Praying for Palin
In Colorado Springs (a.k.a. the "Evangelical Vatican"), people still flock to megachurches and Sarah Palin rallies—but the power of the Christian right is fading.
This past Sunday morning, I visited the expansive campus of New Life Church, probably the most famous megachurch in America, and historically the most influential: Its founder and former pastor, Ted Haggard, headed the National Association of Evangelicals and reportedly had a direct line to the Bush White House—right up to the moment he was caught buying meth and having a dalliance with a male prostitute in 2006.
The cavernous "Worship Center" seats 7,500, and looks more like a high-tech concert hall than a church, with elaborate sound systems, TV cameras, screens scrolling biblical texts, and a backdrop that changes from light blue to crimson to a simulacrum of a traditional church, stained glass and all. Two armed city cops stood guard at the door, and for good reason: Last December, a young man who had been bounced out of a missionary training program near Denver opened fire at the end of a service, killing two and wounding three others before taking his own life.
The boisterous parade of people flowing into the hall looked more like the crowd at a football game: Young women with low-cut blouses, men in shorts, their bellies bursting out of T-shirts, a Vietnam vet in a motorcycle jacket with the word "Sniper" boldly etched on it. There were very few suits. As the service began, the nine-piece Desperation Band laid down the Christian beat, a choir of some 70 people swayed in unison, and most members of the audience were on their feet, hands stretched upward in the Pentecostal reach toward God. When the music finally stopped and they collapsed into their seats, a preacher appeared and asked everyone to take their minds off their financial problems and apply a magnifying glass to God—and fork over some money to the church. Men with white plastic buckets made their way through the aisles. Some people threw in change or bills, but a surprising number gave nothing.
The elections are very much on people's minds here. But things have changed at New Life since the last presidential race. In 2004, Haggard, who had been a guest at the White House and regularly spoke with Bush on the phone, rallied his congregation around the president, and an associate pastor at the church told a reporter, "We're in regular contact with Karl Rove." Congregants campaigned for Bush in "Values Vans" wearing "I'm a Values Voter" buttons. The pastor who replaced the disgraced Haggard, Brady Boyd, still urges his flock to "be a good citizen" and vote: "If you don't vote, you're worse than a puppy kicker," he said at last Sunday's service. But in a recent interview, he cited the economy, not social "values" issues, as "point number one" in the election. Even more surprisingly, he declared, "The only advice I give is pray, fast and vote, and that can be for any political party...What's happening to us is less allegiance to the Republican Party, and more to our core principles." These core values may include "protecting" heterosexual marriage and unborn fetuses, but they also should prompt Christians, Boyd said in a recent sermon, "to pay our neighbors' house notes, to provide food."
There are plenty on the Christian right who remain steadfastly in the GOP's corner. But even on the core issues that usually unite evangelicals, there has been dissension in the ranks here in Colorado. Last year saw the beginning of highly public infighting when Colorado Right to Life, Operation Rescue, and several other organizations attacked Focus on the Family's James Dobson for being insufficiently zealous and absolute in his anti-abortion stance. Colorado Right to Life and Operation Rescue are key supporters of a Colorado ballot measure, Amendment 48, that would define the term "person" to grant full constitutional rights from the "moment of fertilization." But many usually reliable anti-choice allies have opposed the so-called Personhood Amendment. The Colorado Catholic Conference of bishops, for one, has cited doubts about both the measure's "timing and content" and the groups behind it, and even National Right to Life won't endorse it.
Despite all this, there was undeniable excitement at places like New Life about the impending visit of Sarah Palin to Colorado Springs. As I left the church grounds on Sunday, a group of men handed me a fistful of tickets for the next morning's rally. I was there at 6 a.m. for the 8 a.m. rally, joining Palin's supporters lined up in the predawn darkness, many of them dressed in red to demonstrate fealty to their party.
