Candidate Trump and the Last Hurrah of the White Republican Voter

by Nomad

The GOP has long ignored the warnings and continued to court a shrinking audience of angry white voters. Indeed, his rise to the top of the Republican party may just spell the end of hopes for ever winning presidential elections.

Writing for the website Salon, Heather "Digby" Parton has analyzed the present confused political situation in an op-ed piece and came to interesting conclusions about what's really going on. 

Pointing out that Obama won reelection by getting the smallest share of white voters of any presidential candidate in history, Parton suggests that this is a sign of the marginalization of the white vote. And that's something that's  very likely to continue whether Republican candidates recognize it or not. 

Ideological Reinforcement of Like-Minded People

The Republican establishment may think that simply by im­prov­ing turnout they can take back the White House. With Trump at the helm, there is not much chance for much-needed reform of the GOP agenda. In short, Trump is taking the party to a place where it will not survive. 

Not a party for the entire country but a party with a country club mentality with an ever-shrinking membership.

How Conservative Religious Extremists Around the World have Declared War on Secularism

by Nomad

Evangelists and some politicians talk about a war on religion and religious liberties. The examples of victimhood they cite are generally somewhat vague. Yet the truth is, around the world, the victims are not the people of faith, but those holding secularist views.  

Death of a Bangladeshi Blogger

Niloy Chatterjee lived humbly in Goran neighborhood of the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka. In early August of this year, on a Friday night, (the Sabbath day in Islam,)  a  machete welding gang broke into Chatterjee's apartment, pushed aside his family members and hacked Niloy to death in his bed. All of the attackers were apparently members of the local chapter of al-Qaeda.

As the writer of a blog, the 40-year-old Chatterjee went by the pen name, Niloy Neel. He used his blog as a free speech platform to criticize religious extremism in the nation.  

The Right Wing's Strange Love-Hate Relationship with Mr. Darwin

There’s always been a vexing paradox about the marriage of the Neo-conservatives with the Christian Right. Certain key principles endorsed by either group just do not seem to fit together. One of those mismatches involves the respective attitudes of these groups toward the ideas of Charles Darwin. 

From the moment, Darwin published his major works in the middle of the 19th century, it was clear that the strict adherents of the Biblical view would find much to despise. Any blurring of the line between Man as a divine creation of God, and Man as a creepy-crawly evolutionary product of thoughtless Nature was bound to cause a bit of a fuss. 

The argument between the strict believers in the unchallengeable word of God and the evolutionists committed to the peculiar notions of Mr. Darwin was, in many ways, part of the larger war between science and religion. 

All very interesting, you say, but what of it? 

The problem lies in one of the key principles of evolution, namely, the survival of the fittest. Unfortunately for the Christian Right, it just happens to form the basis of the neo-conservative social platform. It’s called Social Darwinism. 

Faith in Politics Exposed: Controversial but Necessary Questions for the Presidential Candidates

by Nomad

Here's an excerpt from an NPR article, entitled "Has Obama Waged War on Religion?"

Newt Gingrich warns the U.S. is becoming a secular country, which would be a "nightmare." Rick Santorum says there's a clash between "man's laws and God's laws."

Religious conservatives see an escalating war with the Obama White House. One Catholic bishop called it "the most secularist administration in history." Another bishop says it is an "a-theocracy." Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' new Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, believes the First Amendment is clear: The government cannot make people choose between obeying the law and following their faith.

Whether Newt Gingrich knows it or not, America is NOT becoming a secular state. It is a secular state and has been since its inception. It is in very real danger of becoming a theocratic state and that, many people would say, is the potential “nightmare.”