Category: Bigotry

McCain’s Other Pet Bigot

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It’s not just Hagee.

Even closer to McCain is Televangelist Rod Parsley, who believes that America was founded with the purpose of destroying Islam.

It appears he knows nothing of the Treaty of Tripoli.

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

But bigots tend to believe whatever they want to believe.

Bigotry is, after all the Republican party has these days.

McCain Embraces Hagee, Which is OK, Because He’s White

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Obama is expected to denounce Farrakhan, who made his endorsement without consulting the campaign, and has never shared a stage with him, but it’s OK for McCain to stand next to an anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic bigot and smile during the endorsement, I guess because he’s white.

Let’s be fair though, McCain does say that he disagrees with Hagee on Catholics.

It’s like that old Eddie Murphy sketch on Saturday Night Live, White Like Me.

McCain can embrace a radical fundamentalist bigot because he is white, and because said bigot is white.

The Bigots Are Going After Each Other Now

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It appears that Bill Donohue, President of the “Catholic League” and all around bigot is upset because Texas Evangelical leader John Hagee, another bigot, has endorsed John McCain.

It seems that Hagee hates Catholics too, you see.

But Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement today that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, “calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.'”

“Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee,” Donohue said.

I appreciate McCain’s conundrum. If he disavowed bigotry, he’d lose at least 3/4 of the Republican party.

Pass the popcorn.

Apologist for Racism, William F. Buckley Dead at 82

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My condolences to his family, but his record of endorsing racism and fascism should not be ignored.

He was a fervent supporter of Franco, and (of course) Joe McCarthy, and he kept himself amused by coming up with reprehensible justifications for Jim Crow.

Of course, he was well respected, because he was from the right family and went to Yale.

See Steve Gilliard’s post speak like a conservative where he quotes Buckley:

The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.

National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.

The irony was that at the end of his life, he was abandoned by the Neocon community that he helped to create, because he actually had a bit of sanity.

Unlike, for example, Norman Podhoretz, there is every indication that he knew what he was doing and knew better (I’m talking about the appeals to racism here), but was too fond of his own words to do the right thing.

He was a good writer and a witty man though.

Taliban Style CatholicsGo After High School Sports

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In Kansas*, a religious high school refused to allow a female referee to officiate at their game, because they did not believe that women should ever have authority over men.

To the credit of then Kansas State High School Activities Association, they are in the process of considering banning St. Mary’s Academy from any sporting events with their members schools if this is actually their policy.

They should do so, and they so should do so for non sports activities too. Whether that be beauty contests, band competitions, car washes, or educational conferences.

These people are the real American Taliban, and any accomodation will encourage more extreme demands.

*You know, Kansas would be the last place that I would expect this. So say we all, by the might of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Newspapers Reprint Mohammed Cartoon In Response to Terror Threats

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Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who painted the picture of Mohammad having a bomb for a turban, was the target of an assassination conspiracy which was uncovered yesterday.

In response, newspapers across Europe have reprinted his cartoon.

Good for them. This is an issue of free speech, and the right to free speech includes the right to be an asshole without fear of violence or death.

For what it’s worth, I do find this cartoon offensive and bigoted:

But the idea that it merits death threats, or for that matter actual conspiracies to assassinate, is repugnant to any civilized people.

The freedom of speech includes the freedom to blaspheme.

By way of example:

I would expect that this would get me called a bigoted asshole, but anyone who thinks that it rates death, and has the inclination to act on it, needs to be removed from free society.

Bigotry in Maryland

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A small Muslim sect, the Ahmadiyya, wanted to build a Mosque and conference center in Walkersville, Maryland.

They were turned down, citing “noise, traffic, and water” issues.

They would have an annual convention of 10,000, but if this were Evangelical Christians doing the same, the Walkersville Chamber of Commerce would be twisting arms to get it in.

You know it, I know it, the Ahmadiyya know it, as do the citizens of Walkersville.

And From the Fascist Wing of the Catholic Church

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St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke calling for Rick Majerus, the St. Louis University basketball coach, to be disciplined for making a campaign appearance for Hillary Clinton and expressing support for Roe v. Wade.

This is not a priest, this is not a professor in the divinity department, this is a freaking BASKETBALL COACH.

I understand that St. Louis University is a Catholic school, but demanding that employees who have absolutely nothing to do with the religious mission of the school have to toe their political is outrageous, particularly given this:

Last year, St. Louis U. celebrated a legal victory that affirmed it is not controlled by the Catholic church or by its Catholic beliefs.

The Missouri Supreme Court agreed with the school in handing down a decision that the city of St. Louis did not violate state and federal constitutions by granting the university $8 million in tax increment financing for its new arena.

Opponents of the $80 million arena sued the school in 2004, halting construction.

The Missouri Constitution prohibits public funding to support any “… college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination whatever.”

The debate came down to two words: “control” and “creed.” Does the guiding mission of a Catholic university align with the specific system of religious faith espoused by the Catholic church? And if so, does that system of faith control the actions of the university?

In a 6-1 decision, the court said SLU “is not controlled by a religious creed.”

As I recall*, Rush Limbaugh’s cousin, Stephn N. Limbaugh, Jr. serves on this court, and had been nominated by Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Hmmm….I guess that Rush is the smart one of his family…Scary thought.

*And by, “As I recall”, I mean checking the Wiki.

Richard Cohen: I’d Call Him a Schmuck, but a Schmuck Has a Head

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Let me make this clear, Richard Cohen’s proposed “Farrahkan Test” is stupid and racist.

The idea that Obama some signs off on an editorial decision made by the daughter of his pastor is insane.

