On February 18, 2012, GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum warned about the “phony theology” of President Barack Obama.
Rick Santorum
“It’s not about you,” Santorum told supporters of the right-wing Tea Party in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s not about your quality of life.
“It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.”
Which raises an interesting question: What would a Bible-based agenda mean for the country?
The death penalty would be vastly expanded to cover such “crimes” as:
- Sabbath-breaking: Because the Lord considers it a holy day, anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death. (Exodus 31:12-15)
- Adultery: If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)
- Fornication: A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death. (Leviticus 21:9)
A Biblical-era stoning
- Nonbelievers: They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13)
- Homosexuality: If a man also lies with mankind, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20-13)
- Taking the Lord’s name in vain: Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. (Leviticus 24:16)
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution—which forbids slavery—would be repealed. The Bible not only permits slavery but lays out rules for its practice—such as:
-
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. (Exodus 21-7)
- However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. (Leviticus 25:44-45)
- Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. (1 Peter 2:18)
Almost all scientific progress would be discarded, since most of its findings conflict with the Bible:
- One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth abides forever. (Ecclesiastes 1:4). This claim is totally contradicted by what astronomers now know about the eventual fate of the Earth: In about 7.6 billion years, the sun will exhaust its nuclear fuels. This will vastly increase its heat and gravitational pull, and at least Mercury, Earth and Venus will be vaporized.
- The Bible speaks of a world where physical laws are often violated by the will of God. Thus, Jesus turns water into wine and raises Lazarus from the dead; Jonah lives inside a fish for three days; Noah dies at 950 years; and demons are exorcised.
- In Biblical times, mental illness was seen as a manifestation of demonic possession. Today we know that mental illness has nothing to do with evil spirits.
Laws guaranteeing equal rights for women would be repealed:
- I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (1 Timothy 12:10)
- Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:22)
- A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. (1 Timothy 2:11)
- But if…evidence of the girl’s virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her father’s house and there her townsman shall stone her to death. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
Military conflicts would be fought without regard to the Geneva Convention–as the Israelites did:
- “You are my battle-ax and sword,” says the Lord. “With you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms….With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers.” (Jeremiah 51:20-23)
Depiction of the taking of Jericho by the Israelites
- Samuel said to Saul, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” (1 Samuel 15, 1-3)
Yes, a nation governed by “a theology based on the Bible” would be one far different from the United States we know today.
Since a number of Old Testament practices might lend themselves to easy abuse, this is not a matter to be taken lightly.
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REPUBLICANS: ATTACKING SOCIALISM, SUPPORTING COMMUNISTS
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 9, 2023 at 12:10 amMarjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), running for reelection in 2022, minced no words in her fundraising email: She opened by attacking “Joe Biden’s Communist Green New Deal.”
Then, after slandering Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WYO), Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) and Adam Kinzinger (R-ILL), she warned that Never Trumpers were colluding “with Communist Democrats to rig the 2022 and 2024 elections.”
And she attacked the January 6 House Committee—charged with investigating the treasonous attack on the Capitol Building by Donald Trump’s followers—as the “January 6 Witch Hunt Committee.”
According to Greene, President Biden was “crippling American energy production to impose socialism on America.”
“I know with your help, we can stop communism and save America,” Greene concluded.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Since the late 1940s, attacking “Communism” and “socialism” has become standard operating procedure for Republicans running for election—and reelection.
Thus, President Donald Trump, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations, on September 24, 2019: “One of the most serious challenges our countries face is the specter of socialism. It’s the wrecker of nations and the destroyer of societies.”
He cited Venezuela as an example of the failures of socialism, and denounced its president, Nicolás Maduro, as a “Cuban puppet.”
And Trump warned: “Socialism and communism are about one thing only: Power for the ruling class. Today I repeat a message to the world that I have delivered at home: America will never be a socialist country.”
Donald Trump
Yet despite such attacks on socialism and communism, many Republicans—including Trump and Greene—have found cause to empathize with infamous Communist dictators.
Trump stands out predominantly as the first American President known to have colluded with a Russian dictator.
This was an open secret—most explicitly advertised by both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 28, 2019.
That advertisement came when the two met in Osaka, Japan—their first since the March 22 release of the Mueller Report, which documented Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
An NBC News reporter asked: Would you tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 Presidential election?
“Yes, of course I will,” replied Trump, grinning. “Don’t meddle in the election, please.”
And he jokingly wagged his finger at Putin: “Don’t meddle in the election.”
Putin grinned back.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump’s affinity for Communist dictators didn’t end with Putin. He boasted that, during an exchange of letters with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, “we fell in love.”
Had a Democrat made such a boast, Republicans would have branded him a Communist traitor.
And while Trump has slandered literally hundreds of Americans and the leaders of the NATO alliance, he has never once criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin for anything.
Trump is by no means the only Republican to cuddle up with Communists.
Seven House Republicans—Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Matt Gaetz (FL), Andy Biggs (AZ), Lauren Boebert (CO), Dan Bishop (N.C.) and Chip Roy (TX)—voted against stripping Russia of “most favored nation” status after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nor is admiration of Russia confined to Right-wing politicians.
Franklin Graham, the son of the late Reverend Billy Graham, praised Putin for a 2013 law that banned “propaganda” promoting “nontraditional” relationships for children.
“Isn’t it sad, though, that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue—protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda—Russia’s standard is higher than our own?” Graham wrote. “In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues.”
Franklin Graham
James Kirchick, an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist, has indicted Republicans generally for their fervent embrace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
As he wrote in a July 27, 2017 essay, “How the GOP Became the Party of Putin”:
“For the past four years, I worked at a think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, that was bankrolled by Republican donors and regularly criticized the Obama administration….
“What I never expected was that the Republican Party—which once stood for a muscular, moralistic approach to the world, and which helped bring down the Soviet Union—would become a willing accomplice of what the previous Republican presidential nominee rightly called our No. 1 geopolitical foe: Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”
How did this come about?
“Russia’s intelligence operatives are among the world’s best. I believe they made a keen study of the American political scene and realized that, during the Obama years, the conservative movement had become ripe for manipulation. Long gone was its principled opposition to the ‘evil empire.’
“What was left was an intellectually and morally desiccated carcass populated by con artists, opportunists, entertainers and grifters operating massively profitable book publishers, radio empires, websites, and a TV network whose stock-in-trade are not ideas but resentments….
“Surveying this lamentable scene, why wouldn’t Russia try to ‘turn’ the American right, whose ethical rot necessarily precedes its rank unscrupulousness?
“Why wouldn’t a ‘religious right’ that embraced a boastfully immoral charlatan like Donald Trump not turn a blind eye toward—or, in the case of [evangelical pastor] Franklin Graham, embrace—an oppressive regime like that ruling Russia?”
For millions, the power of love plays a central part in their lives.
Yet, for other millions, hate serves as a force that gives meaning to their lives. And its power must never be underestimated.
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