Welcome, welcome friends! Welcome to the New Religious Right. Where God and guns go hand in hand... Not that the original BMOC needs either a .38 Special or the Second Amendment for protection. This is the place where the letter of the law is the guiding light of daily life, whether that letter be from the Bible or the Constitution. This is the place where sacrifices are made but only by choice... There is no Robin Hood syndrome here. The New Right is emerging and attempting to make a face for itself. As can be seen in the presidential primaries there is too much tradition and apathy *which is tradition* for true change to happen yet there's enough change out there, or desire for change at the very least, to screw those who hold to tradition. Such is problem for our beleaguered boys in red. The New Right loves Huckabee and yearns for Paul... The New Right looks to help those who need it but expect those who can to pull their own weight. We listen to the call of liberty but also the call of the Lord guiding our principles and morals. Welcome to the voice of the New Right. We have our foundation, we have our direction... Once we find a face and a rallying point it will be time for us to rise up and take our rightful place in the sun. Our search begins here and now. Welcome to the New Right.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
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24 responses:
sick.
someone's gotta bring the lord to these fucking heathens.
What Would Jesus Do?
Jesus would separate his posts into actual paragraphs from now on.
owww my eyesssssaaaaaaah
Does Jesus really think in paragraph form? If He's omniscent then what's to stop him from thinking in completely cluttered thought processes?
Jesus wasn't omniscient, he was God in the form of man.
He may have been insanely wise, but it's not like there are stories in the bible of Jesus saying to Peter, "Wait, hold up..."
*Jesus pauses, cocks his head to the side as though he's receiving a heavenly telepathic transmission*
"There's a really hot chick taking a bath on the roof. Let's go."
Now, as for your point about paragraphs:
Jesus doesn't write for this blog. If he wants to start his own blog, he can write below a fifth grade level all he likes.
Also, I'm pretty sure the Sermon on the Mount was broken into clear and discernible thoughts.
What is it about Christians and not knowing jack shit about their own religion? I mean say what you want about Muslim zealots, but at least those motherfuckers have actually read the damn Koran.
For my money, I'm still okay with the old right. The right that says it's okay for a man to hunt migrating geese with a high-powered rifle as he hovers high above the land in his private blimp. The right that drinks beer and watches professional wrestling. The right that doesn't particularly care what Jesus would do, because in a lot of ways Jesus was a liberal softy and the only cheek Americans like to turn is the cheek of our enemy's ass when we put a boot in it. The right that eats at Arby's and thinks you should be able to smoke outdoors without being fined for it. The right that believes in the silver standard and a non-interventionist foreign policy. The right that hasn't trusted religious fundamentalists since prohibition was repealed.
That's the right I'm down with. I must say, though, it's good to have another right-winger on board here. Welcome.
hey joe, what the hell does being right wing have to do with half the things you mentioned? Everybody loves beers and though I am no hunter, if you cooked a damn bird I would eat it.
Also didn't know Arby's was a conservative thing, but that totally explains why I dont eat there much!
Also dude, I live in PA where you can still smoke indoors in bars and I find myself very conflicted cause as an ex smoker about that. On the one hand I remember being pissed about NY and CA smoking laws when I used to be a smoker trapped in a bar, but on the other hand, today, I appreciate not having smoke being blown in my face all the time. This stuff isn't really right wing / left wing is what I am trying to say.
Also guys, cut the new guy some slack. One of his(or her) first posts. Lets let people edit as they see fit, shall we.
Signing off, on an all embracing note, strange for me. Dunno, just don't feel too pissed off today. Live and let live or something.
1. You're right, I wrote it, not Jesus... Jesus doesn't write for this blog, therefore your first comment about paragraphs doesn't make sense.
2. If Jesus is completely man AND completely God, as Christians believe, then who said he wasn't omniscient? If you think Jesus played all the cards in His deck I'd go ahead and say that you're sorely mistaken.
3. Unless you have one, there's no written record by the man Himself on the Sermon on the Mount. Pretty sure that was written by my man Matthew the Evangelist in his post tax collector days...
Yo Minotauro.
First... I said OUTdoors. Not indoors. I think bans on smoking in restaurants and such are totally rational. My comment was a jab at cities like Santa Monica that have outlawed smoking ANYwhere. People are getting fined $300 for smoking on the sidewalk out there. It's insane.
The rest of my comments were mostly made in jest, and to illustrate that one can be conservative and yet not beholden to religion.
And I wasn't trying to be hard on the new guy. Truth be told, I'm excited that this blog now has a voice from this part of the political spectrum.
Rock and roll.
now all we need is for the lazy bastard to actually write another post.
The hills of PA are run over with bow and arrow wielding maniacs driving pick ups and hunting rodents that they take to the Arby's drive through, insisting that the pudgy community college drop out chef cook it for them.
