The Tea Party As A Religion

The Tea Party As A Religion

Dishheads know I believe that you cannot understand the current GOP without also grasping how bewildered so many people are by the dizzying onset of modernity. The 21st Century has brought Islamist war to America, the worst recession since the 1930s, a debt-ridden federal government, a majority-minority future, gay marriage, universal healthcare and legal weed. If you were still seething from the eruption of the 1960s, and thought that Reagan had ended all that, then the resilience of a pluralistic, multi-racial, fast-miscegenating, post-gay America, whose president looks like the future, not the past, you would indeed, at this point, be in a world-class, meshugganah, cultural panic.

When you add in the fact that the American dream stopped working for most working-class folks at some point in the mid 1970s, and when you see the national debt soaring from the Reagan years onward, made much worse by the Bush-Cheney years, and then exploded by the recession Bush bequeathed, you have a combustible mixture. It’s very easy to lump all this together into a paranoid fantasy of an American apocalypse that must somehow be stopped at all cost. In trying to understand the far-right mindset – which accounts for around a quarter of the country – I think you have to zoom out and see all of this in context.

Many of us found in Barack Obama a very post-ideological president, a pragmatist, a Christian, and a traditional family man, and naively ;believed that he could both repair the enormous damage done by the Bush-Cheney administration and simultaneously reach out to the red states as well. I refuse to say the failure is his. Because he tried. For years, he was lambasted by the left for being far too accommodating, far too reasonable, aloof, not scrappy enough, weak … you know the drill by now. In fact, he was just trying to bring as much of the country along as he could in tackling the huge recession and massive debt he inherited at one and the same time, and in unwinding the 9/11 emergency, and in ending two wars and the morally and legally crippling legacy of torture (about which the GOP is simply in rigid denial).

Obama got zero votes from House Republicans for a desperately needed stimulus in his first weeks in office. So I cannot believe he could have maintained any sort of detente with the Republican right, dominated by the legacy of Palin, rather than McCain. But the healthcare reform clearly ended any sort of possibility of coexistence – and the cold civil war took off again. The first black president could, perhaps, clean up some of the mess of his predecessor, but as soon as he moved on an actual substantive change that he wanted and campaigned on, he was deemed illegitimate. Even though that change was, by any standards, a moderate one, catering to private interests, such as drug and insurance companies; even though it had no public option; even though its outline was the same as the GOP’s 2012 nominee’s in Massachusetts, this inching toward a more liberal America was the casus belli. It still is – which is why it looms so large for the Republican right in ways that can easily befuddle the rest of us.

But it is emphatically not the real reason for the revolt. It is the symptom, not the cause. My rule of thumb is pretty simple: whenever you hear a quote about Obamacare, it’s more illuminating to remove the “care” part. And Obama is a symbol of change people cannot understand, are frightened by, and seek refuge from.

That desperate need for certainty and security is what I focused on in my book about all this, The Conservative Soul. What the understandably beleaguered citizens of this new modern order want is a pristine variety of America that feels like the one they grew up in. They want truths that ring without any timbre of doubt. They want root-and-branch reform – to the days of the American Revolution. And they want all of this as a pre-packaged ideology, preferably aligned with re-written American history, and reiterated as a theater of comfort and nostalgia. They want their presidents white and their budget balanced now. That balancing it now would tip the whole world into a second depression sounds like elite cant to them; that America is, as a matter of fact, a coffee-colored country – and stronger for it – does not remove their desire for it not to be so; indeed it intensifies their futile effort to stop immigration reform. And given the apocalyptic nature of their view of what is going on, it is only natural that they would seek a totalist, radical, revolutionary halt to all of it, even if it creates economic chaos, even if it destroys millions of jobs, even though it keeps millions in immigration limbo, even if it means an unprecedented default on the debt.

This is a religion – but a particularly modern, extreme and unthinking fundamentalist religion. And such a form of religion is the antithesis of the mainline Protestantism that once dominated the Republican party as well, to a lesser extent, the Democratic party.

It also brooks no distinction between religion and politics, seeing them as fused in the same cultural and religious battle. Much of the GOP hails from that new purist, apocalyptic sect right now – and certainly no one else is attacking that kind of religious organization. But it will do to institutional political parties what entrepreneurial fundamentalism does to mainline churches: its appeal to absolute truth, total rectitude and simplicity of worldview instantly trumps tradition, reason, moderation, compromise.Francis Wilkinson has studied the scholarship of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, authors of The Churching of America 1776-1990. He wrote a passage yesterday that resonated with me:

An important thesis of the book is that as religious organizations grow powerful and complacent, and their adherents do likewise, they make themselves vulnerable to challenges from upstart sects that “impose significant costs in terms of sacrifice and even stigma upon their members.” For insurgent groups, fervor and discipline are their own rewards.

