posted on May 30, 2005 04:24:56 PM new
by Toby Sackton:
Thoughts on the Election
Despite some problems with voter irregularity, and scattered instances of republican cheating, I don’t believe there was any widespread conspiracy to steal the election. There was definitely voter suppression in Ohio, a deliberate attempt to deny minority communities adequate numbers of voting machines, and other obstacles all designed to lower the democratic vote, but these obstacles could have been overcome with a surge in turnout.
In fact, two things really stand out to me about the election. First, we did not turn out as many democratic voters as we had hoped. Although on election day there were suggestions that turnout could reach 120 million, or even 125 million (likely ensuring a Kerry victory) the actual votes seem to suggest a turnout just north of 115 million (59 million for Bush, 56 million for Kerry). So they got out more voters than we did. Second, the Republicans were stunningly successful at turning out their voters.
How this happened is in this amazing piece of information from the Los Angeles Times
“A poll released Tuesday by the Barna Group, which does polling for religious groups, found that born-again Christians voted for Bush over Kerry by a 62%-to-38% margin. The poll also found that although the "born-again" population constituted 38% of Americans, it represented 53% of the votes cast in the election.”
This data suggests a huge underground effort to organize around religion and Christian right communities in a way that overwhelmed democratic efforts to get out union members and single women and minorities.
It is unfathomable to me that Born again Christians could represent 53% of the total electorate. If that is a permanent alignment, we are indeed becoming the Western version of an Islamic theocracy, where the power of the government to enforce religious beliefs on the entire society is unquestioned and unrestrained.
It seems to me that the entire thrust of the Christian right is to enforce its religious dogma in secular society. They want to prohibit women from choosing abortions, and in some cases from even using contraception. They want to prohibit gay couples from gaining state recognition in either marriage or civil unions. They want to prohibit teaching about any type of sexuality to children and teenagers. They oppose use and distribution of condoms. They want to restrict depictions of sex in both public and private media. And above all, they divide the world into the “saved” who have accepted Jesus Christ, and the “other” who have not. There is little respect or recognition of the “other” except as a potential convert to Christ, or as a prop, like the current fascination with the Jews among fundamentalist Christians.
To me this parallels the militant Christianity of the Spaniards, who killed Indians who would not convert. It is a mirror image of those Islamic fundamentalists who ban women from public life and education under religious fatwa’s. It is little different from those radical Israeli Jews who believe god granted them rights to the land, and they will kill and destroy anyone who does not accept their view. It is a religious fundamentalism that feeds off of fear and repression.
This is a threat to American democracy. Our country was founded with a government of checks and balances designed to protect minorities because our ancestors fought against a system where a tyrant held absolute power. It is only because our government was originally designed to protect minorities such as unpopular pamphleteers, people who wanted no part of religion or government, members of unpopular sects and movements that the tremendous expansion of minority rights we have witnessed including votes for non-property owners, women’s suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, and the individual right to privacy has flourished as an expansion of that original intent.
Militant fundamentalism repudiates all this. For fundamentalists, there is no right of a minority to hold a different view. That is the essence of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists live in a pluralistic society, but they don’t accept the tolerant basis of a pluralistic society.
They present the same challenge to democracy that many saw in communism. Although in intent communism was supposed to be a democratic system, the actual practice of democratic centralism negated democracy. Once a decision was made, all members followed the party line. When communists operated within a larger society, this "party line" served to destroy democratic institutions. Communist party members would not accept majority decisions that fell outside the party line, because their loyalty was to the party, not to the larger democratic society as a whole. In a similar way, the loyalty of a fundamentalist is to his or her sectarian belief, not to a larger society in which the fundamentalist is only a part.
posted on May 30, 2005 06:48:43 PM new
Ummm... How does the fact that a large percentage of Americans consider themselves born again equate to them all being fundamentalist? Can't you be born again and not be a fundamentalist? According to this author, no. This statement is exactly the same as calling all Muslims terrorists.
Obviously if 53% of the electorate were fundamentalists, they ALL would have voted, and we would indeed be a theocracy. Obviously, this is not the case.
This article is not only illogical, it's just plain old stupid.
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Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum sonatur.
posted on May 30, 2005 07:20:50 PM new
did you expect anything different from a democrat??
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Baseball season has started,but they have it all wrong.3 strikes and you're out,4 balls you walk.I can tell you right now a man with 4 balls could not possibly walk
posted on May 31, 2005 09:40:40 PM new
Demomorns simply don't get it. They blame everyone else for their own problems and don't accept responsibility for their actions.
Thoughts On The Election
If Demomorons actually pulled their collective heads out of their rear ends, they would see that one of the letters in DFL stands for farmers. Problem is the farmers see right through the DFL's bull #*!@ and vote something other than Demomoron. In the last election, the Demomoron Kerry didn't carry one farm community nationwide. Why is that? Simple. Demomorons simply are self centered pigs that really don't care about anyone else except to screw everything up for everyone else.
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Alive in 2005
