans using religious language to defeat compassion?
Let's get one thing straight, and I say this as a former "pro-life" leader: I don't think that the Republicans using abortion funding in the health care bill as an excuse don't give a rat's ass about the unborn. If they did, and if their various presidents over the last 30 years plus had, they would have instituted massive health care reform for families, mothers and children rather than fighting it. Because the chief cause of abortion is economic hardship. How is a mom supposed to pay for health care? (For that matter how is a dad supposed to either?)
Anyone who cares about the unborn would want to go to a single payer universal system tomorrow no questions asked. Take away the economic uncertainty from millions of Americans -- and health care costs are the biggest worry of all -- and you've gone a long way to a family and child-friendly climate.
So no, the people who have encouraged Africans to burn condoms and practice abstinence only non-sex sex, (Hi Pastor Rick Warren are you listening?!) in other words the people who are stopping health care reform, are the same hypocrites using health care reform as a means to defeat the man they hate -- President Obama.
That is their real agenda: stop the uppity black man!
They care about only one thing: the defeat and humiliation of the black man who has the temerity to be smarter than they are and/or they are dupes of the Dick Army-led insurance lobby.
In the process they have turned their hand against God, and, if he exists and if he's the God of the Bible (an even bigger if) he is being exploited by the Republicans today. By their own beliefs they stand condemned not by me or you but by their own double standards born of born-again hatred for our president.
Let's give Jesus the last word (as recorded in Matthew 7:15, 20-23)
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves... Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them... Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!'"
"Herod care" anyone?
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference led last night's "prayercast" co-sponsored by the Family Research Council.
In the "prayercast," Rodriguez prayed:
Heavenly father, righteous God, in this season as we celebrate birth of our savior, the one who came to give us life, everlasting life abundant, we come in His name to intercede for that very gift of life. Father, the same spirit of Herod who 2000 years ago attempted to exterminate the life of the Messiah today lives even America. ...
If you're backing health care reform you're a new Herod. Obama (and presumably all Democrats and sane Republican voters, is (accordingly) trying to kill babies, the innocent, as did King Herod who did a preemptive strike against all male children after he decided to kill the baby Jesus.
So a big "Merry Christmas" from your friendly evangelicals, now using this holiday to quash a bill designed to help the poor. And another example of how some evangelicals on the right are willing to trivialize and demean their scriptures in their anti-Obama crusade.
Okay, there may or may not be a God. But if there is and he's the God the religious right claims to worship, then he is probably not pleased with them. I say this judging by their own oft-stated standards, not mine.
If the God described in the Bible exists and if the fundamentalists are correct that the Bible describes his likes and dislikes then the greatest sin is taking God's name in vain and using God for non-holy purposes -- say, grandstanding in the Senate against health care reform and dragging God into it.
Maybe God doesn't want to become a shill for the insurance industry -- as have the Republicans and the "preachers" who support them.
I was raised by an evangelical leader of the religious right and was his sidekick for a bit before coming to my senses. So this is home territory for me, the stuff I was literally taught at my mother's knee. Like Mom said: "Never take the Lord's name in vain!"
According to scripture humans may not call upon God to place a curse on any individual. To call on God to curse or damn a person or situation (say to call for Obama's death by quoting Psalm 109:8 on T-shirts), or for the defeat of health care reform is therefore a vain attempt at usurping God's power. In the Bible people get eaten by worms for stuff like this.
So when the Republican far right "pro-life" and pro-insurance industry lobbyists took a time out to be led by some of the nation's biggest religious flakes, paranoids and hysterics in "prayer" to delay and defeat health care reform they were playing with eternal damnation (if their theology is correct).
From the evangelical point of view, our words must be well pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ who purchased us with His own blood "that He might redeem us from all iniquity [lawlessness] and purify unto Himself a peculiar people [a people of His own], zealous of good works" (Titus 2:14). May the fruit of our lips always honor "that worthy Name by the which ye are called" (James 2:7)
Religious Right leaders and their supporters in Congress attended a "prayercast" Wednesday night held by the Family Research Council. Attendees asked God to kill the bill.
James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, spoke to the group by phone hookup. According to Rachel Maddow, he said, "I just pray that you will frustrate the plans of the Evil One, and revive us again with conviction and forgiveness. Republicans Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas) was there too with Rep. Todd Akin (Missouri) who spoke by video. He said the Pilgrims believed "that the Bible was a blueprint for all of mankind... to tell us about economics, to tell us about education, to tell us about government."
The Family Research Council held the one-hour webcast. Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN), Jim DeMint (SC), Sam Brownback (KS) and Rep. Randy Forbes were there. Tony Perkins (well known paranoid and delusional moralist leader of the Family Research Council) prayed:
"Life and death hinges on the Senate health care bill. We face significant threats to the God-given right to human life through government funding of abortions, our health from rationing, our family finances from higher taxes, and our general freedoms posed by the government plan to take over health care. There have been a number of critical hours in American history. Our nation has struggled mightily and, under God, always risen to the challenges before us. Tonight, we will face this moral crisis by taking action and obeying the Biblical mandate to pray for our nation and its leaders."
Dobson referred to President Obama as: "I just pray that you will frustrate the plans of the Evil One [Obama and/or Satan take your pick]." Pastor Jim Garlow made the case that the reform "violates nearly all Ten Commandments."
Bachmann's contribution? -- "And we say oh Lord we deserve your wrath. But would you yet give our nation mercy? We ask for your mercy. We cry out to you oh God this is our moment and this is our time Lord. We are at the end of ourselves and now we need you. We need you Lord."
All this to stand up for the insurance industry against the widows and orphans! Quite a stretch for "Christians" wouldn't you think?
I'd hate to still be an evangelist these days (as I used to be when -- sad to say -- as I young man I was my late religious right leader father's sidekick back in the 70s and 80s.) How could I ever tell anyone about Jesus now when the public image of Christ has been hijacked by the Republicans using religious language to defeat compassion?
Let's get one thing straight, and I say this as a former "pro-life" leader: I don't think that the Republicans using abortion funding in the health care bill as an excuse don't give a rat's ass about the unborn. If they did, and if their various presidents over the last 30 years plus had, they would have instituted massive health care reform for families, mothers and children rather than fighting it. Because the chief cause of abortion is economic hardship. How is a mom supposed to pay for health care? (For that matter how is a dad supposed to either?)
Anyone who cares about the unborn would want to go to a single payer universal system tomorrow no questions asked. Take away the economic uncertainty from millions of Americans -- and health care costs are the biggest worry of all -- and you've gone a long way to a family and child-friendly climate.
So no, the people who have encouraged Africans to burn condoms and practice abstinence only non-sex sex, (Hi Pastor Rick Warren are you listening?!) in other words the people who are stopping health care reform, are the same hypocrites using health care reform as a means to defeat the man they hate -- President Obama.
That is their real agenda: stop the uppity black man!
They care about only one thing: the defeat and humiliation of the black man who has the temerity to be smarter than they are and/or they are dupes of the Dick Army-led insurance lobby.
In the process they have turned their hand against God, and, if he exists and if he's the God of the Bible (an even bigger if) he is being exploited by the Republicans today. By their own beliefs they stand condemned not by me or you but by their own double standards born of born-again hatred for our president.
Let's give Jesus the last word (as recorded in Matthew 7:15, 20-23)
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves... Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them... Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers!'"
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