Putting Religion First

On my way home tonight, I saw a bumper sticker that said:

Catholic
Conservative
American
In that order.

And I thought, really? You put your religion before your country? (And on top of that they put their political ideology before it too, but that's a whole other post). I suppose that is the way people do it. And I also think that makes them a traitor. Either you defend the Constitution or you don't. If your religion gets in the way of defending the Constitution, then you're not an American. It can't come third. It's either first, or not at all. Christianity is diametrically opposed to secular democracy, which is what the Constitution lays out for us. There is no religion in the Constitution. The only mention of religion is in Article 6, and that is to ensure that no religion is required to hold office or serve the United States.

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

I suppose when you believe the big lie, that the writings of semi-nomadic pastorlists, who thought the stars were permanently pasted into the night sky, are the words of "god" and that everyone who doesn't believe what [fill in the sect here] espouses is going to hell, that would make you betray your own country, and if it came down to it, your own countrymen because they're not like you in that they are a different religion, or no religion at all.

Article six was a huge step forward in our civilization. Prior to it, in most places, you had to be the religion of the ruling party to vote (if you could vote), to hold office, or in some instances, to even live in said place. In the colonies here, prior to the Revolutionary War, there were laws that required people to be a certain religion to participate in the operation of the colony. That is the reason why Roger Williams left Massachusetts to found Rhode Island. They ran him out because he wanted a voice in his own governance without having to convert to the official state religion.

I just don't get these people. And it's late... I'm sure I'm rambling now...

Queue the Cattle Cars

Props to JoeMyGod for this one...

"If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program.
The bottom line here is that, biblically, those "who practice homosexuality" should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery." --Bryan Fischer (emphasis mine)

And to think my last post was on Anne Frank and the suppression of literature in our public schools. Today, I read that yet another ignorant demagogue wants to send homosexuals to prison for reparative therapy. Is the fact that the Nazis called for the same thing lost on these idiots? Apparently, or they wouldn't spout such nonsense.

My next question is, who the hell do these people think they are? Bryan Fischer is unequivocally calling for a theocracy, openly and without any sort of shame. Subject to Biblical Law as Civil Law?! In these United States? Bryan Fischer, if you read this, YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF! And so can the rest of the fuck-tards who follow his thinking.

I daresay that I haven't been quite so angry and simultaneously annoyed over anything in a long time. I suppose it should come as no surprise. Oh sure, you read this sort of thing all the time from some crackpot troll on message boards, or blogs. But this guy is on the radio, people actually listen to him, he has a platform, and what he is advocating is an overthrow of our democratic system. Our Constitution doesn't allow the sending of people to prison for thought crimes, or crimes against a religion. If Bryan Fischer wants theocracy, he can go live in fucking Saudi Arabia. I keep telling these ignorant bastards that, but they don't get it. Probably because they have the critical thinking skills of a slug. And that's an insult to slugs!

If you think this doesn't affect you because you're not gay or you don't know anyone who is, remember that in Germany, lots of people thought that what was happening didn't affect them because they weren't Jewish, until it was too late.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.
                --Martin Niemöller

I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again, in the Middle Ages people were subject to civilian law for religious "crimes" which were what we would now call thought-crimes. We're talking like Orwell's 1984 here. Orwell wasn't writing solely about the future, he was drawing on the past. People could be dragged in before the Inquisition, in what amounted to a kangaroo court, convicted of heresy after interrogation, (see: torture) for not *believing* what they were told they should believe by the Church. They were then, in what amounts to a mockery of morality and justice, "relaxed" or turned over to the secular authorities for punishment. This meant burning at the stake in most times and places, though later it might amount to hanging.

Make no mistake, this is exactly what people like Bryan Fischer want. They want to be able to kill people for not conforming to their version of Christianity. They will never say it outright, not until they're in a position to carry it out, but they're getting bolder and bolder all the time. When we're to the point that they're willing to openly push for incarcerating people for not believing as they do, we're on a dark and dangerous path as a country. We can't let the demagogues drag us back into the Dark Ages...

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
                --Justice William O. Douglas

A New Year, Same Shit

LOL I don't really have anything much to write about. Same shit, different day. I could talk about whatever news story, but it would just be rehashing the same mess. It is all a mess and all the same isn't it?

