Fellow contributors,

This is an example of a loaded question. If you give the most truthful answer, some infiltrator try to blow you up or use you for target practice (Angel of Death, I'm talking to you buddy!)

Answer at your own risk.

lol, Vince.

to Observer: That's a very good question. ^.^ I'm a New Yorker.. I'm not afraid of terrorists. See, we have the 2 foot norweign black rats who are immune to industrial rat poison, and a direct shock of 800v of electric current. I'm more afraid of our subway rats, than terrorists and the red states combined, because that's unnatural..

Worse than red-necks with guns, is the religious indocterination they receive. Some how their preachers and the politicians they follow believe "Thou shall not kill," is a command from God that means "Thou can kill, if you feel it's in your best interest."

Give me a republican politician who stands up and says he or she is against the death penalty because God specifically commands no killing of any kind and I'll start to take their religious rantings seriously.

Until they get the first 10 rules sorted out correctly, then how the heck are they supposed to be in-tune with God and Jesus with all that other conflicting hidden messages?

Actually, "Jesusland" is armed to their remaining four teeth (2 up and 2 down). Most of them have never shot at anything that had the ability to shoot back, so there's nothing much to worry about.

I remember the days --when we were just worried about the 'racial discrimination'..we' finally got over the insanity of being so rude to certain people because they didn't match our skin color.

If we do away with 'affirmative action'...we're screwed ' more than ever -- , sex, creed, color, religion --what a joke!

Moral Values profiling? -- could be the new 'discrimination issue'...want to take that to the 'Supreme Court'? --EEO update your guidelines.

The south and west are among the poorest and least educated, therefore they need to be told what to be afraid of...and the government did. They don't know that there are many things under government control that kill more and more people every year, and that we rank 73 in the world in health care, and don't even make the top 10 in infant survival. It's all about the message, Limbaugh and Fox. It's no coincidence that the right is terrified of the intellectual left from massachusetts.

Observer from Europe wrote:

"the Jesus-Land (or red states) is pro-life but has the highest ratio of guns in this country ..."

The term "Pro Life" wasn't meant to refer to being against killing deer, turkeys, fishing, or killing someone in self-defense just as the term “Pro Choice” wasn’t meant to refer to giving children a choice of world views in public education, giving tax payers a choice of contributing to social security, or giving employers the choice to hire whomever they want without government intervention. These terms refer to specific stances on the subject of abortion, as if that needs to be stated. Do you really believe it is irrational or contradictory to own a gun for the purposes of hunting or self defense and at the same time believe that unborn children shouldn’t be killed? Admitting this is not a contradiction is not paramount to agreeing with the “pro-life” position.

“… and if they are so well armed why they are more scared of terrorists than New Yorkers ?”

Supporting the “war on terrorism” doesn’t mean you are more scared than those who don’t anymore than ridding your apartment of roaches makes you more scared of roaches than those who don’t. This is not to say that people aren’t scared of terrorism, but you can’t measure this by how someone votes. Remember, Kerry isn’t against war. He was just against painting himself as being the same as Bush. He is proud of going to Vietnam (i.e. killing people), and he was in favor of taking out Ben Laden when our troops had him cornered in the mountains. Does this mean that democrats are scared since they supported a man who was in favor of killing people? Also, should a shotgun or hand-gun really make someone less fearful of an airplane crashing into a building, or a car bomb, or a suitcase nuke? Let’s be reasonable.

wildmap wrote:

“Worse than red-necks with guns, is the religious indocterination they receive. Some how their preachers and the politicians they follow believe "Thou shall not kill," is a command from God that means "Thou can kill, if you feel it's in your best interest."

This boils down to an issue of murder verses the death penalty and/or war. That “Some how” turns out to be an understanding of the underlying language and the context of the passages within the Bible. As with the abortion argument, you don’t have to agree to be capable of seeing the logical progression in the position against murder and for the death penalty. Some people are in favor of locking people behind bars, but strangely enough they aren’t for locking up children in cages. Go figure. Concerning the belief that it is sometimes ok to end a life and sometimes not, it would be wrong to conclude this belief is held only by republicans. Kerry and Edwards are prime examples of people who are for killing bad people and against killing good people. If we took a poll of all murderers in jail to see who was republican and who was democrat, what conclusion might we draw?

prunethebush wrote:
“It's hypocrisy. If these people are so religious, why do they prioritize banning gay marriage (which there is no mention of in the Ten Commandments), over not killing?”

I think the news media is leading people to believe that gay marriage was a bigger factor in the election than it really was. Certainly both Kerry and gay marriage got voted down on election night (one greatly more so than the other), however this doesn’t mean those voting for Bush were primarily concerned with gay marriage. The majority of people who voted for Bush voted because overall he or the Republican Party represented their values and beliefs more than Kerry or the Democratic Party. This was the same for Kerry. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but it should be noted that the vote against gay marriage was mostly in the 90 percentile. This didn’t happen just because of Republicans. There are actually some Democrats who disagree with gay marriage and homosexuality in general. Hypocrisy is acting like something you are not. Being against homosexuality and for the death penalty or going to war are not mutually exclusive ideas. A better example of hypocrisy might be slamming conservatives for being against homosexuality and then campaigning in Black churches who believe the same thing because you know you can get them on board on other issues.

tothcarp wrote:
“They don't know … don't even make the top 10 in infant survival”

“The study found that a mother's level of education and her access to family planning services were the most important factors linked to infant survival and well-being.” - from http://www.awis.org/voice/wire/wire_051503.html

You can say anything with statistics. Of course this doesn’t say specifically, but if having a greater survival rate is in anyway tied to the percentage of abortions performed in these countries then I would have to conclude this is a spurious point to make.

Aren't some of these wild NRA types using a weapon to compensate for small genitalia?

whos the anti-christ?
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the
present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we
often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for
the worse. - Benjamin Franklin