Two hours later they had filled the center of the 8,500-seat stadium (though there were still empty seats in the stands) and were kept stamping their feet in the damp cold—first to a Christian rock group and then to Hank Williams Jr., who opened with a tune tailored to the current election. In the original version of his song "Family Tradition," Williams defended his hereditary penchant for drinking Jim Beam and smoking dope. But rewritten as "McCain-Palin Tradition," the song encourages voters to ignore the "left-wing liberal media" and support the Republican ticket "cuz they're just like you and ol' Hank." I couldn't make out all the words, but according to others who have transcribed the lyrics, they include such gems as "John and Sarah tell you just what they think, and they're not gonna blink, / And they don't have terrorist friends to whom their careers are linked." Williams even goes on to explain the causes of the financial crisis: "The bankers didn't want to make all those bad loans, / But Bill Clinton said, 'You got to!' Now they want to bail out, what I'm talking about / Is a Democrat liberal hoodoo!"
Then Palin appeared, sporting a red leather jacket and producing a roar from her followers. Palin has pulled back from her riff about Barack Obama not being "a man who sees America like you and I see America," after accusations of coded racism from the media and shouted death threats from her crowds. Now she instead offered up another American bogeyman: The Red Menace. Obama's tax plan, Palin warned her audience, would drive the country into the socialist camp: "Obama calls it spreading the wealth," she said. "Now is not the time to experiment with socialism. Distributing the wealth will stifle entrepreneurial spirit."
While the crowd at the rally was totally behind their lady in red, it was easy for an outsider to wonder if this was also something of a goodbye rally for the woman who just months ago had so energized social conservatives.
Pressing a blue "Country First" placard into my hands, a middle-aged woman with intense sparkling eyes told me that despite the recent bad poll numbers for McCain and Palin she thought there was still a chance. She didn't seem all that convinced herself, but she pointed a finger toward heaven and smiled resolutely. The decision, she said, is in the hands of God. "But what if you lose?'' I asked. "We will just have to wait until he decides," she said, again nodding toward heaven. "That might be a pretty long wait," I said. She laughed and agreed.
Perhaps there are some here who also sense that what's being lost is more than just a single election. The fact that the GOP ticket is trailing behind despite the addition of Palin clearly proves that while conservative Christians may be a formidable force in American politics, they can't elect a president by themselves.
The right-wing evangelicals won in previous years because they joined a Republican coalition that also included hawkish neocons, working-class "Reagan Democrats," libertarians, and old-fashioned fiscal conservatives. And some of those groups have clearly had enough. They are departing the flock in disgust with the Republican Party, which could leave the GOP ever more dependent on the Christian right.
Some portions of this piece originally appeared on the Guardian's "On the Road to the White House" blog.
Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickmor.
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This is what happens when the GOP tailors it's candidates to a narrow religious group, you end up with willfully ignorant morons like George Bush and Sarah Pallin.
i suspect a lot of evangelicals are feeling foolish after 8 years of being exploited by bush. bush flogged the religious right like a rented mule but followed through on very little. the scotus appointments were huge, but aside from that, the religious right is still on the political fringes fighting the same losing battles they were 4 and 8 years ago. i guess if i got punked the way they did i'd be weary of presidential politics as well, particularly with the left about to sweep in and annihilate all the "progress" of the past two decades. bummer, jesusfreaks.
The GOP must, at some point, become a party that is interested in governing. It seems to me that when they do, the Christian Right will have to leave, as they won't feel that they have a political home any longer.
My worry is that if that happens, the rightists will turn dramatically to violent and confrontational politics, and of course, terrorism.
McCain has pushed the victim and "stab in the back" narrative pretty hard. I'm afraid it is going to stick with some people, and we will be living with it for years.
Worse, we are a two party system. We need a vibrant second party. But we won't have one if the GOP doesn't start cultivated people who want government to function well.
Because of the primary election niminating system in the uS, the conservative right wing of teh Republican party has a stranglehold on the GOP. They represent approximately 28% of GOP voters but they always go out and vote in the primary elections. They gerenally control who gets nominated by the GOP at all levels because the rest of the GOP voters are "too busy" to vote in a primary nominating election. This has been going on for many, many years at all levels of elections. That is why John McCain has lost himself in his desperate attempt to win the election to a position he has coveted for years.
If God is telling you to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin you have to be praying to the wrong God.
Here's a really funny interactive. (Click on door, window-shades, or anothing with the curser showing a hand).
http://www.palinaspresident.us/
There can be no doubt that Christian Conservatives helped place Bush/Cheney in the White House. What they got for their support was Supreme Court judges and continued persecution of the gays. What the rest of us got was an endless war, loss of our Constitutional rights, torture, big business deregulated, a record-busting deficit, a diminishing environment (you can Google Bush Administration for a complete list of the damage done).
