Don’t Rest On The Laurels Yet–Christian Radicals, Still A Threat

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." –attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Yes, panic-mongering is exhausting. Sometime I just get worn out worrying over these things. But these people are a very real, very dangerous threat. And here’s something that should get some furrowed brows going…

10 Plans Christian Radicals Have For America

A fundamentalist Christian ideology called Dominionism is currently infiltrating a segment of the Christian Right. As a political movement, it seeks to overthrow democracy and transform America into a biblical theocracy. Also known as Christian Reconstructionism, it cuts across denominational lines but does not represent mainstream American Christianity. Many Christians even see it as a heresy and perversion of the gospels.

Within the movement are differing views, and its broad complexity should caution us from labeling it as a monolithic conspiracy. Liberals are often accused of exaggerating the Dominionist threat and are called paranoid conspiracy theorists. But whatever the true numbers of those who hold this radical doctrine, they exert a powerful influence on policy makers of the right wing.

10 The Seven Mountains Mandate

Dominionists believe that Jesus Christ is not going to return until He has gained control of the world’s nations through Christians. This is how they interpret Jesus’s command “Occupy till I come.” The Dominionist blueprint for “reclaiming America for Christ” is spelled out in the Seven Mountains Mandate—Christian takeover and control of the “seven mountains” of society: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family, and religion. Lance Wallnau, a leading Seven Mountains theologian, explains that Christians must install a theocracy governed by “true apostles” to battle Satan and his Antichrist.

Wallnau envisions the conquest of the Seven Mountains as a covert operation. He said, “[A] very small minority of people . . . as small as 3–5 percent . . . can control how the agenda works in a nation and thus create or dominate the culture.”

The Seven Mountains concept was first enunciated as a supposed revelation from God given simultaneously in 1975 to two “generals” of the faith, Loren Cunningham of Youth With A Mission and Bill Bright of the Campus Crusade For Christ. In all likelihood, they plagiarized it from a TV talk by theologian Dr. Francis Shaffer. The mountains are portrayed as “mind molders” by which the “rulers of darkness” influence people, leading to such trends as gay marriage, pornography, and abortion.

9 Capture The Republican Party

Perhaps most of us are wondering why, in spite of the Constitution, there seems to be a religious test for those seeking public office in the US. The Republican Party in particular has made it an unwritten premise that a candidate’s faith is a matter of public debate. Local party meetings feature activists determined to bring “biblical principles” into government. How did the party of Lincoln become, in the words of an insider, “more religious cult than a political organization”?

To conquer the Seven Mountains, Dominionists are stealthily infiltrating the GOP and increasing their political influence. Recent presidential candidates Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann have ties to Dominionist groups. In 1979, GOP strategist Paul Weyrich politically mobilized factions of fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches under the umbrella term “Moral Majority.” It was led by Rev. Jerry Fallwell. Weyrich made no secret of its goal: “We are talking about Christianizing America. We are talking about simply spreading the gospel in a political context.” The clout of the Religious Right became apparent in the 1980 elections, when it unseated liberal Democrats in the Senate and helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.

The Moral Majority is no longer around, but Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition has continued its work. “We want . . . as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians,” Robertson declared in 1992. He and fellow pastors have schools and universities to train Christians how to run for public offices and how to influence policy once in power. Robertson named his institution Regent University because its students are destined to take over the government as Christ’s “regents.” Robertson himself made a losing bid for the presidency in 1988.

Robertson did not mince words: “We are not going to stand for those coercive utopians in the Supreme Court and in Washington ruling over us anymore. We’re not gonna stand for it. We are going to say, ‘we want freedom in this country, and we want power.’ ”

8 The End Of Pluralism

In a disturbing rant, Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said: “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good . . . Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”

Once Dominionists are in power, only one religion and lifestyle will be recognized—fundamentalist Christianity. Democracy and Christian nationalism are diametrically opposed. While theocrats will invoke the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution to further their agenda, they have no intention of keeping it when they win. Gary North, one of the movement’s ideological founders, made their goal clear: ” . . . a Bible-based social, political, and religious order, which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” They view the system that treats everybody equally as the greatest obstacle in their plans.

Secular humanism and all systems that bypass biblical knowledge will have to go. The “us vs. them” mentality that treats the rest of the non-Christian world as satanic will make pluralism impossible. Rick Joyner admits, “At first it may seem like totalitarianism, as the Lord will destroy the antichrist spirit now dominating the world.” But he assures those willing to be deluded that the Kingdom of Christ “will move toward increasing liberty.” That would be “liberty” as defined by a Fascist dictionary somewhere.

7 Undermining The Constitution

The US Constitution, the bedrock upon which pluralism thrives, will obviously have to be abrogated or else reinterpreted under the Dominionists. In its place will be a government based on Old Testament laws. The Law of Moses features, among other things, 1) the death penalty for idolaters, i.e. non-Christians, 2) the likelihood of the reinstitution of slavery, 3) abolition of the income tax in favor of the tithing system, and 4) elimination of the prison system in favor of the system of restitution for non-capital offenses.

Dominionists themselves are divided on how to apply these archaic biblical laws to modern America. Not all of them are keen on reintroducing slavery, but some do think that its legalization would be a good thing. While a majority support the death penalty, they differ on the method of execution. Strangely, though polygamy was permitted in ancient Israel, they define marriage as between one man and one woman. It is also unclear what they will do in the “Jubilee Year,” when estranged property is supposed to revert to its original owners. Will they give back the land to Native Americans (the Christian ones, of course)? Will they return Hawaii to the Hawaiians?

The Christian Right has the means to exploit loopholes through the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), its legal advocacy arm. Founded by Pat Robertson and armed with a $30 million annual budget, it seeks to overturn rulings the Right abhors, like Roe vs. Wade. It is also noteworthy that ACLJ supported the Bush administration in its holding Guantanamo detainees without charges and without trial.

In a Public Policy Polling survey released on February 24, 2015, an astonishing 57 percent of Republicans favor abandoning the Constitution to make the US a Christian nation. Only 30 percent are opposed, and 13 percent are not sure.

6 Death Penalty For Gays And Rebellious Teens

Being a worshiper of false gods (i.e., non-Christian) is not the only capital crime under Mosaic Law, besides murder and rape. Dominionists believe those deserving the death penalty include homosexuals, children who struck their parents, brides who were unchaste before marriage, juvenile delinquents, psychics (“false prophets”), adulterers, and blasphemers. Executions would be made public with full participation of the community, like square dances and quilting bees. Gary North prefers stoning as the method of killing because stones cost nothing and are readily available.

North laments that our humanist society paints the Mosaic Law as barbaric. He himself has no problems executing rebellious teens: “The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death.” What’s more, North says that those accusing a suspect of a capital crime must be among the executioners. For citizens to arm themselves in self-defense is a mark of their judicial sovereignty, North asserts, something gun control advocates want to take away. He extends this concept of judicial sovereignty to executions. He doesn’t want people to delegate the task to agents of the state. Participation in public executions is “an act of citizenship.”

How does this system propose to deal with perjury and false accusation? Perjury would be considered a crime against the accused, not against the court as in the present system. False witnesses will suffer the same penalty supposed to be imposed on the accused had they been found guilty. North believes that the Mosaic system of justice will actually reduce perjury in courts.

