Laugh at Liberals

16 Responses to “Scary Fundamentalist Liberalism”

1. nutslikebush Says: September 8th, 2006 at 10:38 pm

   I agree. We must reject all fundamentalism. I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.

2. nutslikebush Says: September 8th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

   By the way, many of the things that you seem to think are liberal idea really aren’t. They are just straw men that conservatives imagine that liberals actually believe. That is part of the delusion that conservatives suffer from.

3. nutslikebush Says: September 8th, 2006 at 10:44 pm

   If you think I am hard of conservatives, you should see me go after liberals - it’s no holds barred with them.

4. nutslikebush Says: September 10th, 2006 at 2:42 am

   Joy,
   I would be interested in whether you think that Walter Russell Mead’s depiction of American Christian Fundamentalism, published in this month’s Foreign Affairs magazine, is accurate. The title of Mead’s article is “God’s Country” and you can find it at foreignaffairs.org. When I was reading Foreign Affairs tonight I read this essay and thought of you, thinking that perhaps you subscribe to Christian fundamentalism. If I my guess is wrong, please forgive my error.

5. nutslikebush Says: September 10th, 2006 at 4:27 pm

   Joy,
   It seems from your post that you think that liberals are actually some organized group. I have a hard time accepting your hypothesis because it seems to me to contradict the most fundamental tenet of the liberal model as I understand it. The liberal model champions the idea that every individual should evaluate each issue for themselves and reach their own conclusion. Among liberals there really is no “party line.” I like H.L. Mencken’s quip about liberals - “liberals have many tails, and chase them all.” So true. I just cannot see any vast left-wing conspiracy in any domain. Rather, it seems like liberals spend most of their time debating among themselves, which I think is a good thing in the pursuit of truth. But this is also why liberals are ineffective in politics. Here is probably where I come closest to agreeing with the liberal model - I detest all forms of thought policing. Since I moved away from fundamentalist christianity (in my mid-20s, about 30 years ago. I am from a strict independent Baptist background), I have not had any interest in belonging to a political party or any politically (or religious) leaning groups because they all are so flawed when you actually examine them (the democrats seems silly usually, sometims down-right unethical, but usually just silly. Honestly, the republican politicians irritate me because I often uncover evidence that shows them to be ruthless and deceptive. But republicans are amazingly effective at politics and elections. Staying on message and unifying is where their power comes from. Too bad it doesn’t lead them to govern justly or effectively. Libertarians that I have read or spent time talking to have uniformly been delusional fanatics and are even worse at the political game than the democrats. What other choices are there? Communism and socialism are proven disasters and seem to be in conflict with basic human nature). Perhaps the best service one can offer in political forums is that of an annoying fly - pointing out untruth and delusional thinking when and where we find it. We should even consider this possibility: perhaps democracy itself is fundamentally and fatally flawed and it is up to our generation to create a more just system of government. First, thought, we need to answer this question: What is justice?

6. kolran Says: September 12th, 2006 at 12:35 am

   Wow, you visit alot nutslikebush. Suprising since you consider us “the worst of our generation”. Wow, what a liberal. He disbelieves in something and does it anyway!

7. nutslikebush Says: September 12th, 2006 at 2:34 am

   Kolran,
   Our’s is a difference of emphasis. I emphasized tragic whereas you emphasized worst. I guess I am supposed to insult you now by mirroring your post: “wow, what a conservative.” But saying things like that would turn me into a joke, like you. I do challenge you to say something intelligent though. You know, you can use your neocortex for something besides padding for your brain stem.

8. WRHiggins SGT Says: September 12th, 2006 at 8:45 pm

   Joy,
   Another great post. Alas, woe is me. LaL doth not find me worthy of a “publish” button.

9. Joy Says: September 13th, 2006 at 10:32 pm

   #1 - The highest form of human excellence is unconditional love.

   #2 - Tell that to the people being harrassed by liberal group hyenas.

   #3 - I SHOULD see you go after liberals.

   #5 - In Luzon (Phillipines), during WWII, there were different guerilla groups who were strongly anti-Japanese, but who were almost,if not just, as strongly opposed to each other. One group was strongly pro-American, the other group was anti-American. My point here is that they both did considerable damage to the Japanese cause, whatever their feelings toward each other. I see liberals the same way. The basic result is damage to whatever is perceived as “conservative”, which happens to be most of America…under the ultra-loud, ultra-liberal interpretation of “conservative” (which includes moderates through ultra-right wingers).

