The Danger of a Government That “Fears” Its People

 Fear and loathing

One of the primary justifications for a completely unfettered Second Amendment that I see on the Right is some version of the statement “We need to be armed so that we can make the government fear us, rather than us fear the government.” 

This is complete and total idiocy.

For a moment, let’s sidestep the fact that this is an explicit call to revolution in the United States, or at least a constant threat of potential revolution, and let’s examine what happens when a country “fears” its people.  (Spoiler alert: really bad things.)  Countries that fear their people are NOT bastions of democracy, they are lands of oppression, and places where the government’s fear of the people results in a reciprocal imposition of fear and an imperative to make the people fear their government.

Let’s break down why this is. 

First, a government that fears its people has to impose limits on the people so that they are not toppled.  These limits generally include:

• Strict limitations on what people can say in public, or sometimes even in private, because you might speak against the rulers.
• Establishment of a state religion (or lack thereof) to ensure that religious fervor is directed exactly where the state wants it to be, because priests and preachers have always been a thorn in the side of power
• Control of the media to make sure that no opposing views are delivered to the masses, and now, this includes restricting or completely cutting off access to the World Wide Web and social media, so that people have no frame of reference to see what is actually happening.
•  Bans on assembling in large groups for anything other than a state sponsored event, because lots of people in one place ramps up possibility that those people might try to stage a revolution
• Prohibitions against the people airing their grievances to the government itself, preventing citizens from contacting them to tell them how much they dislike what they are doing.

In case you haven’t realized it, these things happen to be the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, which illustrates which of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are actually the most important.

This leads to the second part of the oppression, in order to eliminate the freedoms listed above, you need to have a pretty draconian police state to stamp these out, including:

• Constant surveillance of the population through the use of informants and secret police, so that they ensure that no one trusts anyone enough to talk freely.
•  Suppression of all “non-approved” faiths to ensure that no one gets any idea that a Deity might want a system different than what they have imposed.
• Establishment of a state-run media system that pumps out propaganda constantly telling the people how great they have it compared to everyone else in the world, and then blocking access to any source that might show this to be false
• Bans on congregating in groups larger than a small handful of people, so that any time people start coming together, the police and the military have latitude to just start arresting, or even massacring them.
• Blocking all channels of access into the inner workings of the government, which prevents many of the officials from knowing what is actually going on, because the rulers can never be absolutely sure that all of the people who work for them are totally onboard with what the regime is doing.

Now, let’s (briefly) look at a few places in the news where the government is actively afraid of the people.

First, we have Iran, where there has been a slow-moving revolution going on since September.  While the protesters have won a tiny, almost symbolic victory, with the elimination of the morality police, nothing has actually changed, as the laws they enforced are still on the books, and the regular police can still enforce them.  But these protests mostly haven’t frightened the government into reform, they have frightened it into incredible oppression.  The rulers are engaging in mass arrests, televised executions, and in a few cases, large scale massacres to frighten the population into surrender.  However, at this point, many people feel like they have nothing to actually lose, so this makes the government even more afraid, and increases both oppression and the possibility of astounding atrocities to bring the protesters to heel.  The more success they have, the more dangerous the situation becomes.  (It should be noted that I fully support the protesters, and hope they continue, I am just realistic about how far the government will likely go to remain in power.)

The second place to look at is China, where we have seen brutal suppression of the Uighurs, the people of Hong Kong, and even Chinese citizens living outside of the borders of the country. The Uighurs are being thrown into literal concentration camps and forced to renounce their Islamic Faith.  The Tibetans must accept Lamas chosen by the central government, rather than their own tradition, and when the Dalai Lama dies, they have said in no uncertain terms, they will dictate who will become the reincarnation of that leader.  The citizens of Hong Kong have been placed under a security regime that outlaws protests, or even large assemblies.  They have the power and authority to even dictate what Hollywood movies show, to ensure that these films conform to “Chinese Values.”  Worst of all, and beyond what most totalitarian governments impose, they even pursue Chinese Nationals who have left the country, through a system of secret police and police stations that can arrest and charge people in other countries, as seen by the arrest of five Chinese protesters by diplomatic security forces in Manchester.  To a large part, however, China masks its iron fist with a velvet glove, to try to conceal the actual brutality of the regime.