5 Historical Revisionism

David Barton is a pseudohistorian obsessed with altering historical facts to portray America as a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. This makes him a darling of the Right, with an enthusiastic Mike Huckabee proclaiming him America’s greatest historian, who should be writing the curriculum for the schools. Huckabee suggested (in jest, presumably) that all Americans should be “forced at gunpoint” to listen to Barton. To Glenn Beck, he is “the most important man in America.”

Such accolades come in the wake of Barton’s best-selling books, which claim that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians inspired by colonial preachers to found a society based on the biblical model. Barton teaches that America’s constitutional government was patterned after the ancient Hebrew “federative republic.” He accuses academics of hiding these truths from the average citizen.

In response, academics and even fellow conservatives have exposed Barton’s lies and errors. Barton is caught distorting or even inventing quotes placed on the lips of deist Founding Fathers to prove his point. One blatant example of Barton’s deception is his quote of John Adams’s letter to Benjamin Rush in 1809. In it, Adams says: “There is no authority, civil or religious—there can be no legitimate government—but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it—all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation.” Barton makes it sound like Adams was proposing a government led by the Holy Ghost. But Barton has left out the last part of the quote, in which Adams mocks the very notion: “Although this is all Artifice and Cunning in the secret original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their Lives under the Axe or the fiery Fagot for it. Alas the poor weak ignorant Dupe human Nature.”

Barton makes the tortuous argument that the Constitution, which never once mentions God, is in fact a godly document because it makes a passing reference to the Declaration of Independence which does mention a “Creator” (a deist Creator, alas for Barton). Barton was also forced to admit that he fabricated out of thin air a supposed quote from James Madison in which the staunch advocate of church-state separation was made to beseech Americans to “govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

David Barton is a propagandist masquerading as a historian. Though exposed as a fraud, he remains unrepentant.

4 Abolition Of Medicare And Social Security

Dominionists base their economics on Deuteronomy 28, the “Blessings and Cursings” chapter of the Pentateuch. They believe that wealth is a sign of God’s favor, and poverty and illness are visitations of His displeasure and wrath. The poor and sick deserve their lot. It is God’s way to prick their conscience and provoke introspection. Therefore, governments who seek to alleviate their plight are contravening God’s will. Poverty is not seen as a problem to be solved. This is why Dominionists view Social Security and Medicare as evil programs that take money from others to give to those being punished.

In a 700 Club interview, economics professor Dr. Walter Williams gave this rationalization: “I think Christians should recognize that charity is good. I mean charity, when you reach into your pocket to help your fellow man for medical care or for food or to give them housing. But what the government is doing to help these older citizens is not charity at all. It is theft. That is, the government is using power to confiscate property that belongs to one American and give, or confiscate their money, and provide services for another set of Americans to whom it does not belong.” The Right’s creed of “personal responsibility” has no place for such economic safety nets. If you die of hunger, that’s your fault. Or, in the case of senior citizens, your children’s or family’s fault for not taking care of you.

If on the other hand, you’ve become filthy rich—well, the Lord must be mighty proud of you. So for the government to lay more taxes on you to even out the playing field is an abomination. It is God’s intention that the rich get richer. Charismatic pastor Larry Huch predicts an “end-time transfer of wealth” to blessed Christians who are destined to become God’s bankers. The Dominionists’ promotion of laissez-faire economics of minimum government intervention in business, and repudiation of its licensing and regulatory powers, can thus be seen as self-serving.

3 Abolition Of Public Education

Christian theocrats are aware that they cannot hope to spread their miseducation through the present public school system, which propagates secular knowledge and values. In its place, they want a Christian-sponsored educational system that will assure that children are indoctrinated into fundamentalism, have daily prayers, teach creationism, do away with sex education, and propagate David Barton’s false history.

“I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we don’t have public schools,” wrote the Rev. Jerry Fallwell. “The churches will have taken them over again, and Christians will be running them.” Michelle Bachmann once started a charter school to replace the “godless” secular schools but was forced out of the board of directors when she proselytized the students.

Before a takeover happens, Christian parents are urged to take their children out of public schools to be homeschooled instead. A glimpse into a Dominionist homeschool gives us an idea on what American kids could expect to learn once Dominionists have taken over:

Government: “All governments are ordained by God, but none compare to government by God, theocracy.”

Economics: “We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe.”

Science: ” . . . the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution.”

Math: “Unlike the ‘modern math’ theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, we believe that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute . . . [These books provide] mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory . . . ”

2 Female Subservience

We read in Ephesians 5:22: “Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord.” This forms the basis of women’s roles in the proposed theocracy. Simply put, it will mark the end of gender equality and women’s rights. Women will be relegated to the home, pleasing their husbands, taking care of the kids, and making more babies, or as a critic put it, “dishwashing, suckling and sex.” The Dominionist newsletter Chalcedon Report deplored the situation in America today: “The devastating curse of women ruling over men is getting the press it deserves today . . . Our nation is under judgment. As the home goes, so goes the nation.”

Young girls are taught that their place is in the home and that any desire for a college degree or a job outside the home is prideful and sinful. Homeschooler Doug Phillips says, “Daughters, by no means, are not to be independent. They’re not to act outside the scope of their father, and then later, their husbands. As long as they’re under the authority of their fathers, fathers have the ability to nullify or not the oaths and the vows. Daughters can’t just go out independently and say, ‘I’m going to do this or marry whoever I want.’ ”

Once married, they are encouraged to “pop out some kids” to swell the ranks of Christian soldiers. So says Leah Smith in her to-do list for dominion, where she prompts Christian mothers to “get busy” and outstrip the Muslim birthrate (six kids per household average). Besides household skills, girls should learn apologetics, theology, and evangelism. Smith tells the ladies to “go back to being women, with joy and celebration” as slaves of men.

1  World War III

If Dominionism poses a threat to American democracy, it is even more dangerous to world peace and stability. Dominionists taking over the US would give America’s nuclear stockpile to religious fundamentalists with an apocalyptic mentality. And recent news has shown us that religious fanaticism and military firepower are a lethal mix.

Consider Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who can be described as a Christian Jihadist. He believes in holy war against Islam, with the US military as God’s army. He reports seeing demonic entities in photos of fighting in Somalia, enemies who “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” Incredibly, this intolerant warmonger became deputy Undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. With people like Boykin in command positions, World War III just might be the mother of all religious wars.

With a mindset that regards Israel as an important player in the prophetic end-times drama, the Christian Right is also against a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Palestinians are illegal occupants of the land God gave to His chosen people and there could never be a compromise, a two-state solution.

Dominionists can also self-righteously justify overthrowing foreign governments not Christian enough to their liking. Since the US already has a long history of such interventions, only a change in rationale from political to religious is needed.

The gap between the US and Europe may also widen, with Christians mistrusting the secular and irreligious tendencies of their trans-Atlantic allies. The end of the European partnership would have detrimental effects on global economy and security.

Freaked out? I sure am. Almost to the point of going out and purchasing ordinance – because these fucking nutters aren’t ‘hearing the voice of gawd’, these assclowns are just plain hearing voices. Which makes them psychotic AND dangerous.

They’ll try to take my constitutional rights away, but I will put up one helluva fucking fight when they do. Even at gunpoint.

Till the next post then.

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Give Them Religious Liberty…Or Else!

