This FOREIGN article caught me eye the other day…
Religion in America – From the Economist
The faith (and doubts) of our fathers –What did the makers of America believe about God and religion? The subject is stirring the very rancor they wanted to avoidThere is a great irony about all these disputes over America’s creators, whether they pit Christian against Christian, or religious types against secularists. Regardless of their own views on the spiritual, people like Madison, Washington and Jefferson were intensely concerned for the welfare and cohesion of the new republic. They worried not only about religious wars as such but about political disputes which were “religious” in their intensity. They wanted to create a state and political system to which people with utterly different ideas about metaphysics, and many other things, could offer unconditional loyalty. People who disagree over legal or economic matters ought to be able to respect one another and compromise; people who disagree over things they regard as ultimate—and therefore see one another as heretics—usually can’t.
It has been 3 years now (coincidentally the same amount of time a Black man has been President) that we have been awash with the Republican Base in our face. It began with Sarah Palin, then all those rabid spitting, shouting and shoving town hall meetings. That soon coalesced into the Tea Party, the Birthers and then this years’ gang of clowns running for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Republican Base sees the President, Democrats and Liberals as family destroying baby murdering unAmerican communists.
On the other hand most normal people see the Republican Base as a celebration of ignorance, anti-science, intolerance, bigotry, selfishness and violence.
The above article, WHICH OF COURSE HAD to be written outside America explains the IT that creates such divergent and hostile world views. And IT is because the American media and American politicians cannot address this subject honestly without paying dearly in either share or votes – that I have come to, as some say, dwell too much upon it.
Brought up as a good Catholic boy until I was 14, and being a romantic with a spiritual side, I have had it UP TO HERE that Americans have allowed the worst of us to hijack Jesus Christ and turn him into a Right-wing a whole.
If not for the Christian Republican Base neither Ronald Reagan nor George W Bush would have made it to the White House. And what a kinder, gentle more equitable pleasant country this would be.
While I am at, a reminder to all the young Ron Paul followers out there.
Ron Paul is a Faith Based, Evangelical, Fundamentalist Christian Creationist who is more than happy to allow THE INDIVIDUAL STATES to remove as many of your freedoms and liberties as they see fit. Take note of his answer to most anything controversial… "I would let each state decide that…" Come on, the man is a clown…
I may agree with him about War and Pot, but you know the clock cliche…