Stay inside, hide under the bed and play video games

Because life is just too dangerous to live!

Really, this is the safest time to live in the United states there has ever been and I'm guessing that's true of  the civilized, "first-world" in general. Your kids are more likely to grow up big and strong and to live longer than you do, just as you're likely to live twice as long as folks did a hundred or so years ago, but you'd never know it to listen and to read and to feel.

Have you seen the recent car commercials where the distracted young mother with child in the back seat ( kids can't ride in the front seat any more) nearly rear-ends another car but is saved by automatic braking? Last night I saw another one where Young Mother gets into oncoming traffic on a bridge but the car saves her at the last moment.  Self-driving cars are being tested now and self parking cars are a reality. Cars warn you of other cars in your "blind" spot you would have seen anyway if you were looking and we're supposed to be as giddy and elated about it as an American who just worked "selfie" into a sentence for the first time. We're in terrible danger because learning to drive safely is beyond us and the future must be about cars that drive themselves without participation from you. Driver training?  What?

 Oh, brave new world that has such cowards in it!  What a wonderful world where no risk of any kind is permitted or tolerated outside the world of video games, where a woman can be arrested for letting a 7 year old walk to the park.  Yes, arrested, not scolded or cautioned -- and she faces 5 years in the slam. Maybe she should tke the kid with her -- it's safer behind bars.

No, the joy of driving an open car, a sleek powerful masterpiece of engineering down a country lane, the joy of riding a bicycle unsupervised when you're 7, of walking to the park on a Summer day -- there are parents who won't let their kids play in their own suburban yards unsupervised, whose every moment is scrutinized, analyzed and proscribed lest there be any danger at all of any kind.


How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.

Shit-kicker conservatives?

If there's anything as loathsome to me as racism, it may be the way that many and perhaps most of us like to use stereotypes to demean a group, arguing ad lapidem or using a stereotype designed merely to unite a disparate group for the purpose of disparagement. It's one of the things Bill Maher does sometimes, that Rush and Hannity and others do all the time. It's a sin few of us are free of.

If he's right in saying that many small groups can, often with the assistance of the fair and balanced media achieve a level of influence that belies their small membership, I'd prefer that he'd do so without the cheap stereotypes. 

"From the NRA to “One Million Moms, powerful conservative lobbies that don’t reflect the values of the American people can somehow dictate what politicians on both sides are willing to stand for." 

Well yes, but so can lobbies in general, that's what they're for -- and so can lobbies that don't "kick shit"  but can and do kick the facts around just a bit. I don't think we can assume for instance, that because the NRA has only four million members  it doesn't reflect something similar to what a great deal more than four million voters believe to an extent -- rightly or wrongly.

I have severe misgivings for instance,  about the facts behind many of the pet straw men of the right and left  and sorry, there's no shit on my boat shoes -- besides, the greater issue is far too non-funny to treat in this way.    There are fewer opportunities for burlesque when describing what may be a larger plurality in America -- the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatic and the analytical.  And so we either ignore them or try to force them into a category we know how to mock, because too often mockery, hyperbole and stereotypes  are all we have.

If there's humor in the street theater we get instead of news, I'd have to bring up the crowds waving angry signs and shouting slogans like "no weapons on airplanes" in response to the TSA's decision to allow golf clubs and tiny knives so small that a diminutive Gerbil could carry an 'arsenal' in one cheek.  One "fact kicker" activist found it worthwhile to wave around a large and lethal  hunting knife for the cameras recently in hope that the sort of liberal Maher characterizes as never having met a regulation they didn't like, would identify one with the other and fail to ask how someone would take command of a jetliner with a putter or lacrosse stick much less a "weapon" hardly big enough to sharpen a pencil.  Are these people a majority or would they all fit into a VW beetle?  They'd like to make you angry enough so that you won't ask.  Does it help to dismiss the right wing faithful as "shit kickers" while we bang on the ban drum about making soft drinks illegal and prosecute parents for photographing their kids in the bathtub?  They don't miss a chance to stereotype us and we make it easy for them.

