Religion Dispatches
…believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” Perry did not invent the Ponzi scheme analogy for Social Security; back in 1995, economist James Glassman (he who wrongly predicted that the Dow would hit 36,000) opined that Social Security was like a “Ponzi scheme” in the service of his argument that it should be privatized. (His failed prognostications on the robu…
Read More…department’s actions. Does the religious right have a role to play in the net neutrality debate? Another Baptist preacher is preaching against the sins of transfats. Rev. Michael O. Minor is fighting fat from his pulpit in the Mississippi Delta. He may want to mix in a few sermons on marriage. The Bible Belt has a higher divorce rate than the Northeast, researchers say. Some rabbis are getting help from comedy writers for their High Holy Day ser…
Read More…of the deal they are about to vote through: the complete exemption of high-net-worth individuals from any kind of sacrifice, now or in the future, while the sick, the poor, the elderly, and school kids will pay the whole tab for America’s return to fiscal discipline. I am someone who has resisted the Roger Hodge “mendacity of hope” line on Obama, thinking it too harsh. Until now, that is. My stomach churns to think how this president and the leadi…
Read More…he prospect of watching one’s standard of living decline and social safety net fray, for the sake of visa-free travel conveniences and the privilege of more centralized banking. Don’t Trust Immigration (Islam), and Don’t Trust Marxism (Judaism) While in Bosnia, I was driven past Sarajevo’s historic National Library, which was deliberately torched during the 1990s war. Centuries of history were erased, part of a larger campaign to deny the historic…
Read More…oice between us spending our dotage in helplessness and filth and our high-net-worth friends having to forgo next year’s Learjet, Americans will chose the personal sacrifice every time. Bitter words, but all too true. I will inject very own note of bitterness by observing that the conservatives who never tire of warning us about the road to serfdom seem to have missed the fact that we are already serfs. Not serfs of a totalizing government, as the…
Read More
…hat Jesus opposed the minimum wage or that the bible takes a stand against net neutrality. One of Barton’s chief tricks is to conflate two concepts and treat them as the same thing. In this case, he references the 1968 Supreme Court decision of Epperson v Arkansas in which the court ruled that laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were based on religious objections and therefore violated the First Amendment. On his WallBuilder website, he say…
Read More…y the Heritage Foundation) is the Reagan-esque idea that government safety nets promote “dependency,” while evangelizing the poor will bring them to Jesus and—voila!—out of poverty. As I argued last year, writing about liberal-leaning religious groups countering Glenn Beck’s attack on social justice, the debate about the role of government should rooted in policy, not theology. As Peter Laarman has noted in these pages, in support of a robust defe…
Read More…ngersoll also wrote a post Wednesday on Barton’s biblical argument against net neutrality. Barton kicked off his new role as emerging tea party darling in 2009 with the Texas textbook controversy. As one of the appointed experts to review Texas’ social studies curriculum, he recommended that the Board of Education remove from textbooks César Chavez (labor organizer and civil rights leader) and Thurgood Marshall (the nation’s first black US Supreme…
Read More…a Butt, R-Columbia, who said when she was in high school, “we gave up Aqua Net hair spray” because of fears “it was causing global warming.” “Since then scientists have said that maybe we shouldn’t have given up that aerosol can because that aerosol can was actually absorbing the Earth’s rays and keeping us from global warming.” Mother Jones has video of the debate. The bill, which has yet to pass the Senate, would require teachers to be helped “t…
Read More
…y founded on the principles of solidarity and cooperation, a social safety net, and the aspiration to be the “most moral army in the world.” Remember the old IDF adage “shooting and crying” (yorim u bokim), to illustrate the necessity of war and the moral conscience that remains. A democracy, albeit flawed, but one that included a meaningful movement with a sincere belief that coexistence was possible. Peace Now, founded in 1978 to promote a genui…
Read More