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
I may have said this multiple times, but it bears repeating: belief is ubiquitous, and not the commodity everyone thinks it is. Oversaturate any market (or economy) with product (or a precious metal that suddenly becomes commonplace), and it lowers or even crashes said market/economy. But America has become an orgy of that mental masturbation we call religion. And now, the Tea-baggers are reaching for the brass ring:

This is a religious civil war: Hobby Lobby only the beginning for new religious theocrats

The United States is still a democratic republic, formally, but what that actually means in practice is increasingly in doubt — and the Hobby Lobby ruling, deeply disingenuous and sharply at odds with centuries of Anglo-American law, exemplifies how that formal reality is increasingly mocked in practice. It is a practice best described as neo-feudalism, taking power away from ordinary citizens, in all their pluralistic, idiosyncratic diversity, and handing it over to corporations and religious dictators in both the public and the private realm. The Supreme Court’s actions are not taking place in a vacuum — though they are filling one: As Tea Party Republicans in the House increasingly bring democratic self-government to a halt, contracting the power of we the people to act as a cohesive self-governing whole, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority shifts ever more everyday power into the hands of private dictatorships.

Hobby Lobby handed for-profit corporations religious rights for the first time in history — a radical break with all previous precedent, and yet a part of a recent pattern, as Norm Ornstein rightly pointed out:

[F]or the majority on the Roberts Court, through a series of rulings that favor corporations over labor or other interests, it is clear that corporations are king, superior to individual Americans—with all the special treatment in taxes and protection from legal liability that are unavailable to us individuals, and now all the extra benefits that come with individual citizenship. Call it the new Crony Capitalism.

The expansion of corporate power in Hobby Lobby has gotten too little attention, and I’ll return to discuss this further below. But the advancement of theocracy — religious dictatorship — is even less clearly seen through the fog of right-wing propaganda about “religious liberty.”

First, however, an important highlight of a neglected aspect of the Hobby Lobby case, the fact that Hobby Lobby’s self-professed belief appeared out of nowhere just in time for them to file suit, as Stephanie Mencimer noted in March:

The company admits in its complaint that until it considered filing the suit in 2012, its generous health insurance plan actually covered Plan B and Ella (though not IUDs). The burden of this coverage was apparently so insignificant that God, and Hobby Lobby executives, never noticed it until the mandate became a political issue.

In short, Hobby Lobby’s “deeply held beliefs” claims are transparently bogus — as well as being scientifically invalid, since none of the methods involved are abortifacients, as Hobby Lobby claims. These would not matter if they only guided individual private conduct; that’s precisely what religious freedom actually means. You’re free to be a religious hypocrite, because letting someone else judge your sincerity can lead too easily to real religious tyranny. But when you’re already in a position to tyrannize others — as Hobby Lobby is — that’s a whole different ballgame. The tyrant’s freedom is everyone else’s slavery.

Historically, theocracy meant top-down religiously sanctioned dictatorship, exemplified in Western history by the divine right of kings philosophy. No one reads John Locke’s “First Treatise on Civil Government” anymore, because it is a refutation of the divine right of kings — one might as well read a refutation of four element theory in physics class. Locke’s “Second Treatise” provided a sharply contrasted legitimate foundation for civil government — the social contract and the consent of the governed. This is the air we breathe, and have been breathing ever since America was born.

And yet, theocracy and democracy are not two utterly distinct phenomena. Theocracy can well hold sway inside the family, for example, while the larger society retains its democratic form. More to the point, one stream of extreme Christian theocratic thinking — the dominion theology of the New Apostolic Reformation — has no problem (initially, at least) assimilating its goals of a theocratic government with the existing two-party electoral system. As researcher Rachel Tabachnick explains:

Instead of escaping the earth (in the Rapture)* prior to the turmoil of the end times, they [the NAR] teach that believers will defeat evil by taking dominion, or control, over all sectors of society and government, resulting in mass conversions to their brand of Charismatic evangelicalism and a Christian utopia or “Kingdom” on earth.

In early 2010, a leading NAR figure, Edgardo Silvoso, founder of International Transformation Network, which played a major role in promoting and passing Uganda’s anti-gay legislation, confidently said, “It doesn’t matter if the Republican or the Democratic candidate wins the governorship [of Hawaii]. Either one is already in the kingdom.” It didn’t turn out that way, because Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii’s popular long-term U.S. representative, defeated both the NAR-supported candidates — one in the Democratic primary, the other in the general election. Still, Silvoso’s vision might have come true, there could have been a contested two-party election in which both candidates were Christian dominionists — and most in the media (and thereby the public) wouldn’t even have known what was going on.

Sarah Palin was the NAR’s first full-throated state governor (revealing videos here), but Rick Perry has strong NAR connections as well — the religious kickoff to his 2012 presidential campaign was entirely an NAR-run event. But the point here is a broader one: The dividing line between theocracy and a democratic republic is not nearly as sharp as most might suppose, in fact, there may not actually be such a line, only a zone of blurriness for everything involved.

While the NAR represents an international evangelical grass-roots force of remarkable power for how little press attention it has gained, the theocratic push from above in America — duplicity framed in terms of “religious liberty” — comes from a Catholic/Protestant alliance forged in antiabortion political battles of the past 30-plus years, which is also undercovered and poorly understood in the mainstream corporate media, despite being grounded in a phalanx of powerful organizations, from the high-profile Family Research Council and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, through more specialized think tanks and legal advocacy organizations, such as the Becket Fund and the Alliance Defending Freedom. A useful reference is ”Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights” by Jay Michaelson, published by Political Research Associates in March 2013. In it, he writes:

While the religious liberty debate is a growing front in the ongoing culture wars, it is actually an old argument repurposed for a new context. In the postwar era, the Christian Right defended racial segregation, school prayer, public religious displays, and other religious practices that infringed on the liberties of others by claiming that restrictions on such public acts infringed upon their religious liberty. Then as now, the Christian Right turned antidiscrimination arguments on their heads: instead of African Americans being discriminated against by segregated Christian universities, the universities were being discriminated against by not being allowed to exclude them; instead of public prayers oppressing religious minorities, Christians are being oppressed by not being able to offer them.

In the “religious liberty” framework, the Christian Right attacks access to contraception, access to abortion, same-sex marriage, and antidiscrimination laws—not on moral grounds (e.g., that contraception is morally wrong or that LGBTQ rights violate “family values”) but because they allegedly impinge upon the religious freedoms of others (e.g., by forcing employers to violate their religion by providing contraception coverage)….

In fact, there is not a single “religious liberty” claim that does not involve abridging someone else’s rights.

As I’ve already indicated, Hobby Lobby’s “deeply held beliefs” claims are transparently bogus, but this need not always be the case. What is the case is that the inversion Michaelson describes — that of turning anti-discrimination arguments on their heads — both derives from and contributes to states of confusion in which all manner of bogus claims may flourish. As I noted above, there are legitimate reasons why the content of religious beliefs should not be scrutinized when considering questions of free exercise. But when religion is being imposed upon others, the presumptions ought to be reversed; we ought to be extremely reluctant to allow anyone to impose their religious beliefs on anyone else, no matter how light or innocent that imposition might be claimed to be. The views themselves as well as the manner they are imposed on others ought to be scrutinized as rigorously as possible. Don’t want your religious beliefs questioned? Then don’t impose them on others. When push comes to shove, real religious freedom can be just as simple as that.

And the phony “religious freedom” crowd knows it, which helps explain why outright lies repeatedly slip into their arguments, as Michaelson’s report makes clear. For example, anti-gay “religious freedom” advocates routinely repeat the lie that legalizing same-sex marriage means forcing churches to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies against their will — a flat-out lie.

