Sarah Palin Gets Her Facts Wrong and Advises Seeking Divine Intervention From God

February 6, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Sarah Palin spoke before the Tea Party convention, both rewriting history and suggesting that a top government priority should be asking for divine intervention from god. David Weigel reports on how she got her facts wrong about recent election results:

Palin adroitly re-wrote the history of the past three months of elections, giving the Tea Party movement credit for Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts and calling the White House “0 for 3″ in recent elections–leaving out the New York special election where her candidate, the Conservative Party’s Doug Hoffman, lost in a last-minute upset.

“You know,” said Palin of Brown, “he was just a guy with a truck, and a passion to serve his country,” said Palin. Brown, however, was a state senator and state representative whose campaign staffers cut their teeth with Mitt Romney.

The Guardian reports that things got even weirder at the Q&A session:

The weirdest part of the evening came not during the speech but during the following Q&A session. Asked what she thought that a Republican-controlled congress’s top three priorities should be, she answered: stop spending, energy policy and … well, here’s the whole quote, judge for yourself:

“I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we’re not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know – they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator.”

So, one of the US congress’s top priorities should be … asking for divine intervention from God? “I can think of two words right now that scare liberals: President Palin,” the moderator ended the evening by saying. A brief chant of “Run, Sarah, run,” broke out, although not one shared by the whole room. Proving, perhaps, that you don’t have to be a liberal to be worried by Sarah Palin.

Posted in Sarah Palin, Separation of Church and State. 7 Comments »

Barry Lynn Criticizes Obama For Not Doing Enough To Change Bush Policies On Faith-Based Initatives

February 5, 2010 — Ron Chusid

This is disappointing. Despite earlier promises to radically change the manner in which faith-based programs are handle, Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State argues that Obama has maintained far too many of George Bush’s policies:

In a July 2008 Zanesville, Ohio, speech, Obama flatly promised to repeal Bush-era rules that let publicly funded faith-based groups discriminate in hiring on religious grounds. He also vowed to make sure that these groups do not proselytize the folks who come to them for help.

Obama could not have been clearer. “If you get a federal grant,” he said, “you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.”

Encouraging words. Too bad he hasn’t acted on those promises, and billions of dollars in federal funds are still going out every day under Bush-era rules set up to evade long-standing civil rights and civil liberties protections…

Dissatisfaction with Obama’s inaction on this issue is widespread. On Feb. 4, 25 national religious and public policy organizations sent a letter to Obama, urging him to fix the faith-based initiative. The groups range from the American Association of University Women, the Human Rights Campaign and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to the American Jewish Committee, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society. These groups have grown impatient with Obama, as have I, for leaving the odious Bush faith-based scheme in place unchanged.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, Separation of Church and State. 1 Comment »

Bible Codes Inscribed On US Military Weapons

January 19, 2010 — Ron Chusid

ABC News reports that “Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company.”  They note that this violates military rules which “specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious ‘Crusade’ in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One group has protested this:

“It’s wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws,” said Michael “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

“It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” he said…

“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Religion, Separation of Church and State. 2 Comments »

Religious Right Showing Increasing Influence on Tea Party Movement

January 16, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Initially the tea baggers (at least at times) sounded like they came more from the libertarian wing of the right as opposed to the religious right. Unfortunately it was a populist sort of anti-government viewpoint which lacked understanding of the issues. Such an intellectually weak movement risks being taken over by those who better understand their goal. The American Prospect describes how the religious right is infiltrating the movement:

Next month’s Tea Party National Convention has been making news for the fat fee Sarah Palin is commanding — $100,000, according to many reports. But the gathering, to be held at Nashville’s Opryland Hotel, is interesting for another reason as well: It marks the attempt of the old-school Christian right to take over the tea-party movement. Speakers joining Palin include Rick Scarborough, Roy Moore, and Joseph Farah, men who are radical even by religious-right standards. Their presence shows that the tea-party movement is no longer merely populist, libertarian, or anti-government, if it ever was. It is theocratic. Indeed, after several months in which the religious right seemed lost and dispirited, it has found a way to ride the tea-party express into renewed relevance.

