Paul Ryan: God Says That I Can Carry a Gun?
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Paul Ryan: God Says That I Can Carry a Gun?
abercrombie outletReligious Right leaders are excited that Rep. Paul Ryan, in accepting Mitt Romney's invitation to be his running mate, said that our rights come from nature and God, not from government. I can be moved to tears by the ideals included in our founding documents. My wife and I sent an original printing of the Declaration of Independence on a 10-year road trip around the country to let Americans have the thrill of reading these words in our nation's birth certificate, and in their own home towns: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...."Now, am I crazy to suspect that his "God not government" usage is less an homage to Thomas Jefferson or John Locke than it is a rhetorical boost for the right-wing project to claim a divine mandate for the Tea Party's radically restricted view of the role of government?This wasn't the first time that our new Republican candidate for vice president used that formulation; several weeks ago he cited nature and God as the rationale for repealing health care reform too, criticizing the law's supporters for believing that health care was a government-granted right.Other politicians and Religious Right leaders use the notion that our rights come from God to justify their opposition to legal equality for those who they believe displease God, particularly LGBT Americans -- the way some once argued that it was God's will or the natural order for certain people to be enslaved, or for women to subordinate their legal rights to their husbands. Or the way some people believe that wealth and success are signs of divine blessing (or simply of natural superiority ? la Ayn Rand) so that we as a society shouldn't be too worried about those born into positions of want and restricted opportunity.
cheap abercrombie ukSome even argue that the Constitution was meant to create a government of, by and for Christians. They are demonstrably wrong. The authors of the Constitution explicitly considered and rejected proposals to insert Christianity into the Constitution, and they chose not to. The framers chose the more radical path of separating church and state and creating a country in which one's religious beliefs or lack thereof were no bar to citizenship or public office. Of course, on this as on many other issues, the reality is that in life and in law, at the nation's founding our society was far from the ideal. We struggled for the progress we have made and that struggle continues. So let's do celebrate the legacies from our founders, and at the same time maintain a healthy skepticism toward those who use the rhetoric of nature and God to deny the government's role in promoting the general welfare or securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.I think back to Mitt Romney, in 2007, saying it wasn't "worth moving heaven and earth" to get Osama bin Laden, and the Iraq veteran in me thanks God he wasn't president these past few years.For those wondering, that's not a made-up quote. Romney said it in an interview with the Associated Press. It's clear that Romney would have become just as disinterested in killing Osama bin Laden as George W. Bush had become. President Bush, of course, said, "I really don't spend that much time thinking about [bin Laden]."I bring this up, because I think we've all heard about this new right-wing video that attacks President Obama for leading a successful operation, as Commander in Chief, that killed Osama bin Laden. It's somewhat funny, because we all know if the mission was a failure, the right wing would say the president was responsible for the whole thing. But now that the mission was a success, he doesn't deserve any credit. The right can't have it both ways. But more importantly, they can't run away from Mitt Romney.
abercrombie and fitch ukThere's little doubt. If Mitt Romney was president, Osama bin Laden may very well be alive today. And Romney wouldn't much care, because it wasn't worth moving heaven and earth to get the guy, anyway. There is another part of that quote, though, that is equally as troubling. Romney said it wasn't worth moving heaven and earth, or "spending billions of dollars."Billions of dollars not being worth it? This is the same Mitt Romney who has argued that we should have endless war in Afghanistan."The president's mistakes, some of them are calculated on a philosophy that's hard to understand and, sometimes, you scratch your head and say: How can he be so misguided and so naive? Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. The secretary of defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we're going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan," Romney said in February.Let's leave aside the fact that the president said no such thing, and the defense secretary didn't say we're pulling out all of our troops in 2013. At that time, they said the mission of troops will look more like Iraq did in 2011, as the military moved to just training and advising Afghan Forces.That aside, Mitt Romney made it clear: While President Obama will begin to transition us out of Afghanistan, Mitt Romney would keep us there in an open-ended commitment. Open-ended means decades and hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. We are spending around $2 billion a week in Afghanistan. We have spent hundreds of billions in the war since it started just after 9/11. If it's safe to say that there will be no troop drawdowns, and an indefinite commitment under a Romney administration -- we'd be there for another four or eight years, depending on whether he won a second term. That's hundreds of billions of dollars.
abercrombie ukSo, let's get this straight. Mitt Romney would keep us in Afghanistan -- where Osama bin Laden no longer was, and al Qaeda has largely vacated -- at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, but it wouldn't be worth "moving heaven and earth" or "spending billions of dollars" to get the mastermind of 9/11 and bring him to justice?At the time Mitt Romney said what he did, conservative commentator Byron York summed it up the best. Writing in the National Review, he said:... just speaking as one taxpayer, I would say a) we have already spent billions and gone to a lot of effort to try to get bin Laden, and b) it would be worth still more money and still more effort to kill the man behind 9/11. I can't imagine any serious Republican candidate for president would say otherwise. Perhaps Romney should watch the tape of the planes hitting the towers again.Yep. All I can say is thank God we have had a president who was willing to, as the head of U.S. Special Operations command said, "shoulder the burden" of killing Osama bin Laden. "Hope Springs," the cringingly funny mid-life comedy about a marriage that has lost its sexual spark, seems to have struck a chord with audiences in its opening weekend. It's a departure for the movie industry, which usually creates the impression that everyone is having mind-blowing sex with gorgeous partners, but it more closely tracks what's really happening behind many couples' closed doors.Even though we live in one of the most sexualized cultures ever, Americans are having less sex than they were in the 1950's. In fact, according to the American Medical Association (AMA), 40 million adults in relationships are not having sex at all, and a third of all women report a lack of interest in sex. No wonder people have resonated with Meryl Streep's and Tommy Lee Jones' characters as they try to restore intimacy in what has become a sexless marriage.
abercrombie and fitch outletAs a practitioner of Chinese medicine specializing in reproduction and sexual health, I've talked with thousands of people over the years about their sex lives. So I've heard over and over again about how much sex people are not having, how they just don't feel much like it, how they are too tired or too stressed to even think about it. But I also hear, with equal fervor from women like Kay, Meryl Streep's character in "Hope Springs," how much they want to want sex. So I'm always happy to be able to tell them there are simple solutions available, and that the ancient Taoist founders of Chinese medicine wrote it all down thousands of years ago. Their wisdom offers modern couples key insights about how to want -- and have -- great sex.That's what my upcoming book "Sex Again: Recharging Your Libido" is all about, but in a nutshell: the Taoists understood that good sex is important to a person's health and happiness; that good sex is important to the health of a relationship; and that good sex always involves the mutual flow of energy between partners, with both people giving and receiving it. And that all those things are themselves intimately entwined. If sex isn't creating energetic connection, and powering both you and the relationship, then over time it is likely to drop off. As in, over a cliff. But having sex again -- good sex -- can have you back scaling the heights. My single best piece of advice to anyone who wants to want to have sex, but hasn't really been feeling it, is to go ahead and do it anyway. Pretend you are in a sneaker commercial and just do it. I don't mean to sound glib, and I know it seems easier said than done. But there's real Chinese medicine behind the advice -- and a proven track record amongst my patients that it works. The Chinese medicine philosophy is that having sex creates connection, moves stagnant energy and restores balance -- both within you, and between partners. Balance, connection, and flowing energy are what you need to feel your sexual desire. In other words, having sex makes you want more sex.
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