The Hell It Is!! ...

by Cliopatria

You'll be glad to know that the platform of the Republican Party in Texas declares that"the United States is a Christian nation." That offends the Libertarian sensibilities of Reason's Cathy Young and The Volokh Conspiracy's senior Volokh. The Texas goppers water their ideology a bit elsewhere in the platform by reference to"Judeo-Christian tradition" and Clayton Cramer defends the Texas Republicans with claims about American governance and law being rooted in"a Judeo-Christian worldview." Of course, that only offends faithful Jews who hadn't asked to be annexed or hyphened, thank you.

But, as Richard Nixon used to say,"I'd like to say this about that": The hell it is! What bastardized, compromised, and emasculated notion of Christian discipleship are they preaching down there in Texas? What allows them to demean historic Christianity with such a claim? Have we fed the poor or given tax breaks to the rich? Have we turned the other cheek or made war on the children of G_d? Have we visited them in prison or imprisoned them? And, when we visited them in prison, have we comforted or debased them? Being a Christian nation probably is not on the nation's agenda and probably shouldn't be, but it could be a high and noble calling. It's just not one we've been up to lately.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Richard Henry Morgan - 7/20/2004

I say tax them all. Tax MoveOn.org, Brookings, the Cato Institute, Duke University -- all. Exempting charitable deductions is just an invitation to hiding politics in such organaizations, and acts as a tax on the rest of us, who have to make up the revenue shortfall. Tax them all.

chris l pettit - 7/19/2004

You realize how much of the deficit could be taken care of by taxing simply the Catholic Church's property holdings?

If the extremist (fundamentalist) sects and the religious want to impose their ideologies on the rest of us, make them pay their price of admission...they should even pay more since it is built on blind faith and no idealsim that could ever be logically defended or proven correct.

We should always remember the 11th Commandment - "Keep thy religion to thyself."

Then again...we do resemble more of a theocracy than any other nation other than the blatantly Islamic states these days...

CP
www.wicper.org

Ralph E. Luker - 7/18/2004

Of course, you're right about this, Derek. American Catholicism would better serve its cause by distancing itself from the political fray, cleaning up its own act, and simply and confidently re-affirming its across the board pro-life teaching.

Derek Charles Catsam - 7/18/2004

Funny hot the catholic church is talking about denying Kerry some of the sacraments for his stance on choice, yet is silent on those politicians who embrace the death penalty. Could not possibly be that some Catholics are politicizing things, could it? And never mind that maybe the Catholic church has some internal moral issues upon which they could be focusing?

dc

Jonathan W. Wilson - 7/18/2004

In 2000, I noticed that the Texas GOP platform explicitly endorsed the candidacy of George W. Bush but the ideals of Alan Keyes.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/18/2004

Well said!

Jonathan Dresner - 7/18/2004

If you're going to mention prisons....

The death penalty also gets its most energetic application in Texas, which has not only consistently executed more people (per capita and absolute numbers) than any other US state (and most other civilized nations) but has pushed the boundaries of jurisprudence by applying the death penalty to youthful offenders, developmentally disabled, nationals of other nations, and people defended by sleeping incompetents.

Without aspiring to interpret Christianity for Texas "goppers", the Rabbinic tradition is to make the death penalty as inaccessible as possible. The apparent enthusiasm of Leviticus was tempered and limited with evidentiary and procedural rules.