What would it take to get the Republican party off Morality and Religion......
Pacomc79
Posts: 9,404
and back on to small effective government and responsible economics?
Clearly the Republican party is in the toilet, it's been moving this way for quite a while but they still seemed economically focused in the early 90's.
Now they've essentially abandoned any real "republican" values so to speak and have moved on to the legislation of morality and big government. Also they have all but abandoned sound economic policy save brief subtle moments.
What would it take to get that party out of bed with fundamentalism and back to its responsible principals of economic freedom?
Clearly the Republican party is in the toilet, it's been moving this way for quite a while but they still seemed economically focused in the early 90's.
Now they've essentially abandoned any real "republican" values so to speak and have moved on to the legislation of morality and big government. Also they have all but abandoned sound economic policy save brief subtle moments.
What would it take to get that party out of bed with fundamentalism and back to its responsible principals of economic freedom?
My Girlfriend said to me..."How many guitars do you need?" and I replied...."How many pairs of shoes do you need?" She got really quiet.
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I find it sad that, every time I read about a candidate in the local or national media, the first two questions asked by the media right now are about abortion and gay marriage. This makes me wonder if the fiscal conservatives are being shut out by the media before even being able to publicize a platform. I can understand why the media does this though. You don't see many people showing up to a "March for a balanced budget."
What would it take? That's easy... all it would take is those voters who believe the lies of politicians... being moral and having values to quit buying into those lies. Wake up, fools... they are politicians.
Hail, Hail!!!
hmmm, i dunno, are libertarians 'electable'?
sad that it's always 'not the year' to vote 3rd parties for both sides
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Religion is a different issue.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
The Republicans will return to small government and responsible economics when the voters do. In other words, never.
Vote Libertarian. You won't win, but at least you'll be able to sleep at night.
Yes, but I suspect the original poster's point was about enforcing a specific brand of morality.
Every year is the year to vote 3rd parties.
You know, it's odd. For all the complaining we all do here, I suspect that 80% of the people here tend to vote predominantly for one of the two major parties. Maybe I'm wrong.
Sadly, I don't think you are wrong. I guess they just like having so much to complain about.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
I do tend to wonder what questions people are being asked. It just seems like to me the focus is lacking. Why are "abortion and gay marriage" the top issues? With taxes, spending, eminent domain, the federal government's involvement in public schools, the lack of savings in the average American household and their debt levels, decreasing dependance on fossil fuels especially the imported variety....I mean what the heck is that? That's a bunch of topics that are a hell of a lot more relavent than gay marriage or abortion as far as that which is really hurting our nation.
I'm all about religious freedom, I'm all about economic and social freedom, I just don't get why these canidates are worried about offending thier "base". The base of both of these parties have about a 7 second attention span....offend away, tell them that abortions legality and homosexuality even if you disagree strongly with both really don't amount to a hill of beans regarding the state of the nation.
You're right but if more people were brave enough to change the way they think when it comes to how they vote, then maybe 2008 would be the 3rd party year.
I don't think that it's so much about the voters not wanting it, but just an inherent part of being in power today. Politicians from all sides don't get into governing for the sake of governing the best, they get in it for the power and money associated with the position.
We will never ever see a politician that would be willing to trim thousands of government jobs and departments... where would they get their friends and contributers jobs at?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Maybe it's because the media doesn't bring up these issues often enough if at all.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
point taken and very true. I'm really just trying to wrap my head around why the so called "conservative base" seems to be focused (at least in polling data) on primarily fundamentalist christian ideals. It's not that I have a problem with anyones religious freedom to think that way, it's just that a theocracy is a terrible way to run a "free" country. Then again it doesn't seem like that's what they seem to want.
well on Mcneil/Leherer but yeah I can't really expect most of the public to sit through a debate show on public television with taupe walls......TAUPE!!
Are you kidding me, it's like a parody of itself. Great show, but taupe walls?
losing the presidency while running a fundamentalist.
Meh...this is part of it, yes. But a politician who would run on trimming jobs and government is now asking for political death. The average voter has no practical reason to want smaller government.
When politics becomes the struggle of extracting rights rather than protecting rights, this is exactly what you're going to get: subsets of the population turning against each other and demanding what's theirs while proclaiming offense. It's all about power, nothing about principle. That's the game, as it stands today, and both sides are playing it exactly the way it should be played.
