Of the two groups that got air time on the news for having meetings on the mall, Beck's is, by far, the least worthy of the title.
Hmm, I don't think so. Your point of arrival from your point of departure is illogically light years apart. I have heard a lot of screeching by some over all the “God talk”, must have been part of today's MSNBC talking points daily downloads....but speaking as someone who is not a Christian (though I am religious and believe in faith), I have no problem with it. The people you denigrate as "evangelical" were not talking about making narrow “religious laws”, they were talking about the heart, and faith as inspiration for positive change. They were exercising their faith in a public and peaceful manner, which is entirely consistent with American liberty. I don’t understand the irreligious who can find nothing positive in the faith of others. You don’t have to agree to appreciate the passion, or the intent. I’m not a Buddhist, either, but I can admire and respect a Buddhist making pleas for peace and acceptance. Why can't the non-believing public not do that with Christians as well? Further, Martin Luther King Jr. himself peppered his speeches with references to God and Christ as his foundation and inspiration. That didn’t mean that Jews, atheists, whatever could not appreciate his cause and his concepts. There is a big difference between “making the Bible the LAW” and “the Bible and faith as INSPIRATION for a just and free society”. BIG difference. Those today seemed to fall into the latter category with their prayers and speeches. On another note, of course that won't stop elitist pretend progressives/faux liberals who just spent 2 weeks calling people religious bigots over the inflammatory and unnecessary mosque location choice – from roundly insulting and attacking conservative Christians, having neglected to mention the repellant views of Islam regarding gays and women. I wonder if ANY of them will over hear their own cognitive dissonance as it squirts out of their pie holes? Probably not.
And I'm still saying that, of the two, Beck's is by far the least deserving of the "fringe" title. And, given your first comment about "morons", I was assuming you thought Beck was fringe as well.
She had earlier made some negative comments about this group, so I was assuming she was being specific here as well.
So they don't want to impose their views concerning abortion, marriage, homosexuality, religious iconography, pornography, narcotics, alcohol and the rest on the rest of the public? Again, not buying it. Faith is the decision to believe something without sufficient grounds for believing it is true. It is not to be applauded. It is to be opposed.
Every color on the political spectrum tries to jam what they want down everyone else's throat. It isn't like the left is just sitting on it's hands when some religious fundamentalist mentions God. They use the same process to get their political agenda in place, be it socialized medicine, welfare, the environment, taxes to fund all the social programs, and pro-abortion platforms. Why is what they want to do so much less incidious than when a righty wants to do the same thing? It isn't like restricting what I can and can't buy with the meager amount of money I earn but am allowed to keep while forcing me to buy medical insurance is any less an attack on my liberty.
Oh thats right, FSM forbid that people have their own minds and are able to reach these decisions with out the need for someone else to tell them how to think. I mean come on is the concept that fucking foreign to you that you need someone to tell you how to think, that you are incapable of forming your own opinions and positions based on the data that you see? Oh and please explain how a desire for less government waste and spending and lower taxes and more personal liberty and a limitation on government intervention are now the products of "right-wing fanatic movements"? So how were they targets? By simply not appealing to them? What was said to make you say they were targets?
What are you talking about? What does this have to do with the Tea Party? This is standard boilerplate obfuscation, you are grabbing desperately at generic demonization, and you know it. But let's take it one by one. Abortion -- The Obama Administration has done more to harm a woman's right to choose than any Republican Administration has been able to do since the original Roe vs. Wade decision. You want a bogeyman for abortion? Sounds to me like the Obama Administration should be higher on your list, if you really are interested in protecting a woman's right to choose. Marriage (Gay Marriage I'm assuming) -- The Tea Party has been largely silent on social issues. Not sure what I think of that, but I know full well that I prefer that way, way more than I prefer the Obama Justice Department's argument for not turning over DOMA which compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest. Fuck that, even GWB didn't do that to the gays! Homosexuality -- see above. Religious Iconography -- perhaps you can explain the Tea Parties position on religious iconography first. Don't think I've seen them really take a stand on that. Same goes for pornography, drugs, alcohol. Why would you want to oppose faith? Reason itself cannot exist without faith. And while I'm really not interested in rehashing another one of those religion conversations people have on here, I have to wonder sometimes the following about the religion haters at WF....Is your problem really with God, or is it just his fan club that you hate? There are many philosophies that provide a framework for religion, why simply focus on one of them? Spinoza had a very interesting take on the philosophy of religion, perhaps it might actually help those who, I have noticed, constantly confuse faith with what is done in its name.
