Saturday, February 7, 2015
"Understanding The Lure of Brutality"
Found on a extremist right wing blog:
"Well, Obama wants us Christians to get off our “High Horse” and come down the level of islam. Isn’t that a hoot?...he not only got the Crusades story wrong.... but he also seemed to blame slavery on AMERICAN Christians….as if slavery started here..."
The ignorant on the right are still seething over the truth that President Obama spoke in his prayer breakfast speech. Because he reminded everyone that Christians were also capable of using their religion to justify atrocities, the extremists went all funny in the head and threw a temper tantrum of epic proportions.
We know there's no sin in being ignorant, only in willfully staying that way. So in the interest of enlightening those who refuse to acknowledge history and its truths, here's the manifesto, written by CSA's vice president, Alexander Stephens, which explains how the good Christians in the south at that time interpreted their Bible to justify the brutalization of an entire group of human beings:
[T]he first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society ... With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so.
It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another star in glory." The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws.
This blog has also reminded its readers that the dehumanization, debasement, and murder of members of an entire group of Americans occurred as recently as 1981. We understand why this would make certain zealots uncomfortable when faced with this horrid truth. What those zealots didn't understand (and why should they when understanding would interfere with their Cult of Hatred for Mr. Obama?) is that President Obama simply acknowledged that religions often use their holy books and scriptures to justify genocide.
The ignorant on the right will have none of it. Any reminders of the history of genocide of Native Americans and the brutalization of black Americans is, to them, heretical and sullies their infantile idea of America. Like children who can't deal with their humanly flawed parents, they refuse to face reality, and instead demonize those who place that reality in front of their noses.
Their fits and tantrums do not change history or truths; their ignorant and childish responses only point to the fact that they prefer to ignore them.
More on this subject:
TA-NEHISI COATES:
"If you are truly appalled by the brutality of ISIS, then a wise and essential step is understanding the lure of brutality, and recalling how easily your own society can be, and how often it has been, pulled over the brink."
The Foolish, Historically Illiterate, Incredible Response to Obama's Prayer Breakfast Speech
Using religion to brutalize other people is not a Muslim invention, nor is it foreign to the American experience.
Black Men Were Burned Alive in the Bible Belt
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16 comments:
At least the "ignorant" are not beheading folks. As of yet anyway.
For the righties of whom you speak, they obviously need more eye salve.
the right winger you quote at the beginning of the post, is he or she in grammar school or junior high school?
Likely middle school with a nursery school level of cognition. Some just don't seem to progress.
Man is a brutal animal. Religion does not make him so, but it is often used as justification.
Thanks for posting the Stephens quote. One of the more annoying lies being spread about history by right-wing revisionists these days is the lie that the secession of the Confederacy was motivated not by a desire to preserve slavery but by the need to preserve states' rights or some other abstraction. Based on the Confederates' own writings on the matter, they themselves would have been quite baffled by such a claim.
There's some plagiarist who copies and pastes your blog posts into conservative blogs. Everything you write is pasted in FT's and Lisa's blog under the name "Fox Snooze."
AWttW,
Oh, I'm not concerned. Except for Ducky, RN, and a few lefties, no one on those blogs would understand any of it anyway. Most of what they plagiarize is way over their heads. I understand they save most of what I write in their recipe files.
Blaise Pascal:
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Indeed tis so.
You can't expect the right wing extremists to understand complicated ideas, and never expect them to tell the truth on anything Obama says. Their default reaction is to deliberately misquote and misunderstand. Idiots.
Caution! One of Lisa's Smut Hut sock puppet escapees!
"When Obama alludes to the evils of medieval Christianity, he fails to acknowledge the key word: “medieval.” What made medieval Christianity backward wasn’t Christianity but medievalism.
It is perverse that Obama feels compelled to lecture the West about not getting too judgmental on our “high horse” over radical Islam’s medieval barbarism in 2015 because of Christianity’s medieval barbarism in 1215."
-Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg is full of medieval shit. Christian KKKers were torturing and burning Americans all over the south from 1870 to 1981.
German Christians participated in the genocide of Jews.
And Christians slaughtered each other in Northern Ireland.
Those were not "medieval" times. Goldberg is a jerk.
But we never expect honesty or truth from people who create their own reality.
"What made medieval Christianity backward wasn’t Christianity but medievalism."
If that is the case, then the same can be said for the Islamic terrorists. It isn't the religion, it is the times we live in.
Jerry that reasoning is too rational for people like Goldberg to understand.
Also the Cult of Haters completely and utterly missed President Obama's point: all religions at some point use their scriptures and holy books to commit genocide or other atrocities. That was his point. Not what the melonheads say. They just don't have the intellect to sort it out.
Maybe I shouldn't have called Jonah Goldberg a jerk. What I should have called him is Doughy Pantload:
"Some people seem to think we hate Jonah Goldberg.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. First of all, the Doughy Pantload has given us hundreds of hours of entertainment; in his official role as Village Idiot of the Internet, he never ceases to amuse us with his falling off of walls, tumbling into ditches, and trying to come up with smart things to say when he’d really rather be at home watching Deep Space Nine DVDs."
-Mister Leonard Pierce of sadlyno.com
let's see--"jerk" or "doughy pantload." I'll go with "doughy pantload." It suits him perfectly.
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