In my reading of news articles spotlighting Obama's selection of Mega-church Pastor Rick Warren, I came across this outright lie:
Wow, I guess the name of the organization, combined with what Kolbert said lets us know their agenda: to take what a minority of Americans believe or embody or support, and cast that as The American Way. I'm a liberal inner-city Seattle resident; and Ms Kolbert; your way isn't an American Way; it is a way that won't share the stage with others in the same country that you have little in common with. Ms Kolbert, your values and message are the problem. The Huffington Post [link], in contrast, discusses more transparently that, yes, most of the columnist's friends support gay marriage, but the columnist recognizes their opinion was a minority in the California vote on the issue. What a fair and balanced dialogue when compared to The American Way proclaiming their minority agenda as the national identity.
Maybe clusters of ideological purists like The American Way, or zero-growth environmentalists, or bio-regionalists, or any other radical departure from global industrial-information-transportation economics can be found out during the Obama tenure of the White House. The reactionaries who exploded with declarations of intolerance for Warren ( and his America ) have provided the archetypical behavior. These radicals can then be labelled what they have been all along: intolerant, self-righteous fascists attempting to impose their world view on the rest of society.
I was once in a graduate program operating with The Center for Creative Change ( a.k.a C3). Over my year and a half as a student, I slowly began to realize the horror of what they intended: to impose their anti-industrial, anti-intellectual agenda on the world. The faculty explicitly stated that folk ways were better than scientific/professional experts, that non-linguistic cognitive processes were more powerful and legitimate than the literate functions of our brains. Since my eyes were open to such stupidity marching self-righteously in lockstep, I started this blog and other writing projects to alert the world of these scumbags. I am so grateful for the Obama Presidency. It is going to be a true flashpoint in which these fascists get found out by their intolerant screeching being aired in national media.
Die, fascists, die.
- Embrace What You Have In Common With Rick Warren -Huffington Post
- Rick Warren, Obama and the Left -WSJ
- Obama Selects Evangelist for Invocation -New York Times
- Choosing Warren represents diversity
Rick Warren is as mainstream as it gets.
White, middle-class, Protestant, heterosexual suburbia IS the mainstream in this country. It is wrong to leave them out of ANY national event.
I say this not as a right wing troll. I am an inner-city Seattle liberal that voted for Obama, and the choosing of Warren is a good civic moment gay rights supporters should easily recognize.
The orthodox, entrenched, fascist left should stop trying to recast 'America' as a place without white, middle-class, Protestant, heterosexual suburbia.
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4 comments:
I agree with you again, Lance. Reminds me of this snippet from a New York Times article from July 13, 2008 by William Yardley. Yardley quotes a woman from Portland, Oregon who comments about Barack Obama's shift to the center:
"I'm disgusted with him. I can't even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this 'audacity of hope' stuff, it's blah, blah, blah. For all the independents he's going to gain, he's going to lose a lot of progressives" (from page A18).
Back in March of this year I bought Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism. I haven't made it through the whole thing, but so far I think he is more or less accurate. He exaggerates and is dishonest from time to time, as pundits are.
I am not a Christian hater, but I am solidly against Christianity as a belief system. However, this is a Christian nation, so Obama's choice of Warren is to be expected--and politically it's a good choice.
Great stand point, Lance!
Just a little note, that 'center' is no longer fascist, anti industrialism, anti-technology and anti mainstream etc. :). There are a bunch of new faculty who shares more diverse and open world view in this center. My project and thesis are closely related with globalization and business organizations. One of my fellow classmates was working on a educational video game development for Microsoft and NYU for his change project. The StratCom fellows are people who are tech-savvy. Virtual meeting and facilitation technology is a part of our assignments.
That is not to say that those kind of people is no longer there. It just that the fascist are not the the only faction, and certainly can not be a cultural hegemony anymore. Well, for the sake of democracy, they are still there. However,it is by having new people from new ideas that will bring everyone closer to a real democracy (even though this may be a unattainable absolute point). It's about re-defining the critical mass beyond the ideology. It is about a profound issue we are facing, which is isolation. To be a center dedicated for change, the center must not be isolated. And we are continuously moving to that direction.
I think this is a social pragmatism. Thus, fascist can be a part of a more diverse society, instead of being isolated in a ideology. In that sense, even the fascist should be grateful for the democracy that allows the to exist. Pragmatism is a fruit of diversity in action, not just debates based on ideologies. Ideas matter, and so does perpetuating action. Asian experience taught me that in action perspective, fascism may be the louder voice, but not the people's majority voice.
Obama has drawn forth the demons that Lance (and other critics of this movement that currently dominates the American Left) has been warning us about, but a complete exorcism will require (A) learning the true names of these demons and (B) replacing their negative influence with some positive force.
True names are not going to include the word "facism", but perhaps the similarity is informative. Today's intolerant lefties in the USA are not like the intolerant left of any other country - tactically at least they are more like the the christian right that they hate so much. People for the American Way is specifically a LGBT advocacy group that evolved to resist Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and similar groups.
Rick Warren invited Obama to speak in his church (4th largest in the US) on World AIDS Day. Obama is now reciprocating. Obama has set a historical precedent by appointing an openly LGBT person to a cabinet position. This is no doubt reciprocation for the LGBT community's contribution to Obama's campaign. Positive feedback loops are emerging, but pathological non-reciprocators will be cut out of these loops.
Who is the gay or bisexual or transgendered person Obama has appointed to his cabinet?
"The West today is the victim of a curious illusion. It has created and maintained rare islands of reason in a world otherwise ruled by the law of the jungle, yet it refuses to give itself any credit for this immensely improbable achievement at all."
Harris, Lee. The Suicide of Reason. 2007, p. 79.
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