Legalized civil divorce did not force the Catholic Church to marry divorced individuals, and legalized same-sex marriage would not force them to marry gay individuals, either. Institutional religious practice is almost entirely insulated from civil law. What does change are the rules applying to society at large. Michaelson explains:

Typically, there are five tiers of actors:

1. Churches, clergy, and religious institutions

2. Religious organizations

3. Religiously affiliated organizations

4. Religiously owned businesses

5. Religious individuals

The law treats these tiers differently: churches are rarely required to obey antidiscrimination laws, for example, but religious organizations may be, and religious-owned businesses are. Conservative “religious liberty” rhetoric deliberately misstates harms upward, and tactically expands exemptions downward. On the one side, no clergy will ever have to solemnize any marriage against her/his beliefs, yet restrictions on tier 4 or 5 individuals are cynically extended by conservative messaging to tier 1.

Michaelson then addresses the context of the Hobby Lobby case:

On the other side, conservative “religious liberty” advocates are clearly pursuing a staged plan to migrate extensions downward. In the current HHS benefit battle, for example, the Obama administration first exempted tiers 1 and 2, and then, in February 2013, exempted tier 3. Yet still the Becket Fund has objected that “millions of Americans”—i.e., tiers 4 and 5—are still unprotected.

And this is precisely the logic that the Hobby Lobby decision pursued. The Obama administration’s exemptions of Tiers 1 and 2 were not seen as signs of respect for religious liberty, in line with traditional practice, nor was its further exemption of Tier 3 seen as going the extra mile in a spirit of conciliation. Instead, the accommodation made for Tier 3 was used by Justice Alito to argue for similar treatment for Tier 4. The end result is that women in more than half the nation’s workforce can now be deprived by their employers of their most basic reproductive rights, involving birth control, not abortion.

But that’s just one side of the story. There’s also the economic, corporate power side, where things are a bit more complicated. I quoted above from Norm Ornstein, making the point that Hobby Lobby was part of a broader pattern of shifting power into corporate hands. But it’s striking that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not weigh in on the Hobby Lobby Case — it produced no amicus brief. In fact, as noted by David H. Gans of the Constitutional Accountability Center, “the only noteworthy corporate voices to weigh in — the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce and the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce — actually came down against them [Hobby Lobby and its supporters].” Gans also notes another brief from dozens of corporate and criminal law professors, “who argued that Hobby Lobby’s argument would eviscerate the fabric of corporate law, undercutting the corporate veil that protects owners and shareholders from liability for the actions of the corporation.” The brief itself begins laying out its argument thus:

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga each asserts that the religious values of its present controlling shareholders should pass through to the corporation itself. This Court should reject any such “values pass-through” concept. To do otherwise would run contrary to established principles of corporate law.

The essence of a corporation is its “separateness” from its shareholders. It is a distinct legal entity, with its own rights and obligations, different from the rights and obligations of its shareholders. This Court has repeatedly recognized this separateness.

This is yet another indication of how radically the Hobby Lobby decision departs from the existing fabric of Anglo-American law. And yet, there are clearly some in the corporate world who welcome this development, and it’s surely no accident that the same five justices produced both Hobby Lobby and Citizens United. So what’s going on here?

The best answer I know of comes from political scientist Corey Robin, and it involves looking much deeper than the framework of corporate law. The day the decision came down, Robin published “A Reader’s Guide to Hobby Lobby,” listing what he called “a few posts I’ve written over the years that should help put the Supreme Court’s decision in theoretical and historical perspective.” They’re all well worth reading, but I want to focus on just one of them, the first of two that Robin described thus:

2. Second, two posts on free-market types and birth control, how even the most libertarian-ish free-wheeler seeks to control women’s bodies: Love For Sale: Birth Control from Marx to Mises and Probing Tyler Cowen: When Libertarians Get Medieval on Your Vagina.

In “Love for Sale,” Robin discusses Ludwig von Mises‘ classic 1922 text ”Socialism,” and some contemporary discussions concerning it, particularly its fourth chapter, “The Social Order and the Family.” Here is where Robin gets to the heart of the matter:

The real reason Mises’s arguments about women are so relevant, it seems to me, is that in the course of making them he reveals something larger about the libertarian worldview: libertarianism is not about liberty at all, or at least not about liberty for everyone. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Here’s Mises describing the socialist program of “free love”:

Free love is the socialists’ radical solution for sexual problems. The socialistic society abolishes the economic dependence of woman which results from the fact that woman is dependent on the income of her husband. Man and woman have the same economic rights and the same duties, as far as motherhood does not demand special consideration for the women. Public funds provide for the maintenance and education of the children, which are no longer the affairs of the parents but of society. Thus the relations between the sexes are no longer influenced by social and economic conditions….The family disappears and society is confronted with separate individuals only. Choice in love becomes completely free.

Sounds like a libertarian paradise, right? Society is dissolved into atomistic individuals, obstacles to our free choices are removed, everyone has the same rights and duties. But Mises is not celebrating this ideal; he’s criticizing it. Not because it makes people unfree but because it makes people — specifically, women — free. The problem with liberating women from the constraints of “social and economic conditions” is that … women are liberated from the constraints of social and economic conditions.

If you want to know why libertarians reflexively embrace the National Rifle Association’s vision of freedom, but not Planned Parenthood’s (contrasting visions I discussed here), you need look no further. This passage also helps explain why there’s at least a germ of historical sense in the otherwise ridiculous Tea Party accusation that Obama is a “socialist”! By using government to empower women to make their own reproductive choices — not just in theory, but for real — Obamacare’s reproductive healthcare mandate really is acting in the socialist spirit as Mises described it, however market-based the mechanisms involved may be.

But it’s worth lingering a bit further with the socialist vision as Mises describes it, because it is so intimately bound up in what a functioning democratic republic actually does, or at least has the potential to do, when, for example, we take the Constitution’s general welfare clause seriously. What the socialists want, Mises argues, is to eliminate all manner of “natural inequalities”. This would, ironically, make everyone—not just privileged, straight, white males of means — into classic libertarian subjects, exercising their own, individual, unconstrained and uncoerced free choice. And this is the very last thing that libertarians actually want.

This helps explain why, for example, today’s Tea Party Republicans reject unemployment insurance as “socialist” — if someone out of work has any freedom at all to hold out for a job that will cover their mortgage, say, that’s socialism as Mises would describe it. And he has a point: socialism really is just another word for collectively removing the hidden and semi-hidden forms of coercion that otherwise shape and control our everyday lives. That’s why public education is socialist, too — and why Democratic politicians as well as Republicans are so eager to destroy it nowadays. But none of these other examples is quite as visceral or far-reaching as that of giving women reproductive autonomy equal to that of men.

This, then, is the bottom line: Conservatives (including libertarians) stand for the preservation and reinforcement (if necessary) of purportedly “natural” inequalities, which automatically structure all of society into overlapping forms of dominance and submission, in which the vast majority of people are inherently unfree “by nature.” Any collective action taken to free people from such dependent, powerless living conditions is anathema to them. Democracy itself is anathema to them. And Hobby Lobby is just the latest signal that they are firmly in charge.

