Do You Want to Understand America?
July 6th, 2008 at 09:26am Mark Noonan
Well, some times it is an outsider who can really distill what its all about:
The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted their claim to freedom and independence on the basis of certain “self-evident” truths about the human person: truths which could be discerned in human nature, built into it by “nature’s God.” Thus they meant to bring into being, not just an independent territory, but a great experiment in what George Washington called “ordered liberty”: an experiment in which men and women would enjoy equality of rights and opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and in service to the common good. Reading the founding documents of the United States, one has to be impressed by the concept of freedom they enshrine: a freedom designed to enable people to fulfill their duties and responsibilities toward the family and toward the common good of the community. Their authors clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability, and no happiness without respect and support for the natural units or groupings through which people exist, develop, and seek the higher purposes of life in concert with others.
The American democratic experiment has been successful in many ways. Millions of people around the world look to the United States as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity. But the continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation, native-born and immigrant, makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of your Republic. Their commitment to build a free society with liberty and justice for all must be constantly renewed if the United States is to fulfill the destiny to which the Founders pledged their “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor.”
I am happy to take note of your words confirming the importance that your government attaches, in its relations with countries around the world, to the promotion of human rights and particularly to the fundamental human right of religious freedom, which is the guarantee of every other human right. Respect for religious conviction played no small part in the birth and early development of the United States. Thus John Dickinson, Chairman of the Committee for the Declaration of Independence, said in 1776: “Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of preexisting rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth.” Indeed it may be asked whether the American democratic experiment would have been possible, or how well it will succeed in the future, without a deeply rooted vision of divine providence over the individual and over the fate of nations. - Pope John Paul II, December 16, 1997
Entry Filed under: General Government, Popular Culture, Religion, Social Issues
9 Comments Add your own
1. Magnum Serpentine | July 6th, 2008 at 9:56 am
As you will note, Pope John Paul 2 wrote that before the disastrous Supreme Court decision that gave the republic party the presidency and appointed george Acting President in 2001.
Today more people in the world look to Canada and New Zealand as a model in their search for freedom, dignity, and prosperity
The reason is simple. george has trashed the constitution declared a unitary executive and taken away many freedoms that citizens use to enjoy, one of these being privacy and the ability to speak with-out the government listening in. george also launched the failed george war in Iraq and has used fear and the title “War President” to force people, even the demo-publican congress to do his bidding. And george changes laws already passed by the congress with his so-called signing statements in which he announces that the government will ignore the rightfully passed law or do something opposite to what the elected will of the citizens intended.
“The constitution is just a piece of paper…” george, 2001
2. FmrMarine | July 6th, 2008 at 10:49 am
MS
>>>the disastrous Supreme Court decision that gave the republic party the presidency and appointed george Acting President in 2001.>>>
What a STUPID statement. Are YOU really that DUMB as to believe that idiotic talking point?
PROVE that quote on the constitution.
Were YOU there? Did YOU hear W say that?
or did you gleen it from the DU retard site?
Our country is based on Christian basic belief in God.
3. neocon | July 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Mags,
The title of the thread is: Do You Want To Understand America?
And after reading your post, I can clearly say that you do not.
have a blindly partisan day
peace, neocon
4. Fredrick Schwartz | July 6th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I do understand America. What i don’t understand is why and this is my own opinion, that in the modern age when making ends meet is hard enough people should be expected to live their lives by any rules other than general civility and “doing unto other as you would have them do unto you?”
The rest of it all the control and pro life and gay marriage and all of that can go out of the window if people just focus on getting their own houses in order. That’s what’s wrong with America that when I and others come here we’re ridiculed as being foreigners that cannot understand and yet a Pope who is as far removed from the Americans experience as possible is lauded for agreeing as any Pope would that freedom and values as granted from On High are the basis for America. Well that’s one way to look at it the other way is that everyone isn’t seeking to be controlled by the Catholic or any other organized church but would prefer to live their life by the ethics and values of their own culture, religion and creed.
The problem isn’t some turning of backs on religion it’s that you Noonan and many other Christians cry persecution because you cannot control every waking moment of every worker in America with your Bible and the laws you choose to enforce in it. Americans are sick to death of that and along with it wasteful wars and a decaying economy where they were duped into paying more in taxes and getting fewer cuts than millionaires who have invested them into foreclosure.
