LaughMyselfTo posted:

I really have no idea what movement to identify the Conservapedia folks with. Their conception of Christianity fucks up their conception of conservatism, and their conception of conservatism fucks up their conception of Christianity, so the worst parts of the two kind of merge into this uniquely horrible cult.

Twelve by Pies posted:

Sounds like prosperity gospel to me.

Install Windows posted:

Nah, prosperity gospel at least purports to have something in it for you. Their stuff is just hate.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Except, you know, "I will punish sons for the sins of the father." Sometimes no matter how righteous and diligent you are your father hosed things up too bad and now you must suffer.

It's really just hate. "If you are suffering you, or one of your ancestors, did something to make you deserve it."

ToxicSlurpee posted:

edit: Now that I think about it it's very interesting how much the right contradicts itself. I remember hearing, while growing up in the 80's, that it was important to remember that any authority that exists was because God put it there. Leaders were decided by God so you must follow them. Cue the 90's and Clinton getting elected and suddenly it was "ungodly illegitimate authority" all damned day.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

edit: Now that I think about it it's very interesting how much the right contradicts itself. I remember hearing, while growing up in the 80's, that it was important to remember that any authority that exists was because God put it there. Leaders were decided by God so you must follow them. Cue the 90's and Clinton getting elected and suddenly it was "ungodly illegitimate authority" all damned day.

Mr.Unique-Name posted:

Do you mean the 1580's or something? I haven't heard anybody act like divine right was actually a thing in a modern context at all. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with the right people.

Mr.Unique-Name posted:

Do you mean the 1580's or something? I haven't heard anybody act like divine right was actually a thing in a modern context at all. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with the right people.

quote:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority[a] does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Blarghalt posted:

Fundamentalists don't actually like democracy.

Mr.Unique-Name posted:

Do you mean the 1580's or something? I haven't heard anybody act like divine right was actually a thing in a modern context at all. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with the right people.

made of bees posted:

My understanding was that Carter appealed to them solely by being a Southern Baptist and brought them into the mainstream then Reagan appealed to them by actually sharing their crazy beliefs.

quote:

The Moral Majority was a right-wing Christian organization founded in 1979 by Jerry Falwell (pictured), and it is the key to understanding the current state of religion in America.

(The following information is strictly OTL, and is provided for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with theological history.)

Before the 1980's, Christianity in America was politically much the same as it was elsewhere, and has been traditionally: socially conservative, but economically left-wing. While the church was usually last to embrace social change, they always explicitly supported programs benefiting the poor. The ministry of Jesus was preoccupied with the poor, and for most of the world this heavily informs Christian economic policy.

However, in America, things began to shift during the Cold War. The Soviet Union posed itself as both radically left-wing fiscally, and maintained a policy of state atheism. New Deal-type policies fell out of favour due to their association with communism, and many Christians in America felt themselves even more allied with the conservative Republicans, where before they were allied with the Democrats (the Dixiecrat phenomenon). This began to shift as a result of Nixon's Southern Strategy, which sought to play up the Republicans as socially conservative (read: pro-segregation) to win over southern voters. This was part of a larger political realignment which saw Democrats and Republicans trade stances on many issues, but the Southern Strategy was what spread the shift to American Christianity, and the Democratic Party's association with communist sympathizers intensified this shift.

The Moral Majority's part in completing this shift was a political realignment, not of any political party, but of the right-wing church in America. The Moral Majority presented the church with a compromise: embrace Reaganomic hatred of the poor, and be granted the chance at a president who could overturn Roe v. Wade.

As the 1980's went on, the Moral Majority collapsed. Not because of any internal strife or conflict, but because they'd succeeded. The religious right put Reagan in the White House, so donations to the Moral Majority dropped as people stopped viewing America as being in impending moral danger. Eventually it became part of the Liberty Foundation, then dissolved completely. And that is the story of how American Christianity sold its soul for victory; how they gave up on everything they ever believed about the poor so they could have their president.

And Reagan never did overturn Roe v. Wade. Funny that.

made of bees posted:

My understanding was that Carter appealed to them solely by being a Southern Baptist and brought them into the mainstream then Reagan appealed to them by actually sharing their crazy beliefs.

DStecks posted:

As for Reagan and the southern baptists, I'll just repost what I wrote elsewhere:

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Not sharing, just paying lip-service to - Reagan talked a good talk on abortion but really that was about the only belief he shared with them. Where his handlers were particularly clever was getting the Southern baptists (with the help of the televangelists who were of course all about the Reaganomics) to believe that Jesus wanted low taxes, privatisation, and savage cuts to social programmes.

tacodaemon posted:

BTW if you're wondering what they mean by "Penn Jillette's walrus slide", it's the big slide between his partner's legs that he does at 3:33 in this choreographed dance routine from "Dancing With The Stars":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8M7HfujwnI

tacodaemon posted:

BTW if you're wondering what they mean by "Penn Jillette's walrus slide", it's the big slide between his partner's legs that he does at 3:33 in this choreographed dance routine from "Dancing With The Stars":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8M7HfujwnI

DStecks posted:

Jimmy Carter is legit the most upright Christian man ever elected to the Presidency, and the infamous "lust in the heart" interview should be all the proof you need that he actually takes what Jesus taught deadly seriously. (For those not in the know, that comment in that interview is explicitly about a specific, often neglected verse of Matthew, which you should quote at any fundie who says that women should dress more modestly to stop men from sinning.)

