Religious right critiques hope, destroys world
The recent criticism of hate speech on campus is entirely appropriate. But we ought to make one exception to this rule: the “religious right,” a retrograde coterie of unattractive common folk who seek to impose their irrational beliefs on the rest of us. These fundamentalists lie awake at night, plotting the imposition of the truths they have received by revelation from God. God has decreed the necessity of prohibiting abortion and gay marriage, lest the land be scourged by His wrath, so the unquestioning hordes of Jesus-freaks flood the polls on election day.
The few who are at...
While you obviously intended most of your article as a satire, I think you accidentally discovered one of the major tenets of the practice of tolerance that most conservatives seem to not comprehend: tolerance implies to be tolerant of others' beliefs and lifestyles only when their behavior does not infringe upon your own life and pursuit of happiness. One pertinent example would be gay marriage: it would be right to be tolerant of the gay person and their marriage because they are only seeking to make their own life happier, whereas we would want to be intolerant of the fundamentalist Christian who doesn't support gay marriage because that person is not trying to make their own life better and happier but instead is trying to make someone else's life worse.
Does that make sense? Tolerance is pro-active, as in, a support of a healthy diversity of positive ideas and ways of life. Tolerance stops though when someone is trying to be intolerant of another's way of life.
On this campus there seems to be quite a bit of tolerance for fundamentalist Christians, probably more than they deserve considering how generally intolerant they are of so many things.
Brilliant! I couldn't decide whether this piece was a satire until I google'd the author's name... I met plenty of Obama supporters who actually think and talk like that.
Laying it on a little thick, wouldn't you say?
Is Barack Obama the Messiah?
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/
Ask the risk of extreme irony: get off the cross. Seriously.
Oh, and the holier-than-thou attitude probably won't make people like your opinions more. If you want to have a reasoned discussion of your beliefs or present an argument about why you are anti-women's choice or anti-gay marriage or pro-McCain, that's great. I, for one, would welcome an open and honest dialogue about the merits of the various positions in each debate. But by spending 800 words saying "woe is me" and effectively electing to take all the toys and go home you're not doing yourself--or those who agree with your views--any favors.
This was such a great, and well-deserved criticism of ridiculous religious nuts before you turned it political. Which is a shame, because I (and surely many others) would've been right with you on that first part. Instead, your piece can't help but become (as the first commenter states) a "nobody loves my candidate" pity party which tries to make its point by comparing people's belief and hope in a good man's powerful message to the nutty fundamentalists' belief and hope in an invisible man in the sky.
You should've stuck to attacking the latter.
The writer clearly isn't worried about the facts getting in the way of his story.
Looks like WFB's "God and Man at Yale" was indeed the product of prophetic Divine Revelation.
Excellent work! I knew nothing about the author, so I didn't figure it was satire until about halfway through the piece. You imitated the average Obama fan perfectly. I see a good future for you.
I don't care what anybody says, that was funny as heck! However, in your discription of Christians, you left out the fact that they don't have any teeth and are eeeeevil.
Great work!
Great satire of these Obamamaniacs.
Does the fact that this satire is actually an accurate portrayal of a significant minority of Yale's student body make the satire funnier, or more depressing? The ONLY way the reader can infer that this is satire is by looking at other columns by the same author.
Not everyone who opposes McCain is an Obamaniac.
John McCain wants troops to stay in Iraq for the long-term, which would impose an immense cost on the U.S. economy, yet he also rejects waterboarding and wants to close down Guantanamo. To me, this shows that he is not serious about obtaining information from our ennemies. I don't think that McCain can effectively fight terrorism if he refuses to get information from terrorists.
McCain also is likely to appoint left-wing justices to the Supreme Court because he cares first and foremost about McCain-Feingold and only left-wing justices would agree to uphold McCain-Feingold. That, combined with the fact that McCain has absolutely no interest in fighting illegal immigration, means that we would probably be better off with a Democrat win in 2008 and a true Republican to take back the White House in 2012.
Peter
You better be careful! Once the Yale Witch Trials are called to order, You'll be denounced to this committee and punished for your intolerance. Hate speech is no joke. but the CCU aims to turn it into one. Where not letting a unfamiliar person of color through campus gates gets you dragged before the committee for being a racist. when you tell them you honestly didn't recognize the person you'll be let go, with just your reputation besmirched.
There are so called "progressive" religious types, and there are conservative religious types. I'm an atheist who will vote for McCain as the imperfect but still better than Obama candidate. I agree with quite a few conservative religious people on a lot of issues, which makes me wonder - maybe the belief in God has something to it.
This author is a religious conservative. I view anything he writes through the prism of his professed religiosity. I'm an atheist and it's easy for me to dismiss writers who wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves.
I am supporting Hillary Clinton for president in spite of the fact that she's always professing her religious bona fides. It's important in America unfortunately for candidates for higher office to keep their religious non-beliefs/skepticism/atheism/agnosticism to themselves lest they never ascend to higher office.BTW, watching a great Youtube video: George Carlin and Religion is Bullshit. Classic.
As someone who believes very deeply in God and also happens to be an Obama supporter - dude, quit whining and get ahold of yourself. So no one on campus likes your candidate. Big deal. You complain about the condescending and dismissive attitude with which some at Yale treat social conservatives, and then you choose to treat your fellow students with the same dismissiveness and condescension?
If you seriously think people who support Obama take a similar attitude towards him that Christians take to God, then you're in dire need of a visit to church. Or a conversation with an actual Obama supporter. Or a few moments of quiet reflection. Or something. And if you don't actually think that but wrote this anyway, then you're just being a jackass and really not contributing anything to the debate.