That the Democratic Party would be “anti God” is vile false propaganda from right-wing partisans, and the Democrats are under no moral compulsion to jump thru hoops or bend over backwards to prove otherwise. Yesterday or today there was an article in NYT about people in Iowa being surprised to learn Hillary Clinton is and always was a practicing Methodist, all the while the GOP is bowing at the feet of a servant of Mammon who has said he doesn’t feel the need to ask God for forgiveness, which should be considered blasphemous if you were a committed Christian.
BTW, assuming a Supreme Deity, such does not need lobbyists on His/Her/It/Their behalf. She/He/It/They ****ing owns and operates the Universe. And if Bernie Sanders “dehumanizes” God why I should well expect him to, he’s Jewish and under the Jewish canon God most definitely is NOT human, never was, never will.
I also particularly like our OP’s request that we provide an example not just of exemplary service by Muslims in the US military, but that it specifically be flag/general officers. I get the feeling in that case he’d then move the goalpost to have them be wartime theater commanders that he has ever heard of.
You are in fine form today, Qin Good ones.
Someone above said the OP’s friends really want 1950 back. Problem is they don’t really want 1950 back. They want a mythological, rose-glasses, manufactured idea of what 1950 was.
Yes, in fact, the Democratic Party should rule out the support of 1/4 of the population if accepting that support means that Democrats turn into Republicans.
Jesus H. Christ, what the fuck are you thinking? You know? They’re fucking Republicans! They oppose everything I have ever stood for! And you think it would be a good thing for me to abandon every position I have ever held in my life in order to attract the people I have opposed all my life, and to support their positions? In order to elect people who are technically members of my party but who oppose everything I have ever stood for? What the fuck are you thinking?
As I pointed out above, you are having an extremely binary view of evangelicals who apparently all stand in opposition to the entire platform of the Democratic Party. Even something as simple as building up a contingent of anti-abortion Democrats in the South and other socially conservative areas without compromising on most other issues would go a long way towards attracting at least some Evangelicals.
OK, list me some fucking anti-abortion Southern Republican evangelical Christians who support gay rights, religious freedom, and social welfare. Those are the one who will become Democrats, right? Following your plan, right?
So how do you explain residual white Democratic support in Appalachia and Ozarkia which voted for Clinton and even Kerry in 2004? Or the fact that people like Mark Pryor or John Barrow were still in office until 2014? Gay marriage has been decided and most Republicans know in their hearts of hearts it won’t be reversed anytime soon. Also what do you mean by religious freedom? That’s exactly the phrase the Religious Right uses to justify complaining about bakers having to bake cakes for gay marriages and Kim Davis. I don’t see my plan, at least immediately, switching over all or even most evangelicals, but it’s about the only hope for the Democratic Party to have anything resembling a shot at a House majority for the next decade or two.
There have always been homosexuals and persons of other non-het orientations in America (as in every other country in human history), and, allowing for their inferior numbers, they have done as much as anyone else to build the country. E.g., there have always been homosexuals serving in every branch of the armed forces of the United States (and of every other country in human history).
Qin, the Yellow Dog Democrats got destroyed in the past three election cycles precisely thanks to the ®/Tea Party/RWTalk manipulation that sold to the Conservative voter an “All-Or-Nothing” view of what platform to support. You’re a churchgoing man, conservative on social/moral issues, but supported Obamacare or Immigration reform? You’re gone, you pro-Kenyan Liberal!
**
… but we’re drifting away from the theme **-- any of the major critical policy positions: national debt, health care, Social Security financing, national security, military deployments, relations with Russia/Iran/China/EU… are indistinct as to the “god factor”. They’re Caesar’s bailiwick.
It’s been a while since the OP posted. Perhaps we’re just banging our own drum now.
But so far he has demonstrated a 6-year old’s understanding of Christianity, religions in general, philosophy, ethics, US history, the US constitution, the US military, the US economy, and the political platform of one, if not both, major political parties.
I wonder what, if anything, he does understand? As opposed to just mindlessly parrot?
I absolutely agree popular perception of the Obama administration (and race was a factor no doubt) helped decimate the Democratic Party in the South but at the same time I see no forseeable future for the Democratic Party to win back the House or to gain control of state governments in many parts of the country without winning back a reasonable portion of the evangelical vote (much as the GOP needs to win a reasonable portion of the Hispanic vote to win a Presidential race). That fundamentally means accepting a diversity of views on abortion and guns (the latter especially since the most controversial gun control measures have no chance of passing and won’t affect gun deaths anyways) among other things.
Patriots, of course, do not enter the military for honor, but to serve their country – which is a very different thing, because you can serve your country without anybody knowing about it – i.e., without “honor” in the sense of “popularity” or “reputation.”
PRINCE HENRY
Why, thou owest God a death.
Exit PRINCE HENRY
FALSTAFF
'Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, ‘tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.
Exit
– Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 1
He’s right, you know. But patriots don’t care. They no more demand honor than Christ did. “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country!” 'Twas the only time recorded when Jesus ever was heard to jest.
Well, they’re gone, aren’t they? It’s residual from the Civil War. It’s no longer there.
That belief in any religion, or no religion, in any god, or no god is irrelevant to politics or to the government of the country. Good heavens, you’re a fine one to complain that “religious freedom” is a term you find ambiguous, consider your willingness to adopt senseless and meaningless phrases from the tea party people.
So? What good is gaining a House majority if we gain it by accepting the tenets of our opponents? I’ve already asked you this question.
GloryDays, Onomatopoeia has a valid point. You opened this thread, but have persistently avoided actually engaging in the discussion. You have posted non sequiturs, red herrings, gone off on tangents while failing to respond to direct questions that actually address your OP and are now doing the same thing with questions raised by you in the course of the thread.
Your behavior is very reminiscent of the Gish Gallop and the only reason it has been tolerated, so far, is that you genuinely appear to be incapable of recognizing the false claims in your own posts. However, ignorance of one’s own errors does not justify holding open a thread in which one side continues to post nonsense, (even if it is nonsense the poster believes), while failing to respond to challenges and corrections to those errors.
This is both irritating and disrespectful to your correspondents in the thread.
If you do not begin to address specific points that are made and respond directly to the questions your words have evoked, I am going to close the thread.
I was just pointing out the irony of your use of the term “religious freedom” not that I was agreeing with the use of that phrase by evangelicals. But needless to say as long as people are religious, religion isn’t going to be “irrelevant” to the politics or government of this country. People are inevitably influenced their religious views for good or bad. The trick is to utilize those forces for one’s own ideology.
Except I never suggested we adopt the entire Republican platform wholesale. What is more likely is that we’d have a contingent of Democrats who might be more conservative on certain issues but still distinctly more progressive then their Republican opponents-think John Bel Edwards or Joe Manchin.
Good ones.