Pat Robertson - Extremist Fundamentalist Christian

Islamic Extremist Fundamentalism – Calls for drastic measures to institute their own form of Islam, including the assassination and death of those who disagree with them. In general, opposed to the notion of democracy, (though they will claim otherwise), as they want to institute their interpretation of God’s law.

Christian Extremist Fundamentalism – Calls for drastic measures to institute their own form of Christianity, including the assassination and death of those who disagree with them. In general, opposed to democracy, (though they will claim otherwise), as they want to institute their interpretation of God’s law.

We ask the majority of Muslims, who are moderate and opposed to the sort of measures that the Fundamentalist are willing to kill for, to stand up against that minority who appears to have hijacked Islam for their own political purposes. It is clear to us that this must be done, in order to make it clear that these Fundamentalists are not following the more widely-held viewpoint of Islam as a faith and tradition that stands up for and preaches not only peace and brotherhood, but also calls for continued movement toward God’s justice, primarily the equality of people and fair distribution of the gifts of God.

In the same way, we as Christians who are opposed to the measures that Fundamentalist Christians are calling for and trying to implement. We must do this in order to make it clear that these Fundamentalists are not following the widely-held viewpoint of Christianity as a faith and tradition that stands up for and preaches not only peace and brotherhood, but also calls for continued movement toward God’s justice here on earth, primarily the equality of people and fair distribution of the gifts of God.

Pat Robertson prayed publicly for more vacancies on the Supreme Court, and since these are lifetime appointments, this generally would be construed as praying for either the death or serious illness of sitting judges. (I can only assume that he was praying for the ill-health of only the 2 judges who were appointed by Democrats…) There was no public outcry. There was no demand for apology. Nobody made it clear that this man is a nut-case, and does not represent Christianity as most people practice it.

Now he calls for the assassination of the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADER OF A NATION. While there is some press, much of the press is focused on the victim – the democratically elected leader of Venezuela– rather than on demanding a public apology and an FCC investigation. My guess is that this will die down after a day or two - at least in the American press.

And most pointedly, our President and all of our elected leaders should loudly denounce this hate-speech. If we believe that it is a good idea to spread democracy in the world, then we should hold those within our own country who oppose democracy and advocate the assassination of democratically elected officials to the highest public scrutiny. Mr. Robertson has the right in this country to say whatever he wants, (though we should scrutinize whether we are willing to allow this sort of pornography on the public airwaves), and we should make sure that the rest of the world knows that when he does so, he does not have the support of our leaders or of the Christian community.

We as Christians must stand up against this sort of hate-mongering by extreme Christian Fundamentalists.

Public Education - WWJD

The debate over public education in general is one that has gotten little attention recently.

I have very dear friends who are fundamentalist Christians, who are disgusted that we don't teach Biblical history and morality in our public schools. They believe that the world is 5700 years old, and that "macro" evolution, (or Darwinism as many groups have taken to calling it), should not be taught. These people are loud critics of, and I would say enemies of, the notion of public education - unless it is taught their way.

This movement has been working its way through our culture for several years now, painting a generally dim view of the public education systems in our country. I can tell you that in our family, back in the 80's, we went through a brief period where we put our kids in a private Christian school with an outstanding academic reputation. After just a couple of years, it became plain that the quality of instruction that they were receiving was very plainly less than that they had received in the public system. We switched back.

I tell that story so that you know my bias from experience. From that experience, I have come to understand that generally, private schools pay their teachers less than public schools. It should come as no surprise, then, that the public schools have better teachers.

So why private schools? I see it as broken into 3 main groups:

1. The folks with more money than sense who just can't stand the thought of their child with the common folk.

2. Folks who live in areas with poor public schools, and with the means to send them to private schools, which in their case means an improvement in both quality of education and safety for their child.

3. Folks with strong idealogical (religious) convictions who don't want their children to learn the mainstream knowledge taught in public schools.

