Tomeaphilia - Worship of Big Books (Idols) and Not Necessarily Their Contents = By Fundamentalist Christian and Islamic Religionists

Tomeaphilia - tome-a-phil-i-a - noun

Worship of Big Books (idols) and Not Necessarily Their Contents = by Fundamentalist Christian and Islamic Religionists 

(inspired, with a small "i", by a tweet regarding evangelical trolls by media personality John Fugalsang.)


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First Mormon Presidential Candidate - Prophet Joseph Smith -1844 - Resume Building Mitt Romney

General Joseph Smith - Mormon / (Bain Style) Religionist Candidate for President 1844

It was suggested the other day in a discussion on the Martin Bashir show on MSNBC that Mitt Romney’s only reason for running for president was not any concern for the United States but rather as a Resume building exercise.

 

That Mitt Romney wants the Job POTUS only on his Resume.

Why?

No doubt to show his fellow Mormon Cultists that he is better than the founding fraud of that religion tax break scam, Joseph Smith who ran for President in 1844 before his untimely but predictable death.

Mitt wants to get a good seat in Mormon Heaven next to or better yet ahead of old Bain style religionist Joe Smith.

Joseph Smith Candidate for President 

The most important plank in Joseph’s platform concerned the powers of the president. Joseph wanted to give the chief magistrate “full power to send an army to suppress mobs … [without requiring] the governor of a state to make the demand.” 

Eliminating slavery was another important part of his platform….  Instead of simply calling for the abolition of slavery, Joseph Smith’s platform would have Congress “pay every man a reasonable price for his slaves out of the surplus revenue arising from the sale of public lands, and from the deduction of pay from members of Congress.” 

The platform also proposed changes to Congress. Joseph wanted to reduce congressional pay from eight dollars to two dollars per day. He wanted to have only two members of the House of Representatives for every one million people. 

In addition, Joseph favored extensive prison reform, forming a national bank, and annexing Oregon and Texas.  He favored extending the United States “from the east to the west sea,” but only if Native Americans gave their consent. 

On February 24, the Prophet had 1,500 copies of the pamphlet printed. Copies were mailed to the president of the United States and his cabinet, the justices of the Supreme Court, senators, representatives, editors of principal newspapers, postmasters, and other prominent citizens.

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Hijacked by Fundamentalists?

I saw an interview with Dede Scozzafava last night on the Rachel Maddow show. Dede is the recently withdrawn GOP congressional candidate for the 23rd District in New York State. She had not been directly dealt with a lot or fairly in the press through the recent GOP conservative coup in upstate New York. With her name, it is hard to say or remember for some, she is now asserting herself, catching her breath and back painting her view of recent events.

Of all the things Dede said, the thing that struck me was how some lobbyist like Dick Armey made the comment that local matters in the 23rd district did not matter. “All politics are local” like your greed Dick. Anyway, this is not about the GOP but it is indirectly about how coups or the hijacking of national institutions or a national POV can be manipulated or altered.

As I think I have stated in an earlier blog in terms of any future Global Culture, local politics and local belief systems should be respected and left alone to a point by the dominant Global energy forces – respect for local as a building block of the greater whole of the global.

The Mormons, I have commented on in terms of their Non Profit role in the National Organization for Marriage NOM have fed money to California’s Prop 8 and Maine’s Prop 1. They even had enough church money left over to screw Dede Scozzafava over her and her district’s POV and support the megalithic ego of Dick Armey in the process.

Seems that the Mormons are backing away from their full hate program and supporting some basic civil rights of Gays living in Salt Lake City by supporting anti-discrimnation legislation there.

Mormons throw support behind gay-rights cause

The Mormon church — which continues to suffer a backlash over its support last year of Proposition 8, the measure banning gay marriage in California — emphasized that its latest position in no way contradicts its teachings on homosexuality.

But the action is one of the strongest signs yet that even conservative religious groups that oppose same-sex marriage might be willing to support legal protections for gays that fall short of that.

In a way what does not destroy you only makes you stronger or something like that and a quote from Hemmingway. Perhaps all this persecution of the Gays only makes them stronger. And makes them push back.

The LGBT community has after some years of pressure gotten the LAPD to drop sponsorship of Boy Scouts programs.

