Squeeze it out, Johnny, you can do it
John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council says only Christianity could have produced the American experience and only Christianity can save it.
Yet we keep getting told that we should stop attacking Republicans for their…um…intellectual deficiencies, but look, they shouldn’t get a get out of jail free card to say any crazy thing they want and still get treated with respect. It’s bad enough that with few exceptions the mainstream media refuses to even mention the absolutely insane things they say.
No, UN armored personnel carriers are not going to be rolling down the streets of Lubbock, Texas if Obama wins, whatever County Judge Tom Head might claim. And no, Obama is not going to take white folks’ guns away and give them to black folks. I mean, you can’t say this stuff with impunity. There are consequences.
The consequences include us being able to talk about how completely insane the Republican Party has become. I’d say it’s almost as though they’ve kicked out all the sane Republicans and launched open enrollment of people who belong in mental institutions, but that’s exactly what they’ve done.
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Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party’s chairman, was right to question Head’s “mental competency to hold elected office.” There should be a whole lot more such questioning going on and the American people should place a firm moratorium on crazy talk on Election Day 2012.
The Tea Party proved two things to me: racism is a much bigger problem in this country than I had realized; and that it was no fluke the Nazi Party crowned whack-jobs as the new intellectuals. People with actual working brains were not welcome in the Third Reich, and that should be a lesson to Americans. If you can do your sums, the Republican Party does not want you. And it certainly doesn’t want you to vote.
They’re all gathering for the Republican National Convention in Tampa to get behind a candidate none of them really like and who shakes an Etch A Sketch before every public appearance to determine what he’s going to say.
And they want us to vote for him. Not because they think he’s a stand-up guy but because they hate Obama so much. Hate him with a purple passion. He’s black, he’s middle class, he’s a Christian moderate – everything a fundamentalist Republican hates.
Stemberger whined about “virtuous conservatives” being called hate mongers when they hate on folks. Look, we’re not going to call what’s going on the Summer of Love Part Deux, Jack. It ain’t gonna happen. If you’re going to hate, we’re going to call you on it.
If you don’t want to be called a hate monger, stop mongering hate. Seems very simple from where I’m standing. We tried explaining this to whiners like Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins and I’m perfectly willing to explain it to you: No free passes.
Here’s Stemberger’s insane rant, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
Our culture is in a free fall. Things that were unthinkable just a generation ago are not only thinkable they’re being promoted as virtuous and if you don’t buy into it they act as if you’re a hate monger or something. its unbelievable. Our country needs God. Our country needs us. There is no other religion on the face of the earth that could have produced the American experience other than Christianity. That’s not my opinion. That’s actually a fact.
How about consent of the governed, this notion that we vote? Do you think that’s going to come from Islam? What about the concept of inalienable rights from god. Buddhism doesn’t even have a god; it’s a nontheistic religion. What about all men created equal. From Hinduism? Where there’s a caste system? No, these ideas come distinctly from the old and new testament. What about the separation of powers. What’s the assumption there? That man is basically good and is going to evolve and become better and better? No, the old Testament says what, the heart of man is desperately wicked and yea who can know it? That understanding of power and separation power and protection power from being too strong comes from the Old Testament. Ladies and gentleman, no religion on earth could have created the American experience except for Christianity and no religion can save it except for Christians.
WRONG! Thanks for playing, Mr. Stemberger, but you lose. You do not get to simply make up your own facts to suit your hate mongering platform:
- The nation of “consent of the governed” does not come from Judaism or Christianity. Democracy dates from the wholly Pagan days preceding the notion of monotheism and developed into a system of government in Pagan Greece. The Bible is full of kings and a priesthood calling God ” king” – it doesn’t have anything in the way of a democratically-elected government.
- Inalienable rights do not derive from the Bible. It is a notion of the very secular European Enlightenment and diametrically opposed to Biblical principles. Nowhere does the Bible talk about inalienable rights. In fact, the Bible isn’t about rights: it’s about limitations on behavior and belief and what happens to you if you think or do the wrong thing.
- What the helheim does Jeremiah 17:9 have to do with separation of powers? Have you been listening to David Barton again? He loves to throw meaningless Bible verses around and pretend they explain the American political system.
By all the gods, you want us to talk you seriously?
As a member of a non-Christian religion under attack by bigots like you, I’m just going to come out and say it: you’re a hatemonger. And you’re crazy. You’re also likely intellectually deficient but I’ll withhold judgement till I see your tests. I’d hate to attack the congenitally stupid.
The United States of America, it’s Declaration of Independence and it’s Constitution, are unthinkable without the European Enlightenment which pushed back the darkness of Church-spawned superstition. Your God is in neither document, nor is your Bible nor your Savior. Nor are your Ten Commandments.
The idea that only Christians can save a country founded as the first modern liberal democracy, based on principles of tolerance and diversity and pluralism, is one of the most absurd notions ever uttered. In point of fact, your religion, Mr. Stemberger, is incompatible with the basic precepts of the modern liberal democracy. Your religion cannot save America; it can only destroy it.
America does not need your God. America certainly doesn’t need your type of Christian, if that’s what you want to call yourself. America does need a sane and moderate Christianity, and it needs all those minority religions just as much as it needs people with no religion at all. It needs all of us because America is founded upon the idea of the many, on ideals not of exclusion but of inclusion. You remember that national motto your type hates so much: E Pluribus Unum (“Out of many, one”)?
That idea comes from a Pagan thinker so it’s no surprise you hate it so much. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who lived five centuries before Jesus, said (10th fragment), “The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.”
The “One” he speaks of is the creative force, but not your Christian God. A Pagan philosopher’s words embody the ideals of the Founding Fathers, not your Bible. This Pagan’s words were suggested by the committee appointed on July 4, 1776 – by Congress – to design “a seal for the United States of America.”
Heraclitus’ words were adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782, not the words of Jeremiah or some other Biblical figure.
And you can save us how? You’re not even on the same page as the rest of us. You’re so far out in right field you may not even be on the same planet, let alone the same country. You need to get with the fact that our nation’s founders were inspired by Pagan Greece and Rome, not Israel. You need to just deal with it and quit inventing “facts” to the contrary simply because reality is not congenial to your agenda.
Run along now. And try to behave. We’ll be watching you.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