Henry at Crooked Timber, in his post, Six degrees of Louis Farrakhan, makes the following point:

There’s something else going on here. I strongly suspect that Barack Obama is being asked to condemn Louis Farrakhan not because there’s some bogus two-degrees-of-separation thing going on, but because Barack Obama is black, and because black politicians are supposed to condemn Louis Farrakhan before they can be trusted. This isn’t racism, but it’s an implicit double standard, under which black politicians have a higher hurdle to jump before they deserve public trust than white ones. More generally, this is a bad, wrongheaded, and even dangerous article. Richard Cohen shouldn’t have written it, and the Washington Post shouldn’t have printed it.

I will go further. This is explicitly, and intentionally racist.

BTW, Obama’s response, as given to Talking Points Memo is as follows:

I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.

Richard Cohen is a shanda before the goyim, and a miserable excuse for a human being.

This explains why he works writing openions for the Washington Post.

Von Spakovsky says good-bye to that job at the FEC | Political Insider

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Hans Von Spakovsky resigns from the FEC, though the Bush Administration has not withdrawn his nomination.

This is a man whose professional career has been, “Keeping N***ers from Voting”, and the fact that he is exiting the scene is a good thing.

One final, more trivial note:

Between that picture, which looks like a Waffen SS photo, which, juxtaposed with his name, just gives me the creeps.

Of course, he’s not a Nazi SS member. He’s a bigot, and a lier, and a follower of Jim Crow.

All par for the course for a nomination from Bush and His Evil Minions™.

Classism

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Timothy Egan of the Times has a very interesting post about the establishment’s antipathy towards Huckabee. It sounds a lot like their rap on Bill Clinton (Rhodes Scholar) and Jimmy Carter (59th out of 820 at Annapolis) too.

Amazing it appears that the Washington Hive Mind™ is Republican, and that it hates authentic Southerners (GW Bush was born in Connecticut, and went to Phillips Andover and Yale).

The rap against Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and ex-Arkansas governor now doing for the Republican Party establishment what three-alarm chili does for an afternoon nap, is that he’s too inexperienced to be president, too naïve — a rube straight out of Dogpatch.

Few of Huckabee’s critics have actually come out and said what many of them think. The language is coded, as it usually is with class and race in this country. The Wall Street Journal, the anti-tax jihadists at the Club For Growth, the National Review – these pillars of Old School Republicanism have signaled that Huckabee is Not One of Ours. But they’re careful to say it’s not about class, because, of course – it is!

Go Read the rest.

Why Are Talibaptists So Bloodthirsty?

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Matthew Yglesias comments on the Washington Post OP/ED by Harold Meyerson. They both ask why if the the words in the Christian Bible are so full of peace and love, that the Christo-Fascists are so mindlessly selfish, punitive, violent, and warlike.

Meyerson mentions the punitive nature of their immigration positions, which favor punishing children of illegals.

It’s not just Bush whose catechism is a merry mix of torture and piety. Virtually the entire Republican House delegation opposed the ban on waterboarding. Among the Republican presidential candidates, only Huckabee and the not-very-religious John McCain have come out against torture, while only libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the doctrine of preemptive war.

But it’s on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans — candidates and voters alike — really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here. Consider: Christmas, after all, celebrates not just Jesus’s birth but his family’s flight from Herod’s wrath into Egypt, a journey obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Bible isn’t big on immigrant documentation. “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him,” Exodus says the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai, “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Yet the distinctive cry coming from the Republican base this year isn’t simply to control the flow of immigrants across our borders but to punish the undocumented immigrants already here, children and parents alike.

So Romney attacks Huckabee for holding immigrant children blameless when their parents brought them here without papers, and Huckabee defends himself by parading the endorsement of the Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist, whose group harasses day laborers far from the border. The demand for a more regulated immigration policy comes from virtually all points on our political spectrum, but the push to persecute the immigrants already among us comes distinctly, though by no means entirely, from the same Republican right that protests its Christian faith at every turn.

I would add the death penalty, support for Iraq, opposition to social programs.

I do not know the whys of this. I am not a Christian, and I have read little of the Christian theological works, so my understanding of this cognitive dissonance is limited.

By the same token, I am not in the least surprised. While I am not a student of Christian theology, I AM a student of Jewish history, and the behaviors that they are all so very shocked about have long standing historical precedents.

History shows that the use of the Christian texts to promote hate is the rule rather than the exception.

More happened in 1492, for example, than Columbus going to America.

Covering Religion Made These Guys Lose Their Faith

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Stephen Bates, former religion reporter for the Grauniad*, his work covering religion caused him to lose his faith.

Specifically, his coverage of the entire “Gay Bishop” brouhaha in the Anglican Church”

….

There is also no doubting, personally, that writing this story has been too corrosive of what faith I had left: indeed watching the way the gay row has played out in the Anglican Communion has cost me my belief in the essential benignity of too many Christians.For the good of my soul, I need to do something else.

….

The trouble with these people, my wife always says, is that they don’t read their Bibles, for they know nothing of charity. I think she’s right and I am in mortal danger of losing mine. It’s time to move on.

The whole article is rather forceful about what he found that turned him off of religion, and I feel that he is entirely justified.

You should also look at William Lobdell’s article, Religion beat became a test of faith, where he describes how covering the abuse scandals and similar obscenities in the Catholic Church, along with the “capitalist nearest to God” con games of “prosperity gospel” of some of the mega churches, which seem even more obscene to me, caused him to lose his faith.

There are strong arguments to be made that organized religion is inimical to real faith.

Luckily for me, I am not a member of an organized religion, I am a Jew, to paraphrase Will Rogers.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”