[Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Evangelical Rebellion by Chris Hedges
Matt Reichel
mattreichel at hotmail.com
Sat Dec 29 12:37:22 CST 2007
I think Alex must have been inebriated when writing this snippet. 90% of the time I think he is quite good, if not outright fantastic, but this article in particular was sloppy and poorly defended.
The bigotry of the Left? What . . is he talking about the Communists in The Soviet Union who is father spent his life defending? . .
Even worse, he says: "So Huckabee will probably survive these charges, as he should the
> > whines of New York Times columnists that he is unversed in foreign
> > affairs. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush demonstrated
> > conclusively that a passing glance at a stamp album is the only
> > education required for dealing with the rest of the world."
Is he trying to assert that any imbecile could be head of state because the real brains are already in place at the state department, FBI and CIA? . .This is obviously un-true, since the CIA is so desperate for anyone who actually speaks a foreign language that they are practically handing jobs away to anyone who can pass a drug test. I don't know how many times I've had to explain to someone on the phone that I am not interested in a career at the CIA!! . . And a simple google search of my name would reveal quite conclusively that I am not CIA material!
. . Or does he actually mean to say that one can obtain the knowledge necessary to associate in a complex manner with foreign envoys without experience studying in a foreign setting (once a pre-req for anyone looking for work at the state dept) . . . ?
Either way I find this remark unsettling, if not outright insulting. The lack of experience and knowledge about the rest of the world is one of the principle problems right now in American government, and goes a long way to explaining the continually growing resentment of the U.S. by a majority of people in our fellow "Western countries," as well as explaining the concurrent rapid decline of the American empire.
Perhaps that's it! It's best to have unskilled statesmen at the helm because that will facilitate the decline of the Empire, which will presumably be a good thing for a majority of the world. This seems like a far fetched reason to support idiot presidents!
-
mer
> From: brussel4 at insightbb.com
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Evangelical Rebellion by Chris Hedges
> Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:06:29 -0600
> To: galliher at uiuc.edu
> CC: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
> So, Huckabee or Paul for President!
> Kookyness abounds it seems.
> And where lies the so-called "bigotry on matters of religion" of the
> left? (Is it their disbelief in Genesis and ressurection and other
> myths, and fear of the fundamentalists seemingly growing influence?)
> Why doesn't Cockburn get on his horse for someone like Kucinich
> instead of relishing the likes of Huckabee?
>
> --mkb
>
>
> On Dec 28, 2007, at 2:33 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> > [I often find myself agreeing with Alex Cockburn. Here I think
> > he's good on Huckabee and the presidential campaign. The
> > comparison with Bryan is apt, except that Bryan was more anti-war
> > than Huckabee: Bryan resigned as Secretary of State when a
> > mendacious Democrat president (celebrated by liberals) manipulated
> > the US into war. Regarding this thread, I think Cockburn is right
> > to say, "The clamor about Huckabee's Christian beliefs is overdone,
> > not least among the left whose bigotry on matters of religion is
> > particularly unappetizing" -- although, needless to say, neither
> > Cockburn nor I agree with Huckabee's theology (if on different
> > grounds). --CGE]
> >
> > Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
> > By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> >
> > Suddenly it's Huckabee. The surge of the former Arkansas governor
> > in the race for the Republican nomination has the pell-mell
> > excitement of one of Napoleon's victorious rampages across Europe
> > in his heyday. In this case the long faces belong not to the
> > crowned heads of the Grand Alliance, but to the Republican
> > establishment, quivering with terror at the thought of their
> > doughty standard bearer in 2008 being a former Baptist minister, a
> > fellow who thinks God created the world 6000 years ago more or less
> > in its current form.
> >
> > The great dread of American political establishments down the
> > decades has been that a wild man will suddenly sneak past all
> > obstructions cunningly devised to repel uncomfortable surprises and
> > upset the apple cart. Democrats even today shiver at the memory of
> > William Jennings Bryan, another implacable foe of Charles Darwin,
> > who ran on a silver platform in the late nineteenth century. George
> > Wallace, a redneck governor out of Alabama, ran as an independent
> > presidential candidate in 1968 and Richard Nixon was terrified that
> > he would steal enough votes to throw the race to the Democrat,
> > Hubert Humphrey. A would-be assassin's bullet put paid to that threat.
