Dwindling Christian Right Turns Into Cornered Animal, Lashes Out at Civil Rights and Democracy

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By CJ Werleman

Dwindling Christian Right Turns Into Cornered Animal, Lashes Out at Civil Rights and Democracy

 

Demographic peril is taking on the form of political desperation.

 

 

February 26, 2014  |  

 

Like a cornered animal, which turns instinctively to confront pursuing predators, the Christian Right, knowing it represents the views of an ever shrinking number of Americans, is engaged in an existential fight to the death. Veto or no veto, Arizona’s anti-gay bill is just another of its many efforts to transform America’s secular democracy into a tyrannical theocracy.

The Christian Right’s dirty little secret is they are acutely aware that changing demographics are running against them. While they may believe the earth is a mere few thousand years old, they’re not complete idiots. They can read polls, and the data tells them this: millennials are abandoning religious belief. According to a recent Pew survey, one in four Americans born after 1981 hold no religious belief, which is nearly double the national rate of atheism. Other studies confirm this trend, including a recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute showing more than half of non-religious Millennials have abandoned their childhood faith.

With this in mind, the nation’s radical religious fundamentalists see an ever-shrinking window to impose their Bronze Age worldview on the gay, atheist, liberal, immigrant, heathen, and science book-reading masses. The American Taliban is as deeply troubled by the thoughts of a gay man “sneaking a peak” of a heterosexual man in an NFL locker room as much as they’re freaked out over seeing Cam and Mitchell, the gay couple on "Modern Family," adopt an Asian child. For the intellectual infants of the American species, progressive culture is nothing more than a 24/7 infomercial for gay sex and abortion. That frightens our unfriendly theocrats because biblical fundamentalists are more concerned with the goings on in the bedrooms of others than they are within the guilt-ridden, sexless confines of their own.

Salon columnist Brian Beutler writes that measures like Arizona’s SB1062 bill have emerged in a number of states out of “a wellspring of conservative panic about the country’s abrupt legal and cultural evolution into a society that’s broadly tolerant of gay people.” He adds, “Rather than deny the shift, or stop at trying to reverse it in legislatures, the courts and at ballot boxes, conservatives are instead attempting to erect a legal architecture that will wall them off from the growing portion of American society that supports equal rights for gay people.”

These “religious freedom” bills did not arrive here overnight; they are three decades in the making. Prior to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, no serious presidential candidate ever claimed to have been “born again,” and the emphasis of faith for a politician seeking high office was as rare then as a candidate declaring his atheism is today. When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson established the Christian Right (aka the Moral Majority) in 1979, no serious political commentator believed they could play a significant role in electoral politics. The screenwriter Norman Lear joked, “The Moral Majority is neither the moral point of view, nor the majority.”

Long story short, the Christian Right swept Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980. The Sarasota Journal wrote as much on Feb 9, 1981: “The merging of the political right with the religious right has taken the country by surprise.” It’s now 2014, and the most intellectually and morally stunted segment of American society continues to take this nation by surprise.

The Christian Right has not only moved from the fringes to become the main strain of the Republican Party; it is the Republican Party. These radicals continually surprise us for the fact casual political observers mistakenly believe they represent the far-right fringe. You cannot sugarcoat the fact that a majority of Republicans in Arizona’s House, and also a majority of Republicans in Arizona’s Senate voted for this anti-gay law. Likewise a majority of Republicans in Kansas’ House voted for a similar bill. They voted for it because they want the freedom to discriminate against individuals they claim the Bible finds abhorrent.

Worryingly, this act is a small part in a big pantomime to transform America into a theocratic nirvana—one that is absent gays, Muslims, immigrants, atheists, and science books. To achieve this, the instrument of choice is nullification. It is nullification of the federal government that weds theocrats together with libertarians and the neo-confederate movement. Since 2010, state legislatures have put forward nearly 200 bills challenging federal laws its sponsors deem unconstitutional. Typically, laws the nullifiers believe challenge “religious liberty,” the Affordable Care Act, and gun control.

In an editorial for Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall observes that since the election of Obama and the rise of the Tea Party, “there's been more and more reaching back to the discredited ideas of nullification, interposition and even, at the truly fringe extreme, secession. They are each efforts to preserve power for disempowered minorities after they've lost battles in the standard majoritarian system. More simply, they're workarounds to get out of the consequences of losing political fights. And by definition they are rearguard actions. American history and constitutional jurisprudence has consistently ruled against them.”

Marshall is right in part. But the point he misses is that elections are no longer determined by majority view, but rather by the availability of an endless pipeline of campaign cash, and on that social conservatives are no longer playing second fiddle to establishment Republicans. Thanks to Internet fundraising and changes to campaign finance laws, it’s now a case of the tail wagging the dog. According to the Federal Electoral Commission, Tea Party and social conservative groups raised nearly three times as much as GOP establishment groups in 2013, which is how you end up with a majority of Republicans in both houses of the Arizona congress voting for SB1062 in 2014.

