Sorry, I vented and then had to get to class. Let me do one last post here, to clear some confusion up:

1. I do not think conservatives are bad people, although I myself am not one. I certainly would never think they were not charitable, as a group.

2. I am not, in #124 above, referring to the average American Republican, or independent conservative. If you are not a hypocritical sonofabitch, you should not feel offended.

3. This is the point I was attempting to make in fury: I believe that this ‘Conservative Bible’ crap is a self-delusional attempt to edit the texts of Christianity so as to make them come in line with the political ideas of fiscal and social conservativism. It can’t be done, and it shouldn’t be done. It is one thing for a man or woman to say: “As a Christian, I believe I should be charitable. As a conservative, I believe the government should not mandate my charity.” Practically speaking, I probably don’t vote with them very often, but that’s a sane stance.

What the Conservative Bible people are saying goes more like this: “I am a Christian. This is the founding religion of the United States, and we should routinely reference and credit the Judeo-Christian values of this fine nation—well, mostly Christian values, but you know what we mean. We should follow the Bible in our laws. However, to be sure we don’t transgress against conservative values, we will rewrite the text, to be sure that Jesus is clearly against coerced charity, a free-market enthusiast, and well, wouldn’t want us to do anything we felt uncomfortable doing. Most of all, we will deny Jesus ever would have agreed with liberal Americans about anything.”

This is sacrilege against God, Thomas Jefferson, and the Hebrew and Greek languages. I am greatly in favor of all those things, so I take umbrage with the concept. Well, I don’t know enough Greek to really be in informed favor of it, but I understand it gave us a lot of very good literature.

‘At’s all. Thank you for your time.