From Rome to Rubio, The Last Crusade

Let's be clear, when politicians like Marco Rubio talk about a danger to the survival of Christianity, they're not talking about survival or about Christianity, they're talking about a danger to the power and authority of a certain definition of Christianity that many Christians would call by a different name. Whether or not he seriously thinks Christianity will die out, that nobody will or could be a Christian if the US allows people of the same sex to be party to a civil marriage contract, Rubio, as most politicians do, is using words in a consciously deceptive way.

How do we define, or more importantly how does the government define Christianity?  In fact the constitution forbids it to do so . There are and have been many such claimants to the robe and sandals and the reins of government, so Marco is surely being less than honest to refer to Christianity when he means his Church and its rules. He's being a damned liar by offering us fables about the origins of our laws or arguing from tradition.

Some people simply don't define Christianity as a secular authority primarily established to restrict the private sexual thought and behavior of all people. Certainly not since they never legitimately had such power, nor does the American Constitution state or imply that any legitimate power be given such authority, nor is or government empowered or obliged to "save" any religion, tradition or religious practice.

There is no unified, undisputed definition of  Christianity or of any religion or the doctrines thereof and to say anything else is prevarication. If the legalization of an inherent right of Man is a blow to Christianity I would suggest that a weakening of Christian authority must have preceded it as is the case in Ireland where years of censorship, control of education, marriage rights, reproductive rights and lastly the widespread abuse of women and children, turned Christian power into a thing of public loathing and anger. Indeed Democracy and the right to elect a government only succeeded after the Church lost the power to prevent it.

Rubio, like many of his Evangelical allies are consciously taking the risky position of posing what people approve or see as a right to be protected, as being the enemy of their tribal authority.  He needs to remember how all the other shibboleths have fallen, interracial marriage, blue laws, censorship, the inferiority of women and indeed slavery -- and fallen despite claims that Christianity was in jeopardy and God would punish us all for allowing it.  Sooner or later the prophet has to deliver or be swept away. It's not a good thing to be in power when the argument from tradition, the argument from authority is stretched so far that it snaps.

No, Christianity in some form or another will survive. Perhaps a kinder, gentler more respectful form. It's Marco Rubio and the various crusaders against the right of the people to decide their own rights who are at risk.  I truly doubt that Rubio isn't aware of the truth of that, or that he is unaware of  the kind of  State toward which the manifest destiny of free people inexorably  trends.  It's a shortsighted lust for power and with all his dishonest nonsense about Christian tradition, that tradition has never been about freedom of conscience or any kind of liberty.

As with his mumblings about how our Cuba policies have not failed after 50 years, it's a defense of blind, intransigent, self justifying power and authority and an attack on objectivity and the liberty of the citizen. Make no mistake, Rubio is against the idea that the government is of the people, by the people and for the people and legitimized only by the people and not by gods or politicians who pretend to speak for them.

One gets the idea that Pope Francis is well aware of all this and is concerned that Rubio's way of thinking is making the Church not only irrelevant, but unsustainable in the modern world, but as the Chinese were wont to say from ancient times, "Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away.". The Vatican has one policy, the parish priest and the pandering politician have another. Down at the level where the rhetoric hits the road it's still the old beast.

Christianity has survived a great deal  as it always has -- and it will change a great deal as it always has.  If anything is in danger, it's the guy staking everything on holding back the tide.

The Next American Civil War

Earlier this week, I called the office of Senator Marco Rubio – one of two senate representatives from my home state of Florida - to express concerns over the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter signed by 47 ‘unguided’ missiles of the GOP.

An aid to Senator Rubio took my call.  When I mentioned the Logan Act and the word “sedition” in due course, the conversation ended - with an abrupt disconnect.  Apparently, the aid did not like my drift and hung up the phone. How rude!  Do we wonder why citizens no longer believe their so-called “elected” representatives represent them!

Let's face facts:  The GOP is now an insurgency that no longer knows how to participate in a two-party system of government.  Republicans have crossed constitutional boundaries - with reckless disregard for centuries of tradition and protocol.  They disdain the free exchange of ideas and information in a democracy.  They are openly intolerant of any viewpoint and utterly contemptuous of any opposition.  They disrespect the parliamentary art of compromise and consensus and choose legislative hostage taking over governance.  In short, the GOP has morphed into a sovereign entity hell-bent on domination and suppression.

