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 | Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 6:50:15 mst
Comment ID: #1 (link)
Name: jay
Your a little late linking to those arcticles, they all came out over a year ago |
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 7:52:57 mst
Comment ID: #2 (link)
Name: Doug Clayton
I find the subtle contradiction particularly amusing. First, this:
"Even if there are such differences, and they matter, they aren’t under individual control. It’s called luck: if you’re born smart or with the ability to focus on long term goals, you prosper. If not, you don’t."
Followed by this:
"Of course, as research shows, the one sure fire way to retard children’s development is to tell them that there is a special property (IQ or whatever) that you either have or you don’t." |
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 19:10:31 mst
Comment ID: #3 (link)
Name: Mike
E-mail: atlas51184(at)comcast.net
URL: http://theprimacyofawesome.blogsome.com
Reconstructionists also advocate the death penalty for heresy and blasphemy, so if you're not a Christian i.e. if you're an Objectivist, you could be put to death in a reconstructed America. Also, disobedient children can be executed. And by "executed" they mean stoned to death. |
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 22:38:12 mst
Comment ID: #4 (link)
Name: JT
E-mail: JT30014(at)hotmail.com
Diana or Mike, do you believe there's a large minority of Christians in contemporary America (significantly more than the number of crackpots you'll find in any philosophy) who really want to *execute* homosexuals, witches, and adulterers (not to mention nonbelievers and rebellious children)? If so, what evidence do you have for this opinion? I'm not defending the "benevolence" of religion, but that notion strikes me as beyond the pale. |
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 22:52:37 mst
Comment ID: #5 (link)
Name: Greg M.
URL: http://logicnotfaith.blogspot.com/
There's another point which I haven't seen get much attention (even in Objectivist circles for, let's say, the last year.)
The underlying philosophies of a culture can lead to aberrant behaviors which aren't immediately suggested by those respective philosophies.
For example, in America, abortion doctors have been attacked by and even killed.... by Christians. ...and no, I don't think they were stoned, but how much does it matter to a victim if he is shot dead (or bombed dead) rather stoned to death? |
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| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 23:12:10 mst
Comment ID: #6 (link)
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
"The underlying philosophies of a culture can lead to aberrant behaviors which aren't immediately suggested by those respective philosophies."
I've noticed that for years, with regards to sexuality; a lot of the sexual "deviancy" we see in the world today that the Christians decry, are in fact psychological expressions of the damage caused by the notion that sex is somehow evil or "base" -- a notion that is not exclusive to Christianity at all, and can be observed far beyond it, but nonetheless owes its prevalence in the West to that benighted creed.
Another similarity is the quasi-Puritanism I find expressed in some of the nastier instances of environmentalism; their rhetoric against material progress, "excess consumption" (of energy and resources) etc. contains the same basic elements, enough that environmentalism is being taken up by certain Christian factions. |
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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 3:31:11 mst
Comment ID: #7 (link)
Name: Mike
E-mail: atlas51184(at)comcast.net
URL: http://theprimacyofawesome.blogsome.com
JT asked, " do you believe there's a large minority of Christians in contemporary America (significantly more than the number of crackpots you'll find in any philosophy) who really want to *execute* homosexuals..."
Yes, there is, though I don't know numbers. And those Christian rightists in the US who aren't reconstructionists are certainly influenced by them. Reconstructionsist want homosexual *acts* to be capital offenses. So you can be gay, but if you act on your sexual orientation you would be a criminal. In a reconstructed America having gay sex would be a capital offense, so it would be analogous to murdering someone. It is punishable by death, but need not be. And yes, the preferred method of execution is stoning (by the church community).
Look up the Coalition on Revival and the Council for National Policy. I'm not positive what their positions on homosexuality as a crime is. But, they had on their boards of directors Rushdoony and North. Also on the board of the COR was Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series. The Discovery Institute is funded in part by Howard Ahmanson, who also funded and sat on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, Rushdoony's organization. That mainstream Christians cooperate with reconstructionsist is enough to damn them. Furthermore, many reconstructionsists are intentionally deceptive about it, not identifying as reconstructionists publicly. I suspect Rick Santorum of having such tendencies.