Of these 3 groups, the first one will never go away. There will always be an "elite" class, who will not want to mingle with the common folk. Nothing wrong with that.

The second group of folks use private schools as an escape from poor public schools. Fixing the public schools in their area would fix this problem, and eliminate the need for private education. Better models for distribution of funding for public education is at the heart of that discussion.

The third group is the one that I want to focus on.

Should education be a "right" of citizens? If so, to what level? 8th grade? High School? College?

If the answer to that question is no, then we should focus our discussion on the direction our culture takes as we define ever widening "classes" of people. As ignorance increases among the masses, and the resulting "want" that lower employment will likely bring increases, what will be the result?

If the answer is yes, that some level of education is a "right", then we are left with public funding for education. Let’s start with where we are now.

So far, we have taken an approach that says that local public school districts should exist, and with varying degrees of oversight from the state, these school boards should decide what gets taught and how to teach it.

Of course, the national government has some very high-level authority, in that they want to assure that the rights of citizens are not compromised. This is why the national authority has asserted that it is not constitutional for “creationism”, for example, to be taught in school, as it violates the constitutional prohibition of establishing religion. (The thought being that by teaching the Creation Myth of just one religion, you are essentially “establishing” this as the accepted religion.)

The movement among the public school opponents asserts both explicitly and implicitly that they don’t like this. They assert that the founding fathers were Christian, and that what they really meant to do was establish a Christian country. (While it is true that most of the fathers were Christian to varying degrees, this new movement ignores that fact that NOTWITHSTANDING their Christianity, they explicitly forbade the establishment of religion. In other words, the fact that they were Christian actually makes a stronger case for their intent to keep religion out of government.)

The solution of the public school opponents is clear. Change education so that it is private rather than public, then you don’t have to deal with that pesky constitution. This fits very nicely with an anti-tax agenda, which doesn’t like the fact that the public has to pay for any of this stuff anyway.

And this is exactly what has happened. Those with an anti-public-school agenda that is driven by a religious ideology are aligned with those with an anti-tax ideology. They have been successful in redefining to varying degrees the way that school funding money is distributed, resulting in the increase in “vouchers” which essentially take public funding and funnel it to private schools. (The idea being that the public should fund the education of a student, but that the student and the student’s family should be allowed to learn whatever they want.)

So we only got to this point by saying that we did believe that it was a right of citizens to receive an education, which means public funding. I think that this means that we agree that we have a “moral obligation” to offer education to all citizens.

Should there be any limits on what the public funds in terms of education? What if the local Islamic Mullah wanted to set up a local school that taught Islamic Fundamentalism and Extremism? What if a local Christian group wanted to set up a local school that taught Christian Fundamentalism and Extremism?

If it is not “anything goes”, then who sets limits? The US constitution? Other national authority? State authority? Local school districts as it is now?

What constitutional principles should apply to publicly funded education?

And here is the real reason why I put this post together. Beyond the agreement on a moral obligation to educate citizens, are there other moral obligations that we have in educating ourselves? Are there common morals that we can teach that don’t take steps down the road of establishment of religion in our country? Can these be taught outside the context of a specific religion? How about teaching morals that are common among many religions?

My own bias is that I have a problem with public funds being used to finance private schools. I do believe that we have an “education obligation”, but am undecided on how far that obligation reaches. I do believe that we have a common moral compass in our culture, and that reinforcing that compass can be achieved outside of the context of a specific religion, and that school curriculum should do this. How…

Ms. Sheehan and Mr. Bush

Over the past couple of years, war has been waged in the name of you and me over in a country that in recent history was cobbled together and called Iraq. During those couple of years, the best estimates that I have seen are that over 100,000 people have lost their lives. Most of those people have lost their lives at the hands of you and I, through the hands of our government. Most of those people are civilians – women and children in large part.

This translates to 100,000+ grieving mothers around the world. The vast majority of these mothers grieve over the loss of a child who wanted nothing to do with war, who played no role at all in the ideological battle that seems to be raging over how people choose to hire and fire forms of government.

