Author Topic: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell  (Read 4698 times)

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Offline alicewonders

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Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« on: March 13, 2014, 02:31:29 pm »
Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell

http://www.rightwingnews.com/column-2/why-matt-bevin-is-challenging-mitch-mcconnell/

Written By : Star Parker
March 10, 2014

It’s with mixed reviews that the Tea Party is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its emergence onto the nation’s political scene.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, unfavorability rating of the Tea Party stood at 45 percent in October 2013, up from 25 percent in February 2010. Favorability was at 30 percent, modestly down from 33 percent where it stood in February 2010.

Why the unfavorable trend?

There is no instance where any Tea Party principle has been shown to be off base.

If there has been a single defining theme of the Tea Party movement, it has been push back against runaway government. And public sentiment today is very much in line with this.

According to a Gallup poll last week, 66 percent expressed dissatisfaction with the “size and power of federal government.”

A majority of Americans today appreciate that the Tea Party was right in 2010 regarding the impending disaster of the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare.

Principles of the movement, the very principles upon which this country was founded, liberty under God, are demonstrably true.

If we look around the world, or in our own history, we find a direct correlation between robust economic growth and limited government. It’s no accident that today’s sluggish economy coincides with historic bloating of the federal government.

It is also true that facts justify hoisting the banner of traditional values. Intact traditional families, and the children that grow up in them, are demonstrably healthier and wealthier.

So what’s the problem?

One is that upsetting the status quo means shaking up and displacing an entrenched, comfortable political establishment. For Tea Partiers, this means not just the opposition party, but also the establishment in its own party – the Republican Party.

Take, for instance, the current primary challenge in Kentucky by Tea Partier Matt Bevin against Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell.

Bevin is a Tea Party candidate archetype. A young and very successful businessman, new to the political scene, a Christian man with a large family, who wants to push back against bloated government and moral relativism and restore American vitality.

But the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley writes that Tea Party challengers, like Bevin, are having a “tough time” because the incumbents they are challenging are already conservatives. “Mitch McConnell’s problem,” writes Riley, “ is not that he’s insufficiently right-wing – it’s that he’s in the minority.”

But Riley somehow misses the obvious. McConnell has not always been in the minority.

McConnell has been in the Senate for 30 years, and in 14 of them his party was in control. During the 8 years of the presidency of George W. Bush, Republicans controlled the Senate for 6 and McConnell held a Party leadership position. In 4 of those 8 years, Republicans held the White House and controlled both the Senate and the House.

Yet, during those Bush years, according to the Mercatus Center, spending increased “more than (under) any of the six presidents preceding him.” The number of federal subsidy programs increased by 30 percent.

The major problems we face today – our broken entitlement programs, immigration, health care, education, a horrendous tax code – were known. Yet, all were ignored while government grew.

So when the Wall Street Journal calls performance like this conservative, no wonder the Tea Party has challenges.

In a new Pew Research Center survey only 28 percent of Republicans say their party is doing a good or excellent job of “standing up for its traditional positions” compared to 49 percent of Democrats who say their party is doing an excellent or good job standing up for its positions.

We need citizen activists like Matt Bevin with the courage to fight to take back Washington from the entrenched political establishment. It’s our only hope that the work will get done that is essential for saving the nation.

   Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2014, 02:37:37 pm »
I think Star Parker clearly explains why I, as one of Mitch McConnell's constituents, am sick of him and want him gone.  Sure, he veers to the right before an election - always.  The rest of the time, from my own personal experience, when I contact him about issues I want to see him address - such as amnesty (this was during Bush's term) - I got the standard Mitch form letter....."I hear you and others and I will fight for you....".  He didn't.  He didn't when the GOP was in control and the only reason he is putting off the amnesty talk right now is because he is up for re-election.

He has had plenty of time, he needs to go.  Anyone who has been in Washington as long as he has is part of the problem, is either ineffective - or likes the status quo.  He VOTED for TARP!  Mitch's GOP is the reason we have Obama now!
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Offline Bigun

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2014, 02:44:32 pm »
Quote
But Riley somehow misses the obvious. McConnell has not always been in the minority.