From the beginning, of course, there’s been overlap between the tea parties and the Christian right. Both have their strongholds in the white South, and both arise out of a sense of furious dispossession, a conviction that the country that is rightfully theirs has been usurped by sinister cosmopolitan elites. They have the same favorite politicians — particularly Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is also speaking in Nashville. Glenn Beck, the media figure most associated with the tea-party movement, has a worldview deeply shaped by apocalyptic Mormonism; he is contemptuous of the idea of church-state separation and believes the United States was founded to be a Christian nation…

Naturally, enterprising theocrats would look to the tea parties for salvation. And Scarborough, for one, is nothing if not enterprising. For years, the Baptist minister has been positioning himself as a next-generation Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. In 2002, he left his post as pastor of Pearland First Baptist Church to form Vision America, a group dedicated to organizing “patriot pastors” for political action. That year, Falwell identified him as one of the new leaders of the Christian right. The author of books like In Defense of … Mixing Church and State and the pithier Liberalism Kills Kids, Scarborough spent the Bush years organizing conferences that brought together conservative Republicans with preachers and activists working for the imposition of biblical law.

The fall of Scarborough’s closest political ally, the once-formidable Tom DeLay, eroded Scarborough’s political influence. So did the broader decline of the religious right. “His group has been puttering along with a tiny budget, and he has practically no national presence,” says Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “His goal was to be the next Jerry Fawell, and it has not worked out. The tea-party movement could be the vehicle to give him a much-needed boost.”

Posted in Religion, Republicans, Separation of Church and State. 2 Comments »

Atheists in Ireland Protest New Blasphemy Law

January 2, 2010 — Ron Chusid

A new blasphemy law in Ireland show what it is so important to prevent further deterioration of the wall of separation of church and state in this country. The Guardian reports on actions by atheists to protest these laws:

Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.

The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).

It defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted”.

The justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution extended the protection of belief only to Christians.

But Atheist Ireland, a group that claims to represent the rights of atheists, responded to the new law by publishing 25 anti-religious quotations on its website, from figures including Richard Dawkins, Björk, Frank Zappa and the former Observer editor and Irish ex-minister Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Michael Nugent, the group’s chair, said that it would challenge the law through the courts if it were charged with blasphemy.

Nugent said: “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.

I hope that opposition there is not limited to atheists. While in this country we are often faced with attempts by the religious right to use government to impose their religious views on others, there are also many other religious individuals in this country who understand the importance of separation of church and state.

Here are some of the quotations which were posted by Atheist Ireland, demonstrating the type of free expression of ideas which the law attempts to prevent:

Richard Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Björk: “The Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

Frank Zappa: “To hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

Update: 25 Blasphemous Quotations from Atheist Ireland.

Posted in Civil Liberties, International, Separation of Church and State. 4 Comments »

Religion and Morality

December 6, 2009 — Ron Chusid

This blog was named Liberal Values back when the Republicans were the dominant political party and the media spoke of how they won based upon values issues. The blog was named to point out that liberals also vote upon values when we disagree with conservatives on the issues. Two areas of research which made the news last week show that, contrary to the view of many social conservatives, morality is not necessarily based upon religion. There’s even a silver lining for conservatives here. As many of them do not believe in science, they can easily ignore these findings.

Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at Harvard University, discussed how biology, not religion, has formed the roots of human morality:

Recent discoveries suggest that all humans, young and old, male and female, conservative and liberal, living in Sydney, San Francisco and Seoul, growing up as atheists, Buddhists, Catholics and Jews, with high school, university or professional degrees, are endowed with a gift from nature, a biological code for living a moral life.

This code, a universal moral grammar, provides us with an unconscious suite of principles for judging what is morally right and wrong. It is an impartial, rational and unemotional capacity. It doesn’t dictate who we should help or who we are licensed to harm. Rather, it provides an abstract set of rules for how to intuitively understand when helping another is obligatory and when harming another is forbidden. And it does so dispassionately and impartially.

While biology provides the core of a common human morality, religion is often abused as people attribute their personal beliefs to God to justify their views on controversial issues:

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues…

“People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want,” the team write. “The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”

“The experiments in which we manipulate people’s own beliefs are the most compelling evidence we have to show that people’s own beliefs influence what they think God believes more substantially than it influences what they think other people believe,” says Epley.

This becomes even more dangerous when politicians like George Bush and Sarah Palin use God to justify their political views and policies.

Posted in George Bush, Religion, Sarah Palin, Separation of Church and State. 2 Comments »

Sarah Palin Says United States Should Rededicate Itself To Seeking God’s Will

December 5, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Palin Graham

Sarah Palin said the United States should rededicate itself to seeking God’s will in a video released Friday by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Palin is a young-earth creationist who believes she will see Jesus in her lifetime. As mayor of Wasilla she tried to stack the local school board with creationists and tried to pressure the local library to remove books which social conservatives found offensive.

This is hardly the first time that Palin has expressed such theocratic sentiments confusing “God’s will” with governing. In June 2008 she described the Iraq war as a “task that is from God” and even described the Alaska gas pipeline as “God’s will.”

