Chris Coons Will Bring Yale Divinity School's Values To Senate … What *Values*?

[BeAChooser]

Now there have been several threads at JREF attacking Christine O'Donnell for her silly statements, ideas and beliefs. So let's examine the beliefs of her opponent, Chris Coons. Fair is fair, right? (PS ... this thread is ONLY about Chris Coons "Whacktard" beliefs ... if I may adapt what I was told when I tried to post this sort of information on a Christine O'Donnell thread.)

Here's a good place to start:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/27/coons-i-will-bring-yale-divini/0

The values taught at Yale Divinity School. Values exemplified by the exotic, overripe teachings, readings, preachings, and writings of socialists, Marxists, and camp followers of Liberation Theology who believe in one variation or another that capitalism is immoral, a sin. This includes the one-time Dean Thomas Ogletree and his late writing partner the American Communist Party's Herbert Aptheker, the assigned writings of Liberation Theology's James Cone, Ronald Sider the anti-capitalist Evangelical leftist, and the Brazilian socialist Paulo Freire. Their philosophy, it is now abundantly clear, is at the core of the values taught by the Yale Divinity School that Coons so admires.

… snip …

When you cut through all the academic jargon, intellectual pretense, and nonsense, the end result of the values Chris Coons wishes to bring to Washington from the Yale Divinity School are the same as they always are with the dismal socialist experiment through the centuries. Inducing poverty, financial and personal humiliation, they are legendary in creating unsustainable debt and the cruelest of economic misery. In the case of the values learned at Yale Divinity School by Coons this is all served up with a side dish of utter nuttiness.

And that's no joke.

Read that article folks. And seriously, would you rather have a guy in Congress who appears to have a extended and admiring contatct with Marxists (and, as a matter of fact, later worked for an organization that was trying to make South Africa a communist state) or a woman who dabbled in Witchcraft as a teen and now questions evolution? The later two seem relatively harmless all in all, but the former mindset could spell the end of this great nation. Marxism certainly isn't very *sound* or *scientific* when all is said and done.

 

[Puppycow]

Interesting article.

Doesn't tell me much about Chris Coons, but it is a fascinating window into the world view of its author.

Not to get too non-Ruling Class here, but, like, cool! What do you study at Yale Divinity School when you are learning the values behind witchcraft as officially assigned on the Witchcraft reading list? (As opposed, of course, to non-Ruling Class girls doing the teenage-rebellion thing in high school.)

Well, apparently Witchcraft for the Ruling Class (graduate school division) consists in re-classifying witchcraft as -- don't you just love this? -- multiculturalism. That's right. Multiculturalism. Ahhhh but of course! The multicultural perspective on witchcraft! So what about the reading on witchcraft? If only Christine O'Donnell had just gotten a heads up on the Yale Divinity School-approved reading list for witchcraft!

It seems that he's awfully worked up about the Ruling Class. This class-based worldview sounds a lot like, well, Marxism.

 

[Puppycow]

Heavens to Betsy! This monster Coons even panders to . . .









Wait for it . . .














Wait for it . . .
















ATHEISTS!!!!!1111!!!11!

OH YES. DON'T FORGET the values behind the Coons appeal to atheists.

That's right. To top all of this off Coons also said his job as a public official was to show that "I… value those that have no faith in a higher being." Which is to say, not satisfied with the values he has learned from a school that instructs on the multiculturalism of witches not to mention the values found behind Queer Worship, socialists and Marxists, Coons is making a determined pitch for the atheist vote. What a guy! What values!

The Horror. The Horror.

 

[Zep]

Is that The Spectator, the toilet-paper/broadsheet catering to every neocon Catholic reactionary in the USA?

 

[leftysergeant]

Now there have been several threads at JREF attacking Christine O'Donnell for her silly statements, ideas and beliefs. So let's examine the beliefs of her opponent, Chris Coons. Fair is fair, right? (PS ... this thread is ONLY about Chris Coons "Whacktard" beliefs ... if I may adapt what I was told when I tried to post this sort of information on a Christine O'Donnell thread.)

Here's a good place to start:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/27/coons-i-will-bring-yale-divini/0



Read that article folks.

I read it. It's crap.

Did you notice the title of that book on witchcraft that has that knothead's panties all in a bunch? "Witchcraft and Witch-hunting."