Salon's Beutler writes, “The bad news is that this phenomenon isn’t limited to homophobia, and doesn’t always masquerade as an exercise of religious freedom. As America grows more liberal, conservatives are retreating into a variety of interlinking, but isolated subcultures and, when necessary, making or manipulating law to insulate themselves from contact with the masses.”

The Christian Right’s ideology drives virtually all social policy debate within the Republican Party, whether it's immigration, women’s reproductive rights, the death penalty, or same-sex marriage.

Chris Hedges says the Christian Right’s ideology calls for the “eradication of social 'deviants,' beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these 'deviants' are removed, other 'deviants,' including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as 'nominal Christians'—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The 'deviant' government bureaucrats, the 'deviant' media, the 'deviant' schools and the 'deviant' churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these 'deviants' will be annulled. 'Christian values' and 'family values' will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.”

While the Christian Right is becoming the dwindling minority, it remains an existential threat to civil rights, secularism and our democratic values. It's a threat fueled by a seemingly unlimited supply of campaign finance, and a rabid base that believes it’s fighting for its place in a 21st-century world it can’t reconcile against an ancient book that says gays are an abomination. You know, like shellfish.

CJ Werleman is the author of "Crucifying America," and "God Hates You. Hate Him Back." Follow him on Twitter: @cjwerleman

The right’s Ayn Rand hypocrisy: Why their “religious” posture is a total sham

SALON

Friday, Feb 28, 2014 07:45 AM EST

The right’s Ayn Rand hypocrisy: Why their “religious” posture is a total sham

 

Conservatives booted atheists from CPAC, but love a raging anti-Christian. The reason has to do with economic greed

Elizabeth Stoker

Topics: Ayn Rand, The Right, GOP, Christianity, Atheism, CPAC, Editor's Picks, Christian Right, Religion, Paul Ryan, Politics News

 

Ayn Rand (Credit: AP)


 
Earlier this week, CNN reported that American Atheists, an advocacy group for atheists and atheism, would have a booth at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference. The idea behind the booth was to build bridges between historically faith-motivated conservatives and their politically aligned but religiously different atheist counterparts. David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, called the booth “one of many steps” his organization would take in its “outreach effort” targeted at political conservatives.

But the Atheists’ attempt to extend an olive branch was evidently ill-received by the organizers of the CPAC, who have now disallowed the group from sponsoring its planned informational booth. Apparently most conservatives weren’t amused by Silverman’s comments to CNN concerning the Christian right: ““I am not worried about making the Christian right angry. The Christian right should be angry that we are going in to enlighten conservatives. The Christian right should be threatened by us.”

So much for American Atheists’ short-lived liberation effort, which seems to have been aimed as much at bringing to light already-existing atheist sentiments on the right as in inculcating them into current believers. But if the American Atheists’ goal is to make public quiet inklings of atheism in seemingly faith-saturated conservative circles, an incendiary conversion attempt based out of a booth at CPAC is likely the worst tack to take. After all, a much more successful war against religion on the right has been waged by none other than perpetual philosophical train wreck and failed film critic Ayn Rand.

Rand is perhaps the only virulently anti-Christian writer that Republicans nonetheless routinely feel comfortable heaping praise upon. In a charming 1964 interview with Playboy, Rand described the crucifixion of Jesus in terms of “mythology,” and submitted that she would feel “indignant” over such a “sacrifice of virtue to vice.” That Christians are called to care for the most vulnerable of God’s people was, to Rand, manifest proof that the religion has nothing constructive to add to human life: After all, in her philosophy, “superiors” have no moral obligations to those weaker or more vulnerable than they. According to Rand, the Christian moral imperative to serve the needy is a “monstrous idea.”

In a surprising jolt of coherence, Rand held precisely the position such a disdain for Christian humility would suggest: that the strong are the rightful lords over the weak, and that those with the capabilities to secure wealth and resources should be more or less unimpeded from doing so, the rest of humankind be damned. It’s likely this philosophical tenet that wins her so many fans on the right, among them Paul Ryan, Clarence Thomas, Gary Johnson and Rand Paul.

Speaking of Rand in 2005, Paul Ryan noted “I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are … It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.” Ryan went on to claim that Rand was the very reason he went into politics in the first place, and that it’s important for the future of America to return to Rand’s vision. Though he’s since repudiated – to some confusing degree – his former commitment to Rand, Ryan’s policies have undergone no significant changes between the before and after.

Paul’s love of Rand seems to be only one drop in a current of adoration for the woman’s writing; Clarence Thomas reportedly holds yearly screenings of the film version of her book “The Fountainhead” for all new law clerks, while Gary Johnson evidently gave a copy of her book “Atlas Shrugged” to his fiancée with the romantic addendum “If you want to understand me, read this.” Praise for Rand in minor mentions and allusions is even more widespread, so much so that very few murmurs of distress are raised when conservative politicians wax sentimental about her work.

