The Insidious Influence of Right-Wing Moralizers
Don't these conservative Christians realize that Roman Polanski made just one little mistake? Haven't they seen Chinatown?
There is an insidious influence growing in this country — something that threatens the very heart of what makes us great. The recent brouhaha about Roman Polanksi and ACORN only further demonstrates how bad this problem has gotten. I speak, of course, of right-wing Christian moralizing.
Certain segments of our population are an unthinking, brutish lot. While sophisticated people understand that there are nuances and moral gray areas, these ignoramuses see only black and white, and right and wrong. And this simplistic thinking is threatening the advances that progressives have made.
Take what has happened to the great film director Roman Polanski. Back in the seventies, he apparently drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old and fled justice. Yes, it seems like such a minor thing hardly worth mentioning. It was Hollywood in the seventies; people were just less puritanical back then. They were also more open-minded and into trying new things like raping young girls and fleeing to France. Smart people, like those in Hollywood, just knew and accepted this. That’s why they continued to work with Polanski for decades afterward. A great film — and we’re talking real art here, not some blockbuster with lots of explosions to entertain the yokels — means people are going to get raped.
The point is to not focus on the “victims” but instead to look at the art that is produced. When you see an Oscar-winning film, it hardly seems worth whining about rape.
Of course, you can’t explain that to the right-wing Christians. According to them, the invisible sky fairy they got their instructions from says rape is wrong. Even if done by an award-winning director. There is no reasoning with them on that point. And this myopic thinking apparently has spread beyond the States, as Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for this rape charge we figured no sophisticated person cared about. Some of Hollywood’s forward thinkers have, of course, gone to his rescue, but most of America is demanding he face trial for this minor peccadillo. Haven’t they seen Chinatown? They were probably too busy watching another Michael Bay movie of random explosions.
It really seems this right-wing moralizing stuff has just gotten worse and worse through the years. For instance, take their reaction to the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. For decades, Ted Kennedy served just fine as a senator and everyone praised him as a tireless advocate for progressive causes. But when he died, guess what the troglodytes on the right focused on? That he drowned some nobody in his car forty years ago.
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Frank J. Fleming writes political humor at IMAO.us and is beloved throughout the world.
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60 Comments
1. Marie Claude:somebody is going to get some naughty comments !
Oct 18, 2009 - 2:53 am 2. Delia:“it’s only wrong if it inconveniences a liberal”
Exactly.
Galling isn’t it?
UGH.
Oct 18, 2009 - 2:56 am 3. walt b:Stone Age Values? I thought for a second there you were talking about the Religion of Peace….
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:00 am 4. pedro:Chinotown my favorite movie( the CORRUPTION and INFLUENCE) YAYAYYAYA
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:27 am 5. pedro:WHOO WHOOW WHOO, YOUR MAMA didnt teach u any MORALS Fleming!!!
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:30 am 6. Daniel:Ouch! That is some fairly harsh satire. I think the author characterizations of a few of the incidents were a little unfair, but he did an excellent job illustrating how warped many people’s values are. Also, I think he is buying into the left’s characterization that anyone who has a conservative / traditional moralistic viewpoint being a biblical literalist, although that might have been part of the satire. While I thought that part of the piece was overly simplistic, though amazingly funny, I could not help but smile as I read this piece. It really put the values gap of the United States in perspective. When will the NY Times be running this? Fairness doctrine anyone?
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:40 am 7. mrrogerj:hhhmmm……I’ll let the liberal (so called progressive side) answer this one first.
Oct 18, 2009 - 4:05 am 8. SjB:What I don’t get is why lefties think it’s OK to nitpick the rest of us to death with their petty rules about personal habits. Ones that villainize hamburgers, tax soda, and tell us what kind of light bulbs we have to use… and we don’t understand nuances???
And all we want is justice for heinous crimes like uh…. fraudulent organizations and drugging and sodomizing 13 year old girls? Go figure…
Oct 18, 2009 - 4:23 am 9. eon:What Mr. Fleming does precisely here is point out that, in the “progressive” mind, there are two sets of rules for people living in their Utopia. One set for the common herd, the other for the “enlightened elite’”, like themselves.
