The American Taliban

Well, Rick Santorum has joined Michele Bachmann in signing the Family Leader pledge, also known as

THE MARRIAGE VOW
A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY

As far as I can tell, that small "i" in the word family is supposed to denote humility or some crap. It's also the only sign of humility on the whole damned Family Leader website (other than repeated uses of the words "humble" and "humility," of course). They're associated with both "Focus on the Family" and the "Family Research Council," two of the most strident right-wing Christian conservative groups out there.

The president of Family Leader is Bob Vander Plaats, and he's a special breed of crazy. He's tried to explain in the past that same-sex marriage will inevitably lead to the suspension of the Constitution, the removal of property rights for individuals, and the destruction of the Second Amendment. (Yes, I'm serious about that.) His former campaign manager describes him as "obsessed with the gay-marriage issue."

Since most of the items on the Family Leader's little list have been staple Republican issues for years, I'm not entirely clear why so many of the other front-runners in the 2012 GOP Goat Rodeo are backing slowly away from it. Except that maybe, when you put it all in one place like this, it becomes a little more distasteful to the average American.

Because, really, what this "vow" wants is to put the Christian Taliban in place in America.

There have been a number of objections to parts of this pledge. For example, the first bullet point listed during the preamble to this steaming pile of piety is fascinating.

• Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an AfricanAmerican baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

As Cheryl Contee put it at Jack & Jill Politics:

Given that families were broken up regularly for sales during slavery and that rape by masters was pretty common, this could not be more offensive. I mean, putting aside the statistics on this, which are likely off-base, I could not be more angry. When will Republicans inquire with (sic) actual Black people whether or not we’re ok with invoking slavery to score cheap political points?

But let's take a look at the actual "Candidate Vow" that Bachmann and Santorum signed on to support, shall we?

Personal fidelity to my spouse.

So, we're not likely to see this supported by Newt Gingrich, are we? Or, for that matter, most Republicans. Somewhere between John McCain's divorces and John Boehner's rumored affairs, I don't see the GOP adopting this as a plank, really.

Respect for the marital bonds of others.

Unless you're gay-married. Because that's just icky.

Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.

See, now, there's a tricky issue, right there. Because a "faithful constitutionalist" wouldn't have allowed any Constitutional Amendments, would he? So that whole "Bill of Rights" thing? Yeah, that's out the window. We wouldn't have had to ban Prohibition, but, then again, we wouldn't have had Prohibition in the first place, so I guess there's that.

Oh, and blacks would only be three-fifths of a person. You know, it's the little issues like these that make me wonder about "constitutional originalists."

Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.

Yup, there's that gay marriage thing again.

Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.

Wow. Coming from people who refuse to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution and global warming, that's almost humorous. But what the hell does it really mean? "Recognition of the evidence?" Doesn't really say anything, except "yeah, I guess that's right..."

Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended "second chance" or "cooling-off" periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."

"uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy"? Wow, that would be a fascinating list. Of course, since you've already accepted their bullshit studies in the previous paragraph, I guess the list of what you have to support has probably already been made.

Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.

That's funny. You'd think that the part of DOMA that keeps states from having to accept gay marriages from other states would bother those "constitutional originalists," wouldn't it? You know, that whole Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1, US Constitution), where it says that "acts, records and judicial proceedings (from each state) shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States and its Territories and Possessions" as they do in the original state.

Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.

See? Once again, "constitutional originalists" who want to amend the fucking Constitution.

Logic. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

You know, right at first glance, that looks like a really good part of this whole vow. It's a list of stuff everybody should be against, right?

Well, look closer. Once you get past the "human trafficking" and "sexual slavery," you'll notice that "abortion" is right there next to "infanticide," you'll note that they're not only trying to ban prostitution, but pornography. (We'll be dealing, of course, with their definition of pornography.) And can you please explain what they mean by "seduction into promiscuity" or "other types of coercion or stolen innocence?"

I mean, come on! Do you know how many things have been said to lead to promiscuity? Music of just about every kind, whether rock, rap or pop - go back far enough, even jazz has been accused of being "devil music." The media in general might be at fault. Even dancing at all is immoral. (You didn't think that the screenwriter for Footloose - Dean Pitchford, if you're curious - got the idea out of nowhere, did you?)

It isn't just sexy clothing that lead our children away from the Paths of Righteousness, it might even be something as simple as pants.

The list is endless. So how far do you think these people will want to press the issue?

Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.

The gays again. This time in our military. (Maybe Vander Plaats really is obsessed with homosexuality. Methinks he doth protest too much...)

And incidentally, the womenfolk aren't strong enough to be in the military! They need to be back home pumping out babies!

Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.

