In this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors, Jason and Christian begin by discussing some of the blowback from last week’s interview with Dan Savage, and then take a series of voicemails on topics ranging from how sexy our voices are to whether we should have free college tuition, and from the refugee crisis to whether we truly mock God on our show. We address the issues of modern evangelical culture and persecution in America, after which Christian gets super pissed at his kids and we all get to hear what that sounds like. Dick Bush calls in for tips on becoming a good “agnostical,” and we introduce a new segment called “Go Home, Google, You’re Drunk” which leads to a discussion about elitism, tastemakers, and how stupid everyone is. We then spend a good deal of time arguing about whether, how, and how cavalierly abortion doctors should be killed. In our “Dick Move, God” segment we meet a man who was fired for sustaining an on-the-job injury, and Jason is biebered by how pointless it is to listen to podcasts.
Podcast #390: Batman, Wealth, and Non-Monogamy Revisited
Podcast #204: The Barr and the Bee
Podcast #189: Drugs and Guns
Podcast #353: Our Second Best
I can feel that I might not be on my meds in this moment. With that disclaimer in mind….
1. Everything you guys said about immigration is now manifestly insane in light of San Bernardino. Remember all that bull shit the left was pushing? “Oh, it’s just a bunch of women and children what harm can they do? Oh, our vetting process is awesome we will definitely weed out the bad guys. Oh, Islam isn’t really the problem it’s just this isolated group.”
A few weeks later a female Muslim immigrant gets into the U.S. with fake address and info, helps make her U.S. born husband more “devout”, they make a bomb factory and shoot up like 40 people. See how fast the topic changed to gun control? This is precisely why the average Joe votes against prissy democrats in war time. You guys can’t see how life actually plays out from your ivory tower of idealism. Be sure to remind all the victims families to love their neighbor and welcome thousands more over with open arms.
2. There really wasn’t anything that bad about the Savage interview. How can you be offended by conversation you hear at least once in a week in the real world? Or maybe I just run with vulgar friends lol
3. Christian culture is lame because it’s trying so desperately to be relevant. You can’t put baggy pants and tattoos on a grandpa and make him cool again. It just makes the gramps look less relevant than ever. Old things are cool because they are old and different. Just look at the Catholic Church. They burst into modernity gloriously after the Second Vatican Council and now they have no priests, no nuns, no real distinctive culture, no real doctrinal integrity, very few converts, membership has fallen off a cliff, etc. AND THE SOLUTION?!? We need MORE modernity so we can be more relevant. Brilliant.
4. Listening to liberals lecture conservatives in charity is like watching a creationist lecture Richard Dawkins on science. Conservatives are the ones actually “doing” charitable work while liberals sit around and talk about how we should tax the rich to put charities out of business. There should be a rule where liberals can’t critique “greedy, evil, capitalist” conservatives without first revealing exactly how much work/money they dedicate to the poor and unfortunate. My church just gave thousands of dollars, food, clothes, etc to people in our neighborhood who lost their homes in an apartment fire. Something like that happens every single day around the globe through evil, horrible, persecution complex ridden, greedy, not really Christian, fundamentalist religious groups.
Once the DxP podcast is funding charities and active in the community you can earn the right to bitch about conservative greed. If you aren’t part of the solution….. STFU yo! If you are already part of the solution….. rant on brothas 🙂
Kenneth, what do think Jesus meant when he told us to love our enemies? If you think it has no relevance to both questions of the Syrian refugees being given haven in America, or this fellow that shot up an abortion clinic, why not?
To my mind, Christ’s example and command of enemy love should be paramount in determining our proper response to both.
Great episode guys! I think Christian’s question regarding abortion (just like his previous questions on this issue) was actually really interesting. However, unlike his statement that christians should kill their children, I think their at least two vallid answers that are still pretty orthodox.
1. I think you can call something murder without saying it is exactly the same as all other forms of murder. Jesus says that hate is murder and I don’t think he meant that hate is just as wrong as everything else we call murder. So I think we can say that something is wrong and that it is a “sin” that falls under the same category as murder without saying it is exactly the same as murdering an eight year old.
2. I personaly believe that Jesus calls his followers to complete pacifism. I think that chritians are called to stand up for the opressed and the inocent even if it means sacrificing you’re own life, but I think that they are also told very clearly that they are not to use violence in any situation, even in defense of the sinless son of God. So as a Christians who believe abortion is wrong, I think we should everything we can to peacfully prevent abortions from happening, but under no circumstance should we resort to violence. That would be the last thing that Jesus would want.
