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Thread: The Things That Make for Peace

  1. #16
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    Screw the poor. Let them work their ass off and get out poverty if they have the gumption. It's not hard, it only takes the will to do so and not blaming the world for your own retarded decisions. If they want to sit around in a trailer park and drink generic beer instead of attending classes at the local community college I have no sympathy for them.

    It is immoral to tax someone at a higher rate merely because they have more money. Would you charge somebody more for a cheeseburger because they had a bigger bank account? It is also counterproductive - higher taxes discourage investment and spending which lead to fewer and lower paying employment opportunities, and in the long run lead lower tax revenues. Cutting taxes invigorates the economy, raises the general standard of living across the board, and increases tax revenue.

    Harvey Moul

    Fish and visitors stink after three days - Ben Franklin

  2. #17
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    Originally posted by Shitoryu Dude
    Screw the poor. Let them work their ass off and get out poverty if they have the gumption. It's not hard, it only takes the will to do so and not blaming the world for your own retarded decisions. If they want to sit around in a trailer park and drink generic beer instead of attending classes at the local community college I have no sympathy for them.

    It is immoral to tax someone at a higher rate merely because they have more money. Would you charge somebody more for a cheeseburger because they had a bigger bank account? It is also counterproductive - higher taxes discourage investment and spending which lead to fewer and lower paying employment opportunities, and in the long run lead lower tax revenues. Cutting taxes invigorates the economy, raises the general standard of living across the board, and increases tax revenue.

    I kind of agree with you, Harvey. Remember the "Socialism" debate, about the time I got here?

    I think that much needed social welfare, environmental and educational programs are beeing gutted, though, and that's counterproductive as well. I don't think I'm alone in believing that some programs for the poor are necessar-that there are children who would go hungry if not for food stamps-children of working poor, not malingerers in any sense of the word, just people that don't make enough money.

    While my dad's family has always been pretty well off, my mom's is a great example of the sort of thing that still happens in this country, though for differing reasons. Both her parents had college degrees, but couldn't get jobs in their fields becvause nobody hired Iindian or black teachers in Wyoming then. My grandfather was a coal miner-and they were poor.I've often wondered why they didn't just move, but that's never my call, or anyone else's-and it WAS the depression;moving might not have changed a thing, and he was "lucky" to have the work that he did. My mom and all of her sibs went to college, though, and, like you, I have to wonder why some people don't make better for themselves. Fact is that they don't, and I don't think their kids should suffer unecessarily for it.

    As far as taxes, well, you're kind of right, but you're also wrong. I don't agree with a higher rate-I think we should all be taxed at the same flat rate, and be allowed the same credits and allowances across the board. I'm also not so sure that cutting taxes is going to invigorate the economy this time around.

    My real point is that I haven't exactly missed the money I'm getting back from the government, while I think we will miss the things that that money came from...like textbooks for our kids.
    Aaron J. Cuffee


    As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
    - H.L. Mencken

  3. #18
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    Well, I miss every dime that gets cut from my paycheck.

    I will readily agree that over the last couple centuries that many of the social reforms and programs that were instituted were needed and of great benefit. I also think that some of them (unions for example) are not only no longer needed, but actually a hinderance to their stated goals. They have gotten a life of their own and are out of control in nothing more than a drive to hang on and, if possible, expand.

    Of course, what I see as the great equalizer is unfettered access to education for anyone with the gumption to go after it. The GI Bill was perhaps the greatest driver of prosperity of all time. It created a "middle class" that is generally more educated and affluent than the upper echelons of most other societies, past and present. However, I can't be moved to much sympathy when I get an email from somebody I went to school with and they bitch about their life sucking because they life a run down shack in the sticks. We both had the same opportunities, but I decided to get an education and not start having kids at 19 while they barely graduated high school and had a family of 5 by the time they were 23. I don't care that they work 3 or 4 menial jobs to make ends meet - that is what they chose to do. Perhaps their kids will see that mom/dad are stupid and decide to do better.

    Harvey Moul

    Fish and visitors stink after three days - Ben Franklin

  4. #19
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    Now, I've just read the thread. This thread got nothing to do with Jesus or Homeland security, does it?

    Now, as far as I'm concerned, the size of government (or welfare spending) is matter of political choice. If American want to abolish public education, it certainly their choice though I don't think anyone would go that extrem. Similarly, none shouldn't complain if Sweeds want to have Cancer Research Centre in every town. However, inability to balance budget is a definte sign of failiure. On this account the current administration has failed badly.

    Oh, here is a quote from Mark.

    "And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.

    And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.

    And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:

    For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living."

    It's seems that Jesus prefer progressive taxation.
    -Youji Hajime.

    Engrish does not mine strong point

  5. #20
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    Default Bush was never interesterd in peace!

