life is death and up is down

"Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Strange days indeed
strange days indeed.
Everybody's runnin' and no one makes a move"

i find it incredibly interesting that there is a segment of america who genuinely believes that it's ok to kill others-- despite what they are taught in church. these folks believe it's ok to take the life of another- not in self defense but 'to protect the innocent'- and despite the fact that there are laws on the books that often differ with their particular worldview. vigilante justice isn't part of any biblical passage i have read- but i guess when you believe that YOU are god- the interpretation is quite loose.

these are the same folks who condemn the islamic rite of stoning folks to death and puff up righteously and call these folks 'terrorists.' the hypocrisy and arrogance is almost as thick as the irony. looking at what i know i was taught in my bible belt, baptist upbringing- and what these folks proclaim as 'the truth'- well, somebody was taught wrong. or perhaps they have twisted the bible to their own will instead of their god's will. see, life doesn't end at birth. if you are anti abortion, then you also need to be anti capital punishment, anti torture, anti war, anti poverty,...

i am currently reading chris hedges' book 'losing moses on the freeway' and it is an eye opening read. he obviously believes in god, but he harbors no illusions about organized religions. he disects the ten commandments chapter by chapter but this is no synopsis. he uses real life situations and experiences and draws it all around and lays bare all hypocrises. i have a feeling it might be too much truth for these 'patriots', these 'god fearing christians' to handle. it might interfere with their own god complexes.

Frank Schaeffer tells it like it is...

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future.

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation. (Read the rest...)