Washington - Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson caused heartburn in Washington and consternation in Latin America on Tuesday after calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war,” Robertson said during Monday evening’s broadcast of “The 700 Club,” his Christian news-talk television show. “We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability.”
Robertson said Chavez should be killed to keep him from turning Venezuela into a “launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.”
“We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some covert operative do the job and get it over with,” he said.
The evangelist previously has suggested that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred because “we have insulted God at the highest level of our government.” He has said feminism encourages women to kill their children and become lesbians.
I used to think these TV preachers were merely delusional self promoters who got their religion wrong but now I think they might actually be dangerous to national security.
Bull, America is packed to the gills with people like that. American values are defined as the values held by American people. If there’s enough people who believe something (say over 1 % of the population) then it qualifies, even if that belief contradicts some other widely-held belief that also qualifies.
It’s interesting that if Robertson had been living in Britain he could have been in jail by now.
Even here in the states, had this diatribe come from some ‘out’ group, the uproar would have been fierce. Can you imagine the shit storm if this had come from say, a catholic bishop?
Robertson is a joke, but a serious joke. Fundamentalists everywhere should really be proud of their leader’s christ-like pronouncements.
More interesting is the administrations willingness to close their eyes to such outrageous claptrap. Eyes on the money and the votes…
Our “right to free speech” is now a right to be totally irresponsible.
I’ve tried to watch and take the 700 Club seriously, but I just can’t do it. I’ve seen stereotypical televangelists who can portray more of an actual willing attitude to change things than Pat Robertson. And I agree if a group on the outs right now had said it, people would be asking for banning from TV or jail or some other punishment.
And the Monroe Doctrine? Please, Pat try harder. That was set up more as a means for the Western hemisphere to protect itself from outsiders, not from itself. Just because we dislike the way that one country is run, doesn’t by this doctrine give us the right to go fix it by any means necessary.
Is there any particular reason for the title of this thread to be what it is?
It just seems like (yet another) extraneous way to take a swipe at American pride and patriotism, apparently everybody’s favorite hobby here at ILP. This time by linking the title of our national anthem with something that Pat Robertson said.
Wouldn’t it have just been easier to say, “America sucks” and be done with it? Why the roundabout?
I’m an east coast American that has had close contact with thousands of people and can only count a few that fit the bill of the ultra religious nut. It’s all media hype that Americans are like this.
I agree and that’s why I responded in the manner that I did. Robertson represents why is both great and silly about America at the same time. If people understand my meaning then they will understand the concept of America.
I understand the great and silly, and yes, we need to protect that. But this is post 9/11 America, and we can’t call for international cooperation on quelling terrorism and having people like Robertson spouting inflamatory shitheadisms.
I’m no fan of him, and believe that he does not represent America. My larger point is that he is allowed to say what he said and that’s the great part. Nothing will happen to him.
Meanwhile, I think that what he said is a legal aspect of the American government, or am I incorrect?
I live in the midwest and we do have our share of them here for sure. They don’t read their Bibles nor can they give you a synopsis of the Sermon on the Mount. They just accept the guilt, the sexual prohibitions, and the end-off-the-world stuff so they get militant and power hungry. Not entirely unlike another subsection of another religion that overlooks the prohibitions about killing non-combatants.