Christian and Jason, I am an itinerant listener, first time commenting. First of all, I wish Jason would get another job at a car lot. Those were the best stories. From my perspective as an non-political conservative, Christian’s predeliction for Orthodoxy (reaffirmed in this podcast) is peculiar and refreshing. Connecting with a gay, liberal atheist on a conservative level is some kind of cosmic win. As a Southerner and an old school Catholic (i.e., double loser), I join you guys in deploring Americanism, though probably for different reasons. I say welcome to all immigrants, Mexican, African, Syrian, whomever might help to undermine the obnoxious Yankee state. Anyways, drinking moonshine, deploying swears, being honest whatever-the-fuck, and affiriming non-U.S.-American Christianity are points we have in common, though the commonality be held in tension. Ya’ll have a good show. Many happy returns.
Everyone: “There has been a shooting at a community center!”
The Right: “What’s the skin color of the shooter?”
Everyone: “Brown.”
The Right: “We need to crack down on immigration immediately!”
***
Everyone: “There has been a shooting at an abortion clinic!”
The Right: “What’s the skin color of the shooter?”
Everyone: “White.”
The Right: “Well, this’ll make people think twice before going in there next time!”
Hey Andrew, good to hear from you after so long (my email address changed so I don’t get the group messages anymore). Thanks for listening!
It’s this sense of nuance I identify with as well. I often apply it to things like civil disobedience: Do I believe it can be justified? Absolutely. Should it be violent? No, never.
And to the point about liberals being weak in war-time, this just explains why conservatives bend over backwards to concoct wars and find threats behind every tree. It’s a good tactic, actually.
So far as I know conservatives have been condemning the shooting of the abortion clinic too. It certainly makes me uncomfortable, but at the same time if abortion is the murder of innocents (which it is) I am sympathetic to his motives.
And it wasn’t her skin color so much as it was the fake immigration info and online pledge to ISIS
Kenneth, how does the fact that terrorists may get in negate Matthew 25:31-46?
Those are good answers, Evan. Of course, my questions presupposes that there are Christians (even on this page) who view abortion as the same as murdering a 6 month old child. (These are the same people who wouldn’t know whether they should save a petri dish of embryos if there was a fire in a medical clinic or a classroom full of kids at Sandy Hook if it was next door to the medical clinic. [Yes, we’ve actually had this discussion before.])
Jeremiah,
I guess I just reject this cartoonist caricature of Jesus and the sermon on the mount. Was Jesus loving His enemies when he was beating their ass in the temple? Was Jesus loving enemies when they are cast out into the fire? Was Jesus loving His enemies when He continually humiliated the Pharisees in the public square? Or when He cast Satan out of heaven? Or when He flooded the Earth and all the sinful humans with it? Or with Sodom and Gomorrah? Or killing then first born children in the exodus? Is there such a thing as just war? Should the state prosecute criminals? Should we even try to protect the common welfare? The sermon on the mount can help inform these questions but it just isn’t the and all be all of christianity. Should we help hurting refugees? ABSOLUTELY! But should we help if taking them in could severely damage the general welfare of the nation? That’s more difficult to answer. Should we take justice into our own hands and kill those who commit murder? No. But is it morally permissible to do so if the state won’t intervene and your motive is to save lives? Different question.
Not much action on the group email other than debating the wisdom (or not) of Ross Douthat as a proxy for debating the pros and cons of the current pontificate as a proxy for debating the trajectory of the Church over the past generation. I’m too sorry a Catholic to feel much at stake in the discussion, but just sorry enough to chime in anyway. Speaking of lost causes, Seattle seems like a lovely place. I hope ya’ll enjoy it well before slipping into the Pacific Ocean.
By the way, I remember the one time we met, you describing as “socialism” more or less the same thing that I described as “distributism.” This was partly frustrating and partly illuminating. I ended up thinking goddammit Stellman is a conservative who just doesn’t know it yet or else I’m just a liberal who hates that word and the association with emos, hipsters, and Joseph Stalin.
There nothing to negate. It’s false dichotomy. I can love them, feed them, cloth them, house them, etc without inviting them inside my own house to kill me. Which is exactly what all conservatives want to do.
I think what it comes down to is a difference between saying “abortion a form of murder” and “abortion is exactly the same as the very worst form of murder”.
Exactly! It annoys me that people seem to equate non-violence with inaction. Like some how it’s impossible to stand up for the oppressed without brutally murdering the oppressor.
Jesus said to do good to those that pursecute you. He didn’t add “unless it could be dangerous”.
We’ve had 355 or so mass shootings in America this year.
1 of them was committed by a Muslim couple.
Clearly we must bomb the Middle East some more, close the mosques, fire up the internment camps again, and consign millions of innocent people to squalor and misery.
Gun control? Phppt… stoopid liberals.
“I was a stranger and you did not invite me in.”
