I don’t usually offer political commentary on this board, but this post makes it hard to avoid.
The Republican Party, since Obama’s election, seems to have taken every deliberate step to destroy itself as a potential governing party in future electoral contests. John Boehner (a fellow Ohioan, I blush to admit) has been prominent in all of this. The response to the torture memos has been merely the latest step. I’m looking forward to the nomination of Sarah Palin to carry the GOP banner in 2012.

I am seriously pondering getting out of this country before the Republicans take power again.

Its not the party that makes them look foolish, its the parties running the party.
I know it sounds redundant but it seems to me, we should all have our bags packed and move to Mexico; the property will be cheap by now, healthcare is under the national health plan so, that’ll be covered. As for means of work and additional funds, we’ll just keep looking to the Obama’s for their handouts.
I would appreciate some sort of guidance in the Republican Party or even the Independants, I know they’re not ALL theives.. or are they?

Good grief Nick “before they take power again”? That phrase is the stuff of nightmares…..

Well I thought this was the pagan blog but I guess there’s been a mixup on the server and I got sent to the political blog. Where do I find the pagan blog?

One can only gaze in sadness at the spiritual ignorance of a person who finds condemning the actions of those who condone torture to be unrelated to spirituality.

I know, Cheryl. Alas, it’s better to honestly face reality…
The Republican Party was badly damaged. Many Americans support a torture investigation. This will not go over well with them.

If one was to consider a countries leaders as in some way a reflection of the collective, a micro to the macro. Then any review thereof could be considered as an introspective process capable of raising awareness and consciousness?

C’mon Gus, you’re being too hard on Mike. That was rude. You shouldn’t expect everyone have your level of training and practice.
But I would like to point out to everyone that torture, in cultures in which it becomes accepted, is often used to repress minority groups, and we Pagans are a minority. It is quite likely that somewhere in the world, in a country where torture *is* accepted, Pagans are being tortured as we speak, merely for being Pagan.
False confessions wrung out of people by torture can provide cover for any kind of repression. That was the pattern of the burning times, although few people know that far more people within the churches were tortured and repressed during the middle ages than pagans. Accusations of paganism and the torture-killings which accompanied them were one of the principal tools the High Church used to control rebellious subgroups.
Thermal
Mike said…
April 23, 2009 7:21 PM
Well I thought this was the pagan blog but I guess there’s been a mixup on the server and I got sent to the political blog. Where do I find the pagan blog?
Gus diZerega said…
April 23, 2009 9:00 PM
One can only gaze in sadness at the spiritual ignorance of a person who finds condemning the actions of those who condone torture to be unrelated to spirituality.

No Thermal, I don’t think I was rude.
Had Mike looked at other posts he would have quickly found many narrowly Pagan posts. If he was utterly apolitical, he would have found lots to read as well as stuff not to read – and the headings made the difference clear.
But he chose to say nasty stuff about the first political bog in a list of several that were not political.
That post dealt with torture, and with those who condone it, and their hypocrisy on MORAL grounds.
I can go farther – the administration I criticize, as a matter of policy, supported the most anti-spiritual so-called ‘religious; people in the country, people who were often viciously anti-Pagan (Falwell and Robertson blaming us for 9-11 because their hideous deity was offended we existed), killed thousands who had done us no harm, trashed every value Pagans I know hold about the earth and common decency, and made the country we live in a source of fear for many peoples of the world.
Mike should grow up or get a heart or learn to respect other people, or all of those.

Gus,
I agree that your address of torture in your post has much to do with the ethical standpoint of one’s religious affiliation, but I personally feel where this particular post leaves Paganism and goes into politics is your use of the topic to (again) insult and attack conservatives and fundamentalists.
My own thought on the matter is, it’s your blog, you can tie in whatever you want to your faith, not a problem. However, I agree with Thermal that your response was a bit rude and rather assumptive (not that I found Mike’s to be any better). You claim that you respected conservatives for certain values but then say that because of this issue – granted, a very important one – they have all lost your respect. That is a political statement, and while to divorce it from your spirituality would do the opinion a disservice, it is also not primarily a spiritual statement. You are lumping most or all conservatives together with some of their leaders by that statement; I do not believe all of the Republican Party’s leaders have lost their ethical standpoint, just the ones who have been vocal. I know quite a few conservatives who are glad that the Bush regime was outed. I also hope at least a couple conservatives in Washington publicly denounce Bush’s tactics on this issue, and anyone who has supported the secrecy of it.
Mike assumed you would not be talking about politics in a pagan blog. You assumed that Mike realized your stand that one really cannot be separated from the other. I tend to agree with that latter stance, but I know plenty of pagans who stay far out of politics, even as they might agree that torture is a moral and spiritual question. These might have wanted to see more of your discussion of torture and how the government is doing now, and less of your subsequent jabs of “comrade Boehner”. Responding the way you have was a bit useless, and possibly even preaching at the choir.
I, for one, do not wish to see you hold your tongue (or in this case, your fingers) on issues like this, as I agree the politics of religion is a big issue facing Neopaganism. However, I would also hope that you treat your readers with respect that have reasoning outside of what they type, and do not need to be talked down to like elementary students. Yeah, I could be grossly underestimating the stupidity of the readers of a pagan blog, but I’d really like to think otherwise.
-G

So where is the comment that Thermal is is referring to? I’m not seeing it. I’d like to see the post. It skips from Hermesphilus to Thermal. Did he light me up that harshly that he decided to remove the comment?
As far as my complaints about this blog being overly political, that would be the point of comments. If you expect only high praise, I suggest that you disable comments. You need a thicker skin.
Most of the recent posts I’ve read here have had a high political content. Many other blogs manage to cover pagan issues without being going on and on and on with the Obama religion crap. He’s a politician just like all the other politicians. He’s following in Bush’s footsteps. He’s not keeping his campaign promises just like all the other politicians. I don’t want to be reminded constantly of how screwed we are. I don’t want to be reminded how all Obama’s rich friends are being rewarded for destroying our economy, at our expense. So yes, please tone down the political rhetoric and concentrate on things that we can do something about.

