US Army disinvites Franklin Graham

[RLENT]

I think the founding fathers saw this very thing could happen and even though they were of different christian sects, they understand that there are different religions and what happened with the English Civil war parts one and two.

Bingo !

Case in point is this "US Army disinvites Franklin Graham" and what looks like the trashing of the Christian religion. This is being used by some as an attack on a specific religion while it is not. They are actually preventing a person from speaking in a US government building who has insulted another religion based on his own religious beliefs.

You analysis in this entire matter is exactly spot-on.

Shirley Dobson, who is at the center of the source of the propaganda has fueled the fired by telling the world the pentagon has "melted like butter" and they had something to do with an "assault on religious freedom and people of faith." which is a out and out lie and shows her intolerance.

Exactly - if one wanted to understand where folks of this ilk are really comin' from read up on the following topics:

Dominionism

Dominion Theology

Triumphalism

I view them as being quite similar to say, oh ..... radical Islam - although they have not yet progressed to the point of wholesale butchery in attempting to obtain their ends (although one could easily make the case, with what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, that indeed, some have reached the point of butchery)

But lest anyone forget - that sort of whackiness has existed before in the Christian religion - was fairly prevalent back around the time of a little event that I believe was called The Inquisition ......

At this point I would want to see the end of any National Day of Pray if we have zealots like Dobson making statements that fuel more hatred.

Sounds good to me .....

Franklin Graham has a right to his own personal opinions on any matter, and to practice his religion as he sees fit - as long as it does not intrude on the rights of others .....

He does not have a right to act in a leadership role with respect to our government or the armed forces - that's a privilege .... something that one earns by words and deeds ...... and by his own statements he has disqualified himself .....

[RLENT]

The American people elected a president named Barack Hussein Obama, so they shouldn't be surprised that Christianity is now out of favor.

That there is exactly the point - no religion should be "in favor" .....

Hopefully, someone is keeping a log of every insulting instance like this so we can be reminded of the many ways he has driven the American people apart and has subverted the values that have made the country great.

And you think what Franklin Graham is preaching doesn't drive people apart ..... and is somehow what "made this country great" ?

Seriously ?

[aristotle]

We don't have to go back to the Inquisition days when bad acts were performed in the name of Christianity. The contrast between modern Christianity and Islam couldn't be more stark. Right now, this very day, tens of millions of Muslim women and girls live in terror of the men of Islam.

Muslim females are subjected to unbelievable oppression. Little more than chattel. Islam as practiced in many parts of the world sanctions female genital mutilation, honor killings and public flogging of women. Somewhere it's happening right now.

The great epoch of our time is the current struggle between Islam and the Western world where Judeo-Christian principles are dominant. All religions are not equal and not deserving of equal respect.

It would be nice to live in an Utopian world where religion and politics are not intertwined. Our moral codes come from religion, otherwise an individual is freelancing it as he/she goes along. We in the Western world owe an immense debt of gratitude to the Judeo-Christian tenets which undergird our societies and way of life. It is always a work in progress.

Look at how Muslim infiltration into Great Britain and France have divided those countries. Radical Islam must not be allowed to establish a beachhead in the United States. I am comforted by the belief most Americans would fight to the death to stop the madness disguised as radical Islam. The election of Barack Obama has placed our nation at the greatest peril we have faced to date.

[Turtle]

The 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows the evangelical percentage of the population at 28.6%

The Catholics at 24.5% and mainline Protestants at 13.9%...

It can be a dangerous thing to take Wiki at face value, especially when using things "like lies, dаmned lies and statistics."

To say evangelicals are only a small part of the country is flat out wrong.

Well, since evangelicals themselves cannot agree on the definition of evangelical, depending on which definition you use it could be flat out correct to say that evangelicals comprise a small percentage of the country. It you take every flavor of religion that could be construed as evangelical and compile it together, yeah, you get about 28%, but when you start using other criteria the percentages dwindle rather rapidly.

A good idea would be to go to The 2010 Statistical Abstract and look at the actual data yourself, and to note the sources of the information themselves. Graham may be evangelical, but he certainly doesn't represent all of them. And the percentage of our country that he represents is actually a pretty small one.

