The article states (correctly) that one of the problems with creating rip-offs of Nirvana and Jay-Z for the Christian music scene is that you are trying to "shoehorn a message that is essentially about obeying authority" into an essentially rebellious medium.

The fact that this is correct shows how far "Christians" have strayed from the message of Jesus, who not only frustrated and angered the religious and secular authorities of his day but was an outright criminal and was executed for it. My Christianity causes me to question the so-called wisdom of our authorities, and I often find that they lack any wisdom at all.

My Christian music would be very anti-authority, but it would not be popular among today's "Christians".

This is what troubles me the most about the dozens of churches I have attended and most representations of christianity by those who prosess it. The chant words are submission, surrender and obedience - putatively to God

Yet it quickly morphs into demands for obedience to leaders, groups and ministries. In other words, exactly the religous crowd Jesus rebelled against and warned about. Yet the NT states definitively that no christian need any man to teach him and that there is no mediator between man and God.

The result is a bleating sea of sheep who vote for Bush when told by extortionist con men on the take that he is God's man and lack even the simplist capacity for critical thought. It is all about fiting in to the us/them groupism which defines their faith. I doubt many even have a secure knowledge of their own faith since that is handed down to them every Sunday, which is to say, outsourced.

Not only that, but critical analysis must be applied to how the current collection of manuscripts called the new testament came to be canonized by catholic priests at the order of a roman emporer. After understanding that most texts are 16th generation mistranslated copies of letters which were all writen a century after Jesus lived without authoritative authorship, it does limit the absolute authority of said texts.

That is what our God given brains are for, to discern truth from what is available, and that requires the astute rejection of what one is counselled to obey in the majority of christendom. While seeming like rebellion, it is not. In order for rebellion to occur, there must be some valid authority against to rebel. These lying hypocrites do not qualify.

Um...what does voting for President Bush have anything to do with Christianity? And why, pray tell, would I want Al Gore or John F-ing Kerry as my president? Just curious.

If you follow politics at all, the voter base most credited with the smirking chimp's re-election was the religious right, not to be confused with actual christians.

So, lower taxes and national defense had nothing to do with it?

"So, lower taxes and national defense had nothing to do with it?"

Lower taxes? Only if you are rich. My taxes haven't gone down, at ll...

National defense? Only if you are so myopic as to believe that telling lies justifies the invasion of a country that posed absolutely no threat whatsoever to the national security of the United States of America.

lovethebomb:

If you follow politics at all, the voter base most credited with the smirking chimp's re-election was the religious right, not to be confused with actual christians.

They provided a margin, bombsie, true, but when you have a country that's, what, something like 80% self-proclaimed Christian of some sort or another, clearly many Christians are voting t'other way, right?

hellsie, you do have a point although the exit polls and other national surveys indicated that when one identified onself as christian the margin was greater than 30%. however, this does not take into account the very pivotal role the organized religious right held in forming a reliable voter base for Rove et al to map out a numbers game in each state. it is also true that most "churches" were bribed by faith based intitatives and even reliably democratic black and catholic church leaders began mindf-king their congregations to vote Bush.

They began saying that if "you vote for Kerry you are committing a sin," using the ridiculous argument about abortion and gays, although the legislation passed and supreme court nominess are all aimed at the consolidation of corporate power and big business at the expense of the worker, consumer and average citizen, the wedge issues having little to do with what republicans do once in office.

so I guess I am most angry at the mindless sheeple who call themselves christian who voted for Bush at the urging of their paid off and bribed leaders/wolves. it has to do with the authoritarian mind inculcated in such environs, which is to say, the desire and need to have a big strong daddy figure to follow and make you feel safe. which is to say they seek safety in the arms of those who terrorized them. that is another aspect of the infantilization of the american mind.

Well...that infantilism works both ways as far as voting; conservatism having reasonable contempt for the "nanny state," etc.

It boils down to abortion, basically. The rest, the faux righteousness, the pretense of "we're a Christian nation," school prayer, etc., is just bunting. Even gay marriage--I think "civil unions" would likely pass if they weren't wedged with the loaded word "marriage." Hell, even Bush supports civil unions--he just won't go out of his way to make them happen.