I read a few books over the holiday, and right now I'm reading "The Inquisitor's Manual" by Bernard Gui. Let me tell you, reading it will make you very happy that you live in the 21st century and have secular laws like the Constitution to protect you from religious crazies. Well unless you're unlucky enough to live some place like Iran or Saudi Arabia which are still run by religious zealots :\

Really, if you're American, you should all go and find a statue of Thomas Jefferson and kiss it!

Beck: Freedom is not *really* Freedom

From Crooks and Liars:



Watching Glenn Beck is like watching a real life version of Orwell's 1984 in action.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Corporations are your friend.

Hey Beck! The 13th century called, they want you back. Because that's what this boils down to. They don't want the plebes to have information, just like the medieval Church didn't want the peasants to be literate, because then they might get ideas in their head. And when they say they want broadband access for everyone, that doesn't necessarily mean in their homes. It means that you can go to a library or some other publicly funded place and access the internet. I think that's an important thing.

The only thing that disturbs me is that people believe everything Beck says. As much as he mentions him, I wonder if Beck has ever read anything by Karl Marx. I wonder if he can define "socialism" or "fascism" or "Marxism" beyond just saying that the Obama administration is "all of those things."

“You have a freedom of speech or the government. You can’t really have both,” said Beck.

Really? I could have sworn that the piece of paper that G. Dubya Bush wiped his ass with, also known as our Constitution said that *we the People* are the government. And herein lies the danger. The right-wing wackos scream about how terrible the government is, but we're all supposed to be the government. We're supposed to decide what happens, by electing officials who carry out our wishes. The Constitution, that piece of paper that so many religious fundies want to throw out and replace with the Bible, is supposed to protect our rights. And yet we have Conservatives screaming we need a revolution, we need to overthrow a duly elected government, yadda yadda yadda. There is nothing wrong with our Constitution. It has served this country well (for the most part) for over two hundred years. I do believe that there is a word for that. It's called treachery. And, as Jack Sparrow said in Pirates of the Caribbean, "The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers." But on a more serious note, these people have apparently never read the Declaration of Independence (or anything else of value for that matter):

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Maybe what it boils down to is that Beck is so paranoid, he's afraid of himself.

Think Progress has more.

The Forces of Darkness

War is Peace,

Freedom is Slavery,

Ignorance is Strength.

I don't think that any of these Republicans who are clamoring for their own little totalitarian theocracy have ever read 1984. Because if they had read it, they'd realize that what they're doing is straight out of Big Brother's propaganda machine. These are all from ThinkProgress and all from this evening.

The Democrats are just as bad as the North Korean and Iranian regimes.

Phil Gingrey (R. Ga): "Americans are watching as from Iran to North Korea, the forces of darkness are attempting to silence the forces of democracy and freedom. The irony is on this day, the Democratic process and the nation’s economic freedom are under threat not by some rogue state, but in this very chamber in which we stand."

Pelosi has created an autocracy in the House.

John McCain (R. Az): "And I guarantee you we are using every parliamentary possibility we have and I have great sympathy for my friends in the House because it’s almost under an autocracy now with Speaker Pelosi."

Obama is an Colonial African Despot.

Rush Limbaugh: "We’ve elected somebody who’s more African in his roots than he is American…and is behaving like an African colonial despot."

Because, G.W. Bush wiping his ass with the Constitution of the United States, getting us into two wars we had no business being in, and sending our economy down the fucking drain, promoting theocracy in this country, and being an overall dipshit that the whole world hated, didn't cause these asshats any sort of bother at all. They didn't wake up in the middle of the night, wondering if maybe they should be doing something to save this country.

Now that the democrats are trying to save it, perhaps slowly and perhaps ineffectively, all they can do is scream about how the democrats are really despots and tyrants. Oh please. They wouldn't know a tyrant if they were arrested by them, thrown into prison without trial, and taken out behind a woodshed and summarily executed. Why? Because they don't have any cognizant thought or reason in their heads. Nor do they have any empathy. All they have is a singular idea that god tells them they're special and deserve to have absolute power over everyone else, and because they're rich, they don't have to bother with the lesser classes who should know their place.

