Nope.[/QUOTE] Well, the first two bits of your posts were statements, and my answer to that question rendered the rest moot. Which was just as well, as it was rhetorical silliness.
"Secularism", being a dirty word, and antithetical to what it means to be American, tying Thomas Paine up in his bullshit, when "the age of reason", and "the rights of man", refute virtually everything he stands for... Yeah, those are good enough.
Specifically. In fact take this statement and prove it: when "the age of reason", and "the rights of man", refute virtually everything he stands for...
“I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.” -Glenn Beck. “To pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age; enjoining the parents of such children to send them to school, to learn reading, writing, and common arithmetic…” -Thomas Paine; The Rights of Man. (pg. 335) “Accepting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be relieved but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and the numbers of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities, by the aid of education, will be greater.” -Thomas Paine; The Rights of Man. (pg. 335) “[T]he first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period” -Thomas Paine; Agrarian Justice (pg. 475) “It is not a charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together” -Thomas Paine; Agrarian justice (pg. 482)
And here's Beck blaming society's ills on not enough Gaw-duh. [yt=This]cMwZ76QB7uk[/yt] And here's Age Of Reason. Linky.
so? you have a writer who pretty much every historian agrees radically changed many of his views over the course of his life (something that is not unusual in and of itself) and we therefore are forbidden from citing his remarks we agree with because we disagree with his later (or former) works? Seems more emotion than logic in that. Furthermore, one isn't bound to aly themselves with every position of any public figure, else we would have to write Lincoln off as a bigot and therefore never cite any wise thing he ever said, right? Why did King speak at the feet of a man who said blacks were not the equal of whites and had no interest at one time in ending slavery? people change, their views change, and if something wise passes from their lips, it's not negated because at other times they said something foolish.
no, the "vagueness" is what I've bolded above. an occasional quote is not "tying up" the speaker in anything. I've heard Beck mention Paine, but pretty much always in the context of "Common Sense" and he is treated as what he was, a MINOR player in the revolutionary period. That Paine went off the reservation later isn't really relevant.
Oh, okay, so you're defending cherry-picking. Okey-dokey. I think sequence matters. Abraham Lincoln started bigoted, and matured out of it. Tom Paine grew into his more "socialist", views. And he always believed what he laid down in "age of reason", and never took it back, he just figured he had to jot it down when he did, because he thought he was going to die. If Beck wants to cozy up to more religious founders like Adams, hey, fine. But, whys he gotta co-opt the secular one? Seems a bit odd.
Then why bring him into it at all? Cannot Becks' bullshit stand on its own, without being shored up in a re-jiggered edited pseudo-history? Apparently not.
Beck is a nutcase, no doubt about it. But, the morons I was speaking of, are the ones who think Beck has somehow "put one over" on the liberals. The ones that think liberals spend their entire life looking for ways to "bring down" Beck, et al. The morons who don't think most people live their entire life without giving a damn about Beck.
and by contrast, i think (as did his contemporaries) that Paine went offthe deep end later and his former work was what was important. Beck's entitled to that point of view, even if you disagree. Cry all you want but it's not "pseudo-history" to say "Thomas Paine said..." jusrt because paine later said something different. He either said it or he didn't. find me Beck attributing something to Paine that Paine never said and you can call it "re-jiggled" - otherwise you are just being irrationally pissy because he mentioned one of your heroes.
My earlier comment wasn't about Beck, but in response to someone else assumption that this was some kind of major setback to all liberals everywhere. I didn't accuse you of anything. I took your words and ... tried to make you see what you said. Even now, you aren't looking at what you said, but turning it around so it's my fault - that I did something wrong. Look closely at what you said, then either stand by it or clarify it. But, don't accuse me of making accusations.
Why should anybody care what Glenn Beck does or says? The only time I even hear him mentioned is by those who think he is some sort of threat. To me he's but another talking head with a TV show I don't watch, and a book I won't read.
And I'm entitled to mine, and it's that Beck is a weasel turd. No, it's not, but it is pseudo-history to to patch in the quotes of a man to bolster a political agenda he wouldn't have agreed with. It'd be as dishonest as a communist quoting things from Reagan that don't disagree with the particular speaker on a particular point, and then them having Reagan posters behind them. Come on, it's skeezy. You're not this dumb.
Well, I really shouldn't be telling you this but there has been a slight change since you were a mod, now we can put members on ignore!
Why are you continually expecting me to defend Obama's policies? I don't agree with them. They are bad. But this fact is not a defense of the TEA Parties. Wrong. My problem is with the concept of God, and the fan clubs. All of it, with very few exceptions.
Also, to respond to several posts, I am being led to believe here that if the TEA parties take over the government of the US, they'll allow abortions and gay marriage.
Seeing as you're in Ireland and none of this directly affects you, don't worry about it. Only Bailey in Australia truly knows what's wrong with America and how to fix it.
Leave it to Sharpton to to turn it into a racial issue. His "This is OUR Day" speech proved once and for all that he's nothing but an irrelevant hate-monger and a racist.
In Beck's defense, he wasn't actually standing on the same step MLK stood on. He was on the step that was two steps lower than the one MLK stood on.
And to demonstrate that, they took the government provided Washington Metro (subway) to a government provided park, to watch a speaker protected by government provided policemen.
Far be it for me to defend Beck and his holy rollers, but protection for/from whom? They seemed like an orderly bunch, hardly the type of crowd you'd find at say, a WTO protest or something...