Do they contradict themselves? Of course! So what? Do facts or logic matter anymore? Don’t be ridiculous! Dictatorship means never having to say you’re sorry — much less even a teensy bit wrong. The damages done to the structure and logic of corporate law? Irrelevant!

At the beginning, I wrote, “The United States is still a democratic republic, formally, but what that actually means in practice is increasingly in doubt.” This doubt can simply be summarized in the fact that any action to promote the general welfare will be automatically blocked and denounced as “socialism” by Tea Party Republicans in the House, while at the same time, the 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court rewrites decades or centuries of precedent to further empower the most powerful elements in our society, to the ever-deepening detriment of the whole.

So understand this, folks: even though there is not currently (nor has there ever been) a ‘war against religious liberty’, these monkey-see-monkey-do types, who think their worldview should be everyone’s worldview, are the enemy. It doesn’t matter that there is no such war: these Machiavellian mindfarts think there is one happening, regardless. And when Christians want something badly enough, they bring it to fruition. Don’t believe me? Look it up yourself.

So I hope, as any rational person does, that it won’t come to that. But history tells us these cretins are not to be trusted. The future could end up with people being forced to pray at gunpoint. As histrionic as that may seem, it is starting to look like a very scary reality.

So be afraid. And stock up. It could very well be a long siege.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: The Mad Hatter Joins The Tea Party

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

Much as I detest the bible, one quote springs to mind: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

There is perhaps no better illustration of this than this bit of profound stupidity:

Government shutdown just the start for America's Biblical revolutionaries

John Cornyn, the US senator from Texas, has been a stalwart of conservative causes. He did his best to destroy the Affordable Care Act. He opposes reproductive freedom and same-sex marriage. His voting record gets a perfect grade from the NRA, and he explained that cutting government benefits helps the poor because they "need a hand up, not a hand-out".

But apparently, he WASN'T "conservative" enough for many Republicans in Texas. Over the past few weeks, Tea Party activists floated the idea of replacing Cornyn with David Barton, the evangelical activist who has done more than anyone else to advance the "Christian Nation" myth. Although Barton withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday, Glen Beck (among others) is still holding out hope that a "true conservative" might step in to take down the perfidious Cornyn.

The fact that this kind of discussion is even taking place helps put to rest two very common misperceptions about the right wing of the Republican party. The first is that the Tea Party is primarily about fiscal and economic issues. It is not; it is also about religion.

The second misperception that Barton's abortive candidacy exposed is that the Tea Party is a conservative and patriotic force in American politics. In fact, it is a radical movement that seeks to destroy our present system of government. There is nothing comparable to it on the left or the right in American politics.

Let's take a closer look at what David Barton really stands for. He presents himself as a historian, but by now, no serious person can buy that characterization. His most recent book, The Jefferson Lies, turns out to have been filled with distortions of the actual facts. The book came under criticism from numerous conservative Christians – most notably, Grove City College professors Michael Coulter and Warren Throckmorton, who published a detailed refutation of the book titled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact-Checking Claims about our Third President. In August 2012, Barton's Christian publishing house, Thomas Nelson, stopped production of the tome, announcing that they had "lost confidence in the book's details".

But the facts have never stood in the way of Barton's "history", because the history merely serves as a platform for more ambitious goals.

Barton's political agenda couldn't be clearer. The organization he founded, Wallbuilders, holds the idea that church-state separation is a myth as its chief talking point. Barton also launched the Black Robe Regiment, an association of clergy members and "concerned patriots" whose goal is to establish "the American Church" as "overseer of all principalities and governing officials, as was rightfully established long ago".

Barton's ideas spread well beyond American's system of governance. In his worldview, global climate change is God's punishment for abortion. He also takes some interest in economic issues, usually to offer a "Biblical" perspective. People are on welfare, he announced on Wallbuilders Live, because they don't read Bible!

If Barton were some out-in-the-woods extremist, we could appreciate him as a colorful detail in the diverse and vibrant landscape of American religion. But he is on a first-name basis with Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Michele Bachmann. One of Barton's go-to organizations is the American Renewal Project, which is closely aligned with the fundamentalist policy group the American Family Association and whose "pastor briefings" bring rightwing clergy together with politicians.

The immediate cause of Barton's rumored run for office had to do with the government shutdown. Specifically, it had to do with Cornyn's failure to throw his support behind Cruz and push the button on an economic meltdown.

It would be wrong to characterize those who were itching to push that button as the "fiscal conservatives" in the room. Instead, the appeal of the shutdown to folks who follow Barton is precisely its apocalyptic nature. They want to create a crisis because they understand intuitively that the kind of change in our society that they wish to bring about can really only happen in the context of some major crisis.

Which brings up the second lie that Barton's candidacy exposed: that he and the forces he represents are conservative and patriotic. The separation of church and state that Barton decries as a "myth" has been at the foundation of the American system of government for more than two centuries. The claim that Barton and friends want to "take back" America is nonsense; they want to turn America into something it never was.

According to Barton, God is punishing American for its grievous sins, like granting women reproductive rights. Clearly, Barton's God is mad at America. But it isn't hard to see that Barton is doing the judging. He really doesn't like the electorate that returned Barack Obama to power. He doesn't like our diverse, pluralistic society that worships many Gods and no God. He doesn't like our nonsectarian public schools. And if he bothered to study the works of some of our Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, he probably wouldn't like them, either.

Some establishment Republicans might take solace in the fact that Barton has decided not to burden the Texas GOP with a nasty primary battle, just as they might rejoice in the defeats suffered by the Tea Party in the elections this week. But they shouldn't be overly optimistic. The predictable defeats of Tea Party stalwarts in 2010 and 2012 didn't stop the Tea Party and its raging base from being a persistent force in American politics, and we shouldn't forget that true Tea Partiers, such as Ken Cuccinelli and Dean Young, came within only a few percentage points of defeating their much better-financed rivals. The civil war within the GOP is by no means over, and if, as the Tea Party believes, you've got God on your side, it takes a lot more than a few narrow losses at the ballot box to stop you.

And David Barton has earned the title of ‘Mad Hatter’. How so? Despite the multitudinous quotes and speeches where many presidents have stated that SOCAS is indeed a reality (from Jefferson and Madison to Kennedy and Obama), Barton has declared that SOCAS is a myth. And who told him so? Everybody’s favorite imaginary sky-daddy, that’s who.

He’s had books pulled off the shelf because they were jam packed with lies, he’s also affiliated with racist theocrats like the Christian Identity, and to top all that off, he also is lecturer for Glenn Beck’s online university (another lowly fucktard who also makes too much money off of his moronic lies).

Luckily, Barton has declined – the thought of that particular crazy asshole running for office had me seriously considering purchasing a handgun. Why? Because they’ll pry the SOCAS out of my cold dead hands, that’s why.

That a sane person would even listen to either of these people means that the state of American education is crumbling into sound bites, madness and half-truths.

Till the next post, then.

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YACCR–Yet Another Crazy Cracker Republican.

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
There are actually a lot of conservative atheists who like this grandfatherly old asshole. And to the average layman, he seems to be a regular American – shoots from the hip, apparently a wise old guy everyone should listen to.

Don’t be fooled.

Ron Paul is ‘pro-life’, a gawd-fearing fuckwad who thinks life begins at conception. And, scarily enough, he has covert ties to Dominionists.

Once you’ve had this little eye-opener, I suggest you go out and scrape that ‘Ron Paul In 2012’ bumper sticker off your car, burn that pro-Paul t-shirt you’ve been wearing, and recede into an embarrassed silence upon mention of his name.