> >
> > The clamor about Huckabee's Christian beliefs is overdone, not
> > least among the left whose bigotry on matters of religion is
> > particularly unappetizing. A robust majority of all Americans, so
> > polls unfailingly show, maintain they have had personal encounters
> > with Jesus Christ. Ronald Reagan believed and publicly stated more
> > than once that the Apocalypse was scheduled to occur in his
> > lifetime at Megiddo, as excitingly trailered in the Good Book. The
> > soigné Governor Mitt Romney, now displaced by Huckabee as the front
> > runner, is a Mormon and thus, unless he is a heretic from the
> > Latter Day Saints on this specific issue, believes that Christ was
> > Lucifer's older brother, as Huckabee has not been slow in pointing
> > out.
> >
> > But Huckabee should not be dismissed as simply the creature of the
> > Christian fundamentalists who play a very significant role in the
> > Republican primaries and who are currently hoisting him in the
> > polls. Of course they like Huckabee for all the obvious reasons,
> > and because the alternatives are the Mormon Romney or Giuliani,
> > who's hopped from wife to wife, shared an apartment with a male gay
> > couple and favors abortion.
> >
> > But on many substantive matters, demonstrated during his ten years
> > as the governor of Arkansas, Huckabee was often a progressive, with
> > enlightened views and a record of substantive executive action on
> > immigration, public health, education of poor kids and the
> > possibility of redemption for convicted criminals. In his ten years
> > as governor, Huckabee commuted the sentences of, or outright
> > pardoned, over 1,200 felons including a dozen murderers. This was a
> > courageous and unparalleled display of enlightenment in a country
> > whose interest in rehabilitation is near zero. As Huckabee said in
> > answer to Mitt "throw away the key" Romney, should a woman
> > convicted of check-kiting when she was 17, have this criminal
> > offense prevent her from getting a job thirty years later?
> >
> > Democrats started by chortling over Huckabee's meteoric rise in the
> > national polls. The Democratic National Committee supposedly
> > ordered a moratorium to onslaughts on the Arkansas governor in the
> > hopes that as the nominee he will be roadkill for them in the race
> > next fall. This patronizing posture is already fraying. Huckabee
> > would not be a pushover. He's quick on his feet, has an easy sense
> > of humor and has a powerful appeal to Americans unconvinced by any
> > of the major contenders.
> >
> > Thus far, beyond hee-haws at his Christian fundamentalism, the most
> > the liberals can come up with is that he intervened to save his son
> > from very nasty charges of dog-abuse at a Boy Scout camp and that
> > among those whose sentences he commuted was a rapist, Wayne Dumond,
> > who killed at least one woman after his release. Murray Waas has
> > devoted thousands of plodding words to the case.
> >
> > It's chilling to watch liberals and pwogs thundering their outrage
> > at the mere idea of pardons or commutations, as though one of the
> > besetting horrors of America today isn't the penological mindset
> > that puts people behind bars for decades, or the living death of
> > what the criminal justice industry laconically terms LWOP, Life
> > Without the Possibility of Parole. Let's go back to 1988, when
> > Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, who had supervised an
> > elightened parole and day-release program as governor of
> > Massachusetts, was trashed for letting Willie Horton out of prison
> > on a weekend pass. Who first raised the Horton issue. No, not
> > George Bush Sr. Not Lee Atwater. It was Al Gore, in the '88
> > Democratic primaries.
> >
> > Of course, if you decide not to let people rot in prison for forty
> > years, and let some of them out, there's a chance there'll be a
> > Dumond or a Horton among those released. That's a risk. To say that
> > it's an unacceptable risk is the same as saying there's a risk in
> > administering the death penalty, because an innocent person might
> > get gassed or killed with poison, but that nonetheless the price is
> > worth it. Some guy with a DUI on his record gets his license back,
> > gets loaded again and kills another carload of innocents. So, we
> > should bring in a lifetime ban of all DUIs from driving ever again?
> > More people get killed by drivers with DUIs on their record than by
> > convicted killers let out of prison, or for that matter by sex
> > offenders. These days, with liberal assent, sex offenders serve
> > their full terms and still can't get out of prison. Run a society
> > totally on principles of revenge, not forgiveness or redemption and
> > you end up in the realm of Milton's Moloch, "besmeared with blood
> > of human sacrifice and parents' tears."
