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Forget about "Sharia Law". Worry about the Republican Party's theocratic agenda
I wanted to share this excellent article by William Saletan in Slate. Read all his points. there can be little doubt about who we need to worry about most, in the United States, right now. Their agenda makes me shiver. See for yourself.
Rule of Lord
The Republican plan to nullify the courts and establish Christian theocracy.
Is the United States sliding toward theocracy? That’s what Republican presidential candidates have told us for more than a year. Radical Islam, they’ve argued, is on the verge of taking over our country through Sharia law. But this weekend, at an Iowa forum sparsely covered by the press, the candidates made clear that they don’t mind theocracy—in fact, they’d like to impose it—as long as it’s Christian.
You can find video of Saturday’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum” on the Web sites of two organizations that sponsored it: CitizenLink and the Family Leader. Here are highlights of the candidates’ remarks.
1. Religious Americans must fight back against nonbelievers. To quote Herman Cain:
What we are seeing is a wider gap between people of faith and people of nonfaith. … Those of us that are people of faith and strong faith have allowed the nonfaith element to intimidate us into not fighting back. I believe we’ve been too passive. We have maybe pushed back, but as people of faith, we have not fought back.
2. The religious values we must fight for are Judeo-Christian. Rick Perry warned:
Somebody’s values are going to decide what the Congress votes on or what the president of the United States is going to deal with. And the question is: Whose values? And let me tell you, it needs to be our values—values and virtues that this country was based upon in Judeo-Christian founding fathers.
3. Our laws and our national identity are Judeo-Christian. Michele Bachmann explained:
American exceptionalism is grounded on the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is really based upon the 10 Commandments. The 10 Commandments were the foundation for our law. That’s what Blackstone said—the English jurist—and our founders looked to Blackstone for the foundation of our law. That’s our law.
4. No religion but Christianity will suffice. Perry declared, “In every person’s heart, in every person’s soul, there is a hole that can only be filled by the Lord Jesus Christ.”
5. God created our government. Bachmann told the audience:
I have a biblical worldview. And I think, going back to the Declaration of Independence, the fact that it’s God who created us—if He created us, He created government. And the government is on His shoulders, as the book of Isaiah says.
There are 5 more points, please read them all here.
Tags: Christian, GOP, Republican, Theocracy
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on -
This is one that really makes me SHIVER. Santorum disgusts me. Good thing he doesn't have a prayer in hell (no pun intended) to get the nomination or get elected. But it still scares me because he is catering to a certain type of American, and they are not so few, and they really scare me. People who think like that truly scare me, no less than radical Muslims. And there is no chance that radical Muslims will get elected in the US and impose Sharia Law, that chance exists only in the xenophobic fantasies of a few. But these Republican candidates could potentially have a shot at higher office. Actually some of them are already elected officials!
7. Anything that’s immoral by religious standards should be outlawed. Santorum again:
God gave us rights, but He also gave us laws upon which to exercise those rights, and that’s what you ought to do. And, by the way, the law should comport—the laws of this country should comport with that moral vision. Why? Because the law is a teacher. If something is illegal in this country because it is immoral and it is wrong and it is harmful to society, saying that it is illegal and putting a law in place teaches. It’s not just—laws cannot be neutral. There is no neutral, Ron. There is only moral and immoral. And the law has to reflect what is right and good and just for our society.
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Permalink Reply by Jean Marie on -
this is all so insane, so unbelievable, but so true, this REALLY IS going on, and they don't seem to see it, don't seem to even their own words, don't seem to realize what they are really saying. And idiots march along right behind them all, just amazes me...
swap out the jesus, and they'd be horrified, up in arms about how crazy 'other' countries are...just insane, from front to back, the whole thing.
horrific and very scarey indeed.
THIS should have been posted in the Halloween group, really.
i'm saving this one. Sadly, (or maybe is good thing, haha) few ever take me on anymore via emails, they've all given up, lol.
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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More on this from Alternet. Even Ron Paul, who as a libertarian should stay as far from religion in government as possible, was trying to talk the talk. The scary part is, they are courting voters who eat this drivel up.
At Religious Right Forum, GOP Candidates Weep and Proselytize
November 20, 2011 |Photo Credit: AFPIf you needed evidence of the mainstreaming of right-wing religious culture at the highest level of American electoral politics, Saturday's Webcast presidential forum in the all-important state of Iowa, whose caucuses open the presidential primary season, would serve as Exhibit A.
Gathered around a table decorated with pumpkins, the candidates for the Republican nomination for president shed tears and traded heart-rending personal stories in the sanctuary of the First Federated Church of Des Moines, at an event dubbed a Thanksgiving Family Forum. Neither of the two Mormon candidates, the front-runner Mitt Romney nor the back-of-the-pack John Huntsman, took part.
The forum, sponsored by The Family Leader and livestreamed by the political arm of Focus on the Family, featured right-wing pollster Frank Luntz in the role of a tear-jerking talk-show host, played with the sort of aplomb that would give Barbara Walters a run for her money. Former Americans For Prosperity operative Herman Cain lost his composure when talking about he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer; former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, Penn., came apart a bit when berating himself for having stayed emotionally distant from his youngest daughter, who has a grave genetic disorder that has twice brought her close to death.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., told of how her father abandoned her family, leaving her mother to sell their wedding gifts -- "all the pretty dishes" -- at a garage sale. Apparently lacking a personal story to match theirs, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Ga., summoned the tale of a friend's gravely injured child to simultaneously choke up and rail against the health-care reform law signed by President Barack Obama.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry talked of finding Jesus. Rep. Ron Paul, Texas, gave hints of Christian Reconstructionist leanings, but proved himself inept at public soul-bearing. Asked to reveal some personal difficulty, he talked of how injury cut short his high school track career, but then said he realized it wasn't that big a deal. He did, however, admit to having trouble watching himself on television, "because all I see are my imperfections.”