A very small percentage of those grieving mothers lost sons and daughters who were part of our armed forces. To be more specific, under 2000 of those grieving mothers are Americans grieving the loss of their soldier-child.

And of those, only one has captured the attention of the American media and public. Cindy Sheehan sits by the roadside in Texas, and expresses her grief and her rage in a very public fashion. What is it, she wants to know, that her son died for in Iraq? She wants this answer to come from the man who sent her son there, George W. Bush. Mr. Bush, for his part, says that he understands that pain of Ms. Sheehan, but must get on with his life. And right now, his life consists of his annual 5 week vacation in Crawford, which comes after his last vacation in April…

And the right-wing media, for their part, have taken to attacking this woman, using the unfortunately now familiar right-wing tactic of mucking personal information about their “target” out and shifting the focus away from the issue and on to some voyeuristic personal item in the “target’s” life.

Whether we were or weren’t misled into this war is not the issue.

Whether we did or did not “cook” the intelligence to support our pre-existing desire to invade Iraq is not the issue.

Whether we have listened to our military planners and planned for and executed a wise war is not the issue.

Whether we will or won’t ever face the music and begin paying the financial cost of this war is not the issue.

How on earth we will defend ourselves in the face of an attack with our military stretched as it is today is not the issue.

Cindy Sheehan’s personal life, personal troubles, and human frailties are not the issue.

The issue is an emotional one first, and an intellectual one second.

As a nation, we have been asked to pay nothing for this war, so we feel no emotional pain. Rather than institute a draft – which we should have done as soon as we began gearing up for this war in 2003 – we have misused the Guard and Reserves. Rather than asking the American people to sacrifice financially to pay the huge cost of this war – certainly significant taxes are required to wage war – we continue to sweep the costs under the rug, keeping them off of the budget, conveniently hidden from today’s voters.

But for mothers who have paid the ultimate price, who have lost their son or their daughter in this war, there is no rug under which the cost can be swept. They bear the emotional pain of a nation on their shoulders, and they want to know who is willing to bear it with them. They want to know that we all will still believe in this was if we see it through the lens of their loss.

And will we? The President of the United States – the one who ordered her son into the war that killed him – is apparently not willing to put those glasses on. He is too busy with fund raisers for his Party, and bike riding, and napping. He says he “grieves”, and I believe that he does in his own way. But Cindy is asking him to grieve beyond the intellectual. She is asking him to descend with her into the depth of her emotional grief and rage. To see the cost of the war through a grieving mother’s eyes, and then to tell her again what the war is about, and that he believes in it, and believes the cost is worth it.

With children of draft age, am I willing to descend into that hell of grief with Cindy? I am not sure – tears are in my eyes just considering it. The selfish me is only glad that my children of draft age do not believe in this war, so unless a draft is instituted, I will not be asked to risk that price.

The patriotic me is sick to my stomach that this president is not willing to take this woman into his home and his heart, and to grieve with her. The patriotic me is sick to my stomach at the right-wing media machine who is out to destroy yet another patriot – to eliminate for political purpose one of the few in this country who have actually sacrificed, who have actually paid for this war.

How Bad Is The Bush Problem?

How big is the “Bush Problem”?

As follow-up to my last post about lying presidents, I wanted to elaborate on where we need to go.

Here we sit, in 2005. We should all agree that presidents have lied throughout history. Some have lied for good things, some have lied for not-so-good things. When Bush senior lied about taxes, he did the right thing by going back on his pledge, and being fiscally conservative. When Reagan lied about things like Iran-Contra, he was probably both wrong and criminal, and we should be ashamed of him. When Clinton lied about when his zipper was up and when it was down, we should frankly be ashamed of a media that covered such a personal (if shameful) act, and do our best to judge the man on what he did for the country rather than what he did to shame his marriage. And when Bush junior continues to lie about things of such great importance as why our children are dying in Iraq, and what our real objectives in being there are, we should be shocked and ashamed. He continues to lie by failing to pay for the war – hiding the financial cost by keeping if off of the budget and refusing to ask us to pay for it, and continues to lie by failing to ask us to make the sacrifices that are a NECESSARY part of waging war, (things like a draft in order to maintain a sufficient army).