And now Sarah Palin is the poster girl for the Christian right? It figures. She's as narrow-minded as they are so it's a perfect fit. For example, she's pro-life but supports capitol punishment? How does she justify that dichotomy? She believes global climate change isn't man-made - oh wait, now she says it's possible that man has contributed to it. Uh-huh, and what does the Vice President do? Even siomple questions like what magazines do you read can't be answered directly. Nice wardrobe though - even Todd and the kids look pretty snappy. Too bad it all goes to Goodwill when the campaign is over - or does it?
It will be Obama by a landslide this time around. Hank Williams Jr. can put that in his pipe and smoke it.
Franklin Grimes comments: ["This is what happens when the GOP tailors it's candidates to a narrow religious group, you end up with willfully ignorant morons like George Bush and Sarah Pallin."]
Or, a Hillary Clinton.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html
conduplex fears: ["...the Christian Right will have to leave {the GOP}, as they won't feel that they have a political home any longer.
My worry is that if that happens, the rightists will turn dramatically to violent and confrontational politics, and of course, terrorism."]
Nah. They'll just turn to the Hillary wing of the Democrats, where they'll find a warm welcome.
One must know more about Palin & her connection to New Apostolic Reformation. This is indeed frightening beyond belief. See Google and enter New Apostolic Reformation+Sarah Palin.
*shudder*
More military community 'GodWarriors'...
That Colorado Springs is 'paired' with a Canadian Base in Northern Ontario, gives me the screaming shivers.
These people... are simply terrifying.
You just *know* if they could cram their arses into some KKK sheets & torch some 'non-Khristian, NON-AmeriKKKans', they'd be all over that [deleted].
Know you're freaks, they're on the gov't payroll & you give them weaponry.
You also help fund their freakish behaviour offshore so they can prosyletize their DoomsDay Apocalyptic agendas.
Know them: because the World is getting tired of hearing & suffering from them simply because the USA has nuclear weaponry.
Its religious terrorism & we're tired of it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6439295521791525424
Thanks for coming out, but you've gotta get these cancerous freaks in line before more people start dying to promote policies "in the Amerikan Khristian' interest."
When the core of Americans realize that this 2 party system is a controlled system that no longer works, and realize that if enough support a 3rd party candidate they can break the hold on Washington, there will be change. Not until. There is very little difference between the 2 parties. Under Bush, this govt has more socialist tendencies than Democrats.
There is a recent article entitled 545 people that references those in our govt. who can change things... if and when they desire. They do not desire to do so, for many reasons. They should all be removed from office. There are maybe 20% of our elected officials who work and care. The rest are in it for themselves. Just look at the pork spending Pelosi alone attached to the Bailout bill... millions in funding for a company her husband is involved with.
But there are good reps also, such as Jeff Flake in AZ.
And there are good ideas, some of which neither candidate will even discuss such as The FairTax Plan which would give this economy the much needed boost it needs. It is supported by 73 members of Congress currently. Yet it has not once been addressed. Why? because it removes a politicians ability to play with the tax code to create breaks for businesses he/she wants donations from. And that is the name of the game being played... it's all about money, corporate interests and who gets what.
SUPPORT THE FAIRTAX PLAN
I remember when Bush first took office, he wanted to look good so he passed out money, because he wanted the illegal war with Iraq, for the oil, and then again the money he threw our way when the encomy was bad, and now again to make himself look good, but God forbid if a democrat dare to do it. Also, whatever a republican does wrong, is supposed to be overlooked , because they say they are Christians. They are nothing but lying Hypocrites.
never mind god money makes the world go round
There is so much fear mongering and talking head politics in these comments, I'm wondering who's been more indoctrinated the "Christians" on the right or the Obama zombies commenting here.
John has seven or eight houses and Sarah shops at Neiman Marcus-- they care about poor people "joe the plummer.--yeah right!!"
Christ never condemned gays. BUT he soundly condemned the Saducees and Pharisees, the money-changers in the temple--HIs dialogue is rife with condemnations of the high and mighty hypocrites. Do these Bible-toting idiots ever actually READ the Bible?
