James Dean? No way!
Posted By: I never knew that on 2009-06-11
In Reply to: If I were you....(sm) - Just the big bad
Did not know that
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Charley James is racist.
Obsurd to post someone else's trash. I notice that is happening a lot here lately.
Like James Carvell (sp?) said, most of the people there
was in the age range of 72.4 years and white. I saw no diversity in the tea party myself, the few minutes I switched to Fox (that was the only channel I could get that was showing anything about it, not CNN, MSNBC or the local channels) just a bunch of hate mongers going under the disguse of taxation woes. More like anti-Obama group with all those horrible signs I saw on line.
Howard Dean is also an MD
so he's just a stupid "crat?" Who's stupid?
Revelations, King James Version
Here are a few quotes from James Cone's book...
the author of Black Liberation Theology...you were not looking at the black liberation theology practiced at Trinity...James Cone is central to that, says so on their website, unless they have taken it down.
Here are a couple of direct quotes:
"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love."
"Black hatred is the black man's strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it... While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism. " Excuse me...WHAT??
That is the racist part.
Here is the Marxist part:
One of the pillars of Obama’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is "economic parity." On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with "America’s economic mal-distribution." Among all of controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright, the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language "economic parity" and references to "mal-distribution" is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black Liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim class (blacks).
Black Liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West have worked diligently to embed Marxist thought into the black church since the 1970s. For Cone, Marxism best addressed remedies to the condition of blacks as victims of white oppression. In For My People, Cone explains that "the Christian faith does not possess in its nature the means for analyzing the structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose the gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to see how things really are."
That is just the tip of the iceberg.
James Montgomery, Esq. is holding a press
conference. Jesse Jackson, Jr. is "candidate #5" and he thinks Blagojevich should step aside and resign and let the Lt. Gov. take over. He states JJ, Jr. is qualified for the position.
He states JJ, Jr. is not guity of anything. He is not worried about any consequences of this except the media frenzy that is being created by this. If the meeting between the Gov. and JJ, Jr. was taped, they have no concern over it.
He (JJ, Jr.) will be speaking with the investigators on Friday or Monday. He will be holding a press conference in 15-16 minutes.
I don't understand. Who do you think planted James T Harris
He's a radio talk show host in Milwaukee.
Rick James died in 2004
of a heart attack. That was too bad. I loved Superfreak.
article from john dean
Was Pat Robertson's Call for Assassination of a Foreign Leader a Crime?
By John W. Dean
FindLaw.com
Friday 26 August 2005
Had he been a Democrat, he'd probably be hiring a criminal attorney.
On Monday, August 22, the Chairman of the Christian Broadcast Network, Marion Pat Robertson, proclaimed, on his 700 Club television show, that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be murdered.
More specifically, Robertson said, You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, referring to the American policy since the Presidency of Gerald Ford against assassination of foreign leaders, but if he [Chavez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.
We have the ability to take him out, Robertson continued, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.
Robertson found himself in the middle of a media firestorm. He initially denied he'd called for Chavez to be killed, and claimed he'd been misinterpreted, but in an age of digital recording, Robertson could not flip-flop his way out of his own statement. He said what he said.
By Wednesday, Robertson was backing down: I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out,' Robertson claimed on his Wednesday show. 'Take him out' could be a number of things including kidnapping.
No one bought that explanation, either. So Robertson quietly posted a half apology on his website. It is only a half apology because it is clear he really does not mean to apologize, but rather, still seeks to rationalize and justify his dastardly comment.
From the moment I heard Robertson's remark, on the radio, I thought of the federal criminal statutes prohibiting such threats. Do they apply?
For me, the answer is yes. Indeed, had these comments been made by a Dan Rather, a Bill Moyers, or Jesse Jackson, it is not difficult to imagine some conservative prosecutor taking a passing look at these laws - as, say, Pat Robertson might read them - and saying, Let's prosecute.
