This, from the ACLU:
The Public Expression of Religion Act, or PERA (S. 3696 / H.R. 2679), would bar the recovery of attorneys' fees to people who win lawsuits asserting their fundamental constitutional and civil rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Since these cases are characteristically filed against the government, it means that while the government can call upon huge amounts of your money to defend them, the plaintiffs -- that is, the people whose rights are allegedly being violated -- can go whistle.
This, from a reader at Andrew Sullivan:
I went to the Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit this weekend at the Omni.
It is much, much worse than we know.
The first woman I spoke to (from Erie, PA) railed on about how Chuck Hagel is a flaming liberal and John McCain should be tried for treason. I thought that maybe I'd run into an isolated crazy. Oh no - it only got worse from there. The level of contempt for anyone who diverges from the Holy Word of W is beyond description. I was sort of 'undercover' so I could just let people talk to me, not leading the conversation, not baiting, and it horrified me to hear how many were perfectly comfortable with any form of torture in the name of patriotism if the Commander In Chief gave it the ok.
Granted that anyone who actually spends the time and money to attend something like this is out there somewhere anyway, it's not so far off base. I have relatives who think like this. Truly. (Which just demonstrates that being a wingnut is a choice.)
Another from Andrew Sullivan:
As a Presbyterian pastor, I continue to be stunned by the unthinking support of many evangelicals for a policy that permits torture. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the so-called "Traditional Values Coalition" decided that torture was among the traditional values that they feel compelled to support.
I've already made my comments about these pricks and their "values."
Sullivan, again:
Do I understand Jerry [Falwell] correctly? Is he saying he supports the misnamed Patriot Act, a law that all but eviscerates the Fourth Amendment and does serious injury to several others, a law that was first proposed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore? Is he saying he supports domestic surveillance, which many fear does more to create an American police state than fight terrorists? Does he mean he supports warrantless searches and seizures and warrantless eavesdropping?
I had always believed that Christian conservatives were among our country's most ardent defenders of liberty and constitutional government. All that I knew and understood from my schooling at Thomas Road Baptist Church and the Thomas Road Bible Institute, plus all of my involvement and effort in Jerry's Moral Majority, convinced me that if we Christian conservatives believed anything, we believed in freedom and constitutional government. Am I now to understand that we are supposed to support a Big Brother philosophy to government and must willingly surrender constitutionally protected liberties?
From Digby:
But we aren't going to see the moral scolds standing up on this, I'm afraid. At least I'll be very shocked if they do. They believe, as do so many Republicans and members of the press that morals are attached to somebody elses crotch. They apparently don't see that institutional torture isn't just something that a few bad apples learn from popular culture.
Concerning Digy's last sentence here, the "moral scolds" are the ones who have contributed the most to this -- look, boys and girls, they elected Bush, they've pressured McCain to back down on torture, they want government focused on your crotch to the exclusion of everything else. It only highlights their complete lack of morality and their complete lack of Christianity. Frankly, I can't think of any religion that condones mistreating those who can't defend themselves, which leads me to propose that there is no sincere religious philosophy involved here.
The Moral Majority and its descendants have brought us to this: a nascent police state, a totalitarian regime that advocates torture, a theocratic nightmare. When did I start pointing out that the Christianists are not un-American, they are anti-America? Like, when I started blogging?
2 comments:
It is no surprise that people's religious beliefs inform their political beliefs. It does concern me, though, that people are so dogmatic about their politics. Faith is a reasonable source for political criticism, but it concerns me when people become so tied to one political figure that their faith no longer informs their political beliefs that are supposed to be based on it.
These are people who are desperate for a strong authority figure, otherwise I doubt they would subscribe to such a rigid set of beliefs to begin with.
They are also people whose faith has become their politics, which in a secular country like the US is a distinct problem for the rest of us. It's no surprise that they are against the separation of church and state.
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