Miscellanea Agnostica

The blogosphere has raged over the past few days over the remarks of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s comments about abortion. Naturally, he’s against it — even when the mother’s life is in danger — which follows his Catholic religion’s teaching that women’s lives are forfeit the moment they become pregnant. His remarks that have sparked controversy came in an interview with CNS News, where he said the following, as Huff reports (WebCite cached article):

A conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, Santorum has signaled he’s mulling a run for the White House in the next election cycle. During the interview, he voiced his staunchly pro-life stance, as well as his belief that when life begins “is not a debatable issue,” before going on to criticize the president.

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”

Video of his remarks is courtesy of Youtube:

The buzz that’s erupted around the Internet is that “Santorum is a racist!” Well, I’m no fan of Santorum. He’s a ferocious Christofascist who probably has not had an original thought in his head for the last 3 or 4 decades; he’s only capable of continuously spewing religious and ideological doctrine told to him by others. So don’t think I’m defending him … I’m not. But really, I’m not sure this is evidence he’s a “racist.”

His comments are actually an indirect, implied version of the fallacious reductio ad Hitlerum, a reprehensible propaganda device I’ve blogged about on many occasions already. Now, Dear Reader, if you’re the critical thinker I hope you are, you must be wondering where I got that from … and you’d be 100% right to ask how I could draw such an inference. So here goes.

Santorum’s remark suggests that abortion is used to control the population of “undesirables” or as a tool of discrimination. This is, basically, eugenics. As such, this alludes to the Third Reich and its various policies intended to eliminate “degenerates” and — supposedly — improve the “Aryan race.”

I concede that Santorum never mentioned Hitler or the Nazis, however, the Religious Right frequently states explicitly that abortion choice equates with eugenics, which equates with Hitler. Here is one example of what Santorum is alluding to, and here’s another, and here’s yet another.

There is no way that Santorum’s intended audience would have failed to recognize his reference.

Isn’t it time for this kind of baseless, fallacious, personal demonization of others to stop? It’s childish at best, and disingenuous at worst. I don’t care for the reductio ad Hitlerum when the Left uses it, and find it still less appropriate for the Right — which prides itself on having upstanding morals — to engage in it.

Here’s my personal rule when it comes to this propaganda device, paraphrased from a saying used by the character Salvor Hardin in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation: “The reductio ad Hitlerum is the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt.”

My final note is that people like Rick Santorum — who would like to turn the US into a Christianized fascist regime — are hypocritical to accuse their ideological opponents of being Nazis. Of course, no Religious Rightist ever fails to disobey Jesus’ own explicit, clear injunction against being hypocritical … but hey, what can you expect from irrational militant religionists like Santorum?

Photo credit: Austin Cline / Atheism/Agnosticism at About.Com.

Tags: abortion, adolf hitler, appeal to hitler, appeal to nazis, barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, cns news, eugenics, fallacious, fallacy, hitler, ideologue, ideologues, ideology, nazi, nazi party, nazis, nazism, pro-choice, pro-life, propaganda, reductio ad hitlerum, religious right, rick santorum, right, third reich

It was inevitable, I suppose, that once word came out that President Barack Obama had complimented the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles (WebCite cached article) for having hired Michael Vick after his release from prison for running a dog-fighting operation, the Right would suddenly treat Vick as though he were worse than Hitler or Stalin. It’s the “friend of my enemy is also my enemy” principle in action. It’s natural this would happen, I guess. But the ferocious Rightist Tucker Carlson, however, took that just a few steps too far recently in one of his (many) appearances on Fox News, as AOL Fanhouse reports — and he used Christianity as an oblique justification for it (cached):

“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that.

Now, Vick’s arrest, trial and conviction took place quite a while ago. I can’t find any record of Carlson having weighed in on this matter, before. So I can’t help but conclude that Obama’s comments were the trigger for this call to execute Vick. In fact, Carlson veers close to admitting this overtly:

“[T]he idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”

Here’s video of his comments, courtesy of YouTube:

The bottom line, Gentle Reader, is this: Carlson decided that Michael Vick should have been executed, merely because Barack Obama had something nice to say about him.