The Broad Federal Threat Attempt Prohibition Vis-à-Vis Foreign Leaders
Examine first, if you will, the broad prohibition against threatening or intimidating foreign officials, which is a misdemeanor offense. This is found in Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 112(b), which states: Whoever willfully - (1) ... threatens ... a foreign official ..., [or] (2) attempts to... threaten ... a foreign official ... shall be fined under this titled or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The text of this misdemeanor statute plainly applies: No one can doubt that Robertson attempted to threaten President Chavez.
Yet the statute was written to protect foreign officials visiting the United States - not those in their homelands. Does that make a difference?
It would likely be the precedent of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that would answer that question; the Fourth Circuit includes Virginia where Robertson made the statement. And typically, the Fourth Circuit, in interpreting statutes does not look to the intent of Congress; it focuses on statutory language instead.
And in a case involving Robertson, to focus on language would only be poetic justice:
Robertson, is the strictest of strict constructionists, a man who believes judges (and prosecutors) should enforce the law exactly as written. He said as much in his 2004 book, Courting Disaster: How the Supreme Court Is Usurping The Power of Congress and the People.
Still, since the applicability of this misdemeanor statute is debatable, I will focus on the felony statute instead.
The Federal Threat Statute: Fines and Prison for Threats to Kidnap or Injure
It is a federal felony to use instruments of interstate or foreign commerce to threaten other people. The statute is clear, and simple. Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 875(c), states: Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (Emphases added.)
The interstate or foreign commerce element is plainly satisfied by Robertson's statements. Robertson's 700 Club is listed as broadcasting in thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia, not to mention ABC Family Channel satellites which cover not only the United States but several foreign countries as well. In addition, the program was sent around the world via the Internet.
But did Robertson's communication contain a threat to kidnap or injure Chavez?
First, Robertson said he wanted to assassinate President Chavez. His threat to take him out, especially when combined with the explanation that this would be cheaper than war, was clearly a threat to kill.
Then, Robertson said he was only talking about kidnapping Chavez. Under the federal statute, a threat to kidnap is expressly covered.
As simple and clear as this statute may be, the federal circuit courts have been divided when reading it. But the conservative Fourth Circuit, where Robertson made his statement, is rather clear on its reading of the law.
Does Robertson's Threat Count as a True Threat? The Applicable Fourth Circuit Precedents Suggest It Does
If Robertson himself were a judge (or prosecutor) reading this statue - based on my reading of his book about how judges and justice should interpret the law - he would be in a heap of trouble. But how would the statute likely be read in the Fourth Circuit, where a prosecution of Robertson would occur?
Under that Circuit's precedent, the question would be whether Robertson's threat was a true threat. Of course, on third reflection, Robertson said it was not. But others have been prosecuted notwithstanding retractions, and later reflections on intemperate threats.
Here is how the Fourth Circuit - as it explained in the Draby case - views threats under this statute: Whether a communication in fact contains a true threat is determined by the interpretation of a reasonable recipient [meaning, the person to whom the threat was directed] familiar with the context of the communication.
This is an objective standard, under which the court looks at the totality of the circumstances surrounding the communications, rather than simply looking to the subjective intent of the speaker, or the subjective feelings of the recipient. So even if Robertson did not mean to make a threat, and even if Chavez did not feel threatened, that is not the end of the story.
In one Fourth Circuit case, the defendant asked if [the person threatened] knew who Jeffrey Dahlmer [sic] was. Then the defendant added that, he didn't eat his victims, like Jeffrey Dahlmer; [sic] that he just killed them by blowing them up. This defendant's conviction for this threat was upheld.
In another Fourth Circuit ruling, the defendant, an unhappy taxpayer, was convicted for saying, to an IRS Agent, that in all honesty, I can smile at you and blow your brains out; that once I come through there, anybody that tries to stop me, I'm going to treat them just like they were a cockroach; and, that unless I can throw somebody through a damn window, I'm just not going to feel good.
Viewed in the context, and taking into account the totality of the circumstances, it was anything but clear that any of these threats were anything more than angry tough talk. The same could be said of Robertson's threats. Yet in both these cases, the Fourth Circuit upheld the defendant's conviction, deeming the true threat evidence sufficient to do so.
