“There has been no clear consensus on what constitutes torture,” according to Brian Duffy, NPR’s former managing editor, a principal in Public Radio’s refusal to use the term “torture” to describe Bush era practices.

“I understand the desire to ‘call a spade a spade,’ but it is not for journalists to start labeling specific practices torture,” said Duffy. “That’s what the debate is about — what constitutes torture?”

National Public Radio’s Ombudsman Alicia Shepherd concurs,

“The role of a news organization is not to choose sides in this or any debate. People have different definitions of torture and different feelings about what constitutes torture. NPR’s job is to give listeners all perspectives, and present the news as detailed as possible and put it in context.”

Ombudsman Shepherd continues, “No matter how many distinguished groups — the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners — say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters obviously believed that waterboarding terrorism suspects was necessary to protect the nation’s security.

One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public. So, it is not an open-and-shut case that everyone believes waterboarding to be torture.

I am not shilling for NPR. I don’t agree with its use of bureaucratic euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’  But I am shilling for strong, credible journalism that is as objective as humanly possible.”

Hmm, is an Ombudsman just a paid blog commenter?

Bob Garfield, host of the NPR program, “On The Media,” conducted an exemplary interview with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepherd.

He queried,

“Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.

It seems to me that the only people who think it’s a debate are the Bush Administration, who are the culprits. So how does that constituent a debate?

NPR certainly has no difficulty calling murder ‘murder.’ It doesn’t call it ‘enhanced argumentation technique.’ The terrorists call themselves ‘freedom fighters’ but NPR calls acts of terror ‘acts of terror.’”

Jesus upbraided his disciples for using weasel words to avoid telling the truth.  His punch line was,

“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Karen J. Greenberg writes in her sobering op-ed “Kiss the Era of Human Rights Goodbye,”

“Bush’s Global War on Terror has been a textbook case of human rights violations designed and implemented at the highest levels of government. First, there was the assault on the English language, a necessary initial step in the process of changing the national mindset of a country about to become a first-class human-rights abuser… (when) Susan Sontag compared administration abuses of language to the linguistic perversions that preceded genocidal acts against the Hutus in Rwanda, I recoiled.”

Ever since Gingrich’s “Contract on America” began to threaten NPR’s government funding the network has become morally docile as a legitimate political watchdog.

After 9-11 as NPR garnered a much larger “market share” their support has become much more corporate and their coverage much more feel good.

Public Radio does non threatening arts and culture pieces very well, and will do liberal self congratulatory stories about racism, sexism, or homophobia.

However, NPR’s political interviews are so polite and cozy as to be just shy of handing government officials an open mic to spew propaganda.  Grade school kids have recently asked former Bushies like Condoleezza Rice tougher questions than any NPR reporter ever has.  BBC training and an internship on “Democracy Now” should be mandatory for every NPR correspondent.

It gives me no pleasure to say this but what I  have privately railed about for years is  dreadfully clear now.  NPR has ceded its moral integrity and sacred journalistic trust to hold the powerful accountable.

Health care is worthy of a vigorous debate.  International, universally accepted definitions of torture are not.

There are times when the admonishment of Jesus cannot be trifled with. “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

“The Lord sent Prophet Nathan to King David. When he came to him, he said, ‘There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.’”

King David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.’

Then Prophet Nathan said to King David, ‘You are the man!’”

President Obama spoke at the annual Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner on June 19th.  Here are a couple of his timely quips.

“Nick at Nite has a new take on an old classic, “Leave it to Uigurs. I thought that was pretty good.”

“But I have to say, as I traveled to all these countries, I saw firsthand how much people truly have in common with one another. Because no matter where I went, there’s one thing I heard over and over again from every world leader:  “No thanks, but have you considered Palau?”

Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor are two of my stylistic and rhetorical gurus.  I am given to satirical and politically incorrect humor.  Yet, something about my President’s jokes on these matters, at this time in our history, sounds off key.  This scene reminds me of the Prophet Nathan’s cunning parable that indicted King David.  It is one thing for Leno, Letterman, or Stewart to satirize the Uighurs plight, but for the President who holds their destiny in his hands to do so seems indecent.

The 17 Chinese Muslim ethnic Uighurs in Obama’s joke have been held at the Guantanamo Bay Prison for more than seven years without charge.  They were cleared for release from Guantanamo four years ago after US officials ruled there was no evidence to hold them as “enemy combatants.”

Last year a Federal judge ordered the men released into the United States, but an appeals court halted the order, and they have been in legal limbo ever since.

