- Yesterday, Moore confirmed his place in history as a complete jackass, first with the horse ride to his polling place, and then refusing to concede.
- His uttering the phrase "God is in control" was an exquisite bit of damage to the cause of truth regaining any kind of foothold in post-America. The phrase, in and of itself, is completely true, but his employment of it in the service of his blind-ambition-based delusion allows secular/agnostic/embracing-of-blanket-hatred-of-Republicans progressives to have a field day mocking that truth, as I've already seen happen on Facebook.
- Alabama has not gone blue. When this seat comes open again in 2020, a truly principled conservative can win it.
- Along with the pro-fetal-death position I mentioned in the last post, Jones hates basic human advancement. He is on record as saying coal miners should be retrained (and you know that means by government) for "21st-century jobs".
- Mitch McConnell has been given some breathing room to prove he's capable of being a viable Senate leader. Whether this bracing wakeup call inspires him to see that remains to be seen.
- Any Trump-camp tribalist reading this is going to dismiss me out of hand for not dismissing McConnell as a RINO squish.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Further thoughts on the Alabama election
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ReplyDeleteReligion and politics have always comingled in America. Public officials have relied on their religious values and those of their constituents since the United States was founded, and for the most part, those values were heavily influenced by Christianity. But if being a Christian was part of your political identity, it wasn't the whole loaf of bread. A Christian could be an FDR Democrat or a Reagan Republican, an anti-Prohibition hedonist or anti-evolution creationist, an anti-Masonic Whig or a pro-royalist Tory.
ReplyDeleteWell, times change. Christianity in America has been hammered into a sort of political identity of its own.
Of course, millions of Christians still regularly attend church and accept Jesus Christ as the son of God and their Lord and Savior, many of them striving for lives of humble faith and quiet service. But many others loudly grouse about how nobody's allowed to say Christmas anymore, or warn ominously about how America is losing its "Christian identity." For them, Christianity seems to be a political club, a cultural marker. You can now be culturally Christian, too, without all the church stuff, so long as you sign up to be a solider in the culture war. And when you enlist, it's almost always on the conservative side.
The evolving capture of the word "Christian" by the Republican Party has been well documented, generally traced back to Jerry Falwell launching the Moral Majority in 1979. Vice President Mike Pence, who regularly introduces himself as "a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order," is a good example of this shift. When Pence started college, he was a Catholic and JFK Democrat. In 1978, he started down his path to evangelical Protestantism, and then, as McKay Coppins recounts that Pence had entered college a staunch supporter of Jimmy Carter, and he viewed the 1980 presidential election as a contest between a "good Christian" and a "vacuous movie star." But President Ronald Reagan won Pence over — instilling in him an appreciation for both movement conservatism and the leadership potential of vacuous entertainers that would serve him well later in life,"
http://theweek.com/articles/741485/sad-politicization-christianity
There’s an Irish expression: “The Devil’s own boy gets the devil's own luck.” In other words, bad things happen to bad people.
ReplyDeleteSteve Bannon does for conservatives what you cry Roy Moore did for Christians--set them back. Set them back, Set them back, Set them back!
"Bad things happened to Irish American master plotter Steve Bannon last night as the state of Alabama of all places called a halt to his hate. Bannon has become like an evil virus in the bloodstream of American politics. It is clear he is a destroyer, prepared to tear down every edifice of civility, bipartisanship and decency on his way to creating a radical, some would say, fascist-leaning right."
https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/trump-advisor-steve-bannon-when-bad-things-happen-to-bad-people#.WjEb_vTNyos.facebook
Pence’s journey has brought him much closer to what is good, right and true.
ReplyDeleteI dunno why he now calls himself an evangelical Catholic, do you? He started calling himself that Here's what he says. So was it your intention to smear Catholicism? Pence certainly doesn't. He's back in the fold attending Mass and that makes his mother at St. B's very happy."
ReplyDeleteOne of the more publicly shared accounts of Pence’s transition from a Catholic youth minister who wanted to be a priest to an evangelical megachurch member came in 1994. That’s when he told the Indianapolis Business Journal about an intense period of religious searching that he underwent in college. “I made a commitment to Christ,” Pence said, speaking of the late 1970s. “I’m a born-again, evangelical Catholic.”
Craig Fehrman, an Indiana freelance journalist who has written about Pence’s faith over the years, said he has questioned the governor and has been met with diminishing specificity. Pence always points to 1978 (his freshman year of college) as the point of his “conversion” to evangelical Christianity, yet after that he still attended Mass, worked as a youth pastor at a Catholic parish, met his wife at Mass and applied to graduate school with the intention of becoming a priest."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/07/15/what-it-means-that-mike-pence-called-himself-an-evangelical-catholic/?utm_term=.8a6587df8789
I blame conservatives and evangelicals for draconian drug sentencing laws, when if addiction is involved, it is an illness, even if there is no fool-proof treatment than hitting bottom and the grace of God to get back up again in humility with help. Your ilk can be very judgmental and, although they say it's the sin, very spiteful and hateful. You are often your own worst enemy for Christianity. Preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words...
ReplyDeleteI don't get how you can place the blame with them. "Draconian" is an awfully subjective term. The main focus among conservative policy people is on stemming the trade in drugs. Most of the people locked up are involved in selling.