For me, this make Robertson's threats a very close question. President Chavez publicly brushed Robertson's threats off, for obvious diplomatic reasons, yet I suspect a little inquiry would uncover that the Venezuelan President privately he has taken extra precautions, and his security people have beefed up his protection. Robertson has Christian soldiers everywhere. Who knows what some misguided missionary might do?
If you have not seen the Robertson threat, view it yourself and decide. Robertson's manner, his choice to return to the subject repeatedly in his discourse, and the seriousness with which he stated the threat, all strike me as leading strongly to the conclusion that this was a true threat. Only media pressure partially backed him off. And his apology is anything but a retraction.
Will Robertson be investigated or prosecuted by federal authorities? Will he be called before Congress? Will the President, or the Secretary of State, publicly chastise Robertson? Are those three silly questions about a man who controls millions of Republican votes from Christian conservatives?
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president.
Here is a synopsis of the Dean interview.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0714-25.htm
Them's strong words Mr Dean!
John Dean on MSNBC: Dik Cheney may be guilty of "murder"
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s bombshell earlier this week that Vice President Dik Cheney controlled an “executive assassination ring” continues to reverberate throughout Washington, with Nixon aide John Dean going so far as to accuse the former VP of murder if the charges are true.
You still got the wrong Mr. Dean, Darwin
Identifying the CORRECT Mr. Dean since you don't know any better........no child left behind?
I mean Dean is a real republican, not like the ones today.
Ummm...wrong Mr. Dean, Einstein
Howard Dean was the Vermont Governor who ran in the 2004 election. JOHN Dean was Richard Nixon's Aide - get it?
John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) was White House Counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. As White House Counsel, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover up, even referred to as "master manipulator of the cover up" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Sean Penn...Jeremiah Wright...James Carville...to name
X
Mr. Dean talks thought the mouth of a horse
Yeah, like anything he has to say is valuable. This is the guy who screamed out all those states - HEEEEE-YAWWWWWW?
Mr. Dean is a spiteful crat to the bone and did not do his job properly. He didn't stand on the side of the people, who stood with the big money people.
If he's going to call anyone a murderer he best go back to Billy boy himself with those wars he started that he had no place involving the US troops. Lots of innocent people were slaughtered because of him back then and no he did not follow the Geneva code.
Miers: Margaret Carlson & James Dobson know. Why doesn't Bush?
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=ajuZsQQbuwl4#
With Miers, Bush Gets Fifth Vote Against Roe: Margaret Carlson
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- What if former President Bill Clinton had nominated his White House counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, to the Supreme Court? I can hear Bill Frist now. What does Slick Willy think he's doing -- filling a job at FEMA?
At first glance, there seems to be no other reason for Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court other than that she is President George W. Bush's Bernie Nussbaum. The notion that a careerist corporate lawyer would have risen to the top of Bush's list if she weren't down the hall is preposterous.
Unlike famous self-selector Dick Cheney, no one suspects the modest Miers looked in the mirror and saw the best replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor staring back at her. Only Bush could see the ``heart'' and ``character'' in Miers that made her the perfect selection. She's been his consigliore, fixer and confidante for more than two decades, and she thinks the way he does.
The fact that Miers is a woman helps enormously. It looks as if Bush listened to wife Laura, who publicly suggested he should replace a woman with a woman. It's far more likely that Laura publicly suggested it because he already had decided to do so. The choice prompts automatic praise from some liberals, excites Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and placates Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Bush's Wants
And notice how tongue-tied a potential critic, Senator Edward Kennedy, was two days ago trying to criticize her.
Miers satisfies a number of Bush's proclivities: his inability to distinguish an insider job from an outside one (White House counsel is the most partisan legal job in government), his desire to reward loyalty and his love of surprise.
Ambitious Republicans should be on notice that the best way to get ahead in the Bush years is to work anonymously inside. It was only because the White House floated Miers's name that she was on anyone's list.
This is not to say that Miers isn't a decent, competent (she may be a crony, but she's no Michael Brown) and respected person. She's devoted to her mother and brothers, a regular churchgoer, an early riser, an avid celebrator of birthdays.
Up the Ladder
In Dallas, she broke the glass ceiling for female lawyers (although she lived the life of a nun to get there). After meeting Bush in 1989, she represented him in matters ranging from his purchase of a fishing cottage in East Texas to questions about his National Guard service.
