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“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”


Friday, April 15, 2005

Theocratic Senate

So! Not only are Democrats bad for even considering using the filibuster, but the Republicans are setting them up as the party of Satan.

Via the NYT:

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

[snip]

Some of the nation's most influential evangelical Protestants are participating in the teleconference in Louisville, including Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Chuck Colson, the born-again Watergate figure and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries; and Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

[snip]

The telecast also signals an escalation of the campaign for the rule change by Christian conservatives who see the current court battle as the climax of a 30-year culture war, a chance to reverse decades of legal decisions about abortion, religion in public life, gay rights and marriage.

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."

This is insane. This really is. And it's essentially what my family was saying to me last night.

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posted by Tlachtga, 11:20 AM

Family

I had a fight with my family last night; why they need to discuss politics with me, I'll never know, since they know I don't agree with them. Started with complaints about the "liberal media" (and, well, let's not forget that I'm a journalism student) being against the war. My stepfather sneered at the coverage of the dead soldiers; "We had more casulties taking one island [in WWII; he was a marine in the Pacific] than in this whole war." And the obligatory arguments about the Iraq war started. Then it turned to religion--how the media, liberals, and the ACLU are trying to destroy the Catholic Church. Yeah. Because, you know, the Church never did anything horrible like the Inquisition, promote and permit slavery, and ignore and cover-up the pedophilia scandal.

I love my family, but man, I really can't understand the way they think.

This frightens me. Not just because of normal family divides, but because more and more, they seem perfectly happy with the idea of a pseudo-Christian fascist state. Not that they'd ever call it that--they're very much assured that this is simply a return to good morals. That people should go to church (let's not forget that dear daughter, your blogger here, is a Pagan). That people shouldn't live in sin (again, Pagan Liberal Commie Reporter daughter lives with her boyfriend).

I worry, because I see how, if their worldview were implimented, I'd be first against the wall. I don't know if they think of it that way--they probably don't. But the people my family supports are the type of people who are bucking for a Christian Fascism that spells death for people like me.

I don't know if they know this. I don't know if they're thinking beyond their own community. My parents aren't stupid people. They know evolution happened. They didn't like MacCarthy. But...

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posted by Tlachtga, 11:15 AM

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

More Press for the Theocrats

Well, it seems that little conference of Christian Reconstructionists billed as "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" has gotten even more press, this time from The Nation:

"I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!"

Yep. That's your future right there, kiddies.

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posted by Tlachtga, 12:15 PM

Ashamed

It's bad enough that Cardinal Law was allowed to say a memorial Mass for John Paul II; but the only other American cardinal to attend? Even though all the other American cardinals avoided it like the damned plague? Justin Regali, cardinal of Philadelphia--as in, yeah, my hometown cardinal.

Now, I have a funny relationship with Catholicism. I was raised Catholic, and my family is very, very religious, having produced priests, nuns, brothers, and eucharistic ministers. But myself, I stopped being Catholic a long time ago. When I was a senior in high school (CATHOLIC high school, BTW), I converted to Paganism, and I've stayed there since. But I've never been able to leave Catholicism as a cultural influence; I'll still pray to saints for things (dear Saint Anthony, please come around, something is lost and can't be found)--for me, it's no different from praying to the ancestors. So when something happens in the Catholic Church, I still feel affected, even though I don't actually live by their precepts anymore. I don't know why, but I do.

But beyond that, this is a black eye not only on Catholics, but on Philadelphians. Regali's embarressed the city and has thumbed his fat nose at those who've been molested by priests.

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posted by Tlachtga, 9:45 AM

Monday, April 11, 2005

Theocracy Getting Press

Salon has an article on theocracy--specifically its relationship to the Terry Schiavo case, Tom DeLay, and judicial "activism"--coming to the same conclusions that I have, namely that these Christian Reconstructionists wish to entirely dismantle the judiciary system.

In short--be afraid.

Of course, Salon's article is a case of preaching to the converted, so to speak--sure, politically acute liberals are generally already familiar with this, and Salon has covered it before. However, Dana Millbank in The Washington Post has also been aware, noting the rather disturbing rhetoric coming out against Justice Kennedy:

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

I mean, JAY-zus, they're taking talking points from Stalin now?

Here's the thing about the Salon article--they make a point that's been reverberating around my head for a while now:

It is a challenge to know how seriously to take this sort of thing. The world inhabited by most of those at the conference seems so at odds with empirical reality that one expects it to collapse around them. With each new lunacy perpetrated by religious fundamentalists, progressives tell each other that any second the pendulum will swing the other way and some equilibrium will return to our national life. They've been telling each other that for more than four years. But the influence of religious authoritarianism keeps growing.

Exactly. Laugh all you want; who thought the Czars would be killed off? Who thought a guy who looked like Charlie Chaplin on a bad day would start a world war?

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posted by Tlachtga, 12:10 PM