Finally, we will look at a country that fears only a portion of its populace, which is Israel.  Israel doesn’t fear everyone in the country, although they are starting to question the loyalty of the Liberal-minded Jews, they fear the “Palestinians,” a collection of indigenous Christian and Muslim residents of the country.  This example shows how a country that fears part of its citizenry can surgically remove rights from one group, while maintaining a veneer that those rights exist for everyone else.  The Palestinians have absolutely no right to free speech, free press, or free assembly, and their petitions for redress are completely ignored and even ridiculed.  While they ostensibly can practice their religion, their holy places, including the Dome of the Rock, are under constant threat of destruction, and their religious leaders are under constant surveillance.

But foreign countries are not the only places that have feared their people.  The United States at a few points in its history has as well, and these have not been bright points for Liberty.  First, we have the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which were a response to the undeclared war with France at the same time.  At this point in US history, the Constitution was still very new, the government was not particularly stable, and the great powers in Europe were still looking to squash the new nation.  Several prominent politicians and press people were arrested and prosecuted under these acts.

Next, we have the period of the Civil War, when Lincoln was afraid that Rebel sympathizers in the North might work to undermine the Union forces.  To prevent the dissolution of the United States, he unilaterally chose to go to war, to prevent the people from questioning this, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, detaining thousands for years without trial, to prevent this from gaining widespread knowledge, he shut down newspapers critical of him, and blocked others from being able to be distributed via the Post Office.  While these actions were understandable, and probably even necessary, when examined through the lens of the Civil War, they still were profoundly un-Constitutional, and they were still the acts of a man who was afraid of the general populace of the country.

After this, we have the Espionage and Sedition acts of 1917 and 1918, which were responses to the government’s decision to enter World War 1 on the side of Britain and France.  This decision was not particularly popular in America, which had a very large German population with large swaths of the country where the first language was actually German rather than English.  This suppression of speech and the media was in response to the real danger that civic unrest over the war would undermine the United States participation in it.

Next, we have the utterly abhorrent imprisonment of the Japanese in concentration camps during World War 2, alongside the Alien Registration Act of 1940, which regulated speech of so-called “extremist” organizations.  Again, these acts were in response to fear of the population overthrowing the government on behalf of the Axis, which wasn’t an unreasonable fear, given the Business Plot of 1933, which planned on overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a fascist dictatorship in the mold of Mussolini’s Italy.  It should be noted that the Alien Registration Act was the instrument used by McCarthy at the beginning of the Red Scare and was later enhanced by the MCCarran Internal Security Act of 1950.

To put this all together, through both international in domestic examples, we can see the response that governments have when they “fear” their citizens.  Fear of the populace inevitably leads to authoritarianism, if not outright dictatorship.  And given that a government will always be able to have superior weaponry, this renders the Second Amendment moot, at least for the point the absolutists tend to put forward.  A government that fears people will increase surveillance, limit freedoms, control the populace, and ultimately oppress the masses to remain in power.

So, what should we want, if we don’t want a government that fears, and consequently, oppresses us?

We want a government that respects us.  Respect is not the same as fear, and in fact, is functionally the opposite, as people rarely respect someone they are afraid of.  We should demand that the government treats us like adults: tell us the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is; allow every single citizen to vote in every election, and in fact encourage that, trusting that the people are smart enough to select leaders to guide the country; listen to us when we say that something is not right, rather than come up with insults to belittle us and minimize our ideals; and finally, try, as much as possible, to craft solutions that make everyone a little pleased, rather than perpetuate the concept that a compromise should make everyone a little angry.

And guess what, if we knew we had a government that respected the citizens, all this idiocy about why we need guns would evaporate overnight.

The Caesar of American Democracy Recast as Kitty Genovese

Endings

Democracy in the United States is either dead or very close to it, bleeding out in a gutter outside the stage door.  That is an inflammatory statement that I’m sure will send many of you sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “LA LA LA,” probably because of the Cassandra effect.  No one wants to hear this sort of thing, because we are so certain the American system will protect us.

Unfortunately, that is a dangerous denialism, and one that is contributing to our inevitable doom.

