Theocracy

Mike Huckabee, The Supreme Court, And The “Supreme Being”!

Ronald 1 Comment

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the Presidency, and a former preacher as well, is going off the deep end in his vehement opposition to gay marriage.

Apparently, Mike Huckabee believes that the American people do not need to obey judges and the federal courts, and the Supreme Court, if they do not like or agree with their decisions.

If Barack Obama were to say this, he would be pushed toward impeachment, but Mike Huckabee is promoting disobedience of the judiciary, and shows total ignorance of our legal history!

What he is advocating, taken to its extreme, would mean that the Citizens United case would be ignored, and that billionaires would not be able to distort our election process, something any sensible person would advocate, but the only way to overcome this is by constitutional amendment!

So if gay marriage is made legal in all of America at the end of June, the only way to overcome it is to bring about a similar constitutional amendment.

The same goes for those who are upset about interracial marriage, civil rights laws, the lax enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, racial integration, and a whole host of other “objectionable” decisions made by the courts and the Supreme Court over 226 years of our history!

Mike Huckabee demonstrates his ignorance of our history, and of the significance of Chief Justice John Marshall, and of “judicial review” and the famous Supreme Court case, Marbury V. Madison in 1803.

Presidents, including Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and really ALL Presidents; and many other government figures over the years; and citizens of America throughout its history, have denounced Supreme Court decisions!

BUT the only alternative is a constitutional amendment, ladies and gentlemen, and for any Presidential candidate or President to call for defiance of the Supreme Court is grounds for impeachment and removal from office.

In America, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter, good or bad, and really, it is both, depending on the issue and how people perceive it!

We are NOT a theocracy, and the “Supreme Being”, that Mike Huckabee advocates, is NOT the final arbiter of constitutional cases, and never has been! Thank goodness for that, as it would take away the democracy that America has evolved into over more than two centuries of American history!

Decline Of Religiosity In America A Sign Of The Future In America

Ronald 13 Comments

In the past few decades, we have seen the deleterious influence of the Christian Right in America, promoted in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond by the likes of the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

They and other preachers have utilized their influence to attempt to dominate American politics, and promote a right wing agenda that promotes intolerance and hate.

This includes opposition to women’s rights to control their own bodies (misogyny); opposition to gay rights and gay marriage; the repudiation of science for the teachings of the Bible; the rewriting of American history to make it seem that the Founding Fathers wanted a national religion and a theocracy to govern us; advocacy of war overseas against Islamic civilization; promotion of nativism on the issue of immigration; belief that school prayer will somehow change America in their direction; and attempts to legislate morality limits through control of government.

Originally known as the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, many of these preachers have become super rich and gained the following of millions who have stopped using their brains, and just accept the unethical, hypocritical utterances of charismatic figures.

Despite this, there is now evidence that more Americans, particularly the young and disaffected, have abandoned organized religion and its narrow minded tenets. The Pew Research Center describes this group as the “Nones”, and they are 22.8 percent of US adults, up from 16.7 percent in 2007. Meanwhile, those who identify as Christian have declined nationally from 78 to 71 percent, including not only evangelicals but also Catholics and mainline Protestants and Mormons. There has also been growing disillusionment with the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant sects, and the Mormon Church.

The “Nones” outnumber Catholics (20.8 percent) and mainline Protestants (14.7 percent), demonstrating a constant decline in adults who identify as being Christians. “Nones” include those who have no religious affiliation, as well as those who say they are Atheists and Agnostics.

Evangelical Protestants still are the largest group at 25.8 percent, but they have declined, and it is clear that the “Nones” will eventually surpass them in the adult population of America over the next couple of decades, as many of the Evangelicals are older and will die off over time, as young Americans reject their divisive ideology!

The Misinterpreted Thomas Jefferson, By The Right Wing, On the 272nd Anniversary Of His Birth

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Thomas Jefferson, our most brilliant President intellectually, one of the great Founding Fathers, has been so misinterpreted by the right wing conservatives and Republicans, who have no clue as to his beliefs and thoughts.

The right wing has worked to distort Jefferson, making him out to be many things he was not.

They tell us Jefferson believed in a national religion, when Jefferson was a skeptic about organized Christianity, and became Deist in his beliefs, and opposed the concept of theocracy.

They tell us that Jefferson believed church and state should be unified, when he was the promoter of the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom.

They tell us that Jefferson believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the goodness of state and local governments over national government, which was true to an extent during the 1790s debate of Jefferson Vs. Alexander Hamilton, which helped to create political parties in America. But once he was President, Jefferson was a believer in a broad interpretation of the Constitution and the power of the national government.