If you guys try to be a little more compassionate maybe you’ll catch a few more votes with that honey than with the vinegar you’ve been trying to convince moderates is really wine.
And one serious question to end, not to be facetious at all, you are considerably younger than I am and still among the living and you’ll likely be on Terra longer than Pope Benedict 16 will. You might see two more Popes in your lifetime. So what happens if you get a serious reformer in say ten years who decides priests can marry, that women can be priests, that some divorces can be allowed, that birth control isn’t a sin and that all war is evil? This would leave abortion and gay marriage to be debated at a 22nd Ecumenical Council that would last from 2020 to 2024. In the end sixteen years from now would you leave the Catholic Church if they allowed abortion and gay marriage?
5. Mark Noonan | July 6th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Fredrick,
Well, priests already can marry - in the Eastern rite and a few other instances, as well a priest who converts from, say, Episcopalianism to Catholicism can remain married if he is so at the time of conversion (though he can’t remarry if his wife passes away post -conversion). Celibate priests isn’t an article of faith but a decision on the part of the Church that those who minister to God’s flock should concentrate their whole effort on that with no distractions from wife and children.
As for the rest of that - it won’t happen. In matters of faith and moral, Fred, we don’t decide: God decides. We just try to understand and try to apply what God has decreed in our daily lives. It is only by resolutely ignoring Christian teaching that, say, one can be ok with a female preist, or think that abortion is consistent with Christian morality. Its not a matter of interpretation, you see? The Pope and Gene Robinson aren’t looking at a biblical passage and disagreeing about whether or not it allows a man to leave his wife for another man - the Pope and Robinson both know that this is a wrong thing to do, but Robinson just went ahead and did it and now just ignores those parts of Christianity which call him to account for his violation. Each of us, as individuals, are free to disregard whatever rules we wish - but the Church, as an institution, can’t do that.
And, finally, you entirely misinterpret what we Chrsitians want - we don’t want to control you. Heck, to control you would be a violation of Christian morality! But I do want to be able to tell you, without let or hindrance, in the public square just what I think about what you are doing and (the very, very crucial bit) I want to have might rights protected, too…including my right to not be assaulted by pornography at every turn in the popular culture; my right to instruct children and grandchildren in what I think is right without having you come along in the public school system and contradict me; my right to exerise my faith, even if it means (say) that I’ll not rent a room out to the gay couple because I think such relations immoral (and, yes, there are cases of gay couples suing landlords on this issue)…
Its a two way street, Fred.
6. Fredrick Schwartz | July 7th, 2008 at 6:51 am
5. Mark Noonan | July 6th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
“As for the rest of that - it won’t happen”
And that’s the answer I expected from you Noonan. This is the same sort of answer I would have gotten on Labor Day weekend 2001 if i said to someone “Hey I wonder if you could fly a plane into the WTCs?” If you are terrified by the prospect of the hypothetical you can never be prepared for the eventual.
I get the “What happens if the Palestinians get Jerusalem as their capital?” all the time and my answer is “I’m still a Jew and a Zionist, minus the Hagee inspired folkloric dancing routine.” I can see a Palestinian flag flying over a Jerusalem at peace in 25 years and it doesn’t shatter my worldview. but the purely religious question was dodged so I let it alone.
On to the topics that you do address I do feel that the more vehement Protestants in the SBC and other Fundamentalists DO want to control many aspects of American life. So called decency laws don’t make people more decent they just punish the people who are not being decent. The deterrent is not to doing the indecent thing the deterrent is to getting caught doing that thing. This is the sort of thinking that allows certain people in positions of respect an power to commit crimes with a relatively clear conscience. It also is the suspension of disbelief what allows you to sit there and tell me that restricting the free speech of an advertiser, a filmmaker or a cable TV producer is OK because it increases the morality of the society at large.
That is truly a huge steaming pile of BS. You have a right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” not a right to not be offended by shifts in culture away from your draconian and boring concept of “normal.” And I highly doubt is you are being “assaulted by pornography at every turn” anymore than Christianity is being “persecuted’ anywhere in the United States. What you mean is you want to ban that sort of speech just like you ban facts that people present here that make you uncomfortable about the people you respect religiously. And I can understand that because I get that feeling myself when I see Protestants dancing to Israeli music at a CUFI conference.