McConnell has been in the Senate for 30 years, and in 14 of them his party was in control. During the 8 years of the presidency of George W. Bush, Republicans controlled the Senate for 6 and McConnell held a Party leadership position. In 4 of those 8 years, Republicans held the White House and controlled both the Senate and the House.

Yet, during those Bush years, according to the Mercatus Center, spending increased “more than (under) any of the six presidents preceding him.” The number of federal subsidy programs increased by 30 percent.

The major problems we face today – our broken entitlement programs, immigration, health care, education, a horrendous tax code – were known. Yet, all were ignored while government grew.

So when the Wall Street Journal calls performance like this conservative, no wonder the Tea Party has challenges.

 :amen: Ms. Parker!  :amen:
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Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2014, 03:24:00 pm »
Mitch and others like him have had their chance.  We are losing ground, and although the GOP may very well regain the Senate this year, when they've controlled it before they haven't effected real change.  This is vivid proof that although McConnell presents a veneer of "strength" - he is either ineffective in the long run - or he likes the way it is and only gives us lip service when it's time to re-elect him.  Either way, I'm tired of it. 
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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2014, 03:52:28 pm »
Quote
Principles of the movement, the very principles upon which this country was founded, liberty under God, are demonstrably true.

Ok, you just lost, right there.  This country was founded with the specific aim of rejecting the imposition of religion in public life and many more Americans treasure the right to be free from religious imposition than agree with the tea partiers that Obamacare is a disaster.  Specifically, this country was founded on the proposition that each person's religious beliefs where their own private matter and that government should not have anything to do with religion.  That is, this country was founded on the proposition of protecting religion from the majority precisely by removing religion from government.

And therein lies one of the fundamental errors conservatives have made that has helped to significantly infest government with the anti-religious sentiment coming from the left.

How so?  Let's take one example, so-called "gay marriage."  What has been the consistent line from conservatives on that?  "It cannot be allowed because it's a sin according to my religion."  How can anyone not see that as an overt attempt by conservatives to shove their religion down everyone else's throat?  That sort of imperious demand simply drives the uncommitted - who comprise a majority of American voters - away and in to the arms of the democrats/liberals, who would prefer to extinguish religion and religiosity by forcing private religious organizations to conform to the left's anti-religious program.  That is very much part of the reason why we have arrived at the point where, rather than having something like a "civil partnership" relationship for gays, we now have marriage for gays and the distinct possibility that the left might start using the tools of government to force private religious organizations to recognize those "marriages" and treat them as equal to the marriages that organization accepts on its own terms.  That is also why we have the spectre of a bunch of nuns having to go up to the Supreme Court to seek shelter from the imperious demands of Obama's government that they provide contraceptives to their employees for free.

Does that mean conservatives should simply shut up about it?  No, it doesn't, but it does mean that they must lower the tone of their rhetoric and present the view that they will vote this way or that against abortion because they personally believe it to be wrong.  They could also spend more time trying to find common cause with other individuals who, while not of the same view as the conservatives, do agree on matters such as that government should not be funding abortions.  By trying to find common ground, for example, by conceding - as you must, given Supreme Court jurisprudence - that you will never get rid of abortion in exchange for agreement to remove government funding for abortion.  There are plenty of people who do not like abortion, don't think it's the correct thing to do, and do not like the government promoting or facilitating abortion, but who view it as a private matter that they will not take away from everyone else.  Make common cause with them and you'll get a lot closer to your goals than you will by standing on your dogma and demanding that everyone else agree with you on every jot and tittle.

As for "gay marriage," if conservatives had constructively engaged in the issues instead of adopting an all-or-nothing stance, then they might have been able to shift the course of public sentiment into less dangerous channels, and ended up with something like a civil partnership, along with express agreement that the rights of private organizations to recognize or not recognize such partnerships according to their own internal rules, which would have done a lot more to protect the concept of traditional marriage - the religiously sanctified union of husband and wife - from the depredations now threatening to dismantle it altogether.

But conservatives didn't.  Instead they stood foursquare on their own personal dogma and demanded that they get everything they wanted, and everyone else's wishes be damned.