Will it take some sort of Buddha to remind us that there is a middle path, that Agnew was wrong and extremism is pretty much a vice all the time, that mockery is as much the tool of the bigot and racist and liar and crook as well as of anyone, that cynicism and sarcasm and the throwing of stones are dangerous techniques for those not beyond reproach?  Maybe, maybe not and perhaps that Buddha would risk crucifixion -- it happens.  

Extreme

Extreme is one of the words that defines our time. Extreme sports, for instance -- ordinary sports just aren't enough, but it's not just popular entertainment that needs to be as wild and crazy.  The safer things get, the more we seem to need the excitement of battling danger with passion and with that passion come extreme precautions, and extreme laws -- and extreme stupidity.

Take the danger of child abuse -- it's real, but really, do we need to define the normal and harmless so that it can't be told from the abnormal and harmful?  Of course we do because so much depends, in our totally politicized nation, on hysteria, on showing everyone that we're "proactive" and that any grotesque manifestation of our crusading nature is justifiable "if only one ____ is saved."

It's hard to know what was saved when 7 year old Josh Welch of Baltimore was suspended from school for having chewed his Pop-Tart into something that looked to a teacher like a gun, but it's not unique.  Kids get into trouble for things that seem to someone of my age as if teachers are simply looking for any bizarre excuse to define a nail clipper as a "weapon" or a cough drop is "drugs."  As with so many indefensible things, it's usually defined as "protecting the children."

Again it's hard to know who was protected when an Arizona couple had their children taken from them and their lives arguably ruined for taking bath time pictures of their three toddlers on a towel, hugging each other.  Some Wal-Mart watchdog saw the photos and called the cops. Although a judge eventually determined that the parents weren't thinking about sex when they took the pictures (that's apparently all that's needed) the kids were traumatically  "protected" by being put in foster care and the parents on one of those "sexual offender" lists that essentially render one an outlaw and unable to live near civilization for the rest of their lives. 

So do we wonder that some people think it's not really silly to think that in some ways we have an intrusive government?  Can some be excused for speculating about having lost some essential  freedom because extremism in defense of some thing or another is no vice?  The hell it isn't!  Those who argue that the ends sanctify the means and never mind who gets hurt, can't rightly be called Liberals or Conservatives.  I call them cowards when I'm trying to be gentle and understanding, but I've pretty much run out of those two things these days.

Elective Dictatorship or Leadership?

Ron Paul, I like you - I really do. I like it when you denounce our military adventurism and imperial urges. I share your distaste for prosecuting harmless, consensual acts and I don't think either of us like having a government dictate morality according to some chosen religious standards.

I couldn't agree more that we need to keep the governmental nose out of our personal choices that don't infringe on other people's rights. I think we have an inherent right to be left alone too, but when you assert that that same government can force a woman to continue a pregnancy I find it inconsistent. When you proclaim that President Obama is overstepping his presidential powers by taking action to end a dangerous drug shortage, I'm confused. I'm disappointed. Market forces alone aren't going to induce drug companies to make unprofitable products that some people need to stay alive and if they eventually do, it won't be soon enough for someone's mother or sister or child. There are times when the the noli me tangere market approach does not serve the public interest and times when human life is more important than the sanctity of inflexible doctrine.

Yes, I agree that our government was designed to move slowly, for inaction to be the default action as you said yesterday. I even agree that there is an invisible hand in the market, but I cannot understand how you can ignore the sometimes dire consequences of such slow moving or inert systems in a world that moves at a rate inconceivable in 1789.

Sure, eventually drug shortages will tend to rectify because of market forces. 'Tend to' and 'eventually' are expensive words however and the price is often paid in death and suffering. A car tends to steer itself in a straight line, but you know, sometimes someone has to grab the wheel if staying alive is a consideration.

I have to ask you how much needless death and suffering are you willing to force us all to endure to gild the vision of a withered and minimal state where things move only by themselves and the making of money is the only test of righteousness?

Dictatorship? Seriously? Isn't that a bit like calling the guy who pulls your kid out of a well a kidnapper because he didn't apply to Congress in advance through proper channels?

