- The public schoolteacher suing the school district wasn’t just distributing the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence; he was proseletyzing for his religion.

- The Founding Fathers were explicitly not Christian, most of them rejected religion. Thomas Jefferson produced an issue of the Bible with all references to God and the Divinity deleted. Most of them believed in Divine Providence, a sort of non-anthropomorphic force that governs human affairs and the universe. Sometimes you’ll hear New Agers today talking about “the Universe” wanting something, or the Universe seeing fit to do something.

- Kandice Smith was not disciplined for wearing a crucifix necklace because it was religious. She was disciplined because her school prohibits the wearing of jewelry outside of clothing. (Read.)

- I could find no reference to one or two of the other instances Williams references.

If he gets his facts that wrong on the instances I was able to find, then I’m not particularly trusting of the rest of his conclusions.

And, as Daily Kos reports, there’s a long history of Americans claiming that Christmas and Christianity are under attack as a pretense for anti-Semitism.

So your citing of that Williams article doesn’t make me want to rush out and embrace the Republican party. I find it rather scary, as a matter of fact. I don’t think you’re anti-Semitic, but it does appear that you are being duped by anti-Semites.

As far as anti-Christian goes, it is this type of anti-Christianity I dislike, and it is usually liberals behind it. You may say they are extreme liberals, or a small percentage of liberals, but I do see that side more at home in the liberal philosophy than the conservative one.

Saying “I’m in favor of conservatism because I’m a capitalist” is like saying “I’m in favor of conservatism because I like cheese.” Liberals are capitalists too. Hell, I’m quite happy working for a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation.

If you’re going to define “liberals” as “people who are not religious,” then you are rewriting history to suit your preconceptions. It is, quite simply, false.

There is a long history of marrying religion and liberalism. You might want to Father Google Daniel Berrigan, for instance, and Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker movement.

John Kerry is a mass-attending Catholic who carried a rosary with him on the campaign trail.

The percepton that liberalism is hostile to religion is lies spread by George W. Bush the Fox News Channel, and their ilk.

I wouldn’t classify MLK in the liberal camp. For one, he was strongly religious, and argued for equality through the government on religious principles, something that is more alligned with my camp, than yours. Secondly, he was more merit based than racial based, something again, alligned more with my camp than yours. In fact, I don’t see one thing he taught that a conservative wouldn’t agree with, but I can give you several things he taught that a liberal would disagree with.

I missed this earlier, because I was in a rush, but you had said in response to my abortion testimonials above,

HP: The stories of those two women who regret their abortions is heartbreaking—and there’s a special circle of Hell reserved for family members and boyfriends who intimidate a 17-year-old girl into having an abortion.

Pro-choice isn’t a euphemism for me. Forced abortion is plain wrong.

Your response doesn’t cut it Mitch, you fail to see the logical connection. What the mother did, in this situation, was consistent with liberal principles. Remember, the mother did not force her daughter to have the abortion, she merely pressured her, not in an unusual way either. Mothers have a right, indeed some would say an obligation, to use the power they have, without forcing, to have their children do what’s right. If abortion is what liberals claim it is, nothing more than an operation like having your tonsils removed, and if the mother felt that that responsibility was to strong for her child, than what did she do wrong here?

Nothing, that is why in liberal philosophy, there is nothing one can say to comfort her pain. Her pain only exists in my way of looking at the world…not in yours. The fact that you see it as I do, only testifies to the fact that you have not completely reconciled your abortion views with your moral instincts.

As for my particular views, I mentioned them in my introductory post on this blog…I will cut and paste the key paragraph,

As for what makes me a conservative as opposed to liberal. There are many things that all add up to one conclusion. But I would say the heart of my conservatism lies in three things. Abortion, Vouchers, and Capitalism. These are my core issues that keep me in the conservative ideology. I have others, but I wouldn’t classify those as essential. For example, my non-core issues are, I was for the Iraq war, I am against gay marriage, I am a foreign policy hawk, I am a ’strict constitutionalist’, I dislike the elitism of liberals, I dislike the race baiting of liberals, I dislike their cultural relativism and I dislike their general anti-Christian views. On some of these beliefs I may hold strong views on, some of them I don’t. Some of these beliefs I may know how to defend decently well, others are only stereotypes I have developed over time. However, they all have one thing in common, they are non-core to me. We can discuss each of these if you like, but please note that I do rest most of my beliefs on my three core issues.

-Mitch

The number one reason that the minority population supports the democratic party is owed to ‘affirmative action’.

I believe there is a shift taking place.

Affirmative Action was necessary in order for diversity to take place, in my humble opinion. I have to be honest, a good thing that Kennedy did in years past, was helping out MLK when he was in jail.

More than that, by cutting taxes while running up massive deficits, they’re controlling how my nieces and nephew (aged 15 years, 3 years, and 18-month-old twins) will spend their money, and how their children will spend it too.

HP, whenever we’ve discussed issues, you’ve always expressed an anti perspective. Anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, anti-liberal. I know pretty much what you’re against. But what are you in favor of? What are some of the social changes you’d like to see, the changes in government policy? Do you support the Bush administration, or oppose it? Are you in favor of the war in Iraq, or against it?