Former Representative Ron Paul's announcement this week of the upcoming launch of his eponymous home-schooling curriculum makes clear that the end of his career as a gadfly Republican presidential candidate does not spell the end of his role at the helm of a movement aimed at transforming the way Americans think about government – and God.

The Tea Party godfather has always enjoyed a devoted following of home-schoolers, a relatively quiet segment of the Paul coalition that frequently has flown under the media's radar. After all, one-time Republican candidates better known for their hyper-competitive citation of the Bible, like Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum, make a much bigger spectacle of their support from advocates of shielding your kids from the evils of secular public school education.

While Paul's dedication to the home-schooling cause is emblematic of his widely known views of limited government, the "Ron Paul Curriculum" reveals the far-reaching nature of his religious beliefs.

Paul's advocacy of home-schooling is not just about getting kids out of what home-schoolers disparagingly call "government schools". It's not just about teaching them that government should be small and largely inconsequential. It's based on the idea that the government is largely illegitimate, and that one must create a society in which the populace will follow "moral" (that is, biblical) laws, rather than the laws created by an overzealous, tyrannical government.

When they talk about government tyranny, they're not just talking about statutes and regulations: they're talking about supreme court case law, too. Paul, for example, believes that Roe v Wade is illegitimate, and that states should be able to criminalize abortion, regardless of what the supreme court has to say.

And here’s the freakshow part:

Paul's new director of curriculum development is Gary North, the son-in-law of Christian Reconstructionism founder RJ Rushdoony. Reconstructionism is a movement based on the claim that God granted only limited "jurisdiction" to government, and that biblical law should supplant civil law in all but a handful of circumstances.

He has ties to the ‘Taxpayer Party as well, which lands him firmly in Fuckwad County US of AmeriKKKa.

So for any of you Ron Paul supporters: you’ve picked the wrong guy. Sorry.

And don’t kid yourself thinking he’s history; he’s one of those clowns who will be meddling in the muddy waters of our political process for years to come. Just be thankful he never made prez.

Till the next post, then.

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More On The Madness Of Muslim: Xenophobic Flailings, And The ‘Religion Of Peace’ Is Failing…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
Muslims the world over whinge on about persecution and stereotypes, when the majority of the news seems to reinforce these epithets. Truly, the pedophiliac Muhammad did us all a disservice when he imprinted his delusions on the people around him, plaguing the world with yet another unique brand of crazy.

Timbuktu world heritage site attacked by Islamists

Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes have destroyed the centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the Unesco-listed city of Timbuktu in front of shocked locals, witnesses say.

The attack by the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Dine group came days after Unesco placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger and will recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two sixth-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan.

"They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly," said a local journalist, Yeya Tandina.

Tandina and other witnesses said Ansar Dine had already destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints – Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi el-Mokhtar and Alfa Moya – and at least seven tombs.

"The mausoleum doesn't exist any more and the cemetery is as bare as a soccer pitch," a local teacher, Abdoulaye Boulahi, said of the Mahmoud burial place.

"There's about 30 of them breaking everything up with pick-axes and hoes. They've put their Kalashnikovs down by their side. These are shocking scenes for the people in Timbuktu," said Boulahi.

Ansar Dine backs strict sharia law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam to be idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year.

Locals said the attackers had threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausoleum sites. The Unesco director general, Irina Bokova, called for an immediate halt. Late on Saturday, Tandina said Ansar Dine had halted the attacks. Attempts to contact members of the group were unsuccessful.

Ansar Dine has gained the upper hand over less-well-armed Tuareg-led separatists since the two joined forces to rout government troops and seize control in April of the northern two-thirds of the inland west African state.

The sites date from Timbuktu's golden age in the 16th century. Located on an old Saharan trading route along which salt from the Arab north was exchanged for gold and slaves from the south, Timbuktu blossomed as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes and jurists.

Mali had in recent years sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu, but even before April's rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of westerners in the region claimed by al-Qaida-linked groups.

Unesco's world heritage committee said this week it had accepted the request of the Malian government to place Timbuktu on its list of endangered heritage sites.

"The committee … also asked Mali's neighbours to do all in their power to prevent the trafficking in cultural objects from these sites," it said.

The rebel seizure of the north came as the southern capital, Bamako, was struggling with the aftermath of a coup on 22 March.

Mali's neighbours are seeking UN backing for a military intervention to stabilise the country but security council members say they need more details on the mission being planned.

And who are the Ansar Dine, exactly? More insane shitheads:

The group seeks to impose sharia law across Mali, including the Azawad region. Witnesses have said that Ansar Dine fighters wear long beards and fly black flags with the Shahada (Islamic creed) inscribed in white. According to different reports, unlike the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Ansar Dine does not seek independence but rather to keep Mali intact and convert it into a rigid theocracy.

Oh, fucking joy. More nutters who want to dictate the terms of how others live. How droll, how novel – NOT.

To paraphrase Hitchens, you can pretty much get away with any fucking thing, if you don the robes of a holy man and declare that the voices in your head are divine revelation.

The fires of fanaticism need to be put out. The only better world, is one where nobody has to live in fear of their lives. And as long as we accommodate these madmen, this shall never be.

Till the next post, then.

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The Road To Theocracy Is Often Littered With Broken Promises…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

“Brad showed us that we had permission to speak out about the Judeo-Christian values that we believe in, that we don't have to cower or back down, or we don't have to spiritualize everything. We have every right as Americans to say, 'I don't believe in same-sex marriage.' That's what Brad reminds us.”

One of the consistently scarier elements of the religious in this country, is how they seem to mount a movement almost right beneath one’s nose, and suddenly pop out of nowhere. Granted, I tend to live in an internet-induced bubble for the most part, but these cats? Serious heebie-jeebie time.

Promise Keepers is an international conservative Christian organization for men. While it originated in the United States, it is now world-wide. It is self-described as "a Christ-centered organization dedicated to introducing men to Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, helping them to grow as Christians". Promise Keepers is a non-profit organization, not affiliated with any Christian church or denomination. Their most widely publicized events tend to be mass rallies held at football stadiums and similar venues. They also sell a variety of promotional products to "help men keep their promises," including clothing, books, and music. Dr. Bruce Wilkinson developed the widely-used video curriculum, Personal Holiness in Times of Temptation, as a part of “The Biblical Manhood” series for Promise Keepers.

‘Biblical manhood’? Talk about having a laugh.

Their statement of faith is fairly boilerplate. The ‘7 Promises’ is somewhat borderline worrisome. It’s obvious that they’re homophobic (while trying to appear to be anything but), as they vigorously oppose same-sex marriage. That right there places them directly in ass-clown county.