Forces of darkness? The only forces of darkness I see are McCain, Limbaugh and the rest of their hangers-on.

Made In Communist China

With all the right wing extremist wackos raving and ranting over socialist Venezuela (I dare them to define socialism, the fools don't even know what it is) and Obama the Socialist (huh? like, as if), I got to thinking about it and realized that these people are either one of two camps. They're either the powers-that-be, spreading misinformation for the purpose of advancing their Corporatocracy, or they're sheeple, parroting the last thing their talking head on Faux News or Conservative Talk Radio told them they should think.

Now, China on the other hand. China, which is communist and has terrible human rights violations, these so called capitalist (predominately) Christians don't have a problem with China. Nevermind that communism is further to the left than socialism. Nevermind that American corporations are using slave labor in China to increase their profits so they can make millions, and we can have our cheap plastic crap. So why aren't they decrying us doing business with China? Could it be because China serves us whereas Chavez has basically told us to go fuck ourselves?

From a historical standpoint, it seems that we can set up all the dictatorships we want, and we're fine with their human rights violations, because we seriously don't have any problem perpetrating them ourselves (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, rounding up Japanese for internment camps in WWII, giving native Americans blankets tainted with smallpox, you get the idea), so long as the country we've jury rigged gives us our proper homage. The second they do something we don't like, well, we'll just set up a military coup. Like that couldn't possibly backfire...

Our Constitution dictates that our government should operate in a certain manner, under a set of laws, but so many Americans seem willing to ignore it, when it serves their purpose to do so. You know, I don't give a damn what your private opinions are, or what political party you like to back, but for the love of god, think. It won't kill you.

Speaking of which... do you think China could export some Reason and Common Sense?

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."--Siddhārtha Gautama

The Shoe on the Other Foot: Or How to Sue the DHS Over Nothing

I wound up with another right-wing wacko newsletter in my inbox this morning, this one from Townhall. Titled "Stop Janet Napolitano's War Against Americans and Our Constitution," it says that the Thomas More Law Center has filed a suit against Janet Napolitano for infringing on their first and fifth amendment rights (huh?), and they'd like for you to send them money, it's tax deductible. You know, I really think that some people should have their tax exempt status revoked when they pull shit like this. But whatever, the point is, they're mad because they lost and there's a black guy in the White House, so now they have to go and waste money on frivolous lawsuits over perceived slights against their freedom. The rant is long, incoherent and convoluted, but here's a snippet of it:

Why has Janet Napolitano diverted public attention from the real acts of terrorism in our country, which she now refers to as "man-caused disasters"? And why is she so willing to use the word "terrorist" to describe law-abiding Americans?

The truth is that Janet Napolitano is threatening Americans who disagree with the policies of the Obama administration to "Shut Up or else."

Would you ever have imagined our own government targeting as terrorists our returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who placed themselves in harms way to defend our country?

Would you ever have imagined our own government would target citizens based on their political and moral beliefs such as opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, or the social programs of the Obama administration?

Gee, that's really funny. I seem to remember G.W. Bush's supporters calling people unpatriotic when they questioned the un-Constitutional things that he did. Now that we have a chance to undo the damage the neo-Cons did to the Constitution, that's suddenly against the Constitution. Yeah. Thinking about it will make your head hurt. G.W. Bush can wipe his ass with our Constitution and use the DHS to strip us of our constitutional rights such as with the warrantless wiretapping and the use of torture, and these bastards didn't care about that, but warn that some right-wing wackos á-la-Timothy-McVeigh might have cause to do others harm, and oh-my-god-the-government-is-going-to-take-away-our-rights!

And all of this because she said that right-wing extremists might *try* to recruit veterans. This would seem like a joke if it weren't so troubling. The judge will probably throw it out as groundless, but you have to ask yourself this, why are these people so upset over the assessment that right-wing extremists are a danger to our democracy and safety? Unless Napolitano hit a nerve. Actually if you take into consideration all the right-wing wackos screaming for secession and the violent overthrow of a duly elected government, and thinly or not-at-all-masked neo-Nazi militias who want a white Christian America, you might see that perhaps Napolitano isn't so far off the mark.