Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are
furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles
unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe
themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are
you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote
Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and
mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at
a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian
Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in
attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing
groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative
Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with
unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy
"Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the
jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the
group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an
expert in constitutional law.

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping boy, Ronald
Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. True, Kennedy
supplied the swing vote in Bush vs. Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the
2000 election to George W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority
opinions invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the
execution of juveniles.

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld "Marxist, Leninist, satanic
principles drawn from foreign law."

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his "bottom-line"
solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s: "He had a slogan, and it worked
very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘No man, no problem.’"

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. "‘No man, no problem,’"
he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This
is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which
is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He
speculated that Vieira couldn’t possibly be urging the killing of Supreme
Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by
DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for
[Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior," and Sen. John
Cornyn,
R Texas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to
"engage in violence."

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what would be the
point of invoking one of the 20th century’s great monsters if not to
sanction violence? The avowed goal of this outfit is "Christian
Reconstructionism," the notion that the U.S. government derives its
ultimate authority not from "the consent of the governed," as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as
interpreted by Puritan divines.

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an official
faith. If these people get their way—and Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian
Catholic sect, have introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the
power to rule on religious issues—an established church would be exactly
what we’d get.

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony, spiritual father of
Christian Reconstructionism, favored a Taliban-like, Old Testament moral
code, with homosexuals, abortion doctors and women guilty of
"unchastity" put to death.

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric should be a
wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane Majority. "True
Believers" are an enduring human type. Zealous theocrats afflict every
society from Afghanistan to Arkansas. They always know the absolute
truth and strive to inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually
revolve around sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious
police who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire
because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the national
discourse has been driven by persons whose moral/theological views are
somewhere between childish and insane. Most others either tend toward
partial agreement on "wedge issues" like gay marriage or are too polite
in the ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the
metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence, politicians
like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting with extremists.
It’s time to remind these jokers that regardless of how "devout" they
claim to be, this is the United States of America and the rest of us are
not obliged to pretend that their political opinions are sanctioned by
God, nor even that they are sane.

Jim,
I am curious, why do you cut and paste so many political news articles in
rec.boats?

What are you trying to achieve?


"Jim," wrote in message
...
Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are
furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles
unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe
themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are
you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote
Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and
mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at
a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian
Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in
attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing
groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative
Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with
unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy
"Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the
jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the
group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an
expert in constitutional law.

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping boy, Ronald
Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. True, Kennedy
supplied the swing vote in Bush vs. Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the
2000 election to George W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority
opinions invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the
execution of juveniles.

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld "Marxist, Leninist, satanic
principles drawn from foreign law."

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his "bottom-line"
solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s: "He had a slogan, and it worked
very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘No man, no problem.’"

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. "‘No man, no problem,’"
he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This
is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which
is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He
speculated that Vieira couldn’t possibly be urging the killing of Supreme
Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by
DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for
[Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior," and Sen. John
Cornyn,
R Texas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to
"engage in violence."

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what would be the
point of invoking one of the 20th century’s great monsters if not to
sanction violence? The avowed goal of this outfit is "Christian
Reconstructionism," the notion that the U.S. government derives its
ultimate authority not from "the consent of the governed," as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as
interpreted by Puritan divines.

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an official
faith. If these people get their way—and Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian
Catholic sect, have introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the
power to rule on religious issues—an established church would be exactly
what we’d get.

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony, spiritual father of
Christian Reconstructionism, favored a Taliban-like, Old Testament moral
code, with homosexuals, abortion doctors and women guilty of
"unchastity" put to death.

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric should be a
wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane Majority. "True
Believers" are an enduring human type. Zealous theocrats afflict every
society from Afghanistan to Arkansas. They always know the absolute
truth and strive to inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually
revolve around sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious
police who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire
because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the national
discourse has been driven by persons whose moral/theological views are
somewhere between childish and insane. Most others either tend toward
partial agreement on "wedge issues" like gay marriage or are too polite
in the ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the
metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence, politicians
like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting with extremists.
It’s time to remind these jokers that regardless of how "devout" they
claim to be, this is the United States of America and the rest of us are
not obliged to pretend that their political opinions are sanctioned by
God, nor even that they are sane.

No, it's me wrote:

Jim,
I am curious, why do you cut and paste so many political news articles in
rec.boats?

What are you trying to achieve?

Read the header


"Jim," wrote in message
...

Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are
furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles
unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe
themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are
you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote
Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and
mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at
a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian
Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in
attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing
groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative
Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with
unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy
"Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the
jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the
group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an
expert in constitutional law.

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping boy, Ronald
Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. True, Kennedy
supplied the swing vote in Bush vs. Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the
2000 election to George W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority
opinions invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the
execution of juveniles.

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld "Marxist, Leninist, satanic
principles drawn from foreign law."

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his "bottom-line"
solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s: "He had a slogan, and it worked
very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘No man, no problem.’"

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. "‘No man, no problem,’"
he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This
is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which
is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He
speculated that Vieira couldn’t possibly be urging the killing of Supreme
Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by
DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for
[Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior," and Sen. John
Cornyn,
R Texas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to
"engage in violence."

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what would be the
point of invoking one of the 20th century’s great monsters if not to
sanction violence? The avowed goal of this outfit is "Christian
Reconstructionism," the notion that the U.S. government derives its
ultimate authority not from "the consent of the governed," as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as
interpreted by Puritan divines.

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an official
faith. If these people get their way—and Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian
Catholic sect, have introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the
power to rule on religious issues—an established church would be exactly
what we’d get.

