And, there was this touching statement by the departing Senator: “I’m so ashamed that I’ve done so little.”
So what, you may ask yourself, did Senator Helms do in his remaining time in the Senate after making that statement? He placed his name on a single bill, S. 2525, which would strengthen U.S. aid to foreign nations to combat HIV. It was essentially the same bill he co-sponsored the previous year, which had already progressed through the Senate and was still alive when he co-sponsored the competing bill. Neither passed. He also advocated adding $500 million in appropriations to fight the spread of HIV. That didn’t pass either.
But in a sense, Jesse was arguing that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Here’s part of his explanation from the July 25, 1995 Congressional Record:
Sounds to me like payton’s Servant was engaging in a bit of hyperbole. Whether he literally wished Jesse Helms to be dead is something only he can answer.
BTW, I find the above quote from Jesse Helms quite amusing, when he claimed that he didn’t know any homosexuals. Does this mean that he investigated the sexual orientation of everyone he ever met over his 80+ years of living? :rolleyes:
I’m open minded. If specific acts, rather than labels, are attributed to him, I will listen.
I am looking for specific example of him using his power “to oppress, to discriminate … and to kill.” This seems like hyperbole. As much as we may use hyperbole to express our reactions, our beliefs should not be based on hyperbole.
I can’t agree.
Minorites wield a lot of power today. I cannot think of a recognized minority group that does not have strong activist organizations to confront political opponents.
Again, I was seeking specifics.
As to fostering a genuine sense of vulnerablity or making people fearful and angry, I see gangs of people like that on the streets, and have sometimes seen them in the buildings where I lived. Is it acceptable and understandable for me to wish them dead?
Now here are the specifics I was looking for.
It looks to me like Mr. Helms changed his mind and regretted his past position on AIDS funding. If so, that ought to mitigate the hatred expressed toward him on the issue.
Hmm. I regularly notice womens groups and advocates who demand we spend more money on breast-cancer research and women’s health. This despite the fact that women live longer than men. Is it appropriate for me to wish death on them? Is a woman who advocates more money for breast cancer actually wishing men would die of prostate cancer?
At the start of this thread, I noted that one of my intentions was to ask “how do you know what you know?” The case of Archbishop Romero is a good example.
Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was killed in 1980 during struggles between pro-democracy government and leftist rebels. These struggles left far more people than Romero dead, but Hollywood came along and made a film about him, starring Raul Julia. In this way, Hollywood selectively humanizes the victims on the political left. But the Marxist had murdered numerous officials who defied them, committed violence against people attempting to vote, and killed thousands of civilians.
Romero embraced “liberation theology,” giving support to the people whose express aim was to overthrown represenative government and institute a totalitarian regime.
If we look only at the victims of the pro-democracy government, we get a skewed and untrue picture. Let’s consider the faceless victims who have not yet had the benefit of sanitized Hollywood fiction to stress that they, too, were human.
The United States supports Israel, which is involved in a very dirty war for its survival. Israel has used torture and detention without trial. It has a standard policy of leveling the homes of people it knows have committed no crime, because they are related to someone believed to be guilty. Some people want Ariel Sharon tried for war crimes for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.
But would you say that Israel is entirely evil? Will you say that everyone who has supported Israel is evil?
Have you ever noted that there are no “left-wing death squads”? Apparently, only right-wing death squads exist.
Will you profess that the communist movements attempting to destroy representative governments in El Salvador and Guatemala never use death squads? They never assassinated people, tortured them, killed and kidnapped villagers?
Sometimes the United States has supported the lesser of two evils. We supported Russia in the fight against Hitler. By your thinking, this would make us guilty of supporting – and even advocating – the atrocities of Stalin.
Good GOD! Romero spoke out against the military going out and killing everyone they could get their hands on!
:rolleyes:
Nice revisionism. Oh, and for the record, I never saw the film, Romero, although I would like to. For your information, he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but lost out to Mother Theresa. Had he lived, he would most likely have won the following year.
He was killed while saying Mass! He was killed because he said that the military should STOP KILLING THE PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR!!!
Also, didn’t the military kill people at his funeral?
The same people who killed the Archbishop also raped, tortured, and murdered four US churchwomen-two Maryknoll nuns, one Ursuline nun and one lay missionary, a few months later.
:mad:
El Salvador was hardly a democracy, and D’Aubuisson was also plotting to kill the elected president, Duarte, anyways. He was also behind the killings of the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter.
Romero was originally very conservative, but what he witnessed in his country made it impossible for him to NOT do something about what was going on.
I didn’t say he wasn’t a liberation theologist. Actually I support liberation theology.
However, Romero did so not out of Marxism, but because he felt that to not champion the cause of the poor in El Salvador would be going against his duty.