At the same time, she climbed a steep corporate ladder, becoming co-manager of a huge Dallas firm and chairwoman of the Texas Bar Association, specializing in commercial transactions for large corporations.
She served on the Dallas City Council and headed the Texas Lottery, where, some say, she cleaned up Powerball. She moved with the president to the White House, where the only complaint against her was that she lingered over paperwork too long.
She became counsel to the president when Alberto Gonzales was promoted to attorney general. Gonzales is another loyalist who proved himself to Governor Bush by speed-reading through death row appeals in Texas and redefining torture in the White House for purposes of allowing more of it in Iraq. With her nomination, Miers has gotten an even bigger promotion than her predecessor.
Shocked Conservatives
Some conservatives are loudly shocked that Bush ignored the long list of known quantities among conservative jurists in the mold of his favorites, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. It depressed Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Rush Limbaugh was so agitated Cheney gave him an interview to calm his listeners.
What those conservatives are missing is what Dr. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel to the American Center for Law & Justice, see in Miers: a fifth vote for overturning Roe v. Wade. Bush even got Dobson's approval beforehand.
Like Bush, Miers had a late-in-life born-again moment, joining a conservative evangelical church in Dallas where she taught Sunday School.
In an interview in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, Miers's former campaign manager, Lorlee Bartos, said Miers told her when running for city council in 1989 that she had been ``pro-choice in her youth.'' Then, according to Bartos, Miers said she underwent ``a born-again, profound experience'' that caused her to change her mind and oppose abortion.
Keeping the Promise
That conversion fits with her $150 contribution to Texans United for Life in 1989 and her successful effort to get the American Bar Association to move from support for abortion rights to neutral in 1991. After the ABA switched back to a pro- abortion-rights position, Miers in 1993 failed in a bid to have the endorsement put to a vote of the full membership.
At his press conference yesterday, Bush claimed that in all the years he's known Miers he never learned her view on abortion. Dobson and Sekulow will have their hands full reassuring the base about that comment. It's one thing for Chuck Schumer to be left in the dark, quite another for Bush to say he purposely kept himself there.
Didn't he promise the base he'd turn the light on and give them a selection sure to reverse Roe?
I think he has. This time he's tricking Harry Reid.
I used to think the younger Bush was like his dad on abortion -- pro-life for purposes of getting elected, pro-choice otherwise. But I now see him as a victim of Stockholm syndrome, adopting as his own view that of his right-wing captors. My money is on Dobson knowing what Bush claims not to. Assuming Miers is confirmed, it won't be long before we all know.
To contact the writer of this column:
Margaret Carlson at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 5, 2005 00:16 EDT
Jon Butler, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
HNN History News Network Because the Past is the Present, and the Future too.
12-20-04 An Interview with Jon Butler ... Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
By Rick Shenkman
Mr. Butler, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Yale University, is the author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People(Harvard University Press, 1990). This interview was conducted by HNN editor Rick Shenkman for The Learning Channel series, Myth America, which aired several years ago.
You hear it all the time from the right wing. The United States was founded as a Christian country. What do you make of that?
Well, first of all, it wasn't. The United States wasn't founded as a Christian country. Religion played very little role in the American Revolution and it played very little role in the making of the Constitution. That's largely because the Founding Fathers were on the whole deists who had a very abstract conception of God, whose view of God was not a God who acted in the world today and manipulated events in a way that actually changed the course of human history. Their view of religion was really a view that stressed ethics and morals rather than a direct divine intervention.
And when you use the term deists, define that. What does that mean?
A deist means someone who believes in the existence of God or a God, the God who sets the world into being, lays down moral and ethical principals and then charges men and women with living lives according to those principals but does not intervene in the world on a daily basis.
Let's go through some of them. George Washington?
George Washington was a man for whom if you were to look at his writings, you would be very hard pressed to find any deep, personal involvement with religion. Washington thought religion was important for the culture and he thought religion was important for soldiers largely because he hoped it would instill good discipline, though he was often bitterly disappointed by the discipline that it did or didn't instill.
