Sometimes the disconnect between what they say and normative decency and/or just plain tact is mind-boggling.

"It's "Washington" that is corrupt, and a "Real Conservative (TM)" is the only way to fix it. CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE 9/11 9/11. Thank you and good night."

Notice it's "Washington", like that is some completly seperate entitty that has nothing to do with them.

Never mind it was THEIR PARTY that is responsible for necessitating the need for change in the first place! You don't clog the toilette and keep shoving TP into the bowl, yet this is exactly what they are asking people to do!

And isn't arguing that Bush/Christian conservatives are not *real* Christians a standard trope of liberal Christians?

I am ashamed and appalled to say my parents would probably tell you the same things you heard from those Huckabee supporters while you were here. Too many people are just like them. They mean well, honestly. They don't mean to be hateful and ignorant. They have been conditioned their whole lives to believe that Christian ALWAYS = Good and that God will punish them for not doing everything they can to enforce his commandments. It's all about fear.

There are people here that see it for what it is, but there aren't enough. Sometimes I'd really like to move if I could afford to. It's really sad to me that so many people here are so blind.

...if he wuzzn't daid..."

Thank the gods for HBO and Bill Maher (said the Fagnostic).

And thanks to the Christian Victim Syndrome, even if we did remake the constitution to "reflect God's Law", a good chunk of them would immediately split off and whine because it didn't reflect their version of "God's Law".

For instance, should we base this make-over on the King James version of the Bible, or the Catholic Douay-Rheims version?

That's why we have all these different religions in the first place, and that's why there are several different flavors of Lutherans.

What exactly does being a good christian have to do with governing well anyways? One of these days, Americans better wake up and smell the coffee. You people have 10,000 nukes and lots of real enemies. Good and Christian isn't going to cut it one day and we're all going to go "BOOM!!"

That won't be very fucking pretty now will it?

The core of the belief system is that we can only know the truth of God, through our study of the Bible, because the Bible is the Word of god. This of course leads me to my ultimate criticism of the religous right. I do not believe that the Bible is the word of God. I believe the Bible was written by men attempting through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to translate the word of God, into words that men might be able to understand. The problem being, that God cannot be translated perfectly into words, and so ultimately the Bible is only a reflection of the word of God.

I think that perhaps it is time amend the word of God as guided by the Holy Spirit so that we might better understand it in relationship to the modern world, particularily in regards to womans rights.

My first proposed amendment, we strike 1 Timothy 2:9-15

My guess is that a more important measure of justice and fairness is how people treat people that they do not know, not people in their day to day life. If you live in a small town where everybody knows each other, sure, politeness is important, yadda yadda yadda. But a great deal of what's important in politics and society involves people not of your kin, clan, clavern, town, county, or even religion, state, or region.

More abstract concepts -- prisoners and criminal law, interrogation of criminal suspects or prisoners of war, ANYTHING involving furriners, or the existence of The Gay (which isn't in their small town, just in San Francisco and Boston) -- is where their little minds go off the rails.

For those of you who are convinced Dan is obsessed with the fatties, please note that he went to South Carolina and didn't say a thing about it. Maybe he didn't have time to go to Wal-Mart?

*OTOH, after living here a while, I realize a) I was raised by wolves b) civility isn't so bad.

We have to look at what people do, not what they say or how they interact with us. It's a truism that "Good people do bad things all the time/"