It's okay. I didn't want to be that guy's brother anyways.

I don't have a problem with the statements themselves, only the mindset they may imply, and I'm not willing to hang a dude for that.

'way2lazy2care' said:

'Dragonsoulj' said:

First Amendment violation, no. Separation of church and state, debatable. He isn't forcing his religion on anyone. It's more of a request.

I do think what he said was like political suicide and stupid. If he replaced christianity with a college fraternity, his meaning would be practically the same, but the motivation would be association/organization based rather than religious.


Just goes to show how religion can make non-controversial things incredibly controversial.

Yeah…. those two things are so much alike [rollseyes]

the meaning of the sentence is pretty much a like.

All he's saying is that anyone in some group A is his brother/sister. Anyone who is not in some group A is not his brother/sister, but he wishes they were. The group is unimportant, but because it's religious and he's a politician it's bad.

It's not like the ideas he's preaching are that radical. Poorly said, but not radical. There are far far worse things said on a daily basis by politicians all over the world. This just made headlines because this one happened to be about religion.

...

Superpig, you're correct. The far right wing has been going on and on with covert bigotry for a long time now, and so this is nothing new.

Whenever someone calls the far right out about their radical behaviour (like that sherriff from Arizona did), the far right just lies and says that the Tea Party is a "grassroots" effort, which is just a feeble attempt to diffuse the blame for heinous political behaviour. We all know it's not grassroots if the people are rounded up and funded by the rich. Ditto for the far right in Canada. They were/are trying to push warrantless wiretapping to counteract terrorism. Bigotry through "caution", just like the far right in the US does it.

Fear and hate, it's all the far right has to go on, and Thank God people are starting to realize that they are being deceived. I mean, the Tea Party fizzled because it was just hot air, and not even millions of dollars in funding could keep it from utterly collapsing. People just aren't dumb enough for that kind of thing to happen successfully.

So please don't try to marginalize Alpha (even if he's a treehugger, haha, I kid, I kid), because in reality, only a very tiny fraction of the billions of people in this world willingly accept this right wing type of behaviour -- my guess is like, maybe 100 million people or so, at the very maximum.

I like trees! What of it?!

I do not like trees. One of them jumped out and hit my truck while I was 4x4ing this summer. As far as I'm concerned, they're all terrorists!

/end_thread_derailment

Fear and hate, it's all the far right has to go on, and Thank God people are starting to realize that they are being deceived. I mean, the Tea Party fizzled because it was just hot air, and not even millions of dollars in funding could keep it from utterly collapsing. People just aren't dumb enough for that kind of thing to happen successfully.

the tea party publicized by the news had no association with the tea party in it's original incarnation, and the tea party in it's original incarnation was upset with both parties.

Also you shouldn't generalize to think that fear and hate aren't used by both sides. Obama won in large part because democrats have been feeding hate for bush and the war for the four years prior. Republicans won because they did the same for democratic policies.

It would be pretty easy to argue that fear and hate got you to hate a party you obviously know little about if you think the tea party you see on tv represents the beliefs of it's unofficial original founders who represent the majority of its members.

'taby' said:

Fear and hate, it's all the far right has to go on, and Thank God people are starting to realize that they are being deceived. I mean, the Tea Party fizzled because it was just hot air, and not even millions of dollars in funding could keep it from utterly collapsing. People just aren't dumb enough for that kind of thing to happen successfully.

the tea party publicized by the news had no association with the tea party in it's original incarnation, and the tea party in it's original incarnation was upset with both parties.

Also you shouldn't generalize to think that fear and hate aren't used by both sides. Obama won in large part because democrats have been feeding hate for bush and the war for the four years prior. Republicans won because they did the same for democratic policies.

It would be pretty easy to argue that fear and hate got you to hate a party you obviously know little about if you think the tea party you see on tv represents the beliefs of it's unofficial original founders who represent the majority of its members.

The original Tea Party was about taxation without representation. The contemporary tea party is just a bunch of average whiners who are blaming the government for the collapse of the economy. The economic problems were worldwide, and everyone was to blame. Do these average whiners even watch global news? Anyway, with shows like "Flip This House" on prime TV channels, it's no wonder why the housing economy crumbled in the US/Canada. Too many greedy people marking up the prices of houses way beyond their actual value, and too many greedy real estate agents / bankers (e.g., right wing capitalists) soaking it all up. In any case, there was an estimated 90,000 to 1.5 million people at the Beck rally. Please don't try to tell me that this is a small fraction of the tea party, even if it was only 90,000. Even then, it seems that 80% of tea party members consider themselves right wing. That's a far cry from 50%.

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck have no counterpart on the left, no matter what you say. I recently read Stephen King's book Full Dark, No Stars, and holy cow does Palin get blasted. Nice.

That said, maybe I should start blaming Bush for the collapse of the Canadian housing market, and for the collapse of the Internet bubble in 1999. Heck, Bush is to blame for the birth of his father! Even worse, Bush is the reason why they always put the cheese next to the meat on an Egg McMuffin, so if you don't feel like meat, you end up losing half the cheese when you peel it off. Damn you Bush, just damn you.

And in case you didn't catch it, I hinted that I try to be centrist, not left -- which is why I made the treehugger joke at Alpha's expense.

I'm not from the US so I'm going to shut up now. I'm not even supposed to be on here.