Quote:
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Originally Posted by daswig
DAMN THOSE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE! THEY SHOULD BE BEATEN TO DEATH AFTER REPENTING THEIR HERESIES!!!
oh, wait...
/amused by the so-called "liberals" screaming we have to stop people from exercising their constitutionally protected rights....
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My immediately preceding post should help to persuade you that
I sincerely want to understand and to call attention to what
I believe is happening to the reputation of the U.S. Note
that the thread starter was an article that was published in
a Toronto newspaper, and the following was published last year in a British newspaper. If our foreign policy is perceived
to be driven by the imminent rapture wing of the republican
party, then even our closest, English speaking allies, may
write us off as delusional and unreliable. Israel may perceive
that it is being used to hasten the time of it's own destruction.
Quote:
<a href="http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/04/20/apocalypse-please/">http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/04/20/apocalypse-please/</a>
......We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that between 15 and 18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings.(8) A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans.(9) The best-selling contemporary books in the United States are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series, which provide what is usually described as a “fictionalised” account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to the rest of us. The people who believe all this don’t believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.
And among them are some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the marvellously-named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that “there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking.”(10)
So here we have a major political constituency – representing much of the current president’s core vote – in the most powerful nation on earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelations (9:14-15) maintains that four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates” will be released “to slay the third part of men.” They batter down the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers: when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and never mentioned the matter again.(11)
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