Some of you opposers respond with pure hate, which will further entrench the protesters, as they know that they are ‘right’ in what they are doing.
Way to go, gobear and cole burner. Yes, they are manipulated by the judge.
Um, cole burner simply said:
Bolding mine.
I think his tongue was a wee bit in his cheek at that point.
With regard to Justice Moore in particular, I tend to agree that he knows precisely what he is doing and plans and intends to ride the misplaced sense, shared by (apparently) many devout Christians, that a secular government prevents their appropriate worship of and obedience to their God, straight into the Governor’s office come the next election. After all he rode this horse from the elected trial bench is a rural county to the Chief Justice’s chambers.
What is interesting, however, is that this guy is a West Point graduate and as a child and young man seemed to have, first, an exaggerated sense of being chosen by God for special work and, second, to be exceptionally pig headed. This may be a compensation for having a particularly deprived childhood on the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder for white folks in rural Alabama. He ended up as an MP officer. Consider what sort of a cadet seeks or is shuffled into a dead end slot like the MPs? It is almost as bad as being assigned to the Quartermasters Corps. Not to degrade MPs or Quartermasters, but the chances of anyone in either of those jobs ever becoming a division commander or Army Chief of Staff is pretty minimal.
As a serving officer he commanded an MP company in Vietnam where he made himself obnoxious to his people on petty matters of appearance—hair cuts, fresh starch and the like. While there was talk in his unit of planting a grenade on him he was saved because he was merely a pain and not actually dangerous, and MPs tend not to do that stuff.
He left the service as a Captain at the end of his obligated tour, an unusual move for a West Pointer. This make me think that he was just a little too by-the-book and sanctimonious for his fellows and superiors and was not recommended for advancement.
All this is from an AP story that appeared in my Sunday Paper. Plus a little reading between the lines. The point is that while Judge Moore may be cynically manipulating his voting base, it is pretty clear that once he sets out on a course he is not about to turn around. This is not the last we are going to hear from this guy. Fortunately he is not likely to do me much harm in the foreseeable future.
I can’t help but wonder if we have anybody on these boards who actually knows the guy.
Well, no.
The predominant protestant denominations in the rural South (and in the urban South, too, for that matter) are the Southern Baptists and the Methodists, neither of which trace their roots to the Calvinist tradition. In this century the Calvinist inheritors are the Presbyterian and the Congregationalist and the Dutch Reform Churches, none of which spend much time trying to force their views of the nature of God and man’s duty to God on other folks. The Baptists (southern variety) and the Methodists come out of a different very English evangelical, camp meeting, tradition of the Great Awaking of the early to middle 19th Century. Early on the Duke of Wellington sought to exclude Methodist preachers from being chaplains to his army in Spain as a bad influence on the troops. The people who back Justice Moore and his shrine may be a lot of things but they sure aren’t Calvinists.
Yes they do. Most Baptist denominations in this country (including the Southern Baptists) trace their roots to the English Particular Baptists, which come out of a religious revival in Low Church Episcopalianism (the “Puritan” movement). Low Church Episcopalianism borrowed a lot of its beliefs from Scottish Presbytarianism, which is an offshoot of Calvinism.
The Wesleyan tradition of Methodism was less influenced by Calvinism.
Ok… so if taking away their monument is violating their 1st Amendment rights, then the fact that they don’t have a monument to a pentagon is violating the rights of the wiccans, and the fact that they don’t have a Shinto shrine is a violation of the rights of Japanese Americans who believe in Shintoism… and so on. That rotunda is going to get really crowded.
Maybe if someone proposed putting up some pagan shrine right next to the 10 Commandments, they might decide to listen to reason.
Sounds reasonable.
But it isn’t, apparently:
Sounds to me like they’re offering to perform oral sex en masse. I say we show up, step right in front of them, whip our dicks out and say, “Come on, you know you want to suck it.”
Say huh? Mocking the idolaters in Alabama is nowhere near the same thing as wishing to see them killed, you guys. Really, it isn’t.
I have no wish to harm the protesters; kid them, yeah, but no harm. If it’s up to me, I’d give them all a cup of tea and a library card in hopes of curing their ignorance.