So, congratulations conservatives, for shooting yourselves in the foot.  I, however, prefer to have all ten toes intact, so I'll find some other path, thank you very much.

Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2014, 03:57:00 pm »
"Principles of the movement, the very principles upon which this country was founded, liberty under God, are demonstrably true."


Our rights are endowed by our Creator.  All that other stuff is just a distraction. 
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Oceander

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2014, 04:16:32 pm »
"Principles of the movement, the very principles upon which this country was founded, liberty under God, are demonstrably true."


Our rights are endowed by our Creator.  All that other stuff is just a distraction. 

prove it.

Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2014, 02:08:19 am »
prove it.

Another distraction.  I don't have to prove it Oceander, because it is in one of the founding documents for our nation.  As far as digressing into a criticism of social conservatives - that has nothing to do with what Star Parker said.   

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Offline happyg

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2014, 02:23:25 am »
Another distraction.  I don't have to prove it Oceander, because it is in one of the founding documents for our nation.  As far as digressing into a criticism of social conservatives - that has nothing to do with what Star Parker said.   

It comes from the Declaration of Independence:
Quote
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2014, 02:34:51 am »
It comes from the Declaration of Independence:

Thanks Happy.   :patriot:
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Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2014, 02:38:38 am »
Thanks Happy.   :patriot:

I think you know more about what is going on in KY than the rest of us....... no one knows everything about a state unless they live there and experience it.

BTW - Mitch was on Kelly File tonight - he was actually campaigning for himself on the show, Megyn was a little taken aback by it... he was invited on to talk about something else ~LOL~
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Offline sinkspur

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2014, 02:49:28 am »
I think you know more about what is going on in KY than the rest of us....... no one knows everything about a state unless they live there and experience it.

BTW - Mitch was on Kelly File tonight - he was actually campaigning for himself on the show, Megyn was a little taken aback by it... he was invited on to talk about something else ~LOL~

LOL!!  Campaigning?   Not even close to true.
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Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2014, 03:03:24 am »
I think you know more about what is going on in KY than the rest of us....... no one knows everything about a state unless they live there and experience it.

BTW - Mitch was on Kelly File tonight - he was actually campaigning for himself on the show, Megyn was a little taken aback by it... he was invited on to talk about something else ~LOL~

He's not popular in the state.  Sure, he's done good things but that was then and this is now - the GOP leadership as a whole just doesn't seem to be very effective and I don't get the sense that they are willing to fight for us anymore.  They just go through the motions and don't want anyone to rock the boat.

If Matt Bevin doesn't win this time around, I hope he tries again.  He seems to be a good guy.  Who knows how this will work out?  I know if Mitch McConnell had his way - Rand Paul wouldn't be our senator right now.  Mitch had no problem saying it was Jim Bunning's time to go - I think it's Mitch's time to go now. 
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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #13 on: March 14, 2014, 03:37:30 am »
It comes from the Declaration of Independence:

The Constitution is the operative document for this country - I'd thought that was a particular sticking point for everyone here - and that document expressly eschews any connection between government and religion.

The mistake is confusing the Founders with what they founded.  Yes, the Founders were Christian - a mishmosh of different sects - but they did not found a religious nation, and they did not give religion any sayso in how that country was to be governed; conversely, they tried to make it clear that government was also to play no role in religion.

To put it bluntly, the religious Founders created a secular, a-religious, country.  And they did so for very valid reasons.  At the time they were alive, many of the colonies had religious tests for public office, and many of the colonies had an official religion and prohibited the practice of other religions: "In Maryland, Anglicanism was established as the official religion from 1702. The colony's Catholic subjects were barred from both voting and holding public office, although the right to worship privately was granted in 1712." (source).

Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were deeply opposed to having religion influence government.  Jefferson's The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom is well worth the read because it makes it clear that his view on the matter was that no one should suffer the imposition of anyone else's religion through the power of the government - including his own theistic views - which necessarily means that he would support only that government which was empowered for purely secular purposes.

Another good read is James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.  Admitting well the risks of quoting something out of context, I will quote verbatim the 5th paragraph of Madison's writing:
Quote
Because the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.

I quote this because of Madison's second point, that the law being opposed by Madison - which was to levy a tax on all Virginians to be used for government support of religious teachers - implies that the Civil Magistrate - that is, the government - can use religion as a tool for crafting social rules - that is, for the purposes of social engineering.

In other words, Jefferson and Madison, christians both, emphatically believed that christianity had no role to play in governing civil society.

Which brings me back around to the Declaration of Independence:  Jefferson also wrote the Declaration of Independence, three years before he drafted the Virginia Act, and therefore must have had these same ideas in mind when he drafted that document; I find it extremely hard to believe that Jefferson would have done a 180 in those three years, which would have had to happen if he had meant to import christianity, or any other religion, into the foundations of the United States.

So, with all due respect, this is not a Christian nation and the Christians who founded it very much intended that it not be a Christian nation.


Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #14 on: March 14, 2014, 04:05:55 am »
....all men are created equal...

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness....

Seems to be a continuing dilemma of how to extend these objectives to everybody.

Blacks, Native Americans took awhile. Homosexuals are asking for their rights.

(The Southern Baptist church supported continuing slavery, which demonstrates to me that religion is not always an ideal bass for deciding how to extend those freedoms to all)

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Offline EC

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #15 on: March 14, 2014, 05:13:21 am »
....all men are created equal...

Yet they are not.
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Offline Formerly Once-Ler

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #16 on: March 14, 2014, 08:17:41 am »
Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell

According to a Gallup poll last week, 66 percent expressed dissatisfaction with the “size and power of federal government.”

A majority of Americans today appreciate that the Tea Party was right in 2010 regarding the impending disaster of the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare.
Poor logic.  Obama is dissatisfied with the size and power of the federal government.  A majority of Americans have no idea the GOP shutdown the government at the request of the Tea Party.  They just know the GOP did it because Jon Stewert told them in a video clip they were sent on Facebook.
Quote
So what’s the problem?

One is that upsetting the status quo means shaking up and displacing an entrenched, comfortable political establishment. For Tea Partiers, this means not just the opposition party, but also the establishment in its own party – the Republican Party.

Take, for instance, the current primary challenge in Kentucky by Tea Partier Matt Bevin against Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell.

Bevin is a Tea Party candidate archetype. A young and very successful businessman, new to the political scene, a Christian man with a large family, who wants to push back against bloated government and moral relativism and restore American vitality.

But the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley writes that Tea Party challengers, like Bevin, are having a “tough time” because the incumbents they are challenging are already conservatives. “Mitch McConnell’s problem,” writes Riley, “ is not that he’s insufficiently right-wing – it’s that he’s in the minority.”
Don't disagree at all.
Quote

But Riley somehow misses the obvious. McConnell has not always been in the minority.

McConnell has been in the Senate for 30 years, and in 14 of them his party was in control. During the 8 years of the presidency of George W. Bush, Republicans controlled the Senate for 6 and McConnell held a Party leadership position. In 4 of those 8 years, Republicans held the White House and controlled both the Senate and the House.

Yet, during those Bush years, according to the Mercatus Center, spending increased “more than (under) any of the six presidents preceding him.”
A foreign strike on our economic center and two wars will do that.
Quote
The number of federal subsidy programs increased by 30 percent.
How much did it go up when Pelosi, Reid and Obama were in charge?
Quote
The major problems we face today – our broken entitlement programs, immigration, health care, education, a horrendous tax code – were known. Yet, all were ignored while government grew.
That's McConnell's fault?  Not the framers of the Constitution who wrote the laws that made slavery, and abortion constitutional. Because he has been unable to solve America's problems in 30 years?  Stupidity!  Grand PooBah of the KKK Byrd served for 51 Ted "the swimmer" Kennedy serve for 46 years.  Those guys are my enemy.  Why would I deny my side the power and wisdom that comes with experience?  Patrick Leahy has been in office for 39 years.  Why don't conservatives go after him?

Quote
So when the Wall Street Journal calls performance like this conservative, no wonder the Tea Party has challenges.

