The State That Booed The Golden Rule Again Chooses Mark Sanford

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – While it is always ill-advised and inadvisable to cheat on your wife, violate your oath, lie, do other forms of cheating, steal, whatever the case may be, we cannot deny that there is available to us mercy.  Without mercy, the human condition would cease to exist as any manner or form of an organized society, because once you’ve sinned, you’re kicked out.  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

AG:  One of the interesting things that also came out yesterday, I want to get your thoughts on it as you’ve been kind of discussing morality and society, this Sanford winning the run-off.

Mike:   He did win the run-off, yes.

AG:  I think it’s an embarrassment for anybody in South Carolina that voted for him.

Mike:  Well, let’s discuss that for a moment.

AG:  Let me just lay my point out.  It’s a joke for anybody in South Carolina, I think, to have voted him for the preferred candidate over a number of Republicans that ran in the run-off.  He doesn’t need to be punished, but I don’t think you grace him with the ability to represent your state again.  He was someone who lied to his constituency and was using public funds, until he was caught, to fund these trips to the Appalachian Mountains, initially when he lied and said he was in Appalachia just hiking and he was in Argentina.  I don’t get it.  To cheat on your wife, I don’t think he should be punished, but I don’t think he should have the awesome responsibility of representing the people in South Carolina.  I don’t get it.  Furthermore, if we’re going to talk about morality and marriage and a number of those issues, what are you doing, South Carolina?

Mike:  How do you anoint a guy like Sanford as your standard?  There are a couple of things here that I would comment on.  Folks, I am going to get to the point!  CNN chose not to give me a chance at their new little TV show.  I will get to the point.  Some of us believe in this antiquated notion of contrition.  When I say contrition, I could be using it in the apostolic and ecclesiastical form, the Catholic form of going to confession.  You are to be contrite and humble yourself before the Lord and ask his forgiveness for your sin.  Through the fact that Christ died for our sins, you are to receive forgiveness for your sins.  In the Latin, the word is Confiteor and you are seeking remissionem for your sins.  You do this to make yourself a better person and to correct a mistake.

While it is always ill-advised and inadvisable to cheat on your wife, violate your oath, lie, do other forms of cheating, steal, whatever the case may be, we cannot deny that there is available to us mercy.  Without mercy, the human condition would cease to exist as any manner or form of an organized society, because once you’ve sinned, you’re kicked out.  [mocking] “We’ll vote you off the island.”  You’re gone.  You have to have and must allow for contrition if Sanford is contrite.  You must allow for mercy and forgiveness.  That does not mean that he can then become your standard-bearer, but I would prefer someone who has at least confessed their inequities and sins and is attempting to make a remission or at least right the wrong and promise to do no wrong in the future than someone that is still doing wrong and is lying about it.  If the people of South Carolina trust him — he was their congressman before.  Isn’t he running for the same seat that he had?  He was House of Representin’ in South Carolina, I believe, then Congress, then governor — of course he had to resign — and now back to Congress, right?

AG:  Yeah.  I’m not sure if they’ve redrawn the districts.  One, none of the seven Republican members of South Carolina in Congress have endorsed him and it doesn’t seem like they will.

Mike:  They’re not going to.  They’re not going to forgive him.

AG:  I just don’t get, there’s no one else in that district that actually has a moral ground to stand upon?  I just don’t buy it.  With all the talk of gay marriage in the political world right now and ultimately affecting all of society with the Supreme Court and editorials left and right, always in one of the newscasts that everybody sees, me being under 30, I would look at it hypocritically if Sanford has anything to say in the marriage debate at all.

Mike:  I don’t know that he was asked that question.  They did have a debate; David Webb moderated it.  I didn’t hear it.  I don’t know if the marriage or fidelity question came up.  It is fair game, though, that if you violated your oath of marriage, what’s to say you won’t violate your oath of office to the Constitution?  An oath is an oath; you’re swearing before God that you’re not going to violate it.  Of course members of Congress, before they even get to the Capitol dome in the morning violate their oath of office, intentionally.

AG:  I just think you’ve got to be able to do better than him.  I think it’s really bad that we couldn’t find, we as in Republicans, couldn’t find a better candidate to run against Steven Colbert’s sister.  I think it’s an embarrassment.

Mike:  How do you know Colbert’s sister isn’t going to beat him?

AG:  It looks tied, from the latest polls.  Once again, are Republicans shooting themselves in the foot with this kind of candidate?

Mike:  Republicans have lost, and conservatives and conservatism.  We’re all about television shows and radio programs and websites and blogs.  We’re not about actually living a conservative lifestyle any longer.  You’re exactly correct when you point out the hypocrisy of the whole thing.  I don’t even think the hypocrisy of it does the whole issue justice.  It’s beyond hypocrisy.  It is an entire existence, an entire way of life that is predicated upon what amounts to a hypocrisy and falsehood.  You can’t be [mocking] “We’re the party of values.”  No, you’re not.  There’s no value in stealing from one individual and redistributing it to another through the Armed Forces or through defense contractors.  There is no requiem whatsoever for those that have orchestrated the unbelievably massive buildup of armaments, armies and supplies that were necessary, for example, for the Iraq War.  They’re still in denial of it.  [mocking] “It had to be done.  It did the world good.”  So 190,000 people dead and $3 trillion later it did the world good?  Really?  You really believe that?  You call yourself prolife?  The hypocrisies don’t end at Mark Sanford and his wedding vows and his cheating while he was governor.  The hypocrisies only begin there.

You know what I find laughable about all this?  You brought up South Carolina: What is South Carolina doing?  Let me tell you, Mr. Gruss, what South Carolina is doing.  This is the same state that laughed and heckled Ron Paul off the stage in the debate.  Do you remember this?  When he brought up the Golden Rule.  Remember this?  It was a foreign policy discussion in January.  I think we probably have the sound bite.  It was held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  Congressman Paul brought up the Golden Rule.  He says: I think we ought to follow the Golden Rule, and they booed and heckled him.  To say the people of South Carolina somehow hold a lofty position in the moral discussions of our day — you said Sanford is a joke.  Well, I think that’s a joke.

Again, ladies and gentlemen, we find ourselves in the unenviable position of we live in a dark age.  We live in a dark age because we continue to do things like what I just described.  We seem to think that there is no problem with that whatsoever.  We seem to believe that our militarism is somehow sanctioned by God, and that our bellicosity in foreign affairs is somehow sanctioned by God.  On whose authority?  This translates and permeates almost everything that we do.  When you become a military society, then military tendencies inform much of what you do.  A lot of this violence that we see out there is a result of our militarism.  The coach that we were discussing, throwing the basketballs, I can’t tie this directly to some action of our obsession with weapons and with occupations and the arrogance that goes along with it, believing we are a supreme, exceptional country.  Isn’t the coach just doing what he is seeing many of his fellow countrymen urge the entire country to do, lead by arrogant example?  [mocking] “You will do it the way I want to because I’m your master.  I’ll throw this ball at you and call you any name I want to call you.  I’m the coach.  I’m the master.”

This is a vast departure from actually living a “conservative” lifestyle or practicing what it is you preach.  Gentlemen, are you acting gentlemanly?  Gentle ladies, are you acting gently ladylike?  Are we instructing our kids to act in these manners?  In some instances we are.  It is no longer possible to say that even the great South and the people that made up the great South are of that gentlemanly fiber, always striving for the good, the virtuous.  We don’t do that any longer, and if we do, we certainly don’t do enough of it.  I don’t know, to me, Mark Sanford kind of fits the times, doesn’t he?  He just happens to be a South Carolina version of Bill Clinton.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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