Right now, the Republican Party is an object of contempt to many on the far right, whose adamant convictions threaten what they perceive as Republican complacency. The Tea Party is akin to a rowdy evangelical storefront beckoning down the road from the staid Episcopal cathedral. Writing of insurgent congregations, Finke and Stark said that “sectarian members are either in or out; they must follow the demands of the group or withdraw. The ‘seductive middle ground’ is lost.”

In other words, this is not just a cold civil war. It is also a religious war – between fundamentalism and faith, between totalism and tradition, between certainty and reasoned doubt. It may need to burn itself out – with all the social and economic and human damage that entails. Or it can be defeated, as Lincoln reluctantly did to his fanatical enemies, or absorbed and coopted, as Elizabeth I did hers over decades. But it will take time. The question is what will be left of America once it subsides, and how great a cost it will have imposed.

(Photos: from a Tea Party rally, Ken Cucinnelli, far right candidate for governor of Virginia, and Michele Bachmann, apocalyptic prophet, by Getty Images.)

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The Right Wings Crazy Government Shutdown Conspiracy Theories

The right’s government shutdown conspiracy theories

From park closures to delayed back-pay for workers, the right sees the effects of the shutdown as a left-wing plot

By Elias Isquith

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nlargeJim Geraghty, George Will  (Credit: CBS News/AP/F. Scott Applewhite)

It’s the second week of the government shutdown, and while the right is still confused about whether the shutdown is a good thing, one thing is certain: any and all negative repercussions from it are not only Democrats’ fault, but the result of a “sadistic” master plan to turn the American people against the Republican Party. “Obama views the shutdown as just a game,” writes Rachel Alexander for Townhall. She continues:

One senior level Obama administration official gloated, “We are winning.” Obama is cruelly playing with Americans’ emotions in order to beat the Republicans. He shut down veterans’ memorials, requiring World War II veterans to break down barriers in order to see a memorial set up for them. Obama is counting on the cruel, unnecessary shutdown of certain areas of government to anger Americans against Republicans, and not see it as a carefully plotted maneuver by the left.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty doesn’t allege any “carefully plotted” schemes from the left, but he does go so far as accuse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of “sadism.” In response to the House’s passing a bill to guarantee back-pay for furloughed federal workers, Geraghty writes:

This is quite the revealing moment, as the leadership of the Democratic party and federal government workers are supposed to be the best of friends — symbiotic, really. But when the moment comes to help out federal workers, Harry Reid drags his feet. The only plausible motivation is that the Democrats’ strategy for “winning” the shutdown fight requires maximizing the pain to as many Americans as possible, so that the pressure is maximized on the GOP opposition to accept a deal that amounts to unconditional surrender.

“Harry Reid doesn’t want to minimize the pain of the shutdown,” Geraghty writes. “He wants to maximize it.”

From his new perch at Fox News, meanwhile, George Will argued that the National Park Service is acting like a “willing servant” of the Democrats. “All around the country,” Will said, the government “went out of [its] way to make life as unpleasant and inconvenient as possible.” Will went on to call the closure of parks “government acting as an interest group on its own behalf.”

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House of Turds

Today’s NYDN Front Page Sums Up What 74 Percent of Voters Are Thinking

By Josh Voorhees

You can take a full tour of today’s shutdown-themed front pages over at the Newseum, but trust me, it doesn’t get any better than this one from the New York Daily News.

A new Quinnipiac poll out this morning highlights just how unpopular the House strategy has been: By a 72-22 margin, voters opposed Congress shutting down the federal government to block the implementation of Obamacare. Even though Americans were divided on the merits of the healthcare law itself—with 45 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed—they were against the idea of Congress cutting off funding for the law, 58 percent to 34 percent.

Self-identified Republican voters backed the shutdown by a narrow 49-44 margin, but that’s where the support ended. Democrats (90-6 oppose) and independents (74-19) overwhelmingly were against the shutdown. And while Obama receives a negative 45-49 job approval rating in the poll, those figures look like a standing ovation compared to the 74 percent of respondents who said they disapproved of the job Republicans are doing in Congress. More poll results here.

Read the rest of Slate’s coverage of the government shutdown.

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Mitt Romney A Pathological Liar | A Danger to Democracy | 800+ Vetoes as Mass. Governor

Democracy Danger Signs: Mitt Romney’s 800+ Vetoes as Mass. Governor

Romney’s blocks were overridden over 95% of the time.

By Joshua Holland

Mitt Romney’s “closing argument” redefines chutzpah. “You know that if the President is re-elected, he will still be unable to work with the people in Congress,” Romney said on Friday. He warned of a government shut-down, or another debt-ceiling crisis – two examples of Congressional Republicans taking the economy hostage for partisan gain – if Barack Obama emerges victorious next week. If elected, Romney promised not to “pass partisan legislation.”

