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Republicans morphed by religious extremists
The Republican Party, as evidenced by its platform at the national convention, appears to have been taken over by mean-spirited and intolerant people who have the nerve to call themselves Christians but seem to have ignored the teachings of the New Testament and are content to have their brains stuck in Leviticus.
These born-again religious extremists who have morphed a once-respectable political party into a faith-based entity would likely be happier working for the regime in Iran than in an all-inclusive melting-pot America founded by immigrants seeking freedom from hatred, religious and social intolerance, bigotry and xenophobia. Showing little humility or compassion for others who are deemed “different,” they promote themselves as God’s mouthpiece on earth. What kind of God do the Republicans of the religious right believe in? Certainly not the God who encouraged us to private prayer, not to judge lest we be judged, and to love thy neighbor.
Floyd Sandford
Professor Emeritus of Biology
Coe College
Cedar Rapids
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The GOP made its bed about 30 years ago with respect to courting the former Dixiecrat/racist and fundamentalist voting blocs; now it must lie in it. While it would dearly love to cling to its 1950′s “mainstream America” image, that reality is long deceased and now the national GOP must be an apologist for for the malcontents, the racists, the homophobes, and the militant christian element that now comprise its ranks.
Oh, for this existence of a rational Third Party.
“…the national GOP must be an apologist for for the malcontents, the racists, the homophobes, and the militant christian element that now comprise its ranks.”
It would be understandable if this were indeed the case—but it’s not. Instead, the national GOP incorporated many of these aberrant views into its platform, and its nominees embrace the platform enthusiastically.
(My opinion, the only one I’m qualified to give.)
The current two-party system has become a curse on the country. The preoccupation of each party is to destroy the other, or to win at any cost (lies and distortions are rampant *) , regardless of the welfare (especially the future prospects) of the country.
* Here is just one example — I’m sure there will be examples on the other side:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0830/Paul-Ryan-s-factual-shortcuts-in-convention-speech
O.K…..so Floyd Sandford prefers to follow Obama’s Kool-Aid Club. They are like a vicious cult going after every entitlement they can get their hands on using every hook n crook. It’s to bad after fifty years of welfare nonsense the nation’s broke. Sad the only way the Dems can get a vote is to lie and buy one.
Speaking of lying – - We saw how much respect Republican leaders have for the truth in Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night. There is no need to list all the lies here. Many others, including many Republicans, have already done so.
Voters better keep in mind, if a candidate lies to achieve victory can they rely on him/her to be truthful with the public once in office ?
By the way, here’s Fox news take on the accuracy of Ryan’s speech: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
I suppose that even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then… but for Fox News to put a bit of fact-based commentary like this out under its aegis is stunning. Did Rupert have a stroke? Did the Dems make him an offer that he couldn’t refuse? Truly incredible.
Jack at least you correctly identified this leftist tripe as commentary, It sure isnt fact based reporting.
What in the world are you on about, Mr. Ahart? Talk about too much Kool-Aid. Of course it’s too much of a task for you to track down all of the blatant lies from the platform in Tampa this week, and particularly those from the very mouths of Mssrs. Romney and Ryan. That would just strain your weakened understanding to the breaking point, I suspect. Have another glassful, Mr. Ahart.
We have enough lies with Dems.
Documentation, please?
Some repeat ad nauseam the need for specifics in the Romney plan. ( though his web page is full of specifics). But with all the wild language I have not seen even one issue that someone as a substantive critique of. Exactly what legislative initiatives are so terrible?
I beg to differ, Mr. “Antony.”
Mr. Romney’s web page is full of rhetoric, and very, very short on specifics, except those that will lead to much greater problems than Dubya brought about. Some people just don’t get it. We have tried “trickle down” economic models for 20 of the past 32 years. Those models led to the economic collapse of 2008—and don’t throw real estate bubbles and Fannie and Freddie up in protest, because they are small potatoes in the economic stew.
Interestingly enough, during eight of the years of the past 32 when we did NOT follow the trickle down model, we managed to balance the budget, or very nearly so. During the Obama administration we have begun to turn the economy around, but even you should understand that it’s impossible to turn, say, a ship the size of an oil tanker around in the temporal equivalent of 250 yards; we had traveled too far on the wrong course.
