DOWNLOADS: (164)

PLAYS: (1337)

Embed

[H/t Heather]

The ever-clueless Steve Doocy this morning, talking about the Chick-Fil-A controversy:

DOOCY: Remember, it wasn't just people supporting Dan Cathy for his Christian values. ... People not only supporting his Christian values, and they are closed on Sundays. But also just the CEO's right to say what he thinks. You know, a lot of people wound up going -- I was reading in the New York Post today about how a lot of people went over to New Jersey to a Chick-Fil-A, and it wasn't to support the family-values thing, but to support his right to say something, because so many people on the left are so intolerant -- you gotta be able to say in this country what you think!

Of course, it never appeared to occur to Doocy that what the people who are raising an outcry about Dan Cathy's remarks are protesting is Dan Cathy's blatant and blind intolerance.

This is an old conundrum, or at least it appears to be one, raised time and again during the civil-rights struggles of the 1950s and beyond: Should the tolerant tolerate intolerance?

It's not really a conundrum, though, because the answer is a simple one: No. Tolerance and intolerance are diametrically opposed principles, like matter and anti-matter. One cannot exist in the presence of the other. People who are dedicated to the principles of tolerance have no place for intolerance: It is what they are fighting.

The people like Doocy who are on the historically wrong side of the Chick-Fil-A controversy should think back to the civil-rights era, when people voiced outrage at the intolerance of famous bigots like George Wallace and Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus. The people who organized boycotts of these bigots and the places they represented back then were similarly accused of "intolerance" at the time.

The lesson of that history remains a simple and clear one: One cannot end racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual intolerance by "tolerating" the people who practice it. They will only change when they are faced with becoming pariahs. It is no different today than it was fifty years ago.

Not that we could expect a dim bulb like Doocy to figure that out, either.

The banality of evil, coined by Hannah Arendt about Adolf Eichmann, applies not to sociopaths or cartoon moustache twirling villains, but rather ordinary people who accepted the principles of a morally corrupt regime without question and convinced themselves that gassing millions of people and shoving the bodies into ovens was perfectly normal behavior. Even… morally righteous.

But those people are a thing of the past. Could never happen here. People can’t be dragged down into that darkness again. Yet when I listen to Pat Robertson speaking, a shiver of unease slices up my spine. To Pat Robertson, the catastrophe in Haiti is a direct result of the Haitians who made a ‘pact with the devil’ hundreds of years ago to get rid of the French.

Pat Robertson has at best a tenuous grasp of history, or he simply doesn’t like the idea of uppity black folk, or both. For Pat Robertson, the Haitian Revolution had nothing to do with African slaves revolting against one of the most hellish slave colonies ever to have existed, overthrowing their French oppressors and establishing the first black republic in the world. The poverty in Haiti is completely unrelated to the economic blockades and imposed reparations crippling the country for centuries – imposed by God-fearing Christians of Europe and the United States.

No, Pat Robertson apparently believes that Haiti was ‘under the heel of the French, ah, Napoleon the Third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact with the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story!’

Why let pesky facts such as Napoleon the Third wasn’t even born until four years after the Haitian Revolution and the establishment of an independent Haiti stand in the way of a ‘true story’? He then compounds his demonstration of colossal ignorance and bigotry by a comparison of ‘desperately poor’ Haiti and the Dominican Republic, ‘prosperous, healthy, full of resorts…’ The Spanish colonized the Dominican Republic which tried to gain independence in 1821, but was invaded and occupied by Haitian military for the next twenty three years, and has suffered its own bloody history of tyrannical rulers and political upheaval. But, hey! It’s got resorts on it, the sort favoured by fat, rich, white men with pockets full of viagra.

Continue reading »

I meant to post this a few days ago. We have a winner. If anybody brings their faith into the public square, especially running for office---it's open for a vigorous discussion. If we disagree it's not because of religious intolerance, but rather because it becomes a debatable issue. For Romney to say:

"We need to have a person of faith lead the country."

I can argue vehemently that we don't. Both can lead equally well or horribly bad. Religion doesn't put one on a higher morality plain---although Roy Moore might think so. GWB was supposed to be the chosen one because of his religious beliefs. How has he done so far?

Respondents didn't get around to describing him as "President" until 18th place. "Irresponsible" and "unconfident" round out the list, with "liar," "hypocrite," and "selfish" sprinkled in as well. That's what a 33 percent approval rating will get you.

Jim Wallis is back with more stupidity.

In recent years, the Left and even the Democrats managed to appear hostile to faith and to people in faith communities...

What Democrats have been openly hostile? Whenever they talk about faith----they're labeled a phony. Duncan, Wallis will continually say this stuff so he has something to bitch about all the time----it doesn't matter if it's based on fiction. It gives him street cred for the cable news shows. Kos adds:

Here's the deal -- Republicans have claimed god as their own and perverted religious texts to justify some of the most divisive and hateful policies and discourse in our politics today...read on

Values War and Piece

The emails Andrew Sullivan gets fuel my despair about where America is headed. The hatred, the intolerance. Why do Republicans hate gay people so??? And why do they let Rove fan the flames of this hatred which can only incite violence?

"I wonder if you noticed that yesterday all eleven states that considered the question of gay marriage voted to ban it. ALL ELEVEN. I think this sends a very clear message -- true Americans do not like your kind of homosexual deviants in our country, and we will not tolerate your radical pro-gay agenda trying to force our children to adopt your homosexual lifestyle. You should be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that we even let you write a very public and influential blog, instead of suppressing your treasonous views (as I would prefer). But I'm sure someone like yourself would consider me just an "extremist" that you don't need to worry about. Well you are wrong -- I'm not just an extremist, I am a real American, and you should be worried because eleven states yesterday proved that there are millions more just like me who will not let you impose your radical agenda on our country."

What happened to decency in America? What happened to the religious values of tolerance and respect for human life? Treating others as one wishes to be treated?

NASA Probe Penetrates Tom Cruise's Ego that one blog

The meaning of SpongeBob

via Ornicus

....It's hard to say exactly which organization he's talking about. If you go over to the We Are Family Foundation -- the immediate object of Dobson's wrath -- it's pretty hard to find anything that even remotely mentions homosexuality. Moreover, if you click on the link to the "Tolerance Pledge" that Dobson says is the source of his allegation, you'll see that the pledge is actually the product of Tolerance.org, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In other words, Dobson appears to be attacking the SPLC by proxy. That should give people a little clearer picture of what we're really talking about here. Dobson isn't just condemning cartoon characters, he's attacking the basic concept of secular tolerance as a democratic cornerstone. That is, he's actively promoting the tolerance of intolerance. There's a simpler word for that: .