Zu's musings

UPDATE!

Disgusted with forex traders and generally not interested in persuing this kind of blog anymore, I've jumped ship to wordpress! Update your links to http://easy8gunner.wordpress.com/

posted by Zu @ 9:03 AM 2 comments

anyone?

Anyone have any comments?

Anyone?

Don't all rush forward all at once now...




Bueller?


Bueller?


Bueller?

posted by Zu @ 8:37 PM 9 comments

OMG!

THE ROUGH DRAFT OF MY THESIS IS DONE!

LOOK!

posted by Zu @ 2:34 PM 3 comments

Yay!!!

Blogger decided to work! Woooooooooooooo!!!

Anyways, the thesis rough draft is essentially done. I need to write two pages or so of conclusion, but then it'll be finished. At least until people look it over and go "Good lord man! You need to edit this thing and change a lot!"

Plus I have to work on getting all the footnotes in one standard form. I think I used MLA, but I'm not sure. Maybe I can force an English major friend of mine to make sure everything is cited correctly...

The paper should be posted either tonight or tomorrow via my OSU webspace. Maybe I'll get ambitious and make it avaliable in both .doc and .pdf format!

posted by Zu @ 11:50 PM 1 comments

Test

Can I post blog entries now?

posted by Zu @ 10:10 PM 1 comments

An intro?

I had some free time in the PhAT lounge, A.K.A. my personal office, and I wrote down a more flowing prosey introduction to my thesis. I haven't meshed it with the solid outline-style bullet points of the thesis, but I'll have more time later this week. I still have to write a 5 page book review of Biohazard, but I did a lot of that in "my office" too.

Anyways, teh intro!

In the ancient world, Christianity began with the preaching of a carpenter in Judea. This man, Jesus, spread a message of peace and love. Even as he was arrested, beaten, and nailed to a cross, Jesus continued to show mercy and forgiveness to his disciples, his jeering countrymen, his executioners, and indeed to all mankind. In the years following his death, the disciples of Jesus spread the message of love, mercy, and non-resistance to violence, hoping that Christ would come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, ushering in an unending reign of peace and happiness. The writings of the disciples and their followers represented this belief.

Learned men like Origen and Tertullian wrote tomes about how Christians should behave, how they should try to emulate Jesus in all their deeds, even if their refusal to violate their beliefs led to their deaths. It was far better to die happily as a martyr to the faith than live a lie for the rest of your life. After more and more time passed without the return of the messiah, the followers of Jesus, of now which there were legion began to wonder how they could mesh their faith with the corporeal world. There were brief guidelines written down by an early convert, Saul called Paul, but it did not seem to be enough. Before long though, a bishop of the Christian faith began to write down his thoughts on how the earthly world co-existed with the heavenly one above.

Augustine had to grapple with the fact that the most powerful man on earth, the very Caesar that Jesus instructed his followers to pay tribute to, was now himself a disciple and the Empire which had tried and crucified Christ had been made Christian. The bishop realized that the worldly issues his predecessors had dismissed were now more than ever very important. So he set about formulating a doctrine where the state, because it was an apparatus ordained by almighty God, could do things that would be sinful for mere men to do on their own.

Some 1600 years afterwards, evangelical Christians in the United States faced a similar dilemma. Up until the Second World War, they had never been overtly political; preferring instead like Origen and Tertullian to comment on moral issues and stay away from the business of statecraft. However, with the rising specter of communism and other leftist phenomena emerging in the 1950’s, the evangelicals increasingly turned to politics.

The atheism of communism was seen as an evil that permeated into America, causing leaders to examine previously unquestioned ideas like prayer in school, and the structure of the family. As the years passed, the evangelical Christian groups, now styled the Religious Right by their contemporaries, exercised more and more power over voters and in turn, elected officials. Now that they had a hand on the rudder of the state, the religious right had to travel the path of Augustine by acknowledging the very real and pragmatic issue of war. The effect of this shift and the destination of their new path have come together in the war on terror, and more specifically, the war in Iraq.

posted by Zu @ 9:08 PM 0 comments

Thesis avaliable.

Just a reminder. You can find my full thesis in progress (now 40 pages!) through the documents link on the right of via this direct link.

posted by Zu @ 2:11 AM 3 comments

Zing!

First of all, there is no single reason why the religious right disagrees with early church teachings on the subject of war. Often times commentators like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson seem to promote and explain foreign conflicts as signs of the approaching rapture while at other times, seeking to bring about the signs of revelation, they urge action in the name of Christian Zionism. And sometimes religious right leaders support war just as a matter of pragmatism.

Before we examine the possible rationale for supporting the war in Iraq and the war on terror, let us look briefly at the history of the religious right as a modern political force.[1] Prior to the Second World War, the religious right in America was not particularly politically active. However it was not too long after the tumultuous events of the early 1940’s, the rising specter of communism, and what was seen as a moral decline in America, that the religious right began to exercise its latent might. Starting with Carl McIntire’s The Twentieth-Century Reformation Hour in the 1950’s and continuing with Billy Hargis in the 1960’s and 70’s, the religious right increasingly used media to spread their conservative message. At first the religious right spoke out against communist conspiracies, but before too long they branched out to denounce other aspects of society, with events like the civil rights movement and decisions about prayer in school seen as part of widespread leftist infiltration.