They tell us that Jefferson would have been a supporter of the Republican Party of 2015, when his belief in civil liberties would have made him appalled at that party’s abuse of civil liberties in the name of national security.

They tell us that Jefferson would have been supportive of foreign intervention against Muslim civilization, due to Jefferson’s intervention in the Mediterranean against the Barbary Pirates of North Africa during his Presidency, but Jefferson did not promote Islamophobia, as most Republicans and conservatives advocate in their rhetoric.

Of course, Thomas Jefferson was a complex man, with many contradictions and often hypocritical views, as on race and slavery, but Jefferson was a man who believed in the power of learning and the intellectual life, and he would have been totally shocked at the goal of the Republican Party to keep the population ignorant, and to promote fear, instead of an enlightened view of mankind and events.

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz Publicly Back Discriminatory Indiana Law! What Hope Is Left For The Republican Party In 2016?

Ronald 1 Comment

The Republican Party is going totally nuts, more than ever, as now potential Republican Presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz have issued public statements supporting Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and the passage of a law designed to make it possible that business proprietors can refuse service to gays and lesbians, when commerce has nothing to do with religion, since we have separation of church and state, and are not a theocracy.

Christians of the right wing extremism keep on saying that they are being persecuted, when they are the ones who promoted slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and antisemitism, along with other wrongs, including degradation of women, and ministerial sexual abuse in too many cases over the years!

With Christians being over 90 percent of Americans, it is preposterous to say that they are being persecuted, when they are the ones who promoted persecution in the name of Jesus, a Jew who would never have advocated their hateful actions of racism, misogyny, nativism, and homophobia!

It leaves one to wonder if there are any Republican nominees who can appeal to the mainstream of America, as it is clear most, if not all, of the other potential nominees for President, while not yet specifically stating that they back the Indiana law, it is clear that in their hearts that they will continue to resist gay rights, even with a Supreme Court decision likely this June! Based on past statements and actions catering to the Religious Right, we know that Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal, and Dr Benjamin Carson are likely to back Mike Pence in the coming days!

The only possible hope left seems to be the longshot possibility of Jon Huntsman, who tried for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012, but has given up on running in 2016, easily the most decent possible candidate; or possibly Ohio Governor John Kasich, who appears to be a reasonable conservative, but has said he will decide whether to announce for President sometime this summer. Kasich, so far, seems potentially a candidate who might be able to represent the mainstream of the party, and yet remain a responsible conservative, but who can say that he will not self destruct as Jeb Bush has, for instance, just done with his statement backing Mike Pence and Indiana in promoting discrimination and homophobia?

Conservative Argument That America Is A “Christian Nation” NOT True!

Ronald 9 Comments

The right wing loves to say that Americans are a “Christian nation”, but that assertion is NOT true!

It is true that a majority of Americans are born to the Christian faith, whether Catholic or any of the many Protestant sects, or Eastern Orthodox.

But our Founding Fathers, while born Christian, were in many cases skeptics about organized Christianity, and certainly had no mission to promote a church-state combination, a theocracy, as they knew of the turmoil and sufferings of such combinations in European history, including Great Britain, France, the German states, and Czarist Russia, along with the effects of Islam on the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

Therefore, the Constitution of the United States made clear to keep separation of church and state separate, and there is no statement of America as a “Christian nation” by the Founding Fathers.

There are plenty of statements by many Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Adams and others that advocated separation of church and state, and a sense of skepticism about organized Christianity being part of government.

We also have evidence that conservative Christian pastors condemned the Constitution after its adoption because of the fact that it was a document which, clearly, was secular in nature, and some called the Constitution an atheistic document, which shows how hard the Founding Fathers had worked to undermine the creation of a theocracy, which would allow persecution of non Christians or non believers in religion itself.

After the Civil War, the right wing Christian pastors tried repeatedly to amend the Constitution to make America a Christian nation and make references to Jesus Christ, but those attempts failed, and the only religious reference that would become normal was to say “In God We Trust” on American coinage.

The deleterious effect of this movement among right wing Christian pastors, however, led to anti Catholic and anti Jewish practices and laws locally, discriminating against the immigration of so called “undesirable” groups.

Additionally, for a long period of time, commerce was limited by “Blue Laws”, which banned economic activities on Sundays, finally overcome about 50 years ago, as if someone does not wish to do shopping or other commerce on the Christian Sabbath, that is their choice, but should not be imposed on others, one of the examples of what happens when theocracy and its narrow mindedness is allowed to take hold.

So America is NOT a “Christian nation”, but rather a nation of a diverse number of religious groups, with a majority of Christian sects, including Catholicism, something the majority Protestants did not wish to acknowledge!

Do Not Believe Polls Which Predict GOP Senate Majority!

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So many polls are now predicting that the Republican Party will win control of the US Senate. But polls have been proved wrong before, and the Democrats should not run scared, just run aggressively against the Do Nothing Republicans, similar to what Harry Truman did in 1948!

The Republican Party is wrong on immigration reform; is wrong on the right of workers; is wrong on the treatment of women at work and in their private lives; is wrong on the environment and climate change; is wrong on the need for gun regulation; is wrong on the use of the race card; is wrong on its refusal to promote infrastructure spending; is wrong on its decision to oppose more expenditures on veterans; is wrong in its opposition to ObamaCare; is wrong in its attacks on Social Security and Medicare; is wrong in its efforts to deny voting rights; is wrong in its advocacy of wars everywhere, rather than pursuing diplomacy and peace; is wrong in their anti intellectual, anti science agenda; is wrong in its promotion of theocracy, rather than separation of church and state; and is wrong in its planned strategy to obstruct all judicial and executive nominations and therefore to cripple operation of the courts and government agencies.

The Democrats are likely to keep the following Senators–Mark Pryor of Arkansas; Mary Landrieu of Louisiana; Kay Hagan of North Carolina; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; Mark Warner of Virginia; and Mark Begich of Alaska.

They have a good chance of defeating Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, with their nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes; win the open Senate seat in Georgia with Michelle Nunn; win the open Senate seat in Iowa with Bruce Braley; win the open Senate seat in Michigan with Gary Peters; and an even chance to win the open West Virginia seat with Natalie Tennant over Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

The only seats seen likely to switch from D to R are: South Dakota and Montana; while the Democrats have a good shot at winning Kentucky and Georgia. With West Virginia possibly going Republican with Capito, and Maine having a chance that Republican Susan Collins loses to Democrat Shanna Bellows, if such happens, it is no gain by the Republicans.

The best prediction is that the Republicans MIGHT gain two seats, falling four states short of the six needed to make Mitch McConnell Majority Leader, with him likely to lose to Grimes in Kentucky, in any case.

The worst case scenario for the Democrats is the loss of South Dakota and Montana; and the loss of West Virginia, therefore meaning a Republican gain of three seats!

And in 2016, with two thirds of the seats being Republicans, the Democrats are sure, in an election where their Democratic Presidential nominee will be heavily favored, to win a large number of additional seats, nearing up to 60 from a possible low of 52 in 2014!

CPAC Convention: The Lunatic Right Displays Itself!

Ronald 39 Comments

Watching, listening, and reading about the Conservative Political Action Conference makes anyone with a stable mind roll his eyes in wonderment at what conservatism has become!

All the losers of the past were there and ranting and raving their insanity, including Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, and Mike Huckabee. The “newcomers”,” people not yet defeated but soon to be, including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, also appeared, and made fools of themselves. Of course, the ultimate lunatic and embarrassment, Donald Trump, also spewed his sick mind and constant need for attention. And to top it off, Sarah Palin is making an appearance, as if any sane, intelligent person cares! And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, desperately trying to keep his seat, showed up brandishing a rifle, a horrible image for a Senate leader to display just a year after the Sandy Hook Massacre!

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker stayed away, for both a smart move, and Jon Huntsman was also not there, and at least for Bush and Huntsman, who are the most mainstream of this group of characters, it made sense NOT to be there!

Speaker of the House John Boehner was not invited, which should really be seen as a blessing, as he has upset right wingers by being exasperated with the Tea Party Movement, for making his job absolutely impossible in the lower chamber.

It is still reality that ONLY Jeb Bush and Jon Huntsman would have ANY chance to be elected over Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Election of 2016, but not very good odds for either of them. And again, let this author repeat, that the Electoral College strongly favors ANY Democrat to win the White House, and as long as the GOP alienates African Americans, Latinos, women, and many young voters, it will not win the White House. And as long as it fights the idea of national health care coverage for all; acceptance of gay rights and same sex marriage; opposition to immigration reforms; favors the energy industry over the environment; and continues to fight against a living wage for the poor and middle class, it will lose for the long term future! And if it continues to promote religion and theocracy, it will NEVER win the White House ever again, in a nation that believes in separation of church and state!

So those of us who care about our fellow Americans can sit and observe the CPAC Conference, and feel good that the potential candidates and the Republican party are sealing their doom for 2016 and beyond!

GOP Virginia Gubernatorial Nominee Ken Cuccinelli: Puritanism Revived!

Ronald 16 Comments

Republican Virginia gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli is a nightmare in the making, as he is a 21st century extremist Puritan, wishing to control the private social and sexual behavior of adults, as if one can do that!