Its a goddamn invasion of racoon hunters out here! Seriously though, this one guy at my job had barbequed squirrel meat that tasted not nearly as strange as I thought it would.
apparently pigs taste like people. so squirrels obviously taste like deer. deer tastes good.
that must mean at holy communion, we're eating jesus' body, so it's both cannibalism AND pig-eating. no wonder muslims dont like christians
my logic kicks ass
yo joe, i know you said outdoors, I was just saying my little thing about smoking. I read your posts carefully man, don't worry. Thats the good thing about disagreeing with someone, you listen carefully to what he has to say.
Amen to your point about the separation of religion and politics. People seem to agree about the separation of church and state but they seem to like a little jesus sauce on their candidates.
The real problem with infusing religion into the debate is that it makes us take our eyes off the ball and veer into political tangents. Instead of focusing on economic and social issues we end up arguing over some fringe issue that doesn't really matter.
I guess that's what a lot of people who commented on this post took issue to, on both sides of the political system - the infusion of a kind of vodoo mysticism into concrete issues that tends to confuse things. That was probably my problem with Hucakabee as well.
A good point that Southernpride made however was that Ron Paul and Huckabee represent a younger wing of the GOP and that the people who voted for them in the primaries will end up influencing right wing politics in the next 10 - 15 years.
Agreed. Part of my issue with southern_pride's original statement was that Huckabee and Paul are almost polar opposites on social issues. I'm curious how a cohesive political movement could embrace them both.
Obviously, those with a deep-seated religious faith have every right to participate in democratic politics. My main problem with religion affecting the field of politics is that often religious fundamentalists feel that the teachings of their religion are reason enough to define law and policy. They often go no further than citing scripture or invoking "God's will" instead of arguing logically and explaining why the directions they propose would be better for the country. Example: Christian evangelicals who claim that intelligent design should be given equal footing with evolution in our education system. Their argument is founded almost exclusively upon a literal interpretation of the Bible. Some have more extensive arguments, but for the most part, they refuse to allow the discourse to go any further than "this is the way it is because God said so."
Religion is fine. It serves a vtal role in our society. But in the field of politics, it should be set aside in favor of a more humanistic approach.
you're right, joe. huck and paul can't really be lumped into one cohesive movement, though i don't entirely agree that they're polar opposites on social issues. their opinions do not run terribly contrary; however, their ideas for implementation do.
while paul often follows the typical gop social profile (example: opposition to roe v. wade), i've always understood his policy on federal implementation of such issues is "it's not the federal government's business." please correct me if i'm wrong about that.
one of huckabee's main economic stumps was the implementation of the fairtax system - a flat federal sales tax rate to replace the federal income tax. paul's a staunch opponent of income taxes and has previously stated his support of the fairtax program. for the record, i support a switch to taxing spending rather than income, especially as a means of curbing decadent american spending, but i'm not sure that i agree with a flat rate.
point is, republican opinion on some social issues seems to still be fairly consistent with the base. what i think has changed is a growing discontent with the idea of over-legislating morality at a federal level. this, i believe, is one of the defining internal conflicts within the gop as it fights to establish a post-bush identity.
Sure. I get what you're saying. Here's an example of what I was trying to convey: Paul is against people using drugs, but he's opposed to "the war" on them, while Huckabee is against people doing drugs but totally in favor of spending a lot of money to stop them.
I'm also way into the fairtax, both for the reasons you stated, as well as a couple of others. One of the main advantages to it is that it would bring a large portion of corporate dollars in offshore holding corporations (there's about $15 trillion out there) back into the taxable realm. Another is that it would allow us to get rid of the expensive, inefficient behemoth knowns as the IRS.
While I agree with what's being said here, I really think we're being too kind in general to the Religious Right.
I was raised in and around Christianity from birth, and let me tell you, the Religious Right is an evil arm of politics - not built up around people's ethical uprightness but rather created so as to have the appearance of a well-meaning if not somewhat overbearing moral arm of our government.
The secret of the Religious Right is really quite terrible in its simplicity: Most American Protestant Christians don't actually have a fucking clue what their religion is about. For every single Christian who takes the time to truly research their faith and cultivate a real personal relationship with their personal Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, you have at least (AT LEAST) 10 mongoloid simpletons who show up on Sunday and give 10% and believe things like "Jesus was white," and "God hates fags," and "Barack Obama is a Muslim."
I'm not here to rail on idiocy. I'll save that for later. What I'm here to rail on are the ideas that the Religious Right is inherently good but misguided or that the voters who make up the constituency in question somehow deserve the walking on eggshells treatment.
The thing is, these people didn't used to have one singular voice in America. They didn't used to be able to affect entire decades of this country's history for the worse.
The Religious Right pandered to this group's ignorance, small-mindedness and fear of change to the point that they were able to use this group to sway whole elections in an effort to gain advancements for other far more powerful groups wholly unrelated and sometimes completely removed from the Christian ideologies put forth by the so-called Religious Right.