I still remember when we had people of all faiths in both parties. It's really too bad that we've violated the First Amendment and established a certain brand of Christianity as the state religion. At some point the religious right will realize that they have been cynically used by the Republican party to create wedge issues that take our focus away from their real agenda, which is to create an American empire run by a handful of multi-billionaires.
This is such a good point. I think the same thing is going to have to happen with taxes. You would think most Republicans would be the kind of people who would refuse hand-outs, but by acting like taxes are somehow theft, they are basically demanding free stuff: roads, schools, police, etc. How long can we dive deeper into debt before we're ashamed of ourselves?
Also, may I point out that the opposite of spreading the wealth is concentrating it? Once you look at it that way, it's not a compelling a point, is it, Sarah?
Sorry, I was trying to say that conduplex's point about the Republicans eventually having to get serious about governing was a great point! (Thought it would appear right below!)
According to the parts of the Bible the Christians find so inconvenient, the Truth orignates with God. Wisdom, emanates from God. Lying is prohibited by the Ten Commandments, which also demands we keep the Sabbath, which is NOT sunday worship. We don't even want to begin to discuss Santa, who inculcates our children into the Captitalist Consumerist Lifestyle. And did we mention that the ten commandments also prohibit lying, even when entertaining the children? Everyone quotes the Bible, but no one seems to have read it.
A Christian Liberal asks about the dichotomy of being pro-life and pro capital punishment. That's simple: capital punishment is the state sanctioned murder of those guilty of serious crimes, while abortion is the state sanctioned murder of those guilty of the crime of being inconvenient. How can one be against capital punishment and for the right to abortion? That's just as logically inconsistent.
allen,
perfect point! It seems to these pseudo-moonies that all they have to do is wave their hands in the air and ogle up at the ceiling and god will come down to them. NO, JUST THEM! You know, I, ME, MINE?
If god is real, and ever did stoop to entering "SIX FLAGS OVER JESUS" those mindless zealots would beat each other to death to get to be the first to suck up to HIM!
Frankly, I wouldn't walk across the street to see Palin...I personally think she is a joke and the elephant party has screwed this one up!
sarah pallin is a mercyless animal killer-even to the ones who are allmost extinct and a scrupellous nature exploiter as well as a christian fundamentalist who is very far from being anything but a nazi
Let's hope your analysis is right. I'm still in doubt that there won't be some dirty way to declare these two so nasty people winners, as happened every time with the Bush family's choices...
No need to fret - there is a job for Sarah and John post election. With the religious fervor in mind - we suggest a remake of "The Sound of Music". Cindy McCain plays Baroness von Schroeder - while Sarah fills the role of Maria Von Trapp. Replace the Nazi's with the gay agenda and you have a surefire hit and a career rocketing move for both.
http://www.breederwatch.com/index.php?id=2932426945544685876
"How can one be against capital punishment and for the right to abortion?"
Because not everyone agrees with your conclusion that life begins at conception.
Personally, I believe life begins at 50.
Well done Mr. Ridgeway, you are truly of the first rank.
the reagan titanic is nose up and finally on it's way down. i see newt and alan on shore waving helplessly to some of those that have made it to the life boats: powell, hitchens, buckley...... others, led by rush are trying desperately to shoot a flare gun into the night to catch the attention of anyone on the obama flotilla as it quietly sails by, all decks loaded to the brim on their way to the 21st century. the rest are below deck either dead or on their knees praying for a deliverance that will never come as their cosmology flows through their hands like sand falling into the deep sea.
"And now Sarah Palin is the poster girl for the Christian right? It figures. She's as narrow-minded as they are so it's a perfect fit."
This is the thing I don't get about the Christian right, the "Pro-America America" that Palin speaks for. Are these Red state fundamentalists ready to give up the pieces of their lives that come out of Blue America and the elite liberal intelligencia? Things like books, movies, TV shows, toys, computer software, MEDICINES, CURES??
Nice comment, A Liberal Christian!
If you're sure the USA is in serious trouble; and you're sure because God has whispered in your ear; and you pray and you fast and you do everything God needs you to do in order to get Him to intercede; but then what you feared would happen actually happens - doesn't that have to mean that God thinks you were wrong? Just wondering.
"Do these Bible-toting idiots ever actually READ the Bible?"
No.
About time we rescinded the tax exemtion of churches and had another look aat the division of church and state..