Yes, and I just said we can certainly do good by these refugees without inviting them in to kill us. Why is that a violation of the sermon on the mount? Putting innocent women and children in danger of jihad is not loving thy neighbor. Allowing people to get gunned down in the workplace is not loving they neighbor. Would it be loving for me to free a mass murderer and shack him up at your house? Would insisting that this mass murderer stay in prison be in violation of Jesus teaching? If not, welcome to the world of common sense interpretation.
Why does inviting them in equal “inviting them in to kill us”.
So Syrian refugees are akin to mass murderers in your world then?
Freeing a mass murderer is a lot different than taking in thousands of starving, homeless people. Are you taking a chance that you will be taking in someone among those thousands who may try to do you harm? Yes, you are. You’re always taking that chance when you help someone. Does it matter? Is that one of the conditions of taking people in, having there be no risk? I can’t find that part of the verse, but then again I’ve never read the Catholic Bible.
The problem with this is that I don’t beleive Jesus did or will do half of the shit you just atributed to him.
Anyone can play that game. I could just as easily keep hard ass Jesus and doubt the sermon on the mount. Once you start introducing cafeteria christianity don’t condemn other for arbitrarily picking different items from the grab bag
Cigarettes and Doritos kill more people per year than mass shootings so I guess the gun issue can wait too. See how silly that logic is? Sure ya do
Yes, please apply that to the proverbial mass murderer. Still apply? If not, welcome to the world of common sense interpretation
Cigarettes and Doritos are my personal choice. Your average mass shooter doesn’t ask if I want to be shot. But keep trying.
Just ask the jihadist victims at San Bernadino.
Because all Muslims are inherently evil, obviously. Time for another Crusade.
In my world, and in the world of the families to all the San Bernardino victims. You guys keep insisting everything’s fine. Nothing much going on. Not really that scary. It’s gonna get the dems swept riiiiiiight out of Washington
Jesus, dude. How do you get out from under your bed with 1.6 billion people you are convinced are trying to kill you?
Lol how do you keep employing the defensive tactics of an ostrich even after Paris and San Bernardino.
Second hand smoke? Is that a personal choice too? Hmmm….
And we’ve addressed that concern in many settings with laws and regulations.
Call me when we’ve done something other than jack shit to nationally address gun violence and not simply pretend that it’s the cost of freedom.
Statistics.
I actually agree to some extent. I don’t think any one actually believes everything the bible says. I just wish more people would be honest about the fact that we all prioritze certain parts of the bible and use them to interpret the rest. For me it’s the synoptic gospels, the undisputed pauline epistles, the first epistle of John, and some of the more social justice oriented prophets that have the largest effect on my understanding of Christianity.
I know! Since all gun related problems can be solved by giving more people guns why don’t we battle second hand smoking by giving everyone cigarettes.
What about automotive accidents? What about the consequences of drinking and driving? Are you really gonna say with a straight face we have done all we can to legislate laws that protect people on the roads? Why not a breathalyzer in every car? Why make cars whose top speed is over 80mph? Why not put a camera at every stop light and intersection? Why not put a camera in every car to stop people from driving in a distracted fashion? Why not stop cell phones from functioning while driving?
Tell me some more statistics. How many dead from guns vs cars? It’s a stupid way of conducting government. If there is an external threat we deal with it. We don’t have to wait until this threat statistically is the number one killer of U.S. citizens.
Which is why I kinda hate cars!
• We already see state interference in State colleges. I’ve read multiple stories of Republican governors and representatives threatening to cut funding for political reasons or because they don’t like something the university did. There was the University of Michigan or Missouri being threatened by a state government official because he didn’t care for the thesis topic a post-grad student selected.
So having fully funded public higher education wouldn’t introduce a new political element, because it already exists. It would however, level the playing field even more between poor kids, middle class kids, and upper class kids. And that’s what we want. We don’t want a bright kid who could become a doctor or engineer or scientist settling on being the smartest fry cooks in the diner because his parents couldn’t afford college.
• Facts from a Texas school book:
o Jesus handed the Constitution engraved on two stone tablets to James Madison on the top of Mt. Rushmore.
o Slavery was simply an involuntary jobs program for Africa.
o The first amendment is for Christians. Others need not apply.
o The second amendment protects the rights of all Americans to have their own ICBM if they so choose.
o The tenth amendment supersedes all other amendments unless it’s something we like.
o The War of Northern Aggression was about tariffs. That’s right… Tariffs. No, not that other thing. Ignore the bits of the declaration of secessions that mention that other thing. IT WAS ABOUT TARIFFS!!!!
• What I’m more worried about is the way higher education seems to be going with private and corporate donations affecting curriculum, so one day your kids or grandkids might be sitting in Climatology 101: brought to you by the Koch brothers and Exxon.
• A Libertarian paradise would last for just as long as it took one man or corporation to buy up most of the land and businesses and become the new government for that area or for one man to hire his own private army and become the new regional warlord.
