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When Christianity goes bad.

Fenton Lum said:
I don't see it, sorry. Christianity stated flat out it was waging a war for the souls of the "godless" healthens. Pretty explicit.
Click to expand...

In reality though, it was just used as an excuse to conquer and pillage. We know that. And, the indigenous Americans were pretty damned good at conquering and pillaging. They just never needed to use their religion as an excuse. They just did it.

I'm not sure why Europeans needed to sell the idea. But, they did. Genghis Khan certainly never needed to convince his people that god wanted him to take over everyone else. They were happy with just doing it. Euros seem to have issues with it.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Religion is like a penis.
It's wonderful that you have one.
It's even wonderful that you're proud of yours.
But please don't go whipping it out and shaking it around in public,
and don't ever dare to try shoving it down my throat.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've seen that before. It's ok to have religion so long as you don't express it in anyway that somebody easily offended might actually hear it.

Anyway, already given this bait thread too much attention.
 
Fenton Lum said:
No denying, but they did not take over the world, or try to.
Click to expand...

Ahhhh...low technology civilizations take over their world plenty.
Whenever a higher technology civilization encounters a lower technology civilization, the latter is likely to suffer, but make no mistake, even the lower technology civilizations make use of lower hanging fruit.
 
Fenton Lum said:
I don't see it, sorry. Christianity stated flat out it was waging a war for the souls of the "godless" healthens. Pretty explicit.
Click to expand...

Get better eyeglasses then. I say that because we're only arguing scale and scope of technology and its reach, nothing more.
Native American lore is rife with stories of conquest.
 
X Factor said:
Sincerely confused. Did you not express some "worry" over other Christians you disagreed with? Is it judgment or acceptance you're advocating here?
Click to expand...

I believe that people should live for God, if they choose to. Not all people worship the same God I do, and I understand that. If my actions affected others, you and I might have something to debate about. My actions, which are between me and God, are up to me and God. Others' actions, that ultimately affect potentially millions of others, are another thing.

If Roy Moore wanted to believe a certain way, and it affected him and no one else, that would be between him and his God. But when his decisions affect others, then yes, they can become worrisome to myself and others. Same with Trump. He has made decisions and (tried) to pass laws that would affect others, based on hatred, bigotry and flat-out ignorance. Why would one not worry when decisions affect a large majority of people?

Me? I'm a nobody. I affect nothing outside of my own little bubble. But Trump? His decisions affect millions.
 
bearpoker said:
Obama kept us out of more wars. He behaved like a gentleman. He didn't name call. He behaved like an adult at all times. No one ever accused him of grabbing their *****. If you're a Trump supporter, I can see why don't like him much.
Click to expand...

We were at war the entire time Obama was president. When our men and women are dying on the battlefield in other countries or defending this country we are at war. You can lie and call it a police action or our brave soldiers advisors but that is all it is ONE BIG LIE. Just because the Wussy in Chief and our politically correct blame someone else congress don't have the balls to do their job and declare war on these people attacking our country and/or allies does not mean it is not a war. The brave soldier ordered into another country to fight our enemy is at war whether or not our wussy politicians will admit the truth or not.
 
cuban smokes said:
no matter if one believes in religion, or not, IMO all religion should be kept out of politics & all politics should be kept out of religion.

IMO people that mix the two are setting themselves up for disappointment .............. among other bull**** ...............


the concept should be obvious by observing how ****ed up the GOP is with the religious right crap, which make the religious right look like a bunch of Satanists, considering they are in league with the GOP ................... it is very ugly & IMO Jesus would not approve ............
Click to expand...

JesussaysSCHMUCK.jpg
 
Superfly said:
I believe that people should live for God, if they choose to. Not all people worship the same God I do, and I understand that. If my actions affected others, you and I might have something to debate about. My actions, which are between me and God, are up to me and God. Others' actions, that ultimately affect potentially millions of others, are another thing.

If Roy Moore wanted to believe a certain way, and it affected him and no one else, that would be between him and his God. But when his decisions affect others, then yes, they can become worrisome to myself and others. Same with Trump. He has made decisions and (tried) to pass laws that would affect others, based on hatred, bigotry and flat-out ignorance. Why would one not worry when decisions affect a large majority of people?