Already shown to be extremely prudish, and constantly promoting theocracy in government as Virginia Attorney General, he has now made it clear that he wants to declare oral and anal sex of consenting adults to be illegal and prosecutable, along with stating total condemnation of gays and lesbians as having no souls and being self destructive in their behavior, and not being entitled to workplace protection against discrimination because of their sexual orientation!

Cuccinelli ordered the covering up of the Virginia state seal, which shows a bared breast of a Roman goddess, and claims natural law, which is in his mind Christian Biblical law, should govern all relationships between people, including in the privacy of their own bedrooms!

This man is very sick and totalitarian in his desire to control people’s private lives, while denouncing ObamaCare as intrusion in the lives of Americans!

So government is not designed to deal with real problems such as health care, according to Cuccinelli, but should have police break into bedrooms or other private places to control the sex lives of adults!

What could be more tyrannical or dictatorial action by government at any level than such a belief in the right of the state to control the most basic rights and freedoms of all people than this?

This man is a menace, and hopefully, the state of Virginia will have the common and good sense to send him packing into private life! And do not be surprised if, in the future, we will find that he is a typical “religious”, Puritanical hypocrite who says one thing, and does another! And realize that Cuccinelli has already been implicated as taking money from the same company that has been connected to outgoing Governor Bob McDonnell, who faces the threat of being removed from office before his term ends at the close of 2013.

The Virginia GOP is in tatters, and the good name of the state of Virginia requires that the party be repudiated as a party of not only corruption, but also of religious hypocrisy and totalitarian bent over the private love lives of all Virginians!

Republican Factions And Hatred Of President Barack Obama

Ronald 40 Comments

The Republican Party is creating a history they will not be proud of, when the history books are written on the times we live in!

Yes, every President has opposition from the party out of power in the White House!

But the level of hate against Barack Obama is beyond all sane limits!

One faction, the establishment Wall Street Republicans, hate Obama for the gall that he has, expecting that after years of lack of regulation of Wall Street and the oil companies, and years of massive tax cuts for the top two percent, that he dares to promote regulation, and higher taxation of the wealthy!

Another faction, the Tea Party radicals, are out to return America to the 19th century, condemning everything the New Deal of FDR and the Great Society of LBJ have done to promote equity, fairness, and justice in America in the past century, and they see Barack Obama as the inheritor of those highly popular and successful programs! Instead, they want to put labor, women, minorities, and the poor back to the times that existed in the Gilded Age and early 20th century, a time of laissez faire capitalism and Social Darwinism. And much of the Tea Party Movement resembles the old South of the Confederacy, longing for a return to the pre Civil War mentality, as well! And therefore, the average middle class person is being exploited by the right wing groups led by the Koch Brothers and other corporate interests, who see a way to manipulate public opinion for their own selfish, greedy desires to dominate and increase their acquisition of wealth at the expense of 98 percent of the population!

And then, there are the Christian conservatives, who want to control our private lives and impose a theocracy on America, denying the Founding Fathers’ promotion of separation of church and state. In so doing, they wish to cause more control over our lives, while rejecting economic regulation and pushing social regulations, and they see Obama as a threat to their agenda!

The fact that we have been experiencing the effects of the Great Recession has allowed these groups to exploit the situation, and allow them to make it seem as if Barack Obama has created these conditions, when these groups are simply acting demagogic in their desire for control, and advancement of their own agendas, against the interests of the American people at large!

America At Crossroads On Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Class

Ronald 10 Comments

After recent events in Florida on racial profiling; in Texas and other states on abortion restrictions; in Arizona and other states on legislation regarding undocumented immigration; the push for theocracy by the Religious Right; the move in many states to allow discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment; and the growing chasm between workers and management regarding labor rights and conditions, it is clear that America is at a crossroads on issues of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class!

African Americans, women, Latinos and Hispanics, those for separation of church and state, gays and lesbians, and the middle class and the poor face constant attack on their basic rights and their quality of life, as the Right is moving to curb advancements that have been made over the past 60 years since the time of Dwight D. Eisenhower onward by the Supreme Court, Congressional action on civil rights and civil liberties, and courageous Presidents of both parties who have seen the need to lower the barriers on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class!

We are at a crossroads in the constant struggle for American democracy and fair play, as even when progress is made, there is aggressive action to reverse the progress, trying to wipe out what has been accomplished!

The country is changing, but we have negative elements who are trying to return America to what it was many generations ago, and the fight for continued progress and advancement to a “more perfect Union” is a never ending one, and no one can give up their participation in the struggle, as that only advances the movement toward negativism, regression, and reversal!