Reasons why the NeoCons aren't real Republicans

Oh I never said it was exclusivly Christian. They certainly do use the religious right as a whore to accomplish their very non-Christian, anti-American agenda. I'll also remember what you said the next time GW goes on a Bible rant or someone else covers up Justice's titties. There is no getting around the fact that the neocons are married to the radical Christian right.It is all "God Bless America, damn the fags, and concealed weapons for everyone!" And the worst part is that it works.

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Well, we'll kind of agree.As for the second coming, I'm not a Christian and it is, therefore, entirely an irrelevant concept to me, and one in which I have no belief.

Well, we'll kind of agree...and disagree (it is obvious to me that there'd have been no elections in lebanon were it not for Iraq, Egypt would continue to be as entirely undemocratic as ever, and there'd be no talk of a democratic revolution amongst Arab intellectuals - except from their jail cells).As for the second coming, I'm not a Christian and it is, therefore, entirely an irrelevant concept to me, and one in which I have no belief.

Still, wouldn't you agree the Pew Research study is interesting in that it flies in the face of conventional wisdom about democracy? Isn't it noteworthy that you never hear this sort of positive news in the national press about the Middle East?

You're quite wrong again. The actual neo-cons are divided between liberalism and conservatism on social issues. Their agreement, and the basis on which they are all neo-cons, is the need for the US to promote democracy in order for there to be world peace. They also agree that until the world is safely democratic, and therefore safely peaceful, the US must remian the overwhelming power.

Your response has nothing to do with the neocons connections with the fanatical Christian right (which is by the way, extremely liberal in the political sense). Power hungry neocons give continual lip service to guys like Pat Robertson and they get votes. Plain and simple, that is exactly how they won the last election. Put "Down WIth Fags" on the ballot and you get tons of people coming out of the woodworks to press the "I agree" button along with the "Red" button and go home. It was a total pander to the religious right.

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You're conflating neo-cons with evangelicals - whom you smear as a group unfairly. Pat Robertson, BTW, has been, infact, severely critical of the neo-cons.The neo-con movement has been around since the late 70's, I believe. It was not until 9/11 that its views were adopted by the republican party. As you may recall, Bush ran on an isolationist foreign policy in 2000, the opposite of neo-conservatism. But he, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld realized in short order the truth of its vision at that precipitous moment.As for "put down the fags," that was not what happened. Rather, it was opposition to gay marriage, and that alone. But, assuredly, we will not agree on that anyhow.