I agree it is a two way street the problem is I’m standing on the side where freedom is and you are standing on the side where fascism with a religious smile is waving an American flag. I think the framers of the US Constitution saw all of this coming that a certain segment of the population would want to go back to the “Good old days” at several points in American history because they just were not prepared to deal with social change. In 100 years no one will notice a white woman with red hair walking hand in hand with her black skinned husband or boyfriend; they will be a couple, in love, just like any other to maybe 85% of the population. In another 100 by 2208 two women doing the same stroll on a boardwalk will be treated no different and the world will keep spinning. I think that America 200 years from now more represents what Jefferson and Adams and Franklin had in mind on that one issue than what you and all the centuries of catholic rhetoric have to offer on the subject. For all the nonsense that I have read here about foreigners not having the right to comment on American affairs I have to ask you how can you declare allegiance to the Pope in Rome and expect the American people to be ruled by the concepts of a foreign religion that has been forced to pay billions of dollars in restitution to those it has repeatedly raped first physically and then by overt action to maintain the offending clergymen in their fold?
Can you honestly point to a so called Liberal institution political institution that has been so heinous and abused power in such a way? In no means do I intend to denigrate the Catholic Church as a whole I merely point out facts as there is no lie in what I say and I can provide truckloads of public records to back my assertions. I find it disturbing that anyone could stand idly by and watch as week after week the constant report of abuse of either children by church leaders of any sect or the abuses of the Constitution by the executive branch led by either party. I have many times said that Bill Clinton committed perjury about a private matter that took place while conducting public business and for that he should have gone to prison for 18 months and lost the presidency. If that is the case for Mr. Clinton then it makes matters clear to all that the reasons many don’t understand America is the same reasons that all of you conservative die-hards must defend against “Bush lied.” This is because if you ever admit that he did lie to the American people about Iraq that he should be tried and convicted by the Congress for his lie just as Congress attempted to do to Bill Clinton.
Understanding America Noonan begins with realizing that being a partisan does not mean that you cannot take criticism or that you must accept all of what is forced upon you by society. I really dislike evangelical television so I avoid it. I am as sickened by megachurch crowds and the false weepiness of the whole event as spectacle as you are by hardcore porn. I just don’t turn to those channels unless I have to do so for my job to verify a fact. Otherwise I leave it alone and if I ever have children I will not allow them to watch it or porn until they are of an age that they can process what they are seeing as being staged, not real and for entertainment purposes only.
Di lojti strixiûç!
Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!
Fredrick Schwartz
Managing Editor-Research
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
23 Melnar 2 AS
7. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don't-mess | July 7th, 2008 at 8:16 am
6. Fredrick Schwartz | July 7th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Shadow: I’m not part of this America thing anymore, so I’m going to leave it to them to sort out as I decide when to scoop up the spoils.
With regard to Clinton, it depends on which statements you refer to. I think the whole thing was over and done when his check for $750,000 to Paula Jones cleared. That deposition has to be the first one in US history in a civil sex-harrassment suit, however, in which the plaintiff was not required to specify the acts underlying the claim. Bennett asks for a list of what Jones was claiming Clinton had done. Jones’ lawyers protest, asking for a claim of “sexual harrassment” to stand without specificity and Webber ruled for the plaintiff.
How whatever followed was probative of intent to lie or obstruct justice is beyond me but I’m not an attorney. I do think Bill Clinton had a right to know exactly what Ms Jones contends he did. How does this even get before a federal judge? If it’s precedence, though, I’m mulling over filing a sex harrassment claim against whoever here has the deepest pockets. Noonan? Fine. What did he do to me? I don’t know. He “sexually harrassed me”. I’ll take my $750k and go home, thanks.
Otherwise, you are completely on point. I’m not a Democrat anymore, so I feel no obligation to show examples in which Democrats have seen both sides of an argument, weighed them up, and admitted their culpability. I’d rather they just stonewall it and brazen out the way Republicans do.
In some ways, a malign Republican party which stays on message economically, culturally and with regard to foreign policy and domestic social control is more admirable than a useless Democratic party.
You are a gentleman and take pains not to denigrate the Catholic Church as a whole with reference to the pederasty scandals. I’ll agree with you as far as Catholicism is practiced in the rest of the developed world outside of the US. In the US, however, I’d always assumed that pederasty was kind of a perk of the soul-saving dodge.
