Politics of Fear – Page 36 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 29, 2015

The Republican-controlled House and Senate have each passed budgets for the coming Fiscal Year. The Senate plan seeks $5.1 trillion in domestic spending cuts over 10 years while boosting military funding.

Each budget plan derives more than two-thirds of its non-defense budget cuts from programs for people with low or modest incomes, even though these programs constitute less than one-quarter of federal program costs. One question needs to be asked: Why do Republicans insist on passing legislation that they know Mr. Obama will veto, rather than attempting to draft more palatable and bipartisan proposals (something that actually has a chance of passing) rather than grid-locking all government functions?

The newest Senate budget plan repeals Obamacare, since it’s working pretty well. Their budget guts Medicare and turns it into a voucher-driven private insurance program (another gift to the health-care industry). It cuts back even farther on Medicaid and food stamps; but, it provides a nice tax break to the highest-paid Americans, who don’t deserve a break today. It is evident to anyone who reads that Republicans do not want to eliminate Medicare nor reduce government.

What they want is to privatize it to make their donors even richer than what they are. This budget is similar to what Wisconsin and Kansas both have tried. You could check and see how their economies have tanked as a result of following discredited trickle-down Republican ideology. Now, for a few cartoons to provide some levity to an otherwise bad week.

Republicans give more $Billions to Pentagon than it asks for:

How the budgets compare:

GOP tries usual old trick again:

Obama decides on new plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan:

New screening should check for Pilots’ REAL baggage:

Senate Dems look to replace Harry Reid with Big Head Chuck:

Friday Music Break – March 27, 2015

There are more words about music than music today. People are asking a persistent question: Given our endless Middle East wars, threats to our Constitutional rights, growing income inequality, and the continuing of violence against blacks by our police, “Where is the protest music?”

Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. There has been an avalanche of provocative hip-hop and R&B, known generally as “black liberation music” around for years. Recently, it has become more thoughtful, and for whites in America, more accessible. Gawker has an article that provides a discussion of what it is about, and which artists are leading the genre.

Today, let’s focus on three artists, D’Angelo, who, in January, released an album, “Black Messiah” 14 years after his last effort. The title song has these lyrics:

Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah,
For me the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt
And in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough,
And decides to make change happen.
It’s not about celebrating one charismatic leader, but celebrating thousands of them.

The New York Times Magazine’s Jay Caspian King features another Messiah of the moment, Kendrick Lamar. His new album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has just been released. The first video released is for the song, “i“, that speaks of his experience in Compton, CA:

They wanna say there’s a war outside and a bomb in the street
And a gun in the hood and a mob of police
And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends…

Finally, J Cole released a new album in December, “Forest Hills Drive”. Here is “Intro”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hh-gGb0Mvk

Sample Lyric:
I said do you wanna, do you wanna be, free
Free from pain, free from scars
Free to sing, free from bars
Free my dawgs, you’re free to go
Block gets shot, the streets is cold
Free to love, to each his own
Free from bills, free from pills
You roll it loud, the speakers blow
Life get hard, you eat your soul

This song asks questions that the all of us must answer for ourselves. We live in a very structured, high-stress, work hard or get left behind society.

Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be free?

The answers to these questions are clearly, “YES” for everybody. Cole makes listeners think about what they are doing with their lives, and what really matters.

The Gawker article quotes Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I don’t think it’s an accident that we have all these Black artists who were born around the same time and who are now making art that urges on liberation. America produced us. If there’s any clarity that we can derive from the different stories being told…it’s that a lot of people are fed up.

Kendrick might be one of the few Hip Hop artists who doesn’t want what whiteness affords white people:

And I will die knowing that this white racial supremacy shit has fucked with white folks psychologically, intellectually, and soulfully more than it’s fucked with any of us.

White supremacy is deeply ingrained, so deeply, that in fact, most aren’t even aware they’re infected.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 22, 2015

Back from 85° in Costa Rica to another snow storm in the Northeast. A few things happened while Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right were away. One wasn’t a surprise: Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud Party again claimed the most seats in the Knesset. It’s hard for Americans to wrap their minds around the fact that 75% of Israeli voters can be against a guy, and yet, in a parliamentary system he’s still the Prime Minister.

Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute declaration that there will be no Palestinian state finally rips the fig leaf off of the failed peace process. No one will try to keep up that facade any longer. He claimed subsequently that he never really meant it, but when pressed by a close election, out came the old big bad idea, just like a Costa Rican Black Iguana:

We need to add some distance between the US and Israel, particularly in light of Netanyahu’s move to invalidate the two-state solution. The Obama administration could agree to passage of a UN Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution, something we have always opposed. To really pay-back Bibi for grandstanding in DC and meddling in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations, we should base the two-state solution on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to the major Jewish settlements built by Bibi in the West Bank.

Perhaps it is a good thing that Bibi won the election. It’s time to give him a dose of reality. Yeah, it’s time to call bullshit on Bibi. Now a few cartoons.