    In Bush' political autobiography (A Charge to Keep) he places himself squarely in the mainstream of evangelical thought. Recounting his pilgrimage to the Holy Land Bush writes of entering into the waters of Galilee in the apparent baptism of "a Jewish friend. " It was then that the hymn came to his mind:

    Now the time is approaching, by prophets long foretold
    When all shall dwell together, One Shepherd and one fold
    Now Jew and Gentile meeting ,from many a distant shore
    around an altar kneeling, one common Lord adore
    I don't know if the president has read Hal Lindsey, but much of what he says shows a similar perspective. Having sold fifteen million copies, Lindseys' book The Late Great Planet Earth remains the most influential text shaping fundamentalist thought on apocalyptic matters. Written within the geopolitical fantasies of the Cold War Lindsey writes,

    " As Armageddon begins with the invasion of Israel by the Arabs and the Russian confederacy, and their consequent swift destruction, the greatest period of Jewish conversion to their true Messiah will begin. "

    I'd rather not believe that Bush is moving according to Lindseys' game plan, but the simple fact is that we don't know. The administration's systematic alienation of our Arab allies (soon leaving Israel as our only viable ally in the Mideast) raises disturbing questions, eforts for a Palestinian homeland notwithstanding.

    Lindseys' book influenced not only American fundamentalist culture but had a pervasive effect on fundamentalist Islams' apocalyptic worldview. According to David Cook, an American expert on Islamic apocalyptic literature, until the late eighties this element of Muslim culture had been fairly static for centuries. " The contemporary Muslim," says Cook, " sees the present world turned upside down by Christian millennialism.... In defense, Muslims make heavy use of the Bible, or one might say the Bible as seen through the eyes of Hal Lindsey. There are Muslim readings of the book of Daniel, Ezekial and Revelation. The only difference is the 'good guys' are Muslims, not Christians." This strange cross-fertilization between cultures has placed us in the situation in which the current administration and Radical Islam share a common worldview in which peace descends after Evil is defeated in an apocalyptic battle. Both parties sing the same song: God will lead our warriors to victory against the forces of darkness.

    We are at an extraordinary and critical historical moment. When Bush was in Germany trying to garner support for invading Iraq the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon leaked its unanimous objection. More recently Brent Scowcroft, the elder statesman of the Republican foreign policy establishment declared that Bush' plans could unleash "an Armageddon in the Middle East."


    The religious underpinnings of Bush's war against evil are evident as is the absolutist theology he shares with Radical Islam. Both of them see such wars as we may be facing right now as righteous, good and necessary. It is clear, we should be afraid for we are profoundly endangered by the passions of both Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms.

    The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming, but it was his friendship with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr. Evans, the pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.

    S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.' Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued.... It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.

    In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."

    "To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. And again, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation." Grandiose visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."


    Bush has said: "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know God is not neutral between them."
    words created for Bush by his chief speech writer, Michael Gerson, an evangelical Christian. Historian Boyer notes that when Bush said in his State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein could unleash "a day of horror like none we have ever known," the President not only played on memories of September 11 but also invoked "a powerful and ancient apocalyptic vocabulary that for millions of [Christian] prophecy believers conveys a specific and thrilling message of an approaching end -- not just of Saddam, but of human history as we know it" -- complete with the return of Jesus to lead a much-expanded flock.

    As humans we live within stories. Some stories, like apocalypse are thousands of years old. The scriptured text that informs Bush understanding of and enactment of the End of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book that justifies violence of any kind, and this it takes to the limit: Christ himself the agent of mass murder.
    "I saw heaven open and there before me was a white horse who is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war...He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the word of God...Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the Nations. And I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds flying in midair--come gather together for the great supper of God, so you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."

    Such is "the glory of the coming of the Lord." Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy of vultures. In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates "a new heaven and a new earth." The dead are judged, the Christians saved and the rest damned to eternal torment. The New Jerusalem is established and the Lord rules it "with an iron scepter."

    It is not inconceivable that Bush is literally and determinedly drawn, consciously and unconsciously, toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he believes, for God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in the Middle East suggests as much.
    It dishonors the profundity of the Christian tradition if one doesn't note that Revelations has always been a rogue text. Because of its association with the Montanist heresy (which like contemporary fundamentalists took it to be literal rather than allegorical) it was with great reluctance that it was made scripture three centuries after the death of Christ. Traditionally attributed to St. John, most Biblical scholars now recognize its literary style and its theology has little in common with John's gospel or his epistles and was likely written after his death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of Revelations incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the appendix of his German translation of the New Testament instead of the body of scripture. All the Protestant reformers except Calvin regarded apocalyptic millenialism to be heresy.

    Revelations is also a rogue text because it is unmoored from its
    origins, which are far from Christian. It is a late variant on a story that was pervasive in the ancient world: the defeat of the wild and the uncivilized by a superior order upon which a New World would be established. Two thousand years before Revelations depicted Christ slaying the antichrist and laying out the New Jerusalem, Marduk slayed Tiamat and founded Babylon.

    This pagan myth recycled as a suspiciously unchristian Biblical test found new credence in the 19th century when John Darby virtually revived the Montanist heresy of investing it with a passionate literalism. Given to visions (he saw the British as one of the ten tribes of Israel) Darby left the priesthood of the Church of Ireland and preached Revelations as both prophecy and imminent history. In this he inaugurated a lineage in which Bush's mentors, the Reverend Billy Graham and Dr. Tony Evans are recent heirs. Revelations is much beloved by Muslim fundamentalists and like their Christian compatriots they also thrill to redemption through apocalypse. Jewish fundamentalists of course do not believe in Revelations but have nonetheless made common cause with the Christian Right.