The NYT's middle east columnist, thomas friedman, supported the war in iraq for the reasons neo-cons do, even though he's a liberal. He's one of several leftists who supported the war, hirchens being another, because they realized that it was necessary in light of 9/11 and in light of the need for democracy to battle islamism in the Islamic homeland. Here's a column of his on the worry about Islamism taking root in Islamic communities in the west.Op-Ed Columnist
A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 15, 2005A few years ago I was visiting Bahrain and sitting with friends in a fish restaurant when news appeared on an overhead TV about Muslim terrorists, men and women, who had taken hostages in Russia. What struck me, though, was the instinctive reaction of the Bahraini businessman sitting next to me, who muttered under his breath, "Why are we in every story?" The "we" in question was Muslims.The answer to that question is one of the most important issues in geopolitics today: Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would be ludicrous to suggest that.But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans. Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims, over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer. This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri - a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."Clearly, several things are at work. One is that Europe is not a melting pot and has never adequately integrated its Muslim minorities, who, as The Financial Times put it, often find themselves "cut off from their country, language and culture of origin" without being assimilated into Europe, making them easy prey for peddlers of a new jihadist identity.Also at work is Sunni Islam's struggle with modernity. Islam has a long tradition of tolerating other religions, but only on the basis of the supremacy of Islam, not equality with Islam. Islam's self-identity is that it is the authentic and ideal expression of monotheism. Muslims are raised with the view that Islam is God 3.0, Christianity is God 2.0, Judaism is God 1.0, and Hinduism is God 0.0.Part of what seems to be going on with these young Muslim males is that they are, on the one hand, tempted by Western society, and ashamed of being tempted. On the other hand, they are humiliated by Western society because while Sunni Islamic civilization is supposed to be superior, its decision to ban the reform and reinterpretation of Islam since the 12th century has choked the spirit of innovation out of Muslim lands, and left the Islamic world less powerful, less economically developed, less technically advanced than God 2.0, 1.0 and 0.0."Some of these young Muslim men are tempted by a civilization they consider morally inferior, and they are humiliated by the fact that, while having been taught their faith is supreme, other civilizations seem to be doing much better," said Raymond Stock, the Cairo-based biographer and translator of Naguib Mahfouz. "When the inner conflict becomes too great, some are turned by recruiters to seek the sick prestige of 'martyrdom' by fighting the allegedly unjust occupation of Muslim lands and the 'decadence' in our own."This is not about the poverty of money. This is about the poverty of dignity and the rage it can trigger.One of the London bombers was married, with a young child and another on the way. I can understand, but never accept, suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel as part of a nationalist struggle. But when a British Muslim citizen, nurtured by that society, just indiscriminately blows up his neighbors and leaves behind a baby and pregnant wife, to me he has to be in the grip of a dangerous cult or preacher - dangerous to his faith community and to the world.How does that happen? Britain's Independent newspaper described one of the bombers, Hasib Hussain, as having recently undergone a sudden conversion "from a British Asian who dressed in Western clothes to a religious teenager who wore Islamic garb and only stopped to say salaam to fellow Muslims."The secret of this story is in that conversion - and so is the crisis in Islam. The people and ideas that brought about that sudden conversion of Hasib Hussain and his pals - if not stopped by other Muslims - will end up converting every Muslim into a suspect and one of the world's great religions into a cult of death.

Are you kidding me? You've just been pushing the Xian way as some sort of wonder drug for the masses, the only source of democracy, and ragging against Islam using evangelical stereotypes of that religion.If you are not Xian, you sure are doing a great imitation.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Why on earth do you think it flies in the face of conventional wisdom about democracy? The stereotypes maybe, conventional wisdom I don't think so.I personally found nothing suprising in that report. But then again I guess having had friends in that area since college, I am not burdened by stereotypes aka "conventional wisdom". I suppose that's why I was against the Taliban the whole time Bush and Cheney were backing them... I didn't think Afghanis wanted a military govt brokering oil pipeline deals, while having the likes of OBL tell them how to live. Well I'd first note that the citation was from what I'd consider national press. And second no it would not surprise me if it didn't get as much airplay as bad news because bad news sells. Thanks to our wonder commercial driven news media, and led by such wonderous exploiters as FOX, hype hype hype is in and rational news is out out out.That said, while the findings are not beyond what I'd expect, I always caution people to not take Reserch polls very seriously. They are not the end all of the story, and in this case did not at all support the conclusions/delusions CS was taking from them.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I've been referring to the Christian world, not the faith, which we in the west are. I fully identify with being part of that world, and appreciate its heritage, from its inherently peaceful faith, to classical music, to, especially, liberal democracy. That is in huge contrast to the islamic world, despite its periods of moderation and civility compared to corresponding periods of barbarity in the west. The Islamic world has contributed nothing of significance in the last 1,000 years or so, not in the arts, music, science, philosophy, or political forms. That, I believe, is due to major thematic flaws in the faith, in particular the Koran's War Verses and Sharia Law. So backward and vile are they, they have held back the entire civilization. And yet, I believe a democratic revolution is brewing there, and when it explodes, so will the latent creativity and ability of islamic peoples. We should not forget that the base of islamic civilization, Arabia, is peopled by descendants of some of the greatest of all early civilizations.