Under the latter set of rules, the only rule is that there are none. Or more exactly, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”. (That’s not from the Bible, by the way- well, not “the” Bible, anyway, somebody else’s.) And part of that is that the elite’ must, by definition, be immune to any criticism at the same time that they are empowered to punish members of “the herd” for not living according to their edicts.
This is why Ted Kennedy, who wanted to disarm the American people at any cost up to and including a mandatory death penalty for possession of a gun, had a “security force” composed mainly of men with criminal records- who were all armed to the teeth. The rules were different for him, as the elite’ believe is only fitting and proper.
And yes, I have seen “Chinatown”, in fact it’s one of my favorite “neo noir” movies. The whole point of the film is that, in Los Angeles at that time, there definitely were two sets of rules, and the elite’ (like John Huston’s character) got to make up the rules for everybody else.
If you didn’t agree, you were lucky if all you got for your trouble was a slashed nose and five stitches. The slash being delivered by Polanski himself, by the way.
Take a good look at how our “intellectual superiors” want to run the world. If you don’t see the superiority of their vision… well, you must just be really stupid.
According to them.
clear ether
eon
Oct 18, 2009 - 5:36 am 10. LeighB:I lost my moral equivalency decoder ring a while ago so I appreciate the “tune up” that one great movie is like a “get out of jail free” card for the rape of a child and if your brother was President you can leave someone to die. That helps me understand the current administration so much better. Who knew Mao was a philosopher? I guess if you write a really good book, killing millions is an inconvenient footnote.
No time to look for the decoder ring, gotta get back to clinging to my guns and religion.
Oct 18, 2009 - 5:46 am 11. Gary Ogletree:Right, again, Frank. The problem is not just with the Christians who don’t like sophisticated pedophiles like good old Roman. Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are just as wrong headed. Worse… that truly sophisticated Trotsky scholar, Chris Hitchens, who has debunked all this God nonsense by exposing some of their silly folk tales as unscientific, he too, thinks great artists should not harm children. He may yet be a closet Anglican. Good news, Roman is having a medical “problem” and will soon be on a plane to a Muslim country where they understand and protect child rapists with Sharia Law. At least one great world religion gets sophistication.
Oct 18, 2009 - 5:55 am 12. donw:I don’t know how you do it in an era when satire usually cannot keep up with reality.
I look for to your insights into the workings of the sophisticated mind. As God – ah, the sky fairy – knows the defenders of child rape (it wasn’t rape-rape; thirteen is not thirteen in Hollywood,and the ever useful she asked for it) are way beyond me.
Oct 18, 2009 - 6:53 am 13. Thomas_L......:“It’s not like they’re important children — they’re not Kennedys — ”
Oct 18, 2009 - 7:09 am 14. Beauxdog:Give them a break. If that same child works in a factory making their Nikes, they’ll find the time to make a movie to condemn capitalism and sweatshops. They may even adopt a lucky couple of the cute little tykes for future photo ops.
Three thoughts jumped out at me reading this column.
1) He made A (meaning one) mistake. Chances are, there were probably many more… but he probably was far more careful in the future in “choosing” once he made it to France.
2) He gave up 30 years of free movement and ultimate prison to avoid 47 days in a looney bin for the rape of a child. Afterwards, he would could have roamed freely.
3) What would have happened had Teddy been just a tiny bit heroic and “rescued” Mary Jo? The White House would have been renamed the Ted Kennedy House and the Lincoln Memorial would have a new tenant.
Beauxdog
Oct 18, 2009 - 7:15 am 15. Zacharias:What a howler…
I got a lot of mileage out of the “Stone Age values” reference; great link to God inscribing stone tablets with ten commandments.
The intelligentsia doesn’t need to be reminded every five minutes or so that they have to answer to someone higher than themselves. That is so not cool?
As a sheep, I bleat submissively every time politicians, celebs, and God-haters open their maw to exhale. Why would I need God, when I have incoherent, angry reptiles like Hitchens, Dawkins, America-haters, and vacuous celebs (I repeat myself) to show me the way, the lies, and the death they now lead?