And before I get started, I want to clear the air, this is not specifically an anti-Trump piece; Trump is a symptom, not the direct cause.  At best he will simply, as Morris Berman puts it, greatly hasten our end.  The forces at play are significantly larger than one man.  That said, because Trump is so overtly autocratic and dictatorial, these forces that have been hiding beneath the surface of the swamp are now rising like methane gas on a hot summer day.

First, let’s start with the background.  The beginnings of end of democracy in America can be traced back to the tenure of Ronald Reagan, and especially the economic policies he put into operation.  Reagan presided over the first of the great upward wealth redistributions through regressive taxation policy. 

Regressive taxation is defined as taxes that more heavily impact the poor than the wealthy.  A good example of this sort of taxation is the sales tax where a $7.00 tax on a $100.00 purchase is much harder on a poor person than on someone who is wealthy.  The opposite policy, progressive taxation, is exemplified by Income Tax, which increases its rate as the income brackets go up. 

Ronald Reagan slashed the upper tax brackets tax percentage, which under Eisenhower actually approached 90% at the highest levels, while leaving the lower tax rates substantially unchanged.  This meant the Reagan Tax Cut was heavily skewed towards helping the rich, and it can be argued, by hurting the poor.  This single act started tilting the balance of power in America towards the wealthy, and also started us down the road of the massive disparity in net worth at the ends of the spectrum. 

But, it wasn’t the only thing that set the stage.  Reagan eviscerated Unions, which provided a strong counterbalance to management.  He demonized the poor, through the new myth of the “Welfare Queen,” which he used to roll back civil rights, reversing some, but not all, of the gains of the 60s.  More importantly, he solidified the Republican Party into a majority White and Christian party, which set the stage for one party to consistently oppose any real social progress.  And, as we will see later, he reenergized the power of the shadow side of the government that came close to extinction during Watergate.  Iran/Contra was a full fledged rebirth of the so called “deep state,” which most presidents since have nurtured and grown.

The Democrats, however, are not blameless in this subversion of democracy.  In fact, after Reagan, Bill Clinton is the person most responsible for the decline of the American Concept.  Clinton, not Reagan, deregulated the banks and set the stage for the bubble/burst cycle of Shock Economics that left the middle class barely hanging on for dear life.   He finished off, for all intents and purposes, the social safety net that had been established in the 30’s, “ending welfare as we know it.”  He cut the deficit, which is arguably a good thing, but he did it by cutting programs that help people rather than by cutting a bloated and at point, largely unnecessary, Defense Department.

However, these things, at least on the surface, do not demonstrate the end of Democracy.   They show warped priorities, bad ideas, and poor policy decisions.  But if you look behind the curtain you begin to see the actual stabbing of democracy, the Ides of March of the American Ideal, because the murder didn’t occur in the public forum, it happened off stage, and people only have hinted that it even happened at all.

But every murderer leaves behind traces of what they have done, and in this case, the visible knife is the 2016 election.  And don’t misunderstand, the victim probably wouldn’t be any less dead had Hillary won, we simply wouldn’t be seeing the blood dripping off of her hands like we do Trump’s.

In this case, the indicator of the murder can be found in coalitions.

Political science defines the coalition size as one of the markers between “democracies” (including republics and parliamentary systems with a constitutional monarch) and “autocracies” (including oligarchies, dictatorships and theocracies)

In a democracy, the rulers keep power by giving benefits to large segments of the population.  In fact this is a necessity of any government; you need to “reward” your supporters with gifts.  However, to be elected, you need at least a plurality of votes, if not an outright majority.  This means that the giveaways cannot be personally benefiting to the voters, at least not directly.  You need to reward your coalition with policies that please them, be it social programs, stronger militaries, or heavy infrastructure investment.  Usually, the winning coalition is promised a mix of rewards in all three arenas. 

Additionally, it is critical to deliver broad prosperity to your country to remain in power.   The best rewards are meaningless in democracies if they are not paired with a general sense of well-being, or at least an idea that there is hope of things getting better.  This is the message that swept Obama into office in 2008, the idea that he could “fix things.”  Even though things still weren’t great in 2012, he still could offer the promise that things were actually getting better.  In short, he won and remained in office because of the power of a large coalition.