Franklin Graham speaks the truth about radical Islam. If it offends people in certain quarters, that's too bad.

While his comments about radical Islam is something I agree with, too, that doesn't necessarily make it the truth. But the problem is, two of them really, he expanded his comments to include the whole of Islam, not just Islamic Fundamentalism. And then he, well, you know how when some white dood, for example, will make some really racist comment, and then try to temper it with, "Hey, I've got lots of black friends!" and they come off like a blidiot? (blithering idiot) Well, Franklin Graham did the same thing when he said, "[Islam is a] "very evil and wicked religion. I don't like the way they treat women, the way they treat minorities. I just find it horrific.... But I love the people of Islam. Many Muslims are wonderful people... I have many Muslim friends." Blidiot. He won't apologize for his comments, which I find great, but he shouldn't have tempered his comments in an attempt to not offend somebody.

In any case, the Army can invite, or disinvite whoever they want. I don't care. If they feel that Graham's comments could fuel the tensions in Muslim nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, places where U.S. troops are deployed, and they don't want to put American military lives in any more danger than they already are, that's fine with me. I'd sure hate to think that a soldier died because of something that Graham said. I might be wrong, but I don't think the purpose of the National Day of Prayer is to fuel controversy, much less get people killed needlessly.

[Turtle]

My problem is with the REASON for the invitation being rescended - a protest not from the public or from military or elected officials,but from the liberal Military Religious Freedom Foundation because he might have offended some muslims in the military with a post-911 statement he made denouncing Islam as "a very evil and wicked religion".

Are you really saying, in effect, that if the protest had come from the public, or from military or elected officials, that you wouldn't have a problem with it? It's a trick question, be careful.

I'm willing to bet that before this story broke you had never even heard of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, because if you had, you would not call them a liberal organization. They, and their founder, are far from liberal. All they do is fight religious coercion and discrimination in the military. They were founded because of excessive and sometimes brutal discrimination, harassment and aggressive proselytizing by Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians within the military, sometimes by superior officers.

The organization was founded by Michael Weinstein, a 1977 United States Air Force Academy graduate who then went on to be an Air Force JAG for 10 years. He then spent 3 years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House as legal council, and was the Committee Management Officer of the Iran-Contra Investigation in his capacity as Assistant General Council of the White House Office of Administration, Executive Office of the President. He later served as General Counsel to Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation.

The Foundation's stance on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," for example, is one where they are dead set against repealing it, because the policy is both Biblically sound and Constitutionally correct. If the policy is repealed then the government is meddling in religion, in effect establishing a new one by actually redefining Biblical terminology, and is therefore unconstitutional. Those liberal baѕtards!

No one, until now, has ever accused Michael Weinstein of being a liberal. And the only people who could conceivably call the Military Religious Freedom Foundation liberal are the most extreme of fundamentalist evangelicals, A.K.A., Pilgrims.

Many people think the Pilgrims and others came to these shores because the Church of England were too strict, to conservative and were looking for religious freedom. Newp. They were looking for religious freedom alright, but came here because they felt the Church of England was far too lenient.

[aristotle]

We need to stop bowing to the Muslim muckrakers every time one of them cries, "Foul!" It's this kind of submissiveness that eventually leads to subjugation. Moreover, it's difficult to apply logic to faith-based arguments. It becomes an exercise in futility.

When crunch time comes to our shores, it will be "all hands on deck." There will be no middle ground where happy talk about moral equivalency has a stake. We won't have the luxury of free and open debate once Islam puts down serious roots in this country. Better to have those discussions now.

[Turtle]

We need to stop bowing to the Muslim muckrakers every time one of them cries, "Foul!" It's this kind of submissiveness that eventually leads to subjugation.

Why not? We cry "Foul!" every time a Muslim fails to bow to us. They don't want to be subjugated any more than we do.

Moreover, it's difficult to apply logic to faith-based arguments. It becomes an exercise in futility.

Which is pretty funny, since most of the arguments against Islam are faith-based arguments. Hey, I know, let's kill 'em all and let God or Allah or Whomever sort them out!

