Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Wright's comments about "God damm America" could be right. America have slavery for several hundred years, then segregation. After the civil war there were plenty of lynchings.
"These were recorded lynchings; others were never reported beyond the community involved. Furthermore, mobs used especially sadistic tactics when blacks were the prime targets. By the 1890s lynchers increasingly employed burning, torture, and dismemberment to prolong suffering and excite a "festive atmosphere" among the killers and onlookers. White families brought small children to watch, newspapers sometimes carried advance notices, railroad agents sold excursion tickets to announced lynching sites, and mobs cut off black victims' fingers, toes, ears, or genitalia as souvenirs. Nor was it necessarily the handiwork of a local rabble; not infrequently, the mob was encouraged or led by people prominent in the area's political and business circles. Lynching had become a ritual of interracial social control and recreation rather than simply a punishment for crime."
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/ ... nching.htm
And the same people probably attended church the next sunday. You reap what you sow
"These were recorded lynchings; others were never reported beyond the community involved. Furthermore, mobs used especially sadistic tactics when blacks were the prime targets. By the 1890s lynchers increasingly employed burning, torture, and dismemberment to prolong suffering and excite a "festive atmosphere" among the killers and onlookers. White families brought small children to watch, newspapers sometimes carried advance notices, railroad agents sold excursion tickets to announced lynching sites, and mobs cut off black victims' fingers, toes, ears, or genitalia as souvenirs. Nor was it necessarily the handiwork of a local rabble; not infrequently, the mob was encouraged or led by people prominent in the area's political and business circles. Lynching had become a ritual of interracial social control and recreation rather than simply a punishment for crime."
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/ ... nching.htm
And the same people probably attended church the next sunday. You reap what you sow
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
LOL... Aussie agrees...
I rest my case.
I rest my case.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
dartagnan wrote:I am referring to the famous "God damn America" phrase. Dwight Hopkins a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School says this phrase,"means a sacred condemnation by God to a wayward nation who has strayed from issues of justice, strayed from issues of peace, strayed from issues of reconciliation."
Then we are referring to different speeches, and it is not clear to me that you know anything about the context of these imprecations upon the nation, or what their purpose in that context may have been. I, for one, am not the least bit concerned about Dwight Hopkins' assessment, which seems plausible and fair, because a wayward nation may yet be a nation that the speaker loves. Wayward may suggest straying from ideals. It does not necessarily suggest that America is worthless or beyond redemption. I would be more frightened by those who believed the latter.
dartagnan wrote:I believe that is what Wright was saying, that God is not on America's side. And how could he be after hearing the description of America in Wright's eyes? He says nothing positive, and exagerrates the negative. Wright clearly did not believe God was on America's side on the war. Palin was attacked for saying God was on our side in the war, even though she never said that. To this day the media outlets have never noted their mistake and let the falsehood stand
I don't take Hopkins' statement to indicate that Wright was saying God is against America or "not on its side." Clearly Wright is seeing a different America than you do, but then he sees it through different eyes. You may not like what he sees, but it seems to me that you are not fairly characterizing what he is saying about what he sees.
dartagnan wrote:No, I stand by that. Can you name something good he has said about America? I guess he thinks it is good in the sense that it has so many blacks chosen by God, but as far as the government is concerned, what good has he said of it?
Well, both of us could be woefully ignorant about that. The fact that neither of us know his sermons well does not mean you are right. All it means is that we don't really know the man's work well enough to say. Stand by an opinion that is formed on a small portion of the evidence. I prefer to rely on a larger representative sample before I pass judgment.
dartagnan wrote:Well, this is based on my understanding of Black Liberation Theology
So you are confident that your understanding of Black Liberation Theology is the peg that anyone can comfortably hang Wright and his parishioners on?
dartagnan wrote:His pastor has said some truly offensive and outrageous things about this country, and now Obama wants to be its commander in chief.
I am not sure that I agree that his pastor has said "truly offensive and outrageous things" about his country. Where I have tested this theory thus far, it has failed. I have seen something that can relatively easily be taken out of context and presented as such, and evidently has by those who like to frighten the populace with visions of Black Panthers raising black-gloved fists to "the man." Personally, I thought Obama's criticism of his pastor was spot on, and showed that he understands the problems with parts of his pastor's rhetoric. I guess you can say he is lying, but I can just as easily say he is not.
dartagnan wrote:Well, I recommend you study more about Black Liberation Theology.