There should not be any political messages from the church ..It is against the law for churches to promote or detract from one candidate or another and their tax exempt status should be revoked if they do..
doober proposes: ["There should not be any political messages from the church ..It is against the law for churches to promote or detract from one candidate or another and their tax exempt status should be revoked if they do.."]
So, being a fair-minded person, I suppose you're saying Commondreams.org will have to give up IT'S tax exempt status as well? Or is it only Christians you've got that woodie for?
I find it quite disappointing that the Liberal and the Conservative "Christians" even have those titles. I don't remember reading in the Bible that the disciples had titles like this. Nor did I ever read of the hatred among them that I'm seeing in these posts. The arrogance of people to call themselves "Christian" then live, talk, and write the hateful words about each other or the politicans and think they will not be judged by God for our words is truly not living up to the title of Christ Follower.
I agree with others that Jesus taught to love not hate. When people preach hate for their fellow man in the name of Jesus, they are not a true Christian. When people state that one religion, race or nationality is better than another is not a true Christian. That is what bothers me about extreme right wings who demand that all believe in their beliefs and spread hatred against others. They are not following the Jesus teaching of Love They Neighbor as Thyself. They have sold their soul to the belief that they are superior to all their neighbors. This is not what Jesus taught. This is using Jesus for pollitical gain to impose their self-superior thoughts for self gain. Sarah Palin preaches hate against people.
Out of the mount of Victor Hansen a californian Democrat - A man of great Wisdom:
An Instructive Candidacy
What Sarah Palin taught us about ourselves.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Soon this depressing campaign will be over, and we can reflect on what we learned from our two-month introduction to Sarah Palin.
Clearly, it is more than we would have ever wished to know about ourselves.
First, there turns out to be no standard of objectivity in contemporary journalism. Palin’s career as a city councilwoman, mayor, and governor of Alaska was never seen as comparable to, or — indeed, in terms of executive experience — more extensive than, Barack Obama’s own legislative background in Illinois and Washington. Somehow we forgot that a mother of five taking on the Alaskan oil industry and the entrenched male hierarchy was somewhat more challenging than Barack Obama navigating the sympathetic left-wing identity politics of Chicago.
So we seem to have forgotten that the standards of censure of her vice-presidential candidacy were not applied equally to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The media at times seems unaware of this embarrassment, namely that their condemnation of Sarah Palin as inexperienced equally might apply to Barack Obama — and to such a degree that by default we were offered the lame apology (reiterated by Colin Powell himself) that Obama’s current impressive campaigning, not his meager political accomplishments, was already an indication of a successful tenure as president. The result is that we now know more about the Palin pregnancies — both of mother and daughter — that we do the relationships of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Father Pfleger with our possible next president.
Indeed, the media itself — in private, I think — would admit that while we have learned almost everything about Tasergate and the Bridge to Nowhere, we assume that at some future date a publicity-starved, megalomaniac Rev. Wright will soon offer his post-election memoirs, detailing just how close he and a President Obama were. Or we will learn Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, as long-time friends, in fact, did communicate via phone and e-mail well after Ayers had told the world, about the time of 9/11, that he, like our present-terrorist enemies, likewise wished he had engaged in more bombing attacks against the United States government. And the media never wondered whether a Palin’s falling out with those who ran Alaska might have been more of a touchstone to character than Obama’s own falling in with those who ran Chicago.
While Gov. Palin’s frequent college transfers and Idaho degree are an item of snickering among pundits, none of them can claim to care much about Barack Obama’s own undergraduate career. To suggest that he release his undergraduate transcript is near blasphemy; to scribble that Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome child was not her own is journalism as we now know it. To care that Joe Biden is vain, with bleached teeth, the apparent recipient of some sort of strange facial tightening tonic, and hair plugs is deservedly mean and petty; to sneer that the Alaskan mom of five bought a new wardrobe to run for Vice President is, of course, vital proof for the American voter of her vanity and shallowness.
Second, there does not seem to be much left of feminism any more. Of course, feminists once gave liberal pro-choice Bill Clinton a pass for his serial womanizing of vulnerable subordinates, and Oval Office antics with a young female intern. But they gave the game away entirely when they went after Gov. Palin for her looks, accent, pregnancies, and religion, culminating in assessments of her from being no real woman at all to an ingrate — piggy-backing on the pioneer work of self-acclaimed mavericks like themselves.
