We Fight Low Information
Robert Fuller: The twentieth century witnessed the successful application of the strategies and tactics of identity politics. Those same organizational techniques, applied to overcoming rankism, can render it as insupportable as the isms that identity politics has now put on the defensive.
Robert Fuller: Many of the voices now being raised against religion are over-confident and patronizing, rather like those of trial-lawyers who feel the jury is in their pocket.
This week, Hwood007 comments on Sharon Kyle’s article, “Sharia Law: We Know What It’s About – Really?” which addresses efforts to smear Muslim-Americans in the Black Christian community.
Jim Rhodes: Not since 9-11 has the United States witnessed such callous demigods hellbent on destroying individual liberty as currently being showcased in the Republican primaries.
Steve Ybarra: Newtron signals the beginning of this war by asking people to go and talk to the “Bishops” and hear for themselves that the Catholic Church is being destroyed by these edicts. Wait, ask the BISHOPS!?!
Kathleen Peine: In much the same manner as Huck Finn, scores of individuals in America feel ill at ease with everyday imperatives. For some it’s the Imperialism, even if they don’t know what to call it. For even more it’s the degrading, soul eroding workplace.
Pilar Marrero: Moral issues rank very low in Latino Voter’s minds when making a voting decision while issues like the economy, jobs, taxes and minimum wage are far more important, a new poll released today shows. That finding totally contradicts the famous Ronald Reagan belief, said in the eighties, that “Hispanics are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.”
Julie Driscoll: Leave it to that bastion of “yellow journalism,” Fox “News” to plow forward with an absolutely unsourced article simply to further its anti-Muslim sentiments.
Anthony Samad: The Los Angeles taxpayer would be astonished with the number of unexcused absences council members have, but these two small-minded council persons — Parks and Perry — wanted to send a message and get some press out of it—and they did.
Julie Driscoll: Is she gonna channel Hillary, and stand by her man, or is she gonna do a Jenny Sanford, and tell the schmuck he’s on his own, file for divorce and leave him to his shenanigans – in this case, an Atlanta, instead of Argentinian, mistress?
Steve Hochstadt: According to Cain, most African Americans are unable to escape the mind-control black magic of those long-time political criminals, led by their Brainwasher-in-Chief, Barack Obama.
Leonard Isenberg: Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali tried the impossible task of trying to reconcile her optimism with her equally honest assessment that there was not only no money to fix public education, but even less in the future.
Benjamin Zeller: Rick Perry may fill stadiums for rallies and he may even win the GOP nomination for President, but unlike Ike he will never be able to claim the mantle of a united Big Religion for himself.
Tina Dupuy: It’s time to build a wall (or a levee) between church and weather. Natural disasters aren’t punishment. And religion isn’t a Doppler radar.
Steve Hochstadt: So-called literalists choose which passages they want to take literally on the basis of principles which are very modern, far from the ideas and attitudes of Jews and Christians thousands of years ago.
Tom Hall: How perfect can heaven be, with 200 million new souls crowding into a facility designed by He who designed a world with shifting tectonic plates, ozone holes and republicans?
Ruth Broyde Sharone: Perhaps the most memorable Seder I filmed, however, which ultimately had a profound influence on my life and my career, was led by a Black Pastor, Charles C. Queen, for 600 African Americans. “The Israelites were getting out of Egypt,” he intoned. “They were going to be free people!”
Andrew J. Schatkin: In an age that emphasizes money, materialism, outright greed, and admiration for the rich and powerful, Jesus offers an alternative.
Lee Fang: Despite his media savvy “Muslim messenger” approach, King cannot hide his ties to bigoted figures like Gabriel or their toxic ideas.
Sikivu Hutchinson: Sadly, there is still a fair amount of ignorance and bigotry toward black non-believers in African American communities due to the stereotype that atheists are immoral, rudderless, and not authentically black.
Manisha Thakor: Women who consistently negotiate their salaries throughout their careers earn $1 million more over their work lives than women who do not. We pay a high price for not speaking up for ourselves financially in the workplace. Here are a few money mantras that may help.
Steve Hochstadt: The separation of church and state in the United States has allowed all religions to flourish free of state-enforced rules. One of the results is that no religion represents a majority of Americans.
Sikivu Hutchinson: The bashing of Elizabeth Edwards is just a footnote to the larger trend of right wing demonization of secular and left forces reignited by the Tea Party. This trend builds on Cold War “better-dead-than-Red” hysteria equating patriotism and “authentic” American citizenship with being god-fearing.
Steve Hochstadt: I don’t want to live in any version of a “Christian nation”. I want to live in the United States, in which religious ideas are a private matter, in which my government plays no role in my spiritual life, and denominational beliefs play no role in government.
Steve Hochstadt: No historian would transform the evidence into the nasty claims about Soros, and the Baumbach family who saved him, that Beck broadcast to his 2.6 million FOX News viewers.
Is Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase “wall of separation between church &
state” too broad an interpretation of the First Amendment? Historian Jon
Butler argues that original intent of the First Amendment was even broader
than that.
Johann Neem: Some Americans today believe that the separation of church and state is a threat to Christianity. But historian Johann Neem argues that Americans in the era of the Revolution promoted the idea of separation of church and state as a way to protect Christianity. They supported separation precisely because they were Christians.
Jasmyne Cannick: Much to the chagrin of Black gay men everywhere, who have enough to deal with without the latest outing of a Black pastor, and to the relief of Catholic priests everywhere, all eyes are on Atlanta’s Bishop Eddie Long.
Tom Hall: “Restoring honor” for today’s Tea Party Republicans means trying to return to the days when a man could sit and watch Father Knows Best, while his wife did the laundry, kept the kids under control and fed and satisfied him, without the worry that Chet and David would warn him about uppity coloreds demonstrating in someplace he couldn’t identify.
Michael Sigman: For many old-media types I talked to, there was more resignation than outrage this time around, as though a cherished institution were already gone.
Julie Driscoll: Students and their parents’ only hope is Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown, two Democratic Senators who have the cojones to take on big banks, Wall Street, and the powers that be.
Berry Craig: Called the “Ride for Respect,” the demonstration at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, will be modeled on civil rights volunteers who rode buses into the South in the 1960s to protest Jim Crow racial injustice.
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Black Atheists in the Pulpit
Sikivu Hutchinson: Congregants of Zion Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles probably thought Pastor Seth Pickens was certifiable when he proposed a community dialogue with the L.A. Black Skeptics Group.