When crunch time comes to our shores, it will be "all hands on deck." There will be no middle ground where happy talk about moral equivalency has a stake. We won't have the luxury of free and open debate once Islam puts down serious roots in this country. Better to have those discussions now.

It could happen, certainly, but I don't think it will, not here. This may be one of the few places where Islam, especially fundamentalist Islam, cannot make significant roots. Case in point, Muslim Central USA, Dearborn, MI, no more hookah cafés beginning on May 1. They can and will insert some of their beliefs and customs into ours, that's what America is all about, but I don't think Islam can conquer here. Hеll, they can't even conquer a snot-nosed sand dune like Israel.

They're pіssed at South Park, tho. They got Comedy Central shakin' in their boots.

[aristotle]

I believe Israel is exceedingly nervous these days about the intentions of Iran and Iran's feverish attempt to acquire nuclear capabilities. I would submit that Israel exists only at the pleasure of American guarantees to her security. It is only a matter of time until Israel's neighbors have nukes. Then what?

The United States has a two-pronged problem: (1) we are in a death spiral of appeasement with Islam and (2) we are in deep denial about our Christian heritage.

When we lose sense of who we are as a people, what remains to hold us together? It won't be flowery language about tolerance that carries the day.

[jaminjim]

They're pіssed at South Park, tho. They got Comedy Central shakin' in their boots.

I heard that ABC news reported that the Muslims didn't like it. But instead of showing anything about that they showed the Virgin Mary smeared with fecal matter. Good thing us Christians aren't as easily offended.

[LDB]

None of the current crop of animated prime time shows are worth feces. The last prime time cartoon that was remotely entertaining without being garbage was The Flintstones. It wasn't anything great but at least it was fit for anyone to watch and didn't push the limits of impropriety at every opportunity.

[Pilgrim]

Using that logic, if his name was SpongeBob SquarePants then Bugs Bunny would be out of favor.
He's no more of a Muslim than he is a Christian, and you know it.

After further consideration, I'm going to amend my previous posts: the point about the name was that it's a muslim name, and he's the first American president to have one. Our current president was elected at a time when islam and Christianity are at odds with each other, as has usually been the case to some degree throughout history.

Regarding my statement declaring Obama the first muslim president; I guess what I was trying to say was that we might think of Barack Hussein Obama in the same context as Bill Clinton being declared the first black president by author Toni Morrison. Besides his obvious sympathies, he actually has the muslim blood in his veins as opposed to Clinton who was only born into modest means, tried to play the saxophone and had an acute problem with his zipper.

Clinton as the First Black President

[Pilgrim]

Are you really saying, in effect, that if the protest had come from the public, or from military or elected officials, that you wouldn't have a problem with it? It's a trick question, be careful.

I'm willing to bet that before this story broke you had never even heard of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, because if you had, you would not call them a liberal organization. They, and their founder, are far from liberal. All they do is fight religious coercion and discrimination in the military. They were founded because of excessive and sometimes brutal discrimination, harassment and aggressive proselytizing by Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians within the military, sometimes by superior officers.

The organization was founded by Michael Weinstein, a 1977 United States Air Force Academy graduate who then went on to be an Air Force JAG for 10 years. He then spent 3 years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House as legal council, and was the Committee Management Officer of the Iran-Contra Investigation in his capacity as Assistant General Council of the White House Office of Administration, Executive Office of the President. He later served as General Counsel to Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation.

The Foundation's stance on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," for example, is one where they are dead set against repealing it, because the policy is both Biblically sound and Constitutionally correct. If the policy is repealed then the government is meddling in religion, in effect establishing a new one by actually redefining Biblical terminology, and is therefore unconstitutional. Those liberal baѕtards!

No one, until now, has ever accused Michael Weinstein of being a liberal. And the only people who could conceivably call the Military Religious Freedom Foundation liberal are the most extreme of fundamentalist evangelicals, A.K.A., Pilgrims.

Many people think the Pilgrims and others came to these shores because the Church of England were too strict, to conservative and were looking for religious freedom. Newp. They were looking for religious freedom alright, but came here because they felt the Church of England was far too lenient.