These lies he commits in order to avoid a dip in his support by the American public, and in order to maintain public support for the war. This is some of the worst sort of lying! He knows that if the American people were asked to sacrifice and pay for the war – the same way that every president in our history has done UNTIL Bush – that people would quickly begin to question why it was that we went there, and what is it that we hope to accomplish by staying. And when we ask these questions, he knows that we aren’t going to like the answers.

So he continues to lie by hiding the cost of the war, and misusing Guard and Reserve troops in order to hide the need for an army to fight a war – an army that would come from the ranks of your children and mine.

I’m no lawyer – I don’t know if these terrible lies are “criminal” or not – whether they measure up to “high crimes and misdemeanors” as defined in the constitution. If we compare his lies and omissions to the bar that we put in place by impeaching the last president because he lied about who he slept with, then impeachment for this guy would not go nearly far enough.

What I do know as an American Citizen with strong moral convictions is that what he has done and is doing is immoral, unethical, and shameful.

Without a doubt, we should fire him and anyone who has supported him. We should not fire him because he lied – they all lie. We should fire him because he is running our country into the ground!

But what would impeachment do? Do we want Cheney in the chair? I would expect him to be worse by a long shot.

No, the thing to do is to shake this mess up next year. We need to cut this bunch of liars off at the knees by removing their supporters in congress at the next election. We need to send a message to the Republican party that we are not willing to put up with liars and thieves running for office. If this means that we end up giving control of congress back to the Dems for a while until the Republican party gets the message, so be it. They can’t do a worse job than this bunch is doing.

Most of all, those of us who are truly conservative should demand that one party or the other begin running candidates that will actually run this country in a conservative manner – balancing the budget, being honest with us, maintaining a better future for our children than we have had, and keeping us out of the business of trying to run the rest of the world!

Who Lied, When, About What?

Who Lied?

I have been considering lately this whole “He Lied!” thing that has going on with Bush. Those on the left have been crying about the lies of George W Bush for a couple of years now, (there is even a fairly decent book about the subject out there), and those on the right have been trying to dismiss these claims as rubbish fabricated by disgruntled former staffers or just political posturing.

Until recently, I thought I had a good grasp of this game. In my mind, the whole “He Lied” game seemed to me to be payback from the left toward the right for the big deal that they made about Bill Clinton lying. I could identify with this very easily.

You see, while I am a Republican according to my voter registration, I could never see what it was that Real Conservatives didn’t like about Bill Clinton. Sure, you expect the Republican Party to not like him, because he is a Democrat, but as for real people like you and me, who happen to be conservative politically, Bill Clinton did a pretty decent job. He managed the finances of the country in a fiscally conservative fashion – coming close to balancing the budget which 12 years of previous Republican administration had failed to even come close to. While he did get us involved in some forms of “nation building” and “nation rescuing” activities, he also managed to work closely with the international community to assure that we weren’t committed alone in countries for the long-term. Sure there were some things that I disagreed with, but overall, he really administered the country in a pretty conservative fashion. He had a problem with his zipper, and while I did not approve of this, I found the media coverage of this problem more disgusting than the problem itself. His private intimate life is between him, his wife, and his personal ethical and spiritual framework – it is not the business of the public. Those on the right were able to convince the media and many in America that it was our business, and they cried disgust at the fact that he would cheat on his wife and then lie about it. I mean, really, most people who cheat on their spouse will then lie about it – what do you expect? And why do I care?

