Ideology: Political opinion one wishes to implement into policy; impose upon others.
Personal opinion: Beliefs one keeps to oneself to respect another's autonomy.
What is the difference between a moderate and an extremist?
In Christianity, the 'moderate' recognizes that there aer contradictions and evils (such as the stoning of disobedient children in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy) within the Bible and that some, if not most of it should be taken 'with a grain of salt,' and does not wish to evangelize or impose his or her view onto others.
The extremist manipulates the moderate position to his purpose by accepting that the Bible is the 'Word of God' and is perfectly content with not only buying all of it, but also has no qualms about imposing it upon others. However, the wonderous thing is that very few people have ever murdered their children (by decree of OT prophets), or even sacrificed their first born (early OT, repealed in later books (a contradiction if 100% of it is 100% true!)), though many are severely beaten thanks to James Dobson's helpful 'family counselling.'
In atheism, what might be considered 'extremist' in religion does not exist. Even Sam Harris does not suggest that we wage genocide. Most of which hold our personal opinions and do not wish to destroy religion completely, but simply to boot it from the public sphere because of the horrible consequences of so many past and present theocracies, and rampant corruption among religious leaders, revealing to those who are not blind that religion is morally bankrupt and holds no weight when real challenges must be faced (challenges of especially temptation: money, sex, and power).
An extremist is basically someone whose ideology and personal opinion are intertwined. Example: I am an atheist who is in love with Russian literature, which is heavily Christian. I don't like Christianity in the least bit but I appreciate the insight and skill of Dostoevsky's work in The Brothers Karamazov and believe it to be the best defense of Christianity. The minute you have decided to ban/burn any media whoatsoever, you are an extremist, not even considering the blood that would likely follow (1933 Germany). From banning and burning The Satanic Verses to calling for Rushdie's assassination.
The minute you wish to impose your own will upon the people without regard for consequence, drunk on utopian ideals, and cease to care for what matters most-The quality and value of human life-you are an extremist.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Candidates; Fundamentalism; Silly Topics of American Democracy
All political candidates - even ones I would otherwise be happy to vote for - are pandering to the Christian Right. I read a few days ago that Mrs Clinton and Barack Obama have set up subcommittees to pander to this fringe group. Granted, this is not as shameless as the Republican candidates, who are essentially political prostitutes for the Christian despots. And no one-NO ONE-is trying to pander to non-religious people (some say there are only 10 million of us). Granted, the "fringe" is a huge electorate - 25% of total, the majority of Bush's 30-35% of 2004. And who is this Fred Thompson guy? Just another balding Republican WASP? If he's anti-government, then why is the CR so affectionate with him?
Here is the CR political philosophy - cut government to a desired size (cripple it), and then rebuild it with Christianized institutions and misosophies (a play on 'philosophies' - phil: love; sophie: knowledge; mis - hate; misosophy: hatred of knowledge), and then expand it to the size of a police state.
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Christian fundamentalism/evangelism, is very very cunning. I realized this while watching Jesus Camp: The deeper your "relationship" with Jesus, the deeper the control. Once you confess your undying allegiance to The Savior, it is up to your political instructor to tell you how you must behave and think. They claim to have an individual relationship with a dead man whom we dont even know existed, but it's not really a relationship at all. It's really like the Chinese adoration of Chairman Mao or the Russian love of Lenin. Once you forfeit your soul to Jesus, your thought patterns are dictated to you by Die Fuhrer and you are completely devoid of individual personality and individual notions of right and wrong. Just another organic automaton.
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Democracy has truly failed in America. Why is it important to care about Fred Thompson's trophy wife, or Guliani's & Hillary's marital problems, or the fact that Obama tried pot? The only candidates whose marital problems are significant are Huckabees', Brownbacks', and Romneys', to the extent that they demonstrate their theocratic intentions and to the extent that we can expect them to further damage the area of women's health and sexual science in adherence with Biblical tyranny.
One area in which our government, with the help of the media, has failed us is the No Child Left Behind Act. It sounds good on paper, much like Communism, but it's detrimental to education, much like Communism is to the economy. Teachers nationwide continue to bemoan this extremely destructive piece of legislature, in another area where Curious George has made a mess like a clumsy and incompetent repairman. There are extremely important things, as the argument goes, that cannot be assessed with standardized exams. This is an argument I buy wholesale. Having recently been through standardized exams myself, I know they are very limited in scope and really should not be trusted, complete with trick questions and nonsensical, boring topics. If we want to know if a child understands what he or she reads, assign her a well-written short story that will not put her to sleep. Where do they get these stories from, anyway? It also doesnt help that most of the answers are often almost exactly the same and all could be argued for (as was my experience with the SATs).
And what is the punishment upon a school if enough of the children 'fail'? The intervention of a corrupt right-wing federal government complete with a Soviet-style bureaucracy, a cut-off of funding (isn't that counter-intuitive?), and school vouchers for the parents so they can send their children to Christian automaton factories so they can blow up abortion clinics and watch The 700 Club and vote against their best interests.
Here is the CR political philosophy - cut government to a desired size (cripple it), and then rebuild it with Christianized institutions and misosophies (a play on 'philosophies' - phil: love; sophie: knowledge; mis - hate; misosophy: hatred of knowledge), and then expand it to the size of a police state.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Christian fundamentalism/evangelism, is very very cunning. I realized this while watching Jesus Camp: The deeper your "relationship" with Jesus, the deeper the control. Once you confess your undying allegiance to The Savior, it is up to your political instructor to tell you how you must behave and think. They claim to have an individual relationship with a dead man whom we dont even know existed, but it's not really a relationship at all. It's really like the Chinese adoration of Chairman Mao or the Russian love of Lenin. Once you forfeit your soul to Jesus, your thought patterns are dictated to you by Die Fuhrer and you are completely devoid of individual personality and individual notions of right and wrong. Just another organic automaton.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Democracy has truly failed in America. Why is it important to care about Fred Thompson's trophy wife, or Guliani's & Hillary's marital problems, or the fact that Obama tried pot? The only candidates whose marital problems are significant are Huckabees', Brownbacks', and Romneys', to the extent that they demonstrate their theocratic intentions and to the extent that we can expect them to further damage the area of women's health and sexual science in adherence with Biblical tyranny.
One area in which our government, with the help of the media, has failed us is the No Child Left Behind Act. It sounds good on paper, much like Communism, but it's detrimental to education, much like Communism is to the economy. Teachers nationwide continue to bemoan this extremely destructive piece of legislature, in another area where Curious George has made a mess like a clumsy and incompetent repairman. There are extremely important things, as the argument goes, that cannot be assessed with standardized exams. This is an argument I buy wholesale. Having recently been through standardized exams myself, I know they are very limited in scope and really should not be trusted, complete with trick questions and nonsensical, boring topics. If we want to know if a child understands what he or she reads, assign her a well-written short story that will not put her to sleep. Where do they get these stories from, anyway? It also doesnt help that most of the answers are often almost exactly the same and all could be argued for (as was my experience with the SATs).
And what is the punishment upon a school if enough of the children 'fail'? The intervention of a corrupt right-wing federal government complete with a Soviet-style bureaucracy, a cut-off of funding (isn't that counter-intuitive?), and school vouchers for the parents so they can send their children to Christian automaton factories so they can blow up abortion clinics and watch The 700 Club and vote against their best interests.
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