I will gladly look into it further, but lacking a balanced understanding of Pastor Wright, I won't be able to tell whether he is a wiki-entry case of this theology, will I?
dartagnan wrote:According to Anthony Pinn, who teaches philosophy and religion at Rice University in Houston: "God's presence in the world is best depicted through God's involvement in the struggle for justice. God is so intimately connected to the community that suffers, that God becomes a part of that community."
So your contention is that Pastor Wright and his parishioners believe that God is their unique Deity and not the God of the rest of America too? Is that your purpose in quoting Pinn? What is your evidence from Wright's sermons to back this up?
dartagnan wrote:Then what are you basing it on? He expresses nothing remotely similar to a love for country.
I should think that an extended metaphor in which Jerusalem and America are implicitly compared would be decent enough evidence that this Christian pastor views his country as a wayward but beloved nation, instead of as an enemy he seeks to pillage and gut.
dartagnan wrote:With all due respect, I'm not basing anything on "few far-out statements in isolation." I should warn you that you're on the verge of sounding like a Mormon apologist who tries to argue that context proved Gordon B. Hinckley has never been cryptic or disingenuous in interviews with journalists.
Funny, because I thought that you were sounding like a Mormon apologist. Go figure.
dartagnan wrote:Wright was such a minor point in all that I provided, I'm surprised you're still focusing on it.
I am focusing on it because it is difficult to address every point that you've raised fairly, and not come back with another mountain of equally questionable claims. Most of these conversations, as I have noticed, are going "oh yeah, well Palin said...," with the response, "oh yeah, well Obama did...." It seems to me that you manage to carry on this kind of discourse all on your own, when I haven't discussed Palin for some time. Why is that?
dartagnan wrote:I notice you didn't address his comments about the US government planting HIV to kill millions of African blacks. This sounds like Obama's argument that the US government started the Iraq war as a means to detract attention away from the crimes against America's minorities. LOL. I mean, this has BLT written all over it.
This is an unusual claim, and imho a batty belief. But, I do not think it equates well with Obama's statement concerning the Iraq War as a misdirection. I think a better analog is the one I offered, which is the claim that Clinton launched a military attack to deflect attention from his personal peccadilloes. I don't even agree with your characterization of what he said. Your version is lopsided. Clearly this is how you read what he said. I read it differently.
dartagnan wrote:At what point do you actually have to say to yourself, this guy is a moron who really does hate America? I mean really, what does it take to prove he hates America? Does he have to commit terrorism against it?
Well, clearly it will take more evidence to convince me than it has taken you. I don't take such serious charges lightly, and the fact that you bandy them about so readily, and with partial information at best, makes me suspicious that you are simply running with the one-sided assessments of the conservative camp. I may be wrong, but I may not be.
dartagnan wrote:Well as I said, my view is based on much more data than Obama's affiliation with Wright. Wright is just the tip of the iceberg.
Indeed, ominously put. True? I am as of yet unconvinced. Thanks for giving more to think about, however.
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
I would like to note that the wiki article on Black Liberation Theology to which I was directed was tagged as being excessively oriented toward current events. In other words, it references Wright specifically through a great deal of the document, as though Wright were somehow central to our understanding of the topic. Obviously, the appropriateness of this approach has been questioned, and I suspect rightly so. It is not surprising to me that someone relying on this text could have a rather slanted view of Wright's relationship with Black Liberation Theology as a result.
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Was it the surge supported by McCain that did it??
"Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighbourhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a US troop surge in 2007 - graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report.
The images support the view of international refugee organisations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicentre of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.
Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighbourhoods by Shiite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group Al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.
"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.
"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.
About two million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while two million more have sought refuge in neighbouring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighbourhoods of Baghdad became homogenised Sunni or Shiite Muslim enclaves.
The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before US President George W Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra US troops.
The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.
"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighbourhood homogenisation that is now largely achieved," Mr Agnew's team wrote in their report.
Mr Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the US Air Force.
"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the US invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.
They said the night lights of Shiite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shiite enclave.
Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Burma and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.
- Reuters
"Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighbourhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a US troop surge in 2007 - graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report.
The images support the view of international refugee organisations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicentre of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.
Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighbourhoods by Shiite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group Al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.
"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.
"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.
About two million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while two million more have sought refuge in neighbouring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighbourhoods of Baghdad became homogenised Sunni or Shiite Muslim enclaves.
The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before US President George W Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra US troops.
The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.
"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighbourhood homogenisation that is now largely achieved," Mr Agnew's team wrote in their report.
