US Conservatives to purge the Holy Bible of Liberal Bias, will stress Free Markets.

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Guess:
Because you created a tempest in a teapot after semi-intentionally misreading the topic title to be able to embark on a lengthy and largely pointless lecture about how calling conservatives conservatives does conservatives injustice - and who needs more of that? Thinking of it, I could play a computer game instead and have fun!

In any event, I am utterly grateful that you attest, not without gently scolding me for my careless wording, that I may have acted innocently when I called the thread the way I called it. I will sleep better tonight knowing that.

 

Well, I was waiting for my question to be answered, and the only person who took a shot at is was Splunge -- and he's not even an American. For all this talk about the "conservative mainstream," no conservative can tell us where it is, atm. I'm not saying that it's not there, only that it has allowed itself into this situation where no one can explain its identity. This is what happens when a party is as broken as this one appears to be.

 

Well, you did directly ask Splunge, and he responded, so I figured the question was dead unless someone substantially disagreed with him. I'll go into a little more depth, though. It seems there are roughly 3 'mainstreams' in the conservative party these days. There are the moderates, who largely lambast the extremists for being too extreme, while aiming center-right in their beliefs, there are the extremists (Cheney&Co), who largely lambast the liberals for being liberal, and are vastly right in their beliefs, and there are the christian conservatives, who vary widely through the right range on their political views of most topics (health care, taxation, etc.) but always place the religious/moral issues at core importance (abortion, homosexuals, etc). Conservipedia doesn't seem to represent any of them and, from what I can tell, even the christian conservatives (of whom these people claim to be) would be horrified at this project. I mean, you may not like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell (Sr or Jr), Tim LaHaye, or Jerry B. Jenkins, but I think all of them would say anyone who presumes to purge texts from the Bible without serious historical evidence of it's faults is a loon.

All in all, this seems to be an effort to tie the christian conservatives and the extemists together, but I think if anything it'll just drive them apart, as I doubt either would want to be involved in this. Actually, it may draw them together... in mutual scorn of the people who did this.


Ragusa, I asked my question because I geniunely want to know the answer. If you honestly would see no problem with that title, then we simply have two very different standards of implication (that being a very subjective field).

 

I'm not quite sure there is (or ever was) such a thing as conservative mainstream. Probably the last person to actually unite conservatives was Reagan. Other than him, I think most conservatives have slightly different opinions on almost every issue so it is hard to put them in a group.

As an example, I'm a conservative and I believe NOG is also. I would consider both of us as being mainstream as I don't believe either one of us are with the wackos. However, we differ vastly on issues such as religion and I believe abortion.

 

NOG:

This is how Splunge responded:

Yet, you say there IS a conservative mainstream. So that sounds like a "substantial disagreement" to me. But I agree with Splunge that at least at the moment there really is not a mainstream conservative agenda with any political force to speak of. Btw, you left out the whole libertatian, Ron Paul, segment of your tribe.

IMO, libertarians are the only ones who can save the conservative movement and yet, they have been marginalized and ignored by what passes for -- and is left -- of the conservative "mainstream." That mainstream was represented from 2000 - 2007 by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bill Frist/Trent Lott but all of whom are now history.

I think they were transformational figures for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. And not for the better. I believe that the collapse of the conservative mainstream is the result of a failure of its leadership.

I think Mac tried to take the conservative movement back to the moderate ground in American politics, but failed because of his choice of Palin, which only took the conservative movement further away from the American mainstream by the end of the election cycle. The proof is in the results.

Edit:

Well, there was the Republican revolution of 1994, and the Contract with America, which bore some political fruit before the whole Bill Clinton impeachment thing took it off track. The failure of Bush/Cheney leadership has pretty much finished it off. But they never wanted to build on the CwA, and instead wanted to transform the conservative mainstream into something different. The first four years they were successful, but the last undid them completely....

 

BTW, how do the guys who are behind this project sell it to everyone - like a reader's guide to the Bible, or as an actual new translation? I thought you needed to somehow be authorized before you do something like that. I mean, what if I decide I am qualified to teach what God said and do my own "version"?

I can't help but think one more thing, btw. The last time someone did a really major revision of the Bible, we ended up with the Quran. How different will this version be?

 

Well, I agree that there isn't any one mainstream, and definitely not one with political leadership atm. I argue that there are roughly three (and probably have been since Reagan at least) that are vaguely aligned at the moment. I count that as a minor disagreement.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much they count as conservative. They definitely aren't liberal (on most points), but then politics isn't a bi-polar issue.

