It’s hard to put into words how inebriated with irrational fear someone has to be in order to be so scared of 17 Uighurs — who were never guilty of anything — that they would avoid traveling to whatever place this handful of persecuted individuals is located. But this is the right-wing movement at its core: its leaders cynically ratchet up fear levels as high as possible to justify whatever they want to do (invade Iraq, torture people, spy on Americans with no warrants) and their adherents (along with plenty of others) become more and more paralyzed by their fears of anything Muslim. This, after all, is the same faction that continues to shake with terror at the very idea that accused Terrorists will be brought to the U.S. — in handcuffs, imprisoned, and disappeared into super-max facilities. And it is the same faction that made accepting the Uighurs into the U.S. politically unpalatable by threatening legislation — The Keep Terrorists Out of America Act — that would bar their entrance. As damaging as the resulting policies has been from the last eight years of constant fear-mongering, far worse is what it has done to the American national character, turning much of the citizenry into a weak and easily frightened herd, where the mere mention of the word Terrorist — or Muslim — sends people into spasms of fear and blind submission.—
Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)
“cynically ratchet[ing] up fear levels as high as possible to justify whatever they want to do […] and their adherents (along with plenty of others) become more and more paralyzed by their fears…”
Oh, I’m sorry Glenn. Were you discussing the left’s obsession with climate change? (I originally typed “global warming,” but since the crisis is constantly under revision, I used the more generic term.)
First, emergents cannot accept the idea of Bible inerrancy. Verbal inerrancy will not stand modern critical examination in the study of languages. To assign fixed inerrancy to ancient documents written in the Hebrew and Greek used thousands of years ago stretches credibility.
Affirming inerrancy does take some degree of faith. But without it we can make Scripture say whatever we want. Evangelicals believe God is big and strong enough to guard the integrity of his revelation to humanity.
Second, emergents have come to believe that the gospel that they have been taught is a caricature of the message of Jesus, rather than the real thing. Increasingly they are putting other Biblical writings in the background and have shown increasing interest in what Jesus said and did.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable….”(2 Tim 3:16) We are to use Scripture to interpret itself. Focusing on just one person or book increases the likelihood of poor interpretation and lopsided theological emphases. Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings are equally important theologically because both are the divinely inspired Word of God.
They ask “If we are followers of Jesus, why do we not live and preach his message?” In short, they are looking for a much more radical Christianity than they have found in the Evangelical (and mainline) churches.
Agreed. People who profess to follow Christ need to live it out better, myself included. (It’s important to note, however, that the previous sentence has been true through all of church history.)
Third, exposure to science in public education, universities and personal studies has led emergents to disown the conclusion that when the Bible and science appear to collide, science must take a back seat to the Bible.
In this conflict, emergents are not abandoning the Bible, but are raising critical questions about the Bible’s nature and content. This new bread of Christian remains quite committed to the Bible but they are very open to new ideas and understandings.
Affirming that the Bible is NOT the believer’s highest authority IS in fact abandoning it. Bowing Scriptural authority to “science in public education, universities and personal studies” (personal studies—is this a joke?) is a perfect example of the human tendency to conform Scripture to culture instead of the other way around.
Fourth, emergents have become disillusioned by the clay feet of church leadership. It is not just the Jim Bakkers and the Jimmy Swaggarts, but the rank and file of church leadership.
Emergents compare what Jesus had in mind and what is going on in churches, and they see a need to start over. They want a fresh start with serious intent to follow Jesus.
The tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater is one of the hallmarks of Emerging theology. This is partly because many (not all) of this movement are disaffected evangelicals overreacting against excess.
Fifth, our public schools and our nation in general are insisting that we be truly multicultural. The churches’ teaching, that people not like us, are doomed, is not acceptable to emergents. They want a much broader definition of what it means to be accepted in the family of God.
John 14:6 - “No one comes to the father except through me.” ~ Jesus (you know, the guy emergents want to focus on at the expense of the apostles).
John 3:3 - “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ~ Jesus
Sixth, emergents are insisting that God be understood as totally gracious and loving. The angry, vengeful God that is sometime presented in both Old and New Testaments is not acceptable.
Unless you dismiss all the OT, I don’t see how one can ignore any of the elements of God’s character (all of which are perfect and holy). God required a blood sacrifice to atone for sin. Nothing has changed in the demand, but thankfully Jesus offers to pay that price for us. As a reviewer of Death by Love writes, “those who demand justice for the poor and oppressed today but deny that God should seek justice for the sins we commit against him are hypocrites.”
Seventh, acceptance of homosexuals in the family of God is common. Being pro-gay or anti-gay is not the issue. Emergents recognize that sexuality is far more complex than is generally recognized. To live in harmony with gay and lesbian friends and family members is a part of the emergent’s perspective.
Emergents’ confused viewpoints on sexuality are, again, products of conforming Scripture to culture instead of the other way around. Sexuality is one of the clearest issues in the Bible. Obfuscations abound today. Still, we in fact called to love everyone.
Eighth, echoing the first named characteristic, emergents recognize the role that language plays in their understanding and practice of the Christian Faith. Theology is language bound. Language is a limited tool of communication.