As for Reagan and the southern baptists, I'll just repost what I wrote elsewhere:

quote:

Barack Obama Never Made It To The Situation Room During The Benghazi Attack.[14]

quote:

Reporter Presses White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on New Benghazi Docs in Heated Exchange.[27][28]

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

teapartycrusaders.com was a loving godsend to Conservapedia. Over half of their citations anymore are to there. And the rest are conservativenewsandviews.com.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

So how long until we see a series of articles on these sites that just reference each other in a circle?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

So how long until we see a series of articles on these sites that just reference each other in a circle?

SocketWrench posted:

The ultimate will be when conservapedia references itself

Fulchrum posted:

Conservapedia blocked me some time ago, can someone tell me if their entry on the Southern Strategy is still "The Southern Strategy is why Republicans control the South. It is not racist. That is all."

quote:

The Southern strategy is a path to the White House by winning support in the South rather than the media centers of Boston and New York City.

Liberals, repeatedly unpopular in the South, have tried to attribute this strategy to racial politics. The reality is that liberals have always played the racist card far more often than Republicans do.

quote:

If I'm not mistaken, Democrats would usually take all Southern states until the sixties, where they took a stance against segregation. That's when Republicans started winning them.--CamilleT 20:56, 6 March 2012 (EST)

See Engel v. Vitale, which banned classroom prayer, and other liberal rulings by the Warren Court. Liberal newspapers just cannot accept that the South votes based on religious values.--Andy Schlafly 21:04, 6 March 2012 (EST)

Wikipedia posted:

Libya (Arabic: ‏ليبيا‎ Lībyā, Amazigh language: ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ Libya), officially the State of Libya,[5][6] is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the 17th largest country in the world.[7]

The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fifth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, Gabon, and Botswana. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.[8]

A civil war and NATO-led military intervention in 2011 resulted in the ousting and death of the country's former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, and the collapse of his 42-year "First of September 'Al Fateh' Revolution" and 34-year-old Jamahiriya state. As a result, Libya is currently undergoing political reconstruction, and is governed under an interim constitution drawn up by the National Transitional Council (NTC).[9][10] Elections to a General National Congress were held on 7 July 2012, and the NTC handed power to the newly elected assembly on 8 August.[11] The assembly has the responsibility of forming a constituent assembly to draft a permanent constitution for Libya, which will then be put to a referendum.[12]

Conservapedia posted:

Libya (Arabic: ليبيا) is a country in northern Africa that was taken over, at the encouragement of President Obama, by militant Muslims in 2011. The revolutionaries murdered Muammar al-Gaddafi, who had ruled the nation since 1969. Geographically, Libya borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. In September 2012, the Obama Administration ignored security warnings and refused to protect the American embassy there, resulting in the Benghazi Attack and the murder of the American ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

quote:

For most of their history, the peoples of Libya have been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines ruled all or parts of Libya. Although the Greeks and Romans left impressive ruins at Cyrene, Leptis Magna, and Sabratha, little else remains today to testify to the presence of these ancient cultures.

The Arabs conquered Libya in the seventh century A.D. In the following centuries, most of the indigenous peoples adopted Islam and the Arabic language and culture. The Ottoman Turks conquered the country in the mid-16th century. Libya remained part of their empire--although at times virtually autonomous--until Italy invaded in 1911 and, in the face of years of resistance, made Libya a colony.

DStecks posted:

As for Reagan and the southern baptists, I'll just repost what I wrote elsewhere:

Binowru posted:

I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure presidents can't overturn SCOTUS rulings.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Binowru posted:

I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure presidents can't overturn SCOTUS rulings.

DStecks posted:

You're absolutely loving right, but that doesn't mean he wasn't elected to do just that. (So theoretically the intent was for him to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, but that didn't pan out either, and in my mind there's no doubt that Reagan thought it was all a bunch of impossible promises he could make to secure votes.)

quote:

Jimmy Wales is the co-founder of the politically left online encyclopedia Wikipedia and self-described libertarian. Jimmy Wales claims to be an objectivist who follows the philosophy of atheist Ayn Rand. His favorite book is Rand's Atlas Shrugged.[1] Wales told an interviewer in Reason magazine, "One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek..."

DStecks posted:

You're absolutely loving right, but that doesn't mean he wasn't elected to do just that. (So theoretically the intent was for him to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, but that didn't pan out either, and in my mind there's no doubt that Reagan thought it was all a bunch of impossible promises he could make to secure votes.)