Loved the pictures from the rally. So many of them looked like this: http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/glumpy-two-glenn-beck.jpg "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million pounds..."
Wow, that's quite a turnout, and honoring our troops is always a worthy cause. I hear Glenn Beck hosted the event.
Translation: "I am convinced it MUST be there because my mind is made up. Nevermind you can''t SEE it, just tkae my word for it, it's there - implicitly." Sounds very much like an argument for ghosts or ESP or....god. how do you know? there's a verse in the OT that Evangelicals LOVE to quote about the course the nation is on which says, IIRC, "If MY people who are called by MY name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then i will hear from heaven and will heal their land" There's nothing in that which points the finger outward at secularists or anyone else, the finger is pointed at BELIEVERS and it's part of their belief system that if God blesses a country it's because HIS people are true to their faith, no matter what goes on around them. if you had half a clue about Evangelical theology you'd know that this message is not new, and it always always says "what are WE (the believers) doing wrong and what should WE do to please god" - it doesn't focus on "those sinners out there" at all. that's not to say that they never have the outward focused message - but what we heard Saturday was most obviously NOT it. Here's a clue for your dumb ass - political activism by religious people is mother-fucking NOT an infringement on church & state separation. legal imposition of a policy which has NO purpose but enforcing religious doctrine is. But no one yesterday was advocating ANY religiously driven policy, explicity or implicitly. Explicitly, they didn't send a political message at all. Implicitly, the only logical motive one can ascribe is the Tea party message which is essentially economic in nature (Taxed Enough Already is, after all, where the word came from) and no matter how much you might find their economic views "lunacy" they are NOT religious in nature. so your nonsensical hand-wringing paranoia about how the Christians are somehow coming to get you (checked under your bed every night, didn'cha?) i, ya know, totally irrelevant to this discussion.
Even if that were true, it doesn't prove that everyone who says "We are not the fringe" is in fact on the fringe. More to the point, it doesn't support what you accused me of (implying that lunatics only appeared on the left).
Cute trick. To be anti-mind control...is to be FOR mind control! Like those anti-bigotry bigots, and those anti-fascism fascists. Yeeaah. No, no, discourse in America is in great shape, really...
In political discourse, anyway. If people want to believe in goblins, they can go ahead and do that, so long as they keep it to themselves. BUUTT....religion isn't FOR that. It's FOR fucking with people. It's FOR mind control. I mean, it's literally got "thou shalt not"s, carved in fucking stone. Those ancient desert nomads didn't make this shit up as some hippie-dippie person's comfort mechanism. They didn't make it so some guy in a collar could pat you on the head at a funeral. They just didn't. They made FOR telling people what to do. When you see a prop 8, or similar, that's religion doing exactly what it's fucking made for. If people want to strip out the dogmatism, and keep some sort of "spirituality", okay, fine. I happen to think it's fucking meaningless. If you've gone that far, why at all keep the rest of it? It's just vague oogedy boogedy at that point. But okay, keep your goblins, and go play with that, just leave me out. I want the wall of church/state to hold, I want the state kept secular, and despite the lies from the Beck-ites, the founders wanted it that way. That's the one thing that sticks in my craw about Beck, he can spiral off into his other tinfoil shit, I don't care, but he fucking lies about history. Just baldfaced shamelessly lies. About important shit. Y'know, stuff that matters to me. I could kick him in the nuts for that. Otherwise, I could wave him away like a mosquito.
While I'm loathe to criticize somebody's belief system, perhaps you'd better steer clear of this "Butt Religion." Damn right the state has no business sticking its nose into marriage. Glenn Beck is gonna get you!!!!!! Why does anything stick in your craw about Beck? Don't bother claiming influence, cuz it's clear he holds greater sway, has greater significance with those who welcome craw critters in the first place. Is this one of those deals where you try to define the leadership of your "opposition?" Is Beck your Lex Luthor, Super D? Is your craw cluttered with kryptonite critters? Cause I can see how that'd be annoying.
This annoys me. Honestly how many of you knew what the date was? (I didn't) I'd bet even the media whose going around saying "OMFG! Beck is speaking on MLK day" didn't know it. It's not even an official holiday or anything.
As I told a friend of mine this weekend, I've never watched or listened to any of Beck's shows. I do love how he makes so many liberals get frothy-mouthed, though.
There is nothing wrong with it. However some are trying to beat on Beck for it. There are plenty of other things to beat on him for.
