I grew up in eastern North Carolina. My immediate family converted to Catholicism when I was seven. Some of our relatives were convinced that we were going to hell for worshiping statues, praying to the Virgin Mary, and not being baptized in the name of Jesus only. In other words, I grew up with crazy fundamentalists in my family. However, I never feared their beliefs. They talked a lot but didn't appear to pose a threat to others who did not believe as they did.
But today I came across an organization known as the The Liberty Counsel and their stated goal is Restoring the Culture by Advancing Religious Freedom, the Sanctity of Human Life and the Family.
Doesn't sound so scary in and of itself, but the Liberty Counsel doesn't literally mean freedom to believe or not believe as you wish. The Counsel believes that it is its mission to advance our freedom to believe in a Christian God. The anchor of the Counsel is its fully accredited law school, Liberty University School of Law, located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Its web site touts its "40 years of training champions for Christ." From its mission statement: "The proficient use of reason informed and animated by faith and a comprehensive Christian worldview is the means to revitalizing what is central to the American legal system--the rule of law." (There are 202 attorneys in the 112th US Congress out of a total of 535 members of Congress. Washington Wire, 1/5/2011).
The web site also features a video with a special message from Newt Gingrich. Presumably Gingrich is comfortable with the law school's blend of law and religion, and its goal of injecting that blend into the rule of law.
The document that lead me to the Counsel was a piece entitled Declaration of American Values, with excerpts posted to Facebook by author Pam Spaulding. (I count on Pam to lead me to interesting material and she never fails to do so.) The Declaration appears to be the Counsel's proposal for a new Declaration of Independence and contains such gems as the following:
- To secure our national interest in the institution of marriage and family by embracing the union of one man and one woman as the sole form of legitimate marriage and the proper basis of family.
- To secure the free exercise of religion for all people, including the freedom to acknowledge God through our public institutions and other modes of public expression and the freedom of religious conscience without coercion by penalty or force of law.
- To secure the moral dignity of each person, acknowledging that obscenity, pornography, and indecency debase our communities, harm our families, and undermine morality and respect. Therefore, we promote enactment and enforcement of laws to protect decency and traditional morality.
- To secure the individual right to own, possess, and use firearms as central to the preservation of peace and liberty.
There are ten declarations in all, plus a preamble and a closing vow asserting that an unidentified "we" pledge their names, their lives, and their honor to upholding this declaration of American values.
The Christian fundamentalists of my childhood were goodhearted people for the most part who sincerely believed that it was their duty to try and save the souls of sinners. They were not interested in controlling the government; they sought their guidance from their churches and did their proselytizing via their churches. Today's Christian Right is a different breed. They are not necessarily fundamentalists; they adhere to a literal reading of the Bible only when it suits their purposes. As a whole, they are better educated than their fundamentalists predecessors, churned out by private religious colleges and universities. They encompass middle and upper class demographics. They seek power and control, and view religion as a tool to achieve both. They are dangerous.
It is not enough that they share their beliefs with those who embrace the same values. What they want is to impose their beliefs, their will, on the rest of us. Fanaticism begets a rabid vigilance to convert or destroy all who would dare walk to a different drummer. There is no group more dangerous than those who believe or profess to believe in some mythological anointment of their cause by a supreme being. History is littered with atrocities perpetrated in the name of someone's God.
Please understand that it is not genuinely held personal faith or spiritual belief that I'm speaking of, but a rigid fanaticism in which one group insists upon imposing its views, its beliefs, its will upon others. I'm speaking of groups such as this Liberty Counsel, which adorns itself with the trappings of law, wraps itself in the American flag, and with its Bible clasped in one hand is as dangerous and frightening as any fascist.
Such groups must be revealed, dragged into the light if necessary. Their power lies in their chameleon like ability to blend in, to appear to be simply promoting sensible values that will benefit all of us. We must be vigilant and unafraid in shouting to the rafters that not only does the emperor have no clothes on, the emperor is also a liar and a fraud.
Definition of FASCISM
Definition of FASCISM
1
often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2
: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
"40 years of training champions for Christ."
ReplyDeleteI've always been puzzled by people who picture god as unlimited in power, knowledge and sometimes on rare occasions, common decency and yet tell us he needs foot soldiers, generals and a lot of money.
"Morality is not the Government's business, It's God's business. God can handle it."
That quote, attributed to Justice Louis Brandeis, might apply here. If you think you need to do God's work, perhaps you don't really trust God. It's a way to allow some very marginal people to feel almost like God himself and there's where the danger lies.
These same lovely folks would like us to forget that leaving other people alone with your faith and your commandments and your divine missions was, in fact, the vision of our founding fathers and to me, their most redeeming feature, flawed men as they were.