God forbid that a divinity school would teach students the history of a period in our country during which it seemed perfectly rational to torture women into confessing to witchcraft and then to put them to a very horrific death.

That bozo needs to get a life.

 

[Puppycow]

I read it. It's crap.

Did you notice the title of that book on witchcraft that has that knothead's panties all in a bunch? "Witchcraft and Witch-hunting."

God forbid that a divinity school would teach students the history of a period in our country during which it seemed perfectly rational to torture women into confessing to witchcraft and then to put them to a very horrific death.

That bozo needs to get a life.

Good point. Carl Sagan devoted a chapter or two to the witch hysterias that regularly convulsed premodern Europe. Men and even small children were also caught up and murdered in these brutal paranoid mob actions.

 

[Darat]

I've just gone to the Yale Divinity's webpage to see if they have a statement of their values, and I can't find a simple statement however from their website they say:

Welcome to the Yale Divinity School admissions pages. We believe that, as an ecumenical, university-based divinity school with a strong traditional focus on educating practitioners, Yale Divinity School is uniquely suited to take up the challenges of the new century. We appreciate your interest and encourage you to explore the many opportunities at YDS for persons committed to making a difference in our world.

“These are exciting, yet demanding, times to engage theological education. The stakes have been raised by globalization and the shrinking world it has created. The risks are high, and there is an urgent need for leaders who know the history of the Christian tradition, understand the claims that it makes on minds and hearts, and have the skills to interpret those claims for the twenty-first century.”

—Harold W. Attridge, the Rev. Henry L. Slack Dean of Yale Divinity School

It appears that it is based on a rather traditional form of Christianity, I suppose if you are someone that holds that Christ teachings are socialist that you might be worried about what is taught there.

BAChooser - what concerns you with the "Christian values" that school says it teaches?

 

[leftysergeant]

Men and even small children were also caught up and murdered in these brutal paranoid mob actions.

And it is still happening in Kenya, where a lot of American missionaries are active. They had bloody well better address this issue in divinity school.

 

[DC]

Sounds good, but as the article was a right wing opinion piece, i fear also this guy is not a real Marxist.

 

[linusrichard]

Here's a good place to start:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/27/coons-i-will-bring-yale-divini/0

Wow. It's almost as if Yale Divinity School completely failed to have the GOP vet their curriculum.

Read that article folks. And seriously, would you rather have a guy in Congress who appears to have a extended and admiring contatct with Marxists (and, as a matter of fact, later worked for an organization that was trying to make South Africa a communist state) or a woman who dabbled in Witchcraft as a teen and now questions evolution?

The former (although I ask: Does O'Donnell question evolution, or does she disbelieve in evolution? They are not the same. And I don't think O'Donnell is a loon because she dabbled in witchcraft. I think she's a loon in part because of the significance she gives to that fact. And don't get on me for discussing O'Donnell -- you brought her up).

The later two seem relatively harmless all in all, but the former mindset could spell the end of this great nation. Marxism certainly isn't very *sound* or *scientific* when all is said and done.

You seem reluctant to call Coons a Marxist. Is that a vestige of honesty shining through that won't allow you to do so? Even if he is, I don't mind a Marxist or two in Congress. I'd probably rather have 435 Republicans than 435 Marxists, but I'd rather have one Marxist than a Republican like O'Donnell. And I (like you, apparently) am not even convinced Coons is a Marxist. A non-Marxist who has had extensive contact with Marxism -- this is someone I have no problem with. (Nor would you, if he had an (R) after his name; let's be honest.)

 

[DC]

i perver a marxist over someone doubting evolution.
And a Marxist would fit so well to the Marxist in the White House, isnt it ?

 

[BeAChooser]

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/20/chris-coons-volunteer-for-libe

Chris Coons ... snip ... traveled to Africa in the 1980s -- emerging as a committed leftist after volunteering for an organization supporting Black Liberation Theology.

Under pressure during the campaign to separate himself from the views of Reverend Wright, even Obama implied Wright's views were in essence *nutty*. And Reverend Wright taught Black Liberation Theology. So why am I not surprised to find that the Coons "dabbled" in Black Liberation Theology? But is "dabble" the right term?

Coons, after going to Kenya during his college years to study under a "bright and eloquent Marxist Professor" (Coon's description in the article he wrote "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist" ), went back to South Africa (after graduation) where he "volunteered" for the South African Council of Churches [SACC]. Obviously, the work of the SACC attracted him. So what could have been the attraction?