On the other hand, autocracies do not depend on a large coalition, they depend on a small group of the “elect” who help them maintain their power.  Because this group is small, the rewards are much more personal, and generally are in the form of financial remuneration for support.  The larger population is meaningless, at least in terms of maintaining power, as they have no actual say in the government.  In an autocracy, the masses are either distracted through forms of the Roman “bread and circuses” or though such profound oppression that they dare not speak out.  And in a successful autocracy, it is usually a combination of distraction and oppression that mitigate the threat the masses might otherwise pose to the regime.

Putin is a perfect example of this.  The Russian oligarchs have become fabulously rich in his regime, while the masses have been marginalized.  But Putin, unlike Stalin, mixes circuses in with outright threats.  He makes sure the masses are relatively comfortable and well fed, with many of the trappings that they didn’t have during the Soviet rule.  But he also jails (or often kills) opponents with enough regularity that people understand that opposing his rule is a quick way to end up in a modern gulag or dead.

And this sets us up to examine the rapidly expiring body of American Democracy.

While we do not have overt oligarchs (yet) or obvious small coalition policies, if you look at the legislative agenda of the Republican Party, you can see that the large coalition (most of us) being sacrificed for the sake of the small coalition.  Every major piece of Republican legislation benefits a very small group of Americans, generally at the expense of the masses.

First, lets examine the attempt to repeal Obamacare.  While this law did not have majority support until recently, it was a good example of “large coalition” policy.  Although it could have actually gone further, and had fewer rewards for large national corporations, it was audacious in its attempt to provide affordable health care to the majority of Americans.  This is the type of thing a “democratic” leader needs to do to remain in power, give rewards to large swaths of the population.

However, “Trumpcare” does the exact opposite.  Despite the spin that the Republican Party is trying to spread, the ACHA bill does not help large segments of the population.  In fact, according to the CBO, it will cause 24 million people to lose access to insurance.  That is not smart “large coalition” policy, because all of the spin in the world will not matter when stories start to circulate about people dying or going bankrupt from illnesses that Obamacare would have treated.

However, the ACHA does profoundly benefit one group of people, the wealthy, especially the extremely wealthy; basically the people who compose approximately one percent of our population.  That certainly looks like “small coalition” politics.  When Grandma dies despite an early diagnosis of breast cancer or the baby bankrupts his parents because of his childhood leukemia, people are going to get angry.  And as the 24 million people who are going to be hurt the most live in “red states” this SHOULD be electoral suicide for them, and should make most of them run screaming from the bill

But it’s not and they are not.  This is because the large coalition no longer figures into their calculus. 

And all the policies are this way.  The EPA, school lunches, Medicare, Climate Change, National Parks, bank regulation and many other things targeted by the Trump Administration have deep support across the country, and ending them should be completely off the table in a large coalition situation.

However, there is one group that is generally against all of these things, the neo-oligarchs who form the new coalition.  These billionaires throw gouts of money into elections, facilitate the spread of outright lies, and manipulate the rules through gerrymandering and other nefarious techniques to circumvent the will of the people.

And they write articles like this one, which is in the “Liberal” Huffington Post, which claims democracy is not necessarily the best form of government. 

And through these examples, we can see how democracy is being killed.  The large coalition that drove American politics for the last century is rapidly being replaced by the small.

However, it is not entirely hopeless, and there is still a chance that massive blood transfusions can still save the patient.  We were in much the same position at the end of the Gilded Age, when J.P. Morgan felt that he could personally call the shots in this country.  Teddy Roosevelt showed him the truth, that a powerful president, with a broad base of support across the country, could reign in the small coalition that had become convinced that the United States was their personal playground.  A lesson that his nephew, Franklin, also taught to Morgan’s ideological successors, ushering in the largest coalition democracy the world had ever seen via his “New Deal.”

But absent the large coalition of Americans, from both parties, uniting against the real enemy of the neo-oligarchs, democracy, in this country and likely most of the world, is bleeding to death unseen behind the forum.  And at this point, people are watching, and possibly recording the death on their phones, but not actually trying to save her. 

Judge Not

Discrimination

Freedom of Religion does not equate to an authorization to discriminate in the name of God.

Recently a baker in Iowa refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, on the grounds that she is a Christian.  Victoria Childress, the owner of Victoria’s Cake Cottage stated, “I didn't do the cake because of my convictions for their lifestyle. It is my right, and it's not to discriminate against them. It's not so much to do with them; it's to do with me and my walk with God and what I will answer [to] Him for.”