Me? I'm a nobody. I affect nothing outside of my own little bubble. But Trump? His decisions affect millions.
Click to expand...

I'm not referring to Trump. I'm talking about other Christians.
 
X Factor said:
Let's just save some time, Dems good, Repubs bad. That about cover it?
Click to expand...

No, that is not remotely what I think at all.
But since I am indeed more of a liberal than anything else, the party that I see as having the potential to be responsive would be the Democratic Party, which is a party that infuriates the Hell out of me because at present, it is a spineless mish mash of Wall Street shills, corporate toadies, limousine liberal nimby's, Third Way appeasers and hypocrites.
But still, warts and all, they are more likely to help us get single payer health care, affordable higher education, marriage equality, an end to private prisons and the entire "school to prison pipeline", environmental responsibility, sensible basic gun laws, and a generally more acceptable approach to dealing with immigration, plus more.

Put it another way, they are not out to tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy.
I didn't sign up for that crap.

And if you're going to play dumb and act like you don't know what that last item is, I'll know you're in flat out denial, and that's about you, not me, so you'll be debating your own reflection on that one.
Anyone else on this board that knows what I mean by "tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy" might even click LIKES on this post if I am lucky, to indicate that they too know what I am talking about with regard to today's Republican Party.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Well said, but I want you to please acknowledge which party it was that responded more positively overall to that "last large scale questioning of our authoritarian system".
I grant you everything you said, that it has value and much validity, however the moment one says that the vote is meaningless, the party with a more draconian bent CAN AND WILL seize upon that apathy and leverage it to lock the yoke we wear and tighten the screws.

Political parties get retooled all the time, throughout history, indeed throughout our own modern era.
We have an opportunity to do with our own liberal party what the Tea Party did with the GOP, if we do not waste it.
If we do waste that opportunity we may not get another one in this generation.

The vote may not matter as much as we'd all like it to matter but it does matter. Elections have consequences, because if they didn't, wealthy authoritarians wouldn't be pouring BILLIONS into making sure their vote mattered and ours did not.
Click to expand...

When "both" parties do the will of and cater to the Wall Street/donor/"job creator" class alone, all we the people do is toggle back and forth from one corporate state lapdog political party’s illusion to the other; the power structure has it covered both ways. Hell, Hillary’s campaign staff are now lobbyists calling on the Trump administration on behalf of the same folks they would have had she won. Goldman Sachs is always in the white house "either" way, the system and the unsubstantial people can be controlled, as the Powell Memorandum touched upon, by controlling jobs and wages of workers, and by manipulating the economic system.

Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC has “allowed” us to go from 50 some odd companies in the media game back in the 1980s, to six multinational corporations controlling ~90% of what Americans see, hear, read, and due to laziness and mass indoctrination, come to accept/believe.

Over 90% of the population was against the bailouts, didn’t matter; with “either” “conservatives” or “liberals”. Turns out neoliberal economic policies wind up in the same place regardless of which cabal it is that forces them upon a society. A majority of the population is for single payer, don’t matter. A majority of the population is for very minor gun law changes like the gun show loop hole, don’t matter. A majority of the population is for reducing military spending and endless war, don’t matter. In fact, under Obama we went from 2 wars to 7. And really now, this notion of america being at war is ridiculous. Our economic system requires us to militarily occupy the lands of others for resources and to advance the goals of the corporate state; the people have nothing to do with any of this. When your Wall Street/donor/”job creator” class wants into a country, a rationale will be manufactured and propagated via the corporate state media machine. A majority of the population is for publicly funded elections and getting the oligarchs out of the election process, don’t matter.

If I see a political party begin to advance the concerns of the unsubstantial people and society as a whole, I’ll support them. As of now, I don’t see any.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Religion is like a penis.
It's wonderful that you have one.
It's even wonderful that you're proud of yours.
But please don't go whipping it out and shaking it around in public,
and don't ever dare to try shoving it down my throat.
Click to expand...

Or up a 14 year old's vagina, Roy.
 
X Factor said:
Let's just save some time, Dems good, Repubs bad. That about cover it?
Click to expand...