Wow. That’s all … just “wow.” The viciousness of that is stunning. Not to mention the idea that people should live or die based solely on the ideological identity of others who happen to say nice things about them.

What a marvelous Christian he is, eh?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: barack obama, christian, Christianity, christians, dog-fighting, dogfighting, football, fox news, michael vick, nfl, obama, philadelphia eagles, potus, president barack obama, president obama, right, tucker carlson

A contentious lame-duck session of Congress is underway … but its Religious Right members appear not to have anything to do. So they got together and whined sanctimoniously that President Obama isn’t being religious enough for their taste. ABC News reports on their fit of enraged hyperpiety (WebCite cached article):

President Obama doesn’t mention God frequently enough in his speeches, a group of religious House Republicans said in an open letter to the president, chastising him for skipping over mention of the “Creator,” especially in a recent overseas address.

Forty-two members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus complained in a letter sent to the White House Monday that in a speech delivered last month in Indonesia, the president substituted the U.S.’s religious-themed national motto for a more secular alternative.

This caucus of religionists spews the old lie that only Jesus gives Americans their freedoms (cached):

The prayer caucus members say that by failing to mention God, the president is “removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom.”

The truth is that God had absolutely nothing to do with making the US into a free country. Ironically, the US would cease to be a free country, if these angry Christofascists get their way … it would instead become an Old Testament-style Christian theocracy.

In any event, these people are claiming that, essentially, it’s every American’s duty — from the President on down — to be a Christian. I dare Michele Bachmann and the rest of the members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus to apply their awesome Congressional power, and force this cynical, godless agnostic heathen to become the dour Christianist they want me to become. Come on. Give it your best shot! You have nothing to lose by trying, so why would you not do so?

Hat tip: Apathetic Agnostic Church.

Photo credit: anarchosyn.

Tags: barack obama, christ, christian, Christianity, christians, christofascism, christofascist, christofascists, congressional prayer caucus, god, jesus, jesus christ, michele bachmann, president obama, Religion, religionism, religionist, religionists, white house

An odd story has come up, first reported by ABC News, about the militant Religious Rightist and former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, and something she did on Twitter (WebCite cached article):

In recent weeks Sarah Palin has used her Twitter page to endorse midterm candidates, offer political commentary and get out the vote. But last week, she used Twitter to list as a “favorite” a tweet linked to a photo of a sign labeling President Barack Obama a “Taliban Muslim.”

Palin posted as a “favorite” a tweet by conservative political commentator Ann Coulter linking to an image of a sign outside “The Blood of Jesus ATLAH World Missionary Church.” The sign reads, “The blood of Jesus against Obama history made 4 Nov 2008 a Taliban Muslim illegally elected president USA:Hussein.”

Here’s the picture in question:

Of course, Palin is denying she actually “favorited” Coulter’s tweet, claiming it was “accidental,” which ABC News is also reporting, since she responded to them (cached article):

Asked for comment, Palin wrote to ABC News:

“Jake, I’ve never purposefully ‘favorited’ any Tweet. I had to go back to my BlackBerry to even see if such a function was possible. I was traveling to Alaska that day…it was an obvious accidental ‘favoriting,’ but no one can mistake that Ann Coulter was obviously being tongue in cheek with that Tweet. Shall I correct this with whichever wonderful media outlet ran with this (an obviously bored reporter…since there must be nothing going on in the world today, like, um, ramifications of a shake up of power in the U.S. House of Representatives?).”

Note the requisite snide comment about how horrific the media are. For a publicity hound whose career is now built on having her face and words carried around the world by the mass media, Palin sure spends a lot of her time biting the hand that feeds her. Yep, definitely one helluva class act that woman is, no?

Quite aside from her juvenile jabs at the media … it is by no means “obvious” that this was an “accidental tweeting.” If Palin had been unaware of how to “favorite” a tweet, then it could not have been something she might have done even accidentally.

One might easily suspect that Coulter and Palin would both support the “birther” sentiment expressed in this church sign. It’s a delusion that just won’t die among the Religious Right, as I’ve blogged a number of times already. But these heroines of the Religious Right happen to have picked the wrong church to join. You see, ATLAH World Missionary Church is an African-American church in Harlem, NYC; it’s run by a crazy, (reverse) racist pastor, James David Manning; and the cold fact is that neither Ann Coulter nor Sarah Palin would be welcome there!