Mr Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the US Air Force.
"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the US invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.
They said the night lights of Shiite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shiite enclave.
Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Burma and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.
- Reuters
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Listen to James Cone on the topic of Black Liberation Theology:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236116
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236116
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Then we are referring to different speeches
Do you have a link to the speech you had in mind? I thought you had read the most notorious one of them all. The one where he says "God damn America" in reference to 9-11. This is the one that caused the controversy.
and it is not clear to me that you know anything about the context of these imprecations upon the nation, or what their purpose in that context may have been.
Well given that you haven't even read the speech in question, I suggest you read more on what he has said before jumping to a conclusion that his palpable hatred towards American government can be miraculously contextualized to mean "love." To be frank, this boggles the mind.
I, for one, am not the least bit concerned about Dwight Hopkins' assessment, which seems plausible and fair, because a wayward nation may yet be a nation that the speaker loves.
Hopkins is one of the foremost authorities on BLT, which is why I presented his assessment. I concur with it. In Wright's theology, God is present only with the poor and the black race is his chosen people.
It does not necessarily suggest that America is worthless or beyond redemption. I would be more frightened by those who believed the latter.
Then you should believe what I say, because when Wright was interviewed, he said he told Obama that if he becomes President, he would "go after" him the same way he goes after republicans. Why? Because Obama will have become the leader of that evil empire that is oppressing God's chosen people. That sounds like it is beyond redemption because he doesn't tell Obama to "change" anything for the better. He takes it for granted that Obama will become a natural enemy. If Wright feels America's government can be redeemed, then that completely undermines the BLT theology, which actually requires America to be corrupt in order for their greivances and status as "God among the poor" to be justified.
I don't take Hopkins' statement to indicate that Wright was saying God is against America or "not on its side."
We are discussing a phrase from a sermon you admittedly haven't even read or heard.
Clearly Wright is seeing a different America than you do, but then he sees it through different eyes.
Yes, and his understanding and paradigm of God is much different as well. For Wright, God and American government are on opposite sides. This is a salient point in many of his sermons. He is taking a position Palin never took, and he can get away with it because of his skin color.
You may not like what he sees, but it seems to me that you are not fairly characterizing what he is saying about what he sees.
But you haven't even read or heard the context of this sermon. Why would you assume I am wrong? Why would you assume he didn't really mean God wasn't on America's side when he explicitly says it?
Well, both of us could be woefully ignorant about that. The fact that neither of us know his sermons well does not mean you are right.
Look, the man has made ricidulous and outrageously offensive remarks. If you want to insist I am reading it wrong, then you need to provide the "context" to show I am wrong. I've done my homework on this. I've read and listened to his sermons on the web.
All it means is that we don't really know the man's work well enough to say. Stand by an opinion that is formed on a small portion of the evidence. I prefer to rely on a larger representative sample before I pass judgment.
Well, whatever. As I said, Wright is just a fraction of evidence anyway. One doesn't need Wright's bigotry to show Obama is unfit to lead. You chose to focus on Wright.
So you are confident that your understanding of Black Liberation Theology is the peg that anyone can comfortably hang Wright and his parishioners on?
You make it sound unreasonable. This isn't Mormonism and we're not separating Mormon Prophets from Mormon teachings. They're not going to say "that was just his opinion." Wright deeply respects BLT and its founders including James Cone, which Wright has admitted being the "pioneer" of his theology. Cone once wrote,
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community...Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." - "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, by William R Jones, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
Go ahead and look up the context. It won't change the import of what he's saying here. Essentially, Kill whitey because that's what God wants. Now you keep insisting Wright thinks there is good in America yet you cannot come up with a single statement to that effect. And even if you did, I suppose I could apply your logic and reject it out of hand since that would be passing judgment based on an isolated decontexualized snippet.
Let me provide you the context of the sermon on Sept 16, 2001, and I'll let you judge whether he is a patriot in love with his country. Keep in mind that this was only five days after 9-11:
Every public service of worship I have heard about so far in the wake of the American tragedy has had, in its prayers and in its preachments, sympathy and compassion for those who were killed and for their families. And God's guidance upon the selected presidents and our war machine as they do what they do and what they got to do.
Paybacks. There's a move in Psalm 137 from thoughts of paying tithes to thoughts of paying back. A move if you will from worship to war. A move in other words from the worship of the God of creation to war against those whom God created. And I want you to notice very carefully the next move. One of the reasons this psalm is rarely read in its entirety because it is a move that spotlights the insanity of the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred.