> >
> > Then there are the corruption charges. Huckabee accepted gift
> > vouchers for meals at Taco Bell and had a registry at Target and
> > Dillard's where he and his wife got big-ticket items like a Jack
> > LaLanne juicer. Hold the front page! From reading the furious
> > brayings of Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, you'd think Huckabee was
> > the Emperor Bokassa, of the Central African Republic, crowned on a
> > golden throne, wearing a Roman toga embroidered with a hundred
> > thousand pearls, then driving off in a coach pulled by six white
> > horses flown from Paris.
> >
> > Try as they may, dustrakers like Taibbi have a hard time showing
> > Huckabee was anything more than a piker in the perks department.
> >
> > Here's some of the record of shame. Total for items requested on
> > the Target wedding registry, $ 2,282, including a 12-piece cookware
> > set for $ 249, a DeLonghi retro 4-slice toaster for $ 39. 99 ,
> > napkins, kitchen towels, two king-sized pillows and a clock. Total
> > on the Dillard's registry, $4,635, not omittting the Jack Lalanne
> > juicer for $ 100.
> >
> > True, the Huckabees got married in 1974, but they had that covenant
> > marriage in 2005, which is certainly as convincing as Hillary
> > Clinton saying she just got lucky when, as Arkansas' first lady she
> > made $99,000 on cattle futures off an initial stake of $1,000, the
> > whole miraculous bonanza organized by a guy in the retinue of Don
> > Tyson, the largest food processor in the state of Arkansas. More
> > convincing, actually.
> >
> > As so often with American politicians accused of graft and
> > corruption, one reels back in embarrassment at the tiny sums
> > involved. In 2003 Huckabee was fined $250 by the State Ethics
> > Commission of bringing shame on Arkansas by accepting a $500 canoe
> > from Coca-Cola in 2001. The Comission also gave him a rap on the
> > knuckles for not reporting acceptance of a $200 stadium blanket the
> > same year. He probably wanted it to put over his knees in the canoe.
> >
> > Huckabee appealed the sanctions to Pulaski County Circuit Court.
> > Judge Fox said he should have owned up to the blanket, but threw
> > out the $ 250 fine, finding that there wasn't sufficient evidence
> > to show that the canoe, painted with the words "Coke, Arkansas and
> > You," illegally rewarded Huckabee for doing his job as governor.
> > Huckabee battled other such charges, including more substantial
> > gifts of clothes and furniture. It was all familiar stuff, to
> > connoisseurs of small-time corruption charges. Were the suits for
> > the shrunken Huckabee to deploy to Arkansas' advantage at
> > conferences of governors or trade trips abroad? Was the furniture
> > for the rehabbed governor's mansion while Mr and Mors Huckabee
> > roosted in the double-wide?
> >
> > Arkansas underpays its governors as a matter of policy, forcing
> > them into a flexible ethical posture, as opposed to chill high
> > mindedness. Incorruptibles are often more of a menace to society.
> > The American way, which isn't so bad, is to have the laws on the
> > books, for proper use if things start getting seriously out of
> > control. Corruption, held within bounds, is a useful lubricant. Is
> > it really worse for Muscovites to slip the traffic cop 500 roubles
> > ($20), thus paying a de facto fine, as opposed to getting a ticket,
> > and mailing in your $250 speeding fine to the County Superior Court?
> >
> > Bill Clinton got $20,000 a year for governing Arkansas. Huckabee
> > got $80,000.
> >
> > These guys had to go to McDonalds or Taco Bell. It's all they could
> > afford. Of course they pocketed $10,000 bribes in cash for issuing
> > end use certificates and the like. If the truth be told, Gov
> > Clinton in his Arkansas days in the governor's mansion, was a piker
> > in corruption, just like Huckabee. The laughable thing about
> > Whitewater was the pathetically small sums the Clintons stood to
> > make if all went well, which they did not. When the tribunal
> > investigating Irish prime minister Charles Haughey finally
> > concluded its labors, long after his death, I totted up the proven
> > bribes and it came to something like $50 million.
> >
> > So Huckabee will probably survive these charges, as he should the
> > whines of New York Times columnists that he is unversed in foreign
> > affairs. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush demonstrated
> > conclusively that a passing glance at a stamp album is the only
> > education required for dealing with the rest of the world.