If you’re wondering — as I am — how an African-American pastor could oppose President Barack Obama rather than support him, on the basis of his race … well … welcome to the wonderful world of raging irrational religionism. I don’t plan even to try to make sense of this.

Anyway, I extend congratulations to Coulter and Palin. They just demonstrated their stupidity and ignorance to the entire planet, via Twitter.

Photo credit: baratunde.

Tags: ann coulter, atlah, atlah world missionary church, barack obama, birther, birthers, blood of jesus, christian right, coulter, david james manning, muslim, obama, palin, president, president obama, religious right, sarah palin, taliban, taliban muslim, tweet, twitter

I’ve blogged before about the Right comparing Obama and the Democrats to Hitler and the Nazis. To hear them tell it, the US has already become the next incarnation of the Third Reich. Reductio ad Hitlerums have become so common that it’s almost expected. Well, the Germans have noticed, and Der Spiegel, at least, is telling the American Right to stop already with the Hitlerisms (WebCite cached article):

Many on the American right have developed a taste for including a bit of German history in their stump speeches. Hitler comparisons abound and the Berlin Wall even made a cameo recently. But the flippant references to the Holocaust are ignorant and offensive. And they should stop. …

In this midterm campaign season in the US, German history seems to be everywhere. In June, conservative columnist Thomas Sowell of JewishWorldReview.com essentially argued that President Barack Obama, by requiring that BP pay $20 billion (€14.3 billion) to compensate those harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, was following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler — and was promptly praised by Sarah Palin and Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Other examples abound. A Tea Party campaign poster in Iowa depicted Obama flanked by both Hitler and Lenin. Conservative talking head and Tea Party heartthrob Glenn Beck can hardly get through one of his Fox News shows without an Obama-Hitler comparison. Palin also accused Obama’s health care plan of including “death panels.” …

During his show on Oct. 5, Glenn Beck said that Obama’s science adviser John Holdren’s concern about the global population and White House health policy adviser Ezekiel Emanuel’s warnings about global warming are “the kind of thinking that led to … the extermination program that eventually led to the Holocaust.”

Der Spiegel goes on to talk about how Germans themselves … apart from one famous example that the article cites … tend to avoid the old reductio ad Hitlerum:

For most Germans, though, the Hitler comparisons are vastly more offensive. It is almost impossible to finish high school in Germany without going on a class visit to a former concentration camp. They are not pleasant places to be. While the sites themselves might now be little more than windswept rows of foundations where hopelessly overcrowded, disease-ridden barracks once stood, the museum exhibits tend to be much more disturbing. Images of trucks full of emaciated corpses, ovens where tens of thousands of bodies were burned, photos of SS commandos on the Eastern Front shooting row upon row of Jews, a canister of the poison gas Zyklon B — all are likely to be on display. …

It would be hard to find someone on this side of the Atlantic who wouldn’t cringe at the ignorance of [Beck's] statement [about Holdren]. Leaving aside the question as to whether or not one should be concerned about climate change and an overcrowded planet, the kind of thinking that led to the Holocaust was a different one. Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. People with handicaps didn’t fit. Neither did Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, blacks, Asians, Arabs or homosexuals.

Der Spiegel puts the whole thing into perspective:

The Holocaust was the result of murderous ideological fanaticism of the kind not to be found in leaders forced to face re-election every four years. It was not the result of a policy meeting.

Similarly, back in June Glenn Beck said that children singing for Barack Obama was “out of the playbook … of the Third Reich ….This is Hitler Youth.” One can assume that not all of Beck’s listeners and viewers know what the Hitler Youth was. Beck himself, an astute, if cynical, student of history, certainly does. The Hitler Youth was the ideological training grounds designed to prepare German boys for a glorious career in the SS murdering anyone who stood in the way of the Führer’s dream of a vast and racially pure German Reich. It was not a dictator’s private children’s choir.