This dearth of criticism is rather startling, especially for a set so manifestly averse to atheism – at least, when called by such a name. (“Objectivism,” the title of Rand’s philosophy, perhaps smuggles into decent discourse what American Atheists were at least honest enough to make explicit.) In March 2008, President Obama’s then-pastor Jeremiah Wright was raked over the coals in conservative media for willing that God should damn America, but at least that sentiment acknowledges that there is a God whose authority exists over and above that of the state. If statements that agree with the Christian right’s fundamental beliefs about existence receive that kind of criticism, what accounts for the tacit conservative acceptance of Rand’s extreme anti-Christian tendencies?

One explanation comes from David Silverman himself, who submits that “Just as there are many closeted atheists in the church pews, I am extremely confident that there are many closeted atheists in the ranks of conservatives.” It could well be the case that Rand’s extraordinary anti-Christian philosophy slips by mostly unremarked upon because there really is no significant objection to it.

But it’s more likely the case that conservatives, in wanting to maintain a political system that routinely disadvantages the vulnerable, simply ignore in Rand what rhetoric they don’t like while championing that which they do. The trouble with this is that Rand’s entire notion of morality is predicated upon the idea that a sacrifice such as Christ’s would be morally wrong, which means all ethics that flow out of her work will contain in them that seed of conflict with the central message of Christianity. Whether conservatives like it or not, to advance a Randian political ethic is to further an ethic that fundamentally denies the goodness of the sacrifice of Christ, and thereby can never be brought to union with any serious Christian ethics.

In 1971, Rand wrote, “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.” That the supremacy of reason directly necessitates egoism for Rand suggests she had one thing right: that, as Jesus said, “no one can serve two masters.”

If Randian reasoning is regarded as supreme, then the only authority worthy of service is oneself. But Christian ethics fundamentally and entirely reject such a notion, and much of scripture warns against the temptation to fall into the service of masters other than God. For the many elite conservatives who love Rand, the mission of Silverman and American Atheists may not, therefore, be necessary after all: that there’s any agreement whatsoever with Rand’s ethics suggests any relationship with Christianity is purely one of convenience, not commitment.

More Elizabeth Stoker.

Rand Paul struggles to understand what he doesn’t understand

msnbc

The Rachel Maddow Show

Rand Paul struggles to understand what he doesn’t understand

08/27/13 04:51 PM—Updated 10/02/13 10:03 PM

By Steve Benen

 

 

Rand Paul struggles to understand what he doesn't understand

Associated Press

 

 

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has been feuding with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for a while, and a couple of weeks ago, the governor made his pitch at a Republican National Committee meeting in Boston.

“I think we have some folks who believe that our job is to be college professors,” Christie said. “Now college professors are fine I guess. Being a college professor, they basically spout out ideas that nobody does anything about. For our ideas to matter we have to win. Because if we don’t win, we don’t govern. And if we don’t govern all we do is shout to the wind.”

Hearing this, one might get a certain impression about competing contingents within the party, and the larger fight between pragmatism and idealism. Christie, in this vision, is the pragmatist, who has no use for Paul, with his head in the clouds, pondering questions better left to philosophers.

But the takeaway from this may be misleading. If one is left to believe that the junior senator from Kentucky uses his expertise on principles to compensate for his lack practical solutions, this is a terrible error. Paul is neither the learned philosopher or the practical problem-solver.

Take the senator’s understanding of the concept of “rights,” for example.

“There’s a philosophic debate which often gets me in trouble, you know, on whether health care’s a right or not,” Paul, in a red tie, white button-down shirt, and khakis, tells the students from the stage. “I think we as physicians have an obligation. As Christians, we have an obligation…. I really believe that, and it’s a deep-held belief,” he says of helping others.

“But I don’t think you have a right to my labor,” he continues. “You don’t have a right to anyone else’s labor. Food’s pretty important, do you have a right to the labor of the farmer?”

Paul then asks, rhetorically, if students have a right to food and water. “As humans, yeah, we do have an obligation to give people water, to give people food, to give people health care,” Paul muses. “But it’s not a right because once you conscript people and say, ‘Oh, it’s a right,’ then really you’re in charge, it’s servitude, you’re in charge of me and I’m supposed to do whatever you tell me to do… It really shouldn’t be seen that way.”

Perhaps this is “a philosophic debate” that often gets Paul “in trouble” because he’s spouting gibberish.

As Paul Waldman responded, it turns out “you can be a libertarian and not actually have spent any time thinking about those big ideas!”