Furthermore, the Christian home school movement was started by Rushdoony, and reconstructionsist text are the majority text. Same for Christian colleges.
And, in addition, every biblical literalist is a potential sympathizer for this stuff. The Old Testament is pretty damn clear about what should be an executable offense.
Read the book Kingdom Coming by Michelle Goldberg.
Oh, and our savior George W. Bush has spoken before dominionist and reconstructionist organizations (the texts of his speeches, unfortunately, are not public). Bush may not be a reconstructionist, but if they are powerful enough for him to pander to, that says something. Bush spoke before the CNP in 1999, Rumsfeld and Cheney have also attended meetings during the Bush presidency.
What's scary isn't how many of these guys there are, but that they ARE influencing the Christian right. Dominionism, the political theory derived from reconstructionism. Robertson is a dominionist, and close enough to reconstructionism to cause concern. The Christian Coalition is basically a dominionist organization. That it rates something like 48 Republican senators as 100% in line with the Coalition should give you a hint as to where the Republicans stand re theonomic rule.
That's a basically disorganized mind-dump of what I remember off the top of my head. Read Kingdom Coming if you want more. Also, TheocracyWatch has videos that give nice summaries if you don't have time to read a book. |
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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 3:45:10 mst
Comment ID: #8 (link)
Name: Mel McGuire
E-mail: mel(at)mcguire.name
Leonard Peikoff has been right on the money with his comments about the evangelical movement in America. I too am trying to learn more, but the size and power of this movement is almost overwhelming. Recently, I started reading about "rapture" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture> and remembered the Christian Embassy video of some officers in the Pentagon with "faith" as their first priority. If we should get high ranking individuals in the U.S. government who work their eschatology into major decisions about anything (especially the conduct of the "war on terror"), the damage could be catastrophic to the U.S.
I see today that the "Jesus Camp" <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/> documentary has received an Academy Award nomination. Even a nomination may bring the "dominionist" movement some long overdue attention in mainstream America. (This is a movie trailer.)
Then there is the UK Ch 4 documentary about the (U.S.) Patrick Henry College that shows what this movement is doing to young people and to the U.S. government. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7630851222567912489>
(It's about 50min and you can skip the first 2min of the video.)
Nice blog! I didn't discover it 'till recently but now I check it out every day. |
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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 6:29:38 mst
Comment ID: #9 (link)
Name: Mel McGuire
E-mail: mel(at)mcguire.name
Mike,
I checked the Michelle Goldberg book on Amazon; I'm going to get it. Thanks. There are other books I think need to be read but this is going to be my starter. I'm hoping that it will help integrate all the little pieces I've read so far.
I just found this and thought it would be interesting to many. It's the first such article I've seen.
"Bad Bills On The Hill: Church-State Wall Under Fire In New Congress"
<http://blog.au.org/2007/01/22/bad-bills-on-th/> (got it from theocracywatch "What's New?")
"These measures may not stand a chance of advancing in either chamber â€" at least, we hope they don’t â€" but they serve as reminders that a new Congress does not mean all is secure on the battleground to preserve the church-state wall."
Yes! The wall may hold for 2 more years. But, these bills will keep the holymen busy ranting against it anyway. |
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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 18:34:56 mst
Comment ID: #10 (link)
Name: Mike
E-mail: atlas51184(at)comcast.net
URL: http://theprimacyofawesome.blogsome.com
Mel,
There is, of course, the Constitution Restoration Act. It's not so hard to imagine that being passed by within the next ten or fifteen years if we consistently elect Republican majorities and presidents (and they keep apointing Christian nationalist judges). |
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| Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 5:36:55 mst
Comment ID: #11 (link)
Name: Burgess Laughlin
URL: http://www.aristotleadventure.com
On Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 14:38:12 mst, JT asks: "Diana or Mike, do you believe there's a large minority of Christians in contemporary America (significantly more than the number of crackpots you'll find in any philosophy) who really want to *execute* homosexuals, witches, and adulterers (not to mention nonbelievers and rebellious children)?"