I believe in Democracy as much as you do and perhaps more. I mistrust radical change and I lean toward Libertarianism in many things, but unlike you, I do not belief in faith over fact. If there is a plague, if a dam breaks -- if that asteroid that passed close to us this morning had landed in Texas, I want someone to grab the steering wheel without having his hands tied by doctrines soaked in the tea of Utopian visions.

I have to ask "why now?" Were you as firm in protest of our previous president's extra-legal activities? The signing statements, the treaty breaking, the torture, the illegal search and seizure and surveillance? The wars that have killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed millions of lives and wasted trillions of dollars? Of course you didn't approve and neither did I, but there is a difference between an asteroid and a sand grain. Are we really confusing necessary course corrections with wanton disrespect for law, due process and freedom?

Why now? Or are you just jumping on the Obama Bashing Band Wagon because you're more of a loyal Republican and less interested in doing what needs to be done before too many people die than you'd like to admit?

The Liberals did it, the Liberals did it!

The reaction was swift and predictable. Trolls, whose abusive name calling I won't indulge by posting have assured me that the Arizona shooting was the work of a "Liberal" like me although a man obsessed with returning to the gold standard and pretty much toeing the Tea Party line sounds pretty conservative although I'm the first to say those words are less meaningful as descriptive words than they are as tribal markers. Enraged paranoid schizophrenic who was provided a target by irresponsible political rhetoric? But that won't do, this is a game for two parties, not for reasonable people.

Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?

I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)

The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets.

"Why would anyone want one?"

is the loaded question as though they weren't the choice of many yacht owners who find themselves in an updated and unwanted episode of Pirates of the Caribbean - and many of my friends have been. It's either that or buy an Uzi at twice the price. They used to be banned! it's said, and that's true - or sort of true since they weren't really taken off the marked by that ban. With a supply of tens of millions of units, banned weapons and accessories actually saw a boost in sales of "pre-ban" items, but that remains news to those who really are so far out of the great loop of reality they think a semi-automatic rifle is far more dangerous when it has a plastic military stock instead of a nice walnut one. No military in the world uses what we're told is an "assault rifle" and of course the famous ban didn't actually ban these civilian weapons -- but who reads? Who needs to when we have those freeze dried, microwaveable TV Dinner opinions available? Solidarity, on both sides of the mainstream, is too much fun to risk and emoting is the American pass-time, of course. But I digress.

"That Jared Loughner was legally able to obtain the gun and ammo that he used to attempt an assassination of a member of Congress, slay a federal judge, and kill others should send a shiver down the collective spine of this nation."

writes one website Jeremiah. How could we have made that illegal without making it illegal for millions and millions and millions of people who like to shoot targets, clay pigeons or real pigeons? How could we make it impossible when all our efforts to make things go away by outlawing them have failed and made the alleged problem worse? Are Democrats all about not trusting the citizenry and imposing prior restraints without probable cause? It's too easy for their opposition to make that case and apparently it's too hard for Democrats to recognize the contradiction or that they're equally the party of fear as the party that obsesses about taking away guns and imposing Sharia law. In fact this incident could be a gain for Republicans who have used the fear of more gun bans to make Democrats into depraved authoritarian bogeymen.

Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?

Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.

The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.

Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.

How the Far-Left Mirrors the Far-Right

The left, including this writer, has made a career out of denouncing right-wing extremism, mainly the Tea Party and those Republicans more interested in destroying a president – and in the process, the country – than they are in working to solve the very serious problems facing our country.

Liberals justifiably mock the right’s ignorance of basic civics, the country’s history and the Constitution; after all, part of being a responsible citizen is in knowing these things. Signs with misspelled words advocating “English Only” are met with derision; posters with the swastika are met with outrage. The right’s lies, distortions and hypocrisy are greeted with a mixture of ridicule and outrage and held under the microscope by non-partisan fact-checking organizations – along with those from the left.

Harsh criticism is leveled at the racism implicit in signs at Tea Party rallies and on billboards, on edited photographs, in emails and snail mail, and on social networks. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in their tasteless personal attacks on the current President and First Family; even the children are subjected to racist insults. These character defects should and do attract scorn from most decent Americans, regardless of political persuasion.