But abortion is a traumatic issue for many, the ultimate wedge. Choice, and anti-choice, raise big funds and big votes for both parties. I think to rattle the status quo, slow-burn controversy might be anathema to both sides. Frankly I don't think the Right wants the debate--it is much easier and more lucrative to denounce the flimsy codification of Roe and use it as proof of the decadence of liberal culture.

Perhaps it is time to put it to a vote? I could see a few states voting against legal abortion for exactly one election cycle, after which all the pro-lifers will be thrown out of office when it becomes plain that just as many, many pro-choice people choose to have babies, many pro-lifers secretly avail themselves of their right to choose.

sadly, you may be correct. in europe and well, in every industrailized democracy, they recognize the basic need for it's citizens to have health care. in the us, we choose to fund the military industrial complex at the tune of a trillion a year instead, to build billion dollar bombs. so those who vote republican, who don't make 6 figures, on the single issue of abortion make the choice for war, the gutting of goverment agencies that serve the public and regulate business such as meat inspection and air/water purity, and would rather go without health care so that a fetus might live.

of course that too is an abtraction because it will take more time to stack the supremes. also, as you mentioned, it would not fly for more than a year before all elected officials local, state and federal would be voted out of office. so it is merely a bait and switch wedge issue to dangle in front of the anti-abortion crowd who , for this con job, give up health care for themselves and their children and the protection of the environment, workers and consumer safety.

the nanny state? let's have some basic preventative health care available first. not many complain when meat inspectors find e coli or regulators a potentially lethal product or pill. of course under bush the foxes are gaurding the hen house so not much of that gets done anyway. in europe you can't even talk about the left in american politics since to them and all rational people our "left" is their moderate-right wing.

no one went broke underestimating the stupidity of the american people. that goes double for poor/middle class people who vote republican.

While the con(artist)servatives and li(e)bertarians may like to publicly rant about, and mock as part of a nonexistant "nanny state" any legislation that attempts to limit death and suffering (for those who don't have enough money of their own to purchase the desired level of "quality of life"), it needs to be borne in mind that many business interests also have a significant financial stake in our prolonged and healthier living.

The insurance industry, for one. Take automobile seat belts, shoulder harnesses, & air bags for example: whiile nobody can accurately predict whether wearing them will help or hurt in any particular instance, in the aggregate, more people survive car crashes when they are used than when they are not; likewise, in the aggregate, people who used seat belts, etc. also suffered fewer and less severe injuries than those who did not.

The implications for insurers are painfully obvious: fewer deaths in automobile accidents mean delayed payouts on life insurance policies (and longer periods of collecting premiums); fewer and less severe injuries meant fewer and smaller claims on health & medical policies; less of each also meant fewer and smaller claims on automobile liability policies (for policyholders found to be at fault).

While I have not yet heard of any open involvement on the insurance industry's part in matters like "seatbelt laws" (like Ohio's), I do not doubt that they were active behind the scenes, once they recognized their financial stake in the matter. Nor do I believe that they were the only ones to get involved out of self-interest.

Comments?

Miscreant Mutt

Certainly your argument makes a lot of sense. However, most drivers don't carry comprehensive insurance and the family would receive no payout in case of death except for when the other driver, when at fault, has comprehensive.

Insurance is a numbers game, which is why it should not be involved in our nation's health care. Other nations recognize that the citizenry is their nations greatest resource and act accordingly. Here, we tempt them to throw their bodies on the meat grinders in the middle east for a college education, which many nations offer free or at vastly subsidized rates.

Health insurers only profit if the sickest are kept out of the risk pool which they now accomplish via rejection by pre-existing conditions and other insidious means of keeping those who need health care from getting it.

The main argument, it would seem to me, is that nearly all businesses would benefit enormously if universal health care were passed since they would then not have to pay for the vast majority of via employer's insurance, especially small business. Then why don't they support it? Republican rank and file I can only guess; low tax mantra, no regulation, ect.