• What pisses me off about people suddenly caring about homeless children, homeless vets, or other American problems is that it’s so blatantly obvious that they are only raising the issue to try and be holier than thou when you talk about helping Syrian refugees. And it’s obvious because the people they vote for repeatedly reject doing things to help the homeless or veterans and demonize the homeless and people on government assistance as moochers and takers. And it’s obvious because if you answer, “Great. We have the money to do both. Let’s contact our congressmen and pressure them to help both groups” the reply is crickets or “it’s not that easy”. Or we just can’t help THOSE people because terrorists!!!
It’s bullshit.
• And just consider for a moment and put yourself into the shoes of a refugee. Just think of how utterly hopeless and shitty and godawful your life must be and how fucked up your country must be that you’re actually asking, no, begging to be allowed to move to Texas or Mississippi or Florida. I mean, Syria has got to be a raging shithole to drive a man to that level of desperation.
• I grew up with Republican Jesus. Republican Jesus is white. Republican Jesus loves capitalism, money, and rich people so much that Republican Jesus died to lower your capital gains taxes and save your wallet. Republican Jesus thinks that poor are poor because of their own fault. Republican Jesus is okay with war. Republican Jesus loves guns. Republican Jesus is primarily concerned with stopping abortion and the gays and making sure the kids learn values America used to have when boys were boys and girls were girls and those other people sat at a different lunch counter.
Republican Jesus is angry. He hates liberals. He seethes every day at how much injustice is done to his people by retail employees saying “Happy Holidays.” And one day Republican Jesus is going to come and burn the liberals and gays and Anglicans in eternal hellfire forever.
So, I don’t mock God (though Kenneth no doubt will disagree) so much as I mock the god I grew up with who resembles Jesus in only the most superficial of ways.
• Let’s be quite honest. We’ve never met God face to face. We’ve never had a conversation with him that wasn’t one-sided. We have a book that tells us about God which is ambiguous enough that different people have different ideas of who God is in their heads. We don’t really have a relationship with God in the sense of the word that most people think of, which is to say that it is absurd to assume that one could read a biography of Scarlett Johannsson and then say you have a relationship with her.
We don’t love God. We love an idol. Or we love a flawed representation of God based on our view of the bible, our church traditions, etc. If we see at all, we see God in a glass darkly: through nature, through a quiet sense of awe in a church, in the faces of our fellow man.
• Killing in the name of God is okay if you’re using the right name of God and killing the right people.
• I said earlier that I’m pretty convinced that the problem at least a few people on the right have with Hitler isn’t the genocide, but that he was genociding the wrong ethnic group.
• I’m not qualified to critique Christian culture as a whole. I have plenty of beams in my own eye. But I will say that two of the beams in my eye came from the modern Christian culture I was raised in, and those are: “belief is more important than actions” and “It’s all about me.” What I do doesn’t matter, what Jesus checks on his list is “did I say the right prayer and mean it?” Which is why Ted Bundy is in heaven now to an Evangelical Christian, while his victim who, for the purpose of this example, let’s say was an atheist who adopted war orphans and volunteered at a soup kitchen is burning in hell forever.
And it’s all about me. My beliefs. My personal righteousness. My faithfulness. My confessions. My conviction. My relationship with Jesus. Fuck everyone else, what’s important is “How my walk is.”
“Well, you volunteered to read to kids with cancer, but… you also masturbated a lot to porn, so you really need to repent, bro.”
• I choose greed. If there is no God and/or I’m damned anyway, then just be an amoral greedy bastard who only cares about money and make it however you can leaving behind however much human wreckage in your wake. I’d choose it because I think I could still fit in just fine at most churches.
• Hey, you’re lucky. My daughter will eat: toast, cereal, pasta (no sauce), beans, Spanish rice, peanut butter and jelly, fries, and McDonald’s hamburgers. That’s it.
• If you believe abortion is murder, and you believe that killing in the defense of others is legitimate, it seems impossible to then condemn someone for shooting an abortion doctor or an abortion clinic. And if you do recoil in horror at the idea of killing them, doesn’t that say that you, on some level, recognize that there is a difference between a zygote, a fetus, and a baby? Or does that simply say that your beliefs on the topic are kept in check by the negative consequences you’d face should you engage in that act?
• “Sigh… Look, Mo, nice tabernacle and all. I really like the gold and scarlet curtains and that ark is pretty nice, but uh… could you get rid of Phil.”
“Phil? He’s the most devout of us. He loves you.”
“Yeah, but he’s too short. It’s kind of weirding me out.”
“But, uh, Lord, didn’t you make Phil to be short?”
“Yeah, but I was in a phase. I wanted to make a miniature Earth with miniature people and look, I just kind of creeps me out now. In fact, get rid of Stew too, I don’t like glasses. In fact, just get rid of anyone who isn’t pretty. I only want to see pretty people when I come to visit.”
