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Shocking that this comes from Fox Business News, but it’s incredibly important to be aware of how our Civil Rights are being infringed on…
And Keith Olbermann weighs in…
Awesome follow up from Jesus Christ:
“Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority.”
― Cornel West
An online acquaintance and I have been discussing libertarianism on another post on this blog. I probably shouldn’t get so political. I’ve never won over a libertarian yet, and I don’t expect to anytime soon… but I can’t stop worrying about what I see as a very dangerous trend. As many Gen-X’ers and Gen-Y’ers leave traditional conservative Christianity, they seem attracted to the “to each his own/live and let live” philosophy that makes libertarianism so – well – attractive. And I get that part.
But along with “to each his own” comes a hyper-self-interest and a lack of corporate responsibility that seems epitomized in an American Wild West fantasy of self-made individuals, outside the needs of community or society. When Ron Paul was asked, “Should we let the uninsured man die?” audience members yelled “YES!” Afterward, Ron Paul dutifully answered, “the church should help him,” but ironically, “the church” had just yelled its answer from the seats, and that answer stands in stark contrast to any idealism of what the church may or may not be willing to do.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and then the question came up in a seminary class on peacemaking: ultimately, I don’t believe the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 are somehow limited to individual morality. They aren’t just meant for you and me – they’re meant for “us.” I believe they are meant for community, corporate, even societal manifestation. I believe that government itself can do more than mere justice (welfare, medicaid, the police) but actually bear the fruits of the spirit (an example in class was brought up: Desmond Tutu demonstrating government-love viz South Africa’s Reconciliation Commission). Can a government forgive? Can a government show mercy? Bear the fruits of the spirit? As a Christian, I believe it’s something to strive for.
There is no reason Christians should be compelled to reject Christian morality when it is supported outside the auspices of the church and under the policies of the state. Rather, we should REJOICE when the state manifests redemptive ethics.
Sadly, contemporary Christianity too often undermines its own witness to avoid solidarity with a state system that potentially compromises robber-baron, laissez faire profits of the corporate plutocracy that manipulatively (and patronizingly) eggs them on. Screaming “let the uninsured die” is the void in arguments for church responsibility for the poor. Not to mention the following debate, where a gay soldier was booed for asking who would support ongoing justice for him if elected. That’s why the government must engage in the maintenance of justice and the policies of mercy… because a government by and for the people can be anything we want it to be. I’m happy to pay more in taxes for that.
“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public”
― Cornel West
“The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign — that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole — some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.”
~ President Theodore Roosevelt
And how about this?
“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heal. Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
~ President Grover Cleveland
I’ve grabbed these quotations from a fabulous book by Thom Hartmann: What Would Jefferson Do?
You’ve probably heard plenty about Senator Kyl’s Policy of Truth (oops, that’s a Depeche Mode Song)…
New York (CNN) –
“Not intended to be a factual statement.”This was the sound of the curtain coming back on what passes for political debate too often these days.
The now-infamous statement from Sen. Jon Kyl’s office was released after he said on the floor of the U.S. Senate that abortions represent “over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”It turns out that the actual number is 3%, a mere rounding error of 87%. But it was presented to the American people and enshrined in the Senate Record as a means of arguing that Planned Parenthood should be entirely defunded in the current budget…
But the facts are inconvenient, and so they are ignored. Instead, talking points taken from talk radio are repeated until they take on a life of their own and eventually get the validation of a U.S. senator…
In this absurd spin cycle, there’s one dependable place to look for sanity: satire. And on cue came Stephen Colbert, who took Kyl’s statement as a challenge and dialed it up to 11. Using the Twitter hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement, Colbert unleashed a steady stream of Jon Kyl mistruths with the requisite denial. Among my favorites:
• Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.
• Jon Kyl can unhinge his jaw like a python to swallow small rodents whole.
• Every Halloween Jon Kyl dresses up as a sexy Mitch Daniels.
• Jon Kyl sponsored S.410, which would ban happiness.
• Jon Kyl let a game-winning ground ball roll through his legs in Game 6 of the ’86 World Series.
• Jon Kyl once ate a badger he hit with his car.
