Oh, btw, he’s such a dude… EVERY single emails I’ve sent to him, he’s replied to with thought.

R

If you think the organization has merit – please promote it. I do when ever I get a chance, but I’m just one person without a famous name. :-) Speaking of BNPs, Starhawk seems to be somewhat involved at least with the Rabbi’s synagog, but I’ve yet to see anything about NSP on her website. I haven’t visited in a few months, but…

Nevertheless, Rabbi Learner and the organization welcomes people of all faiths. Futhermore, their magazine website http://www.tikkun.org even sponsored Brokeback Mountain ads!

I think you’d really like some of the articles that come out of Tikkun Magazine as well. One that was published on line was written by a man who gave the Dems a hard time about how they didn’t even protest the the stealing of an election (2000 and 2004) but that the Mexicans did. It was very interesting to read.

R

Oh, and let’s not forget the power of money. Churches require HUUUUUUUGE amounts of money just to remain standing, never mind become a force for actually doing anything. Especially the protestant ones, as they haven’t hoards of monks and nuns and other half-starved submissives around to do all the maintence. And where’s this money going to come from? Who has enough around that they’re willing to drop it into the bottomless pit of church roof maintence funds? Why, corporations and their executives, but of course. And what kind of religion is attractive to the sort of people who become CEOs and CFOs and the like? Hmmmmmm?

Yup.

And we all know how politicians do as they are paid to do. And who’s paying them? Who has the money? Mainline liberal protestant churches and their congregations? Ya think?

It always comes back to money and who has it.

If you believe that those are the options/realities, then people act those out and tend to do so quite diligently — a large-scale binding.

I see no reason why we can’t use the processes of harmony and discord (democratic debate, discussion, and exploration) constructively and to keep alive certain treasured focal points such as balance of powers, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, civil duties, and civil rights.

Liberals are not cowards because they don’t speak up — they often do speak up. They are just not as loud because they cannot speak with one voice for particularly long.

Fundamentalism gains its political strength from its homogenity. A relatively small number of people sound like a much larger group because they all say the same thing.

To invoke the overused metaphor, they get to herd sheep; we get to herd cats. That’s a real problem when organizing a political movement.

The other problem (at least as far as political organizing is concerned) is that we’re more dedicated democracy and civil discource than we are our political priorities. We have to be, because our political priorities are heterogenous and the only way we can get things done is through democracy and civil discourse.

Fundamentalism, however, is more dedicated to their political priorities. They are happy to dump democracy and civil discourse when those things cease to benefit them. We, on the other hand, say things like “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” and spend our ACLU budget defending Fred Phelps.

In other words, we’re *constantly* bringing our Chess clocks to knife fights.

We have to find a way around that, preferably without turning into liberal authoritarianisms like the USSR and China. (Which is what I fear would happen if we just emulated the fundamentalist strategy.)