That title is my paraphrase of what Ed Martin, Republican candidate in Missouri says President Obama and Democratic Representative Russ Carnahan are trying to accomplish. Here’s the exact statement (link also has audio of his remarks) he gave on air to Gina Loudon, a radio talk show host, yesterday about the policies Obama and Carnahan are promoting that will destroy your chance to be saved by Jesus:
MARTIN: One thing I like to say is: America is great, not because of our genetics. We’re great because we created a place and space where people can be free. And they can choose Christ, they can choose to be faithful. They can worship, and they find their way to the Lord. And — or some of them don’t. We sure want them all to, but some of them don’t.
And part of that freedom — when you take a government and you impose, and take away all your choices. One of the choices you take away is to find the Lord. And find your savior.
And that’s one of the things that’s most destructive about the growth of government. It’s this taking away that freedom. The freedom — the ultimate freedom, to find your salvation, to get your salvation. And to find Christ, for me and you.
And I think that’s one of the things that we have to be very, very aware of that the Obama Administration and Congressman Carnahan are doing to us.
Mr. Martin was somewhat short on specifics about which policies of President Obama were taking away your chance to find salvation in the loving arms of Jesus Christ. No let me re-phrase that: He gave no specifics.
(cont.)
Which is hardly surprising. That is standard operating procedure for Republicans: make any outrageous statement you can and just hope enough gullible people will believe it. Like Glenn Beck predicting Democratic “revolutionaries” will take to the streets in protests like those which occurred in the 60’s after the GOP wins back control of the House and Senate.
Or Tea Party activists carrying signs claiming Obama is for “White Slavery”.
And how about the the remarks of Brendan Steinhauser, a “director of campaigns for FreedomWorks” Dick Armey’s Tea Party astroturf organization, in which he said the following about the NAACP’s proposed condemnation of the Tea Party Movement’s racist elements:
“I just don’t see racism in the tea party movement. Racism is something we’re absolutely opposed to.”
Meanwhile, over at Free Republic posters that same day were calling the NAACP “The klan with a tan. Yes, the NAACP is just like the Klan. They have a history of killing and lynching white people and burning crosses on their homes and blowing up their churches and killing little white girls.
Oh wait. That’s not true at all is it. It’s a flat out bunch of bull puckey. Just like Mr, Martin’s lie that Obama and his opponent, Rep Russ Carnahan don’t want you to get religion. And by religion Martin means specifically the Christian religion in which belief in Jesus provides you a one way ticket to Heaven, and keeps you from burning in a fiery lake in Hell for all eternity.
Martin can’t tell you why or how Obama and Carnahan are working for Satan and against Jesus, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? All that matters is that Martin scares someone into believing Obama hates Jesus and works for the Devil.
Just like Beck’s lie that Obama hates white people, or the Republican and conservative lies spread by Limbaugh, Beck and assorted lesser conservative lights that Obama was a marxist, a fascist, a Muslim, an African colonial despot, or that he was part of a vast conspiracy to elect a black man to punish whites for slavery. Here’s all the proof they need to make such bogus and ugly accusations: the tanning bed tax. Here’s the title of that blog entry:
Dem’s Racist Tanning Tax Goes Into Effect – White Folks Feel Burned
Because a tax on tanning beds is taking away white people’s freedom to get skin cancer!
Trust me, this is just the beginning. I can’t wait to see the Sarah Palin rallies in the Fall for GOP candidates, can you?
I used not to pay attention to these ravings. I’ve become more afraid, as a worse-case scenario. They could blow us all up, and the rest of the world, too. They don’t give a shit.
No they do care, just not for us. Those who believe they are possessed of special knowledge or power or a special destiny do not conceive of others who refuse to share their beliefs as people of equal value.
Much of their pointless ranting reminds me too much of the last, very paranoid days of Jim Jones. What a very tragic story that is, ending in a mass murder/suicide involving over 900 cult members.
Mass suicide of the Christian Right? If that happened, I would start to believe that there is a God after all.
I actually think that in theory, banning Christianity would be a great idea, for the same reason we ban other opiates. But in practice, as we’ve seen in places like the USSR and Mao’s China, states that suppress religion invariably encourage worship of the state and the Dear Leader instead.
Besides, I’d settle for a much more modest goal, like having a country where an open athiest could get elected to public office, at any level. They’re even rarer than elected Muslims in this country.
As far as opiates go, at least a satisfied junkie minds his own business.
No – they fund an industry based on violence and extortion
That’s an odd thing to say on several levels.
This country is absolutely built on the idea that there is something absolutely wrong with coercion in religion. First we tried segregating ourselves from each other in colonies that differed in their religion but agreed that war should not be made against each other on religious grounds. There’s no history of religious war in the Colonial Era here.
Then we banded these colonies together under the agreement that there would be no religious tests.
It’s the most beautiful political idea in the history of mankind, and it’s only lost its luster because of its fabulous success.
Eventually, we learned to extend this tolerance to other faiths than Christianity. It’s true that tolerance of faithlessness lost some ground in the late 20th century, but we’re still o great county to live in without faith.
I can’t see any merit at all to banning Christianity, and it cuts against the best shining genius of this country.
And while I am not a supporter of the War on Terror way of looking at things, the one thing I agree with is that people who still kill innocents for being of the wrong religion deserve the undying opposition of the United States.
When we’re young, we identify wrong ideas and want them stamped out. That’s passion and integrity, but it’s not wisdom. We’re not young anymore, Geov.
I very specifically said “in theory,” not in practice. The theory part is a simple question: would a democracy in which people could not justify their every depradation because they interpret it as being sanctioned by an ancient religion work better than one where that happens routinely?
With the net positives and negatives organized Christianity (and organized monotheist religions in general) has spawned, in modern times or historically, IMO it’s a pretty strong argument that we’d be better off without. But I was not stating a policy preference, because, as I noted, it wouldn’t work, for any number of reasons (most of which I didn’t bother to go into), even if it could ever be implemented, which it can’t. So it wasn’t a real serious statement. And I rarely spend much if any time worrying about perfect world ideologies or things that will never happen. (As it happens, I didn’t when I was young, either…)
I agree with you that in the world in which we actually live, this country’s tolerance of different faiths is magnificent – in fact, since we don’t do democracy or human rights very well compared to other Western countries, it’s probably the single idea the USA is most admired and envied for around the world. It’s very sad that so many people in the US itself either take this for granted or are actively opposed to that tolerance.
That said, when the idea of Obama targeting Christianity as a blight on society is presented as an unimaginable horror (and that was the topic of the post), I just felt someone ought to say that actually, in many ways we would be better off without it. Alternatively, it would be nice if in affairs of state more Christians took the moral imperatives of their own religion seriously (particularly the bit about “thou shalt not kill”). I’m not holding my breath on that one, either.
Our success has been so complete that we don’t even think about it anymore. Does a congregationalist think twice about moving to Virginia or a Episcopalian think twice about moving to Massachusetts. Do all our Catholics live in Maryland? Are Presbyterians afraid to live outside New Jersey? Are Quakers confined to Pennsylvania?
I get frustrated with the religious right, but the single most important idea we have in this country is that the government does reward or punish you for your religious beliefs. Ironically, by failing to promote religious beliefs, our government makes that belief stronger. Wherever a government has formally promoted a religion (Catholicism in France and Ireland, Anglicanism in England, Lutherism in Scandanavia) the result has been loss of faith in that religion. So, if you want to stamp out religious beliefs, get the government to sponsor them.
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Just a part of the ugliness in the US. Utter stupidity taken at face value by the Tea Party masses, that’s what Hitler was all about! Hitler was a corporate political figure on the far right … a fascist mass murderer. Lenin and Stalin weren’t socialists but hardline communists. Who cares for the difference nowadays, throw them all on the anti-government heap.
(Telegraph) – A roadside billboard created by a branch of the Tea Party in Iowa comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin has been condemned by other groups in the movement.
North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson said the sign highlighted what the group argues is Mr Obama's support for socialism. Photo: APThe North Iowa Tea Party began displaying the sign in Mason City last week. It shows photographs of Mr Obama, the German Nazi leader and Russian communist with the statement: “Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."You know I lived through the 60’s and I thought no era could be more frightening in my lifetime, but I have changed my mind.
The radical left was a joke as far as being a threat to the Republic since it mostly practiced non-violence in its actions and rhetoric. Certainly there ws no platform for the violent fringe to propagate their message.
The right were, as today, the assassins for the most part, and the supporters of war, uber-patriotism and hate.
But there was no organized mass media that supported and echoed there message. That is no longer the case.