Reply #36: If you want to know where religious sectarianism leads, just look at Iraq.

[Peace Patriot]

Newt seems to be campaigning against Thomas Jefferson.

The thing is, our Founders were well aware of the religious wars, torture, witchburnings and all the other mayhem AMONG 'CHRISTIANS' THEMSELVES--internecine warfare (not to mention against others--Jews, Muslims)--in a thousand years of history in Europe, up to the American Revolution. It is not in the nature of 'Christian' preacher men to proclaim 'Christian' values without starting a war about WHICH 'Christian' values--whose sect, whose church, whose doctrine?--because "speaking for God" is not a religious act, it is an act of pure power-mongering. So what you get are a bunch of dominationist pricks, all trying to out-power each other.

When church and state were first cemented, in the 5th Century AD, that is the last you hear of the pacifist, communalist teachings of Jesus. They drove the real Christians underground, burned all their gospels, anathematized and exiled them, and set up "baptism by the sword." That was the first mistake. The state church then embarked on all sorts of jihads to consolidate its power, to the west and north, and also to exterminate any Christians who took the actual teachings of Jesus seriously, such as the Abligensians in southern France. They engaged in horrible witchhunts, to destroy the old Pagan beliefs, or any open alliance between Pagans and real Christians (such as the Pelagian monks in Wales and Ireland). And, of course, eventually instigated the dreadful Crusades--rampages of pillaging, rape and murder across Europe to the "Holy Lands." "Holy," my ass. Could anything be more unholy or ungodly than the ancient and the current "Crusades"?

Then, of course, came hundreds of years of torture and bloodshed over the "Reformation," among Reformist sects, and between the Reformers and the Church of Rome. More witchhunts. More torture. More death. Some 'Christians.' "Turn the other cheek" not in their lexicon. And how this was made possible was by the desire of kings and nobles to co-opt the power of religion in the interest of land grabs and other material pursuits. Without the cementing of church and state--to maintain both mental and physical control over subject peoples--the religious wars would have spent their force in theological debates, or other forms of coercion, not with massive bloodshed and suffering.

Our Founders were genuinely wise men. They wanted nothing of that horrendous history to pollute and destroy their new Republic. And they hoped to prevent it forever with the First Amendment to the Constitution: no establishment of religion.

And that is exactly what the Newt Gingriches--with their 25% approval rating--are trying to do: to pollute and destroy the Republic, which is the only power on earth, through the agency of its sovereign people, that has the potential to curtail, regulate and even dismantle the bad actor corporations that Newt and the Bush Cartel are the shills for.

This has been well thought out. There is--and always will be--a Calvinist minority that wishes to dictate morals and doctrine to the rest of us. Lard them with billions of dollars from corporate coffers--and then from our own treasury--and see what they can do to poison, corrode and kill loyalty to the secular state, in which all religions are free to operate, and where none have state powers, and in which all citizens are free to choose or not choose religious membership. Divide and conquer. You just have to look at what these traitors are doing to federal agencies--to FEMA, to the DofJ, to the EPA, to the National Guard, to the US military--to know what their agenda is, with regard to religion. Use it as a corrosive tool to further weaken the nation, and the sovereignty of the people, and their ability and right to regulate business corporations.

The war profiteering corporate news monopolies serve the function of putrifying public debate with fascist propaganda, to the exclusion of all other opinion--to demoralize the great progressive American majority, and make its members feel isolated and alone. Diebold/ES&S serve the function of disenfranchising the great progressive majority. The people vote, and nothing happens. 75% of the people hate the Iraq War and want it ended. They elect Democrats to end it. And the war is ESCALATED! Very demoralizing--but, above all, disempowering and disenfranchising. The majority begins to think it is the minority, because the national news narrative leaves them out. Have other Americans gone crazy? No. But the majority of Americans are nearly voiceless, and, with "trade secret," proprietary vote "counting" by rightwing Bushite corporations, powerless to change anything. And here comes Newt Gingrich all over again spouting 'christian' garbage in support of torture, mass slaughter, stealing from the poor and destroying secular government.

Clever, how he uses the word "radical" to describe the most profound principle of our government, going all the way back to our Founders: no establishment of religion. Jefferson, Madison, Washington, all of them, were thorough-going secularists. It was radical, indeed, given the history of Europe. Perhaps we should embrace the word radical--although it leaves ashes in the mouth, after its pollution by Bushites. Better to call it "conservative"--a return to fundamentals--and reclaim that word.