Further enlightenment about Michael Weinstein:


"Mikey Weinstein, who has been invited to speak on military bases to our cadets and paid with our tax-dollars, has made inflammatory statements of his own against evangelical Christians. Following are just a few:

• "The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of and it's a blood libel, a crime against humanity is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as "tolerance for diversity' equals "intolerance for us in the majority.' My response is: F*** you. F*** you. How dare you?"
• “Our Pentagon has been turned into a Pentacostalgon, and our department of defense has been turned into an imperious, vicioustic, contagion of unconstitutional triumphalism by people that want to kill us, or have their version of Jesus kill us, if we don’t accept their Biblical worldview.”
• “Either you stay quiet and let the evangelical chaplains shape a generation of the most powerful instrument of death the world has ever known into an army for Jesus, or you speak up. I couldn’t stay quiet”… today we face a new danger; the rise of the “fundamentalist Christian, parachurch, military corporate proselytizing complex.”
• “We are facing a national security threat in this country that is every bit as significant in magnitude, width and breadth internally as that presented externally by the now-resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. … I’m here to report to you today that that wall is nothing but smoke and debris. We are facing an absolute fundamentalist Christianisation – a Talibanisation – of the US Marine Corps, Army, Navy, and Air Force.”
• “It’s a fundamentalist Christian-Constitution fight,” Weinstein said in an interview. “This represents a perfect, quintessential example of the fact that our United States military has become infused, essentially, with the Christian mirror image of the type of Islam that is pushed by al-Qaida and the Taliban.”

Talk about misrepresentation. The quotes above say a lot about Mikey Weinstein, the man whose organization complained about comments made by Franklin Graham.
Contrarily, Franklin Graham's views are not hateful nor profanity-laced, and they are based on observations of true events. The Pentagon itself had suffered a blow at the hands of a muslim terrorist who hijacked a plane, and such violence could happen again. If Graham voices how our country has endured the pain of death upon innocent citizens due to a core Islam belief in Jihad, that is within his rights of freedom."

Military Religious Freedom Foundation complains about Franklin Graham

[aristotle]

FoxNews.com is reporting President Obama visited with the Rev Billy Graham on Sunday at Graham's home in Norh Carolina. No way this is a coincidence or a preplanned visit, regardless of what the Obama propaganda ministers say.

Obama's advisors must know they really stepped in it this time by orchestrating the snub of Rev Graham's son, Franklin. I suspect Obama made this visit to manipulate the old man into some kind of public statement that all is well between the two of them. Rev Graham is in seriously declining health, it would be unpardonable to exploit a ninety year old man for political gain.

Not knowing Rev Graham's mental acuity, we will see how this story is spun over the next few days. Billy Graham is first among equals in America's evangelical aristocracy. Even at this late point in life, just one unflattering statement from Rev Graham could devastate Obama's political fortunes. And Obama knows it. Thus, the trip.

The hubris of Barack Obama is stunning. If there is justice, Franklin still has his father's ear... and the old man still has a clear mind not to be impressed by Obama's sudden charm offensive. This story isn't over. You just don't slap Billy Graham or the Graham family.

[RLENT]

Hey Pilgrim,

Thanks for posting Michael Weinstein's actual words (from a PR perspective it's always a great day when you can get the opposition to carry your message ) - too bad you didn't bother to quote them in enough context so that it was clear what he meant and what he was referring to though. As an example:

"People say this is a Christian country founded on Christian principles," he says. "The real essential aspect of this country, woven into the tapestry of the embroidery of how beautiful this country is, is one concept above all others, which is tolerance of diversity.

"The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of and it's a blood libel, a crime against humanity, is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as "tolerance for diversity' equals "intolerance for us in the majority."

My response is: F*** you. F*** you. How dare you?"

The second part (which you quoted) is meaningless without the first part which provides the context of exactly what he is referring to ....

And BTW, his sentiments as expressed above pretty much work for me ..... including the language. And if you think that use of such language (which are merely words) is truly "profane", as opposed to the utter profanity of war (particularly when conducted by a religious zealot), then you truly have no real understanding of the profane .....

