I admit it. I am a "secular-progressive."

[Bake]

Billo's new "insult" of choice is "secular progressive." I thought about it, and I have to admit, I AM ONE. And it's not a bad thing.

I'm secular. That is, regardless of my religious beliefs, I believe our nation is best served by a secular government of, by and for The People (you know, like the one described in the Constitution). I don't want the Falwells, Haggards, Dobsons et al. to rule over us any more than I want the Taliban to do so. What's the opposite of a "secular" government, anyway? A THEOCRACY. Anybody here want one of those?

I'm progressive. That means I hope to see society and humankind continue to make PROGRESS in solving the problems we face - hunger, war, AIDS, intolerance, inequality of opportunity, disease, ignorance, etc., and I hope and intend to be part of that progress. WHO THE HELL ISN'T FOR PROGRESS? If society isn't moving forward, it's either falling behind or stagnating; and neither of those is a good choice.

So, Billo, if you want to insult me, you'd better come up with another term. Because I'm damn proud to be a secular progressive.

Bake

[Bluebear]

1. Hell yes. nt

[Nimrod2005]

2. Ditto --- Insult would be calling Billo a dumb mother fucker or scum or an asshole falafel dildo

addict...

[atommom]

3. That's no insult at all. (Why does this man even have his own show?)

:shrug:

[mondo joe]

4. I'm Secular Progressive - just like the Constitution.

[NMDemDist2]

5. agreed n/t

[zreosumgame]

6. just shows to go ya

once again, Bull O'Lielly does not know what the words he says means.

[bryant69]

7. Not Me. I'm a Progressive Secularist!

When it comes to politics anyway.

Bryant

[Laelth]

8. Me too.

n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[StaggerLee]

9. Secu-Prog

Damned skippy!

[ComerPerro]

42. to save time (since he is faxated on Secular Progressives), he calls us SPs

[warrens]

10. Does Billo go to church?

Somehow, I doubt it. I know he mouths stuff about the Catholic church, but somehow I doubt he's there on Sunday mornings.

[PVnRT]

11. Insult? I thought he was using absurd comedy

Seriously, though, I can't talk, I need to go impregnate me some nubile, unmarried women. Gotta meet my quota for November, and I'm running out of time.

[xchrom]

12. my peeps!

[seabeyond]

13. YOU intellectual elitists YOU..... like, where is the insult

ya ya ya

[Kazak]

14. Billo is a conservative...ewww!!!

*shrivels*

[wryter2000]

15. I am, too

So was Thomas Jefferson. Billo has lost his freaking mind.

[Greyskye]

16. Secular Progressives Unite!

Count me in! :evilgrin:

You'll have to do better than that if you want to insult me, Bill-O!

[tridim]

17. I guess the opposite would be a "Theocratic Regressive"

As you said, Christian Fundamentalists and the Taliban fit the definition perfectly.

[Kerrytravelers]

18. Add my name to the list.

[longship]

19. Hear! Hear!

Count me in, too.

If there's one thing that history has taught the world, it's that theocracies suck. All of them! If there's another thing that history teaches, it's that progressive politics governs best.

Call me a secular-progressive!!

[Beelzebud]

20. America is a secular-progressive nation. O'Rielly is confused.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. At least that's what the founders intended, and that's what they said, in their own words. nt

[Lexingtonian]

21. Ergo, "religious conservative" is A Good Thing?

Let me look at what 'religious conservatives' have been doing for us for the past, oh, 40 years....

-they create, maintain, and enforce institutionalized bigotry against gays, women, atheists, former criminals, non-white Americans, and Jews...because it's "against Nature's God" and other funny pre-Christian dogmas.
-they prevent much helping the poor and needy in general, especially if they are member of any of the above groups...because "it's your money!" and poverty is, well, immorality. (So is pacifism.)
-there's championing of all the accretions of Ancient World paganism into Christianity and rejection of the Bible as a whole (it's too Jewish) and Jesus of Nazareth (he was a liberal)- except for bald misinterpretations, which are used as a facade.
-the word Devil derives from the word 'diabolos': "deceiver". But despite all the continuous and overt lying, they excuse Republican leaders again and again and deny their prevarications. Democrats, in turn, are held to a standard of perfection.

-For some reason, unwanted pregnancies and abortion fill a huge amount of their time, energy, and imaginations. Let's just say that if they put all their effort into making the world the better place it can be, these two things would diminish so greatly that they wouldn't feel the need to obsess so badly.

-If they were true conservatives and truly religious, and Real Americans, they'd champion Section 1 of the 14th Amendment rather than deny and obfuscate and try to destroy it. As it stands, they knowingly corrupt the Constitution, which is in effect not distinguishable from sedition or treason.

Hmmm. I guess I don't feel like being a "religious conservative" for some reason. Maybe this funny thing "integrity" has something to do with it.

[Beelzebud]

22. O'Lielly counts on his audience to be too dumb to know what "secular" and "progressive" mean.

[Bake]

25. Most of them ARE!

Just a guess on my part ...