Wind back the clock fifty years.  In the fifties and sixties, at the height of the civil rights movement, the same comments were frequently made in regards to mixed-race couples.  It was not uncommon to invoke God in a discussion of the immorality of interracial marriage.  Go back an additional twenty years, it was invoked for Jew-Gentile pairings; in the 1800’s, any marriage with someone who was Irish and someone who wasn’t.

God and morality are constantly employed to justify discriminatory attitudes, and freedom of religion is the foundation of that justification.  “I understand I’m being (whatever the discrimination du jour is) but I have to answer to a higher power.  This (action) goes against God.”

First of all let me remind you of Matthew 7:1 “Judge not lest ye be Judged.”  Also Mark 24:4 “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”  The Bible makes it pretty clear, at least as far as the Judeo-Christian ethic is concerned, that God is the only one who has the right to Judge.

This means that mere mortals cannot actually have any authority to judge the actions of another; we are only responsible for controlling our own behavior.  The laws laid out are for us to govern ourselves, not others.  (It’s that nasty free will stuff again.)

More importantly though, the Bible has been invoked for centuries to justify the horrific treatment of our fellow humans.  It was the basis of the Crusades (Deuteronomy 13:15 Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.)  It was used to endorse slavery.  (Genesis 9:25, Cursed be Ca'naan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.)  It was employed in the fight against Women’s Suffrage (Colossians 3:18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.)

These attitudes are horrific, and most Christians today rightly reject them. 

And yet, we still use the cloak of Religious Freedom as a means to engage in despicable behavior.  That is not its intent.  The First Amendment guarantees that there will not be a state sponsored religion.

The Wall of Separation, first defined by no less that Thomas Jefferson, states “government must be neutral among religions and non-religion: it cannot promote, endorse, or fund religion or religious institutions.”  In other words, one religion cannot be promoted over any other.  To take an Evangelical belief that homosexuality is a sin over other religious views that accept it violates the Wall of Separation.

It seems that the religious right wants to enshrine their specific version of Christianity as the law of the land.  They do this while at the same time denouncing any possibility of Sharia Law being acknowledged.  Religious law is religious law; all of them are prohibited by the First Amendment.  Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever, you cannot base American Law on any religious text.

But back to the specific issue at hand; the First Amendment is not acceptable grounds to refuse service.  This battle was fought in the sixties when segregation was finally excised from society.  In 1960, it would not have been news that a baker had refused to bake a cake for a mixed race couple.  In 2009, it was news when a county justice of the peace refused to marry a black man and a white woman.

We are fighting the same battles today, just with different victims.

It is OK that the Victoria Childress holds her views, that is her right.  She can believe whatever she wants to believe.   That is freedom of religion.

What is not right is to allow those personal beliefs to guide her in the refusal of providing the service she is in business to provide.  If she does not want to serve all customers equally, without discrimination, perhaps she should consider closing her business, so that she does not have to violate her beliefs.  That is also freedom of religion – to say that I’m not going to play.  It would be sad, but it would be her right.  And in point of fact, that was an option that many businesses invoked after the end of segregation, they closed their doors rather than being required to serve the African-American community.  (It's amazing what narrow mindedness will provoke.)

What is not freedom of religion is to invoke God as a “get out of jail free card” to justify discrimination.  Her religious freedom does not extend to discriminating against people engaging in a legal activity, which in Iowa, gay marriage is.

We would not permit it if the couple involved were of different races or religions, why is it OK to do so when they are the same sex?

It is time for us as an enlightened society to say enough – we are done with discrimination, no matter what the justification is.  We need to stand together.  We need to recognize that we all have different beliefs, and we need to stop imposing our own beliefs on others.

Especially when all the others are doing is committing an act of love.

I Stand With My Brothers and Sisters

Pride

The spirit of America is taking over the globe.  Protesters in Cairo are holding up signs to show that they stand with the protesters on Wall Street and in Oakland.  There are now Occupy movements worldwide.

For the first time since World War II, Americans have shined the beacon across the world and said, NO MORE.  And the world has joined them.