But do I detect an echo? Can it be said that the far-left is sounding like the extremists on the right and adopting some of those very same character flaws we so vigorously reject and condemn?

The Bloggerhood: Free Speech and Hypocrisy

Very early on in my blogging career I read about how Pam, a conservative over at The Oracular Opinion, stepped in to help her friend Shaw at Progressive Eruptions who had to have surgery and needed help to keep her blog running. Liberal bloggers applauded her acts of kindness; right wingers all but tarred, feathered and ran Pam out of Blogger Town on a rail. Her crime? Aiding and abetting the enemy.

A liberal who used the name Blackwaterdog was hounded off Daily Kos by a loud, noisy chorus of ugly rhetoric. She started her own blog appropriately named The Only Adult in the Room. But the “purists” weren’t satisfied; they wanted to annihilate her. This dehumanizing effort was led by none other than Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, a good buddy of Jane Hamsher’s at FireDogLake. Her crime? Posting positive picture diaries of the President and First Family’s activities.

Not everyone may be drawn to the content on The Only Adult but does this give her critics the right to compare her to Nazi propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl? Sound familiar?

The blatant hypocrisy and the total disregard for a person’s right to free expression because their speech is not agreeable with another’s is deplorable and unacceptable. But sadly, I see many comment zones turning into war zones with the far-left resorting to personal insults when disagreeing with more pragmatic liberals who in most cases share the same ideals but not the approach.

Sentamental History

I would have been surprised had the main street media not started attacking President Obama the moment he opened his eyes on the morning after the inauguration. But I was dumbfounded at the attacks from the so-called professional progressive blogs. They began mildly enough but very quickly their rhetoric turned into a cacophony of ugly vitriol not unlike that heard from the far-right. Even worse, professional and non-professional far-left bloggers resort to the same kinds of tasteless personally degrading labels that they criticize the right for using.

“Obama should be like LBJ was” or “Obama needs to do what FDR did” is not too far removed from “I want my country back.” The glaring but simple reality is that we can’t go back in time; our country is facing a different set of problems with a different cast of characters. More obviously, Obama is not like LBJ, just as LBJ wasn’t like JFK, and JFK wasn’t like HST, and HST wasn’t like FDR, and so on.

We get our kicks out of mocking the extreme right for its ignorance of history but the far-left can be just as ignorant of and blind to documented historical facts.

FACT: When legislation for Social Security was introduced, Franklin D. Roosevelt dropped the national health care provision that was originally included. Why did he – gasp! – compromise/sell-out/cave? Because at that time and place in our history, he wisely understood that the Republicans would say NO to health care reform and in the process kill Social Security as well.

I wonder if anyone on the far-left during those gloomy dark days of the Great Depression accused FDR of being corrupt, a puppet, inept or a snake oil salesman.

FACT: The Social Security Act, signed by FDR in 1935, only covered workers in commerce and industry. In 1937 the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) was passed; it required workers to pay taxes to support the Social Security system. In 1939 Social Security was expanded to include dependents and survivors. Not until nearly 25 years later in 1950 was it expanded to cover dependents and survivors. In 1956 Disability Insurance was created and has been expanded over the years.

FACT: LBJ never would have succeeded in getting civil rights legislation passed had it not been for Republican support. The Dixiecrats, led by Strom Thurmond, did everything in and out of the book to block it. Obama is not only burdened with the yellow Blue Dogs, he is faced with an unprecedented concrete wall of well-organized obstruction from the opposition – and now he has the far-left participating in the drive to bring his presidency – and thus the country – to its knees.

The lessons here should be obvious. Not every president can get everything he may have promised during a campaign; a foolish attempt to win no doubt but no more foolish than voters who take such promises at face value. Politics has never been a “take all or nothing” kind of game. Passing legislation is in fact the “art of compromise.” The “all or nothing” school of thought is not only unrealistic, the end result is nothing.