   I don’t see liberals as organized, necessarily. I see them as tribes without wisdom. The current ultra-liberal mindset is hate speech against anyone and anything that doesn’t agree with their agenda. It’s extremely damaging to their freedom, and they aren’t wise enough to recognize it.
   “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately” does not mean that we all play by the minority’s rules or we’re screwed…it means, obviously, that this loud, unorganized but still dangerous minority better wake up and knock it off or their stupidity will get the whole country, and possibly world, screwed. Don’t EVEN go into “Bush this Bush that” here…I’m not talking about Bush and you know it.
   Making bad choices legal is NOT helpful to the criminal or those they prey on.
   Is this on the conservative agenda?
   Calling for understanding of terrorists and misunderstanding of our troops is inhumane, at the very least.
   Is this on the conservative agenda?
   Misleading a whole generation of students to believe that “separation of church and state” is actually something that judges need to go by or that even has a place is a courtroom, is WRONG.
   Is this on the conservative agenda?
   Hauling elementary age children into court because of “sexual harassment” is just plain stupid and highly harmful…OVERKILL.
   Is this on the conservative agenda?
   Where would YOU place these on the political continuum? Not anywhere near the right side, I daresay.
   Homosexuals demand the same rights as married couples. Why?
   Students are mollycoddled if they don’t make the grade. Why?
   We’re lazily raising a generation that needs to be entertained to pay attention.
   Why?
   Whatever happened to,
   “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?”

   There is no perfect government. They’re all flawed because they’re all run by…people. Us. Carbon-based creatures responsible for our treatment of the other creatures and creation. Not mother earth…creation. I don’t worship the earth, I care for it. I answer for it. I’m responsible for it. I don’t apologize to animals, I apologize to my Maker if I misuse what He’s entrusted me with. I make it right as far as I can. I value creation and other creatures, but I value mankind above them. I act responsibly or I answer for it in consequences.
   Stepping down from this soap box, I step up to another…

10. Joy Says: September 13th, 2006 at 11:26 pm

    #4 - I read the article and found it very interesting, though not entirely accurate.

    I’m somewhere between what he defines as fundamentalist and evangelical.
    Logic, not religion, makes it clear that the UN is a quagmire and really bad idea. I’ve covered that one before. Among other things, if we don’t seem to have much voice in our own country, how much less would we have in a world government?
    I disagree with some “fundamentalist” ideas under Meads categoriztion. I don’t see myself as needing to stay separate from non-Christians. I do, however, see that a logical parting comes in choices of leisure activities at times. When it comes to who I’ll trust my children with, I’m extremely picky and there are some non-Christians I would trust over certain “Christians”. That certainly blows the Mead categorization out of the water. Character matters, not labels. If someone holds the same basic character traits that I desire to see in my children, they are good role models and real-life examples.
    I happen to see God as highly practical. He’s the TOP scientist, creator, historian, teacher, parent, etc…and has all the wisdom I need in my day-to-day life. Just as my kids need to know my character to know whether or not what someone says I told them to do is true, I need know God’s basic character to discern whether or not what someone says about Him is true. That, in a very small nutshell, is how I see God.
    You choose to view Him as non-existent or a superstition or whatever. I think you’re missing out, but that’s your choice. I know there are times when my teenaged son is ‘ticked’ with some consequences he encounters through choices he’s made, and he likes to tell himself that it’s my fault. There were times he actually doubted that he was my biological son (after birthing that 9 lb boy, I DIDN’T). In the end he usually realizes that if he’d paid attention when he was told xyz he wouldn’t be walking around with an open fly, so to speak. Personally, I think that people who choose to not believe in God are mad at Him for one reason or another or have a major misconception of Who He is. Or, Christians, real or not, have hurt them.
    Quite understandable, since imperfect humans are running around talking about His Love and then living out our prejudices of one sort or another.
    “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.”
    We can’t see people’s hearts, so we have to go by their actions, and vice-versa.
    Logically, it’s pretty important to get to know the Commander’s character for yourself if you want to judge whether the troops are following his commands or not.

11. kolran Says: September 14th, 2006 at 12:44 am

    JOY, answer post 13 in a civilian death in lebinon!

12. nutslikebush Says: September 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am

    Joy,
    Thank you for your thoughful responses to my earlier post. Even though we have exchanged “zingers” for the past year or two, I suspect that you and I probably have very similar morals and values once we get beneath the surface. Like you, I value honest, charity, compassion, and most of all love. I have to say that I think that questioning ourselves and others leads to honesty, charity, compassion, and love. For me, the question “what does it mean to be human?” takes us right to the heart of unconditional love.