A friggin miracle is what it would take. Divine intervention maybe.
the other foot in the gutter
sweet smell that they adore
I think I'd rather smother
-The Replacements-
Tell that to Bob Dole, or George Bush Sr.
the majority of americans don't want to think about the issues. They don't have time or aren't interested. so they default to 2 or 3 issues...war, abortion, homosexuality...or sometimes even just a letter (R) or (D).
good point
Maybe because about 90% of the country identifies itself as Christian.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Sure but that's just because they happen to be born into it. 90% of the middle east is muslim, I'm sure 90% of India is Hindu etc. etc. If you value freedom and liberty you have to respect that other people are going to believe differently and allow them to do so. Part of enjoying freedom of religion means not using the police power of government to enforce religious ideals.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris15mar15,0,5899452.story?coll=la-opinion-center
God's dupes
Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics -- and are every bit as delusional.
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."
March 15, 2007
PETE STARK, a California Democrat, appears to be the first congressman in U.S. history to acknowledge that he doesn't believe in God. In a country in which 83% of the population thinks that the Bible is the literal or "inspired" word of the creator of the universe, this took political courage.
Of course, one can imagine that Cicero's handlers in the 1st century BC lost some sleep when he likened the traditional accounts of the Greco-Roman gods to the "dreams of madmen" and to the "insane mythology of Egypt."
Mythology is where all gods go to die, and it seems that Stark has secured a place in American history simply by admitting that a fresh grave should be dug for the God of Abraham — the jealous, genocidal, priggish and self-contradictory tyrant of the Bible and the Koran. Stark is the first of our leaders to display a level of intellectual honesty befitting a consul of ancient Rome. Bravo.
The truth is, there is not a person on Earth who has a good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead or that Muhammad spoke to the angel Gabriel in a cave. And yet billions of people claim to be certain about such things. As a result, Iron Age ideas about everything high and low — sex, cosmology, gender equality, immortal souls, the end of the world, the validity of prophecy, etc. — continue to divide our world and subvert our national discourse. Many of these ideas, by their very nature, hobble science, inflame human conflict and squander scarce resources.
Of course, no religion is monolithic. Within every faith one can see people arranged along a spectrum of belief. Picture concentric circles of diminishing reasonableness: At the center, one finds the truest of true believers — the Muslim jihadis, for instance, who not only support suicidal terrorism but who are the first to turn themselves into bombs; or the Dominionist Christians, who openly call for homosexuals and blasphemers to be put to death.
Outside this sphere of maniacs, one finds millions more who share their views but lack their zeal. Beyond them, one encounters pious multitudes who respect the beliefs of their more deranged brethren but who disagree with them on small points of doctrine — of course the world is going to end in glory and Jesus will appear in the sky like a superhero, but we can't be sure it will happen in our lifetime.
Out further still, one meets religious moderates and liberals of diverse hues — people who remain supportive of the basic scheme that has balkanized our world into Christians, Muslims and Jews, but who are less willing to profess certainty about any article of faith. Is Jesus really the son of God? Will we all meet our grannies again in heaven? Moderates and liberals are none too sure.
Those on this spectrum view the people further toward the center as too rigid, dogmatic and hostile to doubt, and they generally view those outside as corrupted by sin, weak-willed or unchurched.
The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin's Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.
People of all faiths — and none — regularly change their lives for the better, for good and bad reasons. And yet such transformations are regularly put forward as evidence in support of a specific religious creed. President Bush has cited his own sobriety as suggestive of the divinity of Jesus. No doubt Christians do get sober from time to time — but Hindus (polytheists) and atheists do as well. How, therefore, can any thinking person imagine that his experience of sobriety lends credence to the idea that a supreme being is watching over our world and that Jesus is his son?
There is no question that many people do good things in the name of their faith — but there are better reasons to help the poor, feed the hungry and defend the weak than the belief that an Imaginary Friend wants you to do it. Compassion is deeper than religion. As is ecstasy. It is time that we acknowledge that human beings can be profoundly ethical — and even spiritual — without pretending to know things they do not know.
Let us hope that Stark's candor inspires others in our government to admit their doubts about God. Indeed, it is time we broke this spell en masse. Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain — from cosmology to psychology to economics — has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.
if they could dump the fundies id be republican in a heartbeat. but the fundies scare me more than the commies.
only problem is george bush won... TWICE.
this is true. i think it's sadly becos most americans arent quite intellectually up to the task of even understanding budgetary or economic issues. we're talking about a nation that cannot even forgo a widescreen plasma tv in order to put a little cash in savings for retirement. deficit spending has created the illusion that the government can just make up money and it's not a big deal, so what does it matter how much they spend? for a group of people with this kind of fiscal intelligence, the ability to even comprehend the technical or subtle difference between the economic policies of, say, al gore and george bush is simply not there. so they resort to something easy they can understand to distinguish... are they "like me"? do they kill babies or like homos? etc, etc. it's an easy way for people too stupid to understand nuance to figure out who to vote for, and there's enough of them that intelligent voters have become an ignored minority.