Oct 18, 2009 - 7:23 am 16. Dave K.:I agree and I’m sure that the author of this article will join me in condemning Laura Bush’s murder of her ex-boyfriend.
Oct 18, 2009 - 7:40 am 17. BC:The “humor” is a little bit along the lines of 4 guys jawing Saturday morning at a coffee shop. The Polanski stuff is one of those things that makes me hate the state of the current “free press”: you get massive amounts of he said/she said “coverage” but without anyone actually anyone detailing what exactly happened and what were the circumstances. In Polanski’s case, he was apparently going through a rough time at the time, and was likely suckered in by the girl was made up and acted as though she was older, evidently deliberately so by her mother for a pregnancy blackmail setup. You really, REALLY shouldn’t have to resort to police reports to find this sort of info, but….there you go.
This sort of stuff is why people who really understand the state of the news media these days always roll their eyes when conservatives or right wingers bemoan and/or criticize the liberal “MSM”. Over the past decade or so, the average quality of journalism has fallen proportional to the expansion of news outlets, especially in regards to cable and the Internet. One of key things that responsible journalists are suppose to do is separate out truth from lies & rumors. That’s pretty basic: someone makes a claim or a charge — is it true? That might take a little bit of research, might take a lot, but it usually becomes clear if the person is being truthful, dishonest, disingenuous, or an idiot. Another key thing is context — what are/were the circumstances? Somebody gets in an auto accident: was he/she heading home from doing some shopping, a night of drinking, a funeral, or what? Did this happen in a rain or snow storm, was he or she cut off, was it at a wide open country road or at a known, poorly designed and dangerous intersection, what?
Jon Stewart recently ripped CNN a new one that actually pretty much encapsulates the true state of the “news” these days. Stewart certainly is not shy about mocking Republicans and right wingers over their often eye-rolling WTF?!?! behavior, but he saves his big claws for the mainstream media when they don’t do their jobs.
Oct 18, 2009 - 7:57 am 18. logdon:Funny but whilst visiting an old friend a few weeks ago, before this arrest blew a hole in Polanski’s life, we argued about his best film.
I was for Cul de Sac, he for Chinatown. Not once was any mention of his obsessive attraction for sub legal age girls talked of.
Although we knew nothing of this case, we did know of the general thrust of his peccadilo.
It had been ten years since my last visit and his, then, five year old daughter had blossomed, as they often do, into a stunningly beautiful young girl. Almond slanting, shy eyes. Coltishly awkward long legs. The winsome slightly hesitant smile.
We’d always enjoyed a quite open and ascerbic blokey humour between ourselves and he, jokingly told me, no midnight creeps. He knew and I knew that such a thing would have been a complete impossibility. My view of his daughter’s beauty did not and could not translate to lust, thus he could be free to make the joke.
Yet there we were later, talking of a known paedophile with no mention of his paedophillia?
Now the facts of the case are out there, there is no way we’d have a conversation in any way resembling the one we had. I don’t care what excuses are offered, it was rape of a thirteen year old girl and there is not one jot of mitigation which could or should be accepted.
Imagine if the daughter of these liberal Hollywood voices offering some kind of defence had been molested by the pool guy? That pool guy’s feet would not touch the ground, so why the double standard?
Same with the murdering Kennedy. If say, Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh or the latest scourge of the libtards, Glen Beck had crashed a car leaving a young woman to die a watery death what then? The whole thing is an afront.
It is the epitomy of a complete lack of any morality yet the fat drink soddened oaf got such eulogy, such fawning media praise you have to wonder what goes on in these twisted minds.
We’ve enterd such a convoluted phase of moral relativity that all pretence of anything resembling right or wrong is condemed as judgemental.
When Barack Obama can, when knowing none of the facts of the case, automatically with kneejerk precision call Cambridge Police ’stupid’just because a black professor and old crony to boot is arrested we begin to understand.
With these people it’s always, always not what but who you know.
They ringfence their own no matter what and isn’t that just as sinister as jackboot fascism?
These guys are the new Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots. Their victims, means to ends. Their morality based on whirling dervish compasses. Only their truth is the truth which fits the narrative.
