'St. Jack' and the Bullies in the Pulpit (Danforth ripping Religious Right ...again)

Carter quotes in his book, “the Prince of Peace,” Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Reinhold Niebuhr, that “A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength.”

Carter believes that “total, unilateral, disarmament is the imperative of our time.” He also believes that spending on superfluous weaponry is a “theft from those who hunger and are not fed.”

Carter argues, as our allies and key members of our own intelligence agencies argued, that after the years of sanctions and inspections and our overwhelming military superiority, there was never any credible danger to the United States from Iraq. He writes that if Hussein had actually possessed arsenals of chemical, or biological weapons, military leaders would have prepared for that possibility to spare tens of thousands of troop casualties that might have resulted from such weapons.(Someone forgot to clue him in on our troops wearing chemical suits) There is no evidence, he says, that the military did that. Therefore, they could not have seriously believed that Hussein actually had such weapons.

In response to the gasoline shortage that occurred during his term of office, Carter had solar panels installed at the White House.

He argues against the fundamentalism, sometimes militant fundamentalism, and the lack of tolerance of both those in Christian churches, and radical Islam. Fundamentalism, he believes, divides rather than unites us. A premise of fundamentalism is “I am right and worthy, you are wrong and condemned.” It follows, then, that since you are less worthy than me, you matter less than I do. That kind of attitude can lead, ultimately, to genocide, just as it did in Germany when Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others were “less worthy.” Fundamentalism, he says, embraces “rigidity, domination, and exclusion.” Characteristics he does not consider Christian.

He notes that In 2002 in America, 47% of women with unintended pregnancies resorted to abortion. The most prevailing common factor was poverty. There are fewer abortions in nations with access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care and enough income to meet basic needs.

According to Carter’s book, Approximately 60% of American teens have sex before 18. Statistics for Canada and industrialized European nations are about the same, but, because American teens are deprived of practical sex education, American girls are five times as likely as French girls to have a baby and seven times as likely to have an abortion. They are seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands, and five times as likely to have HIV/AIDS as those of the same age in Germany.

Carter points out that in the Bible, Jesus does speak out about both divorce and adultery, but he does not say one word about either homosexuality or abortion – the “sins” fundamentalists tend to focus on.

Carter decries the exclusiveness in today’s fundamentalist churches. Christ, he says, was inclusive. He dined with sinners. The only people He ever really railed against were the, self-righteous, the hypocrites, and those who loved money more than they did their fellow man.

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"Former Senator John Danforth gave a speech at the Bill Clinton Center in Arkansas lamenting the takeover of his party by religious extremists who don’t respect the boundary between Church and State."

whenever i hear separation of church and state i am reminded of the soviet union. perhaps danforth would love for this to be the USSA?

As if the problems in his own Denomination are not enough.

Sadly Danforth has jumped the shark.

He is exactly the type of past republican who should remain in the past.

We need to give a serious history lesson that McCarthy WAS CORRECT. In fact Jimmy Carter is a repulsive traitorous fool. He is a joke who should be exposed for the anti-american leftist idiot he is. If Carter were alive then he would have been exposed as a slime.

Danforth needs to shut up and go back into the hole he crawled out of. His politics of surrender need to remain on the ash heap of history.

Hopefully Danforth will run against Hillary in the next election cycle.

He's exactly what the Republican party needs to get itself back on track, and away from the religous nuts who have hijacked the party and convinced the pundits and pols that they matter.