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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
Enough to justify a reconsideration of the controversial portions of the Patriot Act? Surely.
Enough to justify equating Falwell and Robertson with Bin Laden? Not nearly.
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I consider Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, Franklin Graham and others to be practitioners of dangerous hate rehetoric that feeds the neocon, imperialistic mindset. The direct and intended effect is the encouragement of religious intolerance, blind patriotism, and exaggerated national and international political division. The increased numbers who will die because Bush remains president, and feels a "mandate", partially as a result of the unquestioning support of
Christian right leadership, is incalculable. Your "not nearly" conclusion is
reasonably contested, by people with moderate and deliberative points of view.
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<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/99/q1/0329-moyers.htm">http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/99/q1/0329-moyers.htm</a>
During his 25 years in broadcasting, Bill Moyers has sustained the highest quality of broadcast journalism. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has recognized his work with more than 30 Emmy Awards. Before establishing Public Affairs Television in 1986, Moyers served as executive director of the Bill Moyers' Journal on public television, senior news analyst for CBS Evening News, and chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In addition to his 1971 best-selling book Listening to America, four of Moyers' books based on his television series have also become best-sellers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, A World of Ideas I and II, and Healing and the Mind.
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Moyers is a graduate of the University of Texas, and he holds the master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.</b> He was deputy director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration and special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He left the White House in 1967 to become publisher of Newsday, was for 12 years a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and now serves as president of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation.
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<a href="http://www.narsil.org/politics/moyers/Jan_4_2002.html">http://www.narsil.org/politics/moyers/Jan_4_2002.html</a>
Bill Moyers
Harry Middleton Lecture
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
Austin, Texas
January 4, 2002
....................We have work to do.
You know that I come out of that big tent of tradition called Baptists. At last count, there were more than two dozen varieties of us in America. Bill Clinton is a Baptist; so is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist; so is Jesse Helms. Trent Lott is a Baptist; so is Al Gore. Newt Gingrich and Richard Gephardt. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers – one or two make for a tasty dish but a whole bunch of them together in one place brings tears to your eyes.
Twenty years ago I covered the first convention of the Moral Majority, held right here in Texas, in Dallas. With a major presidential candidate sitting on the dais, our cameras captured the president of the Southern Baptist convention as he declared that God does not hear the prayers of a Jew. Since then his crowd has taken control of the Southern Baptist Convention – the country’s largest Protestant denomination – and turned their pews into precincts of right-wing politics. Recently they published a prayer guide calling on Christians to pray for the nine hundred million Hindus who ‘worship gods which are not God.’ Now it’s natural for religions to want others to see the truth as it does, but when a Hindu engineer asked me if Southern Baptists speak for all Baptists, I told him they don’t even speak for all Southern Baptists. We Baptists differ profoundly in how we read the Bible, how we read history, and – surprise, surprise – how we read election results. My father was a Baptist deacon who thought for himself. He was certain that Cain and Abel were the first Baptists, since they had introduced fratricide into the Bible. But think about it. The first murder rose out of a religious act. Adam and Eve have two sons – the first parents to cope with what it means to raise Cain. Both brothers are rivals for God’s favor, so both bring God an offering. Cain is a farmer and offers the first fruits of the soil. Abel is a shepherd and offers the first lamb from the flock. Two generous gifts.
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I see Bill Moyers holding up a mirror for interested Christians to look at themselves in. I see the "Christian Right" using a magic mirror like the one
in the Cinderella fairy tale, where they know that they will always see the
"fairest on of all", when they gaze into it.