Welcome to the monsters ball!
Oct 18, 2009 - 8:37 am 19. David S:I’m not impressed. I can write better satire when I’m being serious.
Peace.
DS
Oct 18, 2009 - 8:44 am 20. Tin Kicker:Once again, the liberal left brings up “CAFETERIA JUSTICE”. just pick and choose which laws you want enforced. If the laws do not suit you, just ignore them.
After all, drugging and raping a 13 year old girl is OK if your a great director with lots of liberal friends……just tell that to all the perverts currently in jail for similar crimes.
And as for the ACORN videos……we must remember that ACORN has helped so many people like our current president with falsified voter registration, oh, and don’t forget about the money that was embezzled a few years ago, just pocket change, and don’t worry about it.
The people must decide, are we a nation of laws or of men. If men, just continue along and we will see what happens, but if we are a nation of laws, then the laws must apply to even great movie directors or organizations that help elect this president.
The future of the country depends upon whether we have a moral compass and the courage to follow it.
Oct 18, 2009 - 9:22 am 21. Delia:19. David S,
Your moronic drivel is the stuff of epic artistry of MARLA.
Keep it up, dilldoh.
Oct 18, 2009 - 9:50 am 22. Allende:“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
Oct 18, 2009 - 9:52 am 23. Mttopforge:Refreshing!
Bravo!!
Well written, well said.
Please do a witty piece like this on POTUS’ eligibility!
It would be totally be hilarious
Best regards
Oct 18, 2009 - 10:02 am 24. Odysseus:Well, David S., for once I think the majority of posters here will agree with your comment (19): As a master of self-parody, you have few equals.
Oct 18, 2009 - 10:54 am 25. ccoffer:“I agree and I’m sure that the author of this article will join me in condemning Laura Bush’s murder of her ex-boyfriend.”
Why are scumbag leftists unable to communicate without telling filthy lies? Say something true about a smelly-ass ratbag leftist like Ted Kennedy and whats the response. The dung-beetle leftist comes back by telling a lie about a conservative.
Oct 18, 2009 - 11:47 am 26. RickGreenville,SC:ccoffer: what did you expect? Even the trolls know they are supporting a outhouse built of cards.Their only recourse to facts is to attempt a smokescreen of lies. They deserve no pity, only contempt and disgust. One can only wait secure in the knowledge that payback is coming, if not in this life, then in eternity to follow. . .
Oct 18, 2009 - 12:07 pm 27. AF_Vet:—-16. Dave K.: belches out some drivel about Laura Bush committing mureder.—-
Hmmm, so sorry Dave ol boy, but the traffic accident wasn’t ruled as murder by the police.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp
Wow…making you look like an uninformed, hate-filled butthead took less than 30 seconds on Google.
Moral equivalence…it’s what’s for dinner.
Oct 18, 2009 - 12:34 pm 28. Poor Citizen:Like yourself, I have no problem with religious zealotry as long as ..what ever happens in the church … stays in the church. When Ronny, Jimmy and George and most of the leaders in the mideast believe they are doing what they are doing because God “told them to do it”…well, we all see where that goes…dont we.
So to the religious Luny fringe, .. keep it in the Church.
However, will they continue to influence our politics? of course they will.
Oct 18, 2009 - 12:40 pm 29. Dave K.:AF_Vet,
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:09 pm 30. Inrptrn:so you’ll agree that Ted Kennedy didn’t murder anyone because that was also ruled as an accident by the police?
The Moralizers are dead! (Christians)
Oct 18, 2009 - 3:35 pm 31. Delia:Long live the Moralizers! (commie-baby-killers)
Who needs rules?
Who needs ‘morals’?
Who needs ‘guidelines’?
Let’s all share needles, give each other AIDS, HERPES and GENITAL WARTS, hump like jack-rabbits and abort the results.
AMEN.
Oct 18, 2009 - 4:19 pm 32. ccoffer:“so you’ll agree that Ted Kennedy didn’t murder anyone because that was also ruled as an accident by the police?”