I think your question is pertinent and deserves an answer, but you might have to piece it together from the sources suggested by Mike and others. However, for further consideration of the subject, I would like to suggest reformulating the question to this:
"Do you believe there are many Christians in the U. S. today who would stay silent and not oppose imprisoning or executing homosexuals and other Biblical targets?"
My answer is: Definitely, yes.
I ask this question because I think that only a very few need advocate a policy for the policy to become institutionalized. If many others acquiesce, then the policy may very well go into effect -- even if the majority of the people would have answered a pollster's question with: "Oh, no! I don't support *THAT*!"
In other words, the question to ask is this: Do many in the culture have guiding principles that would lead them to vocally and physically *oppose* the killing of homosexuals and other Biblical targets? Specifically what fundamentalist Christian principles would lead a mass movement *against* persecution of homosexuals and others?
As Dr. Peikoff pointed out in Session 15 (I recall) of the DIM Hypothesis seminar, a theocratic movement consists of these elements: God, faith, sacrifice, and statism. Which of these elements are missing from 21st Century fundamentalist Christians?
Retrospectively, how many Germans in 1910 or 1920 would have explicitly stated that they would support the killing of 11 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and others? From the little reading I have done on the subject, I would suspect that very few Germans at that time would have publicly advocated such a thing as a holocaust. BUT THEY HAD NO PRINCIPLES THAT WOULD LEAD THEM TO OPPOSE THE HOLOCAUST. So, the Holocaust happened -- as a consequence of advocacy of radically destructive principles by a few, principles that led to the Holocaust. |
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| Friday, January 26, 2007 at 0:44:17 mst
Comment ID: #12 (link)
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
Burgess is pointing out something that everyone concerned with the course of history should know: the culture is always ultimately steered by "extremists", not moderates.
So-called "moderates", of either political stripe, always trot out a lot of guff about "extremists" when confronted with the true core of their own movement... when they care to address it at all.
But when the chips are down, it's the consistent ones who win out in the struggle *within* a movement. Moderates cannot oppose "extremists" in any substantial way, once the ship hits the fan. The pattern is always the same; as a particular movement begins to succeed, its extremists begin to displace its moderates. (Occasionally, but not as reliably and always temporarily, the reverse happens when the movement is losing).
This is because the only thing that can defeat or reverse the progression of any ideology to its logical end-of-road is its own opposite "extreme", i.e. principled opposition -- not a milder version of itself! No moderate of any movement can or will protect you from that movement's extremists, so long as they remain bound by the principles of that movement!
This is the error involved when soi-disant moderates attempt to marginalize an inconveniently explicit individual as "extremist",
or "he does not speak for all of X creed",
or "His idea of X creed isn't really X creed",
or "his views are 'beyond the pale'",
or "He is not part of X creed's mainstream, or of the general mainstream."
Usually, when I read such things, they amount to more of a groundless "whistling past the graveyard" kind of wish or hope that the extremists in question aren't a purer exponent of "X creed" than the moderates are, more than any substantial argument. The only exceptions are when the moderate "cheats" and argues from principles that are actually outside those of his movement, something which usually (and properly) brings charges of apostasy... an example of that would be Bjorn Lomborg vs the envirocult. |
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| Friday, January 26, 2007 at 3:28:09 mst
Comment ID: #13 (link)
Name: JT
E-mail: JT30014(at)hotmail.com
Mike, thanks for your reply to my post. I don't doubt that there are some Christians who do support *killing* people who don't follow Biblical law to the letter. What I doubt is that such Christians constitute even 1% of Christians in present-day America. But I accept that if I really want to know, I'd have to do research myself.
Burgess and Jim, thanks also for commenting. I think you both make valuable points as well. |
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