Paul is obviously unaware of this, but saying that health care is a right doesn’t mean that doctors have to treat people without being paid, any more than saying that education is a right means that public school teachers have to work for free. Because we all agree that education is a right, we set up a system where every child can be educated, whether their families could afford to pay for it themselves or not. It doesn’t mean that any kid can walk up to a teacher in the street and say, “I command you to teach me trigonometry for free. Be at my house at 9 tomorrow. You must do this, because I have a right to education and that means I am in charge of you and you’re supposed to do whatever I tell you to do.”

All this talk of “servitude” and “conscription” is just baffling. The only way I can interpret it is that libertarianism is something Paul picked up from his dad, and it seems to go over well with Republicans when he mentions it, but he hasn’t spent any time thinking about it.

Now, I suspect some Rand Paul defenders would say, “Fine, he doesn’t understand the idea of rights on a conceptual level. But he’s more familiar with other stuff.”

Except, he’s not. The senator says he cares deeply about minority rights, which he struggles to grasp. Paul talks about drone policy, which he flubs badly. He’s expressed a great interest in the Federal Reserve, which he doesn’t understand in the slightest. Paul claims to hate Obamacare, but he fails to appreciate what the policy is and what it does. He says he’s deeply concerned about the deficit, but doesn’t know what the deficit is.

The senator has a great number of opinions, many of which appear to be completely nonsensical.

And that wouldn’t be terribly problematic – there are plenty of silly people in Congress – except Rand Paul wants to be considered by friend and foe alike to be a deep thinker. He is, in Chris Christie’s words, the philosophical “college professor.”

As a rule, professors have some idea as to what they’re talking about, especially when addressing the issues they’re most heavily invested in.

Rand Paul still doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand.

6 Signs of Psychosis From GOP Fringe This Week

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld

6 Signs of Psychosis From GOP Fringe This Week

 

 

The party of bullies, bigots and blowhards prays for a new Jim Crow. 

 

 

 

February 22, 2014  |  

 

Last week was filled with more idiotic outbursts from right-wingers, except some of them went beyond infantile rants and raves to posing real-life harm. As is often the case on the fringe these days, the tone was set by the biggest bigot from the biggest state, Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.    

1. Ted Cruz: Pray for discrimination.

What is Texas’s Tea Party senator seeking now? This week Cruz called on supporters to “simply pray” that LGBT Americans did not get equal legal rights because same-sex marriage was “heartbreaking.” Yes, pray for a new Jim Crow.
In an interview with conservative radio host Janet Mefferd, Cruz started by saying that he introduced the “State Marriage Defense Act” to undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down parts of the federal government’s ban on marriage equality. He accused liberal groups of using “brute power” to wage an assault and “subvert our democratic system.” Then the Harvard Law School graduate, who forgets that an elite Republican lawyer argued for expanding gay rights before the court, issued his hateful hope.

Cruz said that gay marriage threatened liberty and he urged people to pray to God that gays and lesbians don’t get equal marriage rights. “I think the most important thing your listeners can do is simply pray, because we need a great deal of prayer,” he said. “Because marriage is really, really being undermined by a concerted effort. And it’s causing significant harm.”

When right-wingers like Cruz pray for discrimination, a curious thing happens. God doesn’t RSVP ASAP. But other right-wingers do.

2. Answering Ted’s hateful prayers, exhibit A.

A day after Cruz prayed for discriminatory divine intervention, the heavens—or rather the AM broadcasting spectrum—replied. Wrath-filled right-wing radio host Mark Levin didn’t like a libertarian caller’s opinion that LBGT Americans deserved equal legal rights and he disagreed that evangelizing moralists should stay out of people’s sex lives.

What about women in polygamist marriages, Levin replied, saying they don’t have equal legal rights. (Umm, polygamy is illegal in most states.) Then Levin, ever the AM loudmouth, unleashed a torrent about needed moral lines. “I’ll give you an example to be as clear as I can,” he said. “What if an individual decides to have sex with a close relative? And what if it’s both agreed to, they both agree to it?”   

Ted Cruz prays for discrimination and Mark Levin answers by saying gay marriage is like father-daugher incest. Levin doesn’t need a microphone, he needs a psychiatrist.

3. Answering Cruz: Exhibit B, the other Ted.

Not to be upstaged, another foul-mouthed Ted—dinosaur rocker Ted Nugent—sprang up on the Texas campaign trail on Tuesday and spewed more predictable right-wing filth to boost Republican Attorney General Gregg Abbott’s bid for governor. The Detroit-born Ted answered Texas Ted’s prayer for discrimination by calling President Obama a "subhuman mongrel,” among other things. It wasn’t the first time he’s said it. However, this time the national media took note.