Not quite, Assclown. Kennedy was an adult political figure from a political family who made a calculated decision to allow someone to die for his own sake. Laura Bush was an unknown child in high school who got into a traffic accident.
The fact that you would equate the two is simply proof that you are a wretched loaf of excrement with the neither the intellect nor the character to belong in a conversation with decent people.
Do the right thing.
Oct 18, 2009 - 5:45 pm 33. BigDon:So, Dave, did Laura Bush leave the guy there to go home and sleep it off? Moral equivalence is still moral equivalence.
Oct 18, 2009 - 5:53 pm 34. Frank J. Fleming:Dave K:
If you can’t tell the difference between an actual accident that someone took full responsibility for and how Ted Kennedy left a woman to suffocate (who could have been saved had he gone straight to the police but instead was too concerned with himself) and then used his privilege to avoid criminal charges any normal person would have gotten (and then had the gall to lecture Nixon about unequal standards of justice), then it’s because you want to morally stupid. So I praise you for setting easily obtainable goals.
Don’t you have some rape you need to justify now?
Oct 18, 2009 - 6:16 pm 35. myth buster:Ted Kennedy didn’t commit murder; he committed manslaughter and got away with it.
Oct 18, 2009 - 6:47 pm 36. Eric:Very good Frank. However, I would like to have seen something more positive about how the “right wing Christian” side is a good influence on life and less on how liberals don’t care about anything but themselves. Your ranting about the “left” is nothing new, tell people why the “right” is right please. But don’t stop writing.
Oct 18, 2009 - 8:31 pm 37. Donna V.:David S. sez:
I can write better satire when I’m being serious.
For once, I heartily agree with you.
Oct 18, 2009 - 8:46 pm 38. Delia:37. Donna V.,
I wish I could laugh at David S., but his blatant lack of morality and love for all things craven, frankly, creeps the frick outta me.
This guy makes Caligula look like Fred Rogers.
Are we in bizzaro USA when the Leftists are in power?
BY GOSH! I think it be true, girlfriend!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Oct 18, 2009 - 9:14 pm 39. NeverLeft:Yeah those damm conservative Christians, next thing you know their religious leaders will push for illegal aliens to have free health care. The nerve of them! Progressives should make a stand and strongly oppose any attempt to…. Uh never mind.
Oct 18, 2009 - 11:22 pm 40. Inrptrn:“19. David S:
I’m not impressed. I can write better satire when I’m being serious.”
Don’t you always? ^_^
Oct 18, 2009 - 11:22 pm 41. Marc Malone:#35 mythbuster – Um, no, it’s murder if he let her die, because dead (wo)men tell no tales. He silenced the witness.
Oct 19, 2009 - 12:56 am 42. Dblade:Heh, you should take it further and slam the right-wing christians for real, who care more about Roman Polanski and a rape that happened 30 years ago than the real moral issues happening in their towns, schools, and cities. They loooove moral proclamations without actually doing much real moral work, instead its on non-issues like school prayer, or whatever infamous act is making the rounds in the godless media.
I’m not excusing Polanski, but its clear to see that what he did is immoral. There’s voices on both the left and right condemning what he did and those who try and excuse it. Even then, it’s a real moral non-issue in the sense that it is a personal crime that none of us can do anything about. Why should it draw attention, and if Christians are the guardians of morality and the repositories of virtue, why do they suck so hard when it comes to something as simple as staying married? They honestly have more of an issue dealing with that than what Polanski did. The authorities and pundits seem to have that well in hand.
Oct 19, 2009 - 4:00 am 43. biblio44:Frankie, next time try to be a little more heavy-handed. You’re getting much too subtle; someone might actually miss the irony. The putrid state of right-wing “humor” is truly something to behold.
Oct 19, 2009 - 5:25 am 44. Beauxdog:Dblade?
Personal crime? He didn’t rape himself.
Oh… and I am still on my first marriage after 25 years. She is very expensive and has lots of medical bills, but you know… I think I will keep her.
Beauxdog
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:45 am 45. Art:…and predictably the Right Wing Moralizers, equate other horrible practices such as the playing of online poker with the likes of rape, and then jump through political hoops to have it criminalized. What will they go after next???
