Defending the Right for a change
I was responding to a post on Cabal and I thought I might as well post it here. Digby posted a link to this article criticizing the Christian Right for not responding to the Tsunami disaster. And while I am SO SICK of people politicizing this disaster, I'm going to post a rebuttal to it here, because even though I'm not a fan of the Christian Right, I think that this article is so ridiculously biased it hurts.
Just a little background on the purposes of some of the organizations that are mentioned in the article. The AFA according to their website: "represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media including pornography on our society"
The Christian coalition describes itself this way : "The Christian Coalition of America offers people of faith the vehicle to be actively involved in shaping their government - from the County Courthouse to the halls of Congress."
Mr Falwell's website describes its purpose as "to promote traditional family values and battle the liberals who would attempt to destroy those godly principles. We still hold to the four main tenets of the original Moral Majority as it was established in 1979: 1) pro-family, 2) pro-life, 3) pro-defense and, 4)pro-Israel." (I feel sick to my stomach after reading this...)
And Move On says that it is: "working to bring ordinary people back into politics. With a system that today revolves around big money and big media, most citizens are left out."
Also, neither the NAACP nor the ACLU have mentions of the Tsunami disaster on their websites
NONE of these organizations are humanitarian organizations. Therefore it would be going against their "Mission Statement" or whatever you want to call it to be pushing for donations for a disaster. So I do not think we can criticize them for not encouraging donations etc. Some companies like Google, Amazon and eBay have posted places to donate on their website, but the only links I found on news sites were as ads not as links within their websites.
So I think the fundamental issue with this whole argument is assuming that the Christian Right are the ONLY people not doing anything. A lot of people are doing things through the appropriate channels, but we cannot turn every business and website in the US into a donation machine. (As cool as that would be) It probably wouldn't be great for the economy, people still need to live there lives.
I wish I could see what these websites posted after 9/11, I would expect a similar response. Although since some of these organizations are so called "religious" organizations I am surprised to see no prayers or condolences listed, even my work has a post on their website for the families of the victims etc. ::shrugs::
(Funny side note, my spell check tried to replace Fallwell with Valuless heheheh)
Just a little background on the purposes of some of the organizations that are mentioned in the article. The AFA according to their website: "represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media including pornography on our society"
The Christian coalition describes itself this way : "The Christian Coalition of America offers people of faith the vehicle to be actively involved in shaping their government - from the County Courthouse to the halls of Congress."
Mr Falwell's website describes its purpose as "to promote traditional family values and battle the liberals who would attempt to destroy those godly principles. We still hold to the four main tenets of the original Moral Majority as it was established in 1979: 1) pro-family, 2) pro-life, 3) pro-defense and, 4)pro-Israel." (I feel sick to my stomach after reading this...)
And Move On says that it is: "working to bring ordinary people back into politics. With a system that today revolves around big money and big media, most citizens are left out."
Also, neither the NAACP nor the ACLU have mentions of the Tsunami disaster on their websites
NONE of these organizations are humanitarian organizations. Therefore it would be going against their "Mission Statement" or whatever you want to call it to be pushing for donations for a disaster. So I do not think we can criticize them for not encouraging donations etc. Some companies like Google, Amazon and eBay have posted places to donate on their website, but the only links I found on news sites were as ads not as links within their websites.
So I think the fundamental issue with this whole argument is assuming that the Christian Right are the ONLY people not doing anything. A lot of people are doing things through the appropriate channels, but we cannot turn every business and website in the US into a donation machine. (As cool as that would be) It probably wouldn't be great for the economy, people still need to live there lives.
I wish I could see what these websites posted after 9/11, I would expect a similar response. Although since some of these organizations are so called "religious" organizations I am surprised to see no prayers or condolences listed, even my work has a post on their website for the families of the victims etc. ::shrugs::
(Funny side note, my spell check tried to replace Fallwell with Valuless heheheh)
posted by Shinobi at 1:21 PM
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