“Okay, Lord…”
Cars are heavily regulated. The use of cars is heavily regulated. You have to have insurance to operate a car. You have to have a license demonstrating responsible use of a car to operate a car. Another bad choice to hold up as an example.
But are we doing ANYTHING about gun violence? No. In fact, we’re actively blocking gun makers from lawsuits. We’re stopping doctors from asking about guns in the home. National funding of studies of gun violence is slim to none. And forget trying to get national gun control laws passed.
There are some very minimal common sense regulations on cars, but no where near what we could do to save countless millions of lives. We lose more in a year from drunk driving than we have in a decade of mass shootings. There is more we could do about guns but we would save less lives by focusing on that problem than others.
Surely you must be thinking “but what does any of this have to with anything?” That’s exactly the same frustration conservatives feel when a terrorist attack becomes a gun control issue. It’s a tactical way to change the subject because there is bloody egg all over Obama and Hillary’s faces.
No amount of screening would have stopped the cousin of those terrorists from getting a gun. It’s a completely different subject.
Just imagine if terrorists had used an airplane and conservatives change the topic to the dangers of flying. Nonsense. Complete nonsense. And so long as they keep giving the wrong answer for the next year we will hopefully get a commander and chief instead of an apologist for Islam.
Cigs can’t be used to defend ourselves from other cigarettes.
Gun control isn’t the topic. Islam and jihad are the issues.
I’ve got the perfect solution. We can let 10k Syrians in, but give them all guns. It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun, so we’ll have 99.99% good people with guns and .01% bad people with guns! (That’s better stats than we already have!) All those new guns and there’ll be almost no crime!
I was really just trying to make a joke. I wasn’t seriously attacking anyone.
Christian Kingery 2016!!!!
” Was Jesus loving His enemies when he was beating their ass in the temple?”
You begin with stretching the words of the NT to the breaking point, you have to know this is wild speculation at best and sloppy interpretation at worst. Are you serious? He drove them out. Yes, that was a loving thing, did he beat anyone, no.
“Was Jesus loving enemies when they are cast out into the fire?”
Yes, but as you know you and I already disagree on the nature of that fire and whether it’s purpose is to torture or restore us.
“Was Jesus loving His enemies when He continually humiliated the Pharisees in the public square?”
Yes, but I imagine you and I see very different motives of the Son of God in those pages.
“Or when He cast Satan out of heaven? ”
Category conflation, really? Come on Kenneth, you can do better than that. 🙂 But again as above, I see no reason in scripture to doubt God’s heart to at last restore even the satan.
“Or when He flooded the Earth and all the sinful humans with it? Or with Sodom and Gomorrah? Or killing then first born children in the exodus?”
So you would ignore Christ’s statements of how if he was seen, then so was his father seen as well? Or one like, if we love them which love us only, what reward do we have, for even sinners do as much, and then goes on to tell us in doing otherwise we will be like our father in heaven, “for he is kind to the unthankful and the evil.” No brother, I think Jesus was the true revelation of his father and ours, and therefore had the right to correct our mistaken perceptions of the shadows which had come before him and declare the substance in its true light.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t then reject all the violent passages of the OT(or any of it for that matter) you spoke of as uninspired by God, Jesus affirmed the Hebrew scriptures, but he didn’t give them some carte blanche blessing to forever retain the authority as he did his words. I think John says it best, so I won’t try, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
“Is there such a thing as just war?”
In a word, no, Does this therefore mean I think all warriors are evil and horrible horrible sub-humans? No, it means I think they’re mistaken, gravely so, but mistaken.
” Should the state prosecute criminals? Should we even try to protect the common welfare?”
Of course. Though I have an inkling that the “common welfare” you speak of would have far less people in it the what I would consider common welfare. And the “protection” we would envision is probably a little different too.
Grace and peace to you man.
Seatbelts, airbags, vehicle safety standards, product liability laws, but sure, whatever.
Gun violence as a whole dwarves drunk driving per year by several degrees over. 75% of people citing statistics are usually trying to skew them.
HA… yeah, there’s the wingnut in ya. It’s the Democrat’s fault cause even though they’re bombing ‘em, they haven’t fired up the Internment camps yet.
Well, if you can’t stop them all, we shouldn’t try to stop any of ‘em. Guess that means we shouldn’t do anything about terrorism either since we’ll never stop every attack.
Yeah, now let’s imagine the more accurate scenario and say that 355 times this year Americans had hijacked planes and crashed them into populated buildings and conservatives said nothing, but the one time a Muslim does it and they lose their shit and talk about how Muslims are all fucking evil and need to be rounded up and monitored while the rest of us on the sidelines are going, “Hey, uh… before we lose our shit, maybe we ought to try and keep ALL of the crazy people from hijacking planes to begin with.”
