Does this speech interest you?

[MorkandMindy]

The way I would approach a speech like this is firstly the overall question of whether a person's religious beliefs are a personal matter or whether a person feels he/she should take action in society on the basis of his religious beliefs.

The second I question I would ask is whether that action should be limited to immediate personal contacts or whether, as a citizen and voter a Christian should also consider the effects on other people in the nation and in the World.

The Jehovah's Witnesses have a policy of not voting and thereby avoiding placing their approval on any candidate who might win an election and they might then feel accountable for all subsequent actions that candidate takes.


Like it or not some Christians are involved in international politics and one gave the speech below.

If you really are concerned about who it was then it is easy enough to look it up on the Internet, and ditto if you want to know what his wife looks like or the name of his dog. He does have blue eyes.

Personally I'm only interested in the content, and it is pretty middle of the road for here in England and most of the World as far as I know but it could be a bit of an eye-opener if it was published in the US.

Anyway, your comments are welcome.

“While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the US, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as 'the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’, a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people; it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of law, and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention, or forced exile.

It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counter-terrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have cancelled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wire-tapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 air-strikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone.

We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington.

Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by water boarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semi-automatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of national security. Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.”

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America's violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.

 

[mjmcmillan]

You did the exact same thing again. Verdict: You like to start trouble. Next----.

 

[mjmcmillan]

Verdict two: This is not the forum for this stuff. If you had bothered to look, you'd find a forum down near the bottom of CF where they do nothing but political stuff. This is "Mature Singles" in case you hadn't noticed. Up here on this forum, I must assume that the reason you posted it is to make American Christians feel bad for being American Christians, and for no other reason-- given what you've already said in your last thread on this very subject. Unless you can come up with something better, I must assume that is exactly the reason you've posted this here-- twice.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Verdict two: This is not the forum for this stuff. If you had bothered to look, you'd find a forum down near the bottom of CF where they do nothing but political stuff. This is "Mature Singles" in case you hadn't noticed...

That is a valid reason - I'll ask for both threads to be closed.

I spend as much time in the UK and Ireland sub forum where politics does come up a lot, and I was thinking of opening this thread there but decided it was more appropriate to Americans so I opened it here.

But as you pointed out the rules here are very different and for a reason.

 

[blackribbon]

Before I read a speech, I want to know WHO the audience is since most speeches are written to please a particular audience ... and I want to know WHO is making the speech, because what their personal beliefs are often reflect what the words really mean.

And it matters what is the POINT of the speech. In the USA, the UN and its policies are NOT more powerful than the national government and our Constitution.

PS I did address several things mentioned in the speech in your first post and you still haven't addressed what topic it is that you wish to discuss.

 

[blackribbon]

And are you so sure that this speech was not available for American audiences? It is old news being almost a year old...there is nothing spectacularly interesting or mindblowing mentioned. Why do you think this would be so "eye-opening" in the USA? You seem to have a very limited and strangly skewed idea of what American's think. I think it would be hard to even say this is what most Texans or most New Yorkers think...the demographics are very large and diverse to start pigeon-holing very many viewpoints of what is distinctly "American".

 

[MorkandMindy]

Hi BR


I certainly would be happy to discuss the points, but mjm has delivered the knock out blow that I'm outside the forum rules and I've already
asked for both threads to be closed.


I'd totally forgotten that the point of the thread was to ask why American Christians and British Christians are poles apart. I don't think anybody over here would consider that speech to be anything other than totally obvious and would consider it an issue of morality rather than politics.


If you go have a look at some other countries down in regions you can find out things that you wouldn't discover even by visiting them, that is, how people do think differently.


but now I'm being a hypocrite for posting in a thread I've asked to be closed which would stop people posting it.


life does get confusing.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Hi BR post 6

I deliberately avoided mentioning that many Americans would agree with the speech because I thought that would be divisive itself.

It is difficult to know what to leave in and what to leave out, but evidently the answer was to leave it all out. I've noticed for a lot of people in the US that politics is a much hotter topic than religion, which is why I'd planned the OP to arouse interest and from there to move onto religion and morality.

In my case it might mean not posting here at all because to me religion is the basis of morality which is the basis for a lot of politics, so I really can't separate them a lot of the time.

 

[blackribbon]

Finally a point. I can't say I know anything about British public opinion to begin to debate the differences. And yes, American do have opinions about almost everything and aren't afraid to state them. That is what our country was founded on..the freedom to express thought freely.

Put on your big boy pants..your post isn't really that contraversal...this is just not the best place to put it if you really want a deep political discussion. And since you don't seem to want to discuss any of the specifics of the politics or the policies, I am still a bit puzzled to why you posted. I have been willing to discuss....I am not an expert but I do know some history and have a few brains in my head.

 

[mjmcmillan]

I've been known to mix it up elsewhere-- not here, so much, I don't get down to the political/societal threads here. But, on My Opera Debates and Discussions, there's a fair mix. We've got a guy from Glasgow, Scotland that likes nothing better than chewing on Americans, and to be fair to him he takes as good as he gives on that forum.

Over on the EO forums, they have the "Soapbox" which is all politics all the time, they had to have the soapbox because some people just can't separate national politics from running their expedited business-- which is what EO is mostly about.

About the opening post--- seems I remember Jimmy Carter saying something like that, and to be sure I'm less than pleased with the way we have armed--- that's right, armed-- drone aircraft to attack people. Bad stuff just has to happen when you do that. Now we have politicians talking of drones over the skies of America so our government can spy--- and maybe launch missiles at-- us here at home. Can you say "This is a really bad idea"? I thought you could.

 

[Kristen.NewCreation]

MOD HAT ON

Closed at the request of the OP

MOD HAT OFF
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