One can forgive those like Glenn Beck and his Tea Party followers for hating Barack Obama. The liberals, after all, were passionately opposed to George W. Bush and rarely shied away from hyperbole in their expressions of loathing. But it is hard to imagine even the most hard-bitten Tea Party activist sincerely believing that President Barack Obama wants to systematically murder over 6 million people like Adolf Hitler did.

One of the “justifications” for this sort of reasoning which folks on the Right have offered, is that during the George W. Bush administration, many on the Left made similar accusations about Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the Republicans. They are correct in pointing out this happened — as I noted previously — but they’re wrong about this justifying their rhetoric. It doesn’t, quite simply because two wrongs don’t make a right. That the Left did something it shouldn’t have, years ago, does not grant the Right license to do the same thing, now.

I have no doubt that Tea Partiers and assorted creeps like Glenn Beck will not stop using appeals to Hitler and the Nazis, but it sure seems as though Der Spiegel said something that has desperately needed to be said, for a long time … and did so from the perspective of its native country, Germany, which was home to Hitler, his Nazi party, and the Third Reich.

Photo credit: elviskennedy.

Tags: ad hitlerum, adolf hitler, american right, appeal to hitler, appeal to nazis, appeals to hitler, appeals to nazis, barack obama, germans, germany, glenn beck, gop, hitler, holocaust, louie gohmert, nazis, nazism, obama, reductio ad hitlerum, republican, republican party, republicans, right, right wing, sarah palin, tea partier, tea partiers, tea party, third reich

Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black, can be seen in the Religious Right’s yammering and whining about how the current administration uses its faith-based office. CNN reports on their whining, and on the White House’s reaction (WebCite cached article):

The White House pushed back Friday against allegations that President Barack Obama’s faith office is abusing its power for political gain. …

The White House response came after former Bush aides publicly criticized the conference call, saying it was an example of Obama abusing the office to win political support from religious leaders.

Yeah. As though no Religious Right president — such as George W. Bush was — would ever have done anything of this sort!

“According to the White House website, the faith-based office exists ‘to more effectively serve Americans in need,’” Jim Towey, who directed Bush’s faith office, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month. “I guess that now means Americans in need of Democratic talking points on health care.”

“Do we really want taxpayer-funded bureaucrats mobilizing ministers to go out to all the neighborhoods and spread the good news of universal coverage?” he continued. …

This week, another Bush official – former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson – spoke out against the office under Obama.

“I was involved in the faith-based office at the Bush administration and I think (Obama) has abused that office in political ways,” Gerson told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “doing outreach on healthcare and other federal initiatives instead of focusing on what religious-based charities can do for the poor.”

Towey and Gerson are fucking hypocrites, since they know damned well that the administration they worked for did pretty much the same thing … using churches and clergy to move social issues. Allow me to point out — as I have a million times already, but find I must repeat anyway, since Christians seem not to want to know it — that the founder of Christianity specifically, clearly, unambiguously and explicitly ordered his followers never to be hypocritical … ever, under any conditions. Hypocrisy is forbidden to all Christians. Period.

Yet, they don’t seem to be able to stop being hypocritical. And … in spite of their unwillingness or refusal to live as their own Jesus told them to live … they claim the right to tell everyone else how they should live. That only compounds their hypocrisy.

At any rate, the criticism here merely underscores the inherent problem with presidential administrations using “faith-based” offices to mobilize churches: It’s wrong. Just plain wrong. Let churches be churches, and let the White House be the White House. It’s better for religion, and it’s better for the country, if we do that.

Tags: barack obama, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, faith-based, george bush, george w bush, hypocrisy, hypocrite, hypocrites, hypocritical, jim towey, joshua dubois, michael gerson, pot calling the kettle black, pot kettle black, president bush, president obama, religious right, right, white house, white house office for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships

The question of whether or not President Barack Obama is a Christian is one that has plagued him for a long time. Let me begin by getting this out of the way, right now: If he were white and/or a Republican, no one — and I do mean no one — would even be entertaining the possibility he’s anything else, much less a Muslim (as many in the country erroneously believe). Since he is a Democrat and black, though — and worse, has a foreign name — lots of people think otherwise.