And he thought that society needed religion. But he was not a pious man himself. That is, he wasn't someone who was given to daily Bible reading. He wasn't someone who was evangelical. He simply was a believer. It's fair, perfectly fair, to describe Washington as a believer but not as someone whose daily behavior, whose political life, whose principals are so deeply infected by religion that you would have felt it if you were talking to him.
Thomas Jefferson?
Well, Jefferson's interesting because recently evangelicals, some evangelicals, have tried to make Jefferson out as an evangelical. Jefferson actually was deeply interested in the question of religion and morals and it's why Jefferson, particularly in his later years, developed a notebook of Jesus' sayings that he found morally and ethically interesting. It's now long since been published and is sometimes called, The Jefferson Bible. But Jefferson had real trouble with the Divinity of Christ and he had real trouble with the description of various events mentioned in both the New and the Old Testament so that he was an enlightened skeptic who was profoundly interested in the figure of Christ as a human being and as an ethical teacher. But he was not religious in any modern meaning of that word or any eighteenth century meaning of that word. He wasn't a regular church goer and he never affiliated himself with a religious denomination--unlike Washington who actually did. He was an Episcopalian. Jefferson, however, was interested in morals and ethics and thought that morals and ethics were important but that's different than saying religion is important because morals and ethics can come from many sources other than religion and Jefferson knew that and understood that.
Where does he stand on Christ exactly?
Jefferson rejected the divinity of Christ, but he believed that Christ was a deeply interesting and profoundly important moral or ethical teacher and it was in Christ's moral and ethical teachings that Jefferson was particularly interested. And so that's what attracted him to the figure of Christ was the moral and ethical teachings as described in the New Testament. But he was not an evangelical and he was not a deeply pious individual.
Let's move on to Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin was even less religious than Washington and Jefferson. Franklin was an egotist. Franklin was someone who believed far more in himself than he could possibly have believed have believed in the divinity of Christ, which he didn't. He believed in such things as the transmigration of souls. That is that human, that humans came into being in another existence and he may have had occult beliefs. He was a Mason who was deeply interested in Masonic secrets and there are some signs that Franklin believed in the mysteries of Occultism though he never really wrote much about it and never really said much about it. Franklin is another writer whom you can read all you want to read in the many published volumes of Franklin's writings and read very little about religion.
Where did the conservatives come up with this idea that the Founding Fathers were so religious?
Well, when they discuss the Founding Fathers or when individuals who are interested in stressing the role of religion in the period of the American Revolution discuss this subject, they often stress several characteristics. One is that it is absolutely true that many of the second level and third levels in the American Revolution were themselves church members and some of them were deeply involved in religion themselves.
It's also true that most Protestant clergymen at the time of the American Revolution, especially toward the end of the Revolution, very eagerly backed the Revolution. So there's a great deal of formal religious support for the American Revolution and that makes it appear as though this is a Christian nation or that religion had something to do with the coming of the Revolution, the texture of the Revolution, the making of the Revolution.
But I think that many historians will argue and I think quite correctly that the Revolution was a political event. It was centered in an understanding of what politics is and by that we mean secular politics, holding power. Who has authority? Why should they have authority? It wasn't centered in religious events. It wasn't centered in miracles. It wasn't centered in church disputes. There was some difficulty with the Anglican church but it was relatively minor and as an example all one needs to do is look at the Declaration of Independence. Neither in Jefferson's beautifully written opening statement in the Declaration nor in the long list of grievances against George the Third does religion figure in any important way anywhere.And the Declaration of Independence accurately summarizes the motivations of those who were back the American Revolution.
Some of the conservatives will say, well, but it does make a reference to nature's God and isn't that a bow to religion?
It is a bow to religion but it's hardly a bow to evangelicalism. Nature's God was the deist's God. Nature's God, When evangelicals discuss religion they mean to speak of the God of the Old and the New Testament not the God of nature. The God of nature is an almost secular God and in a certain way that actually makes the point that that's a deistical understanding of religion not a specifically Christian understanding of religion. To talk about nature's God is not to talk about the God of Christ.