At the time, I had many arguments with those who called themselves conservative, but who don’t seem to understand the difference between conservative values and principles on the one hand, and partisan republicanism on the other hand. They bought into this media-hype hook, line, and sinker. Each time I would have the arguments with people, they would come back to the single fact that he lied about his personal sex life as the thing that made them disgusted. It didn’t seem to bother them that we had spent $50 million investigating the man, and this is all we could come up with – the waste of our tax dollars didn’t bother them. They were convinced by the media that what they really wanted was a “righteous” man in the office. I pointed out to them that the last time we had a relatively “righteous” man in the office was prior to Reagan – when Jimmy Carter held the office. They didn’t want to talk about that. The lies and crimes of the Reagan administration didn’t seem to bother them – ancient history. (Remember Iran-Contra, the convictions, the pardons? Remember the S&L debacle and the quiet “sweeping under the rug”? Remember the October Surprise evidence?) It boiled down to the fact that Clinton had lied – it didn’t matter to them whether the lie was relevant or important – he lied! They wanted to raise the bar they thought – get someone in the office who would always tell the truth!

Well, OK, I thought. That’s a pretty tall order. They all lie – they are politicians – it’s what politicians do – they lie.

So, Bush was elected, and while I didn’t vote for him because I was concerned about his ties to organizations such as Project for the New American Century, his ties to Big Oil and Big Business, and the general impression that I had that he was somewhat of a buffoon, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt – maybe he would do a good job. I think that many people felt as I did – give the guy a chance.

So here we sit, 5 years later, and those on the left say he lied. Of course he lied – it is what these people do! The question is, what did he lie about? Was it important stuff? If you don’t see the lies that the man has told, then you are either completely ignorant of the facts as a result of ignoring the evidence available but generally ignored by the media, or you are deluded by the powerful right-wing media, led by Fox “news”. Of course he lied – about many things. The one that is most important is the series of lies that he has woven to take us to war and keep us in war, and the collateral lies that he has used to try and maintain support for the war. Here is a quick “off-the-cuff” list of the big ones, as seen through the eyes of a true conservative:
He convinced us that we needed to take the drastic action of going to war against a sovereign nation without the support of most of the developed world because there was an immanent threat of Iraq attacking us with WMD – specifically nukes. He lied by “fixing” and bending the intelligence on Iraq so that it would say what he wanted it to say. He lied by saying later that the intelligence was bad, when in fact the evidence today suggests that the intelligence was the same as it had been in the past, but he ignored it or fixed it to meet his wishes and expectations.
He lied when he told us that he listened to his top military brass to plan and execute the war, when in fact he fired or moved aside the brass who told him that he needed more troops than he had. They were right, and he was wrong. He continues to lie when he says that he listened to them.
He lied when he said that war was his last resort. There is a mountain of strong evidence that he and his staff began planning for a war within days of 9/11, if not before, and that he did everything that he could to assure that war would be the ultimate outcome.
He lied when he called those who were making these accusations liars – starting with Joe Wilson, and moving through respected folks like Richard Clark. Worse among the actions around these lies were the disgusting attacks that he made on the wives of some of these people.
He lied on the deck of the aircraft carrier when he declared “Mission Accomplished”, when he was being advised that the struggle was only beginning.
He lied when he said that if anyone in his administration was involved with leaking the name of a CIA operative would be fired, and now that it is clear that people very high up in his administration did reveal the name of a covert CIA operative, he is lowering the bar to try and protect them. This is treason of the worst sort – people who do this should be treated as traitors, not rewarded with continued employment!

We could make long lists, but these are simply some of the major ones about issues that do matter. These are all factual, objective, history – they are not a matter of “perspective” as one of my closest Republican friends has tried to assert.

So why do those on the right continue to try and deny that Bush lies? Simply because they made such a big deal about “telling the truth” back in 2000, and they want to like “their guy” Bush, so they have no choice but to deny.

