{"id":13649,"date":"2013-02-07T15:11:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T20:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=13649"},"modified":"2013-02-07T15:11:05","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T20:11:05","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/02\/07\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-84\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Jamelle Bouie: \u201cMaking Voting Constitutional\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike citizens in every other advanced democracy \u2014 and many other developing ones \u2014 Americans don\u2019t have a right to vote. Popular perception notwithstanding, the Constitution provides no explicit guarantee of voting rights. Instead, it outlines a few broad parameters. Article 1, Section 2, stipulates that the House of Representatives \u201cshall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States,\u201d while Article 1, Section 4, reserves the conduct of elections to the states. The Constitution does, however, detail the ways in which groups of people cannot be denied the vote. The 15th Amendment says you can\u2019t prevent African American men from voting. The 19th Amendment says you can\u2019t keep women from voting. Nor can you keep citizens of Washington, D.C., (23rd Amendment) or 18-year-olds (26th Amendment) from exercising the franchise. If you can vote for the most \u201cnumerous\u201d branch of your state legislature, then you can also vote for U.S. Senate (17th Amendment).<\/p>\n

These amendments were passed in different circumstances, but they share one quality \u2014 they\u2019re statements of negative liberty, establishing whom the government can\u2019t restrict when it comes to voting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jenny Rae Armstrong: \u201cJohn Piper, Women in Combat, and How Gender Roles Fall Short of the Glory of Humankind\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My gender is not something I perform; it is something I am. Womanhood is not something I do; it is something I live. Femininity does not define me; as a woman created in the image of God, I define it, in community with my sisters. When we reduce manhood and womanhood to a list of characteristics, behaviors, and roles assigned to each gender, we are not defending masculinity and femininity; instead, we are diminishing and impoverishing them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alan Bean: \u201cA Common Peace Community\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was a stranger, and you welcomed me.\u201d \u201cStranger\u201d is the English translation of the Greek word zenos<\/em> which can mean \u201cforeigner,\u201d \u201calien,\u201d \u201cstranger\u201a\u201d or all three at once. The two-bit word \u201cxenophobia\u201d refers to fear of the foreigner, the stranger, the zenos.<\/p>\n

Jesus isn\u2019t just saying that he loves undocumented aliens and incarcerated felons and that we should do the same.\u00a0 Jesus is saying something much more radical. Just as God was incarnate, enfleshed, in Jesus, so Jesus is incarnate or enfleshed in the undocumented and the incarcerated.<\/p>\n

Think of the woman wading the river, driven by dreams of a better life for her family. She is hungry, she is thirsty, she is alone \u2026 she is Jesus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More than 1,000 religious leaders: \u201cOpen Letter to Religious Leaders on Family Planning\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Religious traditions teach that sex and sexuality are divinely bestowed gifts for expressing mutual love, generating life, for companionship, and for pleasure. From a religious point of view, sexual relationships are to be held sacred, and therefore should always be responsible, mutually respectful, pleasurable and loving. The gift of sexuality is violated when it is abused or exploited. Accessible, safe, and effective contraception allows for a fulfilling sexual life while reducing maternal and infant mortality, unintended pregnancies, abortions, and sexually transmitted infections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chauncey DeVega: \u201cFun With William F. Buckley Defending Racial Profiling and Questioning the \u2018Extremism\u2019 of the Civil Rights Movement\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Tea Party GOP reactionary white populists in the Age of Obama are pathetic in their open appeals to herrenvolk<\/em> racism and ugly white populism to keep the black usurper out of the White House.<\/p>\n

By comparison, William F. Buckley had some class to his racism, \u2026 an effortless bigotry that could be argued with, and about, over a nice glass of Chianti. You tell me, who is more dangerous to the Common Good? The Tea Party or William F. Buckley?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jamelle Bouie notes that Americans don’t have a constitutional right to vote and he wants to fix that; Jenny Rae Armstrong responds to John “Irrespective of Competency” Piper; Alan Bean on locking up and deporting Jesus; more than 1,000 religious leaders urge their peers to support family planning; and Chauncey DeVega contrasts two different vintages of American racism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-13649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smart"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jamelle Bouie notes that Americans don't have a constitutional right to vote and he wants to fix that; Jenny Rae Armstrong responds to John "Irrespective of Competency" Piper; Alan Bean on locking up and deporting Jesus; 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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