Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Stop Catering to People's Basest Instincts
7/9/2012 8:26:52 AM
The Republican party attacks the defenseless among
us, to gain political clout.
The conservative party (used to be Republican) needs to stop playing to people’s basest instincts. Take illegal immigrants for example. These were people who risked their lives to come here, hoping for a better life. Most of them were peasants. These are human beings, not political chattel. I can’t emphasize enough what it says on a plaque quoting a poem by Emma Lazarus at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, tempest tost to me, I left my lamp beside the golden door.”
Some would argue that these people are breaking the law and that it’s the government’s duty to enforce it by sending them back. But some of them have been here for years; their children had nothing to do with the illegal crossing. Perhaps a move powerful argument is that in 1845 the United States provoked a war with Mexico, after which we took Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Utah, so who’s the alien, huh? Before that we took the land from all over the country from Native Americans. The Cherokee were told that if they farmed the land and became more like whites they would be accepted. Many of them did; many owned plantations and acquired slaves. Their land was stolen anyway and they were sent to live in Indian territory (modern Oklahoma) which was in turn taken from them.
There are approximately twelve million illegal aliens in this country, but what the GOP doesn’t say is that not all of them are Mexicans. Perhaps your great grandfather walked across or swam across the border between Canada and the United States. But because they were waspish they weren’t harassed.
It’s not only Mexicans who are targeted by the GOP. They cater to the extreme religious faction in the party who claim the Bible is the word of god. It’s not. Experts tell us that at least four people wrote the Old Testament, one of them probably Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch. As for the New Testament, we have Constantine to thank for that. When Emperor Constantine became a Christian, he ordered the bishops to compile a cannon to stop all the bickering going on. It took them until the end of the fourth century to come up with a reasonable facsimile of what we have now. Lots of stuff didn’t make the finals, such as the Book of Enoch and the Gnostic gospels. So what was wrong with St. Thomas’s gospel or Mary Magdalene’s gospel? Were they not also inspired by God. And what about King James’s Bible? It was translated, just as Baruch probably clarified Jeremiah’s words, or at least made them sound a little less crazy. Of course the target I’m talking about here is homosexuals. The Bible has some unkind things to say about them. The Bible also has the Old Testament God telling Joshua to kill all the women and children after the Battle of Jericho and for the Jews to be cursed into perpetuity. No, homosexuals are human beings, too, and it’s just flat out wrong to pass so-called Marriage Amendments codifying marriage to mean marriage between a man and a woman. Thirty-two states have passed these referendums, but they will eventually be ruled unconstitutional for the simple reason that the Declaration of Independence (reinforced by the Constitution) says “All men are created equal,” not “All men are created equal, except for gays.”
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