Look, let us indeed save some time.
I know you're a Texas conservative, you know I am a California liberal.
Please know, I lived in North Texas for ten years, and before that I lived in NE Arkansas.
I made a ton of friends down in Texas, and a good many of them were conservatives.
They were the kind of conservatives that give you hope however, because while we could fight like cats and dogs over the issues, at the end of the day, it was country over party, so it was also "win some, lose some" because at any given time, they were able to understand that a liberal approach to an issue might have SOME merit, and I was able to understand that in some ways, a conservative approach had validity.

That kind of conservatism is an endangered species in today's GOP. The Tea Party took most of those conservatives to the woodshed and they were drummed out of Congress.
Fighting over the issues in a "country over party" manner is healthy, it's good for America, it's good for the democratic process and it's a sign we are all still human.
Work to bring back THOSE conservatives to YOUR party and I promise I will work to bring back sensible liberals to MY party.

Do we have a deal?
Oh and one more thing...STOP PULLING OVER and LOCKING UP WILLIE NELSON for POT.
He's your favorite son and he represents everything good about Texas. You should treat him better than that.
 
PIPEWRENCH said:
We were at war the entire time Obama was president. When our men and women are dying on the battlefield in other countries or defending this country we are at war. You can lie and call it a police action or our brave soldiers advisors but that is all it is ONE BIG LIE. Just because the Wussy in Chief and our politically correct blame someone else congress don't have the balls to do their job and declare war on these people attacking our country and/or allies does not mean it is not a war. The brave soldier ordered into another country to fight our enemy is at war whether or not our wussy politicians will admit the truth or not.
Click to expand...

Oh, cut the dramatics. Obama inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He tried to get us out of Iraq, but we got sucked back in. Bush destabilized the whole Middle East with his neo-con adventures, and while Obama wasn't able to get us out of there, he didn't start any new wars. That's the truth, whether you like it or not.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Look, let us indeed save some time.
I know you're a Texas conservative, you know I am a California liberal.
Please know, I lived in North Texas for ten years, and before that I lived in NE Arkansas.
I made a ton of friends down in Texas, and a good many of them were conservatives.
They were the kind of conservatives that give you hope however, because while we could fight like cats and dogs over the issues, at the end of the day, it was country over party, so it was also "win some, lose some" because at any given time, they were able to understand that a liberal approach to an issue might have SOME merit, and I was able to understand that in some ways, a conservative approach had validity.

That kind of conservatism is an endangered species in today's GOP. The Tea Party took most of those conservatives to the woodshed and they were drummed out of Congress.
Fighting over the issues in a "country over party" manner is healthy, it's good for America, it's good for the democratic process and it's a sign we are all still human.
Work to bring back THOSE conservatives to YOUR party and I promise I will work to bring back sensible liberals to MY party.

Do we have a deal?
Oh and one more thing...STOP PULLING OVER and LOCKING UP WILLIE NELSON for POT.
He's your favorite son and he represents everything good about Texas. You should treat him better than that.
Click to expand...

Ha ha ha, yeah, and Willie's a "conservative" ain't he.
 
bearpoker said:
Actually, I'm sure Christians did elect Obama. They just weren't the same ones that elected Trump. :mrgreen: Christians aren't a monolith. They have all sorts of opinions. The only thing we all agree on is that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, but he's not running for political office, and Roy Moore is not an acceptable substitute.
Click to expand...

Yup. I doubt whether many white evangelicals voted for Obama.
 
bearpoker said:
Oh, cut the dramatics. Obama inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He tried to get us out of Iraq, but we got sucked back in. Bush destabilized the whole Middle East with his neo-con adventures, and while Obama wasn't able to get us out of there, he didn't start any new wars. That's the truth, whether you like it or not.
Click to expand...

Uh, no:

Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.

“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said in May 2013. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”


But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump.

U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America’s largest adversaries, Russia and China.

Obama slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000, and stopped the flow of American soldiers coming home in body bags. He also used diplomacy, not war, to defuse a tense nuclear standoff with Iran.

But he vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.

“The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.

Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” Alterman said. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war - Los Angeles Times
 
Fenton Lum said:
When "both" parties do the will of and cater to the Wall Street/donor/"job creator" class alone, all we the people do is toggle back and forth from one corporate state lapdog political party’s illusion to the other; the power structure has it covered both ways. [...]