It was observed that they aren’t…quite right, as reported in this article:

However, critics of Promise Keepers charge its leaders routinely express views that are antithetical to the Bible's teachings, and outside the realm of mainstream belief. They claim it has an unbridled ecumenicism, a charismatic leadership emphasis, and relies on an anti-God secular psychology.
They say Promise Keepers mimics new-age male bonding and self-discovery therapies, and endorses a book which suggests levels of initiation rites to manhood. They decry its emphasis on phallic symbolism and the fact that Jesus is presented as a sexual male. They note that PK requires submission to leaders and employs a pyramid structure in its organization, that it intrudes on the privacy of a man's family life and sexual habits. They point out that the group encourages male domination of women, and is rooted in the Vineyard ministry, with strong links to the Kansas City Prophets -- a controversial cult claiming visions and revelations from God.
Critics say they do not presume to judge the integrity or the motives of all those in Promise Keepers or question the salvation of these men. They concede that many involved with PK are sincere. Instead, they say they are concerned with the doctrine of the movement and the ministry being promoted. They stress that any group that claims to represent Jesus must 1) preach a pure Gospel, and 2) address man's spiritual growth from an accurate interpretation of God's Word. Critics say Promise Keepers fails on both counts.
They worry that the vast majority of men who attend PK rallies probably know very little about the beliefs or church affiliation of the speakers who appear. The lecturers are accepted as authorities on Christian living simply because they say they are Christians and believe the Bible.
"Since the ministry of these teachers runs the gamut from compromising new-evangelicalism and charismatic error, to ecumenical liberalism, it is clear that they [are] introducing the Promise Keepers to unscriptural doctrines and fellowships," says Al Dager of Redmond, WA. "This is a very serious matter."
Rev. Gil Rugh, senior pastor of Indian Hills Community Church in Lincoln, NE. agrees. "There is so much theological diversity among those involved with Promise Keepers that no in-depth discussion of Scripture or what it means to be a Christian could take place without tearing the movement apart."
As one former Promise Keepers member remarked, "it's so diluted and deluded, you can't get very much out of it."

And here is a particularly chilling little bit:

Yet the religious right pantheon behind Promise Keepers consists of men who think the Republican party is too liberal. Founder Bill McCartney cut his political teeth speaking at rallies of the violent anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. In impassioned speeches — which are especially chilling when viewed on videotape — McCartney and company have said things like: men must be leaders and women "responders," lesbians and gays are "stark, raving mad," abortion is a "second Civil War" and participants must "take back the nation for Christ."

As Frederick Clarkson notes in "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy" (Common Courage Press, 1997), Promise Keepers aims to create "men of integrity" while its leaders model opportunistic double-talk. Honor your wife, but take back your role as head and master of your household. Seek racial "reconciliation" with hugs and tears among the biblically correct, but ignore racial injustice when it comes to education, jobs and housing. March on Washington, but assert it's not a political thing.

It is reminiscent of the way Promise Keepers backer Jerry Falwell claims he doesn't condone anti-abortion violence but paid $10,000 toward Operation Rescue boss Randy Terry's fine on a felony stemming from O.R.'s violent seige of women's health clinics during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Taking a page from Falwell's play book, a radical activist like McCartney insists his group itself is not at all political. Yet Falwell and other religious right doyens — Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, James Dobson and Bill Bright — launched it financially, lent hundreds of staff members, continue to host and speak at Promise Keepers rallies, publish Promise Keepers books and sell their own politically packed treatises at Promise Keepers events.

Still not convinced? Try signing up as a Promise Keepers supporter, as an academic researcher did, and see if you, too, don't suddenly start getting mail from the Republican party that you never got before. Lurk online in a Promise Keepers chat group, as one journalist did, and see if you, too, don't note that abortion is the number one topic — not a woman's right to choose but an abortion opponent's right to kill women and doctors.

At this juncture, the Promise Keepers are relegated to little more than an historical footnote – they lost bundles, had major layoffs, and Joe (oops! I mean Bill) McCartney resigned in 2003, but returned in 2008 to become the chairMAN. So while not a big-time contender anymore (like the AFA, or Focus on the Family, or those other delusional fucks), they bear watching as well.

So keep an eye peeled. They may not be the barbarians at the gate we are accustomed to, doesn’t mean they’re not equally dangerous.

Till the next post, then.

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Scary News–The Evangelists Are Eyeing The Presidency Again..

And once again, it’s some clown from Texas:

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God's messengers visited Rick Perry.

PSSSTTT!! There’s nobody up there!

On this day, the Lord's messengers arrived in the form of two Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos, who called on Perry in the governor's office inside the state Capitol. Schlueter and Long both oversee small congregations, but they are more than just pastors. They consider themselves modern-day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles.

The short version is that they’re utter frauds, then. Because all those fairy tales are so much garbage.

The pastors told Perry of God's grand plan for Texas.

Oh yeah, because Texas is mentioned by name in their book! Oh, waitaminnit…no it isn’t.

A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was "The Prophet State," anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.

(Point at head, whistle while rotating index finger)

The day before the meeting, Schlueter had received a prophetic message from Chuck Pierce, an influential prophet from Denton, Texas. God had apparently commanded Schlueter - through Pierce - to "pray by lifting the hand of the one I show you that is in the place of civil rule."

Con man or crazy? You decide.

Schlueter had prayed before his congregation: "Lord Jesus I bring to you today Gov. Perry.... I am just bringing you his hand and I pray Lord that he will grasp ahold of it. For if he does you will use him mightily.”

A lot of people are being used – but not by their imaginary sky daddy.

And grasp ahold the governor did. At the end of their meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him. As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry, their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the Alamo. Schlueter "declared over [Perry] that there was a leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role beyond what people understand," Long later told his congregation.

It may be unconstitutional, but my opinion is that any politician that has people ‘pray’ over them should be in mandatory retirement. Immediately.

So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God's man for president?

No, he’s a religious puppet with a hand up his ass.

Schlueter, Long and other prayer warriors in a little-known but increasingly influential movement at the periphery of American Christianity seem to think so.

Wait – ‘prayer warriors’? Are you effin’ kiddin’ me?

The movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation. Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and given it an adrenaline shot.

More like smoking crack.

The movement's top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God.

So…they’re phoning it in? Ordering pizza? Be serious.

Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings.

And it all sounds suspiciously like what they want.

When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.

Which of course they have zero evidence to back it up with.

Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre.

All supernatural beliefs are bizarre.

Some consider Freemasonry a "demonic stronghold" tantamount to witchcraft.

Another thing besides prayer that fails.

The Democratic Party, one prominent member believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser demons.

Wait – Jezebel? A demon? Here in the 21st century?

Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at public meetings.

And of course, since our culture has been brainwashed to accept this horseshit, nobody points out that these cats are mentally deranged.

They've taken biblical literalism to an extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth of every Texas county.

That actually sounds Druidic.

If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement leaders wouldn't be remarkable. But what makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government. The new prophets and apostles believe Christians - certain Christians - are destined to not just take "dominion" over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the "Seven Mountains" of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they're intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they're leading an "army of God" to commandeer civilian government.

If they’re going to do it via ‘prayer warriors’, well then…they don’t have a prayer (entendre intended).

In all the media attention surrounding Perry's flirtation with a run for the presidency, the governor's budding relationship with the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation movement has largely escaped notice.

Of course it has. That ridiculous adage about not discussing politics or religion at the dinner table – or anywhere else.

But perhaps not for long. Perry has given self-proclaimed prophets and apostles leading roles in The Response, a much-publicized Christians-only prayer rally that Perry is organizing at Houston's Reliant Stadium on Aug. 6.

Glad I missed that collection of crazy.

The Response has engendered widespread criticism of its deliberate blurring of church and state and for the involvement of the American Family Association, labeled a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its leadership's homophobic and anti-Muslim statements. But it's the involvement of New Apostolic leaders that's more telling about Perry's convictions and campaign strategy.

As we have seen, love is the excuse for their hate.