Of course he said the leftists should stop killing people in El Salvador! However, the leftists were not the ones in charge, so naturally, he was going to be a bit more heavy on the right wingers. If the situation had been reversed, he would have come down on the left a bit harder.
Here is a link which talks about the the process of his possible beatification. John Paul II himself, it seems, considers Romero to be a martyr, ‘a zealous pastor who gave his life for his flock’.
Are there extremists who use his name to further their cause? Absolutely! But who in history hasn’t been used as a symbol to support a cause-no matter how unscrupulous! That doesn’t change the fact that Romero was a hero to the Salvadoran people.
What the fuck is so wrong with WISHING someone dead? When did WISHES ever accomplish diddly-squat?
For the record, I happily enjoy the thought of Helms’ death --everything I have ever read or heard about him convinces me that he is an ass of the first magnitude. I hope it will be a long and painful death. I hope his doctors don’t prescribe a lot of painkillers to him while he suffers.
Y’know what hopes and wishes are worth if they aren’t backed up by planning and action? Diddly-squat.
I don’t hate Helms. If I really hated him, I’d be doing a lot more than wishing and hoping, which was kinda my point. If I really hated him, I’d be looking at ways to make sure his IVs are full of plain saline solution rather than demerol.
For the record, my impressions of Helms come from innumerable reports in the mass media about him opposing civil rights, opposing AIDS research, supporting the trade embargo against Cuba, supporting various South American dictators, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. Jeebus, what do I have to do, live with the guy?
And I’m guessing you support it from the comfort of a nation where people are not threatening to put it into action.
There were poor people being killed by Marxists. Lots of them.
But “being in charge” and “killing people” are two separate matters. You do not have to be in control of the goverment to burn down villages, as the Marxists showed.
And once they did get into power – in Russia, Cambodia, North Korea, China – things got worse in every instance.
The Vatican has its own agenda. In any case, John Paul II personally lead the crusade to stamp out liberation theology as a breakaway movement, closing down radical seminaries and demoting its proponents. Could be the Vatican is now satisfied the breakaway threat is over and wants to co-opt Romero.
It’s interesting to me that Hollywood, which goes out of its way to depict religious people as tyrannical freaks, decides to get misty-eyed about Romero – when by doing so it can blast the political right. Not that I am a religious person at all. I’m not. I just find it interesting the way Hollywood embraces religious ideals when it suits a political purpose, the way conservative Republicans embrace Martin Luther King when it suits their purpose.
El Salvador has a democracy today. It would not have if the liberation theologists had been successful.
“Wishing” and “hoping” are indeed a form of hatred. I’ve detested a number of people without outward expression.
If you were wishing and hoping for evil against gays, without doing anything about it, are you free of homophobia?
And Lord knows there’s never any bias in the media.
Helms is a bigoted, homophobic, racist anti-Semite with delusions of grandeur, who, sadly, was able to use his clout, money and influence to enact legislation that has hurt, and continues to hurt, thousands of people every day.
Thank you, Guinastasia–I just about flipped out when i saw Andy’s comments regarding Archbishop Romero.
This is getting off topic, but, Andy, since you brought it up…you really need to learn more about Romero if you think that he supported the Marxist rebels or that he is only known because of the movie. As Guinastasia has pointed out, he was adamantly opposed to the killing on both sides. Even the movie–which i saw after learning about Romero, not before–makes this point clear.
Liberation theology’s main goal was not to “overthrow representative government and institute a totalitarian regime.” The problem in El Salvador and other Latin American countries was that their government was not “representative” in the first place–unless you mean representative of the wealthiest land-owners, at the expense of the peasants and farmers. Do you really think the Salvadoran gov’t was “pro-democracy”? Does a pro-democracy government send its armies and paramilitaries to terrorize or kill those who spoke against it?
Liberation theology was formed as a response to this kind of situation. Many liberation theologists advocated radical changes, and they were at least partly influenced by Marxist thought, many profoundly so. For this reason, Romero himself criticized liberation theology, and he never agreed with the more extreme interpretations of it (that is, as a call to violent revolution). To confuse Romero with the more extreme forms of liberation theology is misleading, to say the least.
This site offers a brief overview of the history of liberation theology. It’s worth a read.
I didn’t say I LIKED Helms, or that I was neutral on the topic of Helms, just that I didn’t have any visceral hatred of the man. I have felt hatred in my life, it is an intense, very uncomfortable feeling. I don’t feel it towards Helms, though I do find the thought of his death quite pleasant. I suspect that is because Helms is something of an abstract to me – I have never met the man, nor been directly affected by anything he’s done. I’m sure the legislation he’s baced and also blocked has affected me in bad ways, but that, too, is an abstract thing.