LAPD cuts ties to the Boy Scouts – with some red flags

Contracting with businesses or organizations that discriminate based on sexual orientation – as the private, religious BSA has a US Supreme Court-granted right to do – violates city law.

There are instances where over the past several decades since the beginning of civil rights in America, where the ongoing never ending attempted coup on the right has gone unnoticed perhaps. Perhaps vested institutions like the BSA that proudly took up anti-gay and anti-Atheist leadership have been hijacked by that very real far right conspiracy. Hijacked in terms of $$$$ and stated goals of the institution.

While the far right conspiracy in America does not have the numbers yet at any poll to regain its majority status in government, it would seem to have bottomless resources from PACs and Non-Profits and tax free right fundamentalist church institutions.

Which came first – The Fundamentalist Agenda or the secret political funding to hijack the Fundamentalist Movement as safe cover for political power?

At this point is it not safe to say that Conservative = Fundamentalist. That the two have merged, mutated into one, and are basically one and the same Political/Religionist or Religionist/Political beast on the American landscape.

Did the fundamentalists hijack the boy scouts decades ago? Perhaps on some local level, some groups operate and do not care about the politics and religion practiced in the front office. Other groups like in Salt Lake City let their eagle scouts get that status for Mormon Community Service chores and tasks – cleaning carpet. Whatever.

If the BSA continue to advocate an obsolete anti-gay anti-atheist party line, it had better have funding other than from the public in general like the United Way. Has the last local chapter of the United Way in America finally dropped the BSA – a hijacked institution?

This brings one thing to mind. I have been trashing the hierarchy of the RC church for its failure to lead in the past few decades. I begin to see how the leadership of the American RC church has possibly been hijacked by a fundamentalist theme with its absolute party line about anti-choice and anti-female matters.

The only thing I will never find out about is where the funding of this fundalmentalist theme comes from – from within or without the RC church. Is there a RC Dick Armey lobbyist type out there, with suitcases of cash for a worthy cause – the bishops retirement fund, who is the one real person in charge of the RC church in America?

The Prize is the Journey

Caroline Kennedy recently said that an event like 911 made her want to get more involved and have a more active part in the whole fabric of American life. Good for her.

Myself, looking back, I see how 911 poked a hole in my political view of the world. I also had to stand back and decide what I believed in terms of religion. The other side was using, misusing religion as an arm of some political agenda.

This blog, with its readers, has been an education. In terms of my spiritual progress, I have figured out at where I might be at this present time on the road of life.

Perhaps I am more a nineteenth century Unitarian in my private belief systems on more things than anything else. I elect to change my opinions and beliefs as I go along if I so choose. Nothing, like beliefs, in this modern age should be set in stone.

Heaven and hell are here upon this earth. Some of us are lucky enough or blessed to have a choice to seek the former.

I am not a religionist. I do not addicted to religion. I do recognize that religion has been part of the social glue for thousands of years. Secular functions have replaced many previous sacred functions in society. Where religion stands in the rest of the world is entirely different than the way it is going along in the United States.

I am a secularist. I believe in the separation of church and state. I am saddened that so few in America have a rich appreciation or knowledge of true or good religion practice. While I know the average evangelical is probably a good intentioned Christian, I also know that the road to an imagined hell is often paved with good intentions.

That to burn books, symbolically, or in reality, of science is the worst kind of fascism. That this wanting to return to an early nineteenth century mentality whereby the only book in town is a bible is a path that leads to the disasters and misused emotions that turn to anger, hate and days like 911.

I recently got some feedback that said that religion is very, very dead in Europe or at least the organized Christian form is quite dead. We in America do not know or taste and feel our European brothers’ and sisters’ culture unless we travel and experience from those travels. I have to travel more.

That the only energy in religion in Europe these days may ironically be Islam and of the faith of so many immigrants to that social political economic state.

Where religion goes I do not know. I am an anti-religionist. I have my private beliefs but think that in out global mindset, which is the future, the secular side of the equation blots out any or all religious calculations.

Luckily. I have enriched myself and I hope you too the reader by what I have said in writing this year. It has been an interesting year.

The journey is the prize. The prize is the journey. For those of you lucky enough to enjoy thinking, march on.