They will lie and tell you Jefferson, Madison and Franklin were the same kind of Christian Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are and that our constitution is based on "Christian Values." Both statements are a lie and the worst kind of lie; a lie that means to rob us of our freedom. Funny, isn't it, that we fought a war to free ourselves from a political entity that based itself and its right to rule, on Christian Values. The Church of England as well as the Church of Rome violently opposed Democracy as being blasphemy with the same arrogance these small minded trolls oppose personal freedom right down to the level of dictating who we love and how and how we define our family relationships.
What are Christian values? Depends on whom you ask, but to me -- who has ruminated over this for nearly two thirds of a century -- taking care of other people at the expense of all rituals of piety, paying what you owe and worrying more about your own goodness of heart than about the private concerns of other people sounds authentic.
I wish those were indeed American values, but these Liberty Council weasels don't actually share them and remind me of those devout people who defended Slavery, the subjugation of women and extermination of non-Christians and used Jesus to justify it. Fascists in sandals and tin foil halos, hungry for the kind of ecclesiastical power our founding documents were supposed to protect us from and the horrors of which Western history still stinks.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteYes indeed. Some of the most dangerous humans, in my humble saurischean opinion (IMHSO), are the ones who go to religion not to escape from the prison-house of the ego but to shore up a sense of certainty about nearly every question, every practice, every everything. They want black-and-white, hell-yes or hell-no answers to life’s questions; they want dicta and pronouncements from On High. Of course, once they have them, it occurs to them that it would be for the best to impose the same eternal verities and absolutes on others who -- poor benighted, confused souls that they are -- don’t have such certitude. Just as right-wing politicians tell us our primary right is simply to be kept alive (and therefore the other one’s don’t much matter), certain Christo-fascists would have us believe nothing matters but religious correctness and acceptance of their extreme views, to save our souls.
What’s left to say? Turn back to Mother and Father T-Rex, America! High on Sacred Mount Gondwana they dwell, lolling about the Celestial Watering-Hole in their sublime indifference to the misdeeds and malpractices of pretentious hominids.
"Therefore, we promote enactment and enforcement of laws to protect decency and traditional morality."
ReplyDeleteOy. Not again.
What is "decency" in their universe, or "traditional morality?"
In my universe, leaving people alone to pursue their happiness so long as it breaks no laws is decency. The rigid righties have to be reminded that, no, this doesn't mean a person's right to marry dogs or turtles or children, since none of those can give consent. I don't care if a man wants to marry 3 women or if a woman wants to marry three men--let them sort out whose babies belong to whom. Lots of cultures practice polygamy and polyandry, so this notion that one man and one woman marriage go back 3,000 years is bullpuckey.
As for "traditional morality," it was once traditionally "moral" for white southern Xtians to murder African-Americans with impunity; and when laws were proposed to end the lynchings, the keepers of "traditional morality" in the south fought them tooth and noose.
All this posturing by the evangelicals is a symptom of their fears from the realization that the younger generations will leave all there hate-based "morality" behind.
"there hate-based 'morality' behind?"
ReplyDeleteSometimes the stupid takes over my fingers when I'm not paying attention.
Sometimes I question these labels, liberal versus conservative. In this instance, are liberals ‘conservative’ and conservatives radical with respect to preserving the foundations of constitutional law. I refer to Article VI, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states:
ReplyDelete“ … no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Yet, here are 5 Founding Fathers Whose Skepticism About Christianity Would Make Them Unelectable Today.
In the State of Florida, this bill, Senate Bill 98, is scheduled for a vote TODAY. The bill would let school districts overrule the objections of religious minorities and organize school-sponsored prayer under the banner of student government. Under the bill, school officials would be able to skirt the Constitutional protections of religious liberty by letting students actually vote on what kind of prayers the school will allow and conduct.
Most disturbing of all, the bill gives underage children … children! … the power to trash the Constitution, treat religious freedom as a popularity contest as if electing a prom queen, and compel minority students by peer pressure to engage in religious practices that go against their own beliefs.
This is the worst case of fundamentalist overreach within my lifetime. And yes, it is FASCISM!
Yep, time to renew my ACLU membership 'cause nobody else is going to do a damn thing. No wonder the Republican hoodlums here hiss like copperheads when they hear the name.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I hate to see children exploited this way. Would we allow them to vote on how many hours they spend in school or what the curriculum will be? It's disgusting, even in a state with such an atrocious record of ignoring basic rights and practiced de facto slavery until the late 1930's.
I feel sorry for God, held prisoner by these evil ghosts of ancient times. As I've said, humans handle their beliefs far worse than they handle weapons, but in the same way.
"To secure the individual right to own, possess, and use firearms as central to the preservation of peace and liberty."
ReplyDelete..did Jesus carry an Uzzi?
There they go, clinging to those guns and bibles... :)
ReplyDelete