Mr. Romney, it seems to me, wants to double down on the disastrous economic models of the Regan administration and both Bush administrations. If he and Mr. Ryan are elected, it seems to me that we face the very real possibility, even probability, of a total economic melt-down after the model of 1929, only worse, and completely on a world-wide scale.
But if that’s what you want, by all means vote it in. Be warned, however: those who will lie in a friendly atmosphere and on a relatively small scale will most certainly lie about larger and more important matters. We saw that with the alleged “WMDs” in Iraq, for example. How much of our treasure and how many of our lives were sacrificed in that little adventure? How much more economic disaster to we need before we reject unworkable and untenable economic models?
All I can say is this bigoted religious hate. There are no facts, no quotes upon which to base such a charge. I frankly would like to know why this is here. Its an offensive post.
So by your lights it’s a form of bigotry to show contempt for bigots?
The subject letter is both timely and appropriate. The american religious right has hijacked christianity to achieve its own poitical ends. just as the middle-eastern jihadists have hijacked Islam. I’m no fan of any sky-guy-based religion, but I think that it can be tolerated if its adherents don’t go about trying to impose their vision of “god’s will’ on innocent bystanders via political machinations. US fundamentalists/muslim extremists- two sides of the same bad penny.
Specific Jack. Cant have intelligent discussion without specifics
Michelle Bachmann
Bob VanderPlaats
The God haters are here again. Floyd is playing God by showing his hate. Professor Emeritus of _______? People look no further why the American school system has taken a dump.
These brain dead Liberal Cult extremists who have morphed a once-respectable political party into a athiest-based entity would be happier working for the regime in Cuba than in an all-inclusive melting-pot America founded by immigrants seeking freedom from hatred, religious and social intolerance, bigotry and xenophobia. For more than 200 years people from all over the globe ran to America to escape various dictatorships. No we find the same within the Demoncratic Party. Sad.
Yawn. Stop holding back and let out your real feelings and make it interesting — something new ! “Everybody knows” that the Democrats are a atheistic liberal cult and the Republicans are a religious wacko conservative cult.
How ironic that the “… America founded by immigrants seeking freedom from hatred, religious and social intolerance, bigotry and xenophobia” would in the present day have a entire political party (the GOP) that is devoted to promoting, tapping into, and exploiting those very qualities.
BTW, it is impossible to hate that which does not exist. On the other hand, it is possible to have contempt for those people who would give voice to the “will’” of a phony deity in an attempt to achieve their own earthly agenda among their superstitious fellows. Grifter Bob’s name appeared earlier in this thread, and he is indeed the best example of home-grown GOP religious exploitation that exists today.
This is pathetic, lots of over the top wailing and vague shapeless talks about something that not a soul will go out on the limb to define.
Exactly what is so extreme?
Mr Antony,
You are extreme
Roberta there you go with the accusation of extreme. Please one example that is extreme.
Roberta, I’ll help you out by using you as an example.
You are extreme
Because
You don’t believe the American Revolution was fought for liberty and freedom.
That is an extreme position. (and historically wrong)
Give specific examples to support your “You don’t believe. . . ” statement.
From Roberta
“Revolutions don’t happen because people want freedom. Revolutions happen because people can’t afford the price of food.”
From Roberta
“Oh bah humbug, Antony.
Our War for Independence had a whole lot more to do with the Navigation Acts of 1650 to 1696, than with anything someone like you would identify as “Freedom””
Notice the cause of the American Revolution morphed from a food issue to a trade issue. BOTH historically WRONG
I say something that sounds to extreme to be true and get challenged. Fine with me.
I dont have to make this stuff up.
Still waiting for something extreme to back up the wild rantings of this post.
Dear Antony,
My guess is that you have not a clue what the Navigation Acts of 1650-1696 were or the devstating effect they had on Ireland or the devastating effect they promised to have on the American colonies
People don’t fight over abstractions. They fight over resources
“People don’t fight over abstractions. They fight over resources”.
Why exactly Roberta. Liberals fight for “entitlements”. They want “free” money that usually get put on middle class tax payers backs. Politicians like Obama gladly give entitlements to buy their votes. Then they invoke every social issue like religion, same sex, and war on women to divide, conquer, and keep that vote.. The socials wars have little to nothing to do with current fiscal reality……it’s just a means to obtain more resources at somebody else’s expense.