You are being disengenuous. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. Your line about the west being a "Xian world", and everything in stemming from that... especially liberal democracy... is such revisionism.Democracy was a movement away from Xian models of govt and law and science. The whole Renaissance, certainly the enlightenment which Xians openly loathe today, was a rejection of Xian dogma which freed the West to progress. Again, how this comes out of anyone but a Xian fundamentalist, or an apologist is beyond me. They were major contributors, especially to science, when the Xian church was oppressing real exploration. Our modern scientific method is pretty much derived from Islamic scholars.It is true that the West has taken off over the last 500 years. Perhaps due to its bursting free of the Xian bonds 500 years ago which you are now suggesting muslims need to do.In part you are right that certain fundamentalist strains of Islam came to power and became restrictive... which ironically enough is exactly what is occuring now with Xian fundies (otherwise we wouldn't have this site now would we?). That froze many nation's scientific progress right where they were.But they continued to contribute to world art, philosophy, and politics. It has been to a lesser degree as most Islamic nations have been struck into poverty and divided by imperialist wars and manipulation, but what do you expect?And of course this is to treat the Islamic nations as representative of all muslims. Certainly muslims have contributed to the arts and our culture in the US, right? Only a fundie, or someone brainwashed by fundies, can spew such bile about another religion. You've already shown your ignorance regarding the religion as a whole, treating a few of the sects as if they are the all and only valid interpretation. You have misquoted passages and not addressed others put directly to you.It is my feeling that it ignorance such as yours, which is backward and vile and has held back western civilization in the past, and is attempting to do so again.I like democracy and I want to live in one. I think more freedom for individuals, regardless of socio-economic model is a key to freeing the power of cultures.But your apologetics for Xian fundamentalism, which only fans the flame of bigotry toward other religions and science, is not the way toward freedom or democracy.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

It is true, whether you like or not, whether it was because of Christianity, the faith, or not, that the western world, Christendom, produced the greatest and fairest civilization, by far and bar none, ever.It is also true that attributions of great accomplishments to the wrold of islam past are hugely exaggerated, and that much of that was, in fact, the accomplishments of lands they conquered, rather than what they discovered themselves. A good example is the math of India, appropriated by the islamic world after conquering India. Regardless, while the islamic world crashed into utter barbarity, the Christian world elevated to something incredible. That is not pure chance.As for my thoughts on Islam, you are so, so wrong to believe that only a fundamentalist could have those beliefs. There is a huge group of non Christian, often atheist scholars, who take that view, and take it despite much respect for the better side of the faith and civilization. There are even muslims who take that view. All one has to do is read the Koran. Yes, you can buy the utterly disingenuous arguments about Jihad being "spiritual," and so on, if you wish, but every true scholar knows otherwise - as was well demonstrated on threads last week. If you deny the truth of that, then you are indicating yourself to be thoroughly a part of the very late relativist movement that refuses to believe - for some kind of false idealism - that any culture or faith or civilization can be superior to any other. Western liberal democracy is superior, and the civilzation that spawned it and has propagated it is superior. But as others adopt liberal democracy, they then take a guiant step toward equality with ourselves. Japan is an excellent example.To address whether Christianity, the faith, itself produced liberal democracy, or whether it resulted despite Christianity...there's a good argument either way. My view is that the faith is not, innately, in any way inimical to it, unlike Islam. In a sense, then, the faith is neutral, although its peaceful message, and its message that the poor and oppressed are every bit the equal of all others, is noteworthy. That jesus was such a man (or G-d, take your pick) and led such an examplary life, cannot be overlooked (especially in contrast to mohammed's life as a polygamist, warrior who killed personally, slave owner, pedaphile). Yes, many Christians fought liberal democracy for various reasons when it largely arose in the 1800's. But the majority favoured it. Otherwise, it could not have been established, at a time when the majority were, as you'd describe them today, fundamentalists. And, yes, today there are a number (a small minority) of fundamentalists who are so angry and hostile by the secularization that resulted, they feel disdain for democracy. They feel disdain for non Christian immigration to whom they wrongly attribute "social marxism" and the decline of Christian values as they see it. They actually favour some kind of democratic Christian theocracy - although they'd never quite say that. They are the minority, the distict minority.The real threat today comes from the very liberal Christians - a larger group than the extreme fundamentalists who desire a Christian theocracy, as opposed to the majority of moderate evangelicals, like Bush and Rice. These ultra liberal Christians, religous and secular, have lost sight of and touch with the essence of the civilization that produced liberal democracy. The dire consequence is their unwittingly undermining of that civilization. Relativism is a key means. If everything is equal and just a matter of subjective opinion, and there are no absolute values, then even key moral values based on pschological truths are no longer necessary true, let alone worth defending. If collective rights trump individual rights, then the founding liberal democratic principle of the equality of the individual - not the class of people - is challenged and eroded. They support, unwittingly values so far left that the family - the root of human psychology and emotional health (I'm a child counsellor by training) - is undermined. The courts, more and more rather than the people, make law, undermining peoples' feeling that government is of the people, by the people, for the people. Rather, government of, for and by the people is subject to non electable, non accountable courts. That means the will of the people is secondary to the will of teh courts. (Yes, the courts are necessary to protect rights government would trample. But the founding constitution protects those rights just fine, as long as the courts respect them as written. There is no need to alter them to include a judge's temporal sensibilities, based on today's, rather than universal, sensibilities.)There is much more that can be said, but this should suffice.In summary: It was in the Christian world and no other that liberal democracy arose, at a time when the vast majority was what you would call fundamentalist. It is dubious that that is coincidental, whether the faith itself was responsible, or whether it was amenable to the nature of thinking it allowed to arise over time.