Um... does that include the stuff in the Bible, too? Because I might be willing to support this if it did.

Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.

You know, that doesn't necessarily sound all that scary, because many of you might not be familiar with the Quiverfull movement. Yeah, they're out there.

Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

Except for those parts of the government that do the stuff we want, and the new parts to support the requirements of this vow right here...

Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

Free speech, but only for our side. You have to admire that one.

OK, so maybe I do see why the other GOP candidates aren't signing on to this.
_____________

Update (7/11/11): Although the link I used shows the original, it seems that FAMiLY LEADER has removed the only-offensive-if-you-know-a-black-person bullet point about slavery. And seriously, you can't blame them - there can't be more than 12 black people in Iowa, can there? And you can't expect Bob Vander Plaats to know all of them, can you?

Passion play

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

___________

If you managed to get through grade school, you've read this many times, but it never seems to influence the way Americans act or feel: a syndrome which seems more influenced by mob psychology and sectarian chauvinism than anything else. Of course it's long been this way and we've long been a xenophobic and gullible nation, but with the advent of round-the-clock swineherds like Fox, the grunting and squealing of feral hog America is drowning out the voice of our founding fathers and of decent men and women everywhere.

"even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." (Ben Franklin)

The same folks who want to persecute Muslims for their religion and prohibit the free exercise thereof will assert, without twitching their nostrils at the smell of hypocrisy, that this is a Christian nation and that Christian laws, whatever they might be, supersede our national laws about abortion, birth control, spending government funds on Christian activities and browbeating children into theological submission. It's not OK that a Muslim man doesn't want to drink alcohol or a Jew doesn't want to eat pork, but it's fine that a Christian pharmacist refuses to dispense condoms. Damn the constitution, we're a Christian nation. The laws of other religions need not apply and in fact, although there is no chance whatever that the United States will adopt the Quir'an as a replacement to the Constitution and body of laws, it's not enough for the grunting pigs of God who would like to make the free exercise of Islam illegal.

He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. (Isaiah 53:3)

The latest crusade seems to be about portraying every comment by every Muslim as an example of Sharia, from a cabby in Detroit asking that he not be forced to transport alcohol to someone praying in Arabic in front of the white house. According to one witness, he was asking for a blessing on those "Christians" who seemed oblivious to the staggering irony of a mob mocking and cursing a bearded man, bent in prayer, forgiving them for persecuting him. None of this has anything to do with any effort to replace our laws and courts with Islamic laws or Islamic judges nor can it since no effort exists. As to the rules of private observance - let's let only Christians do that! The only credible attempt or theocratic pretenders to the throne of course is by self-styled Christians, as the porcine squeals of the glossolalians Palin and Huckabee would prove.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen. . ." (George Washington)

Perhaps it's fortunate that such people are stupid enough to hoist themselves with their own petty petards. You'll recall and perhaps with a smile, Oklahoma's attempt to thwart the non-existent Islamic take-over by attempting a tin foil hat law banning all religious commands -- which in effect banned the Jewish commandments they had been trying to insert into American life, but we can't afford to depend on their congenital stupidity when so much is at stake. And yes, it takes a stupid man to think that somehow Americans would decide to write Sharia or Islamic tribal practices into American law in open defiance of the Constitution or that the tiny percentage of Muslim Americans would somehow magically or accidentally do it by themselves.

The courts have decisively ruled that the establishment and free exercise clauses forbid the Federal and State to prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion or atheism. The Torah, the Bible, the Quir'an, the Gita, the works of Nietzsche: state or Federal government may not adopt any of them as preferable, much less mandatory. But we're a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel people if I might borrow from T.E. Lawrence -- and a cowardly, ignorant and hateful people as well. "Conservative" legislators continue and will persist in thriving on our traditional sins by inventing threats which must be countered by measures to accelerate our inexorable descent into looserhood. They'll continue to demonize the way their predecessors demonized German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, African, Catholic, Jewish, Chinese and Indian immigrants and history will continue to prove them wrong.

Sarah Palin: No Laughing Matter

Of the Obama administration, she says, “They talk down to us. Especially here in the heartland. Oh, man. They think that, if we were just smart enough, we’d be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell ’em, and I do tell ’em, Oh, we’re plenty smart, oh yeah—we know what’s goin’ on. And we don’t like what’s goin’ on. And we’re not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.” The crowd’s ample applause at these lines swells to something vastly bigger when Palin vows defiantly that “come November, we’re taking our country back!”

The above lines are from an article by author Michael Joseph Gross for Vanity Fair. Gross followed Sarah Palin "...through through four midwestern states, speaking with whomever I could induce to talk under whatever conditions of anonymity they imposed—political strategists, longtime Palin friends and political associates, hotel staff, shopkeepers and hairstylists, and high-school friends of the Palin children. There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath."