Seriously, though, there is a real problem with that part of the so-called "religious right" (which in truth is neither religious nor "right"), aka the Dominionists, who would completely undermine/subvert the Constitution and create a USofA theocracy. Actually, it wouldn't be a "theocracy" since that would mean, literally, that God governs. It would be more of a "they-ocracy" in which THEY rule.

Consider all the advances this nation has made in its history. Who the hell does Billo think DID all that? The conservatives? HELL NO. They were too busy whining about paying for it and longing for the "good old days."

Which reminds me of that "Day in the Life of Joe Republican" piece that has floated around here from time to time. Dig it up in the archives; it lays out plainly many of the societal advances that we take for granted (OK, WE don't take them for granted, but Joe Sixpack and Joe Repub do), and it's CLEAR who was responsible for those advances.

Hell yeah, I'm proud to be a secular progressive. But then, I'm still proud to be a liberal.

Bake

[Demoiselle]

24. I'm a Liberal Secular Progressive. Nyah Nyah.. (eom)

[hfojvt]

26. continue to make progress? Continue?

"On the one side, I see the people who think they can cope with our threefold crisis by the methods current, only more so; I call them the people of the forward stampede. On the other side, there are people in search of a new life-style, who seek to return to certain basic truths about man and his world; I call them home-comers." EF Schumacher

Seems to me that the 'certain basic truths about man and his world' are not secular either.

[Bake]

27. Are you suggesting we've made no progress?

Really? NO progress? I guess that civil rights business back in the 60s was a total bust. We're still dealing with rampant polio. Brown v. Board of Ed. never happened, huh.

I'm not sure where you're coming from but I'd be interested to hear more of it, if you could be a little less arcane.

Bake

[hfojvt]

30. we are now dealing with rampant aids

there are now more black people in prison than in the 1960s. Not getting lynched any more, but there is a drive-by shooting or deadly fight on the news here every night. So it's not obvious to me that blacks are doing better now than they were in the 1960s.

I'm not gonna say there's been no progress, but sometimes, particularly in schools and the mass media, progress is assumed, that every decade is better than the last.

The choices are more complex than progress, stagnation, or regress. Too often people will promote an idea, like a new strip mall, or a super-walmart, or a super-corridor, and accuse their opponents of being "afraid of change" as if any change must always be for the better. There are competing ideas about what constitutes "progress" and the differences there come down to values.

[Bake]

33. What then, just give up?

Not me. We HAVE made progress in many areas; I didn't say we'd "arrived." We still have a long way to go, for example in the area of civil rights and race relations. We have a long way to go in education -- so many areas. There are NEW problems to be faced - HIV/AIDS is one of them.

"Serious times demand serious people." I think I heard that somewhere. Let us secluar progressives (and progressive secularists as well!) be the ones leading the charge.

Bake

[hfojvt]

35. sometimes it is hard for me to work with seculars

when they seem to think the main enemy is Christianity and I'm not sure we have the same values.
You put three eyes in your list - ignorance, intolerance and inequality of opportunity. I would put things like selfishness and materialism at the top of my list. "Inequality of opportunity" seems to take materialism for granted - the problem being that some people are denied the opportunity to compete for material wealth. A slightly different focus, but if you've got specific ideas, then I might join in the effort. Only one other DUer endorsed my idea to get rid of Schedule A, and about twenty of them reccommended the idea to eliminate taxes on the first $50,000 of income per person. So we seem to be on different pages.

[Bake]

38. If you're not a "secular," where are you coming from?

For the record, I am a Christian who simply believes that my religious beliefs, while I belive they are one significant motivation for my political orientation and actions, should never be imposed on others nor be the basis for our system of government. In other words, I'm an "old-style" Baptist who still holds to the separation of church and state. And as I said in another thread, I'll happily elect a non-Christian who defends the Constitution as compared to a Christian who would subvert it in the interest of a "theocracy."

Moreover, I'm not sure what you mean by putting "materialism" at the top of your list of problems. Overemphasis on materialism can, indeed, be a problem (if that's what you're suggesting) but it is undeniable that we live in a material world. Ask the poor if they're happy going hungry. If you equate materialism with economic opportunity, then the corollary of that assertion would seem to be that if everyone would just learn to live without anything material they'd lead happier (albeit shorter) lives. Since the "material" world is where we live, it surely is in our larger interest as human beings to try to ensure that all people have equal economic opportunity.

Or maybe you're just trying to be difficult.

Bake

[hfojvt]

39. but we are spirits in the material world Madonna

I believe that I indicated that I am a "home-comer". I think separation of church and state goes too far when it says we cannot teach values, because we end up teaching values all the same, only by default, and they are not very good values. They are the "values" of materialism and selfishness.

"The public sphere is currently dominated by a scientism that validates money and power (which can be measured) and steadfastly rejects the introduction of spiritual values. But since that public sphere generates a deep spiritual emptiness and validates an ethos of materialism and selfishness, the religious right gains huge credibility by challenging the alleged neutrality of the public sphere and insists on introducing values."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060424/lerner

I am not saying that people should live without material goods. That reductio ad absurdum is not valid. In his economics textbooks in the 1940s, my cousin quoted a sociologist from 1905 who said:

"The fact is, the scramble for money or place, though it be as desperate as the fight of clawed beasts, has ceased to be a clear case of life or death. Only at the bottom steps of the social staircase do men compete from hunger. Above them men work themselves into the madhouse or the grave, not for bread, but for jam on the bread."

