[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic but dude…Creationism? Either you’re a total numbskull (which I don’t believe), or you simply lack any sense of embarrassment or shame. Either way, it’s almost impossible for me to take you seriously anymore.[/QUOTE]
My question was particularly addressed to Diogenes. He left me with the impression that pandering to a religious advocacy group no longer makes McCain worthy of being considered for the presidency.
Why bring up Muslims? Just another religious advocacy group that gets way more consideration from the left than the right. In both cases, YEC and Islam, and you can add my own Christianity to this, their beliefs are irrational. I don’t think Diogenes would disagree.
In both cases, the two groups would love to change American society. Both have affected the way of life in isolated American communities where their numbers are affective yet neither is a serious political force for the nation.
However, both Muslims and the YECs are Americans and given the two party system, no presidential candidate that engages either group should be dismissed on that basis. My suggestion of Obama speaking to Muslims obviously doesn’t mean he suscribes to their beliefs but it would suggest that he is amenable to listening to their concerns. Same goes for McCain.
Its true, I don’t have a high opinion of Islam. Just look around the world today. However, I wouldn’t dismiss any presidential candidate who listens to their concerns and allow them to participate politically.
My question was particularly addressed to Diogenes. He left me with the impression that pandering to a religious advocacy group no longer makes McCain worthy of being considered for the presidency.
Why bring up Muslims? Just another religious advocacy group that gets way more consideration from the left than the right. In both cases, YEC and Islam, and you can add my own Christianity to this, their beliefs are irrational. I don’t think Diogenes would disagree.
In both cases, the two groups would love to change American society. Both have affected the way of life in isolated American communities where their numbers are affective yet neither is a serious political force for the nation.
However, both Muslims and the YECs are Americans and given the two party system, no presidential candidate that engages either group should be dismissed on that basis. My suggestion of Obama speaking to Muslims obviously doesn’t mean he suscribes to their beliefs but it would suggest that he is amenable to listening to their concerns. Same goes for McCain.
Its true, I don’t have a high opinion of Islam. Just look around the world today. However, I wouldn’t dismiss any presidential candidate who listens to their concerns and allow them to participate politically.
First, my OP was really more of a lament about McCain’s loss of dignity and credibility than an expression of any real fear of the ID movement. I was dissappointed about an alleged “maverick,” someone who I once saw as a Republican I would vote for (I even said on this board during the last Presidential election that I would have voted for McCain over Kerry), turning out to be exactly like all the others after all.
Secondly, Islam is not a “religious advocacy group.” Islam is a religion. The Discovery Institute is not just “Christians.” It’s not even just Fundamentalist Christians. It’s a special interest group with a specific political goal to create a wormhole in SOCAS. Pols talk to Christian groups all the time, even right wing fundy groups, and I don’t complain about it. it’s part of the process. It’s expected. It doesn’t mean anything. Even Clinton did it. McCain’s decision goes further than that, though. Unless he denounces ID during his speech (which i doubt he’ll do), he’ll will be implicitly (or possibly explicitly) endorsing a movement to teach religion as science in public schools. It’s all the more disappointing to me because it’s a guy who I thought was independent minded enough that he might be able to distance the GOP leadership from some of the more theocratic elements of the religious right.
I’m not aware of any American Islamic groups which are currently agitating for similar erosions in SOCAS but if any pol were to speak to an analogous Muslim group – let’s say Hillary were to be the keynote speaker for a Muslim special interest group who wanted to ban alcohol, for instance, or institute a Call to Prayer in public schools – you can bet that I would be even MORE disappointed and vocal about it.
Organizers oppose McCain’s continued support of the unpopular Iraq war and consider him complicit in what they perceive as the erosion of American civil liberties associated with the war on terror.(Emphasis mine)
I can imagine how that impresses you, libertarian that you are, but may I remind you that McCain, on his own volition sacrificed every ounce of his own American civil liberties with much physical pain and mental anguish for 5 extra years of captivity to uphold his end in defending the US constitution, ** the American civil liberties therein**, and the integrity of the US military charged with defending the civil liberties of all Americans.