I just read Gross' article. It's long, but well worth taking the time to peruse.

A lot of us, myself included, have been guilty of dismissing Sarah Palin. We laugh at her gaffes, marvel at the way that she mangles the English language, and deride her for her lack of knowledge on most topics of substance. But here's the deal, Sarah Palin is a very dangerous woman and if we are to neutralize her, the first thing that we have to do is take her seriously.

While we're making fun of Palin, she's methodically increasing her base, travelling through middle America, trash talking the Obama administration, and regularly invoking the name of Jesus. Her base doesn't think that she's stupid; they think that she's one of them, and when you insult her, you insult them.

I'm guilty of it, as are most progressives. The provincial and narrow view of the world expressed by Palin's followers offends me and I express my distaste by asserting that they are devoid of intellectual curiosity, which is just another way for stating that they're stupid. Once you tell people that they're dumb, they just aren't interested in hearing anything else that you have to say.

However, Palin has successfully tapped into the psyche of a lot of Americans, people who identify with her because they buy her assertions that she is one of them. She makes them feel that their view of the world is valid, that their prejudices and narrow belief systems are superior to those of the heathen liberals. Early on she recognized that Obama represents everything that they fear and dislike. When he speaks, they don't always easily follow what he is talking about so they presume that he's speaking some anti-American, anti-Christian code. Palin feeds their fire; she's their leader.

Perhaps Palin's most clever move is the focus on generating the tent revival atmosphere demonstrated at Beck's Restoring Honor rally. Palin has two texts that she regularly cites at her appearances, the Constitution of the United States and the Christian Bible, sometimes interchangeably. Her audiences eat the mishmash of secular law and religious belief as if it were the mythical manna from heaven, secure in their desire to get their country back and the belief that God wants them to have it.

I don't believe Christianity is inherently evil but I do believe that humankind has repeatedly demonstrated our ability to twist the precepts of any belief system to justify the worst aspects of our nature. Misdirected religious fervor soon swells into fanaticism, and history is littered with the horrors perpetrated in the name of religious fanaticism. These people believe that they're on a mission from God and that Palin is their angel of light guiding them to salvation, not just for themselves, but for the entire country. If they have to trample on the Constitution, run undocumented immigrants out of the country by any means necessary, and kill off the liberals in order to enact their vision and get their country back, then so be it.

The saving grace of this country has been that most people who consider themselves to be Christians have never been overly involved in organized proselytizing. There have always been exceptions, but not any significant numbers involved in forcing the word of God on all, just a few souls wandering through neighborhoods and knocking on doors on occasion. However, the Palin/Beck base are a different and dangerous breed, and they have found their prophets in Palin and her acolyte, Glenn Beck.

They are fueled by their fear and discontent; Palin and Beck provide them with answers that fit their view that they have been wronged and that their entire way of life is danger of being destroyed. Every time they hear someone speaking Spanish they fear that the conversation is about them. They deeply resent being unable to understand the conversation, after all, this is their country. So they angrily question, "Why can't these people learn English?" They also provide the answer, "They don't want to learn English!"

The black man in the oval office further confuses and upsets them. He must be up to something nefarious; he can't really be working for the good of all Americans. At the core of the obsession with so-called reverse racism is a subconscious belief that black people must have some desire for retribution. That belief fuels the vitriolic dislike expressed for President Obama and the obsessive beliefs that he is on the side of the terrorists, has plans to destroy the United States, and plans to chuck the Constitution and replace it with a socialist manifesto.

I vehemently disliked most of the policies of the George W. Bush's administration but I can't recall there ever being an assessment by progressives that GWB was intentionally and with malice aforethought attempting to destroy the country. Certainly, there have been accusations that certain actions on the part of past presidents would result in the destruction of the foundational beliefs of this country but never the assertion that the president in question ran for office for the express purpose of destroying America.

At the top of the progressive agenda must be plans to reframe our message to re-engage liberals and progressives prior to the November 2010 elections and to begin to lay the foundation for the 2012 elections. I'm not confident that there is any framing that will sway those who are enraptured of Palin and Beck, and I fear that the Palin/Beck base will continue to grow.

There is a great deal of apathy among progressives and liberals; declarations that Obama has betrayed us abound. Like a petulant child who didn't get everything on his or her Christmas list, far too many of us focus on what remains undone and look past all that has been accomplished. We threaten not to vote in order to teach the Democrats not to take us for granted.

It's time that we start taking Sarah Palin seriously; her base certainly does. If we don't, there may lessons learned in November 2010 and 2012 but we may the ones who are schooled.