Sorry but I am not following your logic at all.

Secularists claim to be fighting a was against the "Evangelical Fringe," as they like to frame it. You know, the separation of church and state, blah, blah, blah, I'll impose my lack of morals on you...but don't you dare impose your morals on me, relativism crowd.

Her position seems reasonable to me, well connected with reality, and while only an 'account of her speech' from an unidentified source, doesn't really seem out of this world or even remotely in conflict with the stated goals of the secularist position.

What say you?

-bear

I think let these rightists believe the Dem party is weak as it is strengthening. I remember in the 70's when the Dems were saying the GOP was all but dead.

It's a penduulum and it swings, to put a death knell into one party is ignorant, not knowing history and arrogantly blind.

If you truly believe the dems will lose seats in '06 or that in '08 there won't be a close race that the Dems may win..... then you truly deserve what you get.

You have the GOP feeding on their own, they are running someone against Dewine in Ohio in '06 and someone against Voinivich in '08. Guess what.... your party pissed off 2 strong senators who, if they do lose, will lose to Dems. I can almost guarantee it. If they win do you think they will still be strong GOP (after the party tried to kill them off) or try to show their clout by becoming baby McCains and more liberalized?

Never underestimate your enemy or back them into a corner if you are not sure you can kill them.

Because as the 80's proved with the GOP gaining new strenghth so shall the Dem party of present.

For starters, I'd say the attempts to clean up Politics on TFP are working :D I'm enjoying reading and participating these days. Kudos to you, Bear, for being part of the fix. I only hope I am, too.


But to the point...

(fine print first) (this IS from an unknown source, and may or may not be accurate)(but since you don't seem to mind the sentiment, let's pretend it's accurate)

This is a great paragraph to me, because I disagree with almost ALL of it. Great, because maybe I can come to at least understand...

I don't think secularist 'frame' anything, but if they do I sure don't see "War" talk. (Perhaps I just don't hang out in the secular smoking area.) I most CERTAINLY don't see anyone in that crowd saying "I'll impose my morals on you". What I see them saying is "leave me alone to have whatever morals I want".

That last sentence really seems to be the key to me. Somehow, both sides feel the other is pushing their values on the other. And neither thinks they are doing the pushing.

My take: when you have issues with Gays in the military it seems one side IS pushing. If I'm gay, there's a job that would benefit my country I can't have.
Another example: Someone can believe the 10 commandments are the word of God if they want to. But when you put them on the wall in a court of law, it seems to be pushing again. So I see limitations that are real, and I see pushing of values (however subtley)


Back to Janice Brown: it may be that the rhetoric is what turns me off so strongly. But to say that there is a WAR, and that some group wants to "divorce America from it's religious roots", I just can't see it.

Even if there is a group that would want to do that (which I doubt very strongly, and see NO evidence of), that group certainly isn't big enough, or strong enough to do anything about it.

I would bet over 90% of congress (all States and Federal) are churchgoers. How could anyone "divorce America from it's religious roots"? So that's why I say she seemingly isn't grounded in reality.

Her "frame" seems to be that such could happen. It's not a stretch (for me) to see her becoming an activist judge working to prevent something. Rather than a judge that rules on law.


The "quote" in question:

You can't have a judge in any position making speeches about how bad one political party is. You not only turn off 1/2 the population but that judge just destroyed any belief that they could be nuetral and base their decisions on law and not politics.

Thanks and back at you. Honestly, a week or too 'vacation' [read: suspension] really does the trick so to speak. ;)

Anywho, it's been fun, but my weekend has come to an end, and we have guests chez nous, who I want to watch get too drunk on this celebration of the country of my orgin.

Happy Canada Day to all...and for those limited just to the middle of North America...

Happy Fourth to you as well.

Peace all,

-bear

Um, dude...wow...that's unsettling.

Anyway, Bush is most likely going to appoint at least one far right conservative. Maybe he'll then appoint a more moderate, but still right leaning, second person after Renquist leaves. The Supreme Court is still going to be ultra-conservative.

The most frightening thing out of all of this, though, is how incredibly conservative our nation has become in the last 5 or so years. Back in the day, the House and Senate was full of Democrats. Every college student belonged to the College Democrats or was on the left. More than that, the term "liberal" was not deemed an insult. If this trend continues, we're going to be back in the days where religion rules everything, big businesses and monopolies run amok, and "freedom" exists only if you're a Protestant who owns a Cadillac, has 2.5 children (with a wife who he's only slept with 2.5 times), and believes that God watches over everything. The only difference from the 1700s is that African-Americans and women will be a part of it. Personally, I LIKE the freedoms that we have now. I am both happy that we have abortion and that we have the right to buy guns. However, we soon will become even more ridiculously Puritanical than we are already...and that will be a sad, sad day in the history of this nation. Everything is cyclical - the cycle is now restarting at the beginning.

Don't worry, TM, it will only take another massive economic depression, brought about by the shortsightedness of conservative policy, to bring liberalism back into the fold.

And why is this? It's because the Democrats followed the ideologues so that they are SO far to the left, that they might as well be from a different planet. I've heard people say Kerry lost in 04 because he was not LIBERAL ENOUGH.
It's because the Left has taken "tolerance" and twisted it into a shakedown game for their benefit. It's because the left has been ACTIVELY EXTORTING MONEY from people by saying "Give my group money or we will boycott you, biatch!" It's because the Left has a "Reverend" go to "counsel" a sitting President in trouble for being unable to keep his zipper closed, WHILE TAKING THE REVEREND'S PREGNANT MISTRESS ALONG. Common sense has COMPLETELY fled the Democratic Party.

The Left has become so intellectually bankrupt and out of touch (another example is the "Let's give Communism ONE more try, I promise that unlike every other Communist Government on the planet, I will NOT slaughter my opposition and whomever I please once you put absolute, despotic power in my hands!" crowd) with the American people and HISTORY that the moderates have deserted them in droves. Good Christ, a moderate Democrat addressed the RNC this past cycle!!! Yet the Deaniacs and Kerry Apologists keep screaming "Steer MORE to the Left!"

The tide will turn soon enough. America has a breaking point. I just hope that the new justice isn't some rightie nut-job and all kinds of shit end up getting overturned. Take away that many freedoms from people to satisfy the neo-con minority, (yes they are a minority, there are more moderates than you realize) and you have a large group of people taking a sance against government.

Republicans had their revolution on the 90's. History will repeat itself and the cycle will start again.

Do you think that if Kerry had an ounce of charisma, the election might have turned out differently? I sure do. Closely fought race, imagine someone with the charisma, and the ability to speak to values, of say... John Edwards had lead the ticket. I think it would have been game over.

I say that not to descredit your other opinions, but to suggest that Kerry lost due to politics gives many in the electorate far too much credit.


This is the same group that, when polled in the primaries in 2000, said that Bush was a reformer. AFTER he'd been getting his ass kicked by McCain and he started putting out advertising about how he (Bush) was a reformer...

/threadjacks R us...

For you pot smokers: a conservative bench is your best bet at leagalizing the herb.

I don't partake of the ganja, but umm, how do you say this?