As repulsive as these beliefs are, they are apparently mainstream in the GOP. For example, George Bush has expressed the belief that God chose him to be President and advised him to go to war in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld used biblical imagery to sell Bush on the Iraq war. Jacques Chirac has also been quoted as saying that Bush had justified the Iraq war based upon biblical prophesy.

Posted in Evolution, George Bush, Iraq, Religion, Sarah Palin, Separation of Church and State. 5 Comments »

Religion Continues To Influence Public Policy Even With GOP Out

December 1, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Sarah Posner argues in The Guardian that the influence of religion on government has continued despite the Democrats replacing the Republicans. The most obvious example was in the restrictions on the funding of abortion added to the House health care legislation.

Instead of questioning how religion – exclusively the conservative variety – became so intertwined with politics in a secular democracy, Democrats decided to embrace it themselves. Candidates now need the imprimatur of a Bible verse to have credibility with “religious” voters. Democrats must abandon their supposedly strident views on reproductive choice to satisfy pastors who essentially campaign from their pulpits. Candidates now feign embarrassment that they once spoke at a Planned Parenthood dinner. The party believes it must recruit candidates who are “pro-life,” even if they oppose providing basic health services for women, and participate in misinformation campaigns designed to portray coverage for abortion as complicity in genocide.

The “new” and avowedly more “centrist” evangelicals and Catholics sought by the Democrats claimed to care about global warming, poverty, and healthcare reform. Yet some of them have signed onto the Manhattan Declaration, which too compares abortion to genocide, and elevates gender and sexuality issues above all others. This constituency may indeed care about those other issues. But when it comes down to the wire, the abortion issue matters to them most.

Democrats need to decide what matters to them: winning elections by compromising the freedoms of American women, or standing up to church bullies.

Posted in Congress, Democrats, Separation of Church and State, Social Issues. 2 Comments »

Washington Cop Killer Dead, Possibly Along With Huckabee’s Presidential Aspirations

December 1, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in the police shootings in Washington, was killed during a confrontation with Seattle police this morning. Now that this phase of the story has ended, the lingering question is how it will affect the political career of Mike Huckabee. Huckabee had commuted the sentence of Clemmons while governor of Arkansas.

This will certainly leave Huckabee open to the Willie Horton type of ads run by George H. W. Bush against Michael Dukakis. Huckabee cannot necessarily be expected to have been able to predict the consequences of his decision, and I would hope the result of this is not to inhibit all governors with political aspirations from showing leniency when deserved.

The important question is how Huckabee came about making this decision. Joe Conason argues that it was based on Huckabee’s religious views, believing Huckabee’s decisions were biased by those who claimed to be born again:

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state’s draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee’s tendency to believe such pious testimonials. “I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak,” he explained in his clemency application in 2000. “I’m still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family’s name … I have never done anything good for God, but I’ve prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I’m humbly appealing to you for a brand new start.”

Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murdered now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton’s presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the “Clinton machine.” When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right — until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release — a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.

It does sound like there is valid criticism of Huckabee on this, but I would prefer to see more sources on the decision before coming to any conclusions. As for the 2012 race, it looks like Tim Pawlenty has fired the first shot:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty became the first likely GOP presidential candidate to criticize Mike Huckabee’s pardon of a suspected killer during his time as Arkansas’s governor.

Pawlenty said that he would not have granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons, who was suspected of fatally shooting four police officers in Washington state on Sunday before being shot and killed by police in Seattle Tuesday morning.

He continued, “In Minnesota, I don’t think I’ve ever voted for clemency. We’ve given out pardons for things after everybody has served out their term, but again, usually for more minor offenses. But clemency, certainly not. Commutation of sentence, certainly not.”

Posted in Mike Huckabee, Separation of Church and State. 5 Comments »

Conservative Religious Leaders Issue Declaration Opposing Gay Marriage Rights and Embryonic Stem Cell Research

November 24, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Conservatives love to play the victim, even when they are engaged in denying the rights of others. A group of  conservative religious leaders have issued the Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience. This declaration says “they oppose laws that would compel them to recognize gay unions or marriages, among other social issues.”

The document says, “We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent.”

The document’s language also takes aim at other gay rights laws, including a recently approved law that adds sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally recognized hate crimes and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would ban workplace discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people.

Social conservatives have argued that such measures would have a chilling effect on religious liberties.

The declaration confuses the issues and clearly shows why we need separation of church and state to defend religious liberties. The point of changing the law to allow marriage equality is to provide gays the same right to marriage that the rest of us enjoy. While gays would legally be allowed to be married, this would not compel any church or religious institution to perform gay marriages, participate in abortions, or any other acts that violate their religious principles.