Look at the verse, Verse 9: 'Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks.' The people of faith, by the rivers of Babylon, how should we sing the Lord's song if I forget thee? The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the King, those soldiers who slaughtered his sons and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned their towns, burned the temple, burned their towers. They moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. The babies. The babies. Blessed are they who dash your babies' brains against a rock. And that, my beloved, is a dangerous place to be.
Yet that is where the people of faith are in 551 B.C. and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 A.D. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.
Now, I asked the Lord, what should our response be in light of such an unthinkable act? But before I share with you what the Lord showed me, I want to give you one of my little faith footnotes. Visitors, I often give faith footnotes so that our members don't lose sight of the big picture. Let me give you a little faith footnote. Turn to your neighbor and say 'faith footnotes.'
I heard Ambassador [Edward] Peck on an interview yesterday, did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News. This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. Did you see him, John? A white man. He pointed out, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true, that America's chickens are coming home to roost.
We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Iroquois, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel; we bombed the black civilian community of Panama, with stealth bombers, and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We've bombed [Moammar] Gadhafi's home and killed his child.
Blessed are they who bash your children's heads against the rocks. We bombed Iraq; we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back an attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home.
We've bombed Hiroshima, we've bombed Nagasaki, we've nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards.
(dartagnan says: At this point it should be clear that Wright's intention here is not to console a hurting nation, but rather to place blame on America for 9-11. This couldn't be any clearer, and he even seems excited about the idea that one of his mentors Malcolm X, had given a true prophecy of sorts.)
America's chickens are coming home to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who's trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people that we have wounded don't have the military capability we have but they do have individuals who are willing to die, to take thousands with them, and we need to come to grips with that. Let me stop my faith footnote right there. And ask you to think about this for the next few weeks if God grants us that. Turn back to your neighbor and say: 'Footnote is over.'
Come on back to my question to the Lord. What should our response be right now in light of such an unthinkable act? . . .This is a time of self-examination. The Lord said to me: 'How is our relationship doing, Jeremiah? How often do you talk to me personally? How often do you let me talk to you privately? How much time do you spend trying to get right with me? Or do you spend all your time trying to get other folk right?' This is a time for me to examine my own relationship with God. Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show? Is it something you do for the sake of the public or is it something you do for the sake of eternity? This is a time to examine my own relationship and a time for you to examine your own relationship with God. Self-examination.
(dartagnan says: well that hint of spirituality at teh end there didn't last long. Here we go again with another factually challenged diatribe on politics)
Prior to Abraham Lincoln, the government in this country said it was legal to hold Africans in slavery in perpetuity. Perpetuity is one of them University of Chicago words that means forever. From now on.
When Lincoln got into office the government changed. Prior to the passing of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the government defined Africans as slaves, as property. Property. People with no rights to be respected by any whites anywhere. The Supreme Court of the government, same court, granddaddy court of the one that stole the 2000 election. The Supreme Court said in its Dred Scott decision, in the 1850s, no African anywhere in this country has any rights that any white person has to respect at any place any time.
That was the government's official position backed up by the Supreme Court—that's the judiciary, backed up by the executive branch, [and] that's the president, backed up by the legislative branch and enforced by the military of the government. But I stopped by to tell you tonight that governments change.
Prior to Harry Truman's government, the military in this country was segregated. But governments change. Prior to the civil rights and equal accommodations laws of the government in this country there was backed segregation by the country, legal discrimination by the government, prohibiting blacks from voting by the government. You had to eat in separate places by the government. You had to sit in different places from white folk 'cause the government says so. And, you had to be buried in a separate cemetery. It was apartheid American-style from the cradle to the grave all because the government backed it up. But guess what! Governments change.
Under Bill Clinton, we got a messed up welfare-to-work bill. But under Clinton, blacks had an intelligent friend in the Oval Office. Ooh, but governments change. The election was stolen. We went from an intelligent friend to a dumb Dixiecrat, a rich Republican who has never held a job in his life, is against affirmative action, against education—I guess he is, ha!—against health care, against benefits for his own military, and gives tax breaks to the wealthiest contributors to his campaign. Governments change—sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
But I'm fixing to help you again. Turn back and say: 'He's fixing to help us again.' When governments change, write this down: Malachi 3:6, Malachi 3:6: 'Thus said the Lord,' repeat it after me, 'For I am the Lord, and I change not.' That's the King James Version. The New Revised says: 'For I the Lord do not change.' In other words, where governments change, God does not change. God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. That's what his name 'I am' means. You know, he does not change. There is no shadow of turning in God. One songwriter puts it this way: 'As thou has been, thou forever will be. Thou changest not. Thy compassions, they fail not. Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me.' God does not change.