Bloggers Get Down and Dirty

The extremes on both sides of the political spectrum have a penchant for chanting infantile slogans: “I have a right to free speech” from the right translates into “I have a right to disagree with the president” or “I have a right to criticize the president” from the left. Yes and yes, but that is not the issue.The issue is not in the message but in the way it is delivered, the language.

Vicious epithets directed at the President of our United States are limited only by their crude imaginations. One side is just as repugnant, tasteless and vile as the other. Epithets from the right include: Spoiled Brat, Obama Bin Lyin, Half-breed Muslim, Barack Hussein Obama, No Clue Balls Obama, Robbing Hood, Nazi, Terrorist, Barack the Magic Negro.

What’s the difference between that kind of toilet tank talk and this used by far-left bloggers? Barack Bush, Nel, HomophObama, Pootie Tang, the Black Mr. Rogers, House Negro.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection between the use of such invectives and the fact that Obama is the first black president.

Headlines such as “Barack Obama the Anatomical Wonder. We’re Looking for Organ and Skeletal Donors for Barack Obama” (from one of my favorite blogs no less) and crude – as in content and production videos such as this one.

Other Mirror Images

Who cares what the majority thinks?
It’s all about “me”, not about “we”.
My preferences are more important than yours.
The president is ignoring our side.
I only listen to Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann.
What party of NO? What obstructionism?
Our country is on the verge of collapse. It’s the eve of destruction.
If I can’t have it all and NOW, I’m staying home.
I’m not paranoid. What denial?
Who? Me Whine?

. . . I know we liberals like to say that we don't march lock-step with our leaders as do the GOPers, but where does it say we have to destroy them with the same sort of dehumanizing invective and emasculating and emotional strafing that the far right uses on Obama? I have seen over my lifetime a radicalization of our politics and the extremes in both parties by true believers will keep us in a constant state of combat instead of making some sort of arrangement to get done the very important work that this country needs to get done.

I wish I had said this but I didn’t. It was included in an email from Shaw at Progressive Eruptions. I owe her a debt of gratitude for her insight and willingness to guide me and keep me on track.

There are several reasons I don’t visit right-wing sights: the epithets, the hysterics, the distortion of facts, the sniping, and the doomsday mentality. Maybe I’m just uncomfortable with extremes because I find myself visiting fewer and fewer far-left sites these days. I truly feel both extremes have a humanitarian problem and that if they don’t become more realistic and less pugnacious - more willing to give and take – it will not be because of Obama that this country collapses.

The rage is not about health care

President Obama could have proposed a tax rebate of $10,000 and the conservatives still would have gone stark raving mad. When the Health Care Bill passed Republicans and Tea Partiers turned into a raging sea of childishness, insanity, ugliness and stupidity.

Representative John Boehner went apoplectic chanting "Hell no, you can't." Frank Rich, in a New York Times Op-ed piece, The Rage Is Not About Health Care, suggests Boehner "had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons."
In a debate with David Ploffe on ABC's "This Week," Karl Rove frothed at the mouth and went on a non-stop tirade. Such antics have become less funny and less entertaining.

Republicans have shouted "you lie" and "baby killer" in House chambers, violating every rule of decency and decorum. To steal a phrase from Joe McCarthy, Republican Congressional representatives have become Tea Party "fellow travelers."

For over a year Tea Party protests have attracted increasingly large crowds. They have grown louder, uglier, more threatening and more violent as time has passed. They have shouted racial and homophobic slurs at respected members of Congress and have thrown bricks through their offices - similar to a mini-Kristallnacht in 1938 Germany.

According to Rich, there was heated reaction when Social Security was passed in 1935 and Medicare thirty years later. "When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association."

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill...you have to look to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer...

The election of a black president and a female House speaker, the appointment of a Latino to the Supreme Court, and a gay Congressional committee chairman "would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play."

In this writer's opinion, the Tea Partiers - just like the Birchers, the patriot groups, and other extremist groups have a serious case of paranoia. And racism - despite social scientists' claims to the contrary. Maybe they should have read the liberal blogs in the early days - especially those written by southerners.

