[Lobowolf]

Elected officials are influenced by their moral beliefs, whether those beliefs are religion-based or not.

Having said that, Christian politicians in America have a fairly long history of separating their religious beliefs from their political ones pretty much since Day 1, when they came up with/went along with a First Amendment (have whatever God you want) that was in direct conflict with the First Commandment (Thou shalt have no other Gods before me).

[mikeh]

PassedOut, on Nov 4 2008, 11:48 AM, said:

helene_t, on Nov 4 2008, 10:42 AM, said:

Conversely, it is quite possible to have this "invincible sense of one's own righteousness" without being religious. From my perspective, Marxist or Freudian zealotry is more dangerous than religious zealotry.

How true. I was involved with anti-war activities during the Vietnam war, so got to know many different kinds of leftists. The worst to deal with were those who were absolutely convinced of the correctness of their ideologies. Some called me "worse than Nixon" for taking issue with their positions and for refusing to listen to long-winded nonsense.

I think that people with "true believer" personalities are pretty much the same whether they get caught up in religion, politics, or some other cause.

I agree.

Maybe the explanation is that any doctrine that purports to provide 'true answers' to matters that are insoluble by the rational parts of our brains is dangerous precisely because acceptance of that doctrine results in and in fact requires that we switch of the rational part of our brain.. at least in the context of trying to explore the issue to which the doctrine purports to provide an answer.

My suspicion, which is not remotely original, is that our minds are incapable of accessing any 'true' explanation of the 'why' of the universe. We can and not doubt will continue to come up with theories that push our understanding of the mathematics/physics closer and closer to the Big Bang, and perhaps the ideas of branes, or the multiverse and so on will develop further and so on... but understanding the 'why' of it all seems to me to be akin to expecting my dog to understand relativity. The concept may be valid, but my dog's brain lacks the ability to access it.

Marxism purports to afford an absolute answer (at least, it seems to be interpreted in that fashion by some), in much the same way as religion does... even if the questions being addressed are somewhat different. Hence those memes appear to capture certain types of minds into a closed belief system. And all closed minds are dangerous to outsiders.

[awm]

TimG, on Nov 4 2008, 12:36 PM, said:

One's religion might teach that premarital sex is immoral, so that an elected official that has this religious belief would be hard placed to support programs that make birth control available to teenagers; he would be acting immorally (in his view), or encouraging others to act immorally, if he supported such programs.

This viewpoint (and I think it is a common one) is one I strongly disagree with.

We teach kids about the effects of alcohol and the dangers of driving drunk. Does this encourage them to drink? Should we stop teaching them about the effects of alcohol to prevent underage drinking?

We teach kids about the Holocaust. Does this encourage our kids to kill Jews? Should we stop teaching about the Holocaust in order to prevent anti-semitism?

We teach kids about slavery. Does this encourage our kids to enslave people? To hate blacks? Should we remove slavery from the curriculum?

We have kids read literature that involves all kinds of immorality... children killing their father and sleeping with their mother (Oedipus)... a husband killing his wife (Othello)... and on and on. Should we remove all these works of literature from the curriculum to prevent kids from repeating these awful deeds?

Teaching kids about birth control doesn't cause them to have sex. Kids have sex anyway. Look how many pregnant teenagers are walking around in the schools in Christian communities that don't teach sex education. Look at the percentage of evangelical kids who have sex before marriage.

This opposition to teaching kids facts is just bad educational policy. Ignorance is not a position. Encouraging ignorance in others should not be a political viewpoint.

[cherdano]

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 09:07 AM, said:

I thought Obama was too smart/rational to believe in 'gods' and other superstitious nonsense, but if he doesn't even know when WWI ended, perhaps I'm mistaken.

What are you referring to?

[helene_t]

TimG, on Nov 4 2008, 06:36 PM, said:

I think this is an easier view for the non-religious. Take premarital sex, for instance.

I think it's fair enough if a politician says he's against subsidization of contraception. I also think it's fair enough if he says he is against because he considers pre-marital sex to be immoral. I wouldn't personally vote for a politician who extends his own sexual morality to others (but if he says he wouldn't personally have premarital sex I would have no problems with that). But whether that morality has a religious basis I wouldn't care about.

Suppose a politician says he will fight poverty. I might vote for him because I consider fighting poverty an important issue. It wouldn't necessarily scare me if his agenda was religiously motivated. Of course if he refused to collaborate with secular charities because he considered the religious dimension of charity to be important, it would disqualify him in my eyes.

[luke warm]

mikeh, on Nov 3 2008, 07:15 PM, said:

luke warm, on Nov 3 2008, 06:40 PM, said:

PassedOut, on Nov 3 2008, 11:41 AM, said:

To me, that is real character. [And it's nice to be in touch with my relatives in Norway!]