Well according to this source, the SACC had a think tank that was philosophically aligned with the Black Consciousness Movement [BCM] in South Africa. And what did BCM believe? It believed in James Cone's Black Liberation Theology and as the folks at the World Socialist Movement apparently note:

…state participation in industry and commerce… and an even larger role for the state in planning and control.

Furthermore,

James Cone's influence on the leadership of SACC was discussed in "James Cone's Legacy in Africa: Confession as Political Praxis in the Kairos Document," a paper written by O.U. Kalu, a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria, when he studied at the McCormick Theological Seminary in -- yes -- Chicago, Illinois.

… snip …

The Kairos Document specifically separated the problem of apartheid from socialism. Opposing the first, it supported the second. It read:

It would be quite wrong to see the present conflict as simply a racial war….The situation we are dealing with here is one of oppression. The conflict is between an oppressor and the oppressed. The conflict between two irreconcilable causes or interests in which the one is just and the other is unjust."

So if socialism and liberation theology were "just," what was "unjust"? Said Kairos: "any kind of domination and exploitation by a capitalist minority [BAC - called the "Ruling Class" in the other article]."

Thus, by the time Chris Coons thought it an excellent idea to volunteer for the South African Council of Churches -- and headed to Africa to do just that -- the group's pro-Marxist, pro-socialist, anti-capitalist views were well on display.

So how crazy is Chris Coons? Crazy enough that just two years after democrats were scurrying around trying desperately to distance themselves from the craziness of Jeremiah Wright and his Black Liberation Theology, he's telling folks he will bring what he learned in Africa to Congress. And democrats would have to be even crazier to vote for the guy given that, as the linked article concludes,

they are losing their jobs, their homes and their entire hard won way of life because of the very philosophy Coons traveled thousands of miles to Africa to support.

 

[joobz]

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/20/chris-coons-volunteer-for-libe

Chris Coons ... snip ... traveled to Africa in the 1980s -- emerging as a committed leftist after volunteering for an organization supporting Black Liberation Theology.

What's a Committed leftist?
Is there a secret handshake involved, or perhaps simply a blood oath.


ETA:
BTW that article is a rather disgusting attempt at reframing aide work as nefarious.

 

[BeAChooser]

BTW that article is a rather disgusting attempt at reframing aide work as nefarious.

So in other words, you're not quite able to dispute the accuracy of anything that's claimed?

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...han-Christine-O_Donnell-975963-103658309.html

Coons found Marx about the time that large numbers of Marxist pols behind the Iron Curtain had given him up.

By the 1990s, even jailers and torturers were forsaking old Karl, but not Coons.

Now how crazy is that, folks?

And in the current environment where most people hate taxes …

As county executive of New Castle County, Coons promised voters he would keep taxes down. Once elected, he raised property taxes by 5 percent in 2006, by 17.5 percent in 2007 and by 25 percent in 2009.

He loves taxes. Lord tells us he has proposed to raise hotel taxes, paramedic taxes and something heretofore unheard of. Lord tells us that Coons has a proposal to raise taxes on 911 calls. Lord discovered that by reading Byron York's report in The Washington Examiner.

Seriously folks, how crazy is this "bearded marxist" (that's what he called himself back in the day when "even jailers and torturers were forsaking old Karl").

 

[joobz]

So in other words, you're not quite able to dispute the accuracy of anything that's claimed?

There's nothing to refute. I just read a series of insinuations and no facts. That isn't a logical argument, it's conspiracy theory.

Also, can you explain what a "confirmed Leftist" is?

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

Idea: Stop linking to opinion pieces and editorials, and you might get headway with your argument.

 

[BeAChooser]

Idea: Stop linking to opinion pieces and editorials, and you might get headway with your argument.

Oh it's a fact that people who believe in Marxism are crazy.

And a fact that Coons believes in Marxism.

I leave you to draw the logical conclusion.

 

[leftysergeant]

Oh it's a fact that people who believe in Marxism are crazy.

And a fact that Coons believes in Marxism.

I leave you to draw the logical conclusion.

No.

 

[joobz]

Oh it's a fact that people who believe in Marxism are crazy.

And a fact that Coons believes in Marxism.

I leave you to draw the logical conclusion.

Are you sure you know what the word "fact" means?