You get the idea. But the problem is much bigger than Jon Kyl. Colbert is going to have to get a bigger hashtag. Because we’re heading to a strange place where Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s truism “everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts” no longer applies.Exhibit B this week: Donald Trump’s re-enflaming of the thoroughly discredited birther conspiracy theory. When he repeats this falsehood in interviews, he is too often treated as a man with an unorthodox opinion, not someone repeating a lie on national television.
As a result, more people are duped and the country more divided, not on the many rational reasons to oppose President Obama’s policy agenda but on paranoid fantasies cut out of whole cloth.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a man responsible for pushing the birther myth — and a reported recent Trump adviser — Joe Farah of the fringe website World Net Daily freely admitted to Salon.com this week that his site publishes “some misinformation.”
“Misinformation” is a fancy word for lying with an ideological agenda in mind. It has become more acceptable and more influential with the rise of partisan media. It preys on the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike…
“Not intended to be a factual statement” is an instant dark classic, a triumph of cynicism, capturing the essence of Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe in Washington: when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
We Evangelicals don’t have a great track record on recognizing facts, though, do we? We lump premodern, poetic illustrations about the creation of the universe alongside scientific textbooks containing data on carbon dating… really? We can’t differentiate? We can’t differentiate between an archetypal flood narrative (by the way, shared by countless premodern societies – not unique to Judaism) and – say – plate tectonics?
We live in a world of FALSE EQUIVALENCIES. Wherein completely unequal, divergent or nonparallel things are juxtaposed, weighed and treated as if they even speak the same language. Like modern evolutionary biology is an equivalent to Genesis 1.
It’s not honoring to Scripture to force it into modern scientific categories; it’s degrading and presumptuous. Scripture is an entirely foreign genre, from an entirely foreign era and culture…
But I digress. The “DATA” claptrap coming out of “birthers” and “neocons” and conservative cynics like Senator Kyl isn’t mismatched or flat wrong because it’s miscommunicated from the wrong cultural vantage. It’s wrong because it’s intentionally deceptive, based on a misunderstood paradigm, in which bad, literalist (mis)interpretations of Genesis and Revelation (among other texts) are used as excuses to ignore and disbelieve that the sky is blue and the grass is green and the universe is OLD. This is a concerted effort to undermine science, right and wrong, and reality itself, in the name of religious ideology… But the reasons themselves are far more insidious. They are economic and, ultimately, plutocratic.
I’m a big fan of Naomi Wolf, third-wave feminist activist and author of The Beauty Myth, among other books.
I got this e-mail today:
Since 2007, the American Freedom Campaign (AFC) has been fighting to protect our constitutional liberties, rein in the expansion and abuse of executive power, and restore our system of checks and balances. Your involvement and support was critical to our success in injecting these concerns into the 2008 presidential campaign.
At the time, the results of that campaign suggested a consensus in our favor. We all celebrated the chance to see our government once again uphold the rule of law. Yet since the enthusiasm of that moment, the White House under President Obama has continued many of the same excesses committed by the Bush administration. Your continued concern about limits on executive power is just as important today as it was then.
While AFC is no longer able to do this important work on our own, we have folded into the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) to continue our crucial advocacy moving forward. BORDC was formed in 2001, shortly after the passage of the PATRIOT Act.
BORDC is best known for spearheading a nationwide effort opposing government surveillance in which more than 400 cities and towns across the country, as well as eight states, passed local resolutions opposing the USA PATRIOT Act. Today, BORDC is once again mobilizing Americans from all walks of life—and in all parts of the country—to protect civil liberties at the local level. BORDC’s network stands on the front lines of the grassroots movement to restore the rule of law, and we’re proud to be part of it. The next time you’re frustrated by news from Washington, take a look at the action opportunities you can join through BORDC.
Thank you for your continued support of AFC’s mission to restore the rule of law, and our ongoing efforts to achieve it through our collaboration with BORDC. We look forward to working with you to defend our Constitution and the fundamental values for which it stands. Together, we can ensure that America remains a beacon of liberty to the rest of the world.
