Quote:Well, thanks for asking. I didn't vote for Bush, and I don't support many of his policies. From my libertarian perspective, he is the worst type of Republican in that he expands the role of the nanny state, while also working to curtail freedoms.
Why, if you believe he is working to curtail freedoms and expand the role of the nanny state, am I not correct in my assessment that he is as much a danger to your liberties as Ted Kennedy (at the very least)? The PATRIOT Act alone is enough to send the little libertarian in my head screaming down the halls.
Quote:The US will win the war against the extremists who seek to destroy us, but we won't do it by continuously tearing down all of our Presidents and Congressional leaders or by following a "Duty to Retreat" philosophy in our homes and our foreign policies.
I'm pretty confident the United States will win over some grubby religious zealots plotting bombings from caves in Afghanistan. If you do lose, however, it will almost certainly be by broadening the conflict beyond said grubby zealots, provoking a mass reaction in the Islamic world. This is the madness Bush has dragged you into, and the sooner it stops, the more likely you are to be safe from Islamic fundamentalism.
Quote:That has been falsely inferred due to Jefferson's abridged version of the Gospels used to proselytize the natives. I believe it was an he claimed in the letter I cited, that as a notable public figure, he wanted to keep his personal beliefs between himself and his maker.
He certainly wanted to keep his personal beliefs to himself, and believed quite clearly that it was up to each person to determine these things for themselves.
However, as per the gospels, and the rest of the mystical theology, one does not require specious inferences. Jefferson just out and wrote it, clear as day.
Quote:The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter
[...]
If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross, restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of others of his disciples
Quotes courtesy of infidels.org. There are many more, those are only the juicy ones.
The Jefferson Bible was clearly *not* just an abridgement devoid of theological meaning. It was Jefferson's attempt at creating a "real" christianity, stripped of all the theological trappings that, in my opinion, make it a religion in the first place. A quick peruse of the wikipedia page on the topic calls into question your interpretation, including and especially the idea that the abridgement was of practical, not theological, value. Indians also do not come up. From whence does your information on this matter come?
(Edit: Interesting. Further googling indicates that this "Not a bible, just a primer for indians" is fairly widespread. However, it is a claim apparently contradicted by Jefferson in his own letters.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
As per my less than moderate comments in reply to Occhi, they were perhaps a little bristly, given his criticism that since the man is president, he somehow must not be as I have described (frankly, as Bush himself has described, since it is the man's own words that convince me). How does one argue with that?
One can doubt the comments from Abbas, and everyone else who was there at the time, and the transcript from Ha'aretz. But the comment that he believed God wanted him to invade the middle east is almost painfully plausible. A war to free the middle east, and especially Palestine, is a key ultra-right evangelical belief. Bush has himself claimed that God is not neutral in this conflict, and that he believes God wanted him to be president. He has said that God promised the people of the middle east freedom, and that America is doing his will in bringing it there. Many, many observers to the white house have commented on his propensity to fall back on prayer to guide his decisions, that he is a man, as the Blues Brothers said, on a mission from God.
Now, how implausible is the Abbas quote? Seems like it's right down the middle to me. Maybe the language is slightly exaggerated, who knows, but why would they have invented that comment whole cloth? Even if it is not itself valid as evidence, its content seems completely reasonable, given what we know about the man. So, once again, if this seems cartoony, it's not because I'm painting a cartoon stereotype of Bush. He did that to himself, through his own words, and his own actions.
Perhaps I should have been less abraisive there, although I can't apologise for the substance, which I still very much agree with: Bush is a failure of comical proportions who never should have been elected. However, you yourself are immoderate in your own language on a regular basis. Perhaps we should take a cue from those aphorisms Jefferson was so fond of, and remove the logs from our own eyes.
-Jester