It is no longer my obligation nor my necessity to “understand America.” If I live long enough to see a grandchild be bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, I guarantee you I’ll pay for a chorus of quaint folkloric Country & Western dancers to square-dance and do a little mini-rodeo courtesy of C.U.F.M. (Christians United For Mercosur). What choice will they have when Petrobras owns all of NASCAR and Pemex owns every rodeo organization in the US plus a carry on every US Roman Catholic collection plate and half the tithe of every US mega-church?
8. Pain | July 7th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
7. TampaBayRayz-4-evah-don’t-mess | July 7th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Sadly, Tampa, We cannot afford to let America fall into the hands of the Theocrats so We misy press on!
9. "Truth is Right" | July 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
frederick the great
your ideologies and your thinking have so ruinated your poor little thinker that i doubt any common sense, let alone moral, ethical biblical dogma would persuade you from your downward trend as so many of the leftists and those with agendas thinking they can do as they please.
we do have a democracy in this nation, (thank the Most “High God, YaWeh” for that.
Governments were instituted by the God of Abraham, The God of Isaac and Jacob and if you read 1st and 2nd Kings you will further “possibly” see the reasoning behind the thinking of the Jewish Nation for having a King and God did not see the need, but anyways that’s besides my point, God has always done what is best for mankind, but you see friend, because of mans persistant and grosely misconduct he lives each day, a Nation usually downtrends to the gutter, Why? you may ask.. well because of three things, Every nation in biblical History (and i say biblical because there is NO truth apart from the Holy Word of God and Jesus Christ His Son”.) has been completely destroyed. #1, Idolatry #2Abortion and #3, Homosexuality. don’t believe it, study your history from Greek to Roman times. People give in to the lusts of the flesh and thereby bringing the nations sin before a God that truly LOVES mankind because he created them, but that sin will destroy, because God cannot and will not tolerate this behaviour.
You seem not so afraid of a terrorist slitting your families throats or your own, yet you are so afraid of the christian movement and the ideologies of christian people who teach the peaceful, loving way of Jesus Christ who is the only Son of a Living God.
Because of laws we have civil obedience. Take away the law and man knows neither right nor wrong. Take away a law that says you can rape children or your neighbors, and guess what friend. your neighbor or even you may get raped at any given time that you least expect. Take away a law that governors airplanes flying in and out of the runways, think mishaps won’t be. Not only would planes be aimed at our nations heart, but our people would be in grave danger.
Thank God for President George Bush who has stood (As did Ronald Reagan) in the face of adversity and hatred) and defied and opposed the so called liberal hatred of the networks, ABC, CBS and God help NBC and the idiotic thinking of PBS. (what a federal waste of government funds) that so rashly and idiocally spews the airways with a hatred for what is right and forming their own socialist opinions and ideas.
Keep on believeing what you believe friend and the day will come when you will see Christianity in Its greatest power and form from Almighty God Above who through His Most “Holy Spirit” will come down in the hearts of Gods people and you see a land that is moved by a power beyond mans might or control and you will then see what’s called a revival in this nation and the VERY gates of HELL (some of those leftist ideas) shall be PUSHED against and shattered at its very core.
Christianity will win, because our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ proclaimed that way before Jesus was born in the body as a baby, way before Muhummad, way before buddah, Way before Adam and Eve; yes Gods people will be the victors because our “Rabbi” Master and teacher called Jesus has proclaimed it before the very foundation of the world.
I hope that when this day comes that you will shed your heart before a great and mighty God and allow the Spirit that moves in the hearts of people with Love and that you will then proclaim, “Yes” i have Liberty. And then Liberty you will truly see, because you see, That’s the Truth”.
And one more note my friend, “PLEASE” don’t try and teach your children, but allow them to get into a church that is filled with the power of God and do this while they are still in the womb of your wife, “If” you can see the need. Because apart from Gods Church you will never see truth. Get you a Christian bible that shows the teachings of the one who said and I will close with this final verse, “For God so loved (Frederick,”) the world that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have life eternal>”
For that, I hope you will diligently search for you see wise men still search for Jesus and when you have found him, you won’t have to worry about ideologies, false teachings, airplanes blowing up the nations and some terrorist going after your family. God bless you my friend.
“Truth is Right”
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