Hey, Stalin was just misunderstood. And once we get you one of these you can be a full-fledged member of the liberal club:
It’d take a time clock and a lobotomy to make that happen. Bald, bearded, unpierced, unstained by body ink, abiding conservative always. Fuck those Yankees and their murderous brood. Peace to you and yours.
let’s imagine the more accurate scenario and say that 355 times this year Americans had hijacked planes and crashed them into populated buildings and conservatives said nothing, but the one time a Muslim does it and they lose their shit
I see your point, but I still think it’s a change of topic because the liberal narrative was just proven wrong at every turn. There is a very serious issue with violence within our own borders. There are way too many mass shootings. But that has nothing to do with global jihad and the threat of “radical” Islam. I understand that you don’t take ISIS seriously, but the threat is real. The average bullied psychopath doesn’t have a real chance to grab a nuke…. but ISIS does. Especially with weak ass democrats allowing Iran’s nuclear program. The stronger they grow the greater the threat. It’s a big deal and a much greater threat to the US than gun violence (the vast majority of gun deaths are suicide). As I’ve already stated, moter vehicles are more of a threat than guns. The majority of car fatalities are NOT suicides. To change the subject is tacky and it doesn’t really help dems look better anyways. The damage is done.
Time machine. Those Yankees of course refers to the neo-Puritan Union army and their political heirs.
Once again, the liberal narrative after every mass shooting has been “Hey, let’s do something about this so it doesn’t happen again” while the conservative narrative has been “Buy mohr gunz!”
If anyone is trying to shift the conversation, it is the conservatives who are practically relieved that we’re dealing with Muslim shooters so we can talk about terrorism instead of gun violence.
ISIS is a terrorist group. They are barbaric assholes. Logistically, they lack infrastructure, a regular army, and mobility. Their greatest strength is their ability to hide and their ability to appeal to angry, disaffected youth via social media.
Are they capable of causing damage? Yes. Are they capable of destroying the United States and Western civilization? No.
How should we respond? Well, we do what we’re doing now: bombing known targets while minimizing civilian damage, focus the intelligence services on tracking and containing the group as well as monitoring social media to try and contain the message.
We should also do the following, but probably won’t for political reasons:
1. Focus on cutting off the finances for the group from Saudi Arabia. Freeze the assets of those who are bribing or funding the group. Demand accountability from the Saudi government.
2. Talk with the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Iraqis and coordinate a united response to ISIS. We worked with the Soviets to destroy Hitler, no reasons we couldn’t work with Putin to crush ISIS. We can go back to hating them after the job is done.
2a. Talk to the Russians about resolving the Syrian civil war politically. We’ve said Assad must go, but Russia can and should be involved in the transition process as Syria was their client state.
We should not:
1. Freak the hell out.
2. Carpet bomb Syria
3. Nuke Syria
4. Bar Muslim Immigration
5. Close the mosques
6. Inter Muslims in WW2 style camps
7. Force Muslims to carry special IDs.
8. Try and ostracize Muslim youth so they become angry and disaffected and ISIS propaganda starts sounding pretty good to them.
I’d really suggest reading some articles on the Iran nuclear deal that do not come from Frank Gaffney or the conservative chorus.
It’s also a rather insane idea that even if Iran somehow constructed a nuclear bomb under the constraints of the deal that the Shia clerics who run Iran would hand off that WMD to Sunni fanatical terrorists who hate Shia and might turn around and use the bomb on the Iranian apostates.
As to the politics of it all, unless Obama does something truly stupid like invade a country that has nothing to do with the attack, I think the Democrats will be okay. I don’t think you were ever in danger of voting for a Democratic ticket anyway.
Christian Kingery, on the killing of abortion doctors. I did posted this article, a few days later, that spoke to your observation: The Roots of Pro-Lifers’ Dangerous Rhetoric
We need to embrace the “seamless garment” of a consistent pro-life ethic.
Oh, my bad. I guess I was mistakenly applying it to thousands of homeless, starving people begging for help. My bad.
your comparison of Picasso to Dylan was ridiculous. Dylan’s genius was in his lyrics and ability to make us care using a very limited voice. He was a great song writer who could only sing one way, and he mastered that one way. Picasso’s genius was that he was a classically trained painter that could paint in any style he wanted, so he invented new ones that favored emotion and feeling over visual realism. My take on abstract art is if you have real talent but chose abstract forms of expression, more power to you. But if you have to pursue abstract art because you can’t draw a straight line with a ruler, you need to speak to me in a profound way before I will take you seriously.
Homeless starving MURDERERS, you mean….
Next time I’ll compare Picasso to your mom, would that be OK?