    I honestly do not think that I am angry at the god concept (perhaps I am wrong though, we all delude ourselves habitually), but my experience and understanding of my world leads me to think that the judeo/christian telling of the god narrative is the work of people (our symbolic minds), not a god. I contemplate a very rough idea about god more than I think about anything else. But how can we really contemplate and put into human words or even begin to conceptualize the notion of god? Anything we can conceptualize and convert into words would be as to be pointless babble, so grossly inadequate would be the concept. Here the ancient hebrew notion of the “one who cannot be named” makes sense to me. But in matters concerning god, I don’t believe that anyone has the foggiest idea. So I have grow to distrust people who claim to know anything about the nature of a being (force, process?) who could bring a universe into existence that contains over 30 billion x trillion visible stars, is 14 billion years old. And who knows how many quarks inhabit our universe? When I think about the millions of different species of life forms on this earth alone I realize that my capacity to contemplate any possible creator is much too limited for the job. I could go on, but why. But I do sometimes like to hear smart people discuss faith and reason. A fun podcast to listen to on the concept of faith is Zach Moore’s Apologia (www.drzach.net/apologia.htm). I also enjoyed the PBS show and podcasts on faith and reason by Bill Moyers recently (you can download it on iTunes if you are interested). My first university degree was in religion and I have never for one day stopped reflecting on the question of religion.

    I think that many of the things that you don’t like about liberals I probably am not fond of either. You may be happy to know that I have pissed off more liberals than conservatives over the years (I have been publicly threatened and “hissed at” by some real leftists when I challenged a speaker once in Boulder, Colorado). But I just don’t encounter the extreme left very much these days. Most of the people that I spend my time with are very intelligent and don’t hold extreme views about anything. Activist liberals make up perhaps 1/100th of the liberal population and I haven’t noticed that they have much of an impact on anything. They try to influence things but they are so pitifully weak that big business etc usually disposes of them without much effort. I give them little thought now. My own political commentary at this site is driven by my conscience.

    Since you told me about your family, I will share some things about mine that may surprise you. My spouse embraces the christian tradition and my daughter (who is adopted form central america and seems to have picked up a strong affinity for catholicism early in life) is into it. I support them both in that. My son and I are similar in terms of our lack of traditional american-style religiousity. In spite of his lack of religion, I must say, he is perhaps the sweetest child I have every known, genuinely nice, kind, and gentle, and instinctively understands the importance of fairness and honesty. My family reads together often and sometimes we do read traditional judeo-christian stories (and other religious classics - now I am re-reading Homer’s Illiad). Perhaps this is a form of religious/moral training. But I think that a genuine questioning attitude will lead one to a high level of moral development. The moral question marks that pop up when we read about the behaviors of the gods themselves (including Jahweh) are endless and lead to great family conversations. The goal for me is not to undermine anyone or anything, but with our short time existing, to awaken as fully as possible and to understand what it means to be here now. And then to be gone, perhaps for the rest of eternity. If your notion of God is correct, I believe that your God would like what it finds in my heart.

13. nutslikebush Says: September 15th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

    Here is a video on by Princeton University that provides some disturbing information that should concern us all. Please take a moment to watch it and pass it along to others. http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/videos.html

14. WRHiggins SGT Says: September 15th, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    Joy & NLB,
    That was really great of you two to share like that. It was a breath of fresh air, letting all have an insight into the WHY and HOW of your thoughts and beliefs.

    To Joy,
    I more or less agree with your view of God, and Christians. Being born again does not make one perfect, unfortunately.
    I wish it were true, but seems I still screw up something at least once a day, and that’s a conservative estimate. But there are christians with a holier-than-thou attitude that are quick to point out the faults and shortcomings in others. This drives away as many as it brings in. I think someone once said to remove the plank from your own eye before attempting to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye. The character of God can be discerned from the Bible, and can be summed up pretty quickly. He simply wants us to 1. Love God & 2. Love others. Loving God and others is not always easy. But “loving” means getting to know, on a personal level.

    Nuts, In your post you say that you believe a questioning attitude leads to a high level of moral development. I would go even further and say that a questioning attitude leads to a higher level of spiritual development. I think that a lot of the reason that people find it so difficult to believe in God, and to accept Christ, is that a lot of churches and ministers tend to be very rigid, and questioning God’s character and commands is NEVER viewed as OK. I am incredibly fortunate to belong to a church where questions are always welcome. But the catch is that the answers should be actively sought, and one must be willing to accept the answers, whether they like them or not. I think you might enjoy reading a book called “The case for Christ”. Perhaps as a family reading. It’s even got discussion Q’s for small groups. It’s supposedly not biased or one-sided, but the author’s interviews, although compelling and convincing, are pretty one-sided. Still a good read, though.
    Ok, my turn. I always considered myself a christian, although I was really just spinning my wheels spiritually. I had a son born with several disabilities in January 2005
    in whom God has made his presence blatantly known. Despite that, I had a really hard time with a God,any god who could allow this to happen to a baby. I didn’t question the existence of God, but we were not on speaking terms for quite a while. My questioning, and a comfortable place to do it, led to answers that have to be found for one’s self, but are readily available. One of the biggest problems I had was wondering if… If my son’s disabilities were God’s way of bringing my family closer to one another and to Him. And ultimately, was I ok with the idea that my God could think that that was a good enough reason to disable a child for life.
    Finally, NLB, you say that you believe that “your God would like what it finds in my heart”. In the book I mentioned above, there was an interesting point that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around, the idea of David Berkowitz “Son of Sam”, getting into heaven but not Ghandi. I had never heard the argument before but it was really interesting. the big question is…what WILL God see when he looks in your heart? If he sees His Son, He won’t look any further. One of the biggest hurdles to religion is, as you state, trying to put it in Human terms. You say that you have grown to distrust those who claim to know anything about the creator of the universe. He has made Himself known. What you do with that defines you, not Him.

