Hypocritical "Christians" on the right

Lawrence M. Ludlow points out how the funeral of the Pope and it's associated photo-ops pointed out the hypocrisy of the Republican Right.

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, perhaps photo opportunities at funerals make for something even stranger. As President Bush approached the supine body of John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica - hoping that some of the pope's charisma would rub off - the close proximity of the two men was deeply disturbing. On one hand, there was the pope, a man who was faithful to the message of the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Beside him stood the president, a man who had violated that teaching by launching an unprovoked war.

Out with the Ten Commandments, In with Regime Change

To make things worse, the president was the leader of a faux-religious pro-war gang that unilaterally had taken upon itself the mantle of an unrecognizably twisted version of Christianity. In so doing, it had violated six of the Ten Commandments in a very short time. In addition to substituting a nationalistic worship of the all-powerful state in place of the deity, they repeatedly took God's name in vain with bumper stickers touting slogans such as "God bless America." Furthermore, in their quest to overturn the warning, "Thou shalt not kill," they laid waste to an entire nation and snuffed out the lives of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians - which have been trivialized as "collateral damage" by the American press. In addition, the war has cost the lives of 1,500-plus American soldiers who sought to honor their uniforms by taking part in a dishonorable mission at the behest of a representative of one of America's least-respected professions: a politician. Of course, the pretext for launching this war was a hallmark case of bearing false witness, and the prospect of rich rewards in the form of cheap oil was a source of covetousness whose ultimate end would amount to confiscating the Iraqi oil fields, otherwise known as theft. Six, count 'em six violated commandments.

While I'm not a Christian I am an admirer of the philosophy and teachings on Jesus. Well, maybe that's why I'm not a Christian.