Captain Oblivious

Al Gore, speaking at a MoveOn PAC rally about the extreme right wing crusade against the filibuster:

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God's will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against "people of faith."

How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forbears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throw-back to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction."

Damn straight.

I have absolutely no respect for anyone who claims the United States of America is a Christian nation. Morons, each and every one of them. These people are loudly proclaiming their ignorance, arrogant in their stupidity, showing off for all to see their inability to reason at even the most elementary level. And, no, I will most definitely *not* retract that statement because it is based in fact. Anyone making such a claim is demonstrating a complete and total ignorance of basic American history. This nation was founded deliberately as a non-religious country. The people who came here were quite well aware of the effects of mixing religion with politics, and more often than not they were religious minorities in their countries of origin who were fleeing religious persecution. This radical right wing notion that the separation of church and state is a myth is so incredibly stupid that it would be funny were it not for the millions of gullible and/or ignorant people who believe it.

Why do liberals argue about the presence of the word "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? It's harmless, right? Why do progressives roll their eyes when told that the presence of the word "God" on our money is proof of the religious, no Christian, nature of our country? It isn't hurting anybody, right? Why be such an over-sensitive whiner? Because symbols matter! Every time liberals and moderates let the extremists in the Religious Right sneak in another reference to the so-called Christianity of our country is another step the dominionists gain in their battle to turn this nation into a theocracy.

It can't happen? Oh, really? Are you watching the GOP? Did you see them interfere in a family's medical decision because of their so-called culture of life (you want to support life, how about feeding the starving instead of hypocritically giving another tax cut to the rich)? Pay close attention to Bill Frist, Tom Delay, and Karl Rove as they claim that democrats are anti-faith, prejudiced against Christians, because we don't want to give radical nut-cases lifetime appointments to the federal courts. See, these right wing Christians are persecuted whenever they aren't given complete control over every aspect of everyone else's lives. News flash: despite the attempt of the born-again fundamentalists to hijack the term, the definition of a Christian is one who believes Jesus was the Christ. There are a heck of a lot of liberals who believe in Jesus, but don't believe America should be a theocracy. In fact, over 80% of the population of this country believes in Jesus. Oddly, there are just as many liberal Christians as there are conservative Christians. They're just quieter about it. Maybe they believe faith is a personal matter, not something to be exploited for political or financial gain. What a crazy idea...