Whether you agree with the Occupy Movement or not, this is an amazing moment.  The world, for the first time in my life, is coming together in solidarity.  In streets all over the globe, people are standing together, their voices united.  This movement has trumped religion, politics, race, culture.  It has spread virally through country after country. 

I could be argued that this movement had its seeds in the Arab Spring, and to some extent, that is true.  The Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia reminded the world of the power of Gandhi and Martin Luther King’s admonishment of nonviolence.  There is an unstoppable power in standing calmly while the Powers that Be attack forcefully.  The images created by a Selma or an Oakland resonate for a generation.  The picture of the woman offering a flower to an MP in Arlington remains one of the most iconic images of the Vietnam War Protest movement.

While the Arab Spring reminded the people of their power to stand against injustice, it took the Americans to capture the Zeitgeist of that moment and turn it into something bigger.  Most of the world is not ground under the heel of a dictator, and while there was massive global support for the protesters in Tahrir Square, it was support from the sidelines.

Occupy Wall Street made the battle for freedom personal.  The true danger to liberty in the world is not just from governments, it is from the corporations that run those governments, and the Occupy movement is taking the fight to that shadow government. 

In almost every country in the world, the Oligarchs and Plutocrats pull the strings of government.  As a window on this, look at the copyright bills in play before the E.U., the Canadian Parliament and the U.S. Congress.  All three have massive, freedom of speech eliminating bills before them.  These bills would essentially shut down the free flow of information on the internet, subjecting it to the same degree of censorship that countries such as China already impose.  And this termination of free speech would occur in the name of copyright protection.

As Corynne McSherry puts it, “Hollywood finally has a chance to break the internet.”  All of the “First World” countries are involved in this movement to essentially stop the internet cold.  Under these bills, sharing videos on Youtube of a news report would be illegal, singing a cover of a song would be prohibited, even posting a picture that you do not own could result in jail time. 

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut (which anyone who knows me, knows that I try to avoid that) I do question the timing of all of this.  Suddenly we have companies trying to force through massive restrictions to internet speech at the same time the internet is the mode of communication that unites a global protest movement that has corporations in the crosshairs.  The timing, while possible coincidental, seems awfully convenient.

I think this move by the corporations is doomed to fail.  I think it will become a “let them eat cake moment.”  (Although Marie Antoinette never said that, and is actually a much more sympathetic character than the anecdotes would imply)  These actions by corporations show their complete disconnect from reality.  Another example is the amazing pictures of a mortgage foreclosure specialist firm holding a homeless themed Halloween party.

The Occupy Movement is spreading, people are standing together, people are saying enough.

And this gives me hope for tomorrow.

What Would a Right Wing Christian Nation Look Like?

Theocracy

There would be very little difference between an America made in the mould of the religious right and Afghanistan under the Taliban.  The only major difference would be the Burqa.

I understand that is a very offensive statement.  It is offensive because most Americans believe the dominant religion of the country is Good and Righteous.  It is even more offensive because it is true.

Let’s examine some of the truths espoused by the religious right and their impact on the United States if they got the power to enact them.  I’ll start with the low hanging fruit.

Abortion – This would be outlawed, even in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother.  Some man forced himself on you; sorry, you must have your rapist’s baby.  Your dad and uncle raped you, too bad, have the baby.  Your pregnancy will kill you, that’s life, at least you have a few weeks to say goodbye. 

As an example of just how extreme this anti-abortion movement is, consider this.  For years federal abortion funding laws have permitted exemptions for rape.  In the current congress they are trying to remove that exemption. From an article on this issue:

“Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), introduced a proposal that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.  Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes.”

Apparently, unless a woman is beaten into submission, she asked for it.  Isn’t it nice when you can blame the victim?  And again, the general thought about rape is that the woman is asking for it if she gets raped.  I would like to remind you of Kathleen Passidomo’s statement, “There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute.”

Moving on.

Contraception – Alabama is attempting to enact a life begins at the moment of conception law, known as Personhood.  Colorado has twice defeated the same law because it literally outlaws any form of contraception that acts on a fertilized egg.  This includes the morning after pill, the regular pill and even IUD devices.  The only option available for women to control their own fertility would be a diaphragm, which is as unreliable as a condom; devices that are also under attack from the religious right.