The US state department has said the Uighurs cannot be returned to China because of fears they will face persecution and possible execution.

Officials in Palau, a U.S. administered territory until 1994, have agreed to temporarily take in the 17 Uighurs for humanitarian reasons.  The island is heavily dependent on U.S. aid.  Plus, Palau maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, not China.  Ironically, Palau and the United States are discussing the possibility of a $200-million aid package.

Here’s what gets my little lamb, I mean, goat.

From my back porch, Obama’s cavalier joking is part of a larger American soul affliction.  We live such comfy, entitled lives that wise cracks about locking up marginalized Chinese guys for years on end without cause, is like watching a movie.  Admitting they are completely innocent, yet holding them in prison for their own “protection” is like playing a video game.  Dealing them for money to a helpless former island territory is like the Washington Redskins trading a football player.  Reporters, known in days of yore as political watchdogs, making jolly with the President about our human rights abuses is like attending a farcical play.

Maybe I got up today on the self - righteous side of the bed.  But, Prophet Nathan’s confrontational exclamation seems on the money.

America, “You are the man!”

As Gov. Sanford confessed his affair during a press conference yesterday, he made a comment I found very revealing.  He said that “God’s law is indeed there to protect you from yourself.”

I have a friend (who I’ll refer to as Pat) who was raised in a traditional Christian household.  Pat was taught that pre-marital sex was wrong–so wrong, in fact, that those who engage in pre-marital sex will go to hell.  Pat told me that Sunday school teachers would drive this point home in detail, explaining what it would be like to burn in hell.

Not surprisingly, Pat was terrified of pre-marital sex.  Also not surprisingly, Pat ended up having pre-marital sex.  Pat now has some pretty confused ideas about sex and about self.  Pat has also had trouble forming relationships.

I think this is the mode of faith Gov. Sanford was referring to when he spoke of religion as something that is there to “protect you from yourself”.  Some people, certainly not all people of faith, are afraid of themselves, of their human passions and feelings, of sex themselves.  They learn that sex is bad, and they believe, like Gov. Sanford, that religious laws are intended to repress human passions and feelings–because, the implication is, human beings cannot do this on their own.  They believe that fear can help them to be good.

This approach–the idea that faith can be based on fear, that religion means repression of self–obviously doesn’t always work.  It didn’t work for Gov. Sanford.  It didn’t work for my friend.  It didn’t work for Sen. Ensign.

Joe Lieberman once said that morality is impossible without religion.  I disagree–I think human beings, with or without religion, are capable of understanding that extramarital affairs are wrong, hurting and embarrassing your loved ones is wrong.  But one thing is clear: religious faith does not guarantee morality.  Another thing is clear from Gov. Sanford’s remark about God’s law.  We ought to be asking questions about a fear-based view of faith that has affected every aspect of politics from stem cell research to marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples to policy in the Middle East.  What does it mean to teach people that fear ought to make them good?  What about abstinence-only education, a policy choice flowing from a fear-based view of faith?  It teaches people to fear themselves, fear their bodies, fear contraception, but, of course, does not actually stop people from having pre-marital sex.

Perhaps something positive can come from Gov. Sanford’s statement about faith and fear.  It’s time to make policy choices based on reason and common sense, not on a fear-based view of faith that, especially when it comes to sexual matters, leads to bad policy choices.  It’s ok to be human–people make mistakes, as Gov. Sanford did, as we all do.  It’s time for people like Gov. Sanford to stop insisting that Americans live by a religious code that aims to make sexuality taboo.

“They gotta war for oil, a war for gold,

A war for money and a war for souls,

A war on terror, a war on drugs,

A war on kindness and a war on hugs,

A war on birds and a war on bees.

They gotta a war on hippies tryin’ save the trees.

A war with jets and a war with missiles,

A war with high seated, government officials,

Wall street war on high finance,

A war on people who just love to dance,

A war on music, a war on speech,

A war on teachers and the things they teach,

A war for the last 500 years.

War’s just messin’ up the atmosphere.

A war on Muslims, a war on Jews,

A war on Christians and Hindus,

A whole lotta people just sayin’ kill them all.

They gotta a war on Mumia Abu Jamal,

The war on pot is a war that’s failed,

A war that’s fillin’ up the nations jails.

World war one, two, three and four,

Chemical weapons, biological war,

Bush war 1, Bush war 2,

They gotta war for me, they gotta war for you!”

A Truer poetic rhyme has never riffed on.  It flowed from the prophetic well of Michael Franti. (Listen below.)