God was against slavery on yesterday and God who does not change is still against slavery today. God was a God of love yesterday, and God who does not change is still a God of love today. God was a God of justice on yesterday, and God who does not change is still a God of justice today. Turn to your neighbor and say: 'God does not change.'
Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I'm through now. But let me leave you with one more thing.
Governments fail. The government in this text, comprised of Caesar . . . [and] Pontius Pilate, the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the Seven Seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands. But the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed.
And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on the reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of the racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America'?
No, no, no, not 'God Bless America,' 'God Damn America.' That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human, God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.
Some of us, his own disciples, could not see how the Lord could use a Rosa Parks, a Martin Luther King to bring an end to the sick and silly system of segregation. White Christian preachers, the Lord's disciples, told Martin Luther King he was moving too fast. 'Slow down. Give it some time' God shows us the answer but we let our 'buts' get in the way.
There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction. 'But he's a black man.' There is a man here who is empowered by hope to usher in an era of change in a country that is in desperate need of a change. 'But he ain't black enough.' There is a man here who can get Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and persons of no faith to sit down at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood and talk about our common humanity and our common future. 'But I ain't gonna vote for him 'cause I don't want to waste my vote.'
'But Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us.' No he ain't. Bill did us just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty. But he fixed it so that some of y'all are now riding pretty. Money talks and BS walks. BS, that's bogus stuff. Walk all over this country; walk all over the Internet—bogus stuff. Walk all over your self-confidence.
I would work for Barack, but he doesn't have the experience that Hillary has.' 'But he's an unknown in terms of foreign policy.' 'But his health-care plan ain't as good as Edwards' plan.' 'But the church he has belonged to for 20 years causes some white people and some Uncle Toms some problems.' God shows us the answer and we let our 'buts' get in the way. Put it another way, God shows us the answer and, like Andrew, we show God our 'buts.'
'But this ain't gonna work.' 'But we never did it that way before.' 'But this can never happen.' 'But Pastor Wright don't do it like that, Pastor Moss.' God shows us the answer and we let our 'buts' get in the way. God shows us the answer and we show God our 'buts' as we head for the exit. God shows us the answer and like Andrew we tell God what he shows us ain't gonna work. - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... ory?page=2
I'm sorry Trev, but could you point out the evidence in that jumbled mass of incoherent rambling, where Rev. Wright gives us the slightest indication that he "loves" America like he loves his family?
I am not sure that I agree that his pastor has said "truly offensive and outrageous things" about his country. Where I have tested this theory thus far, it has failed. I have seen something that can relatively easily be taken out of context and presented as such, and evidently has by those who like to frighten the populace with visions of Black Panthers raising black-gloved fists to "the man."
You hadn't even read the sermon I was referring to. Now you have. Tell me where the "context" mitigates the hate and ignorance spewing from this rant.
Personally, I thought Obama's criticism of his pastor was spot on, and showed that he understands the problems with parts of his pastor's rhetoric. I guess you can say he is lying, but I can just as easily say he is not.
Why would Obama distance himself from him if his Pastor said nothing wrong or offensive about America?
So your contention is that Pastor Wright and his parishioners believe that God is their unique Deity and not the God of the rest of America too?
It is stated explicitly in Black theology that any God that isn't the God behind the black people, is a God that needs to be killed. Review the citation above from Cone and you'll know what I'm referring to. I'm sure it is a monotheistic faith, and believes all other Gods don't really exist, but it explicitly teaches that God makes his presence only with the poor black community, which is his chosen people.
Here, before you say this is Cone and not Wright, here is a citation from Wright, who said quite clearly, "Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains."
Yep, it seems to me the two race-baiters are on the same exact page. The God of the oppressed black man is not the same God as the oppressor, and it is clear from his sermons, he believes the white man in general is an oppressor.
I should think that an extended metaphor in which Jerusalem and America are implicitly compared would be decent enough evidence that this Christian pastor views his country as a wayward but beloved nation, instead of as an enemy he seeks to pillage and gut.
"The day of Jerusalem's fall"
That's the title of the sermon, but you haven't even read it until now. By now you should realize the sermon has nothing to do with Jerusalem, despite its title. He starts off with readin Psalm 137, but then launches into a neverending hate-filled rant that never once mentions Jerusalem.He never mentioned it once, and he certainly didn't suggest America was Jerusalem.