It’s a dubious assertion. Romney has made one claim on the campaign trail that is undeniably true. He did bring bipartisanship to Massachusetts – by the time he left the governor’s mansion in 2006, many Republicans in the Bay State, like their Democratic counterparts, couldn’t stand him.

That’s probably not what he meant. In his first debate with Barack Obama, as he shook his Etch-a-sketch, Romney said of his time in Massachusetts, “I had the great experience — it didn’t seem like it at the time — of being elected in a state where my legislature was 87 percent Democrat. And that meant I figured out from day one I had to get along and I had to work across the aisle to get anything done.”

The reality of his time as Governor was quite different. Mitt Romney had the dubious distinction of vetoing over 800 measures passed by that Democrat-controlled legislature. According to the Boston Globe, in a television ad for his 2008 presidential campaign, Romney even gloated about it. ”I know how to veto,” he said in the ad. “I like vetoes. I’ve vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations as governor.” This endeared him to neither Democrats nor Republicans, according to the Globe:

What he doesn’t say is the Legislature overrode those vetoes almost at will. When the House decided to challenge him, Romney was overridden 99.6 percent of the time: 775 to 3, according to the House minority leader’s office. In the Senate, Romney was overridden every time, often unanimously.

In other words, the six Republicans in the state senate often joined their Democratic colleagues to kill Romney’s vetoes. That’s because he was aloof and, after a failed attempt to build up the Republican brand in his state, he withdrew, refusing to work with legislators – even Republicans.

According to NPR, “apart from health care, Romney defined success not with big-picture legislative accomplishments but with confrontation.”

Democrat Ellen Story recalls a Gov. Romney who had a policeman screen visitors and who did not allow lawmakers to use the bank of elevators just outside his office: “He was aloof; he was not approachable,” Story says. “He was very much an outsider, the whole time he was here.”

And Story remembers something else about the former governor: “The Republican reps would grumble that he didn’t even know their names.”

George Peterson was one of those Republicans; he does not take issue with his colleague’s characterization of Romney: “It took him a little bit to get used to dealing with elected officials, let’s put it that way,” he says.

“The first year was, I’d say, a struggle,” Peterson says. “He was used to being a top executive, ‘and this is where we’re going, and this is how we’re going to do it.’ And this animal [the state Legislature] doesn’t work that way. Not at all. Especially when it’s overwhelmingly ruled by one party.”

Frustrated by not being able to manage the state like he did Bain Capital, Romney spent most of his final year outside Massachusetts, laying the groundwork for a national campaign. According to Think Progress, “Romney spent 212 days out of state — more than four days each week, on average” in 2006. He then left office with a 34 percent approval rating. Today, his approval rating in Massachusetts is just 40 percent. In his final year, his unfavorable ratings among Massachusetts Republicans bounced between the mid-20s and the mid-30s.

If Romney wins on Tuesday, we can only expect more of the same inability to work with Congress – people whom Romney apparently views as “the help.” He’ll be forced to adhere to a severely conservative agenda by House Republicans, and he’ll get little help from Democrats given the hard-right policies he’s proposed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said on Friday, “Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his ‘severely conservative’ agenda is laughable.”

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Obama Antichrist | Failed Right Wing Politician Finds New Success With Religious Fanatics

E.W. Jackson: Democrats Have an ‘Agenda Worthy of the Antichrist’

Bishop E.W. Jackson has embarked on a campaign following his failed Senate bid to convince black voters to reject the Democrats’ “anti-God” views and partake in a “mass exodus of Christians from the Democrat party.” Today in an opinion piece in the Washington Times, “Blacks are abandoning the Democratic Party,” Jackson asserted that African Americans will abandon the Democratic party over the issues of abortion rights and gay equality, incredulously asking how Democrats have “managed to hold on to black Christians in spite of an agenda worthy of the Antichrist?” “Mr. Obama’s commitment to the radical left’s anti-Christian, anti-God politics may cost him the election,” Jackson writes, “because a constituency he has taken for granted has awakened to the truth that being the first black president is not enough.” Of course, recent polling shows that Obama has a commanding 94-0 lead among black voters.