John Patrick Diggins has advanced the argument that not only were the Founding Fathers not particularly religious but in fact they were deeply suspicious of religion because of the role that they saw religion played in old Europe, where they saw it not as cohesive but as divisive. Do you agree?
The answer is yes and the reason is very simple. The principal Founding Fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin--were in fact deeply suspicious of a European pattern of governmental involvement in religion. They were deeply concerned about an involvement in religion because they saw government as corrupting religion. Ministers who were paid by the state and paid by the government didn't pay any attention to their parishes. They didn't care about their parishioners. They could have, they sold their parishes. They sold their jobs and brought in a hireling to do it and they wandered off to live somewhere else and they didn't need to pay attention to their parishioners because the parishioners weren't paying them. The state was paying them.
In addition, it corrupts the state. That is, it brings into government elements of politics and elements of religion that are less than desirable. The most important being coercion. When government is involved with religion in a positive way, the history that these men saw was a history of coercion and a history of coercion meant a history of physical coercion and it meant ultimately warfare. Most of the wars from 1300 to 1800 had been religious wars and the wars that these men knew about in particular were the wars of religion that were fought over the Reformation in which Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other, stuffed Bibles into the slit stomachs of dead soldiers so that they would eat, literally eat, their words, eat the words of an alien Bible and die with those words in their stomachs. This was the world of government involvement with religion that these men knew and a world they wanted to reject.
To create the United States meant to create a new nation free from those old attachments and that's what they created in 1776 and that's what they perfected in 1789 with the coming of the federal government. And thus it's not an accident that the First Amendment deals with religion. It doesn't just deal with Christianity. It deals with religion with a small r meaning all things religious.
What about the conservatives' belief that we need to go back to the religion of the Founding Fathers?
If we went back to the religion of the Founding Fathers we would go back to deism. If we picked up modern religion, it's not the religion of the Founding Fathers. Indeed, we are probably more religious than the society that created the American Revolution. There are a number of ways to think about that. Sixty percent of Americans belong to churches today , 20 percent belonged in 1776. And if we count slaves, for example, it probably reduces the figure to 10 percent of the society that belonged to any kind of religious organization.
Modern Americans probably know more about religious doctrine in general, Christianity, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, than most Americans did in 1776. I would argue that America in the 1990s is a far more deeply religious society, whose politics is more driven by religion, than it was in 1776. So those who want to go back would be going back to a much more profoundly secular society.
What do you make of the politicians who take the opposite point of view. It must make you go crazy.
It doesn't make me go crazy. It makes me feel sad because it's inaccurate. It's not a historically accurate view of American society. It's a very useful view because many modern men and women are driven by a jeremiad, that is jeremiad lamenting the conditions in the wilderness. We tend to feel bad when we hear that we are not as religious as our fathers or our grandfathers or our great grandfathers and that spurs many of us on to greater religious activity. Unfortunately in this case the jeremiad simply isn't true. And I don't think that those who insist it is true would really want to go back to the kind of society that existed on thee eve of the American Revolution.
Americans do become religious in the nineteenth century, don't they? That's what you say in your book.
The American Revolution created the basis for new uses of religion in a new society and that was conveyed in the lesson taught by the First Amendment. If government was no longer going to be supporting religion how was religion going to support itself? It would have to support itself by its own means. Through its own measures. It would have to generate its measures. And this is what every one of the churches began to do. As soon as religion dropped out of the state and the state dropped out of religion, the churches began fending for themselves. And they discovered that in fending for themselves that their contributions were going up, they were producing more newspapers, more tracts, they were beginning to circulate those tracts, they created a national religious economy long before there was a secular economy. You could trade more actively in religious goods than you could in other kinds in the United States in 1805, 1810.
What happened in the United States is that the churches actually benefited from this separation of church and state that was dictated by the First Amendment. In addition to which America became kind of a spiritual hothouse in the nineteenth century. Not only did the quantity off religion go up but so did the proliferation of doctrine. There became new religions--the Mormons, the spiritualists--all created in the United States. New religious groups that no one had ever heard of before, that had never existed anywhere else in western society than in the United States.
I seriously doubt the Dems would claim you,Zauber. You're another Howard Dean.
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