So, what's the big deal? Why is the Republican Party so adamant about violating the separation of church and state by displaying the Ten Commandments in governmental facilities? The Commandments certainly are not reflected in Republican policies and practices. Various Republican politicians are involved in corruption and dirty tricks, engage in election fraud, alter the truth, commit adultery, cut aid to the needy and veterans and wage unnecessary wars. It seems that they are trying to garner support from religious people by politicizing the symbol of the Ten Commandments, but rejecting their substance.
It's beyond me how folks that fancy themselves as Christians could support George Bush and his war in Iraq. Since the war has lasted longer than WWII and the situation just gets worse and worse with victory nowhere in sight, it's clear that God is not with us in Iraq. How could He be?
First, Bush told a pack of lies about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Queda to deceive Congress and the American people into an unnecessary war. Iraq had long been under control by embargos and U.S. Air Force flyovers and was no threat to its neighbors as well as us. Bush's unprovoked, preemptive attack was both internationally illegal and immoral with the pope and other Christian leaders condemning him at the war's onset.
Then, there are other atrocities. Bush employed illegal torture and violated human rights in military prisons around the world. He deployed tons of weapons made of 'depleted uranium' from toxic nuclear waste, which are slowly killing scores of exposed American soldiers and Iraqis. The U.N. has classified them as real weapons of mass destruction and are forbidden by international law. In his pursuit of one man, thousands of innocent Iraqi babies have been killed and maimed. Apparently, it's wrong to kill (abort) American babies, but it's OK to kill Iraqi babies.
This war is all about greed. Securing the Iraqi oil fields for privatization by the oil companies was the object in its neo-con inception back in 1998 and remains the reason for today's continued occupation, which is generating the insurgent attacks and providing a rallying point for extremist mullahs. As thousands of our American soldiers are being killed and maimed, munitions manufacturers and war contractors such as Halliburton are reaping huge profits. While Bush gives big tax breaks to the well-heeled, he shorts the troops with needed war supplies including armored vests and vehicles and provides miserable medical care to the maimed and wounded.
By now, most Americans have seen the light and disapprove of Bush and his war. But, his conservative Christian base is still hanging on. In the Bible, Jesus prophesized that one day there would be those who say that 'I am Christ but will reject my teachings'. This prophecy is being fulfilled here. Each conservative Christian needs to consult his conscious and compare Bush's actions with the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ and reconsider his support. Rock bottom poll numbers should prompt a pullout from Iraq.
www.cartoons-political.com
Dan Merica is a political cartoonist and opinion writer battling the right wing scourge now devastating our country. His work is posted on his website, www.cartoons-political.com.
Is the truth of their own hypocrisy lost on them...
...or is it simply a case of the Religious Reich knows if they wrap the "word of god" in enough pretty, gold-leafed bullshit, their willingly ignorant flocks will eat it up like Piranha going after an injured fish?
I used to think I knew the answer to this question. I am not so sure anymore. I am getting to the point where I think the Religious Reich is so deluded, it is starting to believe its own bullshit.
Herein lies the danger in blind faith. When one can no longer tell the difference between day and night, up and down, left and right, then one becomes willing to accept anything they are told, if it is told with seeming integrity.
You are right. When it comes to the Ten Commandments, the number of those clamoring to ram them down our collective throats, yet do not even try to practice the most basic of them, is much higher than the number of people who truly practice them. I hear so often that the Ten Commandments are *supposedly* the basis for the American Justice system.
That is such bullshit! The Magna Carta is the basis for our system of justice. Hundreds of years of precedent in England is the basis for our system of justice. All the years of precedent her in America is the basis for our system of justice. Of the Ten Commandments, only "Thou shalt not kill," and "thou shalt not steal," have made it into the law books. When was the last time you saw someone put in jail for not "honoring thy father and thy mother," or "remembering the sabbath day, and keeping it holy?"
Never, you say? Well, you'd be right. We can't have a "day of rest" vis a vis the sabbath. Oh hell no! Shopping must go on seven days a week, 364 days a year (can't work on Jesus' supposed birthday, now can we?). Honoring mom and dad is as passe, antiquated, and quaint as a crank phone or the Model "T".
And what of bearing false witness? That seems to be DUBYA's absolute favorite commandment to break. He's torn that one to shreds, and still the idiot followers of the Religious Reich seem to think there's no harm, no foul. A lie is a lie. Bearing false witness is lying! DUBYA lies with the same ease with which most of us draw a breath. And yet, still the willingly ignorant and willingly blind think that he can do no wrong; that he's the Abraham Lincoln of our time.
No, sad to say, the only reason the right panders to the Religious Reich on the issue of the Ten Commandments is they know that action pays off in the voting booth. The easily led, willingly ignorant throng that makes up the followers of the Religious Reich's charlatan preachers are too stupid to realize when someone's pissing on their legs and telling them it's a warm summer rain. Those preachers count on the willing stupidity of their flock to keep the cash rolling in every Sunday.
I have said it before that maybe the Ten Commandments should be posted on government property. Maybe then, the politicians might at least be reminded that, according to the laws of the god in which the majority of Americans believe, lying is a sin!
Nah, that will never work. A politician who doesn't lie is as ineffectual as a Religious Reich preacher who doesn't point out the sins of others so no one will see the sins he himself commits.
Blessed be! Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 860 comments)
on Monday, April 16, 2007 at 1:16:03 PM
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