<"The DNC are like lice"

Must have missed this one. From a different thread?

"...they will remain a destructive component of our nation."



"The elitist left hates all religion since they want to be worshiped and they are jealous of any competition."

"The radical Left hates Christianity and Judaism because they promote Western values, and according to many religious people, are fundamental to Western values"

"The Left doesn't give a rat's ass about the Constitution."

Pretty disgusting, incorrect and stupid. If you can't do any better than this (relating to your fellow man), and if you represent a large part of the country, then our society is pretty much doomed. This is sad.



I don't know about disgusting--unless you are counting the "lice" remark--and "stupid" is a judgement call that has nothing to do with factuality, but I would be very pleased if you could prove me incorrect about the radical Left's contempt for mainstream religion, or objective moral values in general.

Just using the many diatribes against Ashcroft as one outstanding example, it is painfully obvious that his Christianity sticks in their craw far more than any actual policies that he has enacted. Ashcroft has demonstrated time and again that he does not allow his religion to override his duties of political office, so this can't be the real issue.

I recommend a reading of this article.

The comments in this article pretty much say it all:

--Franklin Zimring, law professor at UC Berkeley and a law school classmate of Ashcroft: "You'd learn a heck of a lot more about John Ashcroft researching his church than you would turning the University of Chicago Law School upside down. What's problematic about his career as attorney general is not his technical legal training. It's his values."



--"There is a rigidity there that is very troubling," said Ralph Neas, head of the liberal People for the American Way, who maintains Ashcroft is suited to direct the Moral Majority, not the Justice Department. "He is so confident of his world view that he doesn't have to seek any advice that would challenge his opinion . . . or interfere with his bending the law his way by executive fiat. John Ashcroft thinks John Ashcroft knows what's best."

--His religion teaches him there are concrete, clear-cut right and wrong answers to things," said Julie Ingersoll, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, who until recently taught in Springfield. "Someone else might look at Christianity and Islam as two different constructs of reality. Certainly he wouldn't."

--Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, has observed that Ashcroft "knows something about the Taliban, coming as he does from that wing of American politics."

--A bemused national press has made much fun of the fact that he is an attorney general who doesn't drink, smoke, dance, sleep around, swear or otherwise defile himself.



Compare this latter description to the behavior of those who are currently in the leadership of the Left and the Democratic Party. No wonder he makes them uncomfortable.

Now, how does he do his job?

...At tense confirmation hearings, his former Senate colleagues wondered whether the religious prism through which he views the world would distort his ability to execute the laws of the land. Time and again, he said no.



"It's against my religion to impose my religion on other people," he repeated.

There were examples to prove the point. For instance, despite his vociferous opposition to gambling, as Missouri governor he helped set up the required mechanism to run a lottery after voters approved one.

Still, his record gave critics doubts. There was his gubernatorial veto of a bill to allow liquor sales on Sundays, and another veto on relaxing restrictions on candy containing alcohol -- he said he didn't care to make it easier for children to consume booze. There was the time he warned: "A robed elite have taken the wall of separation built to protect the church and made it a wall of religious oppression."

Potential nominees for judgeships recalled that Ashcroft questioned whether they were faithful to their spouses and whether they drank -- although those who reported only social drinking were not disqualified.

Missouri is no bastion of the right wing, but Ashcroft didn't succumb to the common political practice of commissioning polls and focus groups to shape his policies. To the contrary, Chip Robertson, his first chief of staff and later a Missouri Supreme Court justice, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "One of the things I loved about Ashcroft was that he'd see a poll and say, 'My negatives aren't high enough -- I need to take on some tough issues.' "

Ashcroft's record registers none of the usual tabloid scandal scars, unless you count the time his wife pulled strings to get the Missouri State Library opened on a Sunday so their youngest son could finish a homework project.

...At the Justice Department, his record has been a mixed bag. Setting aside his personal religious beliefs, for example, Ashcroft has ordered federal marshals to protect doctors who perform abortions.

Despite his longtime defense of states' rights, he unleashed federal action to block the wishes of Oregon voters who voted to legalize assisted suicide, and California voters who approved medical use of marijuana.



Certainly not the monster dictator he is projected as, unless you are really hard over on legal suicide, liquor candy, or medical marijuana. Now, as a libertarian, I am not comfortable with all his positions either, but they do not warrant the terror and hatred he is getting from the Left.

...Although he gives lip service to the value of "creative self-doubt," there isn't much evidence he engages in it. In his memoir he tries to demonstrate the value of self-doubt by relating a tale in which the press and an opponent once criticized him. But the unintentionally comic moral he offers is not that he was wrong, but that he forgave them for being so wrong about him.



Is this sense of self-righteousness, this imperviousness to criticism, a virtue or a fatal flaw?



This lack of "self doubt" that apparently worries the Left is again an example of projection: Where have you seen less "self doubt" than in the insanity of leftist dictatorships that have slain millions in the blind certainty of their philosophy?

I could also point out the amused contempt of Middle America that radiates from every paragraph of this story, but that's kind of beside the main point.

I could also add to this the portrayal of clergy on modern television and movies as largely raving and evil lunatics, the delight of the Left at the current travails of the Catholic Church, and the Leftist attitudes toward Israel and orthodox Judaism. None of these are beside the main point, but I don't have all day.