Most of us only get to do the talk. McCain has done the walk for American civil liberties and it was’t in the park.
I don’t understand your claim that McCain endured for 5 extra years on his own volition. Leaving that aside, though, McCain deserves respect for having served and endured as a prisoner.
However, I don’t think that should carry over into his actions as a senator. Those actions should be judged on their own.
Point taken, but please remember that, in fact, nobody involved in that war was defending our Constitution or our civil liberties. Or our country, for that matter.
It is very rare for a prisoner of war to be offered his freedom solely because his dad was a bigwig in the US military. McCain refused to take that walk six months into his captivity so it was his decision to remain in captivity ands suffer torture. That takes huge cajones.
In response to those who question my claim that US soldiers defend the US constitution when at war, it just seems to me that fighting for the US is fighting for the US constitution. The constitution is what defines America.
As I seem to recall with the Vietnam situation, the country was concerned with the rampant spread of communism with countries falling like dominoes threatening the future of the US.
Agreed, but so what? What does that have to do with what he does now? Is that supposed to make him immune from criticism for the rest of his life? Does his POW status prove that pandering to IDists isn’t sad and lamentable?
What did Vietnam have to do with defending the US?
The soldiers in the Vietnam War were not fighting for America. (Not that that is a distinction any soldier can or should make.)
The Constitution is not what defines America. We are an ordinary nation-state like France or the UK, not an ideological idea-state like the Soviet Union.
That is a lie, and a damned lie too, and I cannot believe anyone would seriously repeat it at this point in time, after we have had so many chances to learn better.
Tautology. The soldiers should be fighting for the America defined by the Constitution but that depends on those giving the orders and how those orders are interpreted and implemented.
I offer this examplary and prescient article from 1995, reprinted from the Marine Corps Gazette.
Good question. Positions on issues is important, but how often have we seen positions change once a politician is in office. Evidence of a strong reliable character is the most important requirement IMHO for the presidency especially when dealing with new upcoming crises. For example, Bush’s avoidance during Vietnam is ample evidence of weak character and should have served as a warning.
Absolutely not. It would just take a hell of a lot more than talking to the Discovery Institute. I disagree with your take on this whole issue. Everything I’ve read about McCain and evolution is that he clearly believes in evolution and wouldn’t support ID in a science class. He’ll talk about it though, and won’t dismiss these IDers.
Well in the beginning of American involvement under Kennedy and Johnson that is what most everyone who supported it was worried about. Was there a different reason to warrant the loss of over 50, 000 American lives ?
To stop a socialist government emerging from free elections. eisenhower’s memoir were quite upfront about that. Preventing the emergence of alternative models of development in the Third World was why so many proxy wars were fought there and so many dictatorships instigated and supported, particularly in South americ.
This was rhetorically dressed up as the domino theory even though the Sino-Soviet split and the break between the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia showed communism wasn’t monolithic.
The end result was to conflate national liberation in former colonies with the mythical ‘spread of communism’. And by invariably siding with fascist strongmen against democratic forces the West drove national liberation movements into the arms of the USSR and China. It created the conditions for people like Pol Pot to emerge and for the more ruthless organised communist wings to take over.
Invariably people like Ho Chi Minh were nationalists first and Marxists second. State socialism doesn’t work and the sensible thing would have been to embrace them, like in fact we belatedly do now, integrate them into the world economy. Smother the bastards with our superior ‘soft power’.
And if they wanted to be hard-ass communists then we should have let them ruin their countries and then moved in to pick up the pieces. There was absolutely no strategic danger. Vietnam was not going to invade the US and trying to take sides in a civil war on the asian mainland was always going to be an act of extreme hubris with carnage consequences for the vietnamese.
The domino theory was the Cold War’s equivalent to our PNAC follies. That misguided and in people like Dulles, malevolent leaders believed their own rhetoric in no way justifies or excuses anything.
Well, the fact that McCain’s son is getting ready to deploy to Iraq and he still supports the surge, I’d have to give him props for having the courage of his convictions. That right these shows more than a bit of character IMO.