My point was simply that what constitutes a “good singer” or “good painter” depends on what they are trying to accomplish, and that the rules are broader than simply hitting notes or having proper brush technique.
What precipitated those comments of mine anyway? Neither Christian nor I have any recollection!
sure thing, but he was a much better painter than my mom too.
it was during the “go home Google, you’re drunk” segment (which by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed), and you made your point just fine. I simply think that by focusing on the lack of realism in Picasso’s later work as a sign of lesser ability as a painter and putting him in the same bucket with Dylan as less of a singer, you put Picasso in the wrong bucket. Picasso was brilliant under any standard for painters, highfalutin or otherwise.
also, my comment is primarily directed to the need for a little levity on this page after wading through the morass below.
…. who may also be trying to kill us…..
That can be applied to helping anyone ever. I like your version of Christianity though. Based on your logic, I can excuse myself from helping anyone ever.
Oh that’s right, haha.
Only if you adopt the all or nothing mentality that you just frowned upon in this last podcast.
I’ve already said repeatedly that Christian charity demands we help these people. But that doesn’t necessarily entail bringing in thousands of people whom may or may not be planning jihad.
Try to stop painting my comments black and white. It’s very fundamentalist of you. It’s all about the gray 😉
The head of the FBI has already said ISIS has plans to come in through refugees and he can’t guarantee the vetting process is reliable. We don’t have very much Intel on these people. San Bernardino just happened partly due to poor screening with immigration. A significant percentage of these people will hold values fundamentally opposed to everything we stand for. Why is helping them in some other way unacceptable? They don’t want to come here anyways. They want their home back. And we could give it to them….
If we didn’t have a liberal commander and chief
Your problem is not with me, it’s with Jesus. He forgot to qualify his statements. The Catholic church should change them to say “as long as there is no risk to you.” You guys can do that, right?
I’ve already mentioned repeatedly that I am all for helping the refugees. In every way except bringing them here.
Putting innocent people in danger of jihad is not loving your neighbor.
I can’t believe you plebs are still using the Apple Podcast app. It is atrocious! Spend a couple bucks and get an actual good podcasting host.
I also found Christian’s abortion killing questioning really interesting. I do see both sides to the argument, and I have some sympathy with Evan’s response in that murders aren’t all equatable. Interesting.
Did you guys fist fight or make out or both after hitting “stop” on the recorder? The tension after that abortion talk was palpable. I thought for sure something was about to go down during “Dick Move God”.
We don’t host the podcast on iTunes. It’s just one of the many podcast apps that picks up our feed. We should be available in almost all podcast apps. If we’re not available in yours, let me know and I’ll make sure our feed gets submitted!
Ha ha! We hugged it out.
Well, Jesus specifically cast people into hell who didn’t invite the destitute in.
How very unchristlike of Him to do so!
To take that passage and apply it in a literalistic wooden way to refugees that ma be wanting to kill our other neighbors (whom we should love) is absurd. We can still help them. We can still give them a place to eat, work, and be merry. I reject the narrative that we either take them within our own borders or leave them to be crucified.
Would you pick up a starving struggling family and let them sleep in your house?
I bet you might. Maybe.
Would you pick up that same family if the FBI told you they might be planning to kill whomever picked them up?
Only you can answer that. But I wouldn’t. Putting my family in danger is not loving my neighbor
Haha no I mean when you’re listening to podcasts on your phone! Jason was biebering about the iTunes podcast app and he’s right, it’s awful. I use Pocket Casts and it’s way better. Overcast, Downcast, etc there’s plenty you can use. I like Pocket Casts because you make On the Go playlists, and play podcasts at 1.5x or 2.0x speed to get through them more quickly if you choose to.
I think it find to discuss issues of pragmatism. I personally think the risk is being overblown. However, if we are still going to help them, I’m fine with that position, especially if you have personally given funds/effort to help. My problem with some conservative Christians (not all!) Is that they don’t want to bring them here NOR help them at all! Often siting things like homeless veterans as reason not to. That simply is not Christian. That is having your politics inform your Christianity, not your Christianity informing your politics. It is idolatry.
After that great abortion debate I’m sure you would like the documentary I just watched on Netflix called After Tiller. It’s about a special group of 4 doctors that perform late term abortions for women in the US. Would be fun to hear your opinion on it.
It’s getting overblown now that trump has plans to ban all muslims from entering the country! Lol yeah, I’ve seen quite a bit of that. Keep in mind that most of those memes come from veterans and vet associations who have been crying for help for decades
I think the chances of a Syrian refugee family that you take in killing you is about the same as any family you take in killing you.
The FBI director has given us two pieces of info on this.
1. It’s impossible to screen them with any accuracy.
2. FBI has uncovered plans from ISIS to come I’m as refugees.
In what way does that give you confidence they are safe?
Plus your family would definitely jump me dude. “Oh you’re Kenneth? The ass hole who thinks baking cakes is slavery?
***SOCCER KICK TO THE BALLS***
Let me start by saying that I agree with Christian on the abortion question. An unborn fetus is not a person in the same way a living breathing person is. I think scripture bears that position out as well. BUT, I will attempt to explain the difference in defending a kid in a park with a gun to his head and shooting an abortion doctor if we are assuming the value of those lives are equivalent.
There is only one way to save the kid in the park and that is to kill the guy threatening him/her. The best way to save unborn babies (if you believe they require saving) is not to kill abortion doctors. Such an act generates sympathy for the pro-choice cause and perpetuates abortion culture by creating an atmosphere wherein the abortionist is now the victim. Sure you may save that specific unborn baby that one day, but you are creating sympathy for a cause that will further normalize abortion making them more prevalent. If you want to eliminate abortion, there are much more effective ways to do that which have been discussed at length on your show.
Ha! I’d simply shoot you on site since there’s a small chance you’re there to kill me.
The vetting process is a very lengthy process. Of course it’s not 100% accurate. What is? And of course ISIS would try to come in as refugees. They are also trying to come in as non-refugees. We’re not barring all foreigners from landing in the U.S. even though we know ISIS may be among them. Why ban refugees when we know there are millions of them that legitimately need help.
Refugees at least have to go through months of screening. Someone visiting our country can just fly in and answer some questions at the airport and go through. Why turn away the refugees if we allow other non-U.S. citizens to come in?
DXP, what do you think about this guy? Dr. Ryan Anderson is a smart rational guy speaking about the conservative side of LGBT issues. He is typically hated, but I’m not sure why. He sounds completely reasonable to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrSRiQ4PlG4
I found this short video pretty helpful to this discussion. You don’t have to believe that a unborn human is as valuable as a 5 year old child, to believe that the unborn child still has value and shouldn’t be killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMwkQVpy98A
Thanks for sharing. I will mull it over. I don’t really have any strong counter arguments , but anytime someone claims a complex issue is simple, I tend to want to push back on that.
Which of these is false?
1.God has the power to do anything
2. God is the very embodiment of love
3. God knows everything
4. There is a narrow path to The Kingdom of Heaven that few will take it
5. There is a real Hell that promises eternal conscious torment for those not walking with God
6. God freely and intentionally created humans.
I learned all of the above growing up in a conservative Christian denom. I draw the conclusion that if God is real then God intentionally created humans for the purpose of damning them (ok, just the large majority of them), and this, of course, is out of love.
Ah, but you may say, “but God, apart from being love, is also just and must punish sin.” Then it makes no sense for God to create a race of sinners to have to condemn. Obviously God saw this coming!
None of those points are false. What your little paragraph ASSUMES is that there is some other possible world better than this one. One where more people go to heaven, or less people suffer, or whatever. But its obvious to me that you just can’t have access to that information. This could very well be the world where the most possible free agents choose to love God and enjoy Paradise. Its this fundamental distrust of our Lord that I don’t share with you.
My little paragraph is actually not really referencing the physical world because worldly suffering has an end. Rather, I am saying that since God knew before creating people that they would sin and God would damn most of the lot of them, this means God was cool with damning most people before creating Adam. The most important assumption of my little paragraph is If you do something with foreknowledge of the consequences then you were ok with the consequences when you took the action in the first place.
So this God’s actions are not consistent with love. I think if you believe all of the assertions I numbered above then having children is the most immoral thing you can possibly do. Think, Aaron’s kids fell away, Eli’s kids fell way, Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and we know that more people go to Hell than not. So if you have kids then you are probably setting them up for an eternity of pain. But I am in favor of the continuation of the human species. So I contend we rethink at least one of my aforementioned doctrines. I really think that if any one of them were jettisoned the others could make logical sense together.
I wasn’t talking about the physical world either. By world I meant the universe, circumstances, people, and events that we find ourselves confronted with today. God could have created a different world. One with no free will. One with LESS free will. One without Satan. A world with no possibility of suffering. There are endless possibilities. But how do you know that this world isn’t the best of all possible options? We don’t know that.
What we do know is that God foreknew those that would be damned from the beginning. Which means, as you said, God was “ok” with the outcome of damnation before He pulled the trigger. But how does that entail that His actions arent consistent with love? Is love opposed to justice? Is it impossible for God to love the world while also damning it? If so, why? Finally, why do you all constently insist on this one demensional cupcake God made of flowers, grandmas cookies, and peace signs? Doesn’t the picture shift if God has multiple attributes and isn’t MERELY the embodiment of love? What if He is love but is also justice? There are a lot of parts in play in your case against christian orthodoxy and I don’t think any of them meet the kind of evidence I would need to distrust the word of our creator.