I agree. The leadership went off the deep end, and too many of the Right followed. We're starting to realize what's happened now, but I'm not sure how many will make it out.

And who would you look to for the 'authority'? Who owns the rights to the Bible? Basically, it's kind of like publishing a game. Anyone who has the resources can do so, but if the established publishers and reviewers don't pick it up, you'll be selling it in your garage and maybe off your website.

Lmao! The Quran was more than a 'major revision'. It was basically a complete re-write as well as massive expansion. I'd say the Mormons were closer to a major revision (and expansion there as well). Really, though, there have been a number of modern attempts to 're-translate the Bible into modern terms'. Of course, everyone had their own idea of what 'modern terms' consisted of, from ebonics and street slang to political correctness gone mad. None of them really made it, though NASB is pretty well established at this point.

 

Good point. In general, I'd be extremely cautious of any Biblical "product" not authorized by a church - though with all the protestant sects, even that is a bit tricky. Is there something that most Christians consider an authority for such matters? I'd normally have thought that that is the Bible itself, but in this case this doesn't really work...

I don't know, this just strikes me as fairly presumptious. It's one thing (though tricky enough) to publish a Bible for Children, glossing over parts of the old (iirc and new) testament that a 10-year old might not understand or should not know - though even then, who are you to say what parts of the Bible a child should not know - and another to just decide that the Bible needs more and clearer references to a certain political view.

 

There are various groups that are composed of experts on the language, biblical archeology, etc. Usually, if a translation has any merit, they'll say something about it. That then means that the stores are willing to buy the product, which then means that people see the product...

Again, it's kind of like computer games. There's no official authority (well, ESRB doesn't count for this), but if the product doesn't get recognized by reviewers or publishers, no distributor will touch it, which means people won't see it, which means they won't buy it.

 

Wow Tal, I never realized I was a liberal....

 

Tal,
let conservapedia enlight you on what Liberal is:

By that standard your Bush-simple definition is well on target, and uses very few words to say a lot.

 

Not to get too far off topic, but I don't think Palin is the only (or even primary) reason McCain is not president today (although her presence on the ticket certainly hurt him). He was behind in the polls and facing a very steep uphill battle before he selected Palin. In fact, some speculate that the reason he picked Palin was out of desperation - kind of like "deperate times call for desperate measures", in that a more traditional selection would not have changed the direction of the race. Picking Palin certainly changed the tragectory of the race, just not in the direction McCain intended.

Bush-simple? Isn't that like saying the Department of Redundancy Department?

 

I guess we're back to the fifties where we have either:

1. Hard-working, God-fearing Americans (AKA, conservatives).

-OR-

2. Godless communists (AKA, the devil's whores, liberals, etc.)

 

The Devil's Whores? Does that imply there are God's Whores? I'd like to see them. Or have I already when I saw Sarah Palin?

On the flip side, I've used the term "liberal" loosely before, and got utterly crucified for it. Turnabout is fair play . . .

Maybe we all need to cast Barkskin, Stoneskin or Ironskin on ourselves to develop slightly thicker skins.

 

Gotta disagree with you there somewhat. If an article was to claim that, say, a majority of Congress were corrupted, or that the army collectively kills civilians on a regular basis, the headlines would indicate that, because it would be a bigger story. "CORRUPTION RUNS RAMPANT IN CONGRESS!" "OUR BOYS ARE OUT OF CONTROL!" That sort of thing. It's very typical for newspaper headlines to refer to a specific group of individuals relevant to the story by a general moniker. "Researchers promise a cure for cancer," "Catholic priests molested boys," and so on. It's not rocket science to figure out that these kind of titles don't refer to everybody who fits under the banner, but the specific individuals the story is about.

As for the question you posed earlier, I find the title an unlikely choice. You would typically be talking about environmental activists (which is a blanket term in itself) rather than US liberals. Talking about US liberals, at least in my mind, creates an impression of politician types or perhaps more run-of-the-mill regular people liberals being involved beside some Greenpeace people. In this light it could easily be taken as a cheap shot at liberals in general, but by that heading I would not assume that the article would proceed to claim Whale Wars is something that most liberals are involved in. Also, to say that "Environmental activists involved in terrorism on the high seas" would not make me cry out in outrage about how not all activists are like that. It would be a reference to that particular group of activists, nutjobs or not.

 

Yes, not exactly rocket science indeed.