From the Chicago Tribune:

“…an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception." Anti-abortion activist Joseph Scheidler's argues that "Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else."

Try to wrap your brain around that logic.

Continuing on to the third issue in unholy trinity of thought that you must ascribe to in order to be a good Christian conservative.

Homosexuality – Forget the discussions on gay marriage or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, many modern evangelicals want to re-outlaw homosexuality.  It is not only in Uganda where “Kill the Gays” bills are introduced.  Merrill Keiser, Jr., a DEMOCRAT (really, I can’t believe it either) ran a primary campaign against Senator Sherrod Brown advocating capital punishment against homosexuals.  "Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs -- we should have laws against immoral conduct," Keiser says.

Even when not advocating killing homosexuals, many leading Republicans advocate returning homosexuality to a criminal status.  The Montana GOP has that as part of their party platform.  Then there’s Rick Santorum who said,

“We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.”

This is a candidate for President of the United States of America.  You can Google this statement, just don’t do it at work or around anyone else, because the results of a Google search on Santorum are not exactly acceptable in any sort of environment.

And by the way, if we don’t have the right to consensual sex in the home, where can we have it?

Which leads to the next tenant of the Religious Right.

No sex – except for procreation, and within the bounds of heterosexual marriage.  This includes pre-marital sex, affairs, or just recreational sex.  Forget abstinence only education, how about an abstinence only life?

From the Seattle newspaper:

“Extramarital sex and sex outside marriage should be made illegal and prosecuted, according to a nominee for the Alaska Judicial Council, which nominates state judges.  Don Haase of Valdez, a former president of the right-wing Eagle Forum of Alaska, was nominated to the post by Alaska’s Republican Gov. Sean Parnell.”

Let’s take government out of your lives and put it back in the bedroom where it belongs.  Without Telescreens and Thought Police, how will they monitor this?  I guess eliminating Big Government means something different to these people.

Now onto the truly Talibanesque concepts.

Women’s Rights – Forget them.  They are not acceptable in a biblically based America.  As Michelle Bachman (another Presidential Candidate, where do they find them, under a rock?) said “The Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands."  And this woman wants to lead the free world.  What if her husband tells her, no you can’t enact a progressive tax policy. (like she actually would.)  Would she submit to her husband like the bible orders her to?  Would she be a puppet leader?

That isn’t the scariest attack on women’s rights though.  This is from the From the Institute of First Amendment Studies and talks about the highly popular Promise Keepers Movement:

“In Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper Tony Evans admonishes men to "take back" the leadership of their homes from their wives, saying that "there can be no compromise" on this issue. Women are instructed to submit to their husbands, "for the sake of your family and the survival of our culture."

PKers are told that women want to be dominated by men in an affectionate paternalism. In 1993, when Dobson addressed a PK rally, he hailed his audience as "50,000 hairy-chested testosterone-driven males," and told them, "Nothing matters more to a godly woman than that a man accept spiritual leadership for her and her children."

His sentiments are echoed in PK-endorsed publications, which tell women that they were created by God for male enjoyment. The book Promises, Promises: Understanding and Encouraging Your Husband, is sold at PK stadium events and contains essays by wives of twelve prominent Christian leaders, many of them PK supporters. It characterizes Eve and all women since as "gift[s]" from God "designed especially" for men.”

Women may not have to wear the Burqa, but they will have to submit to their husbands in all things.  Is this America?

And the best for last.

This is a Christian Nation – This is the core of all of the others.  The religious right wants to make this a Christian Nation.  There have been calls in South Carolina to secede again to form the Christian States of America.  Others have set their eyes on a higher prize: making Christianity the National Religion.

From Politics USA:

According to David Barton, we’ve been getting it all wrong, folks. The First Amendment didn’t establish freedom of religion; it established Christianity as the official religion of the United States, even though it says “”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

If you aren’t a Christian, beware.  This from Mother Jones Magazine:

Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make "Material support" for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.

The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn't come out of nowhere. Though it's the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states.

And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a "war against Islam" and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.

Tennessee's SB 1028 goes much further, defining traditional Islamic law as counter to constitutional principles, and authorizing the state's attorney general to freeze the assets of organizations that have been determined to be promoting or supporting Sharia. On Monday, CAIR and the ACLU called for lawmakers to defeat the bill.