You are such a fraud. Which exact "civilization" are you referring to? Though we can point to a conglomeration of nations created by Europeans and call it "Western Civilization", they all have varying degrees of "civilization". Some are not so great nor fair.Indeed Western Civilization is traced back well before Xianity ever existed and there were some greater and fairer civilizations than now, though not as technologically advanced given their placement in time. Some of those great, nonXian liberal democratic nations (in fact two of them) lasted longer than any of the current nations (which are powerful and democratic) have been around.So if you want to play this game set out some criteria. Define what constitutes a civilization, and what constitutes great and fair.What is true is that right now certain Western nations are the most powerful nations on earth. It is wholly coincidental that they came from Xian nations, unless you want to argue that it was in rejecting the dominance of Xianity in science and politics that they found a better way to live and learn. Their power and democracy came directly from the advances afforded by that rejection, combined with their coincidental ownership of vast resources (and in the case of Canada and the US, isolated reserves of vast resources). All conquering nations appropriate new things from those they conquer. To try and pass that off as not a part of the Xian world is bizarre in the extreme. And to try and suggest the Islamic world did not take and elevate sciences when the "Western" world was stuck in Xian ignorance is a complete misrepresentation.Are you now trying to suggest that we do not owe much to Islamic nations in that regard? Heck, outside of science you have still refused to answer my direct point that one of the keys to the West freeing itself from tyranny of Xian kings, came from Islam. Did our advances come only AFTER Xian dogma was renounced during the intellectual revolution of the enlightenment, and liberal democracies emerge from those rejecting the common Xian religion and its political models in favor of ancient pagan models?Now I am not the type of person to say "paganism" or "atheism" or "Deism" is the only environment where a free and democratic culture can rise to great power. But if we are going to take your apparent criteria then we must.Powerful liberal democracies existed in the West until Xian dominance, when they crumbled into barbaric feudal socities. They were only to reemerge after rejection of those Xian feudal models and Xian dogmatic control of knowledge.That is the only actual history, whether you like it or not. If you want to ascribe it to something more than chance, Xianity is going to take a hit. Yeah, and what do all of these people have in common? An unswerving evangelical fundamentalist Xian outlook, or a militant fundamentalist Islamic outlook.Hey, I am in complete agreement that there is a large militant fundamentalist Islamic contingent which does view violence as a natural part of growing (aggressively defending?) their so called "faith". They were helped in their growth by meddling in affairs by Western powers. Most notably Afghanistan was a direct result of our encouraging that form of the faith to gain recruits against the soviets.Islamic nations in general have been in decline, or relative decline, for about 500 years, due to a rise in conservative fundamentalist Islamic belief (which differs from militant fundie belief), and a growing poverty as resources were scarce and trade was now able to go around them rather than through them as it had throughout history. This is not to mention the last 200 years of Western imperialist meddling.What is errant is to use that coincidental history to somehow draw conclusions about the inherent nature of the faith. If you want me to then I will point out the correlation between that and the Xian fundamentalist created dark ages of the west, positioned between pagan democratic greatness, and secular democratic greatness. That leaves the obvious conclusion that monotheism of any kind, when allowed to develop into fundamentalism leads to a degrading in freedom and knowledge in a culture.In that case we are simply waiting for those in MidEastern nations to break free of monotheistic fundamentalist dogma as our founding fathers had done. I did, so have others. Combined we have shown that your fragments were pulled out of context, and there are some very opposing texts which