Mike is a troll, and he is successfully trolling your blog. If this site had a registered user function we would be able to look at all of mike the trolls past trolling. Don’t allow trolls to tear down your work here. Pagans are just as free to discuss the political in relation to our values and morals as any other group. Frankly belief net being what it is, I am surprised you don’t see more trolling.

Having differing opinions does not make me a Troll. I prefer Ettin anyway. I love you PC people. It’s fine if you have an opinion as long as it agrees yours. The group think is really irritating.

Mike boy-
If you read the blog posts above you’d see my comment – if i remove anything it is stupidly abusive comments. From here on, you will not be allowed to post here till you can actually give us some arguments indicting you’ve read the people you criticize.
Bye.

>
Having sat in on what I seem to recall was a recruiting meeting for YAF, chaired by you, back in 19[xx] under pterodactyl skies, I do in fact believe it. Funny how it seems to have taken you so long to realize what so-called conservatives were all about, but I had reached that point long before that meeting, which I went to as a curiosity. My last memory of members of that group (YAF, that is) back in my hometown was every single one of them (all male of course) detailing for me how as sincere and dedicated why-not-victory boosters they were going to get themselves out of the draft as quickly as possible. So it took you all this time to fully realize that all these people (save Goldwater, whom I liked to the end of his days) were just power-hungry people looking for an apparatchik slot? Glad you’ve arrived.
Not sure where the paganism entered into the mix, but you certainly were an intellectual heathen (polypolitical if not polytheistic) back then anyway, so I guess it makes sense. As for protests about a bit of politics noting the sad moral decay festering away in certain circles in Washington, remember what The Man always had on his desk: Ni Illegitimi Non Carborundum, with all apologies to your regular readers for the illegitimi part. Nothing personal intended.

Gus, Chris has a point about a registered user function. Is there any way we can get that in place? Whether or not Mike is a troll isn’t the point. Trolls ARE out there and sooner or later they’re going to find and target this blog to play “Poke the Pagans”.

I have little control over who appears here. I do have power to delete the garbage.
I get occasional requests to approve a post. They have always been acceptable. I even got an email asking me to approve one of my own replies! So the system is not optimal.
And like many of you, I hates the captcha! (I also have no access to the emails of people who post here – so if you want to connect with me do so on facebook.)
But at least these methods keep us from being inundated with garbage.
I have occasionally removed posts, and early in my Beliefnet involvement some Watcher removed some eminently removable posts. So garbage and dreck will not be up here long. But I deliberately error on the side of permissiveness, in the chance that someone might be sincere but not very good at expressing themselves. Then I give them a warning if they persist. Then I delete.
One of the most unpleasant things about blogging is having to deal with people so crabbed and bitter that they cannot or will not engage in good faith dialogue. For many years this was on the political and religious right, but now it’s reappearing on the political left and will in time appear on the religious left at as well.
I think my favorite atheistic sci fi author, David Brin, has it about right – some people get addicted to the rush of self-righteousness, and it is that rush they seek, rather than genuine communication. He wrote a really fascinating and short piece on this issue: http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.htm

It’s been on the Left in the specter of political correctness for a long time. Don’t agree with them, then you are a racist, sexist homophobe — even if none of those are the topic. And heaven help you if it IS your topic. WIth the conservatives, the issue is some sort of vague “un-Americanism” that doesn’t seem to actually mean anything in particular. It also tends to be vaguely theistic, though the theology is also a bit fuzzy. Ignorance is the primary driver of intolerance among conservatives. A conservative’s self-righteousness is in a sense more primitive, too. But on the Left, the self-righteous intolerance comes about from their egalitarianism. In the end, both are intolerant of growth, evolution, and excellence.
I had a professor once who proclaimed that the only thing she didn’t tolerate was intolerance. I get that. It’s why I don’t have a lot of tolerance for conservatives or the Left/liberals in this country. Neither actually respect diversity (after all, by definition egalitarianism hates diversity).

Okay Troy, so in a nutshell what’s your point? That everything has to be tolerated by everyone in order for “growth, evolution and excellence” to occur? Yet you don’t tolerate conservatives or liberals. Doesn’t that make you intolerant? Wouldn’t that upset your professor? Aren’t intolerant conservatives and liberals *part* of the diversity in this country?
Just askin’

Well, it’s more than just intolerance I don’t much tolerate. I also don’t tolerate violations of the rule of law, initiation of coercion, and violations of liberty. Arbitrary uses of power, in other words. Thus my intolerance for the Left and the Right in equal measure, as they are equal violators.