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  • From: rua AT mindspring.com
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [internetworkers] Digest comments
  • Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 23:10:12 -0500 (EST)


-- First, I want to say I apologize for any offense at my overly dramatic use
of adjectives and intensity in the 'arrogance' thread. In restrospect after I
went to bed, I think I was feeling a bit of bitterness, ala Hunter Thompson
felt when he wondered what happened to the movement in Fear & Loathing. I
honestly did feel that dems were missing the point, and then to hear the
post-election talk about how it's all the Christian Rights fault, instead of
looking internally, well I just blew a gasket. I like this INW group, and the
fact that people disagree, and don't mean to come off as spitting in public,
or on any group.


--"I don't think Dean got far enough to find out."
Dean had his problems, and I know the republicans would have been calling him
"the most liberal man in DC", just as they said about Kerry. However, I did
respect him more, and I really think it was Kerry's big money supporters in
the media and elsewhere that fried Dean's hopes. I don't think the right gave
much of a hoot about him at the time, figuring his anti-war stance would lose
the election. I respected his stance way more than Kerry's.

"I don't know about anyone else, but to me, someone who puts blind
faith in a canidate for no reason other than its who their pastor,
family, whatever told them to vote for, is ignorant and backwards."
--The way I grew up, I would have knee-jerked agreed, but then I thought
about all those kids who the left was hoping to vote because Eminem said so,
or The Boss, or Madonna. And then I think of a life-long member of a church,
that has been given good guidance and assistance over the years by their
pastor, and I wonder who is being the most ignorant.
--But what I really think, is that the anti-abortion Christians voted
Republican when Clinton won, and in 2000, and in most every other election
the last twenty years. What are you going to do about that, kill 'em all? How
about looking at the undecided, silly, and stop focusing on the wrong voters.
I know plenty of undecideds that didn't vote for Kerry, and I don't know any
that were lock-step Christian automatons.

"It was actually a bunch of right-wing religious Republicans who were
the big advocates for ending slavery."

Here's a moment from the constitutional convention: "On February 11, 1790,
two Quaker delegations, one from NY and the other from Philadelphia,
presented petitions to the House calling for the federal goverment to put an
immediate end to the African slave trade." [and endorsed by Ben Franklin
himself]
It is creepily familar rhetoric that followed, attacking these people of
faith: "The Quakers, Rep J.Jackson argued, were infamous innocents
incessantly disposed to drip their precious purity like holy water over
everyone else's sins." [sounds like a quote out of today's pro-choice debate]
His colleague W.Loughton Smith rose to add that his colleague need not dally
over these pathetic eccentrics.

I know, I know, just as many Alabama ministers supported the KKK you might
say, but the lesson is: just because someone is faithful, does not mean they
are wrong or stupid. I think the Quakers had a helluva humanitarian point,
and did not deserve to be villified then, as many faithful are still today.
They believe what they believe. Differ if you wish. I do. But insulting them
for practicing their faith seems to be getting us nowhere...well, a bit to
the right of nowhere.


Don





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