Michael Franti, \”We Don\’t Stop\”

A war on communism, drugs, materialism, secularism, terrorism, gay marriage, abortion rights.  Rest assured but with both eyes fully open - when you hear a government or a group declaring war on something, the war is on you.

The war on communism spawned over the top zealots like McCarthy bulls eyeing and black balling hoards of creative, honorable, patriotic souls.  It mutated into Korean and Vietnam wars, which are still cavernous in terms of personal, national, international pain and angst.

Nicholas Kristof writes,

“This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

We have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

It’s now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.”

The hellish “war on terror” has debased the human decency of all concerned.  U.S. government officials have resorted to global lying, bullying, torture, dictatorial secrecy, spying on its citizens, the banishment of habeas corpus, and the virtual wholesale gerrymandering of our constitution.

Our reputation is shamefully sullied among our allies and we have birthed more terrorists than democratic converts.  We have killed legions more innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan than Bin Laden ever reveled in on 9-11.  Even though we “regret mistakes were made” following our initial denials and investigations, the indelible damage is done.

The wars are on you; your person, your privacy, your property, your principles.

The venerable sage Lao Tzu offers timeless spiritual medicine.

“There is no greater illusion than fear,

no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear

will always be safe.”

“To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened - a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.”

These were our President’s words at Buchenwald, Germany, earlier this month.  It is infamous as a place of torture for more than a quarter-million, and the place of death for more than 50,000.

In 1995 I watched an 4 part PBS documentary, “The Way West.” It chronicled the Europeans steady, determined migration and occupation of the American Indian lands.  My heart and passion went out to the Indian’s in every respect.  This surprised me since I am a European who never gave Indians much thought.

My only point of reference was negative.  We lived in Rapid City, South Dakota when I was ten years old or so.  My Dad was a minister there and I recall him often helping out drunken and destitute Indians.

There is a part of me that wished I never viewed the PBS series.  Until this time I essentially believed the American fable that we are a nation founded on and committed to the freedom and nobility of all people.  The truth doesn’t always set you free.  Sometimes it disturbs, haunts, and invades you like a bacteria that will neither kill or cure you.

The only way I can maintain any integrity in regard to my ancestor’s relationship to the Indians is to call it painfully and regrettably, an American Holocaust.

According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a “vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record.”

By the end of the 19th century, writes David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, native Americans had undergone the “worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people.”

In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr., “there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a ‘race’ of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history.”

I recall a fiery rant from John the Baptist.

“When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’… every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

American translation – “Don’t talk to me about Washington’s freedom revolution or, Jefferson and Franklin’s  “all people being created equal.” Own up to who you are, and show that you have changed by your actions.”

I am enriched to hear our Presidents decry and memorialize the Jewish Holocaust.  But, if it serves as a smoke screen of self righteousness on how we liberated the Jews, while never looking in the American mirror we will continue to be like the “brood of vipers” John the Baptist called out.  And, we will continue to invade sovereign nations to fight our contrived boogiemen like communism and terrorism.

When U. S. leaders and citizens are courageous enough to confront our denial of the American Indian Holocaust, then healing words of Jesus will be released on their path of natural grace.  “The truth will set you free.”

I was not raised religiously, and, for many years, did not know very much about various religious beliefs.  I was interested in politics, and much of what I thought I knew about Christianity came from Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other religious right wingers.

I was surprised to eventually learn that (a) Christ’s message is one of love–even to love one’s enemies.  This was not a message I heard anywhere in the hate spewed by the religious right and (b) not all Christians are like Robertson or Falwell.

Unfortunately, the religious right has been pretty successful in making Christianity, in the context of politics, synonymous with the Falwell/Robertson school.  There are plenty of Christians (including here on this site) who fundamentally disagree with the religious right and are starting to make the point that Christianity is not a monolith.  (Of course, Christianity is hardly the only religion, and should not be squeezing other faiths out of political debate–but, in the United States, right wingers have been pretty successful at making this so).

As I have been thinking about Dr. George Tiller’s murder, I have noticed that Christianity is used as a license for hate.  As I noted, signs grotesquely displayed at Dr. Tiller’s funeral read “God sent the shooter” and “Baby killer in hell”.   This is not unique to the anti-abortion movement.  Opponents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people mix hatred with religious language, arguing that Christianity provides a justification for discrimination against LGBT people.  An elected official claims (and she is not alone) that “the homosexual agenda is destroying the nation” and poses a bigger threat to the United States than terrorism, claiming that these slanders are justified because “according to God’s word, [being gay] is not the right kind of lifestyle.”