I was raised to be an FDR Democrat because my father was a young man during the Depression and credited President Roosevelt with saving him from starvation. “The Republicans only care about rich people,” I was told. This was more than 40 years ago. In spite of my childhood indoctrination, as a young man newly committed to my Christian faith, I had a crisis of conscience in the late 1970s. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank was pushing the homosexual agenda. How could I, as a Christian, be committed to a party led by Mr. Frank? In the end, I could not. My desire to be in a right relationship with God and my faith was greater than my desire to be approved by my father, my family or the black community.  My wife and I, then Massachusetts residents, left the Democratic Party in 1980 and never looked back.
Democrats now have fully embraced an abortion policy that amounts to infanticide. They have also made the lesbian-homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda their vision for America. How have they managed to hold on to black Christians in spite of an agenda worthy of the Antichrist? They have shown a ruthless willingness to frighten black voters with outright lies about the plans of conservatives and Republicans. Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s “they gonna put y’all back in chains” was not a gaffe. It is part of the Democrats’ strategy of using fear to keep blacks as a captive audience. I always have believed that such lies could not distract black voters forever or keep them from noticing the increasingly anti-Christian radicalism of the Democratic Party.
…
Now black churchgoers are being told to suppress Christian conscience and remain beholden to a party that demands their loyalty while insulting their faith and blaspheming their God. For the first time in 50 years, there is a discussion going on in the black community as to whether their loyalty to the Democratic Party is deserved. Many black pastors are telling their members to stay home, rather than vote for a black president who has done more to advance the cause of homosexuality and abortion than that of black Americans.
We are hearing the rumblings of a fissure between black Christians and the Democratic Party. My organization, Staying True to America’s National Destiny (Stand), is calling for a mass exodus of Christians from the Democratic Party. We held a news conference at the National Press Club on Sept. 10 and produced several videos. This not only has prompted discussion, but perhaps has launched a movement. Mr. Obama’s commitment to the radical left’s anti-Christian, anti-God politics may cost him the election, because a constituency he has taken for granted has awakened to the truth that being the first black president is not enough.

Mitt Romney The Nutty Mormon Conspiracy Theorist

Mitt Romney Pushes “They’re Taking God Off Our Money” Conspiracy Theory in Virginia

Today, The Hill reports that at a campaign stop in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Mitt Romney was quoted as saying the following:

Mitt Romney weighed in for the first time on the Democratic platform initially removing the word ‘God,” saying that was something he would never do.

Mitt Romney, stumped.

Romney began a campaign appearance in Virginia Beach, Va. on Saturday by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before turning to the platform controversy.

‘That pledge says ‘under God,’ and I will not take God out of our platform,’ Romney said to cheers. ‘I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart.’

Is Mitt Romney still spreading a conspiracy theory from 2007, when e-mail rumors were circulating that “In God We Trust” was to be omitted from new U.S. dollar coins? A theory which Snopes found to be false? New U.S. dollar coins were designed with the motto “In God We Trust” omitted.

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Communists Smeared By Ass Clown Allen West | Accuses Them of Being Democrats!

Allen West, House Republicans’ nutcase

Via:- Steve Chapman

Conservatives are to be commended when they repudiate members of their movement found to be racist, extremist or otherwise crazy. National Review has severed ties with John Derbyshire and Rob Weissberg for public displays of antipathy to black people, a decision in the best tradition of founder William F. Buckley, who in his early days disowned the John Birch Society. When are House Republicans going to show similar courage?

Their problem is Florida Rep. Allen West, who claimed that some 80 House Democrats are members of the Communist Party.And as you can see from the video, he wasn’t making a joke.

Related

• 
• Rep. Allen West
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• GOP congressman claims Democrats are communists

This is not a bizarre aberration. It’s perfectly in keeping with the sort of things West has said in the past.

He told Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to “get the hell out of the United States of America.” When Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz dared to take issue with him, he wrote her a furious letter calling her”the most vile, unprofessional and despicable” House member.

He said President Obama exhibited “third-world dictator-like arrogance.” When a video came out of Marines urinating on Afghan corpses, he said, “Unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth.”

He’s an embarrassment to the party. Republican House members of Congress and party officials can either condemn West and expel him from the GOP caucus or else confirm that his views are perfectly acceptable.

They might ask themselves: What would Buckley do?

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Secularism vs. Theocracy | The Good Guys vs. Superstitious Ignorance

Secularism vs. Theocracy

Freedom vs. theocracy is appropriate for this image because today’s Democratic Party is anything but secular. Instead of standing up for our secular democracy, many have adopted a path of pandering to the religious. For us, regardless of our political leanings, it is about secularism vs. theocracy.

Here’s how Adam Lee (Daylight Atheism) recently put it:

It’s secularism against theocracy, the free intellect against dogmatism, conscience against barbarity, the future against the past. Like it or not, it’s one of the defining struggles of our time. And there are many decent, well-intentioned people who don’t want to confront the full scope of the problem, who turn their gazes from it or try to paper it over with soothing platitudes. (Or worse, they claim that we, the people who are pointing out the problem, are the ones who started it all, and everything would be fine if we’d just be quieter and more respectful.)

I encourage you to read Lee’s entire post. It is one of those rare gems I plan to bookmark and re-read whenever I feel like giving up.

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