Christmas, Christians, and Republicans: No crib for a bed

“That thought brings us to the Republican Party of today, which many believe has been hijacked by a narrow brand of conservatives and by fundamentalist Christian beliefs. The quiet, but growing discourse says this strident political/religious stance not only alienates people with moderate conservative political views, but also people of other faiths”

It has always seemed to me that tolerance is a curiously one way street. Christians must tolerate other faiths, lack of faith, sexuality etc. I have no problem with this. None whatsoever. I have no problem with people of differing lifestyles expressing those lifestyles peacefully.

What irritates me… OK, let me be more honest, what leaves my just about ready to take the nearest club and start destroying random objects, walls and people is that intolerance of Christianity is not merely allowed, but encouraged. Can the “Christian Right” truly “hijack” one of the two most significant political parties in the US just by existing? just by expressing their thoughts?

Whiskey.
Tango.
Foxtrot!?!?!?!

Is the objection here that religious people have too much influence over the Republican party or is it in fact that they have any influence? It seems to me that the objection here is the second more than the first:

In the last presidential election, the Republican party played directly to the moderate left, throwing the right a bone in Sarah Palin. And the parties base stayed home in their millions. Now that the base is attempting to reassert their place in the party suddenly the rights detractors want to tar the entire right wing with the “religious crazies” brush. Color me shocked. No. Really.

If merely hearing opinions that run contrary to your own is sufficient to make you feel ostracized or unwanted you have no business in party politics. What having a “big tent” actually means is being able to tolerate not just the presence in your party of people who disagree with you but the presence in your party of people who loudly disagree with you. It also means loudly disagreeing right back (rather than just whimpering that you feel unwanted). And when your party finds itself abandoned at the polls by the very folk you thought were rusted on, it means asking yourself if their views are really so disposable after all.

I think one piece of the puzzle is that prayer acknowledges a higher power.
For example, you mentioned that while the mayor is praying on the one side, his opposition is praying as well for victory in the upcoming debates.
I recall from Highlander, the two armies being blessed by monks following their prayer for victory. I don’t think it’s quite the same thing.
Praying, whether to God or Allah or Lucifer or the Green Man, should be OK. also, NOT praying should be OK. After all, if there IS a separation of church and state, then by banning prayer, is the state not enforcign a religious view of Atheism? By definition, I mean. Creating a secular religion should fall outside of the realm of law…

I agree with Mashed, though, that Christians seem to be the only ones slammed visibly. (Side note, I have heard of mormons in one case, and muslims a few times.) But at Christmas, I never remember hearing complaints over a menorah, nor can I see why any Christian would take issue with such a display (although I was tempted to take issue with the “Holiday Display” put up at work, because it had a menorah, a kwanzaa whatever, and a Christmas tree. The menorah is religious, the tree is symbolic, but not religious, and the kwanzaa thing is a made-up POSm but that’s a rant for another time.)

My issue was the one item being religious, and that religious element being equated with secular symbols. I could care less if the company put up ONLY a menorah – it’s a private company, they can do what they want. But if you’re going to be generic, let’s be generic in all ways – a dreidl would do JUST FINE, and not be religious, but rather symbolic.

Now, the politics is another whole stupidity, but the leftists are in BOTH parties, and they BOTH wish to discredit religion – after all, they are statists, and the STATE must be the ONLY supreme power. This is the real reason for the discrediting of religion, and the tarring of the Republicans with the “Right-wing Religious Nuts” brush. Conservatives don’t belong in either party, nor do lower-case “L” liberals. After all, it was liberals who created our governmental system. They’re probably spinning in their graves over what we’ve become.

The GOP will lose it’s base soon. Sooner is better, in fact, and someone like Palin (Who I don’t like much more, I’ll admit) might even be able to cause the necessary schism to make a real third-party run possible. She might even have cajones large enough, or brains small enough, to not pull a Perot. Even so, I doubt she’d bring in someone like Huckabee, who has actually read our founding documents.

The genie is out of the bottle, though. “Democracy is over the moment the people learn they can vote themselves largesse from the public trough.” As a resident of New Jersey, I’d say the people (who were intentionally excluded from voting in our country) have found out they can vote themselves money by sucking political d!ck. Meantime, I’m paying money to support all those wastes of human flesh from my taxes. (And yes, some need to be cared for, and some are just having a bad time. We can help those people; the problem is those who are happy sucking the government teats, and that includes the bureaucrats.)

Which is why I think that the “prayer” question is derailed so often. Look at the way this meandering post has gone – so many points to be made, it can’t be summed up in a soundbyte of “Separation of church and state” or “First Amendment rights” or even “Woman’s right to choose!” Religion premises a higher power than mankind or government. It implies judgement and divine actions. These are anathema to a corrupt state, oy ANY state that desires to imprison people, whether by law or “education”. Even a golden cage is a cage still. We are being shown a cage of crafted lead and uranium, and being taught to see it as gold. (anyone have a child in school these days? It’s atrocious what passes for a textbook, and the quiet judgements rendered in those books.)

The good result would be a revolution, correcting the situation. The bad news is, I don’t think we have enough men or women with the cajones to face what must be done, so we will crumble as Rome did – with a takeover from inside, human decay, and once the internals are rotted out, we will be superceded by a new culture (which we are importing as fast as possible), whether that be Islam or Hispanic.

(Islamic vs. Arab because Muslims are tied by religion in a comparable way to how Hispanics are tied by culture. Arabs are Muslims generally, but not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs.)

It will eb interesting. Expat life looks better every day.