Posted on 11/29/2004 11:55:35 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
IN A recent speech at Tufts University, Andy Rooney reflected on the election and said, according to The Tufts Daily, that Christian fundamentalism is a result of "a lack of education. They haven't been exposed to what the world has to offer."
Those comments as well as the identification of the "bigoted Christian redneck" after Election Day in various editorials left me wondering: Where do these "liberal elites" get this fictional image of Christians? When did this distorted perspective begin in our cultural history? How can I work to bridge this gap?
Rooney is reflective of the "liberal elite" in America that suffers from an odd disconnect with much of America and those who voted for President Bush. With respect to Isaac Asimov, I have decided to create "The Three Political Laws of Christian Fundamentalists" for the confused "liberal elite":
A Christian is a human being capable of independent, logical reasoning to the highest order.
A Christian is not a mindless entity seeking to obey public religious leaders, such as Pat Robertson, John Paul II, or Ralph Reed, when voting on the future of America.
A Christian must protect his own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Bible.
These laws might serve a good base as these elites attempt to reach out to those in "Jesusland" over the next four years and work to correct their lenses that only allows them to see "homophobic knuckle-draggers."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
As frustrating as it is, the Bible predicted it a long time ago with perfect clarity. It makes it clear that the most obvious truths will sound like foolishness to non-believers. It makes it clear that Christ's message will divide, not unite. It makes it clear that His followers will indeed be persecuted and hated by non-believers. It's still maddening, especially because their seething hatred is so illogical and so totally without reason, but it has been clearly foretold. That's what I try to fall back on and take comfort in.
MM
Yes. What we in America endure today is far short of what Christians suffered in past ages and even in Islamic nations today.
Our forefathers would still be upset at the persecution and bigotry that goes on today in America.
Godless communism merged with hedonistic pleasures during the Baby Boom. The institutional effort to get God out of the public eye is a post WWII agenda. Freedom of religion DOES NOT MEAN freedom FROM religion.
Next comes the time when we trip up and crash down. Anyone have the reference I'm interpreting/paraphrasing?
Right... Christians are uneducated, blind and easy to command. Where have we heard that before? Liberals will never get it. <snort
Without looking it up, I think it is Daniel's vision in Daniel 9. But the clay and the iron were mixed together in this final civilization -- meaning clay and iron don't mix. It is the portrait of a divided kingdom. The iron is a left over from the Roman Empire that was out of iron, the clay is something I can't remember. Point is that there is a world wide cultural divide - as we Freepers evidence every time we log on to this site.
Two very good questions. America hasn't been this caustic toward Christianity ever!
Saying that the Bible predicts men will reject Christ isn't really the answer here. We know that men will consider the spiritual as foolishness.
When did that distorted mantra that all Christians are uneducated bigots, begin? I personally think it has been part of the overall "sexual revolution", especially the gay rights movement. Now, anyone who considers another's sexuality as wrong has been played off as some kind of uneducated Christian bigot.
To be an "elite" means that you think of yourself and your ideas, as far superior to others. This lack of humility causes an elite to condemn others because he finds no basis, using his own vocabulary, for their values.
..............The short answer is that it was not the Communist Party that made the left, but the (small 'c') communist Idea. It is the idea, as old as the Tower of Babel, that humanity can build a highway to Heaven. It is the idea of returning to an Earthly Paradise, a garden of social harmony and justice. It is the idea that inspires Jewish radicals and liberals of a tikkun olam, a healing of the cosmic order. It is the Enlightenment illusion of the perfectibility of man. And it is the siren song of the serpent in Eden: "Eat of this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you shall be as God."
The intoxicating vision of a social redemption achieved by Them-this is what creates the left, and makes the believers so self-righteous.
And it did so long before Karl Marx. It is the vision of this redemption that continues to inspire and animate them despite the still-fresh ruins of their Communist dreams.
It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady. It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.
No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.
Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. .........
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39611fde5615.htm
There are Jews who are religious and observant of their faith. There are also those who are secular atheists or agnostic at best (Larry King considers himself agnostic).
Some atheist "Jews" like Art Spiegelman (who would fall on the left politically, he even had an exclusive audience with John Kerry, to kick the tires so to speak) have been so bold as to ask what is there that can be examined to "unite" Jews as a culture without falling back on religion or the Holocaust.
They are like people without a nation. They turn their back on their faith yet they still want to "belong".
The best home that a man constructs for himself will only be used by him for upwards of 100 years. Of which he will spend roughly one third of that time asleep.
Perhaps they should be giving some thought to the possible existence of an afterlife.
Also they should realize that constructing a society where the government "gives" everything to the citizen can also take away "everything" or control conditions by which they bestow things. A man who provides for himself does not get lazy or comfortable. He is accountable and can reap the rewards. The ant and the grasshoper is not a new tale.
Nice, thanks
Rooney's memory will go down in history with the same respect as Rather's.
That's one reason for keeping a low profile. Let 'em continue to underestimate us, and underbreed themselves out of power.
Yes. Religion must seem so messy to socialists, communists and new world order types.
In fact, such a contention is a result of a lack of education--and this is a result of crippling stupidity since the necessary education is available to all.
Yes, seething hatred was what drove the leaders of that day to have Christ Crucified. They couldn't stand to have someone saying the truth and that they were responsible for their actions. Liberals are the same way as they show their seething hatred for President George W. Bush; calling him a 'Liar' and an 'idiot' at the same time.
Right now, their seething hatred is on Condi Rice. Why? Because she is a african-american woman who believes in responsibilities and civic duties and this exposes liberals as the lawless hedonists that they are.
That's why I recommend praying for the President, the administration, congress and our country; because folks who stand up for responsibility and duty are vilified daily by lawless men and women. Those who uphold the Constitution and honor, are slandered and insulted.
In a number of cases, federal appeals court nominees were vilified simply because they were "Christians" or "Catholics".
Yes, it is predicted and predicable that the righteous will be vilified. Let the light of Christ within them shine forth as the noon day sun, and let the enemies that slander them not be able to stand before them, be scattered, and seen no more.
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