Politics and Religion

Okay, okay, I'm a little behind the wagon, but I only just heard of this Palin protection-from-witches BS and so I've done a little research about how the various candidates feel about neopaganism.

First this whole Palin thing. Even if we assume that she's just going along with this and not the one whose idea it was to get protected from such things-- still, she's going along with it. Which either means she doesn't disagree enough to make an issue of it / agrees she needs the protection, or she doesn't have the willpower to stop such craziness. If she agrees with it or doesn't argue with it, that's an inquisition waiting to happen, and if she doesn't have the will power to take control of her own spirituality, how the hell can she take control of anything else? And this is not even taking into account that the rest of this guy's crazy involves a vision of a radical fascist Christian world-- with Christianity used as a bad word, a totalitarian soul-crusher, not a religion of peace and tolerance.

And you know, the more I find out about her, the more I hear her speaking, the more I want to kick her in the face and tell her she's a horrible insult to everything I believe in-- feminism, womanhood, leadership, environmentalism, rationality, literacy, common sense... She's more and more a joke, and that's really the only way I can deal with her, because if I take her seriously, the thought that she might become president by default is terrifying. I hope the Republicans realize what they've done and how they've damaged their own cause with this loony.

And you know what? The rest of the candidates are being really quiet about religion.

McCain managed to come off as a little too Christian and intolerant of Islam, but that's not that unusual, or unexpected, considering the cloud of other associations around him-- And he honestly believes that the people who founded America were Christians just like him, and not at all like Christianity was three hundred odd years ago, and especially not like Freemasons or social humanists or anything else. At least, that's how he sounds to me.

I can't find anything on how McCain OR Obama feel about paganism directly, but I can tell you that Obama supports more of the things that would gather pagan attention, like peace, tolerance, greening the country, alternative energy, honesty...


links:
Palin: the About.com page here.

About McCain pissing off Muslims, here. The best response: "When the Founders wrote the nation’s Constitution, they specified that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day– giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention religion, except in exclusionary terms. The words “Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God” are never mentioned in the Constitution– not once."