If I were wishing ahd hoping for death for gays generally I would be a homophobe, but I could wish and hope for the death of an individual gay person without being one. Frex, I’m glad Roy Cohn is dead and I only wish the circumstances of his life had been more personally painful.
But I don’t hate all gays. Or conservatives.
See how there’s a difference between disliking an individual and an entire group?
I didn’t say I LIKED Helms, or that I was neutral on the topic of Helms, just that I didn’t have any visceral hatred of the man. I have felt hatred in my life, it is an intense, very uncomfortable feeling. I don’t feel it towards Helms, though I do find the thought of his death quite pleasant. I suspect that is because Helms is something of an abstract to me – I have never met the man, nor been directly affected by anything he’s done. I’m sure the legislation he’s baced and also blocked has affected me in bad ways, but that, too, is an abstract thing.
If I were wishing ahd hoping for death for gays generally I would be a homophobe, but I could wish and hope for the death of an individual gay person without being one. Frex, I’m glad Roy Cohn is dead and I only wish the circumstances of his life had been more personally painful.
But I don’t hate all gays. Or conservatives.
See how there’s a difference between disliking an individual and an entire group?
Also, it seem to me that although as you are the OP and have set the terms of this debate accordingly, there’s something dishonest in your approach. Essentially, you are the one making extraordinary claims, i.e., that Helms was not a racist, bigoted homophobe and friend to murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein. Generally, the principle is that a person making extraordinary claims must provide extraordinarily clear and convincing proof of those claims.
Just muttering “media bias” at all the written reports of Helms’ scumminess hardly constitute clear and convincing proof. The onus is really on you to show why all those media reports of Helms’ racism, bigotry, dictator-supporting, etc., are not accurate, and to present us with a model of Helms that’s consistent with his voting record and his public comments and also consistent with his being a decent human being.
I didn’t say I LIKED Helms, or that I was neutral on the topic of Helms, just that I didn’t have any visceral hatred of the man. I have felt hatred in my life, it is an intense, very uncomfortable feeling. I don’t feel it towards Helms, though I do find the thought of his death quite pleasant. I suspect that is because Helms is something of an abstract to me – I have never met the man, nor been directly affected by anything he’s done. I’m sure the legislation he’s baced and also blocked has affected me in bad ways, but that, too, is an abstract thing.
If I were wishing ahd hoping for death for gays generally I would be a homophobe, but I could wish and hope for the death of an individual gay person without being one. Frex, I’m glad Roy Cohn is dead and I only wish the circumstances of his life had been more personally painful.
But I don’t hate all gays. Or conservatives.
See how there’s a difference between disliking an individual and an entire group?
Also, it seem to me that although as you are the OP and have set the terms of this debate accordingly, there’s something dishonest in your approach. Essentially, you are the one making extraordinary claims, i.e., that Helms was not a racist, bigoted homophobe and friend to murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein. Generally, the principle is that a person making extraordinary claims must provide extraordinarily clear and convincing proof of those claims.
Just muttering “media bias” at all the written reports of Helms’ scumminess hardly constitute clear and convincing proof. The onus is really on you to show why all those media reports of Helms’ racism, bigotry, dictator-supporting, etc., are not accurate, and to present us with a model of Helms that’s consistent with his voting record and his public comments and also consistent with his being a decent human being.
I didn’t say I LIKED Helms, or that I was neutral on the topic of Helms, just that I didn’t have any visceral hatred of the man. I have felt hatred in my life, it is an intense, very uncomfortable feeling. I don’t feel it towards Helms, though I do find the thought of his death quite pleasant. I suspect that is because Helms is something of an abstract to me – I have never met the man, nor been directly affected by anything he’s done. I’m sure the legislation he’s baced and also blocked has affected me in bad ways, but that, too, is an abstract thing.
If I were wishing ahd hoping for death for gays generally I would be a homophobe, but I could wish and hope for the death of an individual gay person without being one. Frex, I’m glad Roy Cohn is dead and I only wish the circumstances of his life had been more personally painful.
But I don’t hate all gays. Or conservatives.
See how there’s a difference between disliking an individual and an entire group?
Also, it seem to me that although as you are the OP and have set the terms of this debate accordingly, there’s something dishonest in your approach. Essentially, you are the one making extraordinary claims, i.e., that Helms was not a racist, bigoted homophobe and friend to murderous dictators like Saddam Hussein. Generally, the principle is that a person making extraordinary claims must provide extraordinarily clear and convincing proof of those claims.
Just muttering “media bias” at all the written reports of Helms’ scumminess hardly constitute clear and convincing proof. The onus is really on you to show why all those media reports of Helms’ racism, bigotry, dictator-supporting, etc., are not accurate, and to present us with a model of Helms that’s consistent with his voting record and his public comments and also consistent with his being a decent human being.