Friday, February 01, 2008
Jimmy the Self-Righteous Jackass
You know, you could look wide and far but you'd never find an individual who's more sanctimoniously self-righteous than Jimmy Carter.
Carter got his panties in a twist this week when the Southern Baptist Convention refused an invitation to participate in his Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant confab in Atlanta. Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page politely stated that said his group would be skipping the meeting to avoid being part of a "smokescreen left-wing liberal agenda."
Would Jimmy Carter use a supposedly all-are-welcome religious meeting to push his brand of left-wing politics? Why, of course he would. Just looks at some of the people who spoke at his little camp meeting: Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Campolo Marian Wright Edelman. All he needed was for Lani Guinier, Donna Shalala, Bruce Babbitt to show up and the whole gang would've been here, um, there.
The American Spectator has more about Jimmy Carter's "covenant" in this special report. Here's a sample:
"There is a story Jimmy Carter tells in several of his books about a newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention paying him a visit in the Oval Office and telling the shocked -- shocked! -- Commander in Chief, 'We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion.'
"'He may have said this because I was against a constitutional amendment to authorize mandatory prayer in public school and had been working on some things opposed by the religious right, such as the Panama Canal treaties, a Department of Education, and the SALT II treaty with the Soviets,' Carter theorizes in Living Faith, as if in the 1970s the "religious right" were single-issue voters fixated in the Panama Canal and maybe -- maybe -- disrupting arms treaties rather than, oh, I don't know ... abortion.
"Nevertheless, it isn't quite clear why, outside of the obvious political advantages gained by marrying delusions of grandeur to a sanctimonious religion-based piety, Carter would so object to the 'secular humanist' label. This is a man, after all, who writes in Our Endangered Values of coming to the "surprising and somewhat reluctant conclusion" that when it comes to alleviating poverty and injustice 'government officeholders and not church members [are] more likely to assume responsibility and be able to fulfill the benevolent missions.'
"Carter places the miracles of government bureaucracy ahead of those of his own church, yet still wonders why the largest single contingent of Baptists in the country is skeptical of his New Covenant. 'I treat theological arguments gingerly but am bolder when it comes to connecting my religious beliefs with life and current events in the world, even when the issues are controversial,' Carter writes in Living Faith. In other words, the details of scripture are uninteresting until they offer a rationale for Carter's left-wing predilections or somehow justify the four years of tribulation known as his presidency."
Carter got his panties in a twist this week when the Southern Baptist Convention refused an invitation to participate in his Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant confab in Atlanta. Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page politely stated that said his group would be skipping the meeting to avoid being part of a "smokescreen left-wing liberal agenda."
Would Jimmy Carter use a supposedly all-are-welcome religious meeting to push his brand of left-wing politics? Why, of course he would. Just looks at some of the people who spoke at his little camp meeting: Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Tony Campolo Marian Wright Edelman. All he needed was for Lani Guinier, Donna Shalala, Bruce Babbitt to show up and the whole gang would've been here, um, there.
The American Spectator has more about Jimmy Carter's "covenant" in this special report. Here's a sample:
"There is a story Jimmy Carter tells in several of his books about a newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention paying him a visit in the Oval Office and telling the shocked -- shocked! -- Commander in Chief, 'We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion.'
"'He may have said this because I was against a constitutional amendment to authorize mandatory prayer in public school and had been working on some things opposed by the religious right, such as the Panama Canal treaties, a Department of Education, and the SALT II treaty with the Soviets,' Carter theorizes in Living Faith, as if in the 1970s the "religious right" were single-issue voters fixated in the Panama Canal and maybe -- maybe -- disrupting arms treaties rather than, oh, I don't know ... abortion.
"Nevertheless, it isn't quite clear why, outside of the obvious political advantages gained by marrying delusions of grandeur to a sanctimonious religion-based piety, Carter would so object to the 'secular humanist' label. This is a man, after all, who writes in Our Endangered Values of coming to the "surprising and somewhat reluctant conclusion" that when it comes to alleviating poverty and injustice 'government officeholders and not church members [are] more likely to assume responsibility and be able to fulfill the benevolent missions.'
"Carter places the miracles of government bureaucracy ahead of those of his own church, yet still wonders why the largest single contingent of Baptists in the country is skeptical of his New Covenant. 'I treat theological arguments gingerly but am bolder when it comes to connecting my religious beliefs with life and current events in the world, even when the issues are controversial,' Carter writes in Living Faith. In other words, the details of scripture are uninteresting until they offer a rationale for Carter's left-wing predilections or somehow justify the four years of tribulation known as his presidency."
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Friday, February 01, 2008 