Come-on, every non-brain-dead citizen knows Polanski is the scum of the earth, but the Morality Police are much more devoted to telling everyone how to live than they are about rape
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:57 am 46. Dblade:Beau, I mean that it is a single crime that really none of us can do anything about. It’s news, but it’s remote from us and just spectacle. It’s not a trend of anything, just a news item.
There’s much more important things to worry about than that, but stuff like this consumes a disproportionate amount of airtime while having no real effect.
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:46 am 47. Marcus - From Brazil:You guys don’t get it! Mary Jo Kopechne was a feminist. And as a good feminist she didn’t need the help of a man. Probably Ted tried to help her, but after hours of debate (socialist debates always take hours, even if the sky is falling), she convinced him that by helping her this would only reinforce the stereotype of a the phallic dominance of men over the women.
Best regards from Brazil
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:53 am 48. A.W.:This is great, Frank, except… i think its hard for people who don’t know you to realize this is a joke.
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:45 am 49. David:The problem is that this is the way many of the liberals actually think, satire in noted in the article. On a trip to LA some years ago, I went to a prominent resturant and saw a woman trying to sell her 13 year old to anyone she recognized as a film insider. She had her 10 year old in tow in case someone wanted something even younger. Look at the situation with Michael Jackson and the williness of parents to send their children to his estate.
But the problem is that both the left and the right are trying to tell us how to live our lives. Maybe it would be a good idea for the government to leave us alone.
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:03 pm 50. Frank J. Fleming:biblio44:
Why come here just to whine?
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:58 pm 51. Marc Malone:#42 Dblade – So, we should stay silent on such things? Really? If we do, who shall speak for this victim, and perhaps prevent the next one? If we don’t make an issue of it, will the government have the will to force the extradition, or would they instead just forget about it?
If we speak not about moral issues, who then shall be the good angels on the shoulders of our leaders? Should we not balance out in some small way the overwhelming assault on our culture by the forces of decay?
You truly believe we do no good works? Christians give more to charity than anyone! Republicans, on average, give four times as much to charity than do Democrats. The Christians account for most of that giving. Do missionaries do no good works whilst they proselytize around the world? Do they not sacrifice greatly to do so? Who do you think sets up and mans these domeatic and international charities to care for the poor of the world?
Finally, should we only discuss the issues the Dems want to discuss, because they deem the other things of no importance? Shall we allow only them to set the terms of discussions? What, prithee, is wrong with discussing things like this, and bringing them into the American consciousness, these discussions of Right and Wrong? Does this not benefit the country to discuss Right and Wrong? Why do you protest such; dismiss them airily, or rather, sneeringly? What, I ask, is wrong with you, that such discussions seem to you contemptible?
Oct 19, 2009 - 2:39 pm 52. Donna V.:If we speak not about moral issues, who then shall be the good angels on the shoulders of our leaders? Should we not balance out in some small way the overwhelming assault on our culture by the forces of decay?
Quite true. The *cough* reasoning displayed by dblade is “Christians aren’t perfect, they sometimes do wrong, so they can never say a deed done by someone else is bad.” In other words, if you’re divorced, you can’t condemn a rapist.
It’s a silly, silly argument that, if taken to extremes, would mean criminals could run amok because, well, we all sin. I took quarters out of my mom’s purse when I was 8, so how dare I say a man who commits an armed robbery should go to jail?
dblade, in case you’re unaware of it, both the NY Times and the WaPo editorialized against Polanski and left-wing feminists like Katha Pollit have condemned him, so this isn’t just a matter of right-wing “prudes” (it’s prudish to be revolted by rape, I guess) throwing stones at a great artiste. Not all leftists make excuses for the kiddy-raper, but I’ve noticed that all of his excusers happen to be leftists.
Oct 19, 2009 - 5:59 pm 53. MD:Mr Fleming, on a certain day called Judgment, I’ll let you stand alone and tell the Man, He is out dated and of no concern for this “modern times”. Eternity is a VERY LONG TIME to live realizing you were wrong.
