The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Neo-Pagans Taking Over GOP?

Posted on | April 7, 2013 | 64 Comments

Liberals have spent decades warning that Christian conservatives were attempting to use the Republican Party as a vehicle to impose their theocratic beliefs on America, I guess that’s why nobody was looking when the Wiccans, Druids and Odinists took over:

A New York City councilman who was arrested Tuesday in an alleged plot to rig this year’s mayoral election is a “prince” in a cult that practices an ancient pagan religion, the New York Post reported Saturday.
Republican Dan Halloran, a councilman from Queens, converted from Catholicism to the pagan belief known as “Theodism” in the 1980s. Members of Halloran’s group “wear medieval garb, make sacrifices to multiple gods and compete in combat games” as part of “the pre-Christian Germanic religion, whose believers drink mead or whiskey from horns and dress like characters in a Renaissance fair,” the Post‘s M.L. Nestel reported. Halloran was “publicly flogged and lost a spear-throwing contest as part of his Theodish punishments,” and formed his own tribe of Theodish followers known as New Normandy, according to the Post report. . . .

You can read the rest at ViralRead. I got it via Memeorandum and the Daily Mail. It’s hard to keep from laughing when you read about people whose “religion” involves spear-throwing contests.

The more you learn about this nonsense — read the Wikipedia page about Ásatrú — the more childishly ridiculous it is: Play-acting as Norsemen, in a cult that was started in 1976 in Watertown, N.Y., by a guy whose previous gig was as founder of “The Coven Witan of Anglo-Saxon Wicca.”

The good news is that very few Americans are stupid enough to fall for that kooky stuff. As Lisa Graas reported in 2011, a survey found 768,400 Neo-Pagans in the U.S. (0.28% of the population), which is larger than the CNN audience, but still too small to really matter in politics.

Some people take CNN seriously, however . . .

 

Category: New York, Religion, Republicans, Scandal

Comments

64 Responses to “Neo-Pagans Taking Over GOP?”

  1. Wombat_socho
    April 7th, 2013 @ 9:34 pm

    The Crack MC is back? AWESOME.

  2. Eric Ashley
    April 7th, 2013 @ 11:37 pm

    Thanks, Andrew.

  3. NeoWayland
    April 8th, 2013 @ 12:54 am

    No, I’m just pointing out that the story isn’t really about the religion, it’s about what someone did.

    If I thought it would help, I’d say that almost all forms of heathenry emphasize personal honor. While I do not have direct contacts in New York, I can tell you that the rumblings say that Halloran is a political opportunist who was shunned by the local leadership. Shunning is a big thing in Theodism, much like it is among the Amish and Mennonites.

    That’s the story.

    Not that you think a religion is weird, but that another politician tried to cash in on a minority when he could get away with it.

    If I plugged “Catholic” or “Jew” into the articles, most people would be upset. Rightfully so.

    It’s not if the you approve of the religion, it’s what the guy tried to do. The rest is just sensationalism.

  4. Dai Alanye
    April 8th, 2013 @ 6:52 am

    Doesn’t matter what the story is about, only that you attempted to restrict my speech on grounds similar to political correctness. That is unacceptable.

  5. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    April 8th, 2013 @ 8:16 am

    Generally, getting into a primary is a matter of signatures and filing fees, and getting nominated is a question of name recognition.

  6. NeoWayland
    April 8th, 2013 @ 8:16 am

    But I didn’t.

    I just said that you don’t get to judge what is a True Faith® or what is silly unless you want your own beliefs judged by another using a standard that is absolutely meaningless to you.

    This isn’t my first rodeo, although usually I’m telling liberal pagans pretty much what I am telling you now.

  7. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    April 8th, 2013 @ 8:21 am

    It’s called “having an opinion,” and if someone wants to criticize mine for silly stupid reasons they are welcome — and I have the right to complain when they do.

    Complaint and criticism are not censorship. They do not indicate a desire on my part that the other person shut up, only that other people know what I think about what he said.

  8. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    April 8th, 2013 @ 8:24 am

    Thorn and eth can be done with HTML entities: þ and ð. Use all-caps in the name of the letter between the & and the ; for the uppercase version.

  9. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 8th, 2013 @ 9:47 am

    It is also exceedingly boring (I liked the Nantucket series and then the beginning of the Emberverse series, but it falls apart after about a dozen books). Maybe Sterling can land that plane. I can’t keep count of all the books on it. My guess is he does not know how to end it.

  10. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 8th, 2013 @ 9:51 am

    I have not. I know of the books she has written. Short of LOTR and Game of Thrones, I generally do not get into fantasy (I prefer science fiction). Are they any good?

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 8th, 2013 @ 9:52 am

    Yeah, funny how that works. I could care less what anyone believes provided they don’t try to kill me if I disagree with them.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 8th, 2013 @ 9:54 am

    I am with you on that.

  13. Dai Alanye
    April 8th, 2013 @ 2:29 pm

    Yes, I do get to judge—that’s what you can’t seem to understand. And when I become king, you’ll have to see it my way.

  14. Dai Alanye
    April 8th, 2013 @ 2:31 pm

    True, but they still seem to have problems at times, so I avoid them except in PDF.