President Trump

Trump is negotiating a deal that would allow DREAMers to stay and the White House admits they won't require wall funding in exchange.

just noticed all this actually so no worries.

and honestly most of what Im reading here seems to me to be, forgive me, a lot of spin from my basic point that jesus, based on his teachings and his actions as noted in the bible, seems a LOT more ideologically similar to what TODAY would be called leftist thinking independent of the technicality of not actively condemning an occupying foreign military government that could (and did) kill him at the drop of a hat.

He preached that we should sell our possessions and give them to the poor if you wanted to be right with god. he hung out with former criminals and prostitutes and lepers and all kinds of people who were considered essentially untouchables in 1st century Judea. He did not hang out with investment bankers and real estate moguls looking for ways to make their lives easier and their profits bigger. He believed the rich, SIMPLY DUE TO THE FACT THEY WERE RICH, were not worthy of the kingdom of god and should radically change their ways. Not sure how we can skirt around that clear distinction between his sensibility about wealth accumulation and the average conservatives notion of it today.

ok take the second half of the statement out of it then. do you think Jesus would think tax cuts for the rich were a good thing?

so do you think jesus would be AGAINST any law that was designed to help those in need of health care or food or housing? do you think he would be AGAINST legislation designed to help refugees and immigrants (like, say, Samaritans)? do you really think he wouldnt want any laws like those to exist because helping the poor and the needy should ONLY be undertaken as a personal mission and never by the government? or am I describing the conservative position wrong again?

see this is a technical dodge to me. i can most certainly be a contributing citizen in a socialist society and do things on my own accord ALSO. So not sure how it precludes anything. Its basically like saying you can only be charitable if your government doesnt care about the poor.

Maybe. But I think he would at least be consistent when it came to that. And not rail on and on about the evils of abortion while at the same time insisting that we should have a death penalty to punish people we humans decide arent deserving of life. He would also support wanting to help those babies born that might otherwise have been aborted and wouldnt suddenly oppose them receiving help in the form of subsidized lunches, guaranteed health care, welfare, etc. Whereas SO many religious conservatives in todays society seem to fully embrace those kinds of absurd double standards.

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Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...

I don't really care for the idea that people need to respond quickly to this stuff, anyway. Discourages thoughtfulness. Sometimes I don't notice a reply for awhile and end up responding better because of it.

I actually addressed this head-on, preemptively, in the last post:

I think the question itself is wrong, because it treats the compulsory aspect as some kind of incidental detail. Wanting to help the poor doesn't mean you're "aligned" with any law that purports to do so any more than thinking you shouldn't say rude things makes you "aligned" with censorship laws.

Leftist thinking is not just its goals, but also its means. The goals are (I'll be charitable for the sake of argument) "let's try to help poor people." The means are "...using the force of law." That is not a minor distinction. I support many, many things that I don't think should be compulsory, and I would imagine you do, too.

I think lower taxes correlate strongly with economic growth, which has inarguably done more to improve living standards for the poor than literally anything else in history. So, yes.

You might not agree with that premise, and that's cool; the relevant point is that the disagreement is about facts, and not the result of inconsistent values.

Any? Probably not. I don't oppose any and every social welfare program. But I don't think that was the issue. The issue was whether being a Christian should obligate you to support socialist-scale welfare programs. This question is pretty far afield from that.

Nope, and neither am I. I realize the perception of conservatives is that they hate immigration, but that's not really true. I'm very pro-immigration, and so are quite a few conservatives I know. The people opposing it are much louder, but I think they're in the minority. Case in point: the last three Republican nominees before Trump were very moderate on the issue. There certainly isn't much consensus on the issue even within the party.

How many of His disciples were conscripted?

It precludes the possibility of charity for the money used for those programs. The fact that you can be charitable separate from that is irrelevant. And it obviously isn't charity to force someone else to do it, which is literally what's happening when you pass this kind of legislation.

Also, wouldn't thinking this way be "legislating your faith"? I don't want to make too many assumptions here, but I don't think I've ever met anyone levying this kind of charge against conservatives who didn't also feel that religion should be kept out of public policy. Please correct me if you're actually the first.

Well, I don't support the death penalty, so I'm not going to defend it much. But I don't think this is a contradiction, any more than believing in freedom and prison is. We all already agree that people have basic rights and that they potentially forfeit those rights when committing crimes, and reasonable people can disagree about whether taking a life should forfeit your own. I say no, in large part because I doubt our ability to get it right, wholly apart from the moral questions.

It's gonna be pretty hard to have a meaningful discussion if I'm asked to defend vague groups like "SO many religious conservatives." I can't argue with your amorphous impression, particularly of a group you don't care for (simply because we all, I think, have caricatured versions of groups we don't agree with in our heads).

As I mentioned earlier, if you want to argue hypocrisy, you have to argue from a shared premise. In this case, that premise is that government dependency is a real, inter-generational problem that can ultimately harm more people than it helps. Agree or not, that's the premise that you'd have to disprove in order to demonstrate an inconsistency.

This is it right here. Well put, as usual, Yoda. Not just the left, but everyone it feels like. Why are we wanting to legislate everything. Including people's thoughts, not even actions, just thoughts. Write something stupid on Twitter, fire 'em. Align with the wrong side, feel free to excuse yourself from civilized society. It is a mine field that not one person I have ever talked to could realistically navigate. Definitely not the type of culture Jesus has in mind for us.

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Letterboxd

Yeah, I mean, if I say "let's eat pizza!" you might say "yeah!!!!!!" That doesn't mean your thinking aligns with mine if I decide the best way to get it is by pointing a gun at the delivery guy. Public policy goals are inseparable from the means of achieving them.

Off topic but since your talking about jesus teachings I just wanted to say I watched a really interesting video about how jesus could have historically been a mixture of multiple people. Thoughts?


@Yoda @seanc

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If you post the video I will watch it. You have any thoughts on it?

Not really the thread for it, already a bit far afield with the other stuff.

Generally speaking, though, stuff like that is usually the clickbait of historical research. Seems designed to get media attention more than to be taken seriously as scholarship.

@Yoda @seanc

LOL... "yeah!!!!!!!!"

I figured that was the only appropriate response to anyone suggesting we eat pizza.

My boy Trumps approval ratings on the rise for three weeks in a row now baby yeah!

In your face Haters!

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The fact that people are trying to spike the football over a 40% approval rating (after previously questioning their validity altogether) tells you all you need to know about the situation.

Wait till he calls Putin a pu pu head. 45% here it comes.

thats what happens when you go three weeks without defending nazis. can the bar get any lower?

Newsflash: Trump's still a blithering idiot. Our fearless leader needs to get his stuff in order quick. After criticizing NFL players, who were non-violently protesting about a crucial issue in our country, he finally turned his attention to Puerto Rico...where he then proceeded to criticize and insult the mayor of San Juan. Nice one, Mr. Drumpf.

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A man's got to know his limitations.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...o-rico-n807216

lol.

I've read several articles recently questioning if Trump has early onset dementia. That's chilling...would they let him keep being president? he doesn't do a good job NOW, just imagine a fully senile orange monster 'running' our country...

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"You, me, everyone...we are all made of star stuff." - Neil Degrasse Tyson

https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

Ronald Reagan?