So I'll ask again, where is the hint of love that you perceive from Wright's sermon?
I am focusing on it because it is difficult to address every point that you've raised fairly
But this isn't even a major point.
Most of these conversations, as I have noticed, are going "oh yeah, well Palin said...," with the response, "oh yeah, well Obama did...." It seems to me that you manage to carry on this kind of discourse all on your own, when I haven't discussed Palin for some time. Why is that?
Well, you asked me to respond to that ridiculous hit piece about "white privilege." I figured if that nonsense got so much needless airtime, the least I could do is be fair and point out the instances of "black privilege" whenever examples came to mind. Does this bother you?
This is an unusual claim, and imho a batty belief. But, I do not think it equates well with Obama's statement concerning the Iraq War as a misdirection.
That isn't whay I provided it. I presented taht statement as further evidence that this man hates American government. No matter who is President, he will continue to hate it. He does not have a message of hope for equality in America. His message is clearly that of eternal division where God makes his presence with the black community and the rest "changes" where God does not.
I think a better analog is the one I offered, which is the claim that Clinton launched a military attack to deflect attention from his personal peccadilloes. I don't even agree with your characterization of what he said. Your version is lopsided. Clearly this is how you read what he said. I read it differently
What? Obama said the War in Iraq, by George Bush, not Bill Clinton, was a conspiracy by the republicans to detract attention away from government crimes against the poor. And Wright says the US government hatched a plan to kill off the black man in Africa by releasing HIV there. My point is that both are ridiculous far fetched conspiracies about the US government. How is this not a valid point that they share the same mentality and distrust of the government? This is a fundamental principle in BLT and Obama and Wright both express their willingness to swallow it hook line and sinker.
Well, clearly it will take more evidence to convince me than it has taken you. I don't take such serious charges lightly, and the fact that you bandy them about so readily, and with partial information at best, makes me suspicious that you are simply running with the one-sided assessments of the conservative camp. I may be wrong, but I may not be.
I presented the evidence. Do with it what you will. You haven't even begun to address the mountain I provided, and I'm frankly surprised you are so skeptical of my homework and analysis, but so willing to give this ranting bigot the benefit of the doubt at every turn. What did he do to earn your apologetics?
I guess that's another example of black privilege.
But as I said, properly understanding the bigoted and hatefulness of Wright is not necessary to be convinced McCain is the better candidate for the Presidency.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
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Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Hi dopy cognate,
I would kick against you, but I suspect that you may be one of the "pricks" that Jesus spoke of (Acts 9:5). Image
Cheers,
</brent>
Typical liberal. Nothing really to see here, as usual, but just for the record, Palin has both supported and resisted earmarks in her state. Her record is a mixed bag, not one of blatant hypocrisy, as Brent C. Goldencalf would have us believe. She has publically stated that she is against "earmark abuse", not earmarks per se.
In any case, and whether or not Palin is an ideal VP pick (she's close, at least in this election), there is no possibility of contrasting her, hypocrisy on this issue or not, to Obama, an authoritarian socialist dilettante who's answer to virtually every economic, political, or social problem is nationalization and socialization.
It would be difficult to contrast Palin, who has a mixed record on pork spending, with Obama, who sees government itself as one great snorting porcine earmark.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
- Thomas Sowell
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
- Thomas Sowell
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- _Emeritus
- Posts: 9826
- Joined: Mon May 12, 2008 4:06 pm
Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
Just a side note. To see Trevor here actually defending Wright and his ideology is actually somewhate disappointing, even for Trevor.
That the intellectual level of our discourse and analysis in this country has degenerated to this point is truly a terrible state of affairs to behold. The Left has, indeed, done its work quite well over the last forty or so years.
Now let's see Trevor pour some sugar on Ayers, Dohrn, and Davis as well. Could be interesting.
Frightening, isn't it?
That the intellectual level of our discourse and analysis in this country has degenerated to this point is truly a terrible state of affairs to behold. The Left has, indeed, done its work quite well over the last forty or so years.
Now let's see Trevor pour some sugar on Ayers, Dohrn, and Davis as well. Could be interesting.
Frightening, isn't it?
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
- Thomas Sowell
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
- Thomas Sowell
-
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 14216
- Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 2:26 am
Re: Govenor Sarah Palin, Mormonism, Post-Mormonism, Politics
We're all socialists now, anyway.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com