Quote

Orson Swindle, 71, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who shared a cement pad with McCain at the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison, says McCain turned down a chance to go home because he believed that those captured before him should be freed first (consistent with the U.S. military's Code of Conduct's prohibition on accepting favors from the enemy). "He chose probably to die," says Swindle, who now lives in Alexandria, Va. "That, my friend, is character beyond what most of us can understand." George "Bud" Day, 83, recalls meeting McCain in 1967 when the future presidential candidate was in desperate shape, with two fractured arms and a broken knee, "filthy, sweating, feverish." "But John refused to die," adds Day, now a lawyer in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

now that's character... of course, all in all i'd rather be in norway

Both stories highlight good aspects of the subjects' character.. and I don't think that one can say that one shows more (or better) character than the other.

After all, we don't know how Obama would have reacted in McCain's situation, anymore than we know if McCain ever has or would exhibit the sort of spontaneous compassion and generosity (small tho the scale may be) that Obama showed.

even so, i'd guess (and it's just a guess) it's easier to show things like generosity in an airport in norway than a pow camp in hanoi

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Nov 4 2008, 10:42 AM, said:

Codo, on Nov 1 2008, 09:09 PM, said:

mikeh, on Nov 1 2008, 02:10 AM, said:

Codo, on Oct 31 2008, 10:19 AM, said:

GWB was one of the worst presidents they had. But this has exactly nothing to do with his religious belives.

I couldn't disagree more (with the last sentence, not the first).

One of the fundamental (pun intended) problems with born-again Christians (and of zealots of other religions as well) is that they are armoured with an invincible sense of their righteousness.

1. If GWB had been an atheist , he had been as convinced and as stupid as a christian.

Not sure what the term "born-again Christian" means~~

me either, helene... to be a christian one must be born again, so i don't know why that phrase is seemingly used to segregate the faith

[jonottawa]

cherdano, on Nov 4 2008, 05:59 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 09:07 AM, said:

I thought Obama was too smart/rational to believe in 'gods' and other superstitious nonsense, but if he doesn't even know when WWI ended, perhaps I'm mistaken.

What are you referring to?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4RYQqFq0Q...ykos.com/main/2

"I want everybody to know, though, a little bit about her. Her name was Madelyn Dunham. She was born in Kansas in a small town in 1922. Which means that she lived through the Great Depression, she lived through two World Wars, ..."

[jdonn]

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 03:49 PM, said:

cherdano, on Nov 4 2008, 05:59 PM, said:

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 09:07 AM, said:

I thought Obama was too smart/rational to believe in 'gods' and other superstitious nonsense, but if he doesn't even know when WWI ended, perhaps I'm mistaken.

What are you referring to?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4RYQqFq0Q...ykos.com/main/2

"I want everybody to know, though, a little bit about her. Her name was Madelyn Dunham. She was born in Kansas in a small town in 1922. Which means that she lived through the Great Depression, she lived through two World Wars, ..."

I believe he also said something like "I need you Ohio" the other day when he was campaigning in Florida. Do you believe

- that he thinks that state that sticks out into the water in the southest US is Ohio?

or

- that it's possible to misspeak after 21 months of giving hundreds or even thousands of speeches and interviews and going on perhaps a thousand plane flights, and with your grandmother who raised you having just passed away on top of it, and that Obama does in fact know when WWI ended?

[TimG]

awm, on Nov 4 2008, 12:57 PM, said:

TimG, on Nov 4 2008, 12:36 PM, said:

One's religion might teach that premarital sex is immoral, so that an elected official that has this religious belief would be hard placed to support programs that make birth control available to teenagers; he would be acting immorally (in his view), or encouraging others to act immorally, if he supported such programs.

This viewpoint (and I think it is a common one) is one I strongly disagree with.

I did not mean to suggest that I believe telling teenagers about condoms encourages them to have sex. (I tend to believe it encourages those that are going to have sex anyway to practice safe sex.) But, there are plenty of "abstinence only" advocates who believe just that.

[jonottawa]

I can see momentarily forgetting which state you're in if you're travelling to dozens of states during the last week of a campaign.

But no, I can't see bringing up the date 1922, asking people to reflect upon what a person born on that date has experienced in life, and then coming to the conclusion that it included living through 2 world wars, unless on some level you are either ignorant or have some kind of dementia. It especially grated me that he was lecturing folks in his professorial tone when he did it.

I voted for him, but he's really not qualified for the job. The press was in the tank for him the whole campaign. He broke his promise on public financing. If the new threshold to be considered qualified to be president is that you're marginally better than GWB then may the FSM have mercy on all of our souls.