With the election of Jimmy Carter, a southern Baptist, the religious right became emboldened. If an evangelical Christian held the highest office in the land, perhaps Christian values would be promoted as part of public policy. This notion was quickly dismissed from the mind of the religious right as President Carter took what they believed to be anti-Christian stances. By letting abortions be federally subsidized, endorsing the ERA, and trying to have Christian schools taxed, Jimmy Carter quickly divorced himself from a large part of his support base. One significant figure in the religious right, Tim LaHaye, expressed his dismay by saying “Between 1976 and 1980, I watched a professing Christian become president of the United States and then surround himself with a host of humanistic cabinet ministers,” ministers who “nearly destroyed our nation.”[2]

Thinking themselves betrayed, the religious right moved to consolidate their power among conservatives. Groups like Moral Majority, founded by Jerry Falwell and others in 1979, and Religious Roundtable moved to secure influence with conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan. Religious leaders like Falwell did all they could to advance their cause, even going so far as to spread outright lies about homosexuals and Jimmy Carter prior to the 1980 election.[3] After much hard work, the results of the 1980 elections were a stunning success to the religious right. All was not well within the ranks however, with support for religious right groups slowly waning until the scandals with Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker in the late 1980’s sent approval into a tailspin. Falwell and others tried to distance themselves from the controversy, but the damage was done; Pat Robertson’s presidential campaign fell apart and the Moral Majority ceased to exist.

Throughout the 1990’s, evangelicals worked hard to get friendly politicians elected. Robertson’s Christian Coalition along with other groups started at the local level and worked their way up the ladder. By the 1994 elections, conservative politicians were being elected in large numbers, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the religious right. Although the popularity of President Clinton kept a conservative from the White House, the ranks of Congress swelled with politicians that evangelicals supported. After several scandals rocked the Clinton White House, the religious right set its sights on a conservative evangelical president in 2000.

Although the religious right would have preferred the more outwardly religious Gary Bauer, they decided to shift their votes with George W Bush. In an interview in 2000, Pat Robertson explained that Bush was “playing intelligent in terms of his campaign,” and said that “coalition members and others have got to understand that that's what's going on.”[4] Even though the religious right supported Bush for president, they had once again lost some of their might. USA Today reported that “The percentage of the electorate identified as "religious right" declined from 17% in 1996 to 14% in 2000. The turnout among white evangelicals fell 6% from 1996 to 2000.”[5]

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the religious right lost their principle foe of the previous 40 years. Without a hostile force seeking to destroy Christian values, membership and support in conservative Christian groups began to wane. Despite throwing their full weight behind George W Bush, the religious right could not get as many citizens out to vote as they had in 1996 for Bob Dole. However, the attacks of September 11^th presented America and the religious right with a brand new enemy that sought the destruction of the American way of life.

posted by Zu @ 1:37 AM 4 comments

Blah!

I'm putting the finishing touches (although since it's still a rough draft, they're not really finishing touches) on the whole section of my paper concerning the modern political history of the religious right. What I'm trying to do is to first explain the basic history of the last 50 years, then try to show how the specter of Communism played a role in getting people to agree with religious right ideas, and the show how once the USSR collapsed, there wasn't a boogyman anymore... until September 11th. Hence, the reason why the religious right supports the war on terror and the war in Iraq. However sincere they are in their beliefs, having a common enemy that hates Christianity and America is very advantageous to their organizations.

anyways, I'll post the section in a few.

posted by Zu @ 1:18 AM 1 comments

Politics and history

I'm not going to get into a big political debate, but within the last 5 minutes of flipping through channels, I saw Ted Kennedy and John Kerry both say entirely false or misleading things about military history. Senator Kennedy said that we've had troops in Iraq for as long as we had troops in Korea during the war, and by the end of the year, we'll have had troops over there for as long as we had troops overseas in WWII. Perhaps on the surface those facts are true, but it totally ignores the fact that we still have troops in Korea and Europe. We're still in a state of war with North Korea for Pete's sake.

Then, generally agitated by what Sen. Kennedy had to say, I flipped around until I came to CSPAN. They had a conference about Vietnam and the Iraq War and John Kerry was talking. He was going through a long list of problems that remained from Vietnam and about 4 or 5 problems in, he mentioned Agent Orange. Now I don't know if he's just ignorant of the facts or if he's overstating the facts/exaggerating/lying, but Agent Orange should be a non-issue. Dr. Guilmartin here at OSU did an exhaustive study on the effects of Agent Orange on the US servicemen that sprayed it from the sky. They would have had the most exposure because they handled it all the time, but the study showed that there were no ill effects.

Anyways, now it's finishing-my-thesis time!

posted by Zu @ 10:39 AM 1 comments