Where is the message of love?  I see messages of hate everywhere–those who call Dr. Tiller a baby killer, who say he got what he deserved, who take pleasure in their belief that he is damned.  How do some (not all in the religious right of course) who claim to follow a philosophy of truly revolutionary love, the vertiginous idea that one must love even one’s enemy, fail to display love, choosing instead to spew out messages of hate?  Where are the leaders–why do the leaders of the religious right and their political allies fail to insist on love, even for one’s enemies?  Something isn’t right here, to say the least.

 

 

“The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor. Time, patience, and the baby will come. Respect the woman’s rhythm. And if you forget the second and third rule, remember the first. The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor.”

This was the philosophy of Dr. George Tiller, the sixty-seven-year-old Physician who was assassinated a week ago Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas.  

As I write this the sick feeling in the belly of my being returns for a man I had never heard of until his murder.  My infirm soul has systemic causes.  

Doctors who provide legal medical care for women are routinely harassed, threatened and sometimes slain.  Women’s clinics are often under siege and vandalized.  Those who honor the woman’s body as her sacred domain are labeled as “murderers” and “baby killers.”  Politicians are forever playing on the fears of certain Christians making laws to chisel away at the legal and ethical right to an abortion.  This is the second time in less than a year that an innocent person has been shot in cold blood in a church practicing liberal faith.

Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue made this statement. 

“George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”

In the early 90’s I read a thick volume which had a profound impact on me titled, “The Great Cosmic Mother” by Sjoo and Mor.  

They write,

“The problem of mass poverty, mass starvation, the mass deaths of children and infants every year from a simple lack of proper nourishment is not normal, is not ‘life’… It is a condition traceable solely and specifically to patriarchal religion.

The antiabortion movement in America calls itself ‘pro life.’  In fact it is ‘pro fetus’ period.  Championing the fetus is easy…What is hard is to change the world, so that millions and millions of children have a chance for some kind of qualitative life after they are born – this is the only genuine pro life work.

When one reads the total gestalt of the antiabortionist movement in America, it is clear to see that the average ‘pro lifer’ is not pro-life at all, certainly not pro-quality life.  Rather, they are pro-control.”

Their conclusion has a foul visual ‘aha’ moment for me.  I vividly recall in 2003 when the federal law was signed to make intact dilation and extraction a crime.  Every single person gathered around the table were men.

Sjoo and Mor continue. 

“The fundamentalist men…are not involved in a religion of Life, but in a religion of male control.”

“Where does life begin?” they inquire.  “Life does not begin.  It is always here.  Nature is alive from the beginning.  Life does not emerge from us, we emerge from it.  Pregnancy and childbirth are ritual passages of eternal life through the bodies of autonomous women.”

Dr. George Tiller recognized a cosmic truth; “The woman’s body is smarter than the doctor.”  Well then, just maybe the woman’s body is smarter than powerful male religions, ministers, and law makers.

Dateline: July 29, 2009 Washington D.C., “Christian Senators Reject Jesus for Supreme Court Justice”

After tense, terse and tedious questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a majority of Christian Senators voted against Jesus of Nazareth to become the first Aramaic speaking Supreme Court Justice of the United States.

Leading up to the nomination President Barak Obama articulated the qualities he wanted in a potential Justice. 

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

President Obama showcased the humble roots of nominee Jesus as he introduced him.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.  He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.  He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He has no credentials but Himself.”  

In the course of the hearings the Christian Senators were particularly vexed by the response of Jesus in a case where he failed to uphold the rule of law. 

Fundamentalist Christian leaders had brought a woman before Jesus who had been caught in the act of adultery.  They quoted from Leviticus in the law of Moses.

“If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.”

They then challenged Jesus, “Now what do you say?”

Jesus stooped down and began to write with his finger in the dust on the ground.  As they persisted in their questioning Jesus straightened up and said to them, “if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  He then bent down again and continued writing with his finger on the ground.  At this, they began to leave one by one, beginning with the eldest. 

Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing before him.  He stood up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?  ‘No one sir,’ she replied.  ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared.  ‘Go now, and do not sin again.’” 

Here is a sampling of responses from the Christian Senators, when asked why they rejected Jesus to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Senator Orrin Hatch replied. 

(Obama) “said that a judge has to be a person of empathy. What does that mean? Usually that’s a code word for an activist judge.”

Senator Jeff Sessions retorted,

“(His judicial philosophy is) “dangerous, because I don’t know what empathy means. So I’m one judge and I have empathy for you and not this party, and so…is he now free to rule one way or the other based on likes, predilections, politics, personal values?”