    man, that was “preachy” wasn’t it?

15. oi Says: January 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    How dare you quote Socrates in such an ignorant manner! The message he was trying to get accross in “I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others”, is to question everything, including all of the conservative misinformation published on this site…

16. DontBeEvil... please Says: January 4th, 2007 at 3:43 am

    Page 1

    conservatism is about privilege, selfishness, inequality, exclusion, and religious self-righteousness and most importantly lack of empathy for other human beings, a 2 year old is a conservative, He wants more for himself and he can’t imagine the suffering felt by others, being a conservative is the easiest thing in the world. Just ignore others. Hitler was a conservative, Mussolini, Khomeini, KKK, Bin laden, Pinochet, Saddam, the Spanish inquisition, were all conservatives, their only goals and accomplishments were the exclusion silencing and hatred of anyone different to themselves. FDR was a liberal, Socrates, Einstein, JFK, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther, JESUS! Like any other excluded illegitimate child, born in an ultra conservative society on the outer edges of a power hungry empire, he was a Liberal: “Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit the sick? Did you visit those who are in prison?, Inasmuch as you have done it to these you would have done it to me.” and the essence of liberalism :(if you have enough intelligence to understand the universality of the statement)… “LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF.”

    That means love the homeless niger child as you love your own, love the single mother as you love your own, love the muslim iraqi family as you love your own…. or atleast don’t fucking vote for a man who’s going to destroy their home, don’t vote to reduce welfare, vote to give every child on the planet equal access to health, education, security and family planning, they deserve it as much as your kids, really they do, don’t accept the undeserved wealth handed to you through the exploitation of the weak, because you were born a wasp. Its not complicated, don’t be evil! Please! Please! don’t be evil! You don’t need ten commandments or a constitution to know what is right and wrong, even a child knows how not to be evil, Its just one rule: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you”, don’t hurt others, don’t treat others in a way you wouldn’t want to be treated, don’t discriminate cause if it happened to you you’d not like it. reject all systems of privilege where you could not tolerate being the disenfranchised. I’m not one of your victims I have been born into privilege but I am not like you because I have rejected these, I am fighting for your victims now and my own and I will keep fighting for the weak until the difference between the fate of the unluckiest infant and luckiest infant is not so criminally vast. I have rejected the religious self-righteous dogma I was taught in MY little town, I no longer believe that MY “god” is the true god or that it is MY people who are going to heaven and yours to hell, I have rejected the labeling by MY people of the weak, the poor and the different as lazy, stupid and evil . I have walked in the shoes of those who MY folk exploit belittle and humiliate to gain THEIR pathetic misplaced sense of identity, they, like your people are too “conservative” too selfish, too evil to think about how the “system”, the “order” the social stratification they so desperately fight to protect crushes the vulnerable and steals all hope from the weak.

    Being a Liberal is about trying not be as evil as you or as your parents or as mine, Its about looking at the underside of your shoes and seeing the lives you’ve crushed as you walked in your extra large military boots. Its about taking them off, walking in your sucks and keeping your head down to make sure you don’t do it again, its about standing in the way of people like you when you are about to step on another human being waving your pathetic flag and holding up your stupid bible and not letting you destroy another life another hope and if someone bigger than you comes along and tries to step on you… I’ll be there to protect you too.

    I leave you with this poem which speaks of the same truth far more eloquenlty than my crude words ever could.

    Conscientious Objector
    by Edna St. Vincent Millay

    I shall die,
    but that is all that I shall do for Death.
    I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
    I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
    He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
    business in the Balkans,
    many calls to make this morning.
    But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
    And he may mount by himself:
    I will not give him a leg up.
    Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
    I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
    With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him
    where the black boy hides in the swamp.
    I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
    I am not on his pay-roll.
    I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
    nor of my enemies either.
    Though he promise me much,
    I will not map him the route to any man’s door.
    Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?
    Brother, the passwords and the plans of our city are
    safe with me;
    never through me
    shall you be overcome.

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