Clinton’s deregulation of the FCC has “allowed” us to go from 50 some odd companies in the media game back in the 1980s, to six multinational corporations controlling ~90% of what Americans see, hear, read, and due to laziness and mass indoctrination, come to accept/believe.

Over 90% of the population was against the bailouts, didn’t matter; with “either” “conservatives” or “liberals”. Turns out neoliberal economic policies wind up in the same place regardless of which cabal it is that forces them upon a society. A majority of the population is for single payer, don’t matter. A majority of the population is for very minor gun law changes like the gun show loop hole, don’t matter. A majority of the population is for reducing military spending and endless war, don’t matter. In fact, under Obama we went from 2 wars to 7. And really now, this notion of america being at war is ridiculous. Our economic system requires us to militarily occupy the lands of others for resources and to advance the goals of the corporate state; the people have nothing to do with any of this. When your Wall Street/donor/”job creator” class wants into a country, a rationale will be manufactured and propagated via the corporate state media machine. A majority of the population is for publicly funded elections and getting the oligarchs out of the election process, don’t matter.

If I see a political party begin to advance the concerns of the unsubstantial people and society as a whole, I’ll support them. As of now, I don’t see any.
Click to expand...

Clinton's deregulation of the FCC? The Telecommunications Act of 1996?
Sen. Pressler, Larry [R-SD] (Introduced 03/30/1995)

That bill was the brainchild of Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America" Republican majority, my dear friend, and it was the next to final chapter in a process which started with Reagan's sunsetting of The Fairness Doctrine, and since you mentioned The Powell Memo, that etymology should not escape you.
Yes, Clinton signed the damn thing, because he knew he was up against a potential veto override.
And, to put a finer point on it, The Progress and Freedom Foundation, even put together the "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," a veritable call to arms for telecommunications deregulation.
"Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," Future Insight, Aug. 1994

Your approach, which in your own words, consists of "If I see a political party begin to advance the concerns of the unsubstantial people and society as a whole, I’ll support them. As of now, I don’t see any." basically boils down to "Since I am not getting the perfect party or the perfect candidates, I'm going to do nothing and support nobody at all."

President Trump thanks you for your support.
Sorry, but that's the way it works these days.
You may not like it, I may not like it, but it doesn't change the arithmetic.
I'll say the same thing to you that I said to X Factor:

"Since I am indeed more of a liberal than anything else, the party that I see as having the potential to be responsive would be the Democratic Party, which is a party that infuriates the Hell out of me because at present, it is a spineless mish mash of Wall Street shills, corporate toadies, limousine liberal nimby's, Third Way appeasers and hypocrites.
But still, warts and all, they are more likely to help us get single payer health care, affordable higher education, marriage equality, an end to private prisons and the entire "school to prison pipeline", environmental responsibility, sensible basic gun laws, and a generally more acceptable approach to dealing with immigration, plus more.

Put it another way, they are not out to tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy.
I didn't sign up for that crap.

And if you're going to play dumb and act like you don't know what that last item is, I'll know you're in flat out denial, and that's about you, not me, so you'll be debating your own reflection on that one.
Anyone else on this board that knows what I mean by "tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy" might even click LIKES on this post if I am lucky, to indicate that they too know what I am talking about with regard to today's Republican Party."

https://www.debatepolitics.com/reli...y-goes-bad-post1067999256.html#post1067999256
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Clinton's deregulation of the FCC? The Telecommunications Act of 1996?
Sen. Pressler, Larry [R-SD] (Introduced 03/30/1995)

That bill was the brainchild of Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America" Republican majority, my dear friend, and it was the next to final chapter in a process which started with Reagan's sunsetting of The Fairness Doctrine, and since you mentioned The Powell Memo, that etymology should not escape you.
Yes, Clinton signed the damn thing, because he knew he was up against a potential veto override.
And, to put a finer point on it, The Progress and Freedom Foundation, even put together the "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," a veritable call to arms for telecommunications deregulation.
"Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," Future Insight, Aug. 1994

Your approach, which in your own words, consists of "If I see a political party begin to advance the concerns of the unsubstantial people and society as a whole, I’ll support them. As of now, I don’t see any." basically boils down to "Since I am not getting the perfect party or the perfect candidates, I'm going to do nothing and support nobody at all."

