June 2012
16 posts
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What’s been lost that our “Christian” founders put in place?
The answer, of course, is that nothing has been lost, and the Christian Right knows it. What evangelicals really want is something that never was, and that’s an explicitly sectarian statement of commitment to Christ worked into the warp and woof of national law and public policy. What they want is the Christian theocracy that the founders explicitly rejected. For all their political thundering against the intrusive ways of “big government,” what evangelicals yearn for is strict legal codification of their version of Christian values. What never occurs to the Christian Right is that if the founders in fact *had been* Christians intending to create a commonwealth faithful to Jesus’s teachings, the United States today would be a nation quite different from what evangelicals think it should be. There would be no standing army, no divide between rich and poor, no ethnic hatred or closed borders, no persecution of religious dissent, no national chauvinism, a lot less holier-than-thou finger-pointing, and a lot more forgiveness and compassion.
Now, that *would* be a shining city built on a hill.
” —Kerry Walters, William Bittinger Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, in We Were Never A Christian Nation
“The problem, as scholar after scholar has pointed out—how often must it be repeated before the reality breaks through the myth?—is that it simply isn’t true. The Founding Fathers weren’t all Christian. Some, of course, were: Patrick Henry (Episcopalian), John Hancock (Congregationalist), John Jay (Episcopalian), and Sam Adams (Congregationalist), for example, were all devout and pretty conventional Christians. But the big players in the founding of the United States—such men as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and probably Alexander Hamilton—weren’t. Each of them was much more comfortable with a deistic understanding of God than a Christian one. For them, the deity was an impersonal First Cause who created a rationally patterned natural order and who was best worshiped through the exercise of reason and virtue. Most of them may have admired the ethical teachings of Jesus (although Paine conspicuously did not), but all of them loathed and rejected the priestcraft and superstition they associated with Christianity.”
—The Truth About Religion in America: The Founders Loathed Superstition and We Were Never a Christian Nation - by Kerry Walters
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“In the end the state owns no one’s genitals so you can do with them as you please.”
Whoa there. In my state, the Virginia legislature claims ownership of all female genitalia, and the right to force even pregnant pre-teens to endure punitive, non-medically-relevant vaginal rapes with a plastic 8 to 10” wand if they dare to seek a legal abortion. That’s why we call our executive Governor Ultrasound.
In Michigan this week, the state legislature punished an elected representative, Lisa Brown, because she said she was tired of their prurient and tyrannical interest in her vagina and wanted them to respect her right to say no. She was punished by being officially condemned and silenced.
Ron Paul’s “libertarian” views include nationalizing *every* fertile uterus in the country, denying *every* fertile woman the right to terminate a pregnancy. What is a woman forced to bear against her will? She’s a slave. She’s property. And in the cases I’ve cited, she’s the property of the state.
” —Who Owns The Women? Does the 13th Amendment Apply?
by Ankhorite, June 22, 2012
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So now we have yet another bogus excuse for the banning: it wasn’t about saying vagina, or how she said vagina, at all. It was because Rep. Brown said “no means no.” As in, women are saying “no” to draconian restrictions on their health care. It’s women saying “no” that is now the problem, that is so very offensive that true gentlemen would never speak such words in the presence of ladies. For this offense, for saying “no,” Rep. Brown deserves a “time out,” as if she’s been a naughty child—instead of a grown woman who has been elected to office and has the right and obligation to represent her constituents.
Is this really the argument Michigan Republicans want to make? A woman who says “no” to men is offensive. A woman who says “no” must be silenced “to ensure the proper level of maturity and civility are maintained on the House floor.” A woman who says “no” needs a time out.
They should have stuck with the “vagina is offensive” argument.
” —Michigan Legislators Struggle To Justify Vagina Ban by Kalli Joy Gray, sourced from Daily Kos, posted at alternet June 20, 2012
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be similar to when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet”
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Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, quoted in
“Of the global dynamics controlling our biological clocks — including temperature, eating, sleeping and even socializing — no “zeitgeber” is more influential than light. New research suggests that when, and how much, light beams through your eyes may play a quiet and unrecognized role in determining your dress or pants size. And the breaking up of light-dark cycles may be a culprit. Light pollution from suburban sprawl, big-city skyglow, electronic billboards and stadium lights has brightened our planet. A rodent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that mice housed with constant light — whether bright or dim — had higher body mass indexes (B.M.I.’s) and blood sugar levels than mice housed with standard cycles of dark and light.”
—Our Animal Natures - NYTimes.com
“In the short run, it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, to run this war in a dictatorial way, kill all the reporters and carry on the war.”
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President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office on February 22, 1971.
“When you start out your life in a new social network, you are rewarded with social reinforcement as your old friends pop up and congratulate you on arriving at the party. Subsequent disclosures generate further rewards, but not always. Some disclosures seem like bombshells to you (“I’m getting a divorce”) but produce only virtual cricket chirps from your social network. And yet seemingly insignificant communications (“Does my butt look big in these jeans?”) can produce a torrent of responses. Behavioral scientists have a name for this dynamic: “intermittent reinforcement.” It’s one of the most powerful behavioral training techniques we know about. Give a lab rat a lever that produces a food pellet on demand and he’ll only press it when he’s hungry. Give him a lever that produces food pellets at random intervals, and he’ll keep pressing it forever.”
—The Curious Case of Internet Privacy - Technology Review
“There are thousands of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are coming home who are diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury or Post Traumatic Stress. You will note I left the word disorder off because like many, I feel this name does not fit, and comes with such a bad stigma that is resulting in many veterans who are suffering with this injury from coming forward for help… . Just this week in Philadelphia, a dozen psychiatrists met to discuss dropping the word disorder from PTSD in the hopes that it would encourage more veterans to come forward who may be suffering. “No 19-year-old kid wants to be told he’s got a disorder,” said Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who until his retirement in February [2012] led the Army’s effort to reduce its record suicide rate.”
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May 9, 2012