Oct 19, 2009 - 11:50 pm 54. Jason S:Come on Frank. Teddy only committed manslaughter, and he was really, really tired like you said, and his Italian loafers were already ruined from all the water. Besides, he phoned the authorities right after he called his lawyer the very moment he woke up. And think of the anguish the poor soul had to live with the rest of his life. I mean, Mary Jo was the lucky one. Drowning is supposed to be a pretty peaceful way to go once the panicky thrashing around part is over with.
Oct 20, 2009 - 12:30 am 55. sara:If the Christians would just up then the elite could let us know from agenda to agenda and fad to fad what is moral and immoral. But nooooooo. The Christians are always sayin’….
When Christians shut up or worse, join the amoral, we are up the creek.
Oct 20, 2009 - 12:50 am 56. Dblade:#51 Marc Malone
This wasn’t something any amount of speaking up would influence. It was a crime that happened over thirty years ago, which was an issue because the person evaded justice by fleeing the USA.
Contrast this with acting to help people struck with unemployment, or helping senior citizens, or one of the many local moral acts which people can do and can influence.
You know where all that charity money goes? Right back into the church and parachurch organizations that use it to build multi-million dollar buildings and pad the salaries of preachers and a whole clerical staff. Half the time it isn’t even invested in their own community, but sent to some big ministry that uses it to buy airtime or stage huge revival events.
It’s not about setting the terms of discussion. I’ll split the post, because the reply answers #52 donna as well. Pajamas needs to really have forums instead of comment boxes.
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:01 am 57. Dblade:#52 Donna
That’s not my point at all, my point is rather than posture on things they are powerless to affect you should save your moral outrage for local events you can.
The reason why Christians like to do that is because it lets them off the hook for real issues they can change. It’s easier to talk about Polanksi than it is to actually do stuff, sometimes stuff the church even offers.
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:15 am 58. Avitar:Over all not funny. Christians showed in their behavior in FDR’s administration that they will kill their own children when faced with the wrong preacher.
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:39 am 59. Donna V.:FDR used nudity in Tarzan and Heady Lamar getting neked to push the illegal Hays censorship office on the entertainment industry. To this day the old Chirstions do not realize that the cost of those “Clean” movies is the fifty million abortiions we have had and the Darwinian evolution imposecd on christian school children.
You know where all that charity money goes? Right back into the church and parachurch organizations that use it to build multi-million dollar buildings and pad the salaries of preachers and a whole clerical staff
Nonsense. Dollar for dollar one of the most effective charities around is the Salvation Army. I remember reading a WSJ article about how much more effective the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities were in the Gulf region after Katrina than even the Red Cross. They were far more effective than the government at any level.
Church charities have far lower overhead costs than government programs and get much more bang for their buck. I have done volunteer work in missions – I know how far they can make a dollar stretch. They’re good at it because they’ve been doing it for 2000 years.
Now – point me to the atheist soup kitchens and shelters. I haven’t noticed many of them – have you? The Red Cross is now secular but it started out as a Christian organization.
P.S. I attend a pretty 120 year old church. I have no problem with part of my donations paying for restoration work and paint and light bulbs. Do you think churches magically stay in pristine condition? Churches have bills and salaries to pay like anybody else and they have to pay for it somehow. If someone embezzles funds, well, they should be punished just as they’d be punished for embezzling from anyone else.
MD: Mr. Fleming was being satirical. Yes, I realize that leftists actually say things like that nowadays.
Oct 20, 2009 - 4:13 pm 60. Joe Gildo:Extremes on BOTH ends are wrong.
Rape is wrong. So are tax fraud, rape, murder, and child sex slavery. So are lots of other things.
But actual smart, thinking humans don’t need to believe in an imaginary being to tell them that, either. And it doesn’t matter whether they call that being “Allah”, “God”, or “Buddha” – its still imaginary.
Its also wrong to think its a good idea to take money away from people who worked for it to provide cushy benefits to those that don’t. (If you raise taxes enough to give free money to the poor, eventually people will wise up and quit working, assuming there was anyone left to be employing them anyway. Then we can all ‘live off the government’ – except there will be no one left working to tax)
Oct 20, 2009 - 10:59 pm