    "It's a very tragic situation in which Christian fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus on Armageddon and the Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims and Jews in bringing about the Second Coming, are involved in a folie a deux with extremist Jews," said Ian Lustick, the author of For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (and yes it is a single tradition) is being led by its fringe into the abyss and the rest of us with it.

    The world has been readied for the fire but the critical element is the Bush Administration. Never in the history of Christendom has there been a moment when this rogue element has carried anything like the credibility and political power that it carries now
    Aaron J. Cuffee


    As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
    - H.L. Mencken

  6. #21
    Gene Williams Guest

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    Aaron, It is "Revelation" singular, not Revelations, plural. Your exegesis of Revelation is essentially correct. Lindsey, et al are crack pots, but I think you attribute to Bush a degree of radicalism that isn't there. Gene

  7. #22
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    Further proof that religion needs to be purged from human consciousness.

    I think the best thing that could happen to the "holy land" is nuclear sterilization to the point that it is unihabitable for the next 50,000 years. Perhaps then hate-filled little groups of fanatics will quit fighting over a patch of desert that is really rather worthless.

    Harvey Moul

    Fish and visitors stink after three days - Ben Franklin

  8. #23
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    Originally posted by Gene Williams
    Aaron, It is "Revelation" singular, not Revelations, plural. Your exegesis of Revelation is essentially correct. Lindsey, et al are crack pots, but I think you attribute to Bush a degree of radicalism that isn't there. Gene
    The Book of Revelation is really an interpretation of earlier apocalyptic prophesies, specifically the Book of Daniel. It was most likely written within a few years after the death of Nero in 68 C.E.. The author therefore is not believed to be the author of the Book of John, written three decades later. John speaks of a loving God which is in stark contrast to the vengeful God of Revelation. The author of Revelation was not fluent in Greek and is believed to have been an Aramaic speaking resident of Palestine, possibly a wandering prophet. “The Apocalypse,” in its original form, was written in barbaric Koine Greek by a man whose native language was Aramaic. Its composition can be precisely dated to the time of the siege of Jerusalem. The author was aware of the death of Nero, which occurred in 68 C.E.

    Consequently, while its original name: Apocolypsos would translate as
    “The Apocalypse,” it has been brought down to us as “Revelation” in the King James Translation, and pluralized in various other-more accurate-translations.………

    As for Bush...his spiritual advisor is Billy Graham-among others of the same breed; how could he help but have exactly that degree of radicalism?
    Aaron J. Cuffee


    As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
    - H.L. Mencken

  9. #24
    Gene Williams Guest

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    C'mon Aaron. Billy Graham is about as tame a bourgeois American as you can find. There isn't a radical bone in his body...he doesn't want to leave this sphere and all his blandishments one moment sooner than necessary, neither does Bush. That kind of pseudo- apocalyptic preaching is heard in Baptist pulpits all over this country every Sunday by preachers who drive expensive cars, live in expensive houses and wear 1000 dollar suits. They ain't going to the mountain top to await the Second Coming any time soon. It is salesmanship, pure and simple. The ones I'd be worried about, if they had political clout and money, are the wiry little mountain folk who handle snakes every Sunday, gobble strychnine, and believe the US government and every political party are agents of Satan. Gene

  10. #25
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    Bush is a shallow minded, dim witted, dogma spewing, malfunctioning republican mouthpiece. I've been saying it since he won the party nomination. He has no political, financial, or military acumen, no public speaking skills, and will misinform and lie to the public to achieve his goals. This would be machiavellian, but his failure to achieve said goals makes it simply moronic. I don't know how many people you'd have to shoot before Colin Powell ends up in charge, but someone should really get on it.

    Bush will run your country into the dirt with expensive and excessive military excursions abroad, poor (re: no) financial planning on the home front, and a general inability to control government spending.

    Yup, Bush is a useless turd. Even -shudder- Al Gore would have been a better choice. John McCain was by far the most promising prospect, and Ralph Nader was a close second.

    I hope you all enjoy your tax cut, because they'll be coming back for all of it and more in less than 10 years; I guarantee it.
    Iain Richardson, compulsive post-having cake eater-wanter.

    "He shoots first who laughs last."
    - Alexsandr Lebed,

  11. #26
    wendy ongaro Guest

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    so Aaron, are you proposing that Bush is essentially the anti-christ?

  12. #27
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    Originally posted by wendy ongaro
    so Aaron, are you proposing that Bush is essentially the anti-christ?
    I have the proof.

    http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/class/notices.html

    Second one from the bottom.
    -Youji Hajime.

    Engrish does not mine strong point

  13. #28
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    Default A Buddhist Point of View

    ".... Be not deceived; God is not mocked.

    For whatsoever a man sows, that also shall he reap."

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  14. #29
    wendy ongaro Guest

    Default my precious

    hajime... that is hysterical. I'm suprised it didn't come off the ONION.

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