If you watched closely when they took down the last attempt at universal health care, the major players, medical, pharmeacutical and insurance industries formed an unbeatable traid. I imagine most big business understand that to take down these big brethren is not in the interest of the corporatocracy and play along. But they know they would be able to then compete with european /and other markets.

With all due respect, you should have a sit-down talk with your insurance provider's agent: "comprehensive" refers to damage to your own vehicle from accidents, whether you were at fault or not; "liability" refers to damage caused to others, when you are at fault for the accident. And again, particular instances are notoriously unpredictable, but the benefits are clear in the aggregate. And this is as far as anybody needs to go on this subject.

I would agree with you on most of the rest of your post, especially considering my own personal experiences with health insurers. Given my own pre-existing conditions, all that I could get was a budget-busting policy that covered little or nothing. One wonders how long it will be before people are refused employment for pre-existing medical conditions at firms that have or provide employee medical benefits.

Much good can be done with just two simple fixes: forbid health insurers from cherry-picking their customers, and permit full deduction of health insurance premiums on income tax returns. Not a perfect solution, but we may have to settle for incremetal fixes, instead of one-size-fix-all broad-stroke approaches.

Miscreant Mutt

It is not stupid to vote against abortion. In fact, it is quite smart. When you know the value of human life, and you treasure motherhood and children, you do not open the door to corporate ownership of our genes, governmental "Giantism" whereby the DNA of America: LIMITING, LIMITED GOVERNANCE AND A BALANCE OF POWERS is lost. You do not throw out the 2,000 year old Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm." You do not make doctors and other medical professionals mere functionaries in a corporate insurance owned and run "Health Care System." You preserve natural order and natural law because the so-called "Scientists" among us, are not given carte blanche to do whatever they want with the human genome. You end up respecting the idea that you provision future generations, not least by educating them. You respect the elderly by not killing them off, too. You knock a leg out from under the "stool" of our current beknighted, modernist, anti-traditional, Democratic Party, Playboy/Hugh Hefner funded, political and cultural disaster called Feminism. You save a few department store chains. You fund Social Security into the future. You have both medical care and good schools back. You invest in People to Promote your Progress -- call it my People Progress Party Platform. Not least, you get to watch your poltical enemies squirm uncomfortably, as more and more Americans recognize that you are right, and they were wrong, when it comes to ABORTION versus HUMAN LIFE. By the way, has anyone else noticed how the same anti-Human Life contingents are so big on the imperatives of the Al Gore construed, so-called "Environmental Movement"? Let me enlighten you as to Environmentalism. The podunk State of Maine is a major practitioner of the Elitist, anti-Progress, anti-Middle Class Environmental Policies of "No Growth, Slow Growth, Progress is Bad, and no, Canada, keep your environmentally benign Hydro Quebec Electric Power to yourself" environmentalism on the planet, outside of maybe the State of Washington. The State of Maine has not grown economically since World War Two. The State of Maine is owned, Lock, Stock and Barrel, by about a half-dozen landed families. The State of Maine is a backyard playground for Environmentalists, so-called, from larger urban centers like New York City and Boston, Massachusetts. It is very tough to make any kind of a normal living in the State of Maine. The State of Maine will tax your wallet so highly, that they will even tax your Spouse, should you happen to work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, even if your spouse never set foot in the State of Maine or worked a day in the State of Maine. Come to think of it, the State of New Hampshire is starting to mimic the State of Maine in all things environmental, including the theft of middle class property rights, under Governor John Lynch and his political progenitor and candidate for U.S. Senate: Jeanne Shaheen. Saying you are an "Environmentalist" is just another way of saying, "We're sorry, but this Economy/Government/Law/Corpora­te Culture/Foreign Policy/War is not intended to benefit you, or Americans generally; it is strictly intended to benefit U.S., your Benefactors, the New American Elitists. We go to Harvard, drive SUVs, save and invest plenty of money, educate our kids into our elitism, offer full employee benefits to our "domestic partners" while skimping on fully benefitted health coverage and employment status for our workers who make us rich, and we like you to know, in every way we can express this idea, that this new "Era of Limits" means to constrain you, not U.S. Happy Earth Day to One and All. <link>