If society is a rat race where people are scrambling for the latest jam, then many people are going to get trampled or discarded. Equality of Opportunity does nothing to address this problem. 10% of society is still discarded, and a big chunk of the rest are treated like crap and stressed out by the threat that they too could be discarded (fired, downsized, outsourced).

That's why I do not care for it. To me it sends the message "it's money that matters" and I stubbornly refuse to endorse that message.

[Bake]

40. I was not familiar with the term "homecomer"

So I looked it up: http://www.homecomers.org

And here's some of what I found, under the heading "social conservation":

As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, our goal is not to move society to the left or the right, but to move upwards. The state should reward good and punish evil, allowing us to live quiet and peaceful lives. Many people expect more from the state, perhaps because they expect less from God. God wants to supply all our needs, not man individual or corporate. What is the difference between praying to an idol for food and praying to the government for food, except that the idol ignores your worship and the state might be eager to receive it? Neither one is your God. God's people may not care for you, but God does.
What is our motivation for trying to change our government and our society? Woodrow Wilson said he was fighting World War I to make the world safe for democracy. Many liberals want to make the world safe for perversion. Many conservatives merely want to make the world safe for themselves. The need is not for social conservatism, but rather social conservation. Just as we protect natural habitats because of their complex interlinking which we don't fully understand, we should respect human ecologies, equally complex and equally misunderstood. If we fear the environmental impact of a new factory on a town, why don't we fear the social impact of a new pastime on that same town?

http://www.homecomers.org/main.html

Here's another interesting quote from the same link:

Historically, repentance and conversion, not social programs, have been the only effective solution for a myriad of problems such as child abuse, child exploitation, poor working conditions, low incomes, high unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse and teen pregnancy. God helps a father to stop drinking and start working, God helps the father's employer to provide job training and increase wages, God helps the employer's teenaged daughter to seek love from himself instead of boys. Social scientists have even coined a term for the phenomenon: "redemption and lift."
_____

Now, far be it from me to question anyone's religious beliefs. Whether you choose to grow your own tomatoes, wash your dishes and clothes by hand, or home-school your children is entirely up to you.

However, in the context of the current struggle in American society between those who simply want to loot the Treasury and screw everybody else, and those who are a bit more progressive (to put it mildly), I'll gladly come down on the secular-progressive side. And I say that as a long-time Christian. And I would add that if you have trouble working with seculars, then stay the hell out of the way because we have a lot of work to do. And we're not waiting around for God to do it for us. I say that, because my faith tells me that God will not do for me something I am capable of doing and ought to be doing myself.

As far as teaching values, I think we can and should teach values: the value of public service, the value of history, the value of science, the value of our responsibility to our fellow travelers on this planet. If you are referring to other, more religious or spiritual values, please do that with your own kids and leave mine out of it. I can take of them myself.

Frankly, the more I read about "homecomers" the more it sounds like a movement to withdraw from society. And I will be the first to admit that I could be wrong in that assessment; if so, I'm open to discuss it. But if I'm correct, then what we need are not people to withdraw from soceity but people to engage society energetically and fix what's broken.

Peace,
Bake

[hfojvt]

44. I'm not familiar with that organization

I was only using the term the way I quoted it in post 26. Whether that is the same, or close to the same as the organization, is another question.

[Zhade]

28. Jim Wallis also attacked "the secular left", saying it "lost" in this election.

Which is bullshit, of course - probably 99% of democratically-minded people are secular, which of course merely means they support the separation of church and state.

Secularism is the only thing that lets societies made up of both believers and nonbelievers thrive.

Secularism works.

[progressoid]

29. One more secular-progressive checking in!

[Hatalles]

31. They've made "secular" a bad word... like they did with "liberal."

Tacking on "progressive" to "secular" is the next step.

[Bake]

32. I suggest we pre-empt them.

Let's not allow them to make either secular or progressive a dirty word, either alone or in combination. I think I know what Billo's trying to do, it sounds similar to "secular humanist" which is a term they have used with derision for years.

We should suggest to our talking heads that they EMBRACE the term and define the conversation before this too becomes a dirty word.

Bake

[Exiled in America]

34. Me too - well said! :)

[Canuckistanian]

36. Whoa! Looks like the Falafel-man sparked an "SP Revolution", here!

Well, I'll be joining you with my pitchfork!

To Victory!

:patriot:

[jannyk]

37. Liberal Secular Progressive reporting for duty - yay. nt

[ComerPerro]

41. The RW has two very different takes on secularism, depending on how you phrase it

Billo is especially norotorious for this kind of shit:

Secularists are bad because they want to take religion out of government and public life.

But the Taliban was bad, mostly because it let religion control government and public life...

[Bake]

43. You are absolutely correct.

And I suggest that we control the phrasing this time.

But then, hell, I like the term secular humanist.

Bake