Abbott replied with the political equivalent of a shrug and a sly smile. Democrats quickly pointed out that the messenger was a mess, a known sexual predator for underage girls. Anyone who has followed Abbott’s antics as AG could hardly be surprised. This is the lawman who sent Texas Rangers to arrest Latino grandmothers—one while taking a shower—for registering voters, marching past local drug dealers and crack houses.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had the right take, noting on-air that Nugent’s hate speech was almost identical to one of the slurs used by Nazis against Jews. That point—and sense of history, of how hate speech can incite real racial violence—was lost on Nugent, who abruptly canceled his appearance on CNN afterward. Nugent, another right-wing crybaby who is afraid to stand by his words in unfriendly forums, turned to Twitter and lashed out, comparing CNN and Blitzer to the Nazi’s propaganda wing.

Then Sarah Palin chimed in, endorsing Abbott on Facebook. “If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!” 

4. More rock-ribbed Republicans with thin skins.

Too bad we can’t give Texas back to Mexico. There’s more poisonous political behavior from the Lone Star state. (That’s one star on a scale of one to five.) What is in the water that creates deluded self-appointed patriots who can dish it out but can’t take it?

Orange County, Texas, population 81,837, lies in the state’s swampy southeastern corner. This week, Jerry Wilson, age 70, a candidate for county GOP chairman, showed us that the GOP is the party of angry white men. On Tuesday, he became enraged when he saw a volunteer from another campaign removing his signs and replacing them with one calling him a RINO, which means Republicans In Name Only. RawStory.com reports what happened next:

“I [Wilson] walked over to him and said ‘you’re pulling up my signs and destroying them.’ He said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ It was a fight. He was landing punches, too. I can tell you this. He will remember the day. Whatever my punishment is, I’ll take it. If I had to do it over again I don’t think I’d change one thing. He deserved what he got.”      

Wilson was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge for his senior moment and released on a $1,000 bail.

On Friday, Nugent half apologized. Gregg Abbott hasn’t said a thing. And Sarah? Well, that uppidy Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann bounced her out of the spotlight, saying Hillary Clinton would never be president because there isn’t a “pent-up desire for a woman president.” She added, “There was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt. People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”

Yup, the country wasn’t ready for Bachmann when she ran for president in 2012, and that’s why Obama was relected twice—tidal waves of electoral guilt.

5. Bitten by one’s own words.

Speaking of guilt, another leading Republican who looks in the mirror and sees a saint is watching his presidential prospects crumble. Like his fellow Republican bully colleague, New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been trapped by his own lies. An email trove released this week in the midst of an independent prosecutor’s political corruption inquiry confirmed that Walker was running parts of his campaign for governor out of the Milwaukee County executive’s office, his prior job. That’s a big no-no under state election law that bars electioneering from public offices.

But the trove revealed something far more interesting than these election law denials. Emails revealed how Walker and his staff were bullies and creeps with capital Bs and Cs. Like New Jersey’s Christie, Walker’s top aides took glee in bullying and mocking. The man-who-would-be-Wisconsin-governor burnished his uptight white guy credentials by firing a county-employed female doctor who modeled thongs on the side. His ex-deputy chief of staff replied to an email comparing non-white welfare recipients to dogs, saying, “That is so hilarious and so true.” Another email among top staffers described a nightmare in which someone wakes up as a “black disabled Jewish homosexual with a Mexican boyfriend.” The person ends up being a Democrat. 

6. Even more right-wing fantasies.

With Republican friends like these, who wouldn’t want to be a Democrat? But snarkiness aside, the right-wing political ayslum is a dangerous nuthouse. Witness the latest bit from inmate Tom Delay, who says people forget that God wrote the U.S. Constitution. That’s the treatise that protects religious freedom and keeps it out of government, needless to say. Yet dangerous things can happen when these members of the American Taliban become blinded by their faith and burning desire to believe anything they say.  

When you start with praying for discrimination, preach intolerance on national airwaves, spew hate-filled rants on the campaign trail, and don’t have thick enough skin to dish it out but not take it, and enjoy bullying and jokes based on racial stereotypes, what does that yield? A spectrum of bad to psychotic behavior.

Witness the week’s other news, such as a noose found around the neck of a statue of the first black man to attend the University of Mississippi, or an all-white high school wrestling team from New Jersey posing in a mock lynching photograph with a black dummy. In Ted Nugent’s world, this is America—get over it.

But repugnant beliefs—not mere distortions—have a way of infiltrating politics, and that is where Ted Cruz’s prayer to God for anti-LGBT discrimination gets serious. Take what happened in Arizona this week. Its legislature passed a bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve anyone—the target was same-sex couples—if it violated their personal religious beliefs. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has not yet signed it.

God may not be answering Cruz’s prayer for discrimination, but other Republicans are.

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

7 Deranged Comments from America's Far-Right This Week—Ted Cruz's Achy Breaky Heart Edition

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By Janet Allon

7 Deranged Comments from America's Far-Right This Week—Ted Cruz's Achy Breaky Heart Edition

 

Plus, Tom Perkins thinks more wealth should mean more votes.

Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock.com

 

 

February 15, 2014  |   

 

 

 

1.Ted Cruz’s ‘heart weeps’ because of marriage equality gains.

Our favorite nut-job senator from Texas was holding forth again this week, and our ears were hurting. Texas Senator Ted Cruz explained to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins how his proposed State Marriage Defense Act  would, “make it more difficult for married same-sex couples to receive legal recognition.”

Thanks, Ted.  We were worried about that.

But the crusading lawmaker didn’t stop there.  He explained how the Obama administration’s support for gay equality was “an abuse of power and lawlessness.”

“Our heart weeps for the damage to traditional marriage that has been done,” Cruz sobbed.  Or at least his heart did.  “Marriage is under attack,” he warned.  “There will be pushback from the country when people see the consequences of this redefinition of marriage.”  Curiously, he did not elaborate on these dire consequences.  An oversight, we’re sure.

Anyway, we’re confident Senator Ted will save us.  As soon as his heart stops weeping, that is.  Messy business. We know a good cardiologist if he needs one.
See more here.

2. WSJ’s James Taranto says intoxicated young women are equally to blame for their own rapes.

James Taranto graced readers with another glimpse into his “war on men” theory in a column Monday, which promised “a balanced look at college sex offenses.” Taranto is very concerned that young men are mostly being blamed when they have sex without a young woman’s consent, in other words, rape, them. He thinks that when both parties are drinking, the young women who are assaulted are equally to blame. “If both parties are intoxicated during sex, they are both technically guilty of sexually assaulting each other," he argues.
Girls drinking too much, and dressing too provocatively are the problem, all right.

“What is called the problem of "sexual assault" on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)

So, wait, does that include gang bangs and the use of roofies too? Maybe so in Taranto’s deranged world, where, wait, a woman could be charged with sexual assault for having sex without her own consent.

Maybe we should consult Bill Cosby on this question.

3. Tom Perkins: Wealthy Americans should get more votes.

Visionary one percenter, Tom Perkins, who sees Nazis when he sees Progressives, and increasing taxes on the rich as a totalitarian takeover of democracy, piped up again this week. This deep thinking venture capitalist suggested that only taxpayers should have the right to vote at all, and wealthy Americans who pay more taxes should get more votes, especially guys like himself.

"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said, at a Fortune magazine forum. "But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

When the audience guffawed—he had to be kidding, right?—he stuck to his guns. It makes total sense to him. Democracy should be just like a corporation.
Yeah. One man, one vote. That’s so yesterday.

4. Clarence Thomas: Funny, race never even came up in the 60s.

It’s always comforting when a lifetime member of the highest court in the land says something that leaves your jaw hanging agape.

Justice Clarence Thomas does not make a lot of public statements, but when he does, well, it makes you realize why he does not make a lot of public statements.

Thomas recently told a bunch of college students that race relations in America were better when he was a kid in the 1960s. Yes, he did. He said that.

“My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up.”

Hmmm. Perhaps the subject of race did not come up because you could be lynched for bringing it up. Let’s see, it was the height of the Civil Rights Movement when Thomas was a kid. Segregation was pretty much the norm, throughout the south, and parts of the north—certainly in Georgia. and African-Americans who protested racial injustice put themselves in grave danger. But little Clarence Thomas was a happy little camper.

The real problem, Thomas continued, is that everyone is just too dang sensitive these days.

“If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah,” he said. “Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out.”

Yeupp, that’s all institutional racism is, Clarence. Just a bunch of black people getting their feelings hurt.

5. Anne Coulter: Obama acts like he’s from Kenya, weed is like ‘retard’ pill.

Vitriol-spewing conservative author Ann Coulter offered up a twofer this week. First, she argued: Obama may not be a brain-washed, foreign born agent of destruction like some latter-day “Manchurian candidate,” but he may as well be. “Let’s just think for a thought experiment for a moment,” she said Monday on the Howie Carr radio show. “If Obama were born in another country, had no love for this country, and had set out to destroy America, what would he be doing differently?”

Think about it. America’s enemies, even now, plotting to impose healthcare on all of us. Terrifying! Thanks, Ann.

Next topic: that old devil weed, systematically reducing the IQ of millions of Americans by up to 8 points, Carr claimed a study said.

 “And a hundred points off your initiative and ambition,” Coulter chimed in. “It is as if they have legalized retard pills.”

She has such a lovely way with words.

h/t: Rawstory

4. Laura Ingraham: Obama treats the Constitution like an abusive spouse.

Not to be outdone by the previous blonde blowhard—yep, we’re talking to you Ann—Laura Ingraham dished out her own colorful metaphors this week: Obama is to America as an abusive spouse is to his victim. Kids, listen up, this analogy may turn on your SAT test.

You have to follow some pretty twisted logic to understand this, but we’ll try. Ingraham, as most will remember, does not like immigrants, especially Latino ones. She recently questioned the patriotism of Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, and has said Mexicans are “jingoists” out to destroy the English language.