remain opposing in context. It is undoubtedly not pure chance that you refuse to deal with these passages in any of your replies. Yes, but every true scotsman knows something else entirely. I am a relativist. Indeed I am a subjectivist. I don't know what is "late" about it. The founding fathers used this principle to discover what is important to good govt.That means, contrary to your assertion above, we do believe that societies can improve. Some can indeed operate in a superior fashion to others. There are of course many qualities to a civilization and so one may not necessarily be superior in all. Relativism is simply an idea that there are no absolute criteria. We do make and judge them all by ourselves. We rank their importance. I have already pointed to passages which say this in the Koran. It is repeated quite a bit. Do you know what Ramadan is? Do you know that unlike Xianity which does NOT REQUIRE charity, Islam requires charity? Do you know that unlike Xianity, Islam forbids usury, which takes inherently allows the rich to take advantage of the poor?Whoops, what do the "true scholars" say now? We have been over this and the facts are out... and no we cannot agree to disagree. Jesus was a KING. He was the KING OF KINGS. A KING who wanders around with the capability of feeding multitudes with the wave of his hand, and healing the injured the same way, is not "such a man". And how is he to return? Oh yeah that's right, you are willing discuss what Christ was but not the most important part of XIANITY, which is what he will be.As I also pointed out he had to be placed as the King of Kings, by proving (or implying) direct relation to a polygamous, pedophilic, slave owning warrior. What's the difference then?By the way have you found any passages related to how bad pedophilia is in the Bible? Despite its emergence as a concept in the late 1800's by sexual prudes, I have yet to see any reason that it is a Xian idea. And then is there an issue with the fact that God impregnated a minor? Remember that thing called the civil war? Where would we be if the South had won? Where are the fundies located? The only reason why the North won was because of better resources to fight the war. See, yet another slip. Secularization that "resulted"? Secularization occured before the nation came into being. It was fundamentalist movements who thrived within the tolerant environment of secular govt that have now decided to rewrite history and pretend everyone was evangelical until lately secularism emerged in the safety of the Bosom only a Xian nation can create. Again you show your ignorance of relativism. Just because there are no known or knowable absolutes, does not mean that humans cannot prefer and defend their way of life.What absolute moral or psychological truths exist to you? How do you know them?And by the way you actually flipped your argument half way through. Relativists would be for the liberal democratic ideal of individual rights. I mean why on earth would people that believe there are no absolutes believe that collective moral truths must be put in place over individuals?But I guess this does show another place we do agree. As one believes that collective rights supercede individual rights, liberal democracy is destroyed. Remind me again who is arguing that certain "moral truths", advanced by a collective of believers, need to be put in place over individuals? I'm sorry what? As frightening as it is to know that you are handling children, and so likely twisting their minds with the falsehoods you treat as "facts", it is worse still that you are trying to twist science into some tool for religious propaganda.What "values" are "left" of the family? And how are they "undermined"? Sources please? As far as I can tell the majority of child murders are coming from fundie Xians. Maybe that's how it is in Canada, but in the US the judges are elected by the people. Elected and retained. Oh wait, or is a Canadian for some reason launching into US political issues, where certain Reps have been discussing the federal court system which are made by appointment from our elected representatives (we are a REPUBLIC after all), and can be removed if there is gross negligence?Why are you discussing US issues? Why are you caring about US issues? Why are you conflating US political issues, with Western civilization? How many nations have judges that are not elected directly? Why don't we just change it to more directly