Don't treat the Religious Right like it's just another voter block or that these people like they are some kind of oppressed group that needs to be coddled with politically correct kids' gloves.
I already stated my opinions on the true nature of the Religious Right. As for their constituency, they are white American Christians and they are not persecuted, not oppressed and their life choices are not being in any way threatened by the rest of us choosing to not put our faith in their mythologies. I hate this idea that we have to be nice to them for some reason the way you would perhaps be kind to child dying of leukemia. Like it is so fucking hard to be a Christian in America.
While no one is defending these people, I also notice that in this thread, people seem reluctant to attack. We attack so many other people we disagree with. Why not the Religious Right?
I'd also like to point out that Southern_Pride has left his own thread, and he has yet to comment on my thread either.
I find this lack of defense quite predictable. Many Christians, when faced with the cold hard truths about their politics, religion and ultimately themselves choose to turn tail and run back to the welcoming walls of their ignorant bliss than have an actual debate.
Something about bringing a knife to a gunfight or a pen to a test...
The religious right is not solely white dude. The black church can be extremely bigoted and homophobic as well and so can the new catholic church which is composed largely of hispanic recruits.
The hispanic constituency brings with them their own historical machismo and gay hating which fits right in with the catholic church's doctrines. They are far more religious and doctrinaire about their beliefs than the old white catholics.
The fact that Christians come in multiple ethnicities doesn't change much about the group I'm talking about.
While it's possible to make the case that the Religious Right has perhaps been attempting to integrate Hispanics into their fold as of late, the fact remains that the Religious Right as it has existed since its first exploitations has been mostly made up of ignorant rural whites.
I would say that Hispanics possibly could make up 10-15% of this constituency, maybe.
As for black people, the Religious Right cares little for the African-American community, as has been evinced by the fact that their Golden Boy blatantly ignored the NAACP until 2006 (after the horrors of Katrina warranted some photo ops with the aforementioned "Colored People").
So I will say that while I consider you a friend and I respect your opinions, I heartily disagree with your assessment of the Religious Right as multi-ethnic.
I disagree with you about this issue man. I think you are simplifying the whole religious right thing and viewing it through a racial lens.
First off, I ll concede that the black and hispanic constituents of catholic and evangelical churches constitute a minority. However that reflects their overall numbers within the total population.
Secondly, the reason I mentioned these minority religious groups is that they exhibit a level of hate towards homosexuals and a disdain for women's rights that is just abominable. These guys were once themselves victims of injustice and racial hatred.
Despite having undergone discrimination and violence, they turn around and denounce other repressed sub groups within their midst. And their justification is the bible and religion. Thats why I think they are way worse than even the old school fanatics. They may not vote republican because of other conflicting interests such as immigration reform or welfare but their stance on social issues is uncompromisingly conservative.
I will certainly concede this point.
However, my issue is not with ignorance or intolerance - both issues that we will deal with until we achieve a Utopian existence.
My issue is with the politicization of such hate and fear within a rather large and formidable group in this country - poor whites who go to church every Sunday.
While these other groups may vote conservatively, I cannot speak to their situation. I have experience among the excessively large majority held within this group we are calling the Religious Right.
I am not in any way trying to knock religion or people who go to church. My beef is with people who claim a an excessive amount of holiness while knowing little to nothing about their actual religion... and then on top of this allowing me who care little for their morals or their situation at large to tell them how to vote.
These same men line their pockets while the churchgoers lose their jobs and attempt to feed too-large families on two minimum wage jobs.
But you are certainly right. It isn't only whites. There are other factors at work. However, I don't feel qualified to speak on the other factors.
In other words they dont have as much of a reason to get off their asses and vote in the numbers they have done.
I dunno about Mccain though. He has proven himself more than capable of pandering to the right in the past and I wont be surprised if he does a lot of that if the going gets rough for his campaign. How convincing he seems to the evangelicals is another question.
Mr. Murder...
Not sure if your recent posts were in response to anything I posted on this thread, but I figured I may as well clear up my stance on this.
I have little, if any, respect for religious fundamentalists of any kind. Once someone starts saying stuff like "the jury is still out on the whole evolution thing," I generally label them an idiot and move on with my life. However, it's tiresome and wasteful to try and get these deluded folks to give up their worldview. They have a right to participate in American politics. Unfortunatlely there's no provision to ban stupid people from voting.
However. My argument is that faith or any citation of scripture or religious dogma has no place in the context of political discourse. As soon as someone tries to invoke these elements, their voice should essentially be disregarded.
For example, if someone who happens to be an evangelical Christian makes a decent argument against stem cell research by framing it in logical terms and presents a logical case as to why stem cell research is bad for society, the argument should be treated as valid. However, as soon as someone says "the Bible says..." or something like that, their part in the argument should end and any statement they make should be completely tossed out.
Just my two cents.
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