So, she really does not like how this Obama fellow is pushing for immigration reform, and she does not even believe the fact that he has deported two million undocumented aliens for minor crimes, because that would make her like him, causing a severe case of cognitive dissonance.

So imagine her horror that someone like Rep. Paul Ryan is voicing his support for possibly, eventually, granting legal status to undocumented immigrants. And she does not give a hoot about all the “enforcement mechanisms” Ryan is promising will be in any immigration reform bill he votes for.

Ready, here comes the domestic abuse analogy.

“It’s like spousal abuse!” Ingraham fumed, referring to Ryan and other Republicans’ willingness to trust that Obama will enforce the laws. “It’s not going to be different. They are abusers! The administration, led by Barack Obama, are abusers of our Constitution. And just when you think that maybe they’re going to see that [Obamacare] isn’t working, this is hurting our health care system, they abuse the Constitution once again.”

If this all seems reall confusing, perhaps thiswill help.

6. Rush Limbaugh’s absurd rant about Michael Sam: Heterosexuals are under attack!

Sputtering right-wing fool Rush Limbaugh was very confused this week. He knew he had to say something about this whole horrifying business of Michael Sam coming out as the first openly gay player projected to play in the NFL. Rush knew he had to protect heterosexuality from this terrible threat.

“Heterosexuality has no political agenda and there is no agenda attached to it,” he helpfully pointed out.  “Heterosexuality does not have activists.. . .
[Heterosexuals] may be 95, 98 percent of the population — they’re under assault by the 2-5 percent that are homosexual.”

Under assault, do you hear him?

Rush has so many questions about this, his head is spinning, and green venom is spewing forth. “Why is it OK now for a gay man to play football? I thought it was dangerous and leads to concussions, that it was barbaric . . . Why is it heroic for a gay man to play football?”

Yeah. Wait. Huh?

Well, it turned out that Rush was just playing with us. He knows the answers. It’s because the media wants a gay football player to succeed.

File it under the vast left-wing-gay-mafia-libera-throw-in-Jewish-and-other- minority-groups-conspiracy.

7. Colorado Sen. Bernie Herpin: It was a “good thing” the Aurora movie theater shooter had a 100-round magazine.

It might be useful to remember that this gun-nut was elected to replace a legislator who voted for gun control in Colorado after the Aurora shooting. So, we knew where he stood. We just did not know that he was standing on another planet, altogether.

 “Perhaps, James Holmes would not have been able to purchase a 100-round magazine,” he said this week. “As it turned out, that was maybe a good thing that he had a 100-round magazine, because it jammed. If he had four, five, six 15-round magazines, there’s no telling how much damage he could have done until a good guy with a gun showed up.”

Yes, it was a good thing he had so much firepower, because the more the firepower, the more chance of the gun jamming? Right? And so, we should supply all of our mass murderers with these, then there is just that much better of a chance that the good guys with the guns will show up before hundreds of people are slaughtered.
Unsurprisingly, victims’ families were not cheered by Herpin’s totally unhinged theory.

5 of the Christian Right's Favorite and Most Dangerous New Recruits Running for Congress

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By CJ Werleman

5 of the Christian Right's Favorite and Most Dangerous New Recruits Running for Congress

 

One candidate calls evolution and the Big Bang Theory "lies straight from the pit of Hell."

 

 

 

 

February 4, 2014  |   

 

 

Not all that long ago, the establishment wing of the Republican Party had the power to demand obedience from its Christian Right flank, but thanks to Internet fundraising and changes to campaign finance laws, the 2014 elections could be a case of the tail wagging the dog.

The GOP establishment has always had a monopoly on money, thanks to its unfettered access to the Wall Street donor class. As a result of this power differential, the Christian Right, while energized and mobilized, would be forced to sit when told to sit by the party’s big wigs. But those days are history.

Today, the Christian Right is armed with networks and pipelines of unprecedented levels of campaign financing. Its consortium of donor channels includes the Club for Growth, Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and a cadre of hyper-religious organizations such as the Christian Coalition, Christian Broadcasting Network, American Values, and the Family Research Council.
The Christian Right can now raise enough cash to compete and win in Republican primaries against Chamber of Commerce-sponsored establishment candidates. According to the Federal Electoral Commission, Tea Party and social conservative groups raised nearly three times as much as GOP establishment groups in 2013.

The Christian Right is not only an existential threat to the future of the Republican Party, it’s also an existential threat to our secular democracy, for it wishes to transform America into a tyrannical theocracy governed by biblical law. With the warring Republican factions preparing to square off in a series of Senate and House primaries, here are the Christian Right’s most favored candidates for the 2014 election cycle.