Between 2003 and 2005, three European allies negotiated a deal that would have frozen Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity at a very early stage.  At the time, Iran operated 164 centrifuges with a nuclear breakout capability at least ten years away.  Acting through the British government, the Bush/Cheney administration scuttled the deal.

Unbound from treaty obligations and a regimen of inspections, Iran has expanded its nuclear program to 19,000 centrifuges with a breakout capability of less than a year away – no thanks to a neoconservative administration that failed to seize an opportunity under far more favorable conditions. Right now, P5+1 negotiators have one more chance to freeze Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  Yet again, GOP neoconservatives are hell-bent on sabotaging this last and final opportunity (source).

In this debate, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.  In a single ‘Dear Tehran’ letter, the GOP shredded the Constitution and upended American diplomacy.  From this day forward, our nation will no longer be considered a trustworthy partner in world affairs.  Every international accord may be held in doubt – held hostage to the whims and caprices of partisan politics.  Shall we dismantle NATO?  Nullify the non-nuclear proliferation treaty?  Scuttle all trade agreements?  The fallout is already clear:  Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany described the letter as “not very helpful.”  Having been burned by American duplicity in the past, the Supreme Leader of our implacable adversary has concerns: "Of course I am worried, because the other side is known for … backstabbing" (source). 

Backstabbing, indeed!  Republicans have been backstabbing the American public for a very long time - holding us hostage to partisan ambitions with deception, defamation, demagoguery, legislative trickery and treachery, and blackmail.  The government shutdown of 2013 compromised the creditworthiness of the nation.  In failing to fully fund Homeland Security, the GOP left us vulnerable to terrorism.  In states across the land, GOP legislators have sponsored bills to:

• Suppress voting rights and disenfranchise citizens along partisan lines;
• Enlist the powers of government to serve as Enforcer of religious doctrine;
• Impose religious teachings and taboos upon the general population;
• Legalize discrimination and deny citizens their full rights under law;
• Assert the sovereign right of states to violate human rights.

Of all enemies, foreign or domestic, today’s Republican Party is by far the more dangerous of the two.  As a result, we are less safe and less free.  In a landmark essay originally published in 2011, former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren exposes the hidden agenda of his party:

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe …

If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America’s status as the world’s leading power.”

I consider the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter our Fort Sumter moment – the first shots fired in a second American Civil War. Consider this post a wakeup call.

Rubio Slippers

Hey, I'm not a scientist, man,  says Florida's Republican Senator and neither am I, but then I'm not an imbecile nor like Marco Rubio, willing to prostitute that pale and slimy vestigial appendage which he calls his integrity for a few votes.  Integrity, that nasty noisome thing he uses like a mop to soak up the sticky, slimy, scummy votes from the peep-show floor of  Southern politics.

He's not a scientist, so how can we expect him to know that the entire universe wasn't created by a sentient entity called Yahweh in seven "days?"  Can we even expect him to ask why we can see further than 6000 light years if it's only 6000 years old?  No, he'd have to be a scientist, he says and even so, there are different theories, just as there are different theories about whether or not  the Earth is flat and the universe, as it says in the bible, has water above and below it and there's a layer a few hundred feet 'above' us where magic creatures live.

You'd have to be a scientist, and even then you'd be baffled by all the 'theories' that abound which although solidly bolstered by irrefutable evidence and buttressed with repeatable observation are -- only theories. 

“I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says.” 

I guess those would be parents of unsound mind or minds as lacking in scope and commitment to honesty as Marco's.  Honesty?  No, I'm not talking about the honesty that would require one to rank 'theories' according to their correspondence to the observation of nature, I'm talking about the dishonest assumption that parents are being prevented from telling their children that some god created us from a clot, a lump of clay or an ear of corn.  A polite person would call it hyperbole. I would call it a lie. I would see it as a continuation of the Republican libel and the war against modernity and science.

 The government has nothing to say about what you teach your kids, but it does have something to say about what I pay, what we pay to have them taught and face it, Rubio doesn't want them taught about 13 Mayan creator gods or Refafu, or Chuckwu or Osiris or Allah. He's simply trying to find support amongst the most ignorant, the deliberately stupid, the accidentally stupid and the demented. He's fishing for the Christian Creationists with fear as the bait. He's playing to the Christian Crusaders who want this to be a nation under God with an established religion.

There are signs that this brand of Christianism, this brand of Conservatism are weakening. Some see it in the entrails of this last election. There's evidence that blind belief is losing ground. That's what I want to believe, of course and that's why I'm not qualified to answer.