Impeachment for what? Conversion to Islam?
The problem here is that most of the current victims of Islamist terrorism and the allies in the region whom we will need to roll back and destroy terrorist groups are also Muslim. I do with President Obama would be more willing to call a spade a spade even if simply to shut the critics up but we are not and we cannot be in any meaningful sense at war with Islam.
Unlike you, I have enough faith in the American people that they are not bigoted and intolerant enough to think that adhering to a particular religion is equivalent to obstructing justice by engaging in a criminal cover-up of a burglary.
So what particular denomination of Judaism and Christianity are associated with these “Judeo-Christian” values if not Roman Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism? The values this country was founded upon is really more of a mixture of the political Protestant tradition and Enlightenment thinking with varying degrees depending on the Founding Father then anything broadly defined as “Judeo-Christian” which can just as easily be used to justify the Divine Right of Kings and submission to the state.
The Turks and Indonesians would, I’m sure, beg to differ that there are not any and will never be Islamic democracies. What the Reich wing wants is for Obama to say “Islamic terrorism” so they can focus on the “Islamic” part and continue to denigrate the world’s second largest religion because of the actions of a tiny minority.
I’ve never heard “Judeo-Christian values” uttered by anyone but a right-winger and very seldom anyone who wasn’t a Christian. The Founding Fathers, whom the right wing deems infallible, were primarily deists. Jefferson himself was open minded enough to have his own copy of the Koran.
The crux of the “Obama is really a Muslim” belief is bigotry, pure and simple. The knuckle draggers logic is “we hate Obama, we hate Muslims, Obama must be a Muslim”.
Hitler never won a majority vote. You might want to research how Hitler seized power.
Saying “Islamic terrorists” may satiate the infantile knee-jerk reactions of the American right wing fascists, but it would do more harm than good. It would offend friendly Islamic states such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, and the UAE. It would drive a needless wedge in the coalition that is currently fighting ISIS, and for no other reason than to shut up the bigots on the American right. Fuck them- Obama has it right.
There are enough bigots in the US that it would be problematic. Look at the dumb asses in Murfreesboro TN trying to block construction of a mosque. Look at the recreational outrage over the “ground zero mosque”. There are a buttload of ignorant bigots in the US and one party more than eager to exploit their hatred.
And all the way through this thread, my brain is screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK DIFFERENCE WOULD IT MAKE?!” What an astounding waste of energy, breath and electrons…
You also seem to have absolutely no grasp of how closely linked politics & religion are in this country. If he were to come out and say he was a Catholic it would still result in the biggest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War. The Republicans would pounce and the Democrats would abandon him wholesale. It could practically bring down the whole modern Democratic party. And it would be worse than what Nixon did in that he would be guilty of essentially lying about nearly everything he’s ever said or done to every single individual, both during two presidential elections and terms.
But like every good liberal you can just scream “RACE CARD!” all day long. You’re right, there’s absolutely no connection whatsoever between being muslim and your opinions & actions regarding terrorism. How silly of me to even suspect such a thing. An all-muslim jury would be just as unbiased as an all-white one…
I really can’t tell if you’re joking or not.
No, we wouldn’t.
Abandoning him might, but standing by him would not. Courage at this point would demonstrate Republican bigotry so openly that the few remaining moderate Republicans left would have to hide their faces in shame.
It would result in the same backlash that the impeachment of '98-99 saw.
Get a grip! Were something like this to occur, it should be no more consequential than his declaring himself a White Sox or Cubs fan. I agree that, sadly, it would cause a bit more of a kerfuffle than that; but not as big a one as you predict – and, as others have said, in the long run the blowback against his detractors would be significant.
If you lie about your faith, then you don’t really have any to begin with. An exception would be someone who was persecuted and had to pretend lest they be killed, but anyone who hides their true beliefs for personal ambition doesn’t really have true beliefs to hide.
So he either is a Christian(albeit not a very practicing one) or agnostic or atheist and being a Christian as part of his branding. There’s just no way he’s hiding a secret Muslim faith.
What would the Republicans “pounce” on and would you be supportive of them for “pouncing?” Because the goal for more and more of us is to make the president’s religious beliefs inconsequential to his qualifications for the job. Bigotry against Catholics or even Muslims would come at tremendous cost to the group exhibiting it.
Yeah, he loves to hang out at Cominskey Park.
Before JFK, it might have been a BFD if a president admitted to being a Catholic. No more. Of course, you’d have to explain why nobody remembered him going through confirmation or remembered him attending mass, so to come out now and so “oh, by the way, I’m Catholic” might raise some eyebrows and incredulousness, but that would be about it. There would be nothing for Republicans to pounce on and there would be no constitutional crisis. If he was Queen Elizabeth, sure. But he isn’t.
You seem to imply that there should be a connection between faith and views on terrorism. I find that appalling.
So… Jesus, for example. Peter, too, off the top of my head. No true faith?
For my part, the solution to this question is very simple. Put Obama in a room with a vampire and a selection of religious symbols. Which will he use to deter the fiend? Problem solved.
???
Wouldn’t that depend on the religion of the vampire?
Harry Turtledove used that point in a minor incident in The Case Of The Toxic Spell Dump. (book)
During his trial, he refrains from declaring his faith in response to direct questioning. Lies of omission are still lies. Of course, we can point out persecution and the threat of death, except that those things were in the plan - not revealing his faith wasn’t in order to avoid those things.
Accepting that, by adaher’s words - “anyone who hides their true beliefs for personal ambition doesn’t really have true beliefs to hide” - I think Jesus fails on that point. Peter’s the more immediately obvious of the two, I grant.
Roman Polanski, as well. “Oy, have YOU got de wrong vampire!”