Eight members of The Response "leadership team" are affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation movement. They're employed or associated with groups like TheCall or the International House of Prayer (IHOP), Kansas City-based organizations at the forefront of the movement. The long list of The Response's official endorsers - posted on the event's website - reads like a Who's Who of the apostolic-prophetic crowd, including movement founder C. Peter Wagner.

These people are the enemy. Know the enemy.

In a recent interview with the Observer, Schlueter explained that The Response is divinely inspired. "The government of our nation was basically founded on biblical principles," he says. "When you have a governmental leader call a time of fasting and prayer, I believe that there has been a significant shift in our understanding as far as who is ultimately in charge of our nation - which we believe God is."

Predictable. And sad. More of their revisionist manure. If their god is in charge, then nobody is.

Perry certainly knows how to speak the language of the new apostles. The genesis of The Response, Perry says, comes from the Book of Joel, an obscure slice of the Old Testament that's popular with the apostolic crowd.

"With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help," Perry says in a video message on The Response website. "That's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the Israelites to do in the Book of Joel."

Ah yes. The old finger-pointing trick. What Perry doesn’t seem to realize, is that moral relativism is a standard by which Christianity flies. I’m going to skip around to the astounding bits:

One of the primary tasks of the new prophets and apostles is to hear God's will and then act on it. Sometimes this means changing the world supernaturally. Wagner tells of the time in October 2001 when, at a huge prayer conference in Germany, he "decreed that mad cow disease would come to an end in Europe and the UK." As it turned out, the last reported case of human mad cow disease had occurred the day before. "I am not implying that I have any inherent supernatural power," Wagner wrote. "I am implying that when apostles hear the word of God clearly and when they decree His will, history can change."

First off, you ARE implying that you have some inherent supernatural power – it’s called clairaudience. Secondly, there was a report in Japan in late 2001. Also a report of one in 2004. So still wrong. And it’s not as much an epidemic as they’re hyping it up. So a load of crap – no surprise.

Oh, here’s another ‘goodie’:

Last year Jacobs warned that if America didn't return to biblical values and support Israel, God would cause a "tumbling of the economy and dark days will come," according to Charisma. To drive the point home, Jacobs and other right-wing allies - including The Response organizers Lou Engle and California pastor Jim Garlow - organized a 40-day "Pray and Act" effort in the lead-up to the 2010 elections.

Hey, I saw it coming too. Didn’t need any writing on the wall. It was pretty obvious.

Oh, and here’s the crazy cat lady:

Patterson claims to have seen demons with her own eyes. In 2009, at a prophetic meeting in Houston, Patterson says she saw the figure of Jezebel and "saw Jezebel's skirt lifted to expose tiny Baal, Asherah, and a few other spirits. There they were - small, cowering, trembling little spirits that were only ankle high on Jezebel's skinny legs."

Likely they’re spiking the punch with hallucinogenics – or she’s just batshit crazy. And like attracts like.

Read the rest of the article. You don’t require me to interpret it for you. But for myself, these people give me the shudders. People who are hearing voices and having visions need medicating, not political power. Perry might turn out to be an also-ran, but he could also become a dark horse.

So keep a wary eye out, and speak up at the first opportunity. Denounce these gibbering weirdos as the nutcases they are. Stump if you have to, but be heard.

The more of us that speak up, the better likelihood there is of being heard.

Till the next post then.

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The NCP: Crazy People Making More People Crazy, And The Crazy Just Seems To Keep On Keepin’ on….

The lunatic is on the grass.
The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.
The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more. – Pink Floyd, Brain Damage

Surfing the web (or whatever phraseology is in vogue right now), I came across something that could scare any secular humanist in any country: a very benign-sounding council that is anything but benign, with the sobriquet of the Council For National Policy. Sounds harmless, no?

No.

The Council for National Policy (CNP), is an umbrella organization and networking group for social conservative activists in the United States. It has been described by The New York Times as a "little-known group of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country," who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference. Nation magazine has called it a secretive organization that "networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy." It was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians seeking to strengthen the political right in the United States.

LaHaye is that crazy asshole who wrote those ridiculous books about Left Behind, a Christian superstition about their elitist deity who will only take those who ‘qualify’ for their ‘sinlessness’ at the End of Days.

The CNP describes itself as "an educational foundation organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. We do not lobby Congress, support candidates, or issue public policy statements on controversial issues. Our over 600 members include many of our nation's leaders from the fields of government, business, the media, religion, and the professions. Our members are united in their belief in a free enterprise system, a strong national defense, and support for traditional western values. They meet to share the best information available on national and world problems, know one another on a personal basis, and collaborate in achieving their shared goals."

What exactly are their ‘shared goals’? Reading between the lines (something you need when dealing with these crazies), you find hints of crazy:

Marc J. Ambinder of ABC News said about the Council: "The group wants to be the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations." The CNP was founded in 1981. Among its founding members were: Tim LaHaye, then the head of the Moral Majority, Nelson Baker Hunt, T. Cullen Davis, William Cies, and Paul Weyrich.

The Moral Majority? Are you kidding me? Top tier crazy. The rest is a who’s who of people I wouldn’t trust with the time of day:

Members of the CNP have included: General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, Senator Trent Lott, Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attorneys General Ed Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Col. Oliver North, and philanthropist Else Prince, mother of Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater private security firm.

And to make it oh so much more frightening:

Membership is by invitation only. The membership list, previously made public, is now "strictly confidential." Guests may attend "only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee." Members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks. New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate the Council from the "liberal bias of the news media".

The liberal what? Is that what they’re playing on their fascist banjos these days?

CNP's meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The group meets three times per year. This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS in 1992 on grounds that it was not an organization run for the public benefit. The group successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The group has launched a website that contains selected speeches from past gatherings.

The funniest sentence in that paragraph is the first one. We all know that folks like these are more interested in sharing an isolated introspective travesty of reality as contrasted with what they’d like to actually be.

While those involved are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives, legislators former high ranking government officers, leaders of 'think tanks' dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as "Christian leadership".

I’m pretty sure where that will end up.

And the leadership of this crowd is a laundry list of some of the more insane people in the limelight:

CNP was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants included Cleon Skousen, a prominent theologian and law enforcement expert; Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.

The council employs about eight people. Its first executive director was Woody Jenkins; later, Morton Blackwell served in this role, which is currently held by Steve Baldwin (b. 1957), not to be confused with actor Stephen Baldwin. Presidents have included Nelson Bunker Hunt of Dallas, Amway co-founder Richard DeVos of Michigan, Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, Paul Pressler of Houston, and former Reagan Cabinet secretaries Ed Meese and Donald Hodel, as well as current president Kenneth Cribb. Former Texas state Republican chairman George Strake, Jr., was a member during the 1990s.

Seriously, this sort of thing freaks me right out: Schlafly is wackjob. Anybody associated with the Constitution Party is living in a self-designed bubble. Amway’s a religion of its own. Any Texan Republican is automatically bad news.

Here comes the scariest part:

The Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University considers the Council for National Policy a leading force in the Dominionist movement. TheocracyWatch, a CRESP project, describes it as "an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the theocratic agenda."

They will pry my ideological rights from between my cold dead fingers, is what. If this nation ever becomes a theocracy, I will (and this is no lie) pick up arms against the oppressor, and I will go forth to do literal battle with the slavemasters that would shackle those of us with their superstition, their fantasy, their mental slavery.

I will go to war.

Who is with me?

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