Saturday, November 28, 2009

GLEN BECK AND MORE FAULTY HISTORY ABOUT LIBERTY: CLUELESS CLUELESS CLUELESS!!!


You have to wonder what history books people like Glen Beck and Rush Limberger read. With all the complaints about liberals taking away freedom its clear that Glen is clueless like Virginia Foxx on matters of the history of liberty. Remember, representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) recently told us that the GOP passed the civil rights laws of the 1960s were leaders in environmental reform. Really!


It was the right wing that fought the religious test ban of the 6th article of the US Constitution. They could not fathom not honoring God in government or not requiring a Christian-only religious test in oaths for public office. They held tightly to the old order of things in existence for as long as anyone remembers. That makes it right, regardless. Change is bad.


It was the right wing that fought to keep slavery an institution. 


It was the right wing that fought women's suffrage. It was the right wing that fought contraception and family planning education which entailed the distribution of information and products that would help women take control of their own futures. With the Comstock Law of 1873,  it became a crime to send condoms and information in the mail across state borders. Twenty four states then did the same for within their bounds. 


It was the right wing that created and supported laws against interracial marriage. It was the right wing that fought desegregating the armed forces. During WW2, until a shortage of men began appearing, black men could only serve as stewards on the ships.  


It was the right wing that fought child labor laws just a they still fight a minimum wage law. 


It is the right wing that always attacks dissenting speech as treasonous and unAmerican. It was the right wing, the conservative Federalists who passed the Seditions Act of 1798 outlawing criticism of the government during the Adams administration. 


It was the right wing that fought the post war, gender equality movement begun in the 1960s which sought equality of the sexes in society and the workplace. Equality meant liberty. Its the right wing that called abolitionists and suffragists "socialists" and atheists.  It was the right wing, especially the religious conservatives that fought natural sciences from day one because it threatened their long established traditional cosmology. From Galileo to Darwin to Richard Dawkins, the right's been having fits over the results coming from the natural sciences. 


It was the right wing that pushed the sedition act after WW1, with which attorney General Palmer paved the way for McCarthyism, more jingoist, anti-immigrant, anti-socialist paranoia. (Congress eventually threw the book at him; J. Edgar Hoover was his lieutenant, too.


The list goes on and on yet the right wing keep recycling the same arguments relying on ignorance and strategies of distortion regarding who is responsible for attacking freedom over the centuries - and nearly every liberty movement that has ever occurred. 


Its been the right wing that has promoted religious intolerance, racism, sexism and discrimination based on sexual orientation. They seem to despise everyone's liberty but their own. There are "control issues" here.


Its the right wing that fights the spirit of the 14th amendment's due process and equal protection clauses:


"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.











Friday, November 27, 2009

GLEN BECK: Church and state separation bogus liberal idea!





















Some things never change. As usual the religious right is revising history and reinventing America according to its pre-constitutional Medieval religious and political paradigm.







When Patrick Henry tried to get the Virginia government to pay for Christian teachers in 1784, his bill failed to reach the floor for a vote on its third and final try. It was trashed for the now famous religious liberty law crafted by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was in Paris as a diplomat but James Madison took charge and steered the outcome with his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. See details below video.


Beck, like "Christian Nation" activist David Barton, seems to think the quotations of certain founders reflect the content of the constitution. In most cases they don't; they can't be considered as law. Heritage and tradition are not always law. 


Another thing that Glen Beck does is he has the first three words of a Jefferson quote at the beginning of his show, "QUESTION WITH BOLDNESS..." The problem with this is that the rest of the quote, not shown by Beck, is not well liked by the religious right. It comes from a Thomas Jefferson letter to his nephew Peter Carr at his coming of age. (see http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_carr.html ) 


The quote says "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus."
  
If there be one? 


As you can see, Beck has is getting an incomplete in his report card. This is part of the right wing playbook of distortion. Beck uses the Washington Monument to make his point. Trouble is, Washington was a deist, not a Christian, and the monument, like the Supreme Court building, was designed by other people whose job it was to interpret and express the spirit Washington. If you want to see a full layout and explanation of the classical architecture and pagan statuary of Washington, DC see my page at http://community-2.webtv.net/westernmind/WASHINGTONDC/

From my history site, www.stopthereligiousright.org/constitution.htm :


Jefferson's statute resulted in the birth of the religion-neutral state, a direct result of the lessons of a violent religious history and the best ideas of the European Enlightenment. Jefferson's pioneering law was brilliant and it was passed instead of Patrick Henry's law to support Christianity. Jefferson's law stated,

"Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

In December, 1784 Patrick Henry's Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religionwas proposed in the Virginia House of Delegates. James Madison, supporting Jefferson's religious liberty statute, addressed the Virginia General Assembly on June 20, 1785 with his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.



 Here are three excerpts:

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.


"Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious disscord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion."



Now this part is what I want you to pay special attention to. According to Madison, the Patrick Henry law was a "Bill of sudden degeneracy". When you hear the religious right whine and wail about church-state separation, think "Bill of sudden degeneracy"


"Because the proposed establishment is a departure from the generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance."

Madison was responding with no gloves on to Patrick Henry's religious establishment bill which would turn back the clock and tax all citizens to support the spread of Christianity. It should be said that Patrick Henry was an opponent of the Constitution in the debates in the years to come. He was for keeping the old church-state order of Europe and the colonies. He was an example of that period's religious right. Another very interesting fact which counters the argument by church-state accomadists who claim the Constitution is based on Christian principles is that not once is Christianity mentioned in the Federalist Papers. When discussing government, Greece and Rome are mentioned much more than the Bible, which is mentioned only twice.


The first two paragraphs of Henry's Bill stated:


"Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society; which cannot be effected without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of instructing such citizens, as from their circumstances and want of education, cannot otherwise attain such knowledge; and it is judged that such provision may be made by the Legislature, without counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved by abolishing all distinctions of pre-eminence amongst the different societies or communities of Christians;"


"Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That for the support of Christian teachers, [amount] per centum on the amount, or [amount] in the pound on the sum payable for tax on the property within this Commonwealth, is hereby assessed, and shall be paid by every person chargeable with the said tax."


Almost thirty-four years after Madison addressed the Virginia House on the matter of church-state alliances, he stated in a letter to Robert Walsh on Mar. 2, 1819 that,


"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State".



Total Separation of Church FROM the State.


Clearly, Gloomy Glen Beck is from another time and space. Secularism, or government neutrality on religious matters, is the foundation of religious liberty and these religious nutjobs don't even know it.






Thursday, November 26, 2009

Dana Perino: No Terrorist attacks during the Bush administration!!!







Ginny Foxx: Obama campaigned to drag this nation down! Really!!!






You have to hand it Ginny; she is consistent in not having a clue about almost everything. One wonders what kind of idiot casts a ballot for this empty headed legislator. Supposedly she represents Airy. I have to say that there has to be a huge draft, no, a category 5 wind tunnel between this gal's ears.














Wingnuts Protest School Kids Singing about Obama























If anyone had criticized kids for doing the same for Bush or Reagan you would have seen apoplectic tirades from the right about anti-Americanism and treason!

PAST BLAST: Jesus Camp Brainwashing




And you thought the Muslim radicals were the only religious nutjobs threatening the safety, sanity and critical thinking of the country! There is not any difference as far as the fearmongering and guilt go. Before the enlightenment, the Christians were the most violent religious jihadists on the face of the Earth. It took modernity in the west to de-fang the Church. We can only hope that modernity strikes Islam sooner than later.








Colorado State Senator Schultheis' tweet SMAHT!!!


Again, a right wing nutjob attacked the President's programs by insinuating he was anti-American. From what I have gathered over the years, to a nutjob, anyone to the left of Pinochet, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco is a liberal. Not only do these misguided fools revise history, they make up new definitions! Here is the bigoted jingoist's tweet recently. 

With the questions being mostly economic these days, it kind of reminds me of Dick Armey, who fearmongered in 1993 that the Clinton economic plan would be catastrophic to the American economy. 

Hey I MISS those disastrous economic times!! 

Armey was an economist? Where? Pluto?








Going Rogue? Going Freakin' CRAZY!







Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Blast from the Past: Election 2008: Bachmann: Liberals are anti-American





























According to Michele "Going Crazy" Bachmann, I am not a real American!!!










Past Blast: Representative Louie Gohmert: Gays are like necrophiliacs and pedophilies







Last Summer Gomer went on a Biblical binge in the House chamber. This reminds me of Rick Santorum's whining around the time of the Supreme Court's Lawrence v Texas decision a few years ago. Gomer was a judge at one time? Where? Planet Uranus?







Virginia Foxx: Democrats More Dangerous Than Terrorism






Hey Lady! Lay off the Koolaid!







Virginia Foxx: GOP passed the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s - REALLY!




Representative Virginia Foxx tells us that not only did the Republicans pass the Civil Rights Acts without much help from the democrats, the GOP has been a leader in the environmental movement! 


Where has this loon been for the last 50 years? The Asteroid Belt?





Minority Leader Boner Needs a Civics 101 Lesson

Ordinarily I would chalk this up to pressure or being very tired, but after running into one right winger after another that clearly does not know what the constitution says and means, there just might be another rather scary alternative reason. He may be clueless and spending too much time immersed in the cognitive dissonance of right wing media diatribe.

Boner said, "This is my copy of the Constitution. And I'm going to stand here with our founding fathers, who wrote in the preamble, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident ...' "

YO, NUMBCHUCK ! THAT'S THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE !