"Do you believe every word of this book (Bible)?" -- "None of your damn business"

[madinmaryland]

Interesting commentary by Charles Krauthammer (yes, him)--

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301501.html

Mitt Romney declares, "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." Barack Obama opens his speech at his South Carolina Oprah rally with "Giving all praise and honor to God. Look at the day that the Lord has made." Mike Huckabee explains his surge in the polls thus: "There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people."

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race -- changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next -- so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

Now, there's nothing wrong with having a spirited debate on the place of religion in politics. But the candidates are confusing two arguments. The first, which conservatives are winning, is defending the legitimacy of religion in the public square. The second, which conservatives are bound to lose, is proclaiming the privileged status of religion in political life.

..snip

Apparently even the folks on the right are getting irritated with the candidates interjecting religion into everything!

[Solly Mack]

1. "None of your damn business" is my 2nd favorite answer to most questions

[ingac70]

2. It is their own fault...

so I don't know why they are whining about candidates injecting religion now. It is A-OK when Dubya does it.

Repubs will get what they asked for aligning themselves with fundies.

[madinmaryland]

4. I think they used them to get elected, and now the fundies

have taken over the party. They're jealous!

:rofl:

[ingac70]

13. Fundies ARE the Republican Party...

No way Republicans can get elected without them. They are the "base". The corporate whores in the GOP better watch what they wish for.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3834259&mesg_id=3834259

:evilgrin:

[madinmaryland]

14. It's funny to see the repubs splintering this year.

The fundies are finally realizing they have been used over the years by the corporatists, and have acted to take over the direction of the party.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Not every part of it.

Just that part about the world being 6,000 years old and homosexuals being evil.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. And that it never rained until the flood. Don't forget that part

[Skinner]

5. You say "even the folks on the right are getting irritated..."

More to the point:

Why didn't folks on the right get irritated back when it was only the Republicans interjecting religion into everything? I suspect that Charles Krauthammer didn't write a column like this back in 2000 when George W. Bush said his favorite political philosopher is Jesus.

Only now that Democrats have learned to play this cynical yet effective game, you find conservatives like Krauthammer complaining about it.

I'm not buying it.

[quispquake]

7. Good point...

Same as the drug issue...it's only bad because a Democrat did it...Bush rode scot free on this one...

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. Yes. It could be a disingenuous complaint more along the lines of "Hey! That's

_our_ gameplan. Give it back!"

[madinmaryland]

10. You ask why didn't they interject it in 2000?

I think they were using that wing of the party to get elected. They did not anticipate that the fundies would become the dominant wing of the party. Of course it did not help that they screwed up with iraq and iran. The neo-cons have had no interest whatsoever and have even said so (KKKRove said this directly about a year ago).

[gatorboy]

11. Better yet, why were they not irritated by Russert's "gotcha" question,

"What is your favorite Bible verse" during the Democratic debate?

[bunkerbuster1]

8. Eh. Same old krappy Krauthammer

Stuff like this:

A certain kind of liberal argues that having a religious underpinning for any public policy is disqualifying because it is an imposition of religion on others. Thus, if your opposition to embryonic stem cell research comes from a religious belief in the ensoulment of life at conception, you're somehow violating the separation of church and state by making other people bend to your religion.

Where "a certain kind of liberal" equals "My imaginary one."

Liberals have great arguments in favor of stem cell research, and when they argue with stupid Fundies who believe in "ensoulment", they don't have to bother trekking to the First Amendment's Establishment clause.

Seriously, I've never heard anyone go there. Not ever.

[blondeatlast]

12. Exactly--note how the "certain kind of liberal" is seemingly hell-bent

on removing spirituality from any discourse, but the "certain kind of conservative" is simply not using spirituality in the most effective way to further neoconnism.

[Blue_In_AK]

15. I couldn't believe that I was actually agreeing

with a Krauthammer column this morning, but he was dead on with this one.