This was the picture of the world that I saw, and that I believed. It is, I believe, true. But it leaves something important out. That is, the “he lied” game goes back to 1992, when the Dems assailed Bush senior for the fact that “he lied” when he said “read my lips – no new taxes”. Of course, the R’s were wounded by the fact that this had been such an effective tactic against them, and one could see the Lewinski game as continuation of something that the Dems started.

And of course, they are correct. So what?

More later…

TABOR

A friend recently asked for comments on the Colorado "Taxpayer Bill Of Rights", or TABOR amendment. This was passed by voters a few years back, and has been seen by many as a major contributor to a fiscal crisis in Colorado today.

In general, what TABOR does is limit revenue as much as anything else as I understand it, preventing the state from collecting and keeping taxes in flush years, then requiring the state to live within means during lean years. In business, if you have an off year, you hope to make up for it next year with profits to offset the losses, and conversely you invest during flush times in ways that allow you to ride out the lean years that you might run into. You don't sent refunds to your customers during the up years - telling them, "no thanks, we really don't need the money this year." We all do that in our personal budgets too. As I understand it, TABOR really prevents the state from doing this.

The bigger issue to me is how our collective (government) finances are managed. It seems that prior to Reagan, (at least during my adult lifetime), voters elected officials with the expectation that they would manage the affairs and finances of the government responsibly, assuring future solvency for future generations as the foundation, and then we can all argue and bicker over the ways that we spend the money that we put into the pot. Then, starting with Reagan, the focus seemed to shift away from solvency for the future, and we seemed to convince ourselves that if we just shut off the revenue stream, (spelled taxes), that the spending side of the equation would take care of itself. In fact, I remember arguments from Reagan supporting talking heads at the time that said that nearly verbatim.

To me, this seemed nonsense at the time, and I am sorry to say that every evidence points to my being right for a change on this one. The analogy to me is that my wife (or husband, as the case might be), has a spending problem, and keeps running up credit card bills and spending over our means. So, to solve the problem, I go to my boss at work and ask him to cut my salary, so that my wife will quit spending so much… It is not only doomed to failure, it is doomed to throw us into bankruptcy, and I believe that this is exactly what these economic policies of the past 25 years have done to this country – brought us to the brink of bankruptcy.

And by the way, did cutting the revenue stream have any impact on spending? None whatsoever. Reagan, along with both Democratic and Republican congresses, went on a spending binge that is second only to the one that the current Republican administration and Congress are on.

Of course, the American people are complacent in this crime, as we have continued to vote into office people who will promise to cut our taxes – kind of like the employer who continues to hire the folks who promise to ask for less pay. In the end, we are getting what we pay for – irresponsibility. Look at the first Bush, whose broken “read my lips” promise certainly helped him lose the election. While I was no fan of Bush senior, he clearly saw a fiscal crisis, and choose to act with responsibility and courage to enact revenue to solve the fiscal crisis. I applauded him for his courage, but the Dems crucified him over his broken pledge. Why did he feel compelled to utter those fateful “read my lips” words? He was coached that this is what would get him elected – and his coaches were right. Shame on us…

The real issue is spending, not revenue. Any path that addresses only the revenue stream in a negative way is doomed to failure. So long as we are a nation, we should be having constant battles over our spending priorities and where the money goes – this is part of Democracy In Action. The politicians have found a cowards way out by selling us on the notion that revenue fixes, (like TABOR), are what we should be thinking about. What we SHOULD REALLY be thinking about is how the politicians are spending our money. This should be the primary issue in every single election.

But when was the last time that you saw any spending issue debated among candidates? They want to tell you about how much they are cutting your taxes, though the truth is that they are simply deferring your current taxes – with interest – to your children. Who among us even knows how our government budgets are broken down? When we pay a dollar of tax to the federal government, how is it divided up, and does this division reflect what we believe our values to be as a nation? And how about our state government budget?

I would love to see the debate on these issues shift there – maybe I’ll do a little research and put another post up here with some of that information on a historical basis…