elected judges... do relativists inherently disagree with that? I'm sorry, what? Western Civilization has a Constitution? When did that happen? Or are you yet again discussing US issues, which is odd enough being that you are Canadian, and conflating them to the issues of Western Civilization?And as Canadian what are you doing talking about how MY nation's Constitution has to be read? You've picked on Islam long enough despite not being Islamic. You obviously have no claim as to know better about what MY nation is about, especially as you have already misrepresented what generated its principles, or guided its architects.As a matter of fact, a "strict reading" was once thought to include slavery, then "temporal" ideas made it not so. So which is it "true scholar" steve?This whole activist judge crap is a political maneuver by certain reps to install activist judges in favor of their own reading of the constitution, sometimes wildly outside of intent of the founders (which you can read in their writings). After all there seems to be no problem with conservative activist judges allowing public funds going to support religious based organizations, when the founding fathers patently proscribed it in the Constitution and wrote against it years later as evangelicals were trying to push that agenda.But maybe I can ask you something more basic. How will having direct election of federal judges have any effect over a judge using temporal issues/attitudes to base a decision? If anything, wouldn't that make them more open to having to follow public whim as they become simple politicians?The biggest problem is that the legislature and executive branches are increasingly wanting to break the Constitution, and so find judges a hindrance to their will. The judges are not getting more active, the rest of government is getting too oppressive.Oh yes, and what are universal sensibilities? How do I attain them? IN SUMMARY:False. Either pure ignorence or a sheer lie. Since I have already brought this p before that does not suggest the former.It was in a pagan world where liberal democracy first arose and lasted for longer than the longest living modern democracy. This ended with the rise of Xian feudal empires which oppressed and rejected democracy.Democracies were not to reemerge until people within those Xian monarchical systems, rebelled and replaced such systems with secular democracies modeled in great part on pagan systems. Those who advocated and fought for rejection of religious based systems of govt were not fundamentalist at all (that would be the majority of US founding fathers and all french revolutionaries), or fundamentalists of denominations persecuted by other Xian denominations and so understood the value of wholly secular govt.This argues for only two things... secularism was what was important, as well as a rejection of the Xian model of governance in favor of "relativist", "temporal", "pagan" democracy which allows for greater individual freedom at the expense of moral absolutism. The Xian faith as a whole, and especially as an organized force, stood against its growth, until the revolutions of art (Rennaisance), science and philosophy (enlightenment), and politics (US and French revolutions), fully ended Xian domination of human endeavour.If Xianity was the key to growth and success of cultures as free cultures, then we would never have had the dark ages, nor the great religious persecutions of Western Civilization. There is no coincidence that our modern era of greater achievements and freedom came after rejection of Xian domination.You can easily refute this by describing what our greatest achievements and liberal democracies have achieved and place them within the periods of Xian dominance of thought and govt (i.e. before the enlightenment).If you want to credit Xian oppression as having formulated the basis of people wanting to live free and well, then I guess you wish to argue that Jews need to credit Hitler and antisemitism in general for making them realize they need to band together to defend themselves. That is they should all be thanked as that was the only way the emerging groups could have succeeded, and so were "nurtured".That is an odd way of thinking.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Given how impolite you are, e.g., "You are a fraud," I have to decide whether I wish to answer. My points stand regardless, with my response being predictable to anyone who understands them.