One of the Religious Right’s whiney mantras, since he was elected, has been to ask why the mass media aren’t working harder at pressing the president on the matter of his religion. Well, he made an appearance at which someone directly questioned him on this issue, and he answered, as CNN reports (WebCite cached article):

An event billed as a discussion on the economy turned personal Tuesday when a woman asked President Barack Obama about his Christian faith and views on abortion.

The question came at a town hall-style meeting in the yard of an Albuquerque home as part of Obama’s public outreach to explain his policies and campaign for Democrats in the November congressional elections.

Here is what he had to say about it:

“I am a Christian by choice,” Obama began, standing beneath a blazing sun, when asked why he is a Christian.

“I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead,” Obama said. “Being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper. Treating others as they would treat me. And I think also understanding that, you know, that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility that we all have to have as human beings.”

Humans are “sinful” and “flawed” beings that make mistakes and “achieve salvation through the grace of God,” the president continued, adding that we also can “see God in other people and do our best to help them find their, you know, their own grace.”

“So that’s what I strive to do,” Obama said. “That’s what I pray to do everyday. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith.”

Here is CNN’s video of the questions asked of Obama and his answers:

Now … similar words have been said by many a believer over the centuries. In most cases this has been taken at face value. I expect, however, that Rightists will not accept this; they’ll say Obama was merely paying “lip service” to Christianity and isn’t a sincere believer.

It’s true that he might not be sincere … but short of being able to probe his mind telepathically and determine whether or not he’s lying, there is no way to know how sincere he is. One can only take his word for it; nothing else is possible or reasonable. The definition of “Christian” is “someone who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ.” As almost everyone knows, there are many ways to go about this; if this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be as many different Christian sects and denominations as there are. A lot of the Christian Right is convinced that Obama can’t possibly be a “‘Real’ Christian,” because he’s pro-choice (GASP!) and (supposedly) a socialist and/or communist. Both of these are bullshit, however; it’s more than possible to be a pro-choice Christian, and there is nothing inherently un-Christian about liberal policies (even if the furiously-sanctimonious Glenn Beck says otherwise).

At any rate, the Right has been demanding for a couple of years that Obama be confronted about his Christianity; now that it’s happened, I’m not betting they’ll be happy with it. They will simply continue raging and screaming that the President dares behave in ways they personally disapprove of. Wah wah wah. It’s all so very childish … but being hyperreligious, they’re not capable of any maturity, so what else can one expect?

Tags: albuquerque, albuquerque NM, barack obama, belief, believer, christ, christian, christian right, Christianity, christians, jesus, jesus christ, obama, obama is a christian, president obama, Religion, religiosity, religious, religious right, right, sincere, sincerity

Sharron Angle, who’s running for the US Senate in Nevada against current majority leader Harry Reid, recently was interviewed by a Christian radio host. In the course of the interview she revealed herself as a militant Christian religiofascist. The Las Vegas Sun reports on this interview, which — until the Sun took note of it — had gone under the radar of the media (WebCite cached article):

And [Angle said] these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.

Here, Angle reiterates the laughable whine of Georgia Congressional candidate Ed Martin that government — or more specifically, President Obama — is getting between Christians and their deity.

I never fail to be amazed at the amount of sheer power these people attribute to things other than God … when at the same time they claim their God is all-powerful and can never be overcome or thwarted by anything.

That assumes, of course, that their objections to government are rational. The truth is that they’re not. Neither Sharron Angle, nor Ed Martin, nor anyone else in the Religious Right objected to entitlement spending while George W. Bush was in office and the Religious Right controlled Congress. Their objections to government only made themselves apparent as they began to lose power — first in the 2006 mid-term elections when they lost control of Congress, and more seriously in 2008 when they lost the White House.

In other words, it’s nothing but sour grapes … and it’s childish. Well, boo freakin’ hoo, Ms Angle.

Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.

Photo credit: TPM.

Tags: barack obama, candidate, christan right, christian, christian reconstructionism, Christianity, christians, commandments, dominionism, ed martin, first commandment, government, nevada, politics, president obama, religiofascism, religiofascist, Religion, religionism, religious right, senate, sharron angle, ten commandments