ReplyDelete"Spiteful" and "hateful" are likewise subjective terms, and I will not let the falsehood of them stand.
Christianity and three-pillar conservatism, together or each on its own, is about belief in how marvelous the individual human being is and about how to free up the individual's awesome power to glorify God.
Re: the worst-enemy charge, if you mean me / this site, I honestly can't think of a position, post or statement that would even remotely substantiate the claim.
And I'll tell you right now, I do not intend for this comment thread to turn into a pissing match about drug-law statistics.
ReplyDeleteOh we know your stance on discussing draconian drug laws. Doesn't scare me. Off the table for discussion here does not mean it is a real issue, especially in regard to stop and frisk and walking while black. Black lives matter matters to me and I hear them. And though you don't like Judge Roy Moore, he's now popping off about how late in the day it is with all the immoral people who did not vote for him. I just know what my kids think about all bible thumpers in politics. It really turns them (and me and that makes 3) off. That is what I mean about vocal Christians being their own worst enemy. Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words.
ReplyDeleteGreat advertising here for Christianity and the thesis that it is so very very late in the day from an alleged sexual predator:
ReplyDelete“We are indeed in a struggle to preserve our republic, our civilization and our religion and to set free a suffering humanity,” Moore said. “Today, we no longer recognize the universal truth that God is the author of our life and liberty. Abortion, sodomy and materialism have taken the place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Judge Roy Moore, 12/13/2017
Besides, we've all got plenty enough on our own morality plates than to go around pointing out the mite in the other guy's eye.
ReplyDelete"The pastor of Heart of Fire church in Louisville, Johnson sponsored a number of bills having to do with religious liberty and teaching the Bible in public schools. But he was mostly out of the spotlight until Monday, when the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published an account from a woman saying Johnson sexually assaulted her in the basement of his home in 2013."
http://cbs12.com/news/nation-world/kentucky-lawmaker-facing-assault-allegations-commits-suicide-12-14-2017
Is your position that since Moore and Johnson are deeply flawed human beings, the Word of God has been shown to be a massive falsehood and that our culture, including public policy, should jettison any hint of it?
ReplyDeleteNo
ReplyDeleteMy position is live and let live and keep your social conservatism based on the Bible to yourselves. There are many good harmless people who want to live their lives without your clanging gongs of degradation and doom. Live and let live if you're being allowed the same. Be an attraction, not a promotion because we all know your souls are as sullied as the rest.
ReplyDeleteMy view is pretty much the opposite. Social conservatism may be the most important of the three pillars. If the tide of mainstreaming of perversion and the mockery of God is not stopped, we will be plunged into the kind of misery and darkness that always results from that.
ReplyDeleteAhh, to know the mind of God like you
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLiberty and the pursuit of happiness entails living and letting live. Abortion, though wrong, is constitutional, but what tactics are best to use in combatting it? This is where the evanjellies got in bed with the Catholics who pretty much carried the ball for at least the first few decades after Roe. It used to be you could be a pot smoker, penitent carouser, Republican and Christian all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteSo God is like some drill sergeant who punishes the entire platoon when someone slips up? I did not mainstream perversion, did you? I presume you are talking about homosexuality. What other perversions have been mainstreamed that are deserving of God's wrath? There is a difference between acceptance and mainstreaming. If they ran ads for buttfucking on TV, would you run out and get the latest and the greatest buttfuck?
ReplyDeleteRe: what other perversions: transgenderism. We now have kindergarteners getting indoctrinated with the idea that they may be the general other than the one indicated by their genitals. The military is having these big debates about whether transgenders can serve. And what we're talking about is the grotesque mutilation of God's temple.
ReplyDeleteObergfell v. Hodges ranks with Red Scott, Plessey v. Ferguson and Roe v. Wade as one of the truly evil Supreme Court decisions in US history.
Re: "It used to be you could be a pot smoker, penitent carouser, Republican and Christian all at the same time." Could be, but shouldn't be.
You see, we are a society increasingly based on utter illusions: ]
- that there are more than two genders
- that two people of the same gender can be married
- that the global climate is in some kind of trouble that necessitates all of humanity abandoning advancement
And re: this business of "live and let live": tell it to Jack Phillips. Whether he can run his bakery in accordance with his faith hinges on what the above-mentioned Supreme Court decides.
What the social conservative is basically saying is that Western civilization must return to an understanding of absolute right and wrong. And that's not subjective. It's handed down by almighty God.
And, no, God is not a drill sergeant. He loves each of us so much that he'll go to extraordinary lengths - like getting beaten, tortured, and nailed to a cross - to see that we get mercy rather than the justice we deserve.
ReplyDeleteDredd Scott.
ReplyDeleteI would not have crucified Him but greater men than I denied Him. I never got the big deal about Him suffering so. He knew who He was, but we don't and billions have suffered the same fate or worse at the hands of unloving humans.throughout history and their Father has hidden His face from them.
ReplyDeleteThe gay thing now includes the trans thing. There are way fewer trannies than even Jews who comprise a mere .2% of the global population, yet we may see Armageddon over them. To some of your ilk that's a good thing. I call it complete and utter tragic destruction of not only humans who might deserve it, but all of His known creation on this Planet of Adam. Crazy world; Crazy God?
ReplyDelete