On a Mission From God
Rise of the Religious Right
Even Republicans are worried
If This Goes On--
Heinlein published If This Goes On-- in 1940. I wonder if he thought we'd be arriving at theocracy before 2010? I don't have a copy of the story handy (it's still packed -- books haven't all come out of boxes yet), so I can't backtrace the timeline from the revolt in 2100.
I sit in North Vancouver, BC, partly because of the state of the American electoral system -- dominated by a few right-wingnuts associated with extremely wealthy people. We'll spend weeks this fall working in at least one battleground state and we do what we can to remind people of what we see happening (we blog, and we talk, and we point out stories), and I hope that what we (and everyone else who believes in true freedom in America) do will make a difference. But I am often not hopeful (hence my sitting in Canada instead of the U.S.).
Some quotes from the above links:
In 2001, the St. Petersburg Times opined, "We believe Mr. Bush and his supporters deserve to have their philosophy placed fairly before the public, without the distorting lens of liberal media bias. Therefore, without further ado, we give you the verbatim comments of the President's good friend and spiritual comrade: the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
"You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan. Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people. The world will reject Americans who continue to be so foolish.. . ."
"We must have an autocratic theocracy to rule the world. So we cannot separate the political field from the religious. My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholic and all religious sects. We can embrace the religious world in one arm and the political world in the other."
Coda: "I want to salute Reverend Moon. He's the man with the vision." - former President George H.W. Bush. [St. Petersburg Times]
That would be the St. Petersburg, Russia, Times -- someone with a little more experience of autocratic ideology driven regimes than most Americans, BTW.
Voter apathy is the key to the phenomenal ascent of the Religious Right in the U.S. government.
"With the apathy that exists today, a small, well-organized minority can influence the selection of candidates to an astonishing degree."
Pat Robertson wrote those words in The Millennium, 1990, and it has been a key organizing principle of the Religious Right ever since.
Pat Robertson tells us who makes up that "well-organized minority." It includes only Christians who share his point of view. As he said on his television program, the 700 Club: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists, and this and that and the other thing. Nonsense! I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." (Pat Robertson, the Most Dangerous Man in America? Rob Boston)
and
By including a provision regulating the most intimate of relationships into the Constitution, the traditional analysis that the court has used to limit government power will be fundamentally changed
Not from those links, but a worthwhile quote nonetheless (the set-up is that Jerry Falwell's God has come to a party at Roy's house):
"I'll tell you something Jesus would Not Do. Jesus would not wreck a guy's party.
Jesus would not preach hate.
Jesus would not stand in the rubble and say 'I told you so'.
Jesus would not use an international catastrophe to score points for some mysogynistic, narrow, homophobic, anti-Semitic interpretation of his life and teaching.
And if people are jealous and judgemental and vengeful and violent, maybe it's because You made them in Your image.
And if people have cast you out of the town square, maybe it's because you are a finger-pointing, moralizing, rage-aholic stone drag who gives Dieties a bad name!"
-- Jerry Falwell's God, Roy Zimmerman
