11/22/05: A Poem by Roy Moore Received as an Email Forward; Correspondence/Debate Below
RE: POEM BY JUDGE ROY MOORE
The following is a poem written by Judge Roy Moore
from Alabama. Judge Moore was sued
by the ACLU for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom foyer. He has
been stripped of his judgeship and now they are trying to strip his right to
practice law in Alabama. The judge's poem sums it up quite well.
America the Beautiful,
or so
you used to be.
Land
of the Pilgrims' pride;
I'm
glad they'll never see.
Babies piled in dumpsters,
Abortion on demand,
Oh,
sweet land of liberty;
your
house is on the sand.
Our
children wander aimlessly
poisoned by cocaine,
Choosing to indulge their lusts,
when
God has said abstain.
From
sea to shining sea,
our
Nation turns away
From
the teaching of God's love
and a
need to always pray.
We've
kept God in our temples,
how
callous we have grown.
When
earth is but His footstool,
and
Heaven is His throne.
We've
voted in a government
that's rotting at the core,
Appointing Godless Judges
who
throw reason out the door,
Too
soft to place a killer
in a
well deserved tomb,
But
brave enough to kill a baby
before he leaves the womb.
You
think that God's not angry,
that
our land's a moral slum?
How
much longer will He wait
before His judgment comes?
How
are we to face our God,
from
Whom we cannot hide?
What
then is left for us to do,
but
stem this evil tide?
If we
who are His children,
will
humbly turn and pray;
Seek
His holy face
and
mend our evil way:
Then
God will hear from Heaven
and
forgive us of our sins,
He'll
heal our sickly land
and
those who live within.
But,
America the Beautiful,
if
you don't - then you will see,
A sad
but Holy God
withdraw
His hand from Thee.
Judge
Roy Moore
-----
Reply:
I've read into the Roy Moore case before. A couple things are clear to me regarding both him and this email.
First, if all American judges were like Roy Moore, we would soon have
about as much liberty as modern Iranians do. This is no exaggeration. Moore and his supporters want to establish a theocracy in
the United States. If you don't
believe it, it can only be because you haven't carefully considered the man's
stated opinions. Go and look them
up.
But also: If you're curious about what life in a theocracy is like, go read
a bit about life in contemporary Iran.
Luckily for us, the Founding Fathers didn't want a theocracy on our
shores. We have all benefited from
their wisdom. Or perhaps you
disagree?
Second, consider the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion."
This seems pretty clear to me.
I'm not sure why it is that in recent decades so many Americans seem not
to understand it.
I am a Christian myself, but I'm certainly glad American judges judge
cases based on state and federal law rather than their interpretation of the
Ten Commandments. Think about
it. Would you trust a fundamentalist
preacher to impartially judge legal cases? I wouldn't.
Hell, I've listened to a few fundamentalist preachers. I wouldn't trust one to bring in my
mail.
Third: Roy Moore might have some legal training, but he probably
shouldn't think of starting a second career as a poet.
Eric Mader
* * *
It's best for our neighborhood to keep the current street layout.
Only like this can both streets flourish as they should.
* * *
Correspondence
Follows some correspondence provoked by my above reply. The woman who initially forwarded me
Moore's "poem" wanted to rebut my remarks. A long-term correspondent of mine, she is the source of many
of the most interesting Bush-Republican email forwards I've gotten over the
years, some of which I've posted at the Manhattan Reichstag Review.
Her letters are almost classics of a certain genre. What to call this genre though I'm not
quite sure.
E.
* * *
Dear Eric:
I entirely disagree with your comments in response to Judge
Moore's poem. To me having life the way that Judge Moore voiced it in the poem
is not representative of a theocracy.
It actually is the way life used to be when it was decent and
wholesome.
People my age can hardly believe the cheap decline of our
society. To most people my age it is
shocking to see the deterioration.
I hear people saying this all the time. I don't view this as progress, but a slide into degradation. Once again, given that you are only in
your thirties now, you have not come from where I've come from. You were born after the 1960's, when
America changed for the worse.
Years ago life was more beautiful, love was more permanent and
beautiful, and families were more celebrated as binding units. Values were more
soundly based on morality, and, believe it or not, sex was better when not
advertised with every flick of a TV or every product ever sold. In movies when people met, one person
didn't suddenly slam the other against a wall and almost rape them as if it is
a normal way to appreciate love.
Wherever you turn, this erosion of what was once a beautiful and
wholesome life is more and more apparent.
Perhaps you can imagine what I'm saying by simply re-visiting in your
memory such movies as "Oklahoma," "The Sound Of Music,"
"My Fair Lady" and so on.
You may say to me that these are just fairy tales, but speaking from my
own experience, such movies were more representative of the decency in this
country and the world at that time.
TV today is becoming X-rated and children, unfortunately, are daily
having their values distorted by this trash. Decency is what is lacking. There is hardly any decency left today. I think of the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah when I think of the world today.
There is a constant slide into indecency and I always wonder when God
will suddenly not bless America.
Coming from my youthful years to the present, all I see is one big nasty
decline into an age of disgust.
This is not progress.
Instead, I believe, we are literally playing with fire.
Just before coming in to check my computer I listened to an
argument to take Christ out of Christmas.
What should we then call it?
The "Mas" season?
Christmas is Christ! Christ
is the whole reason for Christmas!
