Politics and religion ........

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:30 am

So where's the illuminati references again?

joel the ornery · Post by **joel the ornery** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:47 pm

Surely God is mad at America.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:16 am

Crushin the Chai Guy for this:

Chai Guy wrote:What Would Jesus Drive?

http://www.whatwouldjesusdrive.org/

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Shit....wrong thread..........or is it?

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 6:51 am

DVD Burner wrote:Ripley's believe it or not you can be a nice person, love thy neighbor and all that good stuff and know that religion is bullshit that causes more problems than it cause good on this planet and the universe.

You don’t need God/Devil or religion of any type to be a good person or think logically or to be smart. All you need is to live and be in reality in all it's good bad and ugly and make the best of it.

joel the ornery · Post by **joel the ornery** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:06 am

February 9, 2006

Drafting Hitler
By DAVID BROOKS

You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel.

Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, "Write this one in your diary, Anne." But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people or call on God or bin Laden to exterminate my foes. I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one.

At first I sympathized with your anger at the Danish cartoons because it's impolite to trample on other people's religious symbols. But as the rage spread and the issue grew more cosmic, many of us in the West were reminded of how vast the chasm is between you and us. There was more talk than ever about a clash of civilizations. We don't just have different ideas; we have a different relationship to ideas.

We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora. In our world, images, statistics and arguments swarm around from all directions. There are movies and blogs, books and sermons. There's the profound and the vulgar, the high and the low.

In our world we spend our time sifting and measuring, throwing away the dumb and offensive, e-mailing the smart and the incisive. We aim, in Michael Oakeshott's words, to live amid the conversation — "an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure in which, in imagination, we enter a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves and are not disconcerted by the differences or dismayed by the inconclusiveness of it all."

We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding.

But you have a different way. When I say you, I don't mean you Muslims. I don't mean you genuine Islamic scholars and learners. I mean you Islamists. I mean you young men who were well educated in the West, but who have retreated in disgust from the inconclusiveness and chaos of our conversation. You've retreated from the agora into an exaggerated version of Muslim purity.

You frame the contrast between your world and our world more bluntly than we outsiders would ever dare to. In London the protesters held signs reading "Freedom Go to Hell," "Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam," "Be Prepared for the Real Holocaust" and "Europe You Will Pay, Your 9/11 Is on the Way." In Copenhagen, an imam declared, "In the West, freedom of speech is sacred; to us, the prophet is sacred" — as if the two were necessarily opposed.

Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological. In your worldview, history doesn't move forward through gradual understanding. In your worldview, history is resolved during the apocalyptic conflict between the supernaturally pure jihadist and the supernaturally evil Jew.

You seize on any shred — even a months-old cartoon from an obscure Danish paper — to prove to yourself that the Jew and the crusader are on the offensive, that the apocalyptic confrontation is at hand. You invent primitive stories — like the one about Jews who kill children for their blood — to reinforce your image of Jewish evil. You deny the Holocaust because if the Jews were as powerful as you say, they would never have allowed it to happen.

In my world, people search for truth in their own diverse ways. In your world, the faithful and the infidel battle for survival, and words and ideas and cartoons are nothing more than weapons in that war.

So, of course, what started in Denmark ended up for you with Hitler, the Holocaust and the Jew. But in your overreaction this past week, your defensiveness is showing. Democracy is coming to your region, and democracy brings the conversation. Mainstream leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are embracing democracy and denouncing your riots as "misguided and oppressive."

You fundamentalists have turned yourselves into a superpower of dysfunction, demanding our attention week after week. But it is hard to intimidate people forever into silence, to bottle up the conversation, to lock the world into an epic war only you want. While I don't share your rage, I do understand your panic.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:19 am

DAVID BROOKS?

I'm impressed. Though he has not the confidence that is needed for the "so called facts" he chooses.

Nice guy though.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:23 am

wikipedia kinda sucks.

You are gonna have to look it up for yourself.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:42 pm

Bush Sr.: They were mean to my widdle boy at that funeral,

Dad Slams Attack On Bush At King Rite

HOUSTON, Feb. 10, 2006

(CBS) Former President George H.W. Bush has expressed dismay and anger at attacks on his son, President Bush, at the funeral for Coretta Scott King.

"In terms of the political shots at the president who was sitting there with his wife, I didn't like it and I thought it was kind of ugly frankly," the former president said in an exclusive radio interview with CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer.

"Anybody that shoots at the president of the United States at a funeral, I just didn't appreciate that," Mr. Bush added.

Listen to former President George H.W. Bush

Former President Carter and the Rev. Joseph Lowery criticized the president during remarks they made at the King funeral in Atlanta.

The Rev. Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., drew a roaring standing ovation when he said: "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor" - a takeoff on a line from a Stevie Wonder song. The comment drew head shakes from Mr. Bush and his father as theysat behind the pulpit.

Former President Carter brought up the government response to Katrina, saying, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi" to know that inequality exists. He also noted that the Kings once were "victims of secret government wiretapping" - echoing Mr. Bush's domestic spying program.

Former President Bush also had praise for his friend, Bill Clinton: "I thought President Clinton was maybe the best. It was his crowd. They talk about Bill Clinton being 'the first black president,' well when you walk into that church with 12,000 or whatever it was, I mean it was very clear who that crowd loved and respected."

joel the ornery · Post by **joel the ornery** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 4:57 am

just remember, what goes around, comes around.

Kinetic IV · Post by **Kinetic IV** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 7:37 am

joel the ornery wrote:just remember, what goes around, comes around.

Yeah, too bad it couldn't be another Bill Clinton presidency. I still think that in my lifetime he's been America's best president.

I know that will make some people howl but it's how I feel about it...it is what it is.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:26 am

joel the ornery wrote:just remember, what goes around, comes around.

Like what? Bush is gonna insult the King family?

Bwwwwwaaaaa Ha ha ha ha!

Seems what went around already started comming back to Bush. Yepper, he's got more comming.

After all he did say "bring it on".

Hey, did anyone see the news last night about the "Bagdad sniper"?

Dude, I'd worry about a few like him. He's a badd ass.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 11:46 am

After just surfing the cable news channels, I came across the funeral again.
I got a chance to see Bush senior and Jr.'s speeches. Then Clinton.

I gotta say this guy is really a quick thinker. Very fast on his feet before and as he says anything.

Never has to say "Uh".

I love people that can think that fast of their feet.

I wonder why that is?

Mozy bonz · Post by **Mozy bonz** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:01 pm