> >
> > Huckabee's single rival as a genuinely interesting candidate is
> > another Republican, Ron Paul, who set a record a few days ago, by
> > raising $6 million in a single day. Unlike Huckabee, Paul's core
> > issues are opposition to the war and to George Bush's abuse of
> > civil liberties inscribed in the U.S. Constitution. His appeal, far
> > more than Huckabee, is to the redneck rebel strain in American
> > political life – the populist beast that the US two-party system is
> > designed to suppress. On Monday night Paul was asked on Fox News
> > about Huckabee's Christmas ad, which shows the governor backed by a
> > shining cross. Actually it's the mullions of the window behind him,
> > but the illusion is perfect. Paul said the ad reminded him of
> > Sinclair Lewis's line, that "when fascism comes to this country it
> > will be wrapped in a flag and bearing a cross." In the unlikely
> > event they had read Lewis, no other candidate would dare quote that
> > line.
> >
> >
> > Robert Dunn wrote:
> >> so.... what is the point. The Republican establishment hates him
> >> because he will not cowtow to them. He is more of a threat than
> >> Ron Paul or Ralph Nader ever was or would be. I disagree that a
> >> Huckabee presidency would bring about a new wave of fascism. This
> >> is one of my hugest pet peeves of the liberal wing of the American
> >> Left. The hostility to evangelicals needs to cease for the Left to
> >> be effective. It would have sounded absurd if during the 2002 15th
> >> Congressional District, Carls opponents attacked him based on his
> >> devout Catholic beliefs. Who would not rolling on the floor with
> >> uncontrollable laughter if the main threat from Carl was that
> >> through him, then Pope John Paul II would control policy for East
> >> Central Illinois. Of course it would be nice to have my state
> >> taxes go down from 30% to the tithe of 10%.
> >> So, if others can really help me out with some fruitful
> >> discussion, perhaps Carls 2 or more cents, on this issue. I am
> >> curious as to who the "real enemy" is? Is it the "Right-Wing
> >> populists led by the noses?" Or is it the corporate establishment?
> >> Either way, if the Liberal wing of the American Left, particularly
> >> the Democratic activists who claim to speak for the Left continue
> >> to come up with ridiculous notions of a Christian theocracy as the
> >> real threat, the more evangelicals will reject the Left and
> >> continue "to vote against their economic interests." So with all
> >> fairness to actual folks concerned about real violations of civil
> >> liberties such as the Patriot Act, domestic wiretapping, etc. Baby
> >> Jesus at city hall or some public school kid praying over his PBJ
> >> is not a threat to average Americans.
> >> Carl, do you have any insight into this ridiculous article?
> >> Who am I supposed to fear, the corporate elite or the rubes duped
> >> by them. Because I could just as well say that there are liberal
> >> rubes that the corporate elites are duping. This whole culture war
> >> issue where abortion, environmentalism, gay marriage, even
> >> identity politics on the Left is in my opinion another way of the
> >> corporate elite to maintain power. Are those who just say whatever
> >> the Democratic Party spouts at the moment dupes as well, as I have
> >> seen some even on this list?
> >> Cheers,
> >> Robert
> >>
> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> ---
> >> Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:21:40 -0800
> >> From: jencart13 at yahoo.com
> >> To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Evangelical Rebellion by
> >> Chris Hedges
> >> A friend forwarded this, so I will, too.
> >> The Evangelical Rebellion
> >> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/
> >> 20071223_the_evangelical_rebellion/
> >> Posted on Dec 23, 2007
> >> By Chris Hedges
> >> The rise of Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate
> >> represents
> >> a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the
> >> radical Christian right. Huckabee may stumble and falter in
> >> later primaries, but his right-wing Christian populism is
> >> here
> >> to stay. Huckabee represents a new and potent force in
> >> American
> >> politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once
> >> viewed
> >> the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots,
> >> are now
> >> confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones
> >> who
> >> have been taken for a ride. Members of the Christian right,
> >> recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote
> >> against their own interests around the issues of abortion and
> >> family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party
> >> into
> >> new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with
> >> looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that
> >> could
> >> demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage
> >> for a Christian fascism.
