(January 17, 2013 at 9:13 pm)Anymouse Wrote:What a hypocrite you are....where was all your pompous and self-righteous dribble when conservatives were referred to as KKK earlier in this thread?...Why aren't you speaking out against your fellow leftwingers on this forum who are referring to Republicans and conservatives as racists, nazis, and facists on a daily and consistent basis?...if you can't mete out your criticisms equally and fairly, then go preach your leftist double standards and your hypocrisy to somebody else.(January 17, 2013 at 7:46 pm)A Theist Wrote: Because Obama and the typical whining leftwing storm troopers act like this so much.(Nazi and KKK images cut for brevity).
To A Theist:
Y'know, recently I was appointed to my city council to fill the unexpired term of my neighbour, who died after thirty years service on the board.
I am relatively new in town (less than two years).
In that time, my wife and I fought the Post Office for months to save our local office (successfully), founded a library friends organisation to support our public library in this town of 128, chased off a burglar at the Lutheran Church across the street in the middle of the night with a dog, started a children's homework help programme, and many other things.
I think you mischaracterise Nazis (fascists), the KKK (bigoted theocrats), and President Obama (a capitalist Constitutional lawyer).
I live in the most religious state outside the Bible Belt (Nebraska). I am a real open socialist. (I support publicly funded things like the military, roads, infrastructure to allow capitalistic commerce and public travel, health care for all, you know, those socialistic things that the government "redistributes wealth" for.)
I edit erotic Romance novels for pocket money. I belong to a third party political party (the Modern Whigs, originally founded by active duty and veterans sick of politicians scoring points with the public on religion and warfare). I am a disabled Navy veteran of seventeen years service, an atheist in a foxhole (well, on ships anyway).
I am openly atheist in a village which has only one other: my wife. I write letters to the local newspaper on the pernicious decline of the separation of church and state, which protects churches just as much as it does government.
And you know what? Of five candidates for the seat, I was unanimously selected by the village. The Chairman noted publicly that I was the "least divisive candidate" for the seat. The other all lived here for many years and are good, God-fearing, honest folk, but who actually never did a thing for the town.
The town knows I will not impose religious thought into council decisions. They want a pragmatic councillor. They want someone that actually respects their religious rights. (And believe it or not, I in fact do respect the rights of the religious to be that way.)
There is just so much about town government that "only a Christian" can use his faith to peer through inscrutable issues: Award a contract for a new fence around the sewage lagoon, petition the telephone company to upgrade Internet service to the town (I am only one of three that has it, the others being the general store and the library), apply for block grants from the USDA, arrange a village-wide cleanup, you know, all these things that only an understanding of the Bible can teach you.
(And I understand it better than most here, except possibly the minister of the church across the street, and we are good friends despite knowing I am an atheist. She views me as a valuable neighbour, particularly since I ran off the burglar. I didn't do it because it is a church. I did it because the church is my neighbour and I don't want robbers in my town.)
If you think that things like the Affordable Health Care Act paint President Obama as a socialist plotter, you don't understand socialism; it does not enrich insurance companies. That is capitalism. I have real socialist health care: the Veterans Administration. They pay for civilian care and will see me in the VA hospital two hundred miles away (if I can get there). I just show my military ID card in any hospital or clinic in the nation and boom. My wife is also covered with a small co-payment.
Even Theodore Roosevelt tried to get health care for all through Congress (you know, the guy who lead the charge up San Juan hill, &c). He felt that a healthy populace was vital for national security, without which you cannot raise an effective army. He was successfully opposed by folk with vested interest in pay-as-you-go health care.
It is interesting to note that our infant mortality rate in the "best nation in the world for health care" falls squarely between Albania (just emerged from sixty years of Stalinist dictatorship) and Bosnia (just emerged from devastating civil war). Our life expectancy is the lowest in the First World. (Source, CIA World Factbook).
"Socialism" to describe Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are just as much misnomers as "democracy" is a misnomer for our own nation (it is actually a democratic-republic).
Perhaps you ought consider when you pull out Godwin's Law (the longer an argument goes, the more likely someone will pull out Hitler as an argument) that you actually should consider what the terms mean that you use.
I leave you with this quote: "If you don't want tax dollars helping the sick and the poor, then it's time to stop saying you want a government based on Christian values."—John Fugelsan, political satirist.
You know, because the Jesus depicted in the New Testament was a socialist too (unless you read the Conservapedia version).
"Inside every Liberal there's a Totalitarian screaming to get out"
Quote: JohnDG...
Quote: JohnDG...
Quote:It was an awful mistake to characterize based upon religion. I should not judge any theist that way, I must remember what I said in order to change.