Replies to post #23277 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[ed_ferrari]

Now you know why they're called "Massholes".

By the way... it's my money, not the government's money.

[F6]

The Second's Missing Half

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

By Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution
January/February 1994 Issue [ http://www.motherjones.com/toc/1994/01/index.html ]

Emblazoned across the front of the NRA headquarters in Washington, D.C., is half of this amendment--the second half. It's a testament to how well the NRA does its job that most Americans probably don't know about the first half, with its clunky and inconvenient dependent clause. But that's how the Founding Fathers wrote it. The NRA's reasons for focusing on its backside are fairly obvious, but what do the courts say about the Second Amendment?

According to Jon S. Vernick and Stephen P. Teret of Johns Hopkins University Injury Prevention Center, the Supreme Court has examined two broad issues involving the amendment's reach. The first is whether the amendment controls federal law only or whether it also can be extended to the state and local levels. The second is whether it protects individual rights to own firearms, or only collective, "militia" rights.

On the first question, the Court ruled definitively in United States v. Cruikshank that the amendment "means no more than (the right to keep and bear arms) shall not be infringed by Congress." This 1876 ruling established that states and localities are not prevented from enacting their own gun-control laws--and they remain free to do so to this day.

In 1886, in Presser v. Illinois, the Court reaffirmed the concept of a state's rights, as it were, to control guns, and this position has never been modified. Therefore, it re-mains the Court's last word on the subject. Lower courts have time and again held to this precedent.

Regarding the second broad question of individual versus state-militia rights, the Court held in its 1939 United States v. Miller decision that individuals have in effect no right to keep and bear arms under the amendment, but only a collective right having "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." Lower courts have consistently applied the Miller decision in upholding various gun-control laws over the years.

The Supreme Court most recently revisited this question in 1980, when it reconfirmed that "these legislative restrictions on the use of firearms do not trench upon any constitutionally protected liberties." One significant part of that case is that then Chief Justice Burger and current Chief Justice Rehnquist both supported that interpretation. Burger has denounced the NRA's edited version of the amendment as a "fraud."

The legal precedents are clear: Almost any state or local gun-control action is fine; the Second Amendment does not apply. On the federal level, only laws interfering with state militias are prohibited.

There's really no legal problem with gun control at all. As a legendary sports figure once pointed out, in a different context, "You could look it up." On the other hand, most Americans (56 percent) don't want to, since they now agree with the statement, "Although the Constitution provides the right to bear arms, American society has changed to the point that it is too dangerous for this right to continue as originally written." At this point, the NRA might want to consider putting the front end of that amendment back up at headquarters. It could be worse.

© 1994 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/1994/01/nra.sidebar.html

[F6]

Notes on the Founding Fathers and the Separation of Church and State

by R.P. Nettelhorst

Introduction

Many well-meaning Christians argue that the United States was founded by Christian men on Christian principles. Although well-intentioned, such sentiment is unfounded. The men who lead the United States in its revolution against England, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and put together the Constitution were not Christians by any stretch of the imagination.

Why do some Christians imagine these men are Christians? Besides a desperate desire that it should be so, in a selective examination of their writings, one can discover positive statements about God and/or Christianity. However, merely believing in God does not make a person a Christian. The Bible says that "the fool says in his heart, there is no God." Our founding fathers were not fools. But the Bible also says "You say you believe in God. Good. The demons also believe and tremble."

Merely believing in God is insufficient evidence for demonstrating either Christian principles or that a person is a Christian.

Perhaps, to start, it might be beneficial to remind ourselves of what a Christian might be: it is a person who has acknowledged his or her sinfulness, responded in faith to the person of Jesus Christ as the only one who can redeem him, and by so doing been given the Holy Spirit.

The early church summarized the Christian message in six points:

1. Jesus came from God.

2. You killed him.

3. He rose again on the third day.

4. He sent the Holy Spirit

5. Repent and be baptized.

6. He's coming back.

An individual who would not acknowledge this much of the Christian message could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a Christian. The founding fathers of this country did not acknowledge this message. In fact, they denied it.

Founders of the American Revolution

Thomas Jefferson created his own version of the gospels; he was uncomfortable with any reference to miracles, so with two copies of the New Testament, he cut and pasted them together, excising all references to miracles, from turning water to wine, to the resurrection.

There has certainly never been a shortage of boldness in the history of biblical scholarship during the past two centuries, but for sheer audacity Thomas Jefferson's two redactions of the Gospels stand out even in that company. It is still a bit overwhelming to contemplate the sangfroid exhibited by the third president of the United States as, razor in hand, he sat editing the Gospels during February 1804, on (as he himself says) "2. or 3. nights only at Washington, after getting thro' the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day." He was apparently quite sure that he could tell what was genuine and what was not in the transmitted text of the New Testament...(Thomas Jefferson. The Jefferson Bible; Jefferson and his Contemporaries, an afterward by Jaroslav Pelikan, Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, p. 149. Click [ http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/ ] to go to a copy of The Jefferson Bible).

In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson wrote:

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury to my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. (Dumas Malon, Jefferson The President: First Term 1801-1805. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970, p. 191)

Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer whose manifestoes encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the War of Independence. But he was a Deist:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. (Richard Emery Roberts, ed. "Excerpts from The Age of Reason". Selected Writings of Thomas Paine. New York: Everbody's Vacation Publishing Co., 1945, p. 362)

Regarding the New Testament, he wrote that:

I hold [it] to be fabulous and have shown [it] to be false...(Roberts, p. 375)

About the afterlife, he wrote:

I do not believe because a man and a woman make a child that it imposes on the Creator the unavoidable obligation of keeping the being so made in eternal existance hereafter. It is in His power to do so, or not to do so, and it is not in my power to decide which He will do. (Roberts, p. 375)

John Adams, the second U.S. President rejected the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and became a Unitarian. It was during Adams' presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli, which states in Article XI that:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arrising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (Charles I. Bevans, ed. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America 1776-1949. Vol. 11: Philippines-United Arab Republic. Washington D.C.: Department of State Publications, 1974, p. 1072).

This treaty with the Islamic state of Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington's Administration. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on June 7, 1797; President Adams signed it on June 10, 1797 and it was first published in the Session Laws of the Fifth Congress, first session in 1797. Quite clearly, then, at this very early stage of the American Republic, the U.S. government did not consider the United States a Christian nation.

