Monday, September 13, 2010

Christians don't value human life

It's obvious, isn't it, that Christians don't value human life? Look at the tens of thousands of innocent women put to death - often burned alive - for "witchcraft." Men, too, sometimes.

Oh, they don't do that anymore? That was just a tragic episode in their history? Not true. "Witches" are still being killed in Africa. Furthermore, it's commanded in their holy book, that Christians must kill witches. It's still the same book. That hasn't changed.

If you claim that Christians have changed, that they do value human life these days, then why haven't they edited the Bible to remove that commandment (and the similarly disgusting promotions of genocide, slavery, and child-abuse)? Why aren't Christians protesting against these parts of their holy book? Why aren't they marching in the street, demanding that the worship of such life-destroying acts be ended forever?

Clearly, Christians don't value human life.

Turning to a completely different subject, I thought this article at TPM by Steve Clemons was interesting:

And now the editor in chief of one of Washington's most venerable rights-concerned journals of opinion, Martin Peretz, has written clearly that he doubts that Muslim lives are worth much and that in his gut he doesn't believe Muslims deserve the protections of American laws and civil rights.

Nick Kristoff writes:
For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine's editor in chief, it asserted: "Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims." Mr. Peretz added: "I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."
One of my late mentors, Hans Baerwald, taught me that the only way to get a real rather than shallow sense of a political system's norms and operating behavior was to watch it under stress.

With commentary like that we have seen from John Bolton, Martin Peretz, Richard Cheney, Liz Cheney, Glenn Beck, and saw in the political maneuvering of Cheney Chief of Staff, David Addington, we unleashed an America that defiles key aspects of its own DNA and that is less-trustable by the rest of the world today.

To take this further, I think the debate today is not about the treatment of Muslims or those of Arab descent, but about the United States itself.

John Bolton and Martin Peretz, in undermining America's core values of a big-tent approach to accommodating and absorbing other societies, are not performing a patriotic duty -- but are displaying the opposite of American patriotism.

Muslims are impossibly vile and don't deserve civil rights like normal human beings. Just look at the Koran. We all know that believers follow every word in their holy books, right? And religions can't possibly change. In fact, we should probably edit the U.S. Constitution to remove citizenship from every Muslim - and members of every other religion that advocates violence...

Hey, I have no liking for Islam, myself (or Christianity, for that matter). But when did we Americans turn into the exact opposite of what America used to stand for? Is it just that we're such hopeless cowards that any threat at all turns us into gibbering lunatics? Please explain this to me, because I just don't get it.

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