Badtux the Snarky Penguin

In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.

Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

The Revival Meeting

One of the rational conservatives out there, John Cole, reports that a lot of prominent evangelicals and a token Mormon got together last night to discuss theology and the Bible. This prayer meeting was apparently televised nationally (darn, I'm going to have to get my television out of the closet one of these days!) and addressed important issues such as the Big Bang Theory vs. the Biblical account of creation, the importance of the salvation brought to Man by Jesus Christ, etc.

Oh wait, that wasn't a prayer meeting... that was the Republican presidential candidates' debate. Because, after all, we must have our priorities straight. The Iraq war, health care crisis, collapsing immigration system, national debt, global warming, well, those are all trivial things. The important thing for Presidential candidates to debate is whether the Genesis account of Creation is 100% factual or not. Just as the important thing for Byzantine intellectuals to debate in the 8th and 9th century was iconoclasm, not the fact that the Muslims were whipping their butt on the Anatolian frontier. Remember, what's important in a Presidential candidate is not how he handles worldly concerns like, say, how to secure our borders. As with the Byzantine emperor in the 9th century, securing the borders isn't important. How a politician handles religious arguments... why, that's the important thing, not how well he handles running the country, y'know?

As the Byzantine Empire went, so goes ours...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Labels: politics, Republican stupidity

Posted by: BadTux / 6/06/2007 12:56:00 PM

Comments:

You said you were a teacher? I would have given anything to have been in your class room, hell, I would have actually gone to class. You remind me of my AP History teacher, Mr. Relou, he was awesome...
# posted by angry ballerina : 6/6/07 1:27 PM

I would think more like the Roman, for our Senate is offering the bastard a crown. I still am waiting for Martial Law to be declared to prevent voting booths from opening.
# posted by georg : 7/6/07 6:08 AM

Hey, the Democrats apparently did the same thing the night before! It's everywhere.
# posted by Share Cropper : 7/6/07 6:15 AM

The Byzantine Empire *was* the Roman empire. When the Western empire fell, the Eastern half of the empire just kept going. They continued calling themselves the Roman Empire, but since they no longer controlled Rome, the folks who *did* control Rome took to calling them the Byzantine Empire, after their capital city of Byzantium (Constantinople, now Istambul).

History is written by the winners. The Roman Empire, in either of its incarnations (the one based in Rome, or the one based in Byzantium), wasn't one of the winners in the long run though they had a very good run of it for a thousand years or so, far longer than any current nation-state has existed in continuous form. But they lost in the end. Thus why we generally call it the "Byzantine Empire" rather than the "Roman Empire", even though it was a direct result of the Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire moving the capital out of Rome to Byzantium.
# posted by BadTux : 7/6/07 8:50 AM

This post has been removed by the author.
# posted by Take That Left : 7/6/07 8:52 AM

What are they supposed to do when Blitzer point blank asks Huckabee what he believes about Creation? Avoid the question?

What an awful question to ask in the first place! Like you have said, that has very little to do with the election, and was asked just jeer at Huckabee for actually believing the Genesis account. Talk to your buddies at CNN and tell em to run a better debate, it was just awful.

On top of the pointless questions on the faith, they sound problems all night long, and they put the main candidates all together in one place (taking away camera time from the others). On top of all that, the night before Blitzer had the second most talking time during the debate. Yes, that includes all of the Deomcratic candidates.

And, just for the record, they did address all of those points that you mentioned. Heck, some of them had to fight to get a word in on the issues because the debate was so poorly moderated. Not to pick on Huckabee again, but after he was drilled on Creation stuff, he never really got the chance to speak on the immigration issue he had been trying to voice on the entire debate.

Blame the poor moderation, not the candidates. They just answer questions.

And if you don't like faith, go talk to the Democrats. At one point, they say faith won't affect their decisions on issues such as abortion or homosexuality, whatever. But then they tell us that faith requires them to help the poor. Hypocritical? At least the Republicans are straight shooters, and realize that a real faith affects all of their decisions (instead of just the politically correct ones).
# posted by Jonathan : 7/6/07 8:53 AM

Honor Roll

Technorati embed?

Liberated Iraqis

Children celebrate liberation of parents
More pics of children celebrating
Liberated baby
Liberated women and children
More liberation, yessiree
More to follow, after I finish cursing SOB chickenhawks and get my breath back...

"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

-- Plato

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