[jdonn]

That seems pretty cynical to me, but I bet you already know it is. I think I have said 2 before when I meant to say 1, and probably not even realized it. I don't think that makes me demented or ignorant about whatever I was talking about. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.

Can you please name any person you believe is qualified to be president?

[jonottawa]

Bill Clinton ...

Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold: guys with a bit of gravitas and experience who aren't all salesmanship. (If strenuously opposing the Iraq war ahead of time qualifies you to be president, well then pick me.)

Obama took 15 minutes to vote today. People are being disenfranchised all over the country by 5,6,7,8-hour lines and this clown is taking 15 minutes to vote while he banters with his wife. I wish he'd buy a clue.

[Gerben42]

Quote

But no, I can't see bringing up the date 1922, asking people to reflect upon what a person born on that date has experienced in life, and then coming to the conclusion that it included living through 2 world wars, unless on some level you are either ignorant or have some kind of dementia. It especially grated me that he was lecturing folks in his professorial tone when he did it.

Give the man a break, his grandmother just died. Would you like to have every mistake you make pointed out to you? I bet you'd be fed up with it in 1 day. I know I would.

[mikeh]

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 04:46 PM, said:

Bill Clinton ...

Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold: guys with a bit of gravitas and experience who aren't all salesmanship. (If strenuously opposing the Iraq war ahead of time qualifies you to be president, well then pick me.)

Obama took 15 minutes to vote today. People are being disenfranchised all over the country by 5,6,7,8-hour lines and this clown is taking 15 minutes to vote while he banters with his wife. I wish he'd buy a clue.

Funny: you are upset because, on the biggest day of his life, he slows up a line for 15 mins, yet your first choice of who's qualified to be President is Clinton, who, as president, shut down a major airport while he had a barber come onto Airforce 1 to give him a haircut. I know, that arrogance didn't disqualify him as a president, but I did find it amusing that you call Obama a clown for his minor delay.. which had nothing to do with any 4 or 5 hour line-up in other polling stations, btw.

Personally, my impression of Obama is that he has ample gravitas... that he is possessed of a sound philosophical centre, that he will not give way to surges of emotion (unlike McCain), and that he has an intellectual aspect to him. One of the most ludicrous aspects of modern politics, perhaps more so in the US than in most western democracies, is the habit of using the descriptive term intellectual as a form of insult. Maybe the experience of being governed for 8 years by an anti-intellectual is sinking in.

[jdonn]

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 04:46 PM, said:

Bill Clinton ...

Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold: guys with a bit of gravitas and experience who aren't all salesmanship. (If strenuously opposing the Iraq war ahead of time qualifies you to be president, well then pick me.)

Obama took 15 minutes to vote today.  People are being disenfranchised all over the country by 5,6,7,8-hour lines and this clown is taking 15 minutes to vote while he banters with his wife.  I wish he'd buy a clue.

Reading all this it's hard to believe you didn't vote for McCain!

BTW, I think the last thing you said is the same argument as "how can you not finish your brussel sprouts, there are starving children in Africa!" Except ruder.

[cherdano]

jonottawa, on Nov 4 2008, 03:46 PM, said:

Bill Clinton ...

Chuck Hagel, Russ Feingold: guys with a bit of gravitas and experience who aren't all salesmanship. (If strenuously opposing the Iraq war ahead of time qualifies you to be president, well then pick me.)

Obama took 15 minutes to vote today. People are being disenfranchised all over the country by 5,6,7,8-hour lines and this clown is taking 15 minutes to vote while he banters with his wife. I wish he'd buy a clue.

Clown? The only drawback of Obama versus McCain that I could see was that McCain is considerably funnier when they try to be comedians, Obama just seems too serious a person to do that well. (Watch the speeches at the Al-Smith charity dinner as a good comparison.)

[mike777]

Living in NC this became a really ugly election run by Dole the last few weeks.

I think it really started in August with a bunch of Hagan attack(typical) ads with no reaction from Dole.

Add in Dole basically has not lived in the state for 20 or 40 years or more.
Add in Dole never visits here....20 days a year....
Add in I think the only two things Dole brags about
1) Keeping military bases.....Hagan is for them also...see pork...
2) more federal money for tobacco farmers......Hagan is also for this....see pork....
3) There is alot of talk about large black turnout but I think a even bigger point is all the Northern Democrats who have moved here from up North and Calif.
4) We find some things shocking such as no teacher unions.

[inquiry]

What goes around comes around. After the Dole tricks here, justice was served tonight.

[keylime]

I confess, I think Dole deserved to lose by running the campaign she did.