December 2007 Archives

An interesting piece by Max Obuszewski: "Largest Civil Disobedience Movement in U.S. History Is Underway".

Possible conclusions are:

• Civil disobedience is nearly useless


• There is a quiet revolution afoot


• The civil disobedience hasn't been done right


• It hasn't been properly highlighted


• The national leadership has failed to use this


• People are using these actions as a way of washing their hands of the situation without a real drive to change things ("not in my name")


• Corollary: People will stop these actions if it seems they might change something


• Others?

Poster cartoonist Mike Flugennock responds in the comments section to the article:

If this crap were actual "resistance" -- that is, direct, active interference with troop movements, shipments of war material, any other actions with serious impact on "business as usual" -- it might be worth mentioning. As it is, it's a bunch of people who got arrested at some contrived CD action, got toted off to jail, paid their fines, and were released, with no impact whatsoever on business, fascism and imperialism as usual.

Huckabee: "Let's understand what sin means -- sin means missing the mark," he responded. "Missing the mark can mean missing the mark in any area. We've all missed the mark. ... How we miss the mark is less important than we all miss the mark. The mark is that we have marriage -- men and women, they marry, they create children, and they train their replacements and you have a future generation then that creates their replacements and trains them. That's the mark. If we didn't have that as the ideal, we wouldn't have a civilization that was able to perpetuate."

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

The exchange between Jesus and his disciples shows how misunderstandings can show the soul. The disciples seem to think that pre-marital sex is fine while Jesus obviously doesn't. He places as an ideal being a "eunuch" -- not procreating. While Jesus indicates how God is revealed over time, Huckabee's "ideal" -- 2,000 years later -- is a retrograde of Jesus's. Talk about missing the mark.

Charles Krauthammer writes today: "The God of the Founders, the God on the coinage, the God for whom Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving day is the ineffable, ecumenical, nonsectarian Providence of the American civil religion whose relation to this blessed land is without appeal to any particular testament or ritual. Every mention of God in every inaugural address in American history refers to the deity in this kind of all-embracing, universal, nondenominational way. (The one exception: William Henry Harrison. He caught cold delivering that inaugural address. Thirty-one days later, he was dead. Draw your own conclusion.) I suspect that neither Jefferson's Providence nor Washington's Great Author nor Lincoln's Almighty would look kindly on the exploitation of religious differences for political gain. It is un-American. It is unfortunate that Romney has had to justify himself in response."

Some similarities to the Washington Post's own editorial: "'Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government,' Mr. Romney said. But not all Americans acknowledge that, and those who do not may be no less committed to the liberty that is the American ideal."

Mitt Romney: "Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government." From his speech today.

During a debate on May 16 of this year: "I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo."

Other precious lies and hypocrisies from today's speech: "We believe that every single human being is a child of God -- we are all part of the human family. The conviction of the inherent and inalienable worth of every life is still the most revolutionary political proposition ever advanced. John Adams put it that we are 'thrown into the world all equal and alike.'"

"America took nothing from that Century's terrible wars -- no land from Germany or Japan or Korea; no treasure; no oath of fealty."