The Terminator and the First Amendment

[Toto]

Arnold S. is trying to win the graces of the conservative Republicans in California:

Schwarzenegger supports prayer in school (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/recall/20030828-9999_1n28recall.html)

Some of Schwarzenegger's answers were less than clear.

"I believe in prayer in school," said Schwarzenegger, who spoke on three radio talk shows yesterday. "I think it should be up to the schools what religion they belong, what direction they want to go."


But it probably won't work. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez called up the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition and read selected excerpts from that Oui magazine article that is making the rounds:

What, Schwarzenegger Vague? He Was Once Mighty Explicit (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez29aug29,1,163257.story)

As I began quoting from the Oui article, there was stony silence from the Rev. Sheldon, the head of Californians for Moral Government.

"Everybody jumped on" a naked woman at Gold's Gym in Venice, Schwarzenegger said in describing an impromptu orgy. But then he qualified the claim, saying some men can't [perform] in front of others, because they're insecure about the size of their [action figure].

. . .

The Rev. Sheldon was already praying for Arnold because of the candidate's moderate views on abortion, among other things. When I had finished reading him the Oui article, Sheldon was in a lather.

There is only one way for Arnold to save the conservative vote (not to mention his soul), Sheldon said, and stand tall as the moral leader of the great state of California.

"He must repent. George W. Bush fully repented and has abstained from hard alcohol for many years."

[Jayjay]

Heh, I suddenly have this image of school children reciting a prayer lifted from "Conan the Barbarian":

Crom, I've never prayed to you before,
I have no tongue for it,
No one, not even you will remember,
if we were good men or bad,
why we fought, or why we died,
no, the only thing that matters is,
two stood against many, thats whats important,
and if valour pleases you Crom,
then grant me one request,
grant me revenge,
and if you do not listen,
then the hell with you!

(Complete with Austrian accent, of course.)

[Toto]

The article from Oui (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/arnoldoui1.html)

[Jewel]

Oh, good grief. How wishy washy is that? :rolleyes:
Schools should be alble to choose their religion? Uh, no -- individuals should be free to choose their religion, or lack there of.

[rock_hard_cox]

All praise be to Arnold, the one true god.
http://www.actorarchives.com/arnold/arnold.jpg

[Toto]

Schwarzenegger gets Orange County Religious nuts excited (http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/01/news-moxley.php)

Seven days later, on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, Dornan managed to focus long enough to offer his analysis of the recall election. "Here's the fascinating thing," he said. "[Tom] McClintock is a Baptist. Everybody else is a Catholic. [Bill] Simon. [Dick] Riordan was. [Cruz] Bustamante. Gray Davis. The Austrian-born Catholic, the Terminator. They're all Catholics. So I'm going to look to see what our gutless, weak, silent, worthless bishops do in this, because this is an interesting moment in the history of a state that was born out of a Spanish experience and a Catholic Franciscan monastery. I mean, explorers and missions. It's all fascinating."

. . .

Even longtime Rohrabacher allies can't stomach his opportunism. The Reverend Lou Sheldon, oddly, has used graphic sexual imagery to describe his revulsion to Schwarzenegger's campaign. "Hear me now and believe me later," says Sheldon, who runs the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition. "All these conservative orgasms over Arnold Schwarzenegger are - like the 'Gorbasms' liberals experienced over Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev - fake."

Don't feel sorry for Sheldon. He isn't alone. He has Dornan, who offers Schwarzenegger this advice: "In a crisis like this, I'd be going to church every day. He's got to get right with God."

[Toto]

Oh no - Pat Robertson endorses Arnold, a fellow body builder (http://www.msnbc.com/news/961479.asp)

BUCHANAN: All right. Let me take up another prominent candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is pro-abortion. He is pro-gay rights. He’s got a lifestyle that I guess-or had a lifestyle we could call, I guess, body builder lifestyle that you’ve been reading about.

Pat Robertson, should Christians in good conscience, can they vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger?

ROBERTSON: You know, Pat, I’m a body builder. I do some pretty heavy weight lifting, so I think the weight lifters of the world need to unite.

But I tell you what, those guys in California could use a big bruiser to knock some heads together. I mean, they’re out of control out there, so what are they going to do? I mean, you’re going to have Bustamante, who is sort of a, you know, the Governor Gray Davis light. They don’t want any more of Gray Davis so who are you going to put in? I think we don’t have anybody else that’s coming up on the radar, so the other alternative is just stay home.

[Toto]

And, for equal time, Gray David gets religion (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/062exlpp.asp)

During last night's candidates' forum in Walnut Creek, for example, the governor referred to his "strong faith in God" as seeing him through the ordeal of recall.

It wasn't the first time this week that Davis played the faith card. On Labor Day, he attended Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Davis, a Roman Catholic, sat in the front row, and listened intently as Bishop Gavino Zavala may or may not have insulted him. "As for the upcoming recall election," the Bishop said, "most commentators agree that it's only a consequence of decades of dysfunction of political parties and leaders who seemingly care more about doing the bidding of wealthy contributors than stopping the problems that confront working people."

. . .

IRONICALLY, it wasn't so long ago that Davis found religion to be a troublesome matter. Last Christmas, a Sacramento priest who operates a Catholic children's home barred the governor from setting foot on the property because of his pro-choice views. In February, Roman Catholic Bishop William Weigand challenged Davis to adopt the Vatican's pro-life position and said the governor shouldn't receive communion until he had "a change of heart."

[Toto]

CS Separation is not a big issue in this ever entertaining recall, but it's never far from the surface.

Tom McClintock's deputy campaign manager (sometimes described as his "chief strategist") is John Stoos (http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.s.htm#stoos), a Christian Reconstructionist and a force behind the recall.

God's Vice Regents (http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/cra.html), a 1998 article in Mother Jones, describes how conservative Christians took over the California Republican Assembly, which dominates the Republican Party. Stoos is described there as "a former CRA vice president, a former gun lobbyist, member of the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, and senior consultant to the State Assembly."

Stoos outlines his philosophy on the Chalcedon site, Freedom Under the Fear of God (http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/2003junjul/stoos.shtml):

There is a simple choice that any group of people must make when organizing the civil government that will rule over them. On the one hand, they can pledge, as the Pilgrims did on the Mayflower to "solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic…" . . . .

Or, on the other hand, a group of people can choose to go the way of the French who presented their "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" shortly after our own Declaration of Independence. Not wanting to be under the shackles of religion, and in their pride and rebellion wanting nothing to do with "ruling in the fear of God," the French revolutionaries simply declared that all men are born equal. Americans held to a "firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," but the French stated, "[T]e principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation."

or :this (http://www.chalcedon.edu/report/2001feb/stoos.shtml):

There was a major theological reason that our Founders chose a Constitutional Republic over other forms of government such as a type of monarchy, but especially a democracy. At the time of our nation's founding, almost everyone affirmed a critical Biblical doctrine that many churches today try to keep hidden away like the crazy aunt in the attic: The Depravity of Man.

. . .

The Bible presents quite a different picture of the nature of man than we get in today's self-esteem movement, most corporate training seminars, certainly what is presented by the popular culture, and sadly even what is often taught in many modern churches. The Bible presents man as a special creation of God, made in His image, but seriously changed after his Fall in the Garden of Eden. . . .

McClintock, or course, is threatening to deprive Arnold of the election by splitting the Republican vote, but is resisting calls to withdraw - because allowing Arnold to win would mean that the conservatives would lose their grip on the California Republican Party, even though that Party cannot win in California because it is so far out of touch with California's voters.