Calvin argues for two types of government in his compendium of theology, "The Institutes of the Christian Religion." One government rules the spiritual or inward aspect of humanity, that is, spiritual government, and one government rules the external aspects of human life, that is, secular government.Thomas Hobbes
Calvin was a strong believer in behaving as God wished. Immorality was severely condemned but to begin with the consistory was not an effective body. It only started to be so when the number of appointed ministers was greater than the elders. Also in 1555, the city council gave the consistory the right to excommunicate offenders. Only after this date was a strict moral code imposed and every sin was made a crime e.g. no work or pleasure on a Sunday; no extravagance in dress. If you were excommunicated you were banished from the city. Blasphemy could be punished by death; lewd singing could be punished by your tongue being pierced.
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion. - Leviathan
Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons.
If you missed 60 Minutes last night, you missed Steve Kroft's interview with retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former head of the US Central Command and a special envoy to the Middle East, and a registered Republican."In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."Zinni endorsed Bush in 2000, but has compared Iraq war strategy to a "brain fart" emitted from a Bush "policy wonk."
“I believe that they [Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz] should accept responsibility for that. If I were the commander of a military organization that delivered this kind of performance to the president, I certainly would tender my resignation. I certainly would expect to be gone.”
“It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result."
Kerry gets help from rival party in MarinIn other news, John McCain demonstrated that not all Republicans support Bush's cynical and deceptive tax cuts during a time of war.
$80,000 raised at Tiburon event
By Richard Halstead, IJ reporter
A group of Marin Republicans turned off by President Bush's performance joined with Democratic supporters of John Kerry at a rally in Tiburon last night, which raised more than $80,000 for Kerry's campaign.
"You understand that the ultimate test of freedom is the removal of an incumbent who is not doing the job that ought to be done," Allan Littman, one of the rally's Republican organizers, told the more than 200 people, who attended the rally at the Tiburon Peninsula Club.
Littman, a former Tiburon councilman, is one of four Republicans on the 10-member steering committee of the newly founded Tiburon Peninsula Bipartisan Committee for John Kerry. Each steering committee member donated $2,000 to the Kerry campaign last night.
"From pork-barrel spending to expanding entitlements to tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens, both parties have proven who they are working for and it's not the American taxpayer. My friends, we are at war. Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice."House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., responded by impugning McCain's patriotism. "If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda. There's the sacrifice in this country." A Republican chickenhawk attacking a decorated veteran's patriotism reminded me of the attacks leveled against Max Cleland in 2002.
"I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. Apparently, those days are long gone for some in our party."
Moore revealed he had smuggled three camera crews into Iraq to film disillusioned US soldiers for his new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.This isn't the first time that Moore has been muzzled. HarperCollins asked him to excise 50 pages from "Stupid White Men," in which he was critical of President Bush, just after 9/11. Moore refused. Harper pushed back the release date, sitting on 50,000 finished books. The only reason why the book was finally released as Moore had intended was that a librarian stood up for him.
He was speaking for the first time since his public row with Disney, who had refused to distribute the film in the US because of its anti-Bush message.
Fahrenheit 9/11 looks at life in the US in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the onset of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Moore sent the crews into Iraq after disaffected soldiers wrote to him, he said.
"I was able to sneak three different freelance crews into Iraq," he said.
The soldiers had "express disillusionment that they had been lied to", said Moore.
"[The film from Iraq] is certainly something the Bush administration does not want people to see," said Moore.
Moore made Fahrenheit 9/11 for Miramax, which is owned by Disney.
He said Disney had backed out of distributing the film for "only political reasons".
"This is a fascinating story because it shows what a free society does when confronted with a crisis. Do we maintain our sense of freedom and liberty and dissent and open discussion of the issues? Or do we start putting the clamp down?"Once the book became a bestseller, Moore was ticked off that he had made so much money for a corporation that didn't have the balls to defend him. He's now with a new publisher and "Dude, Where's My Country" has been a big success.
'Not true,' D'Souza said. 'Look at what they did. First of all, you have a whole bunch of guys who are willing to give their life. None of 'em backed out. All of them slammed themselves into pieces of concrete.'Ok, big deal, the show is called Politically Incorrect, right? But then Texas-based radio-show host Dan Patrick told his listeners to complain to both Sears and FedEx, who both subsequently pulled their advertising from the show.
Maher concurred. 'We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away,' he said. 'That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly'
ABC Chairman Lloyd Braun said Maher's controversial comments had nothing to do with the decision to replace him.HBO had the balls to give Maher a show, "Real Time with Bill Maher," and he's never been better. If you don't have HBO, get it by August, when he'll start his new season.
'We made a decision to go with straight entertainment programming in late night,' Braun said on Tuesday. 'That's just basically a scheduling opportunity that we felt over the long term had more potential.'
Whereas Disney executives often publicly supported Koppel and 'Nightline' after the Letterman flap, there was little support for Maher and 'PI.'
For five years or so, I have been going to Louisiana during the Court’s long December-January recess, to the duck-hunting camp of a friend whom I met through two hunting companions from Baton Rouge, one a dentist and the other a worker in the field of handicapped rehabilitation. The last three years, I have been accompanied on this trip by a son-in-law who lives near me. Our friend and host, Wallace Carline, has never, as far as I know, had business before this Court. He is not, as some reports have described him, an “energy industry executive” in the sense that summons up boardrooms of ExxonMobil or Con Edison. He runs his own company that provides services and equipment rental to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
During my December 2002 visit, I learned that Mr. Carline was an admirer of Vice President Cheney. Knowing that the Vice President, with whom I am well acquainted (from our years serving together in the Ford administration), is an enthusiastic duck-hunter, I asked whether Mr. Carline would like to invite him to our next year’s hunt. The answer was yes; I conveyed the invitation (with my own warm recommendation) in the spring of 2003 and received an acceptance (subject, of course, to any superseding demands on the Vice President’s time) in the summer. The Vice President said that if he did go, I would be welcome to fly down to Louisiana with him. (Because of national security requirements, of course, he must fly in a Government plane.) That invitation was later extended— if space was available—to my son-in-law and to a son who was joining the hunt for the first time; they accepted. The trip was set long before the Court granted certiorari in the present case, and indeed before the petition for certiorari had even been filed.
We departed from Andrews Air Force Base at about 10 a.m. on Monday, January 5, flying in a Gulfstream jet owned by the Government ...
In the middle of Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, a group of protesters let rip a pretty damn good chorus of "Fire Rumsfeld!" for about a minute before the cops ushered them out. Click here to see some quick video of the protesters from CNN's broadcast. (It's a 1.6 MB MPEG so give it time to download.)