Via Dailykos.
LA GOPer: November A Choice Between An Atheist Society And A Christian Nation
Appearing before the Republican Women of Bossier with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) cast the November elections as a choice between godlessness and Christianity. He also called bipartisanship impossible.
“We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle — one is going to have to win,” Fleming said.
We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we’re going to have to win that battle, we’re going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things.
I confess the idea of going the way of western Europe is terrifying to me. Just imagine the horror: Healthcare for everyone, shorter work weeks, six weeks of vacation, strong worker protections and rights, inexpensive education and child care, no debate over whether or not evolution is true, and so on. These are abominations that simply can’t be allowed to happen.
August 27, 2010 at 1:01 am
This isn’t even the New Christendom of the mid-twentieth century that led to liberation theologies. This is simply a de-centralized, Protestant version of old Christendom… good god that’s frightening!
August 27, 2010 at 8:37 am
Here in western Europe, we’re always puzzled when these US right-wingers point to us as having gone down the ‘socialist road’. Then we remember that the same people think their current President is a socialist and it all becomes clear…
Of course, the real laugh is that they all seem to be able to ignore the fact that the New Testament depicts Jesus as somewhere to the left of Marx.
August 27, 2010 at 1:06 pm
That’s what people like myself, Jon, and Protevi are up against down here in Louisiana. Governor Jindal, by the way, is a creationist and won easily in this state. It’s no wonder education has been cut repeatedly under his administration.
August 27, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Yes, ridiculous. That and the increasing visibility and normalization of hate-speech against Muslims in the US is disturbing. The comedian and writer Dylan Moran once said that there are stupid people everywhere, but that the stupid people in the US seem to be the most stupid. There certainly is an incredible lack of historical and social context in so much of the public discourse about these things. A complete lack of subtlety and refined distinctions. Sometimes I spend an hour or so watching CNN or C-Span or some other horrible waste of time and I really can’t imagine that the average American is as bluntly stupid and myopic as so many of our representatives in Congress and the Senate — not to mention “our” media, those people who are “supposed” to be the voice of the people. (Does that even need scare quotes? It’s almost automatically ironic. The irony is included in it already.)
August 27, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Some conservative comments are a bit odd. But I’d note libertarians often look quite admiringly at the Netherlands both in terms of social liberties but more importantly economic ones. Even Scandinavia has really opened their markets pretty significantly. In some ways much more so than the US has. (Look at the economic freedom charts and outside of the socialist proper programs for taking care of people most those countries score amazingly high)
It seems to me Europe has really embraced neo-liberalism but far too many see Europe through the lens of the 60’s and 70’s for some odd reason.
August 28, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Well, if you rely on a few right-wingers in Texas to write U.S. textbooks (and remove Thomas Jefferson and Thurgood Marshall from history) what do you expect? America will get stupider. Education will continue to get worse and worse as time goes on.