Feminism, it turns out, is no longer about equal opportunity and equal compensation, but, in fact, little more than a strain of contemporary elitist identity politics, and support for unquestioned abortion. Had Gov. Sarah Palin just been a mother of a single child at Vassar rather than of five in Alaska, married to a novelist rather than a snow-machiner, an advocate of pro-choice, who shot pictures of Alaskan ferns rather than shot moose — feminists would have hailed her as a principled kindred soul, and trumpeted her struggles against Alaskan male grandees.
So there was something creepy about droves of irate women, in lock-step blasting Sarah Palin from the corridors of New York and Washington, when most of them were the recipients of the traditional spoils of either family connections, inherited money, or the advantages that accrue from insider power marriages. Indeed, very few of Palin’s critics on their own could have emerged from a small-town in Alaska, with an intact marriage and five children, to run the state of Alaska.
We have come to understand that — for a TV anchorwoman, op-ed columnist, or professor — it would be a nightmare to birth a Down Syndrome child in her mid-forties, or to have had her pregnant unwed teen actually deliver her baby. In the world outside Sarah Palin’s Wasilla, these are career-ending blunders that abort the next job promotion or book tour— or the future career of a prepped young daughter on her way to the Ivy League.
Third, from the match-up of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, we discovered that our media does not know anything about the nature of wisdom — how it is found or how it is to be adjudicated. For the last eight weeks, Palin has been demonized as a dunce because she did not, in the fashion of the class toady with his hand constantly up in the first row, impress in flash-card recall, the glasses-on-his-nose Charlie Gibson, or clinched-toothed Katie Couric.
Meanwhile Joe Biden has just been Ol’ Joe Biden — which means not that he can get away with the occasional gaffe, but that can say things so outrageous, so silly, and so empty that, had they come out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, she would have long ago been forced to have stepped aside from the ticket.
Factual knowledge? Biden, in the midst of a financial meltdown on Wall Street, apparently thinks that the last time it happened in 1929, we heard FDR rally us on television. And such made-up nonsense came in the form, as many of Biden’s gaffes do, of a rebuke to the supposedly obtuse George W. Bush.
Sobriety? Biden now admits that dangerous powers abroad will immediately test a President Obama. He warns that the results of such a crisis will be very disappointing to the American electorate, and thus Team Obama/Biden will need loyal supporters to rally as their polls sink. Yet remember that Biden himself has been a fierce and opportunistic critic of Bush, who despite a frenzy of congressional demagoguery, initiated the successful surge and ignored the very polls that the for-the-war/against-the-war Biden so carefully tracked. More importantly, if an Ahmadinejad, Chavez, or Putin ever had any doubts about carving out new spheres of uncontested influence, they may entertain very few now.
Veracity? If one were to think that Biden’s past brushes with plagiarism, inflated bios, and falsehood were exceptional rather than characteristic, the last two months confirmed otherwise. For all the false recall, it is hard to remember anything he said in his Palin debate that was true, whether describing the status of Hezbollah in Lebanon or his own past remarks about the wisdom of burning coal.
Silliness? Imagine the following outbursts, mutatis mutandis, from the mouth of a Sarah Palin — “John McAmerica,” “a Palin-McCain administration,” “Senator George Obama,” “Congressman Joe Biden,” who is both “good looking,” and “drop-dead gorgeous.” Or “I guarantee you, John McCain ain’t taking my shotguns. . . . If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break.”
Or “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Or “Mitt Romney is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly he might have been a better pick than me.”
The list could go on ad nauseam. But we got the picture. Biden has devolved from the ridiculous to the unhinged, confident that in-house journalism would understand that the law graduate with 36 years in the Senate was simply being Joe, while a Sarah Palin, who flinched when asked to parse the Bush Doctrine, was a Neanderthal creationist. I thought by now the You-tubed exchange of a Congressional Finance Committee hearing between the pompous Harvard Law School graduate Barney Frank and the conniving Harvard Law School graduate Franklin Raines — at the proverbial moment of conception of the financial meltdown — would have put to rest the notion that graduation from law school was any proof of either wisdom or morality.