Too bad you didn't bother to quote anything else from the remainder of the article by Cara DeGette - but of course, that doesn't fit with the specific agenda you're trying to push (it's all good ... just as long as we're doin' it in Jesus' name)

So lemme see if I can fill the void:

"Every single time radicalized Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state and the armed forces, we have ended up not with puddles and little streams, but with oceans and oceans of blood," he says. "I'm not just talking about the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the four Crusades, I'm not just talking about the Black Plague; it's the transition from Plan A to Plan B.

"In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the Holocaust, the pogroms, the Inquisition ..."

"I'm the field general leading this thing right now. I get demonized by the religious right and I get canonized by the liberals, and I don't deserve either. I'm just a piece of flotsam on the ocean. But I'm telling you, this country is going through right now a transition from A to B."

and

.... As an added bonus, he would be able to visit [his son] Curtis, who had just completed combat survival training [at the USAF Academy]

"Curtis just has this tremendous joie de vivre, and the moment he walked in, I knew something was wrong," Weinstein says. His son wanted to talk, but not on base. All the way to the McDonald's beyond the South Gate entrance of the academy, Weinstein says he was freaking out, wondering what trouble his son had gotten himself into. Finally inside the restaurant, Curtis coughed it up.

"He said, "Dad, it's not what I've done, it's what I'm gonna do, and I'm probably going to get into a lot of trouble. I'm going to beat the **** out of the next person who calls me a "****ing Jew" or accuses me or our people of killing Jesus.'"

He asked his older son, who had just graduated from the academy, about his experience. "Casey said, "Dad, this is just the way it is. Senior cadets would sit down and say, "How do you feel about the fact that your family is going to burn in hell?"

A June 2004 report conducted by a team from Yale Divinity School observed, among other things, that during basic training, Maj. Warren Watties called on about 600 cadets to proselytize their bunkmates and warn them they would burn in the fires of hell if they weren't born again. [mission creep]

A 2004 survey indicated that half the cadets at the academy reported hearing religious slurs on campus.

One documented "joke" went like this: "Why do Jews make the best magicians? Because they can go into a building and vanish in a puff of smoke." [apparent reference to being fragged by one's own comrades-in-arms] Jewish cadets complained about being called "Christ-killers" and being told that the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus.

Cadets who declined to attend a Christian worship service reported being marched back to their dorms by upperclassmen in an exercise they called "Heathen Flight".

Last July 12, Weinstein picked up his New York Times and read a story about the increasingly religious climate in the Air Force. He choked on this quote, from Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson: "We won't proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched."

[sounds like more "mission creep" to me .... ]

"The fact he would make that statement on the front page of the most visible newspaper in the world, when we're fighting a war against an enemy that already sees us, sees America, as invading Christian imperialist crusaders!" Weinstein marvels. "How do you think that plays with [Iraqis and other Muslims] when they can say, "Hey, this is the Air Force policy'?

The above is so unbelievably retarded that it utterly boggles the mind ..... old Cecil ought to be court-martialed for sheer military stupidity (in strategy and tactics) if for no other reason ....

BTW Pilgrim, if this is really a road you wanna go down, you just let me know there sport - I got plenty of ammo on the subject (some of it actual audio and video of retarded, religious fanatic whackjobs of the Christian variety, in the military, saying just some of the wildest things )

It is not likely to be an argument you will prevail on.

Entire article by Carla DeGete linked below:

Mikey's Mission

Time for a housecleaning I say ....

[aristotle]

RLENT... just a quick question: has it occurred to you that this rabblerouser Weinstein makes stuff up to whine about? His rants remind me of a spoiled brat teenager who hates his parents. I suspect Weinstein's real hangup is the fact that America is a predominantly Christian nation. A lot of self-loathing sufferers of arrested development hate their parents and their country. Sounds like Weinstein's son is another Major Hasan just waiting to happen. A psychiatric eval would be in order for Weinstein and his children. No doubt, their military careers will be truncated. Weinstein isn't the first to make a horse's behind of himself. His histrionics will pass just like those who came before him.