The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935.By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist (Richard) Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

In my very humble opinion the Tea Partiers and Beck and Co. are one thin hair away from being seditious. If we were a police state, as that monumental wonder Beck proclaims, everyone of those thugs would be in jail.

Religious leaders speak out against Beck

Because they are fundamentalists, certain factions . . . oppose preaching a social gospel that attempts to make a relation between Biblical teachings and social problems. Thus they are often critical of the favored liberal social legislation of the National Council of Churches. . . .

The above paragraph is taken from a section about the John Birch Society in the book, The Far Right by Donald Janson, 1963.

Nearly 50 years later Glenn Beck's rants sound eerily identical to this right-wing extremist group. Goose-stepping along with the JBS, this fountain of lies and distortions "has suggested any church promoting 'social justice' or 'economic justice' was using code words for Nazism and communism."

I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!

If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place.

Later, Beck held up a picture of a swastika and one of a hammer and sickle, declaring again that "social justice" has the same philosophy as the Nazis and communists and that the phrase is a code word for both.

A small group of churches and religious leaders are speaking out against this poor excuse for a human being. Hopefully there will be a louder outcry as congregations gather to worship this weekend.
The strongest voice against Beck so far has been that of the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO and president of Sojourners and an evangelical leader.

When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches, I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show," he said. "This offends Christians. This is salt, something at the heart of their faith. It's something many of us have spent our lives trying to do, to practice.

Urging a boycott of Fox and requesting an invitation to appear on Beck's show for a little friendly chit-chat, Wallis said, "What do you say about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what do you say about Desmond Tutu, about Mother Teresa, what do you say to the reverends and rabbis who gave their lives to social justice because that is their faith?"

The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ USA, commented:

It's very disturbing," she added. "He's speaking on behalf of his political views and trying to take out of the biblical text the things that are going to oppose his political views. This is primarily a political motivation. ... It's not that Christians haven't been Nazis and socialists, but we're not talking about political parties here. We're talking about 2,000-year-old gospel.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he and his family are members, "suggested Beck's comments did not necessarily represent its position." In a kind of wet noodly way, the church issued a statement that read, "Public figures who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represent their own views and do not speak for the church."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Onward Christian Soldiers

Christian hate groups, patriot groups and all kinds of domestic terrorist groups are activating or re-activating in the name of God and country. They are like tiny benign tumors that grow into massive malignant cancers.
Sue just posted a piece about a new group called The Oath Keepers - the militant and armed side of the The Tea Party Movement.

Wing-nuts, in their infinite denial, like to proclaim that these groups do not exist. But they do and they are no better than such gangs as the Bloods and the Crips. In short, they are ignorant thugs who harass, intimidate and threaten their fellow citizens in the name of Christianity and love for our country.

Repent Amarillo is an evangelical hate group which has been "terrorizing the town of Amarillo." Their mission is to "work:"

1. Gay pride events.
2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”
3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood.
4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.
5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.
6. Spring break events.
7. Demonically based concerts.
8. Halloween events.
9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.

According to The Texas Observer, one of "Repent's" targets has been a swinger's club, Route 66.

Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to shine the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. “I don’t think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There’s no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down.

Because of complaints to the fire marshal and the city's code enforcement division, the club was shut down for five months for minor violations,"like the lack of separate-sex bathrooms." Membership is supposed to be private, but somehow the Repenters obtain the names and addresses and show up at parties at private homes. These good Christians trespass on private property and try to block cars from entering the driveway.
Meanwhile, Repent has put the Meads (the owners) on the brink of bankruptcy.

Since the protests started last year, the Route 66 building has been rented just three times, forcing the couple to put it up for sale. For Repent, God had delivered a victory. The group snatched up a Web site the Meads had let lapse, Route66SwingersClub.com, and turned it into a call for “adulterers” to “Repent or Perish!”

Ironically, but not surprisingly, Grisham was a "sexual sinner" before he got saved.

What’s next for Repent? They’ve posted a “Warfare Map” on the group’s Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park’s Walmart-funded “Earth Circle,” used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (“Allah is a false god”), and “compromised churches” like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).