If theology is language bound, it is also culturally shaped. To be rigidly exclusive does not make sense to emergent Christians.
Again, this is too often used as an excuse to make Scripture say what you want it to say and descend into relativism.
I highly recommend “Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be).”
…lots of left-wing bloggers are cheering [Wanda] Sykes on, and the president of the United States was visibly amused by her joke. So the question is this: Why do liberals find this joke funny when they should find it embarrassing?
The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh’s past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.
Except for the last one, these are all taboos that liberals promote and enforce with especial vigor. If a conservative violated any one of them, he would be on the inside track to be named “Worst Person in the World” by that NBC blowhard (as indeed Feherty was).
What makes Sykes’s joke funny to a liberal, then, is the sense of danger that accompanies her risky themes, combined with the secure knowledge that since the joke is at the expense of a liberal hate figure, the usual rules do not apply. It’s the same reason people on the left evince particular glee when they attack Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele in expressly racist terms, or when they use antigay innuendo against their political opponents (regardless of the latter’s sexual orientation).
In Obama’s wide grin as Sykes was telling her joke, we saw the smug look of a man who enjoys seeing his critics dehumanized. The president of the United States should be better than this.
Bible texts are best read with a pair of glasses made out of today’s newspaper.—
Dorothee Sölle (via azspot)
I would reverse this completely. Today’s newspaper is best read with a pair of glasses made out of Scripture.
A few miles away, another group of folks gathered on that same Good Friday outside the headquarters of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms contractor. We walked the stations of the cross, one by one, remembering our lover Jesus. And we heard stories of suffering – stories of God’s little ones groaning in the midst of killing, displacement, torture. We heard statistics about weapons manufacturers like the one on whose property we were standing. And again we read the passion narrative. This time as we listened to the words, it seemed that we could almost hear the wailing of women in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine, women like Mary.
As we approached the final station of the cross, about 20 of us crossed onto the property at Lockheed Martin. I bowed on my knees and began to pray the Lord’s prayer … interrupted by a police officers who placed me under arrest. As I stepped into the police van, smiling faces lit it up … there was a solemn sense of peace. It was the right place to be. It was a magnificent thing to hear folks honk and wave as they went by. We even had a police officer who had arrested us thank us for our witness and decry the evils of violence and war.
As I sat in silence that night after a long day, I recalled the words of one of the preachers that had spoken earlier with that historic black-church fire: “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.”
It was legal to kick black folks out of stores and buses because of the color of their skin. But that didn’t make it right. It may have been legal to take slaves from Africa and treat them like property. But that didn’t make it right. Maybe it was legal to take the land from natives, but that didn’t make it right. And it may be legal to sell handguns in bulk to “straw” buyers who sell them on our streets, but that doesn’t make it right. It may be legal to make weapons that can kill 100,000 in one blast, but that doesn’t make it right.
The main problem I have with this is that Claiborne seems to make social justice the primary focus of the gospel—and it is not. Claiborne and his friends seem so permanently attached to viewing everything through a lens of oppression, political leftism and the idea of “the least of these” (which do not [should not?] have to be inherently related), that he cannot even extricate himself from them for one day and focus on just the gospel. Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Sinners of all kinds: gun victims and gun owners, the raped and the rapist, the homeless guy and the multi-billionaire, the black man and the white man, women and men.
Why does Claiborne have to cheapen what should be a simple celebration of God coming to earth as a man—to seek and save the lost—with an opportunistic political agenda?
Evan Coyne Maloney discusses “Indoctrinate U” with Lou Dobbs (CNN, March 11th, 2009)
According to David Axelrod, among the books that Obama has read recently is “Unequal Democracy,” by the Princeton political scientist Larry M. Bartels. It attributes the steep economic inequality of our time not to blind technological and market forces but to specific Republican policies. Bartels writes, “On average, the real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans.”
For decades, rising inequality coincided with conservative electoral success, because voters were largely ignorant of the effects of tax-code changes and other economic policies, those in power were unresponsive to the concerns of working-class citizens, and broader income growth occurred in election years.
In other words, the causes of inequality are essentially political—an insight that suggests that Obama might use economic policy to begin reversing a decades-long trend.
I’m skeptical of this (duh ;), but there’s more to it than ideological dismissal. Although focused more on the stock market than the economy as a whole, this article describes why directly relating a president’s party affiliation to the country’s economic success is fallacious.
The Obama campaign has sent letters to radio stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania discouraging them from running ads by the National Rifle Association critical of Barack Obama.—
The Volokh Conspiracy - Obama Campaign Challenges NRA Ad:
This is rather despicable. The Obama team acts in a very thuggish manner to suppress dissent. If you’re a liberal and you’re not troubled by this, you’re not actually a liberal.
For those who care, the ads are actually accurate. Factcheck.org usually does a good job, but not here. But regardless of Obama’s stance on the Second Amendment, we should be worried about his stance on the First. Threatening stations that run ads against him is worrisome, particularly since, if Obama wins, he could actually take retribution against media outlets. And don’t think he wouldn’t do it … he’s basically told us he would.