It's just another example of the sickness of our world. If people don't want to celebrate
Christmas with Christ then they should make up their own shabby holiday. They
should leave those of us who have honored Christmas for years alone to continue
to do so. How much more disgusting
can you get?
Once again, my opinion is immovable. I have been somewhere you haven't had the privilege of being; I honestly liked it better in those days when decency was practiced. It made life more beautiful. Perhaps Judge Moore is not a good poet, but his words are filled with truth.
Sincerely,
T-----
* * *
Dear T-----:
All your talk about the past and values, etc., is not really to the
point. Do you really think
bringing Biblical religion into state and federal laws is going to make society
more moral? I don't. I think it would corrupt Biblical
religion by mixing it with politics as it would corrupt America by undermining
the project of the Founding Fathers: a state that doesn't legislate
religion.
Taking Christ out of Christmas is wrong. Making prayer part of public school curriculum is wrong
too.
Sincerely,
Eric
* * *
Dear Eric:
I can understand your point and the point of our American
Forefathers not wanting to mix religion and politics. Still, in the days of the forming of this country's stand on
issues, I do not believe these same Forefathers tried to eradicate the word of
God from public places. Their
motives were different; at least it seems that way to me. Today, all we hear is "take In God
We Trust off of our money," "Take Christ out of Christmas," no
displaying the Ten Commandments in public, no singing any songs in school that
allude to religion and Blah Blah Blah.
It sickens me as on the other hand people are killing babies just prior
to birth and sucking them out of the womb, while immorality is rampant. Sexual promiscuity is prevalent in
upper elementary school now and girls are wearing jeans so low at the waist
that nothing is left to the imagination, as we wonder why pregnancy in our
youth is so prevalent. In fact, my
neighbor, an oral surgeon, was just yesterday telling me of his disgust upon
having a 12 year old girl in his surgical chair. When he neared her side he glanced down and could see as far
down as POSSIBLE! He was so
disgusted. It all makes people of
my age angry and troubled. The
movies, the liberal politicians, the music (Rap) is ruining our lives and what
is sad is that so many people are blind to this fact. Even the gay marriage issue is preposterous. The fact that there are 400,000 sex
offenders loose in this country is also troubling as children are abducted and
killed regularly. Even these
idiots are privy to enough sexual material to keep their addictions constantly
roused.
What has happened is they have taken the idea of our
Founding Fathers and stretched it to a point where values are no longer honored
and decency is lost. Yes, the
pendulum has swung way too far and if it continues I do not believe that God
will continue to bless this country.
Sincerely,
T-----
* * *
Dear T-----:
On values. I'm
seriously considering doing a tally of Jesus' words in the Gospels, a kind of systematic
study. I'd go through the texts
and categorize all Jesus' sentences according to the general topic of his
concern. The categories,
tentatively, might be as follows:
1) the Kingdom of Heaven (its nature, how one enters it)
2) the sin of pride
3) the sin of greed (earthly wealth)
4) the sins of anger (violence, refusal of forgiveness)
5) sins related to sex (adultery, lust, etc.)
6) family values
7) the poor and their needs (the mission to help the poor)
8) "Who I am" (Jesus on himself, his relation to
the Father)
9) predictions of the future (predictions of his
crucifixion, the Second Coming, etc.)
10) religious hypocrisy (the scribes, Pharisees, etc.; the
need for humility rather than self-righteousness)
11) other
I would go through the Gospels and tally up by category how
many sentences Jesus devotes to each of these topics. I cannot speak with perfect confidence yet, but I do have a
prediction about what I'd find.
As follows: I believe Jesus, when speaking of morality,
devotes less than 3 percent of his statements to sins related to
sexuality.
On the other hand, I believe, also in this register of
morality, that he devotes probably 70 percent (or more) of his statements to
condemnations of 1) the desire for material wealth and 2) religious pride,
self-righteousness.
Why then is it that American Christians are so obsessed with
1) sexuality; with
2) homosexuality (to which Jesus devotes not even a single
word); with
3) family values (in regards to which Jesus' statements are
almost uniformly contemptuous)?
And how can these same American Christians remain
indifferent to the things Jesus seemed so concerned about, namely:
1) the sinful desire for earthly wealth; and
2) the arrogance of the self-righteous, i.e., those who are
certain of their righteousness and boldly judge others.
Now let me be clear on this. I am confident Jesus would have condemned abortion, as I'm
confident he considered lustful behavior and adultery both sinful. On the other hand, however, I'm convinced
he considered sexual sin of far less concern than the sins of material greed and
religious self-righteousness. I'm
convinced of this by the nature of his teachings in the Gopels.
Consider, for one example, how Jesus deals with the rich
man and his brothers in the tale of Lazarus the beggar (Luke 16:19-31) and
compare this to Jesus' treatment of the adulteress in John 8.
How do you
understand these things? For
myself, the answer is evident: Many American Christians are not so much
Christians as they are simply social conservatives. They are social conservatives whose pet issues have very
little to do with the worldview taught by Jesus Christ, a figure they really
know little about. Or again: Many American
Christians fly the banner of Jesus of Nazareth without really paying attention
to what he taught.
I think you are in many respects a good Christian, yet when
I read your tirades on the "decline of values" in America I nowhere
see that you are basing these tirades on Jesus' words. Rather you are basing them simply on
American social conservatism, which is not necessarily the same thing as
Christianity.
Best,
Eric
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Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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