Why is it that some people absolutely insist on deliberately twisting what I write to make my posts sound hateful?
Aw, c’mon, Mr. Blue Sky. Don’t you know non-Christians don’t have any rights? Or they shouldn’t, in a properly run theocracy, and if these good folks in Alabama just keep a-prayin’ long and hard enough, maybe God will smite all the unbelievers and let the fundies take over.
Or maybe this is all just an excuse to pose in front of the cameras, vying mightily, yea, unto exhaustion and a slipped disc, to find a holier-than-thou praying posture.
Just make sure it’s decaf. Fundies on caffeine=freaking scary.
And make sure they stay far away from the Left Behind books.
I’d steer them towards John Shelby Spong, or Aleksander Kerensky.
The fact that these imbeciles are free to stand outside the courthouse and wail on endlessly that their granite monument has to be moved to a non governmental location goes to show that freedom of religion is alive and well in this country.
What, and risk catching a nasty disease?!? :eek:
I doubt these people go to libraries, gobear (see the third panel).
gobear, I agree with about everything you’ve said, but this is an incorrect assumption. I don’t see any evidence that these people are “worshipping” the 10 Commandments monument.
But of course they are. They are treating this granite monument as if it were the deity they worship instead of regarding merely as a representation of an idea.
No, I really don’t think they are. Are they praying to it? No, they’re praying near it. I pray in a church, doesn’t mean I’m worshipping the church. Are they asking the monument to perform miracles? No. Do they liken the image of the monument to the image of God? No. Are they kooks with no sense of reality or logic? Absolutely. Would I put it past them to worship an ice cream sandwich if their pastor told them to? Nope, not in the least. But what they’re doing can hardly be called worshipping the monument.
Then why are they treating it like a holy relic, vowing to defend it with their lives, using their bodies as human shields to prevent the stone from being removed.
And just you wait. . they’ll be attributing miracles to it any day now.
Acting as if removal of the big rock is an affront to God is worshipping it. If it wasn’t being revered, then what is the harm of moving it? It’s not the Ark of the Covenant, it can be touched.
“[T]reating it like a holy relic” does not equal “worshipping” it, nor does “vowing to defend it with their lives”.
“Acting as if removal of the big rock is an affront to God” and revering it is NOT worshipping it. Sorry. But thanks for bringing the Ark of the Covenant into the discussion - that’s a perfect example of a holy relic that people defended with their lives that was not worshipped.
Cited occurances of God in American Law:
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, <note 1> the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God <note 2> entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator <note 3> with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security…
…WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge <note 4> of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; …
… And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, <note 5> we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor…
Well I count 5 instances where God is refered to or invoked. That is in our Declaration of Independance folks!
I’m sorry for the uniformed here. This nation was founded by people who believed in DIVINE PROVIDENCE ie. God. What do you think the founding fathers were refering to when they stated their intentions in the Declaration. They were refering to all previous generations of laws and justice which includes the Ten Commandments! Imagine that! If the people of Alabama must lose the Ten Commandment monument then every courthouse in the country needs to remove all other figures, images, icons and the like that alude to or endorse any other faith or religion. There should not be any stars in any image of government because having them endorses the religion of Zoroastisim. The image of Blind Justice could be construed as a religious symbol.
Why not remove all images of greek and roman mythology or images of the eye in the pyramid on the currency. Or even wipe out any reference to the bald eagle as the nation’s image! You see it is a very fine line between an image and a faith or religion. It can be argued that each of these images represents a religious viewpoint so if you must eliminate the Ten commandments then you must apply the same rule to every other image possibly associated with any government entity for fear that it could be construed as religious in nature.
Why is it that people have to attack Judaic images yet let others go unopposed. The Ten Commandment were Judaic Law not Christian Law as so many have failed to understand. The commandments are also the root law of all current law as well. Is it not a crime to lie, steal, commit adultery, kill?
The people who bash these courageous individuals will all answer someday to a court of law which will know the truth and no amount of lawyers will be able to hide their deeds.