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Permalink Reply by Hope on -
Oh yeah forget about the Sharia Law thing
"Welcome to Christian Sharia Law"
Radical Christians are not that different from radical Muslims they have so much in common!
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Permalink Reply by Adriana on
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Yes, fundamentalists of all religious have the same agenda: impose their beliefs, "morals" and customs on everybody else!!
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Permalink Reply by Chris on -
Aren't they the same thing? It seems to me that the only difference is the language they use for God, Allah, or Yahweh.
Christians don't want Sharia law. Funny how Christians are more than willing to drown suspects (waterboarding isn't simulated drowning it is drowning).
Sounds like trial by ordeal.
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Permalink Reply by Sassan K. on -
To be fair, one cannot compare Christianity to Islam. Christianity for the most part is benign and doesn't resort to militancy. The teachings of Jesus is one of salvation, love, and forgiveness. The teaching of Muhammad from the very onset was one of war and the fight against the pagans and non-believers.
And one can argue that water-boarding is never justified; but to compare water-boarding to the tortures faced by Islamic despots is quite reprehensible. Mind you, we only waterboarded a couple of the most extreme of Al Qaeda terrorists - it was never systematic policy. The President or Vice President had to give the approval after it was reviewed by the Justice Department. I am not defending the practice, but simply stating that it wasn't systematic policy and in addition, it had nothing to do with religion whatsoever. In contrast, in Iran, before executing our young sisters, they are raped before execution so that they don't "die as virgins" as the Islamic maniacs in Tehran believe "virgins go straight to heaven" as to both "deny" this to them in addition to not "polluting" heaven. In fact, the quran allows the capture of slaves in battle and the quran states that those slave women caught in battle are to be considered your property or "as your right hand" as in one does not even need to marry them or have them as concubines so they may have sex with them as they wish and pass them on to others. In fact, after the 2009 protests when our sisters were raped, the Basiji and Hizbolli thugs were simply following their fanatical religious beliefs.
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Permalink Reply by Jean Marie on
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i so so agree, with Michel there. It might feel benign if you have not grown up around it, not been poisoned by it yourself, but, it is dangerous.
Xtians do have their extremists, abortion clinic bombers for example, those who murder abortion clinic physicians in the USA, (we now have TWO, i repeat TWO living physcians who can perform late term abortions, the rest have all been murdered). Timothy McVeigh killed 169 in a bombing a few years ago. The USA has long bloody history of the KKK terrorists, a christian based hate group, and,
shockingly, the KKK still has pockets here and there.
Many of our most virulent hate groups have or use christianity as reason for how they feel, like the Nazis for example.
I almost feel like saying,
it's hard to get a really strong hate group going WITHOUT using religion!!!!!!!!
The church itself has 1000s of years of bloody terrorist history, i could crash the whole website posting the church's bloody history. Slavery, the Inquisitions, withhunts, invading other countries, racism, and the oppression of women, taking over govts, promoting sexual repression and anti-gay hate, rampant sex abuse of children, the cover ups, on and on and on.
The entire GOP political party, for another example of damage religion can do.
Xtians have pushed their religion into our govt,
which impacts stem cell research,
cloning research,
the ability of women to get birth control if their xtian doctor OR xtian pharmacist thinks only married women should get it, and some xtians are against dispensing some or all forms of birth control, whether the patient is married or not,
restrictions and obscene new laws on the prerequisites on abortion rights,
etc
etc
religion helps our legislators overlook climate change "God takes care of this stuff"(for real, actual senators have said this about clmate change)
and the dumbing down of our citizenry by christian evolution deniers who help rule that "creationism" is part of "science" books,
etc
etc
sorry, i could go on a long time, i'll stop!! BUT CHRISTIANITY IS SOOOOOOOOO NOT "BENIGN" imo. Even the invasion of Iraq had christian taint all over it....
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Permalink Reply by Jean Marie on
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i could even list the damage done to my OWN FAMILY by christianity.......a paralyzed sister who refused amputation of her gangrenous toes, which led to gangrenous legs, and threatened her very life,
cuz she felt she'd be "insulting god with a lack of faith" by having the surgery. for real. she almost died, we had psychiatrists and priest after priest go in there and tell her it's okay with god to have the surgery, etc.
my widowed father, who once had a nice lil dating thing going on,
dropped the woman suddenly,
when he heard some remark in church about how widowers who stay widowed are "more blessed" than those who remarry,
and he's been lonely ever since.
lotsa crap, damage done in my own family, by christian gods...
and those who won't accept medical care by doctors for religious reasons, etc.
SO BESIDES the damage done all over the globe by xtians,
there are smaller but just as painful dangers of being a xtian...
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Permalink Reply by Sassan K. on
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When those who commit the murders of the abortion doctors (no matter how rare it is), the Christianity community doesn't defend them or justify their actions.
And NO, our wars had NOTHING to do with religion. You see the type of erroneous conclusions you are jumping to?
I agree with you on the point that Christianity encourages oppression - the oppression of the intellect. There is no doubt about that. But the teachings of Jesus are about love, forgiveness, and salvation. You simply cannot compare it or put it on an equal footing to Islam. BUT, as an American, I do definitely see the Christian right as a threat in the fact that they continuously undermine the separation of church and state and keep our youth ignorant and scientifically illiterate. But again, our leaders make their decisions "in this world". You may agree or disagree with the war, but don't equate it to something that has no relevance whatsoever.
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