1. Matt Bevin: Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky

Matt Bevin, a self-employed businessman, is contesting the GOP primary for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s seat. Bevin, who describes his life as being “built on a bedrock of strong Christian values,” is now leading McConnell by 4 according to the most recent Rasmussen Report poll.

Right-wing blogger and Fox News contributor Erick Erickson says Democrats are “squealing like a stuffed pig” because of polling data that shows Bevin leading Democrat Allison Grimes, while McConnell only draws out a statistical tie. “If the GOP does not gain the Senate in 2014, it will probably be because they lose Kentucky. They only lose Kentucky if Mitch McConnell is the Republican nominee,” says Erickson.

Like all those on the far right, Bevin, who is a Southern Baptist, is obsessed with controlling all matters related to sex and abortion. Earlier this month, on the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bevin penned an op-ed that read, “The fight for the unborn could not be any more important. Since that dark day in 1973, America has seen more than 55 million babies killed under the guise of 'choice….Being pro-life is more than simply a slogan to us. It is a belief that every life, born and unborn, is so precious to our Creator, that it compels us to action.”

In case you missed it the first time, he’s leading McConnell and the Democrats by a handy margin.

2. Pam Barlow: Republican Candidate for U.S. Congress in Texas Congressional District 10

Pam Barlow is a Tea Party-endorsed candidate contesting a U.S. congressional seat held by establishment incumbent Mac Thornberry.

Barlow is a veterinarian, retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and small business owner in Bowie, TX. She describes herself as an “unashamed Republican Tea Party Christian Conservative with a loud voice and some rock-solid core values.” You know, values such as opposing women’s reproductive rights, marriage equality, raising the minimum wage and immigration reform.

When it comes to tackling the nation’s most complex fiscal issues as they relate to taxes, spending and federal budgets, she’s got that covered, because in her words, “As a small business owner, I know how to save money— in fact, I can pinch a penny until Abe has a migraine.”

Barlow believes her qualifications as a veterinarian place her in good stead when it comes to dealing with WMDs. “Many folks are unaware that what we call 'weapons of mass destruction' are, in fact, modified zoonotic animal diseases and pesticides. Veterinarians understand the diagnosis and treatment of these things, and the means available to protect the public,” she wrote on her blog site.

3. State Sen. Lee Bright: Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in South Carolina

In South Carolina, state Sen. Lee Bright is challenging veteran Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his senate seat. It's difficult to find someone further on the loony fringe than this Club for Growth-endorsed candidate.

A member of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Board of Visitors, Bright has been a sponsor of the “Life Begins at Conception Act” for the past three years. In April 2013, Bright introduced a bill that would end all abortions in South Carolina. He has also sponsored bills that would criminalize the Affordable Care Act and bills that would exempt South Carolina from federal gun laws.

Bright has also called FEMA a "scam,” and has promised “to get rid of the IRS.” After seeing a video of IRS agents training with AR-15 rifles, Bright said, “They’re doing assault-weapon training, the Brown Shirts are next because that’s the enforcement for Obamacare. If you don’t have an IRS, you don’t have Obamacare. That’s the mechanism that’s controlling our lives for far too long.”
It gets worse. Bright believes federal income tax is something “designed by Nazi Germany,” and in a series of speeches to pro-faithful gatherings has promoted the idea of reigniting the Civil War. “If at first you don’t secede, try again” is one of his favorite applause lines. “If the 10th Amendment won’t protect the Second, we might have to use the Second to protect the 10th,” is another.

4. Chris McDaniel: Republican Candidate for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi

Mississippi state senator and Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel is mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).

McDaniel is a distant cousin to President John Kennedy, but that’s where any similarities with the pro-civil rights leader begins and ends, for McDaniel is a neo-Confederate who has delivered speeches to the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

In January, Mother Jones surfaced comments McDaniel made about his unhappiness with the lack of Muslim villains in Hollywood films. McDaniel said, “They’ll go out of their way to find some Russian white guy that’s just nuts, and he’s the terrorist, which I’ve never seen that. But the Muslims, they’ve just disappeared from Hollywood’s radar.”

He blames rising gun violence on a "hip-hop" culture that "values rap and destruction of community values more than it does poetry."

5. Paul Broun: Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate Seat in Georgia

Paul Broun is contesting the Republican nomination to contest for the U.S. Senate seat made vacant by the retirement of Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
In a speech given at Liberty Baptist Church sportsman’s banquet, Broun said, “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.” Broun believes the world is no more than 9,000 years old and was created in six literal days.

In May 2009, Broun proposed failed legislation that would have proclaimed 2010 "The Year Of The Bible,” and he also introduced a bill to ban pornography at all U.S. military installations. That same year, Broun proclaimed climate change to be a “hoax.” He said, "Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus."

In reality, there is almost unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is real and is caused by human activity.

CJ Werleman is the author of "Crucifying America," and "God Hates You. Hate Him Back." Follow him on twitter: @cjwerleman