In another shot in his struggle for "the culture of life," GWB is going to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, which will use them to kill people and threaten India. Pakistan is the country where gang-rape is considered an acceptable punishment for a woman accused of adultery.
Never think a Republican or fundamentalist "christian" is acting in good faith when they talk about "life." Same people can't wait to fire up the 'lectric chair or start wars.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Culture of Hypocrisy
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 2:51 PM
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8 comments:
I think it is worth noting that India is a democracy but Pakistan is ruled by a military dictator who over threw a democratically elected government.
Also, Pakistani courts also order gang rapes of women to punish their relatives. That is the woman being raped was never accused let a lone convicted of anything but by ordering her rape, the court hopes to punish her brother/father/cousin whatever.
Finally, these F-16s have been saught by Pakistan for years. Clinton had agreed to sell them Pakistan but when Pakistan started testing atomic bombs, Clinton diverted the planes to Taiwan, pocketed Pakistan's money and changed our position on Kashmire to agree with India's.
Remember: Pakistanis and Indians are heathen doomed for hell, so according to right-wing "Christians," their lives don't really count anyway... and the electric chair and wars kill only bad people, so they are just doing the Lord's work... and anyhow, God is on America's side. Don't be too quick to dismiss it as nonsense: self-interest and hate-for-others make a consistent philosophy. The only hypocrisy is those who believe it also call themselves good Christians.
A big pile of self-righteous crap is obscuring Jesus' teachings of love, peace, and compassion. Christianity needs a good enema. The religious tolerance of the Left has failed: it's time to throw the moneylenders out of the temple. Time to start calling these self-proclaimed "fundamentalists" what they really are: heretics, blasphemers, liars, sinners, and worshippers of evil.
Think that's too harsh? It's these same "fundamentalists" around the world who donate money to murderous "pro-life' extremists in the US, Christian terrorists in Ireland, Jewish terrorists in Israel, Sikh terrorists in India, and Muslim terrorists throughout the Arab world. It's these same "fundamentalists" throughout American history who used the Bible to justify slavery, the subjugation of women, prejudice and hate of all kinds, and countless bloody wars and crusades.
If true Christians are tired of being tarred by the same brush, they need to make a clean break. The recent brouhaha over the Episcopalians' noble defense of their first gay bishop is a good thing. When the Church with the most Earthly power became corrupt, Martin Luther knew what to do. It's time for Second Reformation. [Thank you for reading my little rant]
I agree with Dr. Strangelove.
By the way, Jefferson often called these kinds of fundamentalist Christians "Demonologists."
Here is the really scary part: Fundamentalists really do "feel" they are on the side of right.
But why does this surprise us? After all, Henry Miller demystified the whole thing in the Scarlet Letter. It wasn't a love story; it was about the dangers of fundamentalist thought. We learn about the witch trials and all of that, yet people fail to see how little we have really evolved. The new witch hunt is after gays and, of course, women.
I'd like to point out that women have never been able to get rights as their own movement. They have always had to attach themselves to another cause that involved men. It's that stupid self-sacrificing, martyrdom thing women have going on. Example: the first women's movement came from the abolitionists. In fact, the women's suffrage movement of the time worked first to insure blacks got to vote before working to get the vote themselves. And today, it seems that the debate over workpalce rights and family-friendly work policies and laws will come from what gays manage to win or from the state's desire to protect children.
In order to sell women's rights in this country, they have to be couched in the "family values" debate. Fundamentalists have never favored women. As a Catholic, I left the Church in part because I could no longer be part of an organization that saw my value only as a baby factory. And they hide that fact so well in all their rhetoric. The only women they honor is Mary and she is supposed to be a VIRGIN.
The only faiths that I have seen that don't subjugate women in Buddhism and perhaps the Ba’hi. But my view is limited. So I will stand to be corrected if I am wrong.
Sorry, I got off track in responding to the Pakistan thing. I wonder if this has anything to do with Europe’s plans to sell weapons to China. And we all know that Pakistan is our closest ally in the “War on Terror”. And they are so useful, letting Osama escape a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t they have him cornered and he got away? I bet we are working with the Pakis tracking Osama in this satellite phone. And I bet he is more useful to us that way because we can know what he us planning. If we capture him, it doesn’t do the intelligence war much good.
I think US West sells women a bit short. Check out this website:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/articlearchives/womhst/chrono.htm
Women were very concious of the need for them to take the lead in their own liberation. In the 1850s men were banned from some meetings in Ohio for example.
Women had long had rights locally that were denied nationally. I think it is interesting to note that the states where women had the most rights are NOT IN THE SOUTH but in what is now the Midwest and West. That implies, as usual, it was Southerners block the spread of equality and liberty.
RE: Catholic baby factories...Mary is not only venerated for being a virgin, she's a virginal baby factory (and she produced the perfect baby!). If the Catholic Church portrays her as obedient to Joseph then that's the trifecta: submissive-virginal-baby factory.
RE: Women in other cultures. I can't comment on B'Hai, Budhism etc. But the pre-Christian societies in Europe, that the early European Christians wiped out in violent wars and brutal state oppression, were much more egalitarian with regard to women. The Arabic merchant and traveler Al Tartushi was shocked when he visited Viking age Scandinavia because women were so independent - they could own property and could initiate divorce procedings themselves and speak at the Ting (townhall meetings of a sort) - which the good Muslim gentlman (and the feudal Christians) considered scandalous.
RE: China-Pakistan-Europe and F-16s. After China's little tantrum about Taiwanese independence, the Europeans have backed off the idea of selling them weapons. Pakistan's closest ally is not the US but China (where do you think Pakistan gets their nuclear and missile technology?).
RBR may be correct to say that I am too hard on the women's movement. And he is correct in his assessment that women had more power in local politics than on the national scene. But one of the most controversial choices made by Elizabeth Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott was to agree to place Black male suffrage ahead of women's suffrage. The decision was pragmatic. They would make more progress on the former than on the latter. They satisfied themselves with the publication of the Declaration of Sentiments, which is worth re-visiting. ( http://worldpolicy.org/globalrights/usa/1848-declofsentiments.html). So at the time the cast system went in order from White male, black male, white female, black female, children, animals.
Let me clarify my Pakistan comment: What I said was that Pakistan was our closest ally in the "War on Terror" (meaning it somewhat tongue in cheek). I didn't say anything about what we were to Pakistan. I agree, that China is their best bud. To them, we are simply an insurance policy to the status quo. We are partly what keeps MUSHARRAF in power.
In defense of Stanton et al's placing Slavery/emancipation ahead of women's rights...in the 1850s in the United States I don't think any other priority would have been morally defensible let alone pragmatic. The country was in the midst of an undeclared (and soon to be all out) Civil War ... Remember that in the 1850s an actual shooting war was taking place in Kansas over the issue of slavery.
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