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NRaleighLiberal

(60,014 posts)
Tue Jun 11, 2019, 10:20 PM Jun 2019

Pretty horrifying - from Slate "The God Doctrine - How Evangelical Christians are Guiding Trump's

Foreign Policy"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-evangelical-foreign-policy-pence-pompeo.html

by Joshua Keating

The Trump administration’s foreign policy really isn’t consistent enough to be placed into any single ideological camp. The president is an isolationist critic of military engagement who has repeatedly let hawks like John Bolton and Marco Rubio drive policies that depend on the threat of military force. Administration surrogates use human rights rhetoric to criticize the governments of Venezuela, Iran, and China (including an unexpectedly strong statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this week) while the president defends and praises the most brutal dictator in the world. The Pentagon warns of a world defined by “great power competition,” while the president seems convinced that Russia has nothing but good intentions. The administration hates multilateral security alliances except when it’s trying to create new ones. Its Mideast strategy is guided by a single-minded focus on countering Iran, except when it’s not.

This incoherence makes it hard for foreign governments to make sense of the administration’s intentions, and it means that almost none of Washington’s foreign policy camps feel very happy right now. I say almost because there is one group that’s consistently and effectively—if quietly—pushing its foreign policy agenda in Donald Trump’s Washington: evangelical Christians.

It’s not great for the long-term stability of the world to have U.S. foreign policy become an extension of America’s culture wars.
Politico reported late last month that the State Department is launching a new “Commission on Unalienable Rights” to advise Pompeo and provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.” Details about the panel are still sketchy—and there’s certainly room for “fresh thinking about human rights discourse”—but human rights activists fear that in this context, “natural” means “God-given” and could entail providing less support for programs promoting reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people. The concept note outlining the commission was written by Robert George, a Princeton professor and co-founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage.

The influence of evangelical priorities is already spreading through the Trump administration’s diplomacy. In April, the U.S. threatened to veto a U.N. resolution condemning the use of rape as a weapon of war because of its language on reproductive and sexual health, which Trump officials felt normalized sexual activity and condoned abortion. The administration succeeded in moving Germany, the resolution’s sponsor, to water down that language. According to reporting by Foreign Policy, American instruction to push back on the resolution came via a cable from Pompeo’s office.


snip


good, sobering read. Separation of church and state - where did it go?

And....these fucking crazies scare the shit out of me....

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Pretty horrifying - from Slate "The God Doctrine - How Evangelical Christians are Guiding Trump's (Original Post) NRaleighLiberal Jun 2019 OP
We have been heading toward christofascist theocracy since Reagan. Thomas Hurt Jun 2019 #1
Can you blame China for knocking down these churches? Dawson Leery Jun 2019 #2
Religion and politics use each other to gain power and wealth. keithbvadu2 Jun 2019 #3
Pence and Pompeo think they can hasten the Second Coming... czarjak Jun 2019 #4
Kicking them out of the White House should be our biggest priority. Initech Jun 2019 #5
"it's still a country that strongly believes it has God on its side" trev Jun 2019 #6

Dawson Leery

(19,348 posts)
2. Can you blame China for knocking down these churches?
Tue Jun 11, 2019, 10:37 PM
Jun 2019

The Evangelicals are a cancer on every place they go. They are the reason why Cuba's new constitution does not have equal rights for gays.

Initech

(100,075 posts)
5. Kicking them out of the White House should be our biggest priority.
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 12:26 AM
Jun 2019

They have overstayed their welcome. Fuck evangelicals.

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