Benjamin Franklin, the delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. He has frequently been used as a source for positive "God" talk. It is often noted that Franklin made a motion at the Constitutional convention that they should bring in a clergyman to pray for their deliberations:

In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when present to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?....I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men. (Catherine Drinker Bowen. Miracle at Phaladelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1966, pp. 125-126)

It is rarely noted that Franklin presented his motion after "four or five weeks" of deliberation, during which they had never once opened in prayer. More significantly, it is never mentioned that Franklin's motion was voted down! Fine Christians, these founding fathers. Furthermore, the context is usually ignored, too. He made the motion during an especially trying week of serious disagreement, when the convention was in danger of breaking up. Cathrine Drinker Bowen comments:

Yet whether the Doctor had spoken from policy or from faith, his suggestion had been salutary, calling an assembly of doubting minds to a realization that destiny herself sat as guest and witness in this room. Franklin had made solemn reminder that a republic of thirteen united states - venture novel and daring - could not be achieved without mutual sacrifice and a summoning up of men's best, most difficult and most creative efforts. (Bowen, p. 127)

About March 1, 1790, he wrote the following in a letter to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, who had asked him his views on religion. His answer would indicate that he remained a Deist, not a Christian, to the end:

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." (Carl Van Doren. Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Viking Press, 1938, p. 777.)

He died just over a month later on April 17.

Deism

Certainly it is generally the case that these people believed in God, but it was not the God of Christianity. Deism began in the eighteenth century and was very popular in America. According to the dictionary, it was "a system of thought advocating natural religion based on human reason rather than revelation." Jefferson wrote that the religious doctrines of Jesus that he accepted, and which he regarded as consistent with his deistic perspective were three:

1. that there is one God, and he all-perfect:

2. that there is a future state of rewards and punishments

3. that to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.

Why do Christians want the founding fathers to be Christians?

Is it because they wish the best for these people?

Hardly.

It is because they hope that by demonstrating they were Christians, they can justify their political agenda. Rather than wanting something new (the injection of Christianity into government) they seek to restore something they imagine has been lost.

Reality: nothing has been lost. It wasn't there to start with. Therefore the whole concept of "taking back America" is a lie. America was never Christian.

Recent Misinformation on the Concept of Separation of Church and State

Some Christians are currently arguing that the concept of separating church and state was not in the minds of the founding fathers, and that it is a recent and pernicious doctrine that is the result of Supreme Court decisions in the 1950's and 60s.

This simply isn't true.

Separation of church and state is not something the Supreme Court invented in the 1950's and 60's. The phrase itself appears in a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, on Jan 1, 1802.

The Baptist Association had written to President Jefferson regarding a "rumor that a particular denomination was soon to be recognized as the national denomination." Jefferson responded to calm their fears by assuring them that the federal government would not establish any single denomination of Christianity as the National denomination. He wrote: "The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between Church and State."

Notice the phrasing in the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (emphasis added)

The concept of the separation of church and state appears in the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message (a revision of an earlier statement where it also appears) adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention:

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power. (emphasis added).

Look at what Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, had to say about religious freedom in the 17th century. He was a Baptist persecuted for his faith who argued for the separation of church and state nearly a hundred fifty years before Jefferson.

The Church and State need not be, Williams insisted, inextricably linked: 'A Pagan or Antichristian Pilot may be as skillful to carry the Ship to its desired Port, as any Christian Mariner or Pilot in the World, and may perform that work with as much safety and speed.' 'God requireth not an Uniformity of Religion to be inacted and inforced in any Civill State,' he declared. Rather, the tares in the field of Christian grain must be left alone; let man hold whatever religious opinions he chooses provided he does not 'actually disturb civil peace,' ran a provision of the Rhode Island Charter of 1663; let civil government be based on the consent of the governed. 'The Soveraigne, originall, and foundation of civil power lies in the People,' Williams insisted. They 'may erect and establish what forme of Government seemes to them most meete for their Civill condition.'

William's plea for Separation of Church and State stemmed far less, Harold Laski writes, from tender concern for men's consciences than from 'a fear that their unity meant the government of the Church by civil men and thus a threat to its purity.' Popular control of the Church through elected magistrates Williams thought evil since it gave the Church 'to Satan himself, by whom all peoples natural are guided.' The precise intention of Scripture could not be ascertained, he believed, with the icy certainty claimed by the New England clergy. He wanted Church and State separated so the Church would not be corrupted by the State. Thomas Jefferson entertained the opposite conviction, fearing that the State would become contaminated by the Church. (Alpheus Thomas Mason. Free Government in the Making: Readings in American Political Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 55)

In his tract on the topic of religious toleration Williams made some important points:

...Fourthly. The doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is proved guilty of all the blood of the souls crying for vengeance under the altar.

Fifthly. All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.

Sixthly. It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries: and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in soul matters, able to conquer: to wit, the sword of God's Spirit, the word of God.

Seventhly. The state of the land of Israel, the kings and people thereof, in peace and war, is proved figurative and ceremonial, and no pattern nor precedent for any kingdom or civil state in the world to follow.

Eighthly. God requireth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.

Ninthly. In holding an enforced uniformity of religion in a civil state, we must necessarily disclaim our desires and hopes of the Jews' conversion to Christ.

Tenthly. An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

Eleventhly. The permission of other consciences and worships than a state professeth, only can, according to God, procure a firm and lasting peace; good assurance being taken, according to the wisdom of the civil state, for uniformity of civil obedience from all sorts.

Twelfthly. Lastly, true civility and Christianity may both flourish in a state or kingdom, notwithstanding the permission of divers and contrary consciences, either of Jew or Gentile... (Roger Williams. The Bloudy Teneent of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience Discussed, 1644. excerpted from A.T. Mason. Free Government in the Making. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 64)

Notice what Ulysses S. Grant said in his seventh annual address (State of the Union address) to the Congress, December 7, 1875:

As this will be the last annual message which I shall have the honor of transmitting to Congress before my successor is chosen, I will repeat or recapitulate the questions which I deem of vital importance which may be legislated upon and settled at this session:

First. That the States shall be required to afford the opportunity of a good common-school education to every child within their limits.

Second. No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community. Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect.

Third. Declare church and state forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres; and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation (emphasis added). (A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. X. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1897, p. 4310)

Here is a quotation from the Encyclopedic Index of A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, published in 1917:

Religious Freedom. - The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (q.v.) requires that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Religious freedom doubtless had its greatest inspiration from James Madison while he was in the Virginia Legislature. An attempt was made to levy a tax upon the people of that state "for the support of teachers of the Christian religion." Madison wrote what he called a "Memorial and Remonstrance," in which he appealed to the people against the evil tendency of such a precedent, and which convinced people that Madison was right. A bill was passed providing "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever * * * nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and, by argument, maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The religious test to which many of the states put their office-holders were gradually abandoned, and the final separation of church and state in America came in 1833, when Massachusetts discontinued the custom of paying preachers (emphasis added).(A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. XX. New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., 1917).

It should be clear, from these quotations, that the concept of separating church and state is hardly of recent invention in the United States, since we see it as far back as at least 1644. It cannot seriously be argued that it sprang as a result of weird ideas in the 1950's and 60's. In point of fact, the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court at that time on school prayer are entirely consistent with the general thrust of U.S. history.

If this is a "Christian" nation, then why did Jefferson write what he did to a group of Baptists? Shouldn't he instead of said that they had something to worry about? If the concept of separating church and state were a recent idea, then why did Jefferson himself use it, one of the founding fathers and author of the Declaration of Independence?

I think it is a big surprise to the Jewish people who have been living here for longer than my ancestors (who only got here in the middle of the 19th century) to think that this is a "Christian" nation. If it were "Christian" then there would be religious requirements to be a part of it and to participate in the public arena. If this were a Christian nation, then why are so few Americans Christians? Even the most optimistic Gallup pole shows that barely 1/3 of the U.S. population claims to be "born again". Interestingly, that's up considerably since the time of the nation's founding, when barely ten percent, if that, claimed intense religious affiliation.

I believe that those who talk about "restoring" prayer to the public school have a misunderstanding of the Supreme Court ruling and have failed to carefully think through their position. The Supreme Court decided in 1962 that for the school administrators to write prayers and read them over the intercoms to the students was wrong. It is hard for me to figure out how anyone in their right mind would think it's a good idea for the state to compose prayers and force them on people.

So why would you want to "restore" government sponsored religiosity? Students and faculty and other employees are free to pray for themselves if they want; that has never been a problem (admittedly, some examples of overzealous administrators who didn't understand the issue, who tried to stop individuals from exercising their religious beliefs, can doubtless be found; but that is the exception, not the rule. That there are murderers is not proof that murder is legal.).

As a Baptist, I frankly would be bothered by a Moslem or a Hindu writing a prayer for my child. I no more want them imposing their religious views on me and mine than they would want me to impose my Baptist beliefs on them. And what about the agnostics and atheists? They no more wish to be inundated by religious concepts in school than I would like to have my children inundated by their beliefs (or lack thereof).

The attempt in the public arena is toward neutrality; certainly it is a tough ideal to reach, and certainly there are a lot of mistakes made on all sides. Certainly, too, in the past there has been a lot of inconsistency in these ideals. But the ideal remains nevertheless.

The history of the U.S. has been one of lofty ideals rarely achieved; our shame is that we so rarely reach what we proclaim: freedom, equality, and the like. But our pride is that, unlike so many before, at least we have ideals and we're trying, how often unsuccessfully, by fits and starts, to reach them. Most of the political disagreements between the parties is not so much over the goals (both Democrats and Republicans want a free, prosperous, safe and happy society), but over the methods to reach those goals. Demonizing the opposition is not reasonable, and both parties are guilty of this (Democrats tend to turn Republicans into Fascists and Republicans tend to turn Democrats into Communists; neither caricature is accurate, appropriate or dignified).

The American Revolution, at its Foundation, was Unscriptural

At its foundation, our American revolution was unscriptural. Therefore I have a hard time seeing how our government could have been founded on Christian principles, when its very founding violated one:

Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. (1 Peter 2:13-14)

No matter how you cut it, the founding fathers were revolting against the King of England. It should be remembered that Peter wrote these words while Israel was suffering under the domination of government far more oppressive than England ever was. In fact, compared to current taxes, our forefathers had nothing to complain about.

What Peter wrote seems perfectly clear and unambiguous; furthermore, it is consistent with what Jesus said about his kingdom not being a part of this world (John 18:23 and 36).

As a Christian, it would be very difficult to justify armed revolt against any ruler. Passive resistance to injustice and evil, as embodied in the concept of civil disobedience, however, does have Scriptural precedent (as for instance in the case of the early Christians described in Acts 5:28-29:

"We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name," he said. "Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood."

Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men!" (see also Acts 4:18-20)

Civil disobedience means obeying a higher, moral law, but willingly suffering the consequences of your actions and submitting to the authority of those in power to arrest or even kill you for your disobedience. Peter and the others were arrested, and many of them were ultimately martyred. But they never participated in violent protest, nor did they resist those in authority by violence.

Conclusion

Certainly many of the early immigrants to the New World came for religious reasons - often to escape persecution. However, they were not interested in religious freedom for anyone other than themselves, and often turned around and persecuted others who had slightly different viewpoints.

As Pastor Richard T. Zuelch pointed out in his letter to the Los Angeles Times on August 14, 1995:

Gordon S. Wood, in his 1992 book, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," states that, by the 1790's only about 10% of the American population regularly attended religious services - to quote just one statistic. Not exactly an indication of a wholehearted national commitment to Christianity!

It is a matter of simple historical fact that the United States was not founded as, nor was it ever intended to be, a Christian nation. That there were strong, long-lasting Christian influences involved in the nation's earliest history, due to the Puritan settlements and those of other religious persons escaping European persecution, cannot be denied. But that is a long way from saying that colonial leaders, by the time of the outbreak of the Revolution, were intending to form a nation founded on specifically Christian principles and doctrine.

We Christians do ourselves no favor by bending history to suit our prejudices or to accommodate wishful thinking. Rather than continue to cling to a "Moral Majority"-style fantasy that says America is a Christian nation that needs to be "taken back" from secular unbelief (we can't "take back" what we never had), it would be much healthier for us Christians to face reality, holding to what Jesus himself said in the Gospels: that Christians should never be surprised at the hostility with which the gospel would be greeted by the world, because most people would fail to believe in him, thereby strongly implying that, in every age and country, Christianity would always be a minority faith. (Rev. Richard T. Zuelch, Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, August 1995)

The United States is not, by any stretch of the imagination a Christian nation today, nor has it ever been, nor was it ever intended to be. The Religious right (or left) would do well to stop looking for the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth.

http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume2/ushistor.htm

[F6 note -- in addition to the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (items linked in) http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4130762 and preceding, and see also (items linked in) http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4505026 and preceding and following]

[Capt_Nemo]

Ha Perffffect F6!!!!

[rooster]

The only problem with that is, WE SEND BILLIONS OF TAX MONEY FROM OUR OIL WELLS TO SUPPORT YOU FUCKING YANKEES!

[F6]

Red State Babylon



If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.

by James Wolcott
November 2006

In contemporary lore, the good people of the red states walk in Jesus's sandals while the rest of us are following Satan into the licking flames. Twenty-plus years of conservative propaganda have convinced millions of Republicans and their pet Beltway pundits that they inherited the legacy of frontier values and dwell in baptismal light, unlike modern Democrats, who crawled out from under rocks and prefer the ambiguous dark, where there's no right or wrong, only "personal choices." Newt Gingrich once spouted that Susan Smith's murder of her two children in 1994 was a sign of the evil that liberal Democrats had wrought: "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things.... The only way you get change is to vote Republican." According to the gospel of Saint Newt, William J. Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and similar blowholes, the dying raptures of Sodom and Gomorrah can be found in the cultural duchies of the blue states. Here sin and moral sloth have set up shop, and venereal outbreaks of trendy ideas go unchecked. Conservative pundits and politicians regularly jeer that these Jurassic Parks of geriatric do-gooders and brainwashed college students don't represent the "real" America—the God-fearing, flag-waving, decent-living, high-octane, steeped-in-common-sense, everyday-low-prices heartland. Yet even as blue states hug the coasts and red states spread like a bloodstain across America's outstretched body, the influence of these elitist enclaves remains pervasive, corrosive, rotting away the pillars of moral order and foisting abortion, divorce, pornography, gay marriage, snail-darter environmentalism, secular humanism, dovish appeasement, moral relativism, and Rosie O'Donnell's TV comeback upon a once virile nation. The very names of the enclaves breeding such bacteria make the nostril hairs quiver. Hollywood. Berkeley. San Francisco. Madison, Wisconsin. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Martha's Vineyard. Georgetown. And, worst of all, New York City, especially Manhattan, most especially its Upper West Side, disparaged by its critics as the outpatient clinic for last-gasp liberalism.

It's so unjust.

As a resident of the Upper West Side and a regular bus rider, I must protest that the truth has been perverted and inverted. Yes, the Upper West Side is liberal, socially conscious, multi-culti, gay-friendly (Rosie's brother Daniel—also gay—is our state assemblyman), and occasionally itchy with political correctness. And, yes, it's true that we care, perhaps care too much, rattling our Zabar's bags as we nag the nation's conscience to no avail. Really, though, such little harm we do, what unracy lives we lead. It's like Jewish-Hispanic-Amish country up here! The broad sidewalks present a wholesome cavalcade of baby strollers, Columbia University students, diabetics on canes, and tourists posing in front of Tom's Restaurant, the diner made famous on Seinfeld. It isn't the cultural bastions of the blue states such as the Upper West Side that are greasing America's slide into the disco inferno. It's the Republican red states that are lowering the country's moral standards and dragging us through muck and malaise, the red states that are pustulating with horny hypocrites, rampant crime, polygamy, crystal-meth labs, federal handouts (The Economist recently christened Alaska "America's welfare state"), illegitimate births, blimping waistlines, and future generations of dumb bunnies. JonBenet Ramsey, dolled up and immortalized in her beauty-pageant footage, is the pre-pubescent red-hot-mama mascot of red-state Babylon.

"Red States cling to double standards like a drunk holds on to the last beer he can afford," writes Justin Cord Hayes in the semi-humorous survival guide Blue State/Red State. Hypocrisy is the hallmark of the red-state bull-roarer. Gingrich, who makes Hayes's dishonor roll of "conservative scalawags," has been married three times and has been known to have problems keeping it zipped [F6 note -- see http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13863833 ]. Limbaugh has three marriages in the loss column. He is also a prancing Tartuffe on the drug issue, condemning addicts and users on his radio show for their weak wills and moral failings (and wanting to chuck them behind bars), only to be revealed as a painkiller anteater himself. Bennett expended volumes of wind preaching virtue and decrying seamy decadence, only to be exposed as a high-stakes slot-machine love monkey. But these are minor-league hypocrisies, as much a by-product of male prerogative as of Republican humbug. It is at the extremes that the red-state double standards are most sharply defined.



For the purposes of lurid illustration, no one is a better, more bitter distillation of red-state double standards than Dennis Rader, the monster who achieved lethal renown in Wichita, Kansas, and across the nation as the "BTK" killer (BTK: Bind, Torture, Kill). Convicted and sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms after a reign of terror that lasted decades, Rader was a methodical sadist, murdering his victims as if staging his own theater of cruelty, a Black Mass of the sacred and profane. The Los Angeles Times reported, "After killing neighbor Marine Hedge in 1985, Rader took her body to his church and photographed it on the altar. Then he hid her body, changed into his Scouting uniform and went off to chaperon a camping trip." It was the Scout-leader uniform and the other trappings of patriarchal authority that enabled him to blend into the community, elude suspicion. He played the role of respectability to the hilt. Rader was not only a Scout leader but also an officer at Wichita's Christ Lutheran Church and a registered Republican—a psychopathic parody of the Upstanding Citizen. Because he fit so well the stereotype of how a pillar of the community should conduct himself in daylight, his church congregation didn't have a collective clue. ("Nobody, nobody saw this coming," said the Reverend Michael G. Clark, the church's pastor, regarding Rader's arrest.) On the outside he couldn't have been more conformist; inside, he was an icebox of finely chiseled rage. Rader is the nightmare embodiment of the red-state personality at its most self-conflicted: piously Christian (he quoted the Bible at his sentencing hearing), yet torturously punitive; arrogantly proud, yet sloppily maudlin ("I've humbled myself," he blubbed at the same hearing); dotingly paternal (Time: "Rader was known as an attentive father who used to take his kids camping and fishing"), and a petty despot (as a compliance officer in his Wichita suburb, Rader was known to measure grass with a ruler and give citations for unkempt lawns).

Rader is vicious proof that punitive control and outlaw behavior feed raw meat to each other. Societies that tightly fasten the lid produce pressure-cooker violence, like the sporadic outbursts of BTK or extended shooting sprees (such as the recently stemmed sniper attacks on bikers and pedestrians in Phoenix), which in turn produce emergency calls for tougher laws, stiffer sentences, bigger prisons, and more lethal injections. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, of the 10 states with the highest number of total inmates per 100,000 residents in 2003, 9 were red. Of the 10 states with the most female inmates per 100,000 residents that same year, all were red. (Conversely, of the 10 states with the lowest incarceration rates of female prisoners, 9 were blue.) Not only do red states pack a larger percentage of their populations into their sardine cans, they have a near monopoly on capital punishment. Since 1976, the highest number of executions have been carried out in red states, with Texas—no surprise—ranking No. 1 on the hit parade. George Bush may be stingy with the pardons as president, but his wrist was quite limber when it came to signing those execution approvals as governor of Texas. "Now, you would think that all of this imprisonment and death might result in safer, more peaceful Red States, wouldn't you?" asks John Grevstad in his book, Red State, Blue State: Defending the Liberal Jesus and Blue State Morality from Red State Religion and Hypocrisy (which references the above statistics). But nay. "You would be wrong. Red States tend to be the most violent places to live.… Red States dominate the rankings of violent crimes despite their emphasis on judgment and incarceration." It's never fun having your ass shot off, but the odds of that occurring seem higher in the red states, which account for all of the top 15 states in rates of death by firearms (2003). Methamphetamine addiction is a national scourge, but it's been chewing the heart out of the red Middle West, where Missouri has the tragic distinction of hosting the highest number of lab incidents (meth labs or production facilities raided by authorities), with Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa, and Kentucky also among the top six states afflicted with an outbreak of bootleg chemistry. The 10 states with the lowest meth-lab incidents? Eight of them are blue. Then there's the violence or despair directed selfward. Of the 15 states with the highest adjusted rates of suicide (2003), 14 are red.



Animals aren't safe, either. Although "canned hunts"—the shooting of (often tame) animals in enclosed habitats so that white guys can claim exotic trophies and feel Hemingway-esque on the drive home—are staged from here to Hawaii, they are most common in Texas, according to the Humane Society.

In what's known as "victimless crime" to its defenders and "vice" to its detractors, the picture is no prettier. Take gambling, for example. Raised Catholic, I'm familiar with the tawdry allure of a rousing game of bingo, and each day I see busloads of mortgaged souls being shuttled to Atlantic City, where slot machines await to swallow their incomes and where the boardwalk teems with ghosts of suckers past. So I'm aware of how even a boulder of integrity such as Bill Bennett could succumb to gambling's baccarat beat. But it is still passing strange how accepted gambling—or gaming, as it is euphemistically known—is in red states that otherwise pride themselves on shunning temptation, neon lights, and Jezebels in tights carrying cocktail trays. If The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill were to tour present-day America, he'd find that the trouble in River City runs the length and width of the red states. He'd throw up his hands to high heaven at the spectacle of all these fine Christian folk frittering away their souls and savings. According to a 2005 publication by Ernst & Young, of the 11 top-grossing gaming markets (excluding Native American gaming revenues—see below), 8 are in red states. Five of the six states that offer riverboat gambling are red, and they should be red with shame, because you know what goes on on those riverboats: Fancy Dans with diamond stickpins and concealed derringers fleecing honest cardsharps to the rhythm of Dixieland music. Some red states are so economically parlous that casinos are the only thing between them and Desolation Row. Mississippi made its own deal with the Devil, until Nature upped the ante. "Until Katrina, [Mississippi] casinos were restricted to floating seafront barges to appease opponents of gambling in one of the Bible Belt's most God-fearing states," Andrew Ward noted in the Finanical Times. After Katrina, this drooping member of the Bible Belt loosened its buckle and lunged at the cash cow. Governor Haley Barbour's battered Mississippi has gone on a casino-building orgy clustered around the city of Biloxi, where black Americans and Vietnamese fishermen are being displaced by redevelopment. Biloxi may have around 20 new casinos a decade from now, becoming the ruby in the navel of "the Redneck Riviera."

When gambling interests slap on the feed bag, greed makes them sloppy. It's hard to pace yourself when so much money's sluicing through. The growth spurt in Native American casinos, scattered across 20 red states and 8 blue states, gave us the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal—la grande bouffe of greed, where millions of dollars were diverted for campaign donations to Republicans, illegal gifts, luxury trips, and sniper equipment for West Bank settlers. (In Newsweek, an associate labeled Abramoff a "super-Zionist.") Few glad-handing facilitators have worn an uglier frown. It is an index of the contempt Abramoff had for his clients that he referred to Native American contacts as "monkeys" and "mofos"—"we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!" he ejaculated in an e-mail. Abramoff and his former business partner Michael Scanlon might not have been able to get away with their egregious palm greasing for so long had they not been dancing cheek to cheek with a rising political star and princely pretty boy named Ralph Reed. They were the rough to his smooth. Former executive director of the Christian Coalition, Reed was an impeccable natural on TV—unlike Jerry Falwell, whose jowls belonged to an earlier era, or Pat Robertson, with his elfin ears and daffy pronouncements—and a slick operative in the executive suites, the perfect envelope for the multiple payload of Republican conservatism, evangelical outreach, and old-fashioned power brokering. In a profile of Reed in The Nation, Bob Moser wrote, "As executive director of the Christian Coalition from its founding in 1989 till his departure in 1997, Reed got—and took—the lion's share of credit for transforming the politically unsophisticated evangelical right into a disciplined Republican Party machine. 'Ralph Reed symbolizes the rise of the Christian right to political power,' says Frederick Clarkson, author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy." Now he has the stubbed-out look of any other rejected prospect. Unable to diffuse the Abramoff skunk aroma, Reed lost his bid for lieutenant governor of Georgia in July's Republican primary, and with his defeat the red states lost one of their most promising avatars.



The red states may be more churchgoing than the blue states, but they're no strangers to Peyton Place. The 10 states in the union with the highest divorce rates in 2004 (among the 45 states for which figures are available) were all red! The fireball center of the red states when it comes to getting unhitched is, no surprise, Nevada, whose marriage laws encourage major turnover in the honeymoon suites. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, until the spouse finds out, and then it's say hi to your new friend, Al Imony. (A joke, I'm ashamed to say, I saw printed on a Vegas cocktail napkin.) Illegitimacy rates? Once again, the red states can hang their baseball caps in shame. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, of states with the highest percentages of births in 2003 to unwed mothers, 9 of the top 10 were red. Considering how ardently the hard-core Christian right is campaigning against abortion availability and birth control, this percentage could conceivably (no pun intended) rise, giving the red states an added advantage in the birth race. In an essay adapted for USA Today, Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, noted that progressives have fewer children, and that if demography is destiny: "[This] augurs a far more conservative future—one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default."

Red-state pathology incorporates another uncontrollable appetite, the unceasing gnaw of gluttony. I took umbrage when a right-wing blogger who posts under the handle Horsefeathers, reveling in Bush's 2004 re-election and the suicidal dismay of "Luxury Liberals," jeered, "And so we must take our leave of New York's Upper West Side where all the women are strong-minded, all the men are overweight, and all the children are spoiled." Admittedly, upper Broadway seldom resembles Copacabana Beach, bodies taut and oiled undulating snake-hipped down the avenue, but before haters label Luxury Liberals as emasculated fatties, they should take a look in the mirror, if they can find one wide enough. According to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, supported by the C.D.C., in 2004 14 of the 15 states with the highest percentage of obesity were red. Moreover, there is a correlation between corpulence and economic deprivation. Based on a three-year average of obesity rates, "the five states with the highest obesity rates—Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky—exhibit much higher rates of poverty than the national norm," the Associated Press reported in August. All five states are red states.



It is no shame that so many in the red states waddle to the checkout counter. Most Americans could afford to drop a few. It's the direction that they waddle, the Pied Piper tune that they follow, that makes one fear for their future, and ours. Thomas Frank's best-seller asked the question What's the Matter with Kansas? Why does a red state such as Kansas vote against its own economic interests? As Frank himself put it in an online interview, "Large parts of the state are in deep economic crisis—in many cases a crisis either brought on or worsened by the free-market policies of the Republican party—and yet the state's voters insist on re-electing the very people who are screwing them, running up colossal majorities for George Bush, lowering taxes [for corporations and the already affluent] and privatizing and deregulating, even when these things are manifestly unhealthy for the state." Part of his explanation for why Kansas voters keep laying their heads on the chopping block involves the Republican superiority at waging culture war and exploiting animus. A shallower, more disturbing, and definitely more obnoxious hypothesis is that the red states are where the dumbing down of America has achieved rock-bottom success. In a survey done by Morgan Quitno Press, an independent, private research-and-publishing company in Kansas, blue states accounted for 8 out of the top 10 "Smartest States" as measured by pedagogical criteria. (And one of the 2 red states that did make the top 10—Montana—is trending blue.) As for the bottom 10 states, 8 of them were red. Blue states not only put a premium on education but are also willing to pay the premium. Nine of the 10 states paying the highest average salary for schoolteachers in 2004–05 were blue; the 10 states with the worst-paid teachers were all red. This gap helps explain why our children isn't learning, to paraphrase President Bush.

Under Karl Rove's sorcerer's spell, Republicans learned how to exploit the intelligence gap, herding the dopey faithful to the polls, and depending on their docility between elections. "Karl Rove was there to recognize that there were substantial powers to be obtained by catering to stupid stubborn people, and George W. Bush would be the man to harvest such resources," Norman Mailer brilliantly proposes in The Big Empty (a series of dialogues between Mailer and son John Buffalo). "George W. understood stupid people well. They were not dumb, their minds were not physically crippled in any way. They had chosen to be stupid because that offered its own kind of power. To win a great many small contests of will, they needed only to ignore all evidence. Bright people would break down trying to argue with them." It's like trying to reason with a box of rocks. If Rove's vision of a permanent Republican majority comes to rotten fruition, America may well devolve into the moronic dystopia of Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy—a mentally handicapped superpower buried under a mountain of garbage where the Fox News Channel is the sole source of information.

Progress in this country depends upon maneuvering around this solid bloc of recalcitrant dunces. Fortunately, there is room to maneuver, the differences between red- and blue-state Americans being less fixed and primary, more flexible and subtly hued, than advertorialized. In The Flight of the Creative Class, Richard Florida cites the findings of political scientist Morris P. Fiorina, who, after sifting through a grain silo of polls and data for his Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (written with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope), disputed the notion that American citizens are at bayonet points, poised for civil war. Compared with the Vietnam-era turmoil, the American people are feeling quite cousinly. It's the political class that is polarized and is inciting polarization among the apathetic masses. "A polarized political class makes the citizenry appear polarized, but it is only that—an appearance," Fiorina argued. The good news is that some of the most heavily made-up clown faces fronting this charade are melting into a pool of batter: The previously mentioned Ralph Reed. The once omnipotent and fearsome Tom "the Hammer" DeLay, forced to resign in disgrace as majority leader of the House. Virginia senator George Allen, a would-be son of the Confederacy, whose re-election campaign took a turn for the ugly after Allen singled out a Democratic volunteer of Indian descent as "macaca" at a campaign stop and mockingly welcomed him to "America and the real world of Virginia," that is, White People Land. Conrad Burns, Republican senator from Montana, who made himself a prime candidate for anger management and foot-in-mouth removal when he (a) berated exhausted firefighters for doing a "piss-poor job," (b) called his housepainter "a nice little Guatemalan man" and hinted he might be an illegal alien, and (c) said at a fund-raiser with First Lady Laura Bush present and pretending to be awake that America faced a terrorist enemy whose members "drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night"—kind of like Travis Bickle, only duskier. And Nip/Tuck's woman of the millennium, Katherine Harris, who earned infamy for her role as secretary of state in the Florida recount follies of 2000, is spiraling earthward and streaming mascara into the atmosphere in her disastrous run for the Senate, in which she has given Jewish voters a nervous scare by declaring, "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin." So many flameouts in one year must be more karmic than coincidental. These downfalls and others won't stop NASCAR, the comedy stylings of Larry the Cable Guy, and intelligent design from being forced down our throats, but it's a start.

James Wolcott is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

Copyright © CondéNet 2006.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/11/wolcott200611

[F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also in particular (items linked in):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12258062 and preceding and following;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6725040 and preceding and following;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=5720199 and preceding and following;
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=5578478 and following; and
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4752272 ]

[sortagreen]

Too good.

Here's a similar post from the last time we lost and election by getting pencil whipped. I don't remember exactly when...


Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States
By New Democrat Outreach Program (feedback at theregister.co.uk)
Published Sunday 7th November 2004 12:30 GMT
Comment The defeated Kerry may have called for unity last week, but already radical elements inside and outside of the Democrat party are arguing for the abandonment of the old ways of cosy consensus. One such organisation, formed even as the last queues for the ballots ebbed away, styles itself "The New Democrat Outreach Program." The Register has been contacted by one NDOP activist, styling himself Commandante Camembert, with an early draft of the organisation's first communique to the nation. "We must," says Camembert, "learn to speak to all of the people. But we mustn't be afraid to sneer when we do it."

We think they've got that right already, although the "outreach" may need some work. Anway, here it is:

An open letter to the Red-State victors:
With hard work and superb organization, you have triumphed over John Kerry and the forces of Blue-state paternalism. Congratulations. The multinational corporations that hold you in bondage remain free to profit off your sweat nearly tax free, while their overpaid senior execs continue to pay a pittance in personal income tax.

Your primary and secondary schools will continue to turn out third-rate pupils with limited opportunities, while you enjoy the satisfaction of making it on your own without health care when a catastrophic illness bankrupts your family.

Your agricultural universities will continue issuing Ph.D.s in football, and bogus Protestant Evangelical and Fundamentalist theology, and how to jerk off a bull safely. Your children will learn to borrow enough money to erect chicken houses so that they, like you, can take custody -- not possession, but custody -- of Tyson's chicks, feed them, rear them, assume losses from those that fail to thrive, and in the end earn just enough money to service their endless debt, and realize a profit of perhaps $12K a year. Your bank thanks you; Tyson thanks you; George W. Bush thanks you; and I thank you.

You can continue sending your sons to die in Iraq on a fool's errand. When you bury them, you can console yourselves with Bush's platitudes about their heroic mission to defend America from weapons of mass destruction.

You can savor the deficit spending that stimulates commerce today, but will cripple the US economy in ten or fifteen years' time when the bills come due with interest. Perhaps a Democrat will be in office at that time, who can be blamed for W's delayed economic fiasco.

You can continue believing, as Republican Party brainwashing has persuaded you, that we, your neighbors, are your enemies. You can believe that we have no morals; that we pimp out our teenage daughters for Internet porn; that we eat babies; that we are all gay; that we are cowards on the battlefield; and that we want to run your lives and give you AIDS.

Here's a clue: we are not your enemies; we are your countrymen. Your enemies are the greedy multinationals that the Republican Party bends over backwards to accommodate. Incidentally, most of them are based in Blue states, as are their Republican owners and major shareholders.

Here in the Blue States, Democrats and Republicans alike generate the lion's share of America's wealth, although it is you Reds who provide the lion's share of the stoop labor. You are our Mexicans, so to speak. We could not have accomplished the economic miracle that is America without your willing capitulation to a system that lies to you and fucks you over at every turn.

Look at economic output and educational achievement on a state-by-state basis: it's painfully evident that we Blues are immensely more productive and better educated than you Reds. We have lots more money. We live longer. We eat better. We work less. We fuck more. We do cocaine and smoke fine Canadian buds, not the homebrew crank and cheap Mexican headache reefer you guys are stuck with. We drink French wine and Stoli martinis, not Budweiser. Our children rarely bother us: we've got them on Ritalin and Prozac. Our teeth are straighter and whiter, our necks longer, and our fingernails cleaner. And many of us are the Republican elite who have just punked you.

It's good to be a Blue, regardless of which party you join.

Understandably, you resent us, so you've fabricated an imaginary measure of superiority: Christian "values." Yet you talk about values the way a pre-teen girl talks about "love" in fan letters to Ashton Kutcher. You recycle quasi-religious platitudes and received slogans. You know nothing of moral theology, a rigorous philosophical pursuit that hardly exists outside the Catholic Church and its elite universities. You make of the Bible what you will; you attend prayer meetings with other semi-literates, where you reinforce each other's sloppy understandings of the text, and combine them with half-digested bits of old-timey Hallmark-card "wisdom." And when you spout gibberish, you call it "speaking in tongues." You actually fancy that you're saints, you silly, narcissistic creatures.

Nevertheless, you are fellow Americans. The Blue Republican elite encouraged you to vote for George W Bush, because they quite simply own him, and they know that his administration will make policies that help them, even if hurt you. We Blue Democrats voted for John Kerry because we believed he would minister to your needs better than Bush. A President Kerry would have shared some of our wealth with you, assured your health care, raised the minimum wage, and checked the rapacious greed of the multinationals that hold you in thrall.

President Kerry would have helped us to help you, which is all that we ask. It pains us to see you in wage slavery. It pains us to see you so ignorant and uneducated, and so eager to place yourselves in bondage. Yes, we live better; but we wish you to live better too, even if it means sacrifice on our part.

What we wanted for you would have been far better than that which you, in your ignorant pride, demanded for yourselves. Oh, you defeated us all right, but only to your detriment.

We Blues will come out of the Bush era no worse for wear, although you Reds will come out very much diminished, deeper in debt, and less able to improve your circumstances by your own powers. But because you wish to be flattered more than helped, you will be grateful for your ass fucking from the Blue-state Republican elite that is laughing behind your backs today.

We did not wish it so. We honestly did want to help.

On 2 November, you thanked us by electing a shrewd, manipulative handmaiden to corporate America who panders to you while ruthlessly exploiting your ignorance and weakness for the benefit of his patrons in the national plutocracy. There is nothing we can do about that. You won fair and square.

We should let you rot. We should secede and leave you to fend for yourselves. Then you will see firsthand just how dependent you are. We are sick of fighting for you by fighting against you. Perhaps, when you see how dreary your lives have become without us, you will finally develop the spine to fight for your basic, human rights. And then we will gladly confront the plutocracy alongside you. We need your help to defeat the Blue Republicans, who, I assure you, are just as decadent as we are, though often richer.

But until you finally learn to respect yourselves, we can't respect you, and we therefore can't be bothered to give a rat's ass about you.

So let us secede, Blue America and Red America. We can handle the Blue state Republicans, so long as we don't have a lot of ignorant Red state lemmings frustrating our efforts and screwing themselves in the bargain. Secession will enable us both to live as we have chosen without the other's interference. We will prosper, and you will get a clue.

But do stay in touch after the borders slam shut. When you finally tire of living on the modern, corporate plantations of Cargill, Tyson, ConAgra and Smithfield; when you tire of shopping at Wal-Mart and sending your daughters to sling hash at Denny's in hopes that they'll meet the nicer sort of truck driver; when you tire of sneaking into Blue America as illegal white-trash wetbacks eager for casual work dusting our parlors; and when, like men, you finally rise up in rebellion against this immoral usury -- then, and only then, let us talk.

We'll gladly get your backs. But first you must grow the brains and the balls needed to profit from our help. ®
© Copyright 2005

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/07/blue_state_to_reds/

Text Features: bold, Italic, Underline (Want to use
more advanced posting features? Read the FAQ)

Message In Reply To:
Red vs. blue? Not true.
By Robert Kuttner / August 10, 2005

TO HEAR network commentators and read innumerable press stories, you would
think the United States was divided into two bitterly opposed cultural
worlds known as red states and blue states. As widely used political
concepts, these phrases actually date back only to the 2000 presidential
elections, when all the networks used the same color-coded maps to show
which states went Republican or Democrat.
The reality is quite different. In the very close 2004 election, for
instance, the contest was decided by 10 points or less in 21 states. And a
surprising number of states voted one way for president, the other for
senator or governor.

Montana, which Bush won by better than 20 points, elected a Democratic
governor and gave Democrats control of both houses of the Legislature.
Wyoming, which gave Kerry just 29 percent, has a Democratic governor, too.
Likewise ''red state" Arizona and Oklahoma. Even Kansas, the poster child
for working people who supposedly don't vote their pocketbook interests,
has a Democratic governor, too. Maybe there's nothing the matter with
Kansas.

Ohio, which seldom supports a Democrat for president, is presumably a
diehard ''red" state. Yet a Democrat, campaigning as an Iraq veteran
against Bush's war, nearly won the state's most heavily Republican house
seat in a 52-48 special election to fill a vacancy.

Conversely, even the ''bluest" of the blue states, such as New York and
California, send dozens of Republicans to Congress, and elect GOP
governors. True blue Massachusetts also keeps electing Republican
governors (who reciprocate by leaving town, but that's another story.)

Howard Dean, the Democratic national chairman, has recognized these
realities in calling for a ''50-state strategy," just as Republican
chairman Ken Mehlman is pursuing African-Americans, the Democrats' most
loyal voting bloc.

Despite my own determination to avoid this sloppy language, I caught
myself lazily describing Senator Bill Frist as hailing from a ''red
state." In fact, Tennessee sends five Democrats to the House, and four
Republicans.

The mischief is that this usage paints our country as far more bitterly
divided than it is. Yes, there are Limbaugh ditto-heads (several reliably
send me unprintable e-mails), just as there are crunchy lefties driving
old Volvos with more bumper stickers than paint.

However, only a small minority of Americans are cultural warriors.
Mercifully, most Americans hold appropriately complex views on contentious
political or moral topics that demand complex thinking. These include the
Iraq war, abortion, gay rights, religion, health care, the environment,
and other issues that supposedly divide America into warring camps.

It is possible, for example, to believe that Saddam Hussein is a monster
and still have major doubts about whether Bush's Iraq policy made sense.
Polls show that a majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal, but
have serious qualms about its widespread use. As citizens, most Americans
want a clean environment, but as consumers we are addicted to polluting
cars. A majority of heterosexual Americans think the government should
stay out of the bedrooms of gay adults, but still have trouble with gay
marriage, though not necessarily domestic partnerships. Most Americans
believe in God, but most believers are tolerant of people of diverse
faiths or no faith, and don't think the government should be in the
business of proselytizing, much less that religion should dictate science.

Americans are capable of splitting tickets, and changing their views over
time. Over the past two decades, we have become a country far more
tolerant of difference. We have also become more skeptical about large
institutions generally, whether big government or big business.

Political scientists have long celebrated the fact that Americans have
multiple, cross-cutting identities. We are not defined just by religion or
ethnic group, or region, like so much of the conflict-ridden world, but by
occupation, hobby, civic activity, and much more. Our three-dimensional
selves create multiple opportunities for empathy, and save us from being
Yugoslavia or Iraq.

The pundits have lately introduced a new color -- purple -- into the
political lexicon, but with the false implication that a state with both
''red" and ''blue" tendencies is something exotic.

The press is supposed to protect us from stereotypes, not reinforce them.
Next election, the networks should give us the complex palette we deserve.

Let's hear it for purple mountains' majesty.

Correction: Last week I mistakenly named Ohio Senator George Voinovich
''John."

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, can be reached at
[e-mail]. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/10/red_vs_blue_not_true/

[yayaa]

I'm not offended by strong language but I am to gutter language. I didn't get past the first sentence and the majority of sane people wouldn't either. Whatever argument the writer was putting forth was wasted with such trash writing. Just my opinion.

[F6]

The Founding Fathers Wouldn't Have Liked George Bush

Bill Maher
Posted July 20, 2007 | 09:54 AM (EST)

I'm in Boston today, getting ready for my standup special tomorrow night live on HBO (last shameless plug, I promise) [F6 note -- see http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21490468 ], and walking around the city has made me remember: oh yeah, America started here. That's right, America was invented by liberal men in Boston and Philadelphia. Not that I don't love all of America, but rednecks who think they're the real America should read a history book once in a while. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin, Madison -- the whole lot of them were well read, erudite, European thinking children of the enlightenment, and they would have had absolutely nothing in common and less to say to a cowboy simpleton like George Bush.

And speaking of who's a real American, was anyone as outraged as I was reading Robert Novak's little interview [ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/magazine/15WWLN-Q4-t.html (F6 note -- below)] in the NY Times magazine on Sunday? Asked if in hindsight he would leave out the part of his 2003 column that identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, he said "I don't know. I thought journalistically it was justifiable. Nobody had told me -- and I still don't believe -- that it put anybody's life in danger. I don't think she was an important person in the CIA."

That really is quite an astounding quote, isn't it? How the hell would he know if it put anybody's life in danger? YOU'RE NOT IN THE CIA, BOB! They don't tell you any of their business! Considering the consequences of being wrong about such a hunch, is it really the patriotic thing to do? To sit in your office and just conjecture that this agent wasn't very important to the CIA? First, I think everyone who works at the CIA is important; and second, WHO THE HELL IS THIS MAN TO OUT PEOPLE IN THE DEADLY WORLD OF ESPIONAGE BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HE "THINKS"?!

With patriots like that, I'm sure glad there are traitors like me and Michael Moore still living here in America.

Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/the-founding-fathers-woul_b_57064.html [with (numerous) comments]


====================


The Plame Game

Questions for Robert Novak

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: July 15, 2007

It has been four years since you were catapulted into the headlines for outing the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame in your syndicated column, yet the story lives on, most recently in the uproar over the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. Would you like to see him pardoned? Yes. I don’t see how you can have obstruction of justice when there is no underlying crime.

But as you well know, he lied under oath to the grand jury investigating the leak of Plame’s name to the press. I think he got mixed up. It was not a lie. I think he got confused. That’s why you need lawyers — to make sure you don’t get confused. I was very careful in my testimony to the grand jury and before that to Mr. Fitzgerald to make sure that I didn’t fabricate anything.

In your new memoir, “The Prince of Darkness,” you complain about the $160,000 you’ve spent on legal fees and claim that your income has taken a dive as a result of your role in this. Can you elaborate? I left CNN, which was my biggest payer, and my lecture fees were down. I was a little bit untouchable in the eyes of some people. I was off “Meet the Press” for two years. I have a much lower role with Fox News than I had at CNN.

If you could rewrite your newspaper column of July 14, 2003, would you leave out the part where you identify Plame as a C.I.A. operative and destroy her cover? I don’t know. I thought journalistically, it was justifiable. Nobody had told me — and I still don’t believe — that it put anybody’s life in danger. I don’t think she was an important person in the C.I.A.

Your betrayal of her identity appalled not only Democrats but also some of your former conservative friends, like Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who called your conduct reprehensible. Did that sting on a personal level? I think it did. I really enjoyed Bill’s company, but Bill is an ideologue, much more than I am, and I think it was very hard for him to maintain a relationship with me when I took positions on the Iraq war and on the Middle East which were so far different from his.

Not long before the Plame affair, David Frum attacked you as unpatriotic in National Review, the conservative magazine for which you had written. Was that a turning point for you? I don’t know if it was a turning point or an ending point. It might have been a difficult time for me, but it was also a time when I had become a Catholic convert, which gave me a great deal of comfort.

By your own account, you converted from Judaism after meeting Msgr. Peter Vaghi, a former Republican lawyer and adviser to Senator Pete Domenici who made you feel comfortable with Catholic liturgy. That’s right. He was a source of mine before he was a priest. He knew me; he wasn’t just some strange priest that I didn’t know. It was one of the several serendipitous things that led me into the church.

That’s not a very spiritual reason for converting. What if you had met a Republican rabbi who had provided tips for your column? Would you have become a more observant Jew? The point is very difficult for a non-Catholic to appreciate. But I believe that Catholicism is the only true religion. The Holy Spirit has convinced me of that.

Much of this is recounted with admirable frankness in “The Prince of Darkness.” Did you intend the title ironically? Yes. It’s a little bit ironic. The nickname was given to me by my friend the reporter John Lindsay because he thought for a young man I took a very dim view of the prospects for our civilization.

Isn’t Prince of Darkness Richard Perle’s nickname? No. It’s my nickname. There was a British parliamentarian who came over and got me and Perle mixed up. At that time, we might have looked a little bit alike, dark-complexioned and sinister-looking.

Do you still have sources inside the White House? Yes.

Can you tell me a scoop? You have no idea how I work. I wouldn’t dream of telling you. If I have a real good scoop — and I do know a couple of things — I am going to write about it.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/magazine/15WWLN-Q4-t.html

[sortagreen]

Too f'ing funny, really. I didn't have that one. Thanks.

[m_stone_14]

HaHa..F The South..LOL..That's too funny. The South has wanted out of this union for years but the Carpetbaggers just won't let it go. They can't because they need the tax money for their "social programs". I personally wish the northeast would just fall off the continent and go to Russia..That's where all your "heroes" have come from. I can't figure out why you Carpetbaggers are all still here and not in Russia.

[m_stone_14]

HaHa..later Carpetbaggers