> >> The corporate establishment, whose plundering of the country
> >> created fertile ground for a radical, right-wing backlash, is
> >> sounding the alarm bells. It is scrambling to bolster Mitt
> >> Romney, who, like Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton, will
> >> continue to slash and burn on behalf of corporate profits.
> >> Columnist George Will called Huckabeeâ•˙s populism ╲a
> >> comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs.╡ He
> >> wrote that Huckabeeâ•˙s candidacy ╲broadly repudiates core
> >> Republican policies such as free trade, low taxes, the
> >> essential
> >> legitimacy of Americaâ•˙s corporate entities and the market
> >> system allocating wealth and opportunity.╡ National
> >> Reviewâ•˙s
> >> Rich Lowry wrote that ╲like [Howard] Dean, his nomination
> >> would represent an act of suicide by his party.╡
> >> Huckabee spoke of this revolt on the ╲Today╡ show.
> >> ╲Thereâ•˙s a sense in which all these years the
> >> evangelicals
> >> have been treated very kindly by the Republican Party,╡ he
> >> said. ╲They wanted us to be a part of it. And then one
> >> day one
> >> of us actually runs and they say, ╢Oh, my gosh, now
> >> theyâ•˙re
> >> serious.â•˙ They [evangelicals] donâ•˙t want to just show
> >> up and
> >> vote, they actually would want to be a part of the
> >> discussion.╡
> >> George Bush is a happy stooge of his corporate handlers. He
> >> blithely enriches the oligarchy, defends a war that is the
> >> worst
> >> foreign policy blunder in American history and callously
> >> denies
> >> medical benefits to children. Huckabee is different. He has
> >> tapped into the rage and fury of the working class,
> >> dispossessed
> >> and abandoned by the mainstream Democrats and Republicans.
> >> And
> >> he refuses to make the ideology of the Christian right,
> >> with its
> >> dark contempt for democratic traditions and intolerance of
> >> nonbelievers, a handmaiden of the corporate establishment.
> >> This
> >> makes him a much more lethal and radical political
> >> force. The Christian right is the most potent and
> >> dangerous mass
> >> movement in American history. It has been controlled and led,
> >> until now, by those who submit to the demands of the
> >> corporate
> >> state. But the grass roots are tired of being taken for
> >> rubes.
> >> They are tired of candidates, like Bush or Bill Clinton, who
> >> roll out the same clichés about working men and women every
> >> four years and then spend their terms enriching their
> >> corporate
> >> backers. The majority of American citizens have spent the
> >> last
> >> two decades watching their government services and benefits
> >> vanish. They have seen their jobs go overseas and are
> >> watching
> >> as their communities crumble and their houses are
> >> foreclosed. It
> >> is their kids who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. The old
> >> guard in
> >> the Christian right, the Pat Robertsons, who used their
> >> pulpits
> >> to deliver the votes of naive followers to the
> >> corporatists, is
> >> a spent force. Huckabeeâ•˙s Christian populism represents the
> >> maturation of the movement. It signals the rise of a truly
> >> radical, even revolutionary force in American politics, of
> >> which
> >> Huckabee may be one of the tamer and less frightening
> >> examples.
> >> Hints of Huckabeeâ•˙s bizarre worldview seep out now and
> >> then.