President Trump thanks you for your support.
Sorry, but that's the way it works these days.
You may not like it, I may not like it, but it doesn't change the arithmetic.
I'll say the same thing to you that I said to X Factor:

"Since I am indeed more of a liberal than anything else, the party that I see as having the potential to be responsive would be the Democratic Party, which is a party that infuriates the Hell out of me because at present, it is a spineless mish mash of Wall Street shills, corporate toadies, limousine liberal nimby's, Third Way appeasers and hypocrites.
But still, warts and all, they are more likely to help us get single payer health care, affordable higher education, marriage equality, an end to private prisons and the entire "school to prison pipeline", environmental responsibility, sensible basic gun laws, and a generally more acceptable approach to dealing with immigration, plus more.

Put it another way, they are not out to tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy.
I didn't sign up for that crap.

And if you're going to play dumb and act like you don't know what that last item is, I'll know you're in flat out denial, and that's about you, not me, so you'll be debating your own reflection on that one.
Anyone else on this board that knows what I mean by "tear down the entire democratic process and install authoritarian fascist theocracy" might even click LIKES on this post if I am lucky, to indicate that they too know what I am talking about with regard to today's Republican Party."

https://www.debatepolitics.com/reli...y-goes-bad-post1067999256.html#post1067999256
Click to expand...

While I understand that Clinton signed the bill, rather than face an override of his veto, I still think it tarnishes his record. He should have vetoed it and made the Republicans own it all.
 
Fenton Lum said:
Uh, no:

Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America’s grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing.

“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he said in May 2013. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”


But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump.

U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.

Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America’s largest adversaries, Russia and China.

Obama slashed the number of U.S. troops in war zones from 150,000 to 14,000, and stopped the flow of American soldiers coming home in body bags. He also used diplomacy, not war, to defuse a tense nuclear standoff with Iran.

But he vastly expanded the role of elite commando units and the use of new technology, including armed drones and cyber weapons.

“The whole concept of war has changed under Obama,” said Jon Alterman, Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank in Washington.

Obama “got the country out of ‘war,’ at least as we used to see it,” Alterman said. “We’re now wrapped up in all these different conflicts, at a low level and with no end in sight.”
President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war - Los Angeles Times
Click to expand...

Obama tried to be as effective as possible with the least risk to American personnel. I don't have a problem with that. It would have been nice if Bush had cleaned up after himself, but he didn't.
 
bearpoker said:
While I understand that Clinton signed the bill, rather than face an override of his veto, I still think it tarnishes his record. He should have vetoed it and made the Republicans own it all.
Click to expand...

No argument there but that is indeed a symptom of what I referred to earlier, that Third Way appeasement business.
Richard Mourdock was on TV a couple of years ago, on the heels of the Tea Party takeover of Congress, saying, "Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming around to Republican ways of thinking."
And that is precisely why the Democratic Party deserves its own "Liberal Revolution", a sort of bookend to the Tea Party rout of 2010, wherein liberals rout out all the corporate shills you speak of, and install real actual liberals.
That takes doing, and it takes participation, so YOUR HELP is needed, in order for that to happen, and it is the only realistic way we will ever SEE what you term as "a political party begin[ing] to advance the concerns of the unsubstantial people and society as a whole".
I term it as "The Democratic Party returning to its liberal roots as a party which is responsive to the needs of working class individuals and families".

Don't be an armchair critic who refuses to get their hands dirty...you're TOO DAMN INTELLIGENT. :)
We need you, we need a lot of people like you.
 
bearpoker said:
Obama tried to be as effective as possible with the least risk to American personnel. I don't have a problem with that. It would have been nice if Bush had cleaned up after himself, but he didn't.
Click to expand...

I don't award Obama super-points as the most effective foreign policy president in history, far from it.
In particular, I am looking at the current uprising in Iran and I am going to point to his weak and tepid response to the previous Green uprising in 2009.
And that's just one critique, there are many.

That said, Republicans accusing him of islamist appeasement have their heads squarely up their asses. Here's why:

appeasement2.jpg
 
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