In a new Pew Research Center survey only 28 percent of Republicans say their party is doing a good or excellent job of “standing up for its traditional positions” compared to 49 percent of Democrats who say their party is doing an excellent or good job standing up for its positions.
Making the Bush tax cuts permanent, drone first ask questions later...I can see why the rats are so proud.
Quote
We need citizen activists like Matt Bevin with the courage to fight to take back Washington from the entrenched political establishment. It’s our only hope that the work will get done that is essential for saving the nation.
But Bevin has no shot of winning.  Your "only hope" is going to get maybe 20%.  Will the defeat of the patriotic yet clueless Tea Party primary candidates afford the Tea Party leadership the time to consider their actual power and popularity? 

Offline alicewonders

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #17 on: March 14, 2014, 02:32:54 pm »
But Bevin has no shot of winning.  Your "only hope" is going to get maybe 20%.  Will the defeat of the patriotic yet clueless Tea Party primary candidates afford the Tea Party leadership the time to consider their actual power and popularity?

We're going to do what any true movement does, we'll keep on keepin' on and try it again the next time around.  We're here, and we're not going away - no matter how much you want us to. 
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Oceander

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #18 on: March 14, 2014, 02:38:49 pm »
Yet they are not.

Depends on what the context is.  "All men are created equal" as used in the relevant context, means that all people are born as equal moral agents - each has the same capacity for making moral decisions, decisions about what's right and what's wrong, and therefore that no one person has the right to impose his decisions about right/wrong on any other person.

It doesn't mean that everyone is born with the same material goods or the same physical characteristics or capabilities, or even the same level of intelligence.  That would be nonsensical because even a 5 year old can tell that people are different, so it would be the heighth of inanity to assume that people as intelligent and observant as the Founders would have meant that sort of equality.

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #19 on: March 14, 2014, 06:08:46 pm »
Yet they are not.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I think the context of "all men are created equal" is with respect to the endowment of their unalienable rights, by their Creator.

I have also heard it stated "all men are created equal..." in the eyes of God.
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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #20 on: March 15, 2014, 02:31:30 am »
Oceander writes:
[[ This country was founded with the specific aim of rejecting the imposition of religion in public life...]]

Ok, you just lost, right there.

That's YOUR opinion. I don't for a moment believe it.

You weren't there, and neither was I.

But I sense that the founders were less concerned that the nation they were trying to create and the citizens thereof be "free" from the imposition of any -particular- religion, rather than religion in particular.

Indeed, although I'm not a gamblin' man, I would reckon that the majority of them were quite God-fearing men themselves, and recognized (rightly) that the majority -- no, the OVERWHELMING majority -- of new "Americans" were as well.

Your post above reveals far more about your own personal beliefs regarding religion than it has to do with what notions the nation was created upon...

Oceander

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #21 on: March 15, 2014, 03:36:49 am »
Oceander writes:
[[ This country was founded with the specific aim of rejecting the imposition of religion in public life...]]

Ok, you just lost, right there.

That's YOUR opinion. I don't for a moment believe it.

You weren't there, and neither was I.

But I sense that the founders were less concerned that the nation they were trying to create and the citizens thereof be "free" from the imposition of any -particular- religion, rather than religion in particular.

Indeed, although I'm not a gamblin' man, I would reckon that the majority of them were quite God-fearing men themselves, and recognized (rightly) that the majority -- no, the OVERWHELMING majority -- of new "Americans" were as well.

Your post above reveals far more about your own personal beliefs regarding religion than it has to do with what notions the nation was created upon...

As the Founders expressly intended, you're entitled to your beliefs.  However, as the Founders also intended, you are not entitled to force those beliefs on anyone else.  If this were a Christian nation, then it would necessarily have the power to force Christian beliefs on everyone.  It can't and therefore it isn't a Christian nation.

I am not denying that the Founders' Christian beliefs didn't shape their views on matters, in fact, I am precisely arguing that it was the Founders' very deep-sighted, historically grounded view of their own beliefs that led them to create the United States as a purely secular, nonreligious nation.  Read up on some history and you'll quickly see that Christians were a really rotten bunch of nasty bastards (and some bitches) when Christianity ran government.  The Christians of the wars of religion make today's islamic terrorists look a little tame.  What else whas the Inquisition but a form of Christian terrorism?  The Founders knew this history - and had lived with paler versions of it themselves - and expressly intended to prevent it from happening in their newly-formed nation by expressly excluding religion - including Christianity - from the reins of power.