I don’t know whether Sarah Palin would make a great vice president. But I did learn that by the standard of John Kerry’s pick of John Edwards, and now Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, as running mates, she is wise and ethical beyond their measure.
©2008 Victor Davis Hanson
"She's pro-life but supports capital punishment?"
Yes, she is, because criminals CHOOSE to do what they do - they've had their chance to do right. And unborn babies don't even get to CHOOSE anything yet! They're innocent. Obviously people who murder and rape others have don't something wrong. Why are we okay with killing little ones before they even have that chance? Talk about playing God.
i am sick of these republican using the word socialsm. every time when we ask their rich with billions butt to give, they called us socialists. they to spend 20 years in North Korea or Cuba in order get the different between Castro and us "the people"
churches have a right to free speech, doober -- they were critical to the civil rights movement. I just don't see why ANY of them, political or not, should get a pass on taxes. I'm pretty sure nurses and teachers pay taxes, and they actually don't make a business of selling fairy tales. You're right, we need to apply the separation of church and state fully.
Very terse funny and clever.
Well said.
So, let me get this straight:
1) Dobson wants evangelicals to pray "for God's intervention" on election day.
2) When Obama wins ... did God intervene?
3) If God did not intervene, why did He ignore Dobson?
4) If God did intervene, why did he ignore Dobson?
5) Will Dobson ever again ask evangelicals to pray for something?
6) Will evangelicals figure that Dobson isn't sufficiently Godly, because of the evidence that God doesn't answer Dobson's prayers?
These rightwing Old Testament "Christians" always talk about "values", but no one ever asks them to define what that means. It seems that it only has to do with oppressing homosexual people and opposing abortion because their "values" sure don't sound like anything that can be found in the Gospels when you read just what Jesus, himself, said. He never mentions homosexuality but very clearly condemns the rich (when's the last time you heard a church condemn the rich or call for the suppression of their civil rights?), calls to feed the hungry, love your neighbor and your enemy, forgive 70 times 7, let he/she who is without sin cast the first stone, judge not, and He said there were really only 2 commandments - to love God and to love your neighbor, and on these 2 commandments hang all the laws. Looking at what Jesus, not Moses or Paul or Pat Robertson, said, then the Democrats win hands down on "values", unless the religious (I can't bear to call them Christian) right's values mean something else and they're not saying what they are, but they are definitely not Christian values (at least according the Christ himself). By any reasonable definition Jesus was a radical liberal - and yes, very much a socialist, so how do these rightwing religionists ignore His teachings so markedly? It's amazing!
Being pro-life and pro-death penalty is not a dichotomy. Only a moron would think so. Now read this very s-l-o-w-l-y so it has the possibility of sinking in to your thick skulls. Pro-lifers believe in protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. Now that wasn't so difficult to understand, was it? Of course, unless you believe someone should be able to do absolutely anything to one of your family members and the worst sentence he could receive is watching TV and playing basketball the rest of his life you idiots. Read this and learn something new: Prison is not punishment. DUH!!!
Division of church and state? Have you seen all the crosses at military cemeteries? What did you think they were for, to simply mark the graves you moron?
Isn't deciding who is guilty and who is not GOD'S job?
I'm not completely decided on whether or not I support capital punishment, but to say that fetuses are innocent and criminals sentenced to die based on the decisions of men, all under the filter of religious belief, seems kind of hypocritical to me.
Of course a lump of non-cognizant cells is "innocent". After all, plankton is not capable of commiting murder. But why destroy 1, 2, or more peoples lives for the sake of something that's not even aware it's alive?
Consider it a favor... at least they get to go straight to heaven without the messy tragedy called "life" (especially when compared to the eternal paradise).
Scottford, that is a private right. People have the right to be buried under their religious symbols (well, at least most people do). It has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.
The Right Wingers with their spokespersons like Rush Limbaugh , Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich have done everything possible to destroy Hillary Clinton. She didn't win, but now they're whining about Obama... sending around emails that he's another Hitler and the anti-Christ. Well, good enough for you. I hope the Right Wingers are as depressed over the Obama as some of us were when they stole the election from Al Gore. They went after Hillary and got someone they see as much worse. Goodie goodie. I hope they suffer a great deal. I know we did when Gore lost to Bush. That was hell. Still is but only for a few more weeks.
you have to believe in god
you have to believe in god and keep praying.