Do you ever see Obama take a stand on issues of personal liberty? No. He’s not that kind of liberal. He’s not, actually, any kind of liberal. He’s a statist.
(via jeffmiller)
(via jgh)
Hey everybody, Obama wants to violate the first and second amendment!
(via soupsoup)
A Democrat? NEVER! But they’re the ones that aren’t that Facist Bush!
(via muppetpants)
sds:
Couple thoughts here. On climate change: Some on the right dispute whether global warming exists at all. Others dispute whether it (a) is dangerous to us, (b) whether mankind can do anything about it, and/or (c) whether it’s worth it to do anything about it. I am not an expert, but some things seem obvious to me. First, the science is not clear, as evidenced by the many respectable and credible voices who are skeptics. Non-linear systems are almost impossible to predict or understand, and the global warmists treat the issue like a linear system. Second, even granting that the global warming threat is real, that the science is legit and unquestionable, and that we can actually do something about it (all big IFs), there is a good argument to be made that our resources are much better spent elsewhere—like directly tackling issues such as global poverty, clean water, economic reform, basic human rights and systems of justice, etc. My concern is that the left wants to use the threat of global warming to expand government’s role in our lives and enforce draconian economic requirements that would do more harm than good.
Also, I waver between being offended and laughing aloud at being compared to a Holocaust-denier.
On fear-exploitation in politics: if there are genuine differences in the policy implications of one party over another, where should the line be on fleshing out those implications using real-world examples? (That is not a rhetorical question.)I don’t think any use of real-world examples should be off-limits. I think, however, that hypotheticals should be used judiciously on topics where peoples lives and safety are at stake. Appeal to evidence, and if a hypothetical scenario is the only way to make your argument, acknowledge both that this is a weakness of your argument and that people may react to it as if it is not hypothetical and situate it accordingly.
Clearly it’s bad form to say “If you elect a Obama, expect a dirty nuke in DC within six months.” On the other hand, the foreign policy implications of a Democratic presidency are well-defined. I won’t go into them here. While describing Democrats as “not sharing the fear and not wanting to address the threat” of, say terrorism, may be too harsh and/or simplistic, the last 7 years have shown that too often they do not understand the nature of evil (especially the one embodied in radical Islam) and are unwilling to confront it steadfastly.
I just took a look at the 2008 GOP platform, which for the first time mentions global climate change and proposes ways of addressing it. So I’ll need to read that, but I’ll provisionally retract the my argument. If Republicans do officially agree that there is a threat (and judging by the section titled ‘Addressing Climate Change Responsibly’ I take it they do), then my contortions make no sense, and folks like Gore should radically attenuate his argument to acknowledge this landscape. I’d just add that this is a pretty new development (c.f. the 2004 GOP Convention).
Any comparisons to holocaust-denial were unintentional, and I’m still not sure what you mean. Sorry if I’m dim.
I think both of these issues (global warming and terrorism) are pretty fruitful avenues for distinguishing between the governing philosophies of the two parties. I’m not an expert in either, but debating why (1) the Democrats’ approach to global climate change is a better one and (2) the Republicans’ approach to global terrorism is a better one sounds like a good idea (I’m ruefully adding up the time I’ve already spent reading about Palin minutae).
Specifically on the topic of global warming, I think its acknowledgement as a real issue might as well be taken for granted now. But debates about (b) and (c) are where it’s at.
The underlying debate here is your “concern is that the left wants to use the threat of global warming to expand government’s role in our lives and enforce draconian economic requirements,” in other words the fundamental differences in outlook between liberalism and conservativism. I don’t see liberalism as wanting to expand the government’s role in our lives. Stop laughing. I see global warming (along with pollution reduction, minimization of food-borne illness, stopping the spread of communicable disease, etc.) as the sort of problem that only gets addressed with regulation and governmental action. Furthermore that indictment is not as stinging to me because I don’t see the government per se as something nefarious, but something closer to the embodiment of our collective will, and something that can be done well.
So. I’m gonna read that platform now, and my revised position on the above is that both sides should lay off the argumentum ad baculum.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I completely apologize if you thought my Holocaust-denier reference was directed at you. By no means. I was referring to those on the left who would clamp down any discussion of global warming and demonize any skeptics. You are very clearly not one of those.
I agree that there are not necessarily any nefarious, expansionist motives in the use of government to combat the global ills of poverty, pollution, diseases, etc. However, in terms of global warming, when one considers that the science is not determined, and that the proposed means to fight global warming would be economically catastrophic, what other explanation are we left with? Liberalisms’ new religious cause is climate change. And they use strikingly religious language.
James Taranto, today:
How do people end up believing things that are false, such as that the sun revolves around the Earth or that Barack Obama is a Muslim? In a New York Times op-ed, scientist Sam Wang and science writer Sandra Aamodt explain that it has to do with “the quirky way in which our brains store memories—and mislead us along the way”:
A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.
You may remember that a lot of people claimed that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were lying. But none of their claims were ever disproved, and T. Boone Pickens still has his million bucks.
Wang and Aamodt, however, seem to have internalized the claim that the Swift Boat Vets were lying. Irony of ironies, they have unwittingly illustrated their own point.