> >> Bob Vander Plaats, Huckabeeâ•˙s Iowa campaign manager, for
> >> example, when asked about his candidateâ•˙s lack of foreign
> >> policy experience, told MSNBC: ╲Well, I think Gov. Huckabee
> >> has a lot of resources that he goes to on national security
> >> matters. Hereâ•˙s a guy, a former pastor, who understands a
> >> theological nature of this war as weâ•˙re fighting a radical
> >> religion in Islam.╡
> >> Robert Novak noted that Huckabee held a fundraiser last
> >> week at
> >> the Houston home of Dr. Steven Hotze. As Novak wrote,
> >> Hotze is
> >> ╲a leader in the highly conservative Christian
> >> Reconstruction movement.╡
> >> Huckabee has close ties with the Christian
> >> Reconstructionist or
> >> Dominionist branch of the Christian right. The Dominionist
> >> movement, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the
> >> Christian faith and American patriotism, is small in
> >> numbers but
> >> influential. It departs from traditional evangelicalism. It
> >> seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian
> >> terms and
> >> concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical
> >> church to
> >> take political power. It shares many prominent features with
> >> classical fascist movements, at least as such movements are
> >> defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as
> >> ╲a form of political behavior marked by obsessive
> >> preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or
> >> victimhood
> >> and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in
> >> which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,
> >> working in uneasy but effective collaboration with
> >> traditional
> >> elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with
> >> redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints
> >> goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.╡
> >> Dominionism, born out of Christian Reconstructionism,
> >> seeks to
> >> politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a
> >> belief
> >> in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident
> >> call for
> >> moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case
> >> American Christians. It also has, like fascist movements, an
> >> ill-defined and shifting set of beliefs, some of which
> >> contradict each other. Paxton argues that the best way to
> >> understand authentic fascist movements, which he says
> >> exist in
> >> all societies, including democracies, is to focus not on what
> >> they say but on how they act, for, as he writes, some of the
> >> ideas that underlie fascist movements ╲remain unstated and
> >> implicit in fascist public language╡ and ╲many of them
> >> belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the
> >> realm
> >> of reasoned propositions.╡
> >> Dominionism teaches that American Christians have been
> >> mandated
> >> by God to make America a Christian state. A decades-long
> >> refusal
> >> by most American fundamentalists to engage in politics at all
> >> following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for
> >> Christian ╲dominion╡ over the nation and, eventually,
> >> over
> >> the Earth itself. Dominionism preaches that Jesus has
> >> called on
> >> Christians to actively build the kingdom of God on Earth.
> >> America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of God,
> >> and all political and intellectual opponents of Americaâ•˙s
> >> Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of
> >> Satan.
> >> Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a
> >> sinful and
> >> fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the
> >> basis of our legal system, in which creationism and
> >> ╲Christian values╡ form the basis of our educational
> >> system,
> >> and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to
> >> one
> >> and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public
> >> schools will
> >> be abolished. Women will be removed from the work force to
> >> stay
> >> at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian
> >> will be
> >> denied citizenship. Baptist minister Rick
> >> Scarborough, founder of Vision America and
> >> a self-described ╲Christocrat,╡ who attended the Texas
> >> fundraiser, has endorsed Huckabee. Scarborough, along with
> >> holding other bizarre stances, opposes the HPV (human
> >> papillomavirus) vaccine on grounds that it interferes with
> >> Godâ•˙s punishment of sexual license. And Huckabee, who once
> >> advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public and
> >> opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure,
> >> comes out of this frightening mold. He justified his call to
> >> quarantine those with AIDS because they could ╲pose a
> >> dangerous public health risk.╡
> >> "If the federal government is truly serious about doing
> >> something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that
> >> would
> >> isolate the carriers of this plague,╡ Huckabee wrote.
> >> ╲It is
> >> difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is
> >> the first time in the history of civilization in which the
> >> carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the
> >> general population, and in which this deadly disease for
> >> which
> >> there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue
> >> instead of the true health crisis it represents.╡
> >> Huckabee has publicly backed off from this extreme
> >> position, but
> >> he remains deeply hostile to gays. He has used wit and
> >> humor to
> >> deflect reporters from his radical views about marriage,
> >> abortion, damnation, biblical law, creationism and the
> >> holy war
> >> he believes we are fighting with Islam. But his stances
> >> represent a huge step, should they ever become policy,
> >> toward a
> >> theocratic state and the death of our open society. In the
> >> end,
> >> however, I do not blame Huckabee or the tens of millions of
> >> hapless Christians╉40 percent of the Republican
> >> electorate╉who hear his words and rejoice. I blame the
> >> corporate state, those who thought they could disempower and
> >> abuse the working class, rape the country, build a rapacious
> >> oligarchy and never pay a political price. Chris
> >> Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity
> >> School, is the author of ╲American Fascists: The Christian
> >> Right and the War on America.╡
> >> =
> >>
> >> _____________________________________________________________________
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> >> Mobile.
> >> Try it now.
> >> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51733/*http://
> >> mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ>
> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> ---
> >> Don't get caught with egg on your face. Play Chicktionary! Check
> >> it out! <http://club.live.com/chicktionary.aspx?
> >> icid=chick_wlhmtextlink1_dec>
> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> ---
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Peace-discuss mailing list
> >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> > _______________________________________________
> > Peace-discuss mailing list
> > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> > http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
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