The Sermon on the Mount, Ayn Rand and neocons... does not compute, even though it was Uwe's attempt at humor (let me stress the attempt part ).
I honestly had no idea it came from the Sermon on the Mount. I first read it on the cover of Rush's 2112 in the mid-seventies and attributed it to Ayn Rand as it also prefaces one of her books ("Anthem", on which the concept of 2112 is based) she wrote. And I know that while good old Ayn left us a decade or more ago (not sure whether she doesn't regard heaven as too much a collectivist place though ...), that still doesn't take away her place in the spirit shrine of neocon thinking, she was after all an anti-collectivist and ultra-liberal thinker (in the market freedom and less-government-is-good sense of the term, not in the sense US Conservatives use it against people who are, eg, for anti-gun laws and against death penalty), "Freedom of man is the freedom from (the responsibility for) his brothers." was one of the mantra phrases she coined.
So I inadvertently used a quote from the Sermon on the Mount to put down the four arch-Catholics from Ireland and their unbearably pious mysticism that permeates their lyrics? That is even more bloody brilliant!
It also shows that while I did read quite a bit of the Bible (at an age when I was already an agnostic), I didn't do it with quite the commitment I devoted to Rush sleeves or Ayn Rand's books which I found perversely intriguing. As some of you may have noticed, I enjoy reading things I totally disagree with.
Uwe
PS: George, is that you again, in your new avatar pic testing the diversitiy boundaries of the Republican party?
PPS: What I don't like musically about U 2? After a few songs from them I tend to miss riffs (to me a riff is something like "Burn" or "Smoke on the Water", best played in root note and fourths over the D and G string of a guitar ... yes, Deep Purple did have some influence on my musical taste
) and a little angularness (which Rush have loads of) in their music, it becomes too smooth and drony with little instrumental highlights for me. The lyrics leave me utterly cold.