I very much doubt it would stand up to a constitutional challenge even if it does pass.

That would be my hope. But a well packed Supreme Court has made some mighty strange decisions in recent years.

But even the fact that hysteria has reached just a high pitch that such a bill could be taken seriously is frightening.

Please watch Yuri Bezmenov - he knew way back when...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bezmenov&aq=0
 

learn to know propaganda when you see it.

1. He's an ex KGB agent who defected. He  has payoffs to make.

2. His jabber about using the schools to destroy American patriotism so that in three generations you have a nest of traitors in positions of power is pure drivel. I taught for some 45 years. I never saw any such thing happening, nor have I seen it in the US. The only people even in the US who would believe that are the far right wing and most paranoid. (Of which there are, admittedly, quite a few.)

3. If a demoralized and unpatriotic group in the US had any power, a Bezmenov would never have have been allowed into the country. Obviously, they aren't in power. Obviously, the people who let him in to make these propaganda speeches are the ones who are in the power in the US.

Yuri Bezmenov's predictions came true very precisely. Same as Allan Bloom with 'The Closing of the American Mind'.

It is interesting to observe the narrative of the left always denying the most evident. From redistribution of wealth, the finite economic pie, recycling, multiculturalism, global warming, victimology, etc, etc...

After 120 million people murdered in the 20th century by communism and its variants, we can only hope for indeed some hysteria to manifest itself everywhere.

Another good one is : 'Is this still the age of socialism ?' by Alan Kors.

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/Philosophy/Political-Philos...

Oh, Lord, another leftie/rightie thinker. I wish you people could first figure out what those words mean. I wish you wouldn't pick such a ridiculous figure for communist murders - especially whan the real one is quite bad enough. I wish you would count the millions killed by right wingers (whatever the hell that means) in the past century or so.

Yuri's pedictions didn't come true except in your fevered imaginatioin. I'll bet you also thing Obama is a left winger, a secret moslem, and Elvis is living ini Calgary.

I'm quite fascinated by all of you. In fact, you inspired me to write a note to my thirteen year old sons on what I believe and why - and inviting them to talk about it.

I should make it clear that I have no worries about my faith. I thought I became an atheist at 16. I returned to church, impelled by the birth of my twins, and was surprised that I always tried to base my judgements on Christian principles, even in my highest atheist years. I also came to terms to thinking in a more precise way of what I believed, and accepted what I can never possibly understand. And accepted it without feeling any threat to my faith.

What concerns me is not so much my spirituality - though I'm sure it could use some development. What concerns me is the general decline of faith, and the implications of that for the world's future. What concerns me is not saving any particular church, but saving and spreading the conepts and practices of faith.

But, oh, you've all given me so much to dibest, and it's late here in the East, and I'm tired, and I have to do radio early tomorrow morning.

I shall, as a general said, return. Thank you all.

lol graeme - did this end up in the wrong thread?  you & crazyheart madly posting, surfing the wonderworld, careening from one thread to another...  I'm guessing this ought to be in your mainline churches thread?? 

Holy mackerel. well, I said I was awfuly tired.

crazyheart did it yesterday morning too :)  only hers was about sox & moose & Regina.  Don't ask.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

most interesting...

please. Did you notice there is not a single mention of American killing? Nothiing of the wars and excecutions and genocides in latin america? the Spanish American war? The genocide of native peoples? Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?

Nor is there any mention of the wars and killing by democratic Britain in building its eimpire. And Belgium's democratic slaughter of millions in the Congo? What about democratic France's killing in North Africa and indo china? The Netherlands in Indonesia..  Nothing on democratic Churchill's deliberate bombing of Kurd civilians in terror raids in 1920.

And,as I recall it, we fought as allies of the tyrants of both Czarist and communist russia. We also supported Chiang Kai-Shek, whose record of murder comes close to the worst of them.

Democracies don't go to war against each other? Gee. I thought Iran was a democracy in 1951, when democratic Britain and freedlom loving Americans deposed the elected leader to put in a tyrant - the Shah. Wasn't Chile a democracy when the American democracy, working with Chilean generals, killed the president to impose a dictator? And it seems to me Cuba had at last begun a democracy when the the US intervened to send the elected president into exile.

Books like this are what feed the hysteria of the American far right.

I'm misusing words, but misusing them in such a way as to take into account your linguistic handicaps.

the free market has nothing to do with hysteria. There is no free market. Never was. Something called a free market is sometimes pushed when it's of advantage to a powerful country. But even the name is forgotten when conditions change. But I never mentioned free market, anyway.

What does socially conservative mean? Seriously.

What does politically right mean? seriously.

so you can't answer my questions.

So obviously, I have to deal with a subtle thinker who thinks a free marketisi something that isn't really free - but it still af ree  market, who defines socially conservative as being, well, socially conservative, ane who doesn't even try politically conservative.

Why don't we back off to more comfortable territory for you and discuss Thomas the Tank Engine?

I read it, deep thinker. I have to espect a scholar who gets info from Wikipedia. But what the article says is that there is no clear meaning, and many people mean different things by it. And even at that, what they mean is still vague even to them.

What's a traditional value? Well, wife beating is. In fact, it was legal into the twentieth century. Using drugs is pretty traditional, too. In fact, the British Empire of a century ago was the biggest drug pusher in the world. Another tradition dating back centuries is child prostitution. So was sending kids to work in the miines at age six. Slavery is another very old traditional value.

In politics, people love to pin labels on themselves without any understanding of what the words mean.

In fact, one could argue that most societies do not have traditional values at all. First, values are constantly changing as our environment changes. Using soldiers to kill civilians at random is not traditional. It developed as the result of undiscriminating weapons, like bombers.

As well, values will vary according to social class. Rich girls are trained to seek out rich husbands. Poor ones are urged to at least live with the guy who got them pregnant.

What they are, in their own minds, is Christians who want to impose their version of traditional, fundamentalist values on the whole nation. That is, they want to punish the poor for being poor, gays for being gay, women for being women, and the rest of the world for not being under their control.

no. you hsbr dr tioud trsfinh ifdsniliyird. said, "What they are IN THEIR OWN MINDS,,," Of course it's inconcistent with the idea of traditional values since nobody even knows what traditional values are.

I won't try again to define something that has no definition. That's my pont. There is no defeinition. Except in your mind. But you don't know what it is.

And your are a words who uses all words as profanity because you have no idea what they mean.

You're bright, Beshpin. Too bad you're also such a miserable misfit.

just adding my 2 cents

The first part is appropriate, and ought to include the fact that they are very politically & financially active in funding their favoured candidates with favoured policies.  They use their clout to steamroll other viewpoints because they believe they are on God's side, rather than respecting different views and the democratic process.  They have a perception of their country (ies) as being chosen by God and directed by God to spread (their brand of) Christianity in the world.

The second part of the Graeme's sentence falls into rhetoric & opinion, but lacks substance.  However, we all know the substance that Graeme can provide for his opinion, even if he hasn't shared it here. 

I'd perhaps write it to say: They seek to save people from their sins in order to live out their idea of God's will, and in their perspective it means gays are sinful, women seeking power out from under their husbands are sinful, and all non-Christian (and even differently-minded Christians) are lost unless won over.  They have an elitist trend which affords them a sense of superiority and control over others.  Some on the outside recognize these attributes not as God-given, but as thinly veiled structures for control & financial gain.

There - a more substantiative definition, I expect similar to Graeme's less-impassioned, more objective perspective.  And I expect it is about to be skewered by Beshpin for something or other.