But it's not just Muslims who draw Yerushalmi's scorn. In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled On Race: A Tentative Discussion (pdf), Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks. "Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones," he wrote.

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that's consistent with SANE's mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. He's been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox.

And these are the people trying to take control of the United States?  If they gain power, would this even be America anymore?

Under this vision of this country, there would be no abortion, no contraception, no homosexuality, all of which could be punished by jail or even death.  Not only would women have few rights, they would be required to submit to their husbands.  (And trust me, they would have to have one, if only to avoid being denounced as a Lesbian)  Finally, you would have to be Christian.  Non-Christians, if they were even permitted to be here would be reduced to a second class citizen status. 

And if you are a Christian, you need to ask yourself, would you be considered the right kind of Christian.  (And if you’ve read this blog post this far, you probably are not.) 

It is time to throw off this kind of thinking.  This is a free country, there is Freedom of Religion.  As such the far right can spew this kind of hate.  However, their rights end at my body, at my mind and my soul.  It is time for us to reject the Medieval thinking that fundamentalist propaganda espouses.

One last thing, after researching this blog, and searching the terms that I used to find my documentation, Google now thinks I am a Republican. With their tracking system, every search I do now leads me to evangelical sites.  I think it was the last search I did on making this a Christian Nation.  I don't even want to think what the Santorum search did to the database.  I’m off to Google tons of info on Quantum Physics and evolution to try to clear the system. 

Is This the Best He Can Do?

Outrage

Glen Beck has declared a boycott on Levi’s.  Why?  Because they apparently “glorify revolution” in a “shocking” new commercial.  He said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, I love Levi’s. Never again, Levi’s, never again will you get a dime from me. I know you’re not disappointed. Never again. I won’t wear your stupid red tab."

Let’s deconstruct this.  We live in a country, for which Beck loudly screams his love for, that began with a violent revolution.  There was no Velvet Revolution or Freedom Revolution here.  We took our freedom in a war, a war to good end, and one which I as an American thoroughly support having happened, but still, let’s be honest, it was a violent insurrection against at least semi-legitimate overlords.  (By this I mean that all citizens of the colonies were British Citizens who immigrated here.  We were not a conquered vassal state, as were the Middle Eastern and Asian Colonies.

Let’s also look at world events.  All across the world, people are throwing off the yoke of oppression, demanding freedom, and rights, and liberties that we as Americans take for granted.  (and seem to be willing to discard, but that’s another story.)  They are rising up with one voice and saying, NO MORE.  They are NOT fighting FOR intolerance, they are NOT fighting FOR bigotry, they are NOT fighting FOR evil, they are fighting AGAINST them.  They are willing to lay down their lives for the very things that America is supposed to stand for.

Let’s look at the text of the commercial:

          Your life is your life.

          Don’t let it be clubbed into submission, be on the watch.

          There are ways out.

          There is a light somewhere

          It may not be much light, but it beats the darkness.

          Be on the watch, the gods will offer you chances.

          Know them, take them.

          You can’t beat death, but you can beat death in life sometimes.

          The more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be.

          Your life is your life.

          Know it while you have it.

          You are marvelous, the gods wait to delight in you.
             (I know the last sentence seems a bit of Tyler Durden's "beautiful or unique snowflake,"  but the rest is powerful.)

I don’t often stand up for corporations, especially one with a checkered past like Levi’s, but the message here is amazing.  It is a call to stand up for your rights, to stand against the darkness.  To shine what little light of good and right you possibly can.  To spread that light as much as you can.

And Glen Beck is outraged at as commercial that seems to him to stand for revolution??!!

How dare he be?

The change coming to the world will make us safer, freer, and more unified as a planet.  It is our last best hope that the human race will finally throw off the shackles that bind us and stand together, shoulder to shoulder, saying what you do to my brother, you do to me.  I am not free unless you are free; I am not whole unless you are whole.  We will no longer allow petty tyrants or the chains of fear bind us.

If we lose now, we lose for all time.  Moments like these come once in a generation, if then.  We cannot afford to cower.  And we can no longer afford the Glen Becks of the world, who would have us turn our face from the light and live in fear. 

This is the video that offended Glen Beck so much: