Comments on: A Loss Of Faith

Former White House Insider Tells Lesley Stahl Staffers Called Evangelicals "Nuts" And "Goofy"

[marcpcbs]

Obviously David Kuo knows very little about America. Seperation of church and state. It's been that way for a while now.

[mickeyjay31-2009]

How could anything that happens in "The Right House" become suprising or dissapointing? The Emperor not only has no clothes, he has no brains. This man would say anything, promise anything to reach his goals. He pulls us into a war, with troups being killed and injured, then cuts benifits for those returning. Why wouldn't this man use The Almighty any way possible. Lincoln was wrong, you can fool all of the people all of the time and we are the biggest fools of all.

[bluestardad]

This Administration will say and do anything to anyone to stay in power, Up to and including using our overextended military to start a war with North Korea and risking total destruction of our way of life at the hands of China. This administration played to the Christian Right by painting John Kerry as a waffling weak Northeasterner from a state that lets Homosexuals get married. Now come to find out have covered up for gay pedophiles in the Republican party for years. This Republican Administration has some Sergeant Shultz looking dufus whipping boy as Speaker of the House bumbling thru the halls of Congress saying %u201CI Knew Nothing%u201D%u2026go ahead and vote Republican you deserve what you get.

[observantx]

David Kuo quote %u201CYou%u2019re taking the sacred and you%u2019re making it profane. You%u2019re taking Jesus and reducing him to some precinct captain, to some get-out-the-vote guy."

This is perhaps the ultimate in cynicism and dirty tricks. They used people%u2019s faith by promising to infuse government with a Christian agenda; then laughing and referring to them as %u201Cnuts%u201D when they are out of earshot.

They took every one of the Evangelical leaders and played them like fish on a line. They baited each line with the single hot button issue of abortion, stem cells, ***, evolution and then stole their votes. They did this just to stay in power.

Power is not the means but is the end to these hypocrites. It%u2019s all they want, it%u2019s all they need. It%u2019s the monkey on their back. It%u2019s their drug, and they will lie, cheat, steal and even torture and murder to keep it.

So each of us needs to ask ourselves: %u201CWhat bait are they trailing in the water for me?%u201D

Don%u2019t take the bait. It%u2019s a lie. VOTE these addicts out!

[houser123]

To paraphrase, " Some truths are self evident." Keep in mind that with all politics, money trumps everything.Republicans claim to be morally superior to Democrats, stronger on defense and protectors of tradional family values. To this I say "BUNK". First and foremost, Republicans are capitalists, which is not a bad thing to be except when taken to extremes. Three things that one of our Republican Senators' teaches his political students they need to succeed in politics. MONEY, MONEY MONEY. Its all about the money.

[oleander8]

Contrary to attempts by Republicans - LIBERAL is not a dirty word.

[jw218389]

Beware of FALSE PROPHETS!!

[carlylaine]

yaaaaaaaaaa yaaaaaaa yaaaaaa....Kuo looks like a liberal.

If it looks like a liberal, talks like a liberal and the talk smells of bones and flesh from crunching on Christians ....IT'S A LIBERAL!!!!

[alphaa10-2009]

This blog's Auto-Bowdler objected to the word "d-a-m-n" in a paraphrase from Shakespeare, giving it three asterisks for emphasis.
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The correct spelling of "proselytize" no longer escapes my fingers.
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[alphaa10-2009]

Prelgovisk said, "The Democrats are clueless about the Evangelicals. The conservative Christian Churches care little for any funding from the government. People like Jessie Jackson represent those who have bellied up to that trough. And those feeding there alongside him are not likely to vote Republican anyway.

This article is simply an attempt to discourage the Republican base before the election. But the question is, %u201CCan the Christian conservative expect better treatment at the hands of the Democrats? Would the Democratic Party promise more, give more or mock conservative Christian leaders less the the Republican Party?%u201D

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Thank you for a revealing series of non sequiturs about the GOP and its hidden partisan agenda in a supposedly "non-partisan Faith-Based Initiative" It is interesting how your attempted defense of Bush policies-- which might boast of Faith-Based accomplishments-- has little to offer. Instead, it turns into an attack on Democrats and others who do not favor Bush. After a fashion, you *** the GOP with such faint praise.

[alphaa10-2009]

Prelgovisk-- 2
Meanwhile, the confessions of David Kuo ( Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction ) is only part of a parade of facts returning to haunt those at the highest GOP levels with charges of massive corruption-- in the very regime which once claimed the right to govern on its mastery of "moral values". Among the GOP-confounding facts--

1. Evangelicals, as individuals, are not for sale, and frequently vote for the Democratic Party--
The evangelical spectrum runs widely across traditional religious boundaries and many do not consider Bush to have honestly delivered on promises to help those in need or to witness faithfully to the moral values he claims to champion. They also oppose prosyletizing imposed by many Faith-Based groups under a new Bush provision allowing them to "consider" religious beliefs for eligibility. Like other Americans, they do not agree with the Bush plan to combine church and politics.

2. Many conservative Christian churches-- at least, in the opinion of Bush's own staff-- DO care for government funding--
According to White House documents, Bush-defined faith-based groups got $1.17 billion from federal grants in 2003. Faith-Based head Jim Towey claimed another $40 billion was available from federal money distributed through state governments. How much was actually delivered in the first two years is much less, according to Kuo.

[alphaa10-2009]

Prelgovisk-- 3
3. The Faith-Based Initiative diverts tax dollars to the GOP infrastructure, all in the name of religion--
Towey and the White House were embarrassed by a Washington Post story saying the faith office to trying to woo voters. Though Bush repeatedly denied the politics, Kuo says the story was true, and it was endorsed at the high level. After Kuo developed his idea, he brought it to Ken Mehlman of the Bush political affairs office, and suggested holding events for Republicans in tight races to reach religious voters. Mehlman, Kuo says, was "thrilled... He just whipped off a bunch a names of particular races and said, 'We need to go there, there, there, there and there'" The practice was widespread. Far from Washington, a local congregation in Philadelphia, PA, church whose pastor publicly endorsed Bush in the 2004 election year promptly got a $1 Million 'Faith-Based' Grant.

4. The Faith-Based Initiative is largely a campaign of slogans--
Kuo saw political connections as a way to "empower" the program. "And you think if you can get it tied %u2013 hooked in with the political people, that they'll then come back and support you, is that the thinking?" reporter Leslie Stahl asked. Kuo replied, "This is not rocket science or brain surgery, this is a matter of survival." Nonetheless, Kuo's estimate, the mere $60 million actually delivered by Bush in the first two years was less than one percent of the original federal promise of $8 billion (actually .075 percent).

[alphaa10-2009]

Prevgovisk-- 4
5. This article is simply an attempt to discourage the Republican base before the election--
A news flash for you-- such revelations of GOP corruption have been coming out for the last five years. Those GOP voters still paying attention are more than discouraged, they are bitterly angry at being lied to by those who counted on their trust. Like those who supported Nixon and discovered he was, indeed, a crook, they have every right to be angry.

6. "Would the Democratic Party promise more, give more or mock conservative Christian leaders less the the Republican Party?%u201D--
There, in your own words, is the problem-- the GOP not only cynically manipulates religious voters, the GOP does not understand religion is a matter of the conscience, and cannot be bought like a commodity. The GOP tried, and failed to use taxpayer dollars to buy itself votes on religious issues.

David Kuo, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (copy and paste the URL below into your browser)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-4133496-2944811?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+kuo&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

[candojj]

from "http://elite.asadi.org/" %uFFFDThe more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.

[candojj]

Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us- and in us- and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial. We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom. We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom- the forced actors who take the consequences- are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.However:

[candojj]

%uFFFDOur minds are not yet captive%uFFFD We belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting (the official myths and the unofficial distractions)%uFFFD...we have got first to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.%uFFFDDirectly Quoted from C. Wright Mills -as written by him in the summer of 1954- Letters & Autobiographical Writings, University of California Press 2000: 184-187). Let us begin with these DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE Our Central Goal:"...A (world) society in which all men and women would become people of substantive reason, whose independant reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates." (C.Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959:174)"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern%u2026The very framework of modern society confines them to projects not their own, but from every side, such changes now press upon the men and women of the mass society, who accordingly feel that they are without purpose in an epoch in which they are without power%u2026

[candojj]

from "http://elite.asadi.org/" As the means of information and power are centralized, some men come to occupy positions in American society from which they can look down upon%u2026and by their decisions mightily affect, the everyday worlds of ordinary men and women. They are not made by their jobs, (but) they set up and breakdown jobs for thousands of others%u2026 %u2018They are all what we are not%u2019.

The Power Elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of everyday men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences%u2026For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society%u2026They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.".
Mr. Kuo is clearly of the masses and needs an education on the power elite. We all do. And that's the truth. God help us if we don't know and perpetuate the lie forever.

[phil-in-fin]

To jdcapshew:

I am Pentecostal, and have been often characterized (demonized?) as a Bush supporter, even though I have never voted for him.

Your comments are exactly right.

I too am heartened that this attempt to join church and state (i.e. Iran) has failed. Funny. That most Christians point to Iran as a failure between church and state, and yet do not see that Bush had attempted to do the same thing.

There are many Christians who believe that The Bible holds all the answers, and for me personally and for my family they do. America is one crazy place and I like the fact that I can teach my children about morality and have a good reference to read to them about it. Whether or not my children continue to Believe after they grow up and leave the nest is entirely up to them; at least I was able to gave them some clear answers whenever they asked.

A reference to any "(surreal) reality" TV show makes my point clearer. Some people actually believe that actors display "real" emotion and attitude. Strange. Actors are paid to do whatever it takes to get ratings for their shows, so how can that be real? Anyway, I digress.

And, well, actors and politicians are the same, are they not? When it comes to defining their professions?

With regard to how to country should be run, Jesus never left behind such a mandate: He never said that The Great Commission was to preach the Word through government office, that belief must be gathered, harnessed, and ultimately, controlled.

[vincan-2009]

Many times I have been frustrated that the republicans convinced people they were the only christians - which is hogwash. Blindly people bought into the big lie. Bush and his machine did everything to win, and I mean everything. Now they are holding on as tightly as they can to power, crushing any and all who dare get in the way. They don't care about anything or anyone but themselves - definitely not the average American who is a christian.

[buddyandmom]

If David Kuo is naive and simplistic because he believed the promises of a man running for President of the United States and then believed the same man again when he promised to make programs for the poor his top priority during his presidency, then you can call me naive and simplistic too. I too believed Bush. I believed his words in his State of the Union Address in 2003. And I'm a lifelong Democrate.
Who wouldn't want to work for a president whose vision about compassionate conservatism would be matched with sweeping legislation to help the poor ? OK, call us both naive and simplistic. And at the same time you can call Bush a big fat liar !