I don’t have any hope that Fox News will become a legitimate news organization, but I was shocked when I first heard clips of this on the radio. These kinds of facts’ll get you fired over there…
This is 100% politics. The unions have already given concessions toward balancing the budget. Of the the top 10 political donors in America, 7 donate to Republicans. The other 3 are unions. So if you bust the unions, you end the Democrats ability to remain fiscally competitive, politically. This isn’t an accident: this is strategic and calculated, and if Walker somehow manages to get away with this, it’s going to spread…
According to Mother Jones:
Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose bill to kill collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions has caused an uproar among state employees, might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are conservative titans of industry who have infamously used their vast wealth to undermine President Obama and fight legislation they detest, such as the cap-and-trade climate bill, the health care reform act, and the economic stimulus package. For years, the billionaires have made extensive political donations to Republican candidates across the country and have provided millions of dollars to astroturf right-wing organizations. Koch Industries’ political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers’ largess is Scott Walker.
First of all, I sort of have a crush (yes, yes, I’m married) on Natalie Portman, so I don’t appreciate anyone messing with Natalie. Not the Hitler-loving whack-job designer from Christian Dior (okay, his comments weren’t directed at Portman) but DEFINITELY not crazy Kevin-Spacey-look-alike-Mike-Huckabee!!!
I like Spacey, but...
The former governor and potential presidential candidate attacked the actress Monday on Michael Medved’s conservative radio talk show: ”One of the most troubling things is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet that boasts of, hey look, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having children and they’re doing just fine.”
Huckabee, also a Baptist minister (surprise!!), said when wealthy actresses have children without being married, they set a bad example for the rest of America: ”There aren’t really a lot of single moms out there that are making millions of dollars each year by being in a movie,” Huckabee said. “I think it gives a distorted image that not everybody hires nannies and caretakers and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and would not get healthcare.”
Huckabee: I’d say don’t be a dick, but it’s better that you behave in ways that are authentic to your misogynistic, fundamentalist worldview. It’s very confusing when guys like you play nice on television, and folks aren’t sure what to think about what you think. Maybe a few jabs at queers will clarify things even further…
Today George Buckley, the CEO of mega-corporation 3M, criticized the president for being “anti-business.”
[Buckley] blasted the president as being “anti-business,” claiming Obama has not done anything to improve the White House’s relationship with Corporate America.
3M CEO George Buckley called Obama’s policies “Robin Hood-esque” and told the Financial Times that manufacturers like 3M may have to shift production to other countries in order to stay competitive.
“We know what his instincts are … he is anti business,” Buckley said in an interview that ran late Sunday.
One could spend a lot of time and emotion arguing, but I’d only be arguing because this guy is a plutocratic jerk, not because he’s wrong (I hope). I posted something last year about why we NEED a Robin Hood today!
Is Obama our Robin Hood, stealing for the poor? Frankly, if he is, he’s a little too subtle for my taste. I want Errol Flynn, or at least the singing Disney Fox! But if you’re going to be attacked, getting attacked by fascists, corporate robber barons, and Prince John (and his snake, “Hiss”) is the best way to take it. Remember that Garth Brooks song, I Got Friends in Low Places? And enemies in high places… Maybe that means he’s doing the right things.
I’ve said plenty of times, that I’ve been… underwhelmed…by the presidency of Barack Obama. I’m a liberal, he’s a pragmatist. I voted for big changes, and we got hit in the face with a major economic downturn. Ouch.
I’m actually not that critical of our president. I just expected a more outspoken liberal! You know?
Anyway, I’m watching Real Time With Bill Maher right now, as Bill Maher attacks and demeans the credentials of President Obama, and I’m struck by this simple fact: Barack Obama is smarter than Bill Maher.
And I was listening to Ed Schultz on the radio a few days ago as he was bashing the president, and I was struck by the same fact: Barack Obama is smarter than Ed Schultz.
I was listening to Norman Goldman on the radio as he was bashing the president, and I was struck by the same fact: Barack Obama is smarter than Norman Goldman.
I sort of have a feeling that the problem with all the pundits I hear, daily attacking this particular president, is that none of them have a fraction of the intellectual capacity of this president. Neither do I.
That doesn’t mean there’s no role for thoughtful, constructive critique from the left, but I guess I’m a little exhausted by the mass of constant, arrogant condescension from the army of Bachelor of Arts pundits who now look down their noses at a man much smarter than they, whom they recently voted for with the enthusiasm of tween fans at a Justin Bieber concert.
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