Another observation: You state that liberals are patronizing minorities, treating them as children, when liberals say that minorities owe their advances to liberals.

But your statement is patronizing in its own way, because it neglects the fact that many of those liberals are, themselves, minorities. What individual has the most responsibility for the advancement of blacks since the 1960s? Martin Luther King.

You state that Bill Clinton, in particular, patronized black people in the manner in which he addressed them. And yet Clinton got strong support from blacks, both in the overall population and from the leadership; I think it was Maya Angelou who pronounced Clinton the first black president. I trust that blacks know their own self-interest, and know who’s patronizing them and shucking and jiving them—to suggest that we know better than they do what’s good for them is, well, patronizing.

Liberal philosophy works best when enlightened members of the majority, minorities and the poor work together and advance themselves. And oppression works best when minority groups turn on each other.

However, here in this state, one can get a doctor’s note/letter to expedite the divorce process. In some cases, if one has a doctor’s note/letter telling the judge that his/her patient is suffering mental stress……then the judge will usually sign the divorce documents.

I wonder if this gal could have done the same thing.

Let me tell ya…..there are some stupid judges/lawyers out there. Believe me, I know. But I have to remember that they are human and make mistakes.

I suppose I just don’t understand why the lady did not go through with the divorce, you know? Also, most states have a “protection from abuse” type of assistance. This case seemed to happen recently enough that I wonder why this gal didn’t file a “protection from abuse” type of case against this man. I also wonder about the woman’s lawyer……

Geez’ I’m wondering to much. Happy New Year everyone!

I’m now kind of suspicious of the article. The beginning of the article–especially the first paragraph—are not supported by the facts as they are laid out in the rest of the article.

It appears, if you read all the way to the end, that the judge and prosecutor were not trying to prevent the woman from getting a divorce. Rather, they were following a law that required a 90-day waiting period before granting a woman’s divorce request, if the woman is pregnant, to give her husband a chance to contest it.

I ran the article by a friend in another discussion group—like HP, he’s a conservative, and my friend is a lawyer, too. He responded: “I think it is a fair example of a species of conservative judicial temperament, the kind that ignores the consequences of dated legal doctrines — and is aggressively devoted to upholding precendent, no matter what. ‘Let justice be done even if the heavens fall.’”

“I’ve little patience for this sort of thing. Pragmatic jurisprudence is about knowing when the law is being an ass and not being afraid to junk old law. But I am at my least conservative when it comes to jurisprudence.”

In my observation, the central tenet of American conservatism is the desire to return America to a Golden Age that existed in some time before liberals came and mucked things up.

The characterstics of this Golden Age, in the mind of its believers:

– Women were subservient to men.

– Teen-agers were chaste, and—when they weren’t—they were held in opprobrium, which was good for the commonweal, because it kept the majority of teens in line.

– People got by on their own merit and hard work. The poor were that way because they didn’t work hard enough. They deserved it.

– And, most importantly, American was a Christian nation that respected Christian values.

None of these may be your beliefs, but they’re the beliefs of our President, his supporters, and Congressional leadership.

Of course, this Golden Age never existed. If you look at the time before liberalism gained power—which I’d place at when FDR gained office–you see an era when WASP men were kings, women were beaten and didn’t have the vote, and the rich were free to abuse the poor with little constraint.

The Golden Age of America was the latter half of the 20th Century, a time when strong government and a strong private sector were occasionally partners, and occasionally balanced each other. And liberals had a lot to do with creating that state.

HP: The stories of those two women who regret their abortions is heartbreaking—and there’s a special circle of Hell reserved for family members and boyfriends who intimidate a 17-year-old girl into having an abortion.

Pro-choice isn’t a euphemism for me. Forced abortion is plain wrong.

Still, your anecdotes do not serve as arguments to ban abortion because it is wrong. Rather, it serves as an argument to ban abortion because women don’t know what was good for them. Conservatives of the Clinton era had a phrase to describe that kind of thinking: “The nanny state.” And that’s one of the chief reasons that I’ll never be a conservative.

I grew up with conservatives warning about the Nanny State created by liberals, and then, when the conservatives finally reach a point where they control two out of three branches of federal government—and are gaining control of the third—what do the conservatives do? Why, they want to regulate my sexual behavior, they want to tell me who I can marry. They hire people to search me and pat me down when I wish to travel across geographical distances. They want to keep a database that contains the credit history, criminal record, and other background information about any American that flies on an airline. They want to be able to demand to know what books I read and what videos I watch, and they want to forbid librarians from letting me know that they’ve inquired. They want to suspend the right to trial by jury and the right to counsel. If I had children, they’d be filling my children’s heads with lies about evolution and how to avoid getting pregnant.

And, of course, conservatives have been beating up liberals for decades about fiscal responsibility, but now that the conservatives have complete control of the federal pursestrings, they’ve run up a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars, while cutting taxes.

Of course, the punchline of this story is that the leaders of this country really aren’t conservatives. They’re radicals, determined to impose their national agenda for drastic change on the country. I’d gladly have voted for a real conservative for president in the 2004 election.