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony, spiritual father of
Christian Reconstructionism, favored a Taliban-like, Old Testament moral
code, with homosexuals, abortion doctors and women guilty of
"unchastity" put to death.

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric should be a
wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane Majority. "True
Believers" are an enduring human type. Zealous theocrats afflict every
society from Afghanistan to Arkansas. They always know the absolute
truth and strive to inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually
revolve around sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious
police who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire
because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the national
discourse has been driven by persons whose moral/theological views are
somewhere between childish and insane. Most others either tend toward
partial agreement on "wedge issues" like gay marriage or are too polite
in the ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the
metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence, politicians
like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting with extremists.
It’s time to remind these jokers that regardless of how "devout" they
claim to be, this is the United States of America and the rest of us are
not obliged to pretend that their political opinions are sanctioned by
God, nor even that they are sane.

Are you saying you want to wake up the Sane Majority?


"Jim," wrote in message
...
No, it's me wrote:

Jim,
I am curious, why do you cut and paste so many political news articles in
rec.boats?

What are you trying to achieve?

Read the header


"Jim," wrote in message
...

Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are
furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles
unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe
themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are
you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote
Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and
mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at
a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian
Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in
attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing
groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative
Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with
unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy
"Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled
the
jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the
group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an
expert in constitutional law.

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping boy, Ronald
Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. True, Kennedy
supplied the swing vote in Bush vs. Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the
2000 election to George W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority
opinions invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the
execution of juveniles.

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld "Marxist, Leninist, satanic
principles drawn from foreign law."

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his "bottom-line"
solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s: "He had a slogan, and it
worked
very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘No man, no problem.’"

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. "‘No man, no problem,’"
he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This
is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which
is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He
speculated that Vieira couldn’t possibly be urging the killing of Supreme
Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by
DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for
[Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior," and Sen. John
Cornyn,
R Texas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to
"engage in violence."

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what would be the
point of invoking one of the 20th century’s great monsters if not to
sanction violence? The avowed goal of this outfit is "Christian
Reconstructionism," the notion that the U.S. government derives its
ultimate authority not from "the consent of the governed," as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as
interpreted by Puritan divines.

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an official
faith. If these people get their way—and Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian
Catholic sect, have introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the
power to rule on religious issues—an established church would be exactly
what we’d get.

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony, spiritual father of
Christian Reconstructionism, favored a Taliban-like, Old Testament moral
code, with homosexuals, abortion doctors and women guilty of
"unchastity" put to death.

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric should be a
wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane Majority. "True
Believers" are an enduring human type. Zealous theocrats afflict every
society from Afghanistan to Arkansas. They always know the absolute
truth and strive to inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually
revolve around sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious
police who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire
because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the national
discourse has been driven by persons whose moral/theological views are
somewhere between childish and insane. Most others either tend toward
partial agreement on "wedge issues" like gay marriage or are too polite
in the ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the
metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence, politicians
like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting with extremists.
It’s time to remind these jokers that regardless of how "devout" they
claim to be, this is the United States of America and the rest of us are
not obliged to pretend that their political opinions are sanctioned by
God, nor even that they are sane.

No, it's me wrote:
Are you saying you want to wake up the Sane Majority?
Yes -- most of whom boat


"Jim," wrote in message
...

No, it's me wrote:


Jim,
I am curious, why do you cut and paste so many political news articles in
rec.boats?

What are you trying to achieve?

Read the header


"Jim," wrote in message
.. .


Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are
furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles
unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe
themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are
you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote
Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and
mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at
a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian
Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in
attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing
groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative
Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with
unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy
"Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled
the
jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the
group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an
expert in constitutional law.

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping boy, Ronald
Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. True, Kennedy
supplied the swing vote in Bush vs. Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the
2000 election to George W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority
opinions invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the
execution of juveniles.

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld "Marxist, Leninist, satanic
principles drawn from foreign law."

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his "bottom-line"
solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s: "He had a slogan, and it
worked
very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘No man, no problem.’"

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. "‘No man, no problem,’"
he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This
is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which
is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He
speculated that Vieira couldn’t possibly be urging the killing of Supreme
Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by
DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for
[Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior," and Sen. John
Cornyn,
R Texas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to
"engage in violence."

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what would be the
point of invoking one of the 20th century’s great monsters if not to
sanction violence? The avowed goal of this outfit is "Christian
Reconstructionism," the notion that the U.S. government derives its
ultimate authority not from "the consent of the governed," as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as
interpreted by Puritan divines.

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an official
faith. If these people get their way—and Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian
Catholic sect, have introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the
power to rule on religious issues—an established church would be exactly
what we’d get.

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony, spiritual father of
Christian Reconstructionism, favored a Taliban-like, Old Testament moral
code, with homosexuals, abortion doctors and women guilty of
"unchastity" put to death.

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric should be a
wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane Majority. "True
Believers" are an enduring human type. Zealous theocrats afflict every
society from Afghanistan to Arkansas. They always know the absolute
truth and strive to inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually
revolve around sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious
police who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire
because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the national
discourse has been driven by persons whose moral/theological views are
somewhere between childish and insane. Most others either tend toward
partial agreement on "wedge issues" like gay marriage or are too polite
in the ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the
metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence, politicians
like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting with extremists.
It’s time to remind these jokers that regardless of how "devout" they
claim to be, this is the United States of America and the rest of us are
not obliged to pretend that their political opinions are sanctioned by
God, nor even that they are sane.