I have never heard of the Navigation Acts. I looked them up. They were but a single thread in the tapestry of the American Revolution. That tapestry was Liberty and freedom. Read the Declaration Independence, There is a document you have never heard of. Read the Federalist Papers. Something else you have never heard of. Those documents explain in detail the ‘abstractions’ that explain the cause of the Revolutions you you refer to them, and the resulting constitution that was designed to ensure the new Nation’s citizens, liberty and freedom. Liberty and freedom from a too large, too powerful too wealth gobbling federal government.
In short to protect the people from the government.
You must be of the same background as Obama, Neither of you have a hint about the greatness of this nation, and its history that made it that way.
Here are a couple of sites (for whatever they’re worth) found in just a few minutes of searching.
http://www.publiceye.org/research/directories/dem_grp_undermine.html
and
http://www.ccofal.org/alabama/conservative-voter-guide.html
Here’s a interesting video/read, “The Resurrection of Ralph Reed”. Watch or Click on “full transcript”.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-the-resurrection-of-ralph-reed/
I exercised a subjective loyalty to the Republican Party for sixty years. Finally, after some objective reasoning I find myself outside of that political enigma. My exodus was due to the few anti-Tea Party elite who control the G.O.P. and not due to the faithful who far outshine their adversaries across the aisle.
In describing these elite members, Sandford tells us they are ‘mean-spirited’ and ‘intolerant’ extremists. Must we then draw the conclusion that the Progressive elite are not ‘cut from that same cloth?’
Let us gander at ‘mean-spirited.’ Lets see…..a Ryan look-alike pushes a wheelchair-bound elderly lady over a cliff. Or…Romney is described as a ‘murderer.’ Or… how about those Progressives who tell us Romney wants our children to drink dirty water and breath dirty air?
Sandford is correct, America used to be an all-inclusive melting pot of immigrants seeking freedom from hatred, intolerance, bigotry, and xenophobia. Is he not aware of the simple fact that we are no longer that ‘melting pot?’ Progressives have seen to it that ‘diversity’ is of greater importance than unity and oneness. Diversity is preached in our public schools and liberal colleges. Such a strategy is effective in staging ‘class warfare’ and promoting envy and intolerance under the guise of tolerance. Progressive hatred and intolerance are expressed in the preceding paragraph. And lets us consider the constant words and actions espoused by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson..they strike me as being ‘mean-spirited’ and xenophobic.
The argument Progressives use against their ‘enemies’ (their word, not mine) is that Republicans have little humility or compassion. Such dangerous rhetoric reveals the disdain Progressives have for their foes as well as a lack of concern for our national debt and what it means to our childrens’ futures.
A lot of people exercised a loyalty to the Democratic Party. That is changing quickly.
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/27/13505045-citizens-united-seeks-to-turn-the-hope-and-the-change-on-president-obama?
In Bossie’s movie, an advance copy of which he shared with NBC News, a parade of 40 voters—all of whom say they voted for Obama in 2008 and many with hard luck stories – vent about bailouts, subsidies for the wealthy, health care and their utter disillusionment with the president.
Let’s all face it, there are extremists on both sides of the aisle. I pay little attention to the negative ads that either party puts out, and if you disect the speeches of both parties you should agree that neither is telling us the truth. If Professor Sandford cannot see this, maybe he should stick to Biology and leave Government to someone else. When someone disagrees with someones opinions, life style, choices, it does not make one a bigot. A little civility in what all candidates say would be greatly apprciated by all.
Mr Frank,
On this particular issue—the influence of religion on a specific political party—who are the extremists on the Democratic side of the aisle?
I don’t see any Democrats trying to pass legislation that would enable, for example, Unitarians to force their religious beliefs and practices on anybody else. I do, however, see Republicans trying to do exactly that. From prayer in the public schools to creationism to censoring school textbooks to abortion and reproductive health care to equal rights for homosexuals I see Republicans forcing the views of a narrowly defined conservative Christianty on the rest of us regardless of what any of the rest of us might believe.
As for disagreeing with someone elses’s opinions, life style, or choices making or not making one a bigot, it all depends