The Senate’s No. 2 Republican Jon Kyl forcefully stated he could not support a Supreme Court justice who decides cases based on

“emotions, feelings, preconceived ideas, or someone who takes into account human suffering and employs empathy from the bench.”

Peter, a fellow judge with Jesus, reflected on the Christian Senators “no” votes.

“The living stone rejected by men is chosen and precious in God’s sight..the very stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone that will make men stumble and a rock that will make them fall.” 

So says Liberty University:

Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying “we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by” the university.

As the College Democrats Alumni Association put it:

Apparently it’s not okay to be a Democrat, a Christian, and a Liberty University student all at the same time.  The university is telling chapter leaders that they can’t use the university’s name, hold meetings on campus, or advertise events — if they try, they’ll earn a reprimand that could lead to expulsion.

Now it appears the club can still meet, but not as an official Liberty University club:

Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. made his first public comments today about the university’s suspension of the campus Democratic party club.

“That club still has the right to exist,“ Falwell said, although it cannot use the university’s name in its activities.

“They still can meet on campus,“ in certain rooms, he said. “There is absolutely no animosity at all toward any of these kids.

“They are good, Christian kids who sit with me at ball games. I just hope they find a pro-life family organization to affiliate with so they can be endorsed by Liberty again.“

So, wait, Liberty University can conceivably “endorse” Republican clubs but not Democratic ones? Wouldn’t that be some flagrant violation of their non-profit tax status? And here I thought allowing political speech on campus was about debate and an exchange of ideas that would help students think critically (because that’s what it did for me). Apparently, you’re not supposed to go to Liberty to expand your horizons.

DNC head Tim Kaine and VA gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Creigh Deeds have already condemned the politically-minded expulsion, but you can add your name to the growing chorus. Sign the College Democrats Alumni Assocatio petition and send a message to Liberty that there is still free speech in America, even on campuses like Liberty’s.

Over the last 30 years, the Republican party has played a dangerous game with the religious right, buying their support by paying lip service to the right-wing religious on reproductive rights, discrimination against the LGBT community, and breaking down the boundary between church and state.  The party’s decision to court the radical religious right, taking their extreme positions seriously and giving them the cover needed to appear mainstream, has had profound consequences for American politics.  We have reached a point where a first-tier Republican presidential candidate (Mike Huckabee) could openly call for theocracy, saying the Constitution must be changed to match “God’s standards” and not disqualify himself from consideration.

I have great respect for religious freedom, but, as the radical religious right has injected its views into politics at every level, it is perfectly appropriate to note just how extreme this movement is.  One recent example caught my eye.  Liberty University, the school founded by Jerry Falwell, decided to revoke its recognition of the campus Democratic club.  In explaining the decision, the school’s vice president of student affairs said that “Among other things, Liberty University stands for the sanctity of human life.  The loss of human life is a great tragedy and we cannot remain silent when the political policies or politicians themselves promote the destruction of innocent human life.  While those who are members of the LU Democratic club are well-intentioned and honorable, the platform and policies of the national Democratic party, and the candidates supported by that party, and thus the student organization itself, are inconsistent with the mission of the University.” Or, as the club’s staff advisor said the vice president explained it to her, “You can’t be a Democrat and be a Christian…” (the vice president denied saying this).

Ugly, ugly stuff.  We shouldn’t have religious tests in politics–in fact, the Constitution expressly forbids it.  But the good folks at Liberty University think otherwise–they have solemnly concluded that the Democratic party is a party that stands for the destruction of human life, and that its policies are inconsistent with the mission of the University — which is “to develop Christ-centered men and women…”  So, the school’s vice president may bob and weave, but his own words make clear that the Democratic party’s platform and policies are inconsistent with developing “Christ-centered men and women…”–in other words, you can’t be a Democrat and a Christian.

I find it disgusting that anyone would denounce the Democrats as un-Christian, but leaving that aside for the moment, why is it that the radical religious right makes abortion the only litmus test for judging the faith of politicians and political parties?  Liberty’s statement says the school “stands for the sanctity of human life”.  Why do they give the Republican party a pass on the death penalty, or on the war in Irq, which has killed more than its share of innocent civillians, including children?

The unholy alliance between the Republican party and the radical religious right is an affront to the Constitution, especially in the sense that religious righties have expressly developed a religious test for politicians, one that invariably places abortion as the make or break issue.  If these extremists insist on forcing their sanctimonious tests into political discussion, can they at least explain why they give Republicans a pass on issues like the death penalty?