My views on religion are tempered by a willingness to look at the facts, and the history, and not blanche in the face of ugliness, and those facts and that history clearly demonstrate that Christians can be just as cruel to others as any other bunch of religionists, and that excluding religion from the reins of civil government is one of the best ways to preserve the liberty and individual rights of everyone, including most especially Christians.

My views on the Founders and the creation of this country are similarly tempered by a willingness to read what the Founders said and to make the effort to not conflate the Founders with what they founded.

But thanks for the veiled personal attack anyways.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2014, 03:40:17 am by Oceander »

Offline EC

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #22 on: March 15, 2014, 09:56:56 am »
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I think the context of "all men are created equal" is with respect to the endowment of their unalienable rights, by their Creator.

I have also heard it stated "all men are created equal..." in the eyes of God.

Yep. We are all sinners and serial f**k-ups.

While I am not going to disrespect the founders - they did an amazing job of distilling several thousand years of political philosophy into a short, easily understood and workable document - they didn't think it through. Could they even comprehend a society where everyone gets a trophy for participating? The concept would be so foreign to them it would give several of them strokes from laughing too hard.
In a way, they covered it. Originally, voters were confined to land owners and businessmen. Correct? People who used their God given gifts in a way beneficial to them, their families and society as a whole.
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Offline olde north church

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #23 on: March 15, 2014, 12:11:26 pm »
As the Founders expressly intended, you're entitled to your beliefs.  However, as the Founders also intended, you are not entitled to force those beliefs on anyone else.  If this were a Christian nation, then it would necessarily have the power to force Christian beliefs on everyone.  It can't and therefore it isn't a Christian nation.

I am not denying that the Founders' Christian beliefs didn't shape their views on matters, in fact, I am precisely arguing that it was the Founders' very deep-sighted, historically grounded view of their own beliefs that led them to create the United States as a purely secular, nonreligious nation.  Read up on some history and you'll quickly see that Christians were a really rotten bunch of nasty bastards (and some bitches) when Christianity ran government.  The Christians of the wars of religion make today's islamic terrorists look a little tame.  What else whas the Inquisition but a form of Christian terrorism?  The Founders knew this history - and had lived with paler versions of it themselves - and expressly intended to prevent it from happening in their newly-formed nation by expressly excluding religion - including Christianity - from the reins of power.

My views on religion are tempered by a willingness to look at the facts, and the history, and not blanche in the face of ugliness, and those facts and that history clearly demonstrate that Christians can be just as cruel to others as any other bunch of religionists, and that excluding religion from the reins of civil government is one of the best ways to preserve the liberty and individual rights of everyone, including most especially Christians.

My views on the Founders and the creation of this country are similarly tempered by a willingness to read what the Founders said and to make the effort to not conflate the Founders with what they founded.

But thanks for the veiled personal attack anyways.

The second most quoted source after the Bible during the "Founding" was the Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, a Catholic.  Remarkable, he would have been prohibited from voting, holding office or owning property in most of the original 13 colonies.
Had the Founders wanted a "Christian" nation, they couldn't have had one.  They wouldn't have had the votes to pass the Constitution.
Try as you might want it to be so, the "Creator" was not Jesus, it was, if He is to be named, was YHWH.  But even that isn't correct.  Again, try as you might want it to be so, they were speaking from a Deist point of view.
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Offline Bigun

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Re: Why Matt Bevin is Challenging Mitch McConnell
« Reply #24 on: March 15, 2014, 12:53:03 pm »
The founders were indeed educated men and especially so in the field of human history. The Colonies they were trying to write a governing document for were quite diverse in their religious tests for citizenship and the founders were very much aware of that fact! They therefore had no choice but to require that the new GOVERNMENT itself be completely neutral (secular) on the subject of a STATE religion. They masterfully also protected the right of each individual citizen to practice his own religion freely and that includes elected government officials and employees of the government.

There can never be a single STATE religion (anything like the Church of England) in the U.S. but there will always be religion!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

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