The principle of separation of church and state, which the religious right often denies, is what protects churches from participating in activities they oppose. In return, churches and other religious bodies not have the right to impose their religious views upon others.
Posted in Religion, Separation of Church and State, Social Issues, Stem Cell Research. 3 Comments »

Right Wing Extremism & Pat Buchanan’s Confused View of Traditional American Values

October 20, 2009 — Ron Chusid

I’ve often noted the tendency of many on the right to portray themselves as victims. This includes the protests of the tea baggers over the imaginary injustices and our delusional decline into socialism which they were warned about by watching Fox. (And notice that my use here of Fox, and not “Fox News, ” predates the arguments from the Obama administration that Fox is an arm of the Republican Party and not a legitimate news organization.) The shock of having a black man in the White House, added to all the other imaginary injustices felt by the far right, has led to increased signs of extremism. The Secret Service reports an unprecedented number of death threats against Obama and a rise in racist wing hate groups. Expressions of violence from the right have become commonplace–including from mainstream conservatives in the Republican Party.

In this atmosphere, right wing pundit and Nazi-sympathizer  Pat Buchanan feels comfortable being even explicit about his views. He showed his sympathies towards Nazi Germany in a column last month. Now he writes about the persecution that he sees white working-class voters being subjected to.  The column is full of absurdities which other bloggers have already discussed at length, so I will limit this to one particularly ridiculous line. Buchanan writes: “In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for…”

Yes, and this is a good thing. The schools are not the place to spread the Christian, or any other faith. Even Mike Huckabee has expressed some support for the idea that prayer does not belong in the schools. (If only he extended this to also opposing the teaching of creationism). Such separation of church and state was a fundamental principle of the founding fathers, who realized that this was necessary to preserve freedom of religion. While I would strongly object, it is logically possible to argue for having a state religion which is supported in the public schools.  It makes no sense to argue for this in a column which claims to support traditional American values.

If you support the inclusion of religion in the public schools you are directly opposing traditional American values.  With their growing cheering against America and opposition to the values we were founded upon, the word conservative has taken on an Orwellian meaning as we wonder what it is that conservatives want to conserve. This should come as no surprise when we have those on the right who claim to support a strong defense while supporting policies which undermine our national security. The right speaks of freedom while supporting an increasingly authoritarian society, ignoring true violations of civil liberties but see attempts to provide people with affordable health care as an intrusion on our liberties. The right speaks of supporting capitalism while backing a form of crony capitalism which would make Adam Smith roll over in his grave. While Pat Buchanan’s views are contrary to traditional American values, they do fit in will with the contemporary conservative movement.

Posted in Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee, Op-eds, Republicans, Separation of Church and State, Social Issues. 1 Comment »

Liberty Counsel’s Program to Pray For Liberals

October 6, 2009 — Ron Chusid

You just can’t make up stuff stranger than what is coming out of the right wing. The Liberty Counsel, which is affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, has started a program to adopt a liberal and pray for them:

Since the landmark 2008 general election, there can be no doubt that a very large percentage of our Nation’s leaders have a liberal mindset. The undeniable fact is that the 111th Pelosi-Reid Congress and the Obama Administration demonstrate a far left political philosophy. And since the President nominates federal judges and Justices of the United States Supreme Court, the judicial branch of government could take on a decidedly more liberal bent as the Obama Administration wears on.

Liberty Counsel has therefore named this special new prayer-in-action program Adopt a Liberal. And that’s exactly what we invite you to do — adopt a liberal who is in authority for regular, intense prayer in accord with St. Paul’s admonition to his disciple, Timothy. In fact, we expect that many of our friends and supporters will choose to adopt many liberals as subjects of regular prayer!

Pick one or more of the liberals from the list we have posted online at www.LC.org, or choose your own liberal(s) to adopt. If you are led to choose one or more of the liberals we have selected for consideration, please read their brief biographical statement, including the reasons they stand in need of prayer.

Pray earnestly and intensely for them! Pray that the Lord would move upon them and cause them to be the kind of leaders who will encourage others to lead “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” We encourage you to seek the Lord’s guidance on how to pray for your liberal(s), always allowing Him to temper your prayer with His love and mercy.

Please pray daily for the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation’s culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will “graduate” from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!

They even provide a list of names of liberals to pray for, including the “Unknown Liberal” for any additional liberals:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Congressman Barney Frank
Director John Holdren
Mr. Barry Lynn
Secretary Janet Napolitano
President Barack Obama
Senator Harry Reid
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Senator Olympia Snowe
The “Unknown Liberal”

Reading the warped descriptions of the views of the people on their list is also good for a few laughs.

(Hat tip to Amygdala and Andrew Sullivan)

Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Separation of Church and State. 3 Comments »
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