Bibi isolates Israel:

Bibi’s domestic campaign message was a cheap imitation:

Obama goes to the experts for advice on undermining a leader:

Obama suggests voting be mandatory. Reaction is predictable:

Republicans try to find the losers in their bracket. Please help them out:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 15, 2015 (Costa Rica Edition)

You may have heard that there was a volcanic eruption in Costa Rica. It occurred while the Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right were seated in a prime location on the runway (yes, in a plane) at Newark Airport. But airlines do not willingly fly into volcano ash, so we had to wait another 24 hours for the San Jose airport in Costa Rica to reopen. So we did, and here we are, walking around the Curu National Preserve @6:30am, after getting to bed after midnight local time. If you’re traveling to Costa Rica, visit https://www.buenavistadelrincon.com/costa-rica-wellness-tours/ to learn about wellness tours.

Here is a photo of a female spider monkey from the early Saturday walk:

Now, on to cartoons. It seems that Hillary and the Republican effort to torpedo the Iran negotiations continued to dominate the news.

The messaging on both sides is the same:

Republicans see no irony in their position vis a vis Iran:

Clinton server problems:

Hashtag #47 Traitors

Twitter has turned on the Republicans who signed the letter to Iran. Outraged Americans on Tuesday blasted the Senate Republicans for sending a letter to Iran’s leaders, sparking a top trending #47Traitors hashtag on Twitter. The attack got started following the Daily News’ front-page coverage of the unprecedented open letter to Iran:

The Daily News is a right-leaning paper, owned by Mort Zuckerman, who is a staunch supporter of all things Israel. It’s interesting that their editors took this on. We covered the wretched Republican epistle here. The Iranians expressed amusement at the Republican’s notion that they do not understand the US government. How ignorant do you have to be to talk down like that to another country in a so-called diplomatic exchange? Do the Republicans really think the Iranians are an uneducated people?

Here is part of Iran’s Foreign Minister’s response, which is an act of diplomatic trolling. And depending on your point of view, it is either hugely insulting or hilarious (or possibly, both):

…it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.

Iran knows that third party investment will flood into Iran if there is a nuclear deal, and sanctions are lifted. It would be interesting to see a Republican Congress try to reverse a nuclear agreement, and then work with Israel to attack Iran, which would then include French, British, German, Chinese, and probably some American investments. (A side note: The Wrongologist raised a couple hundred million dollars for the Iranian National Oil Company in the pre-Ayatollah era of his banking career.)

The 47 Traitors say that Obama can only legally conclude an “executive agreement” with Iran and have it remain in effect only for the remainder of his presidency. Once again, they are incorrect. They continually talk about the “alliance” between Israel and the US. But, there is no treaty creating an alliance between Israel and the US. All of the many agreements are “executive agreements.” Mostly because Israel wants it that way, and their position is easy to understand:

In a defense treaty, the US would commit to defend Israeli territory in case of attack. Israel’s problem with that is both the “territory” part, and the “attack” part.

1. Defining attack: Would violent Palestinian resistance against occupation and expropriation qualify as an attack? Would a stray rocket or mortar round constitute an attack, or does it need to be a barrage? Does it need to be men or vehicles crossing Israel’s border? Does it need to be an attack by only state actors (Iran) or would non-State actors (Hezbollah) be enough?

2. Defining territory: Israel’s “territory” would have to be defined, and Israel doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at that. Would the US defend the 1948 borders? The 1967 borders? The 1973 borders? What about the Golan Heights? What if someone attacks the ski resort or the vineyards that Israel built there? And what about the Sheeba farms? That are an Israeli outpost inside of Syria. What if someone attacks an Israeli in East Jerusalem? Or in a settlement in the West Bank? None of that is Israeli territory under international law.

And, regarding a legal basis for a charge against Republican traitors, here is the relevant part of the Logan Act:

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

But, the lunacy of what the 47 Traitors have done is best shown on Twitter. Here is a tweet that captures the emotional maturity of today’s Republicans by Steve Marmel (@Marmel) :

Finally, the Republican Party is moving on from the mistakes of the George W. Bush era to make new, even bigger mistakes. #47Traitors.

Republican Senators Usurp Presidential Power

Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin reports that a group of 47 Republican senators, led by freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), wrote an open letter to Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, warning that any nuclear deal Iran signs with President Obama’s administration is unlikely to last after Mr. Obama leaves office. Here is a snippet:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system…Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement…The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

The full text of the letter is here. Seven Senate Republicans did not sign the letter. It is a pretty condescending way to insert yourself into nuclear negotiations being conducted by 6 nations with Iran. Their premise is that Iran’s leaders “may not fully understand our constitutional system,” and in particular may not understand the nature of the “power to make binding international agreements.” The problem is that these Senators seem to have an incomplete understanding of our constitutional system.

Their letter states that “the Senate must ratify [a treaty] by a two-thirds vote.” Yet, a Senate web page says:

The Senate does not ratify treaties. Instead, the Senate takes up a resolution of ratification, by which the Senate formally gives its advice and consent, empowering the president to proceed with ratification…

Ratification is the formal consent that the nation will be bound by the treaty. Senate consent is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of treaty ratification in the US.

None of this detracts from Sen. Cotton’s message that any administration deal with Iran might not last beyond this presidency, but, in a letter purporting to teach a constitutional lesson to a foreign government, the Republicans have made an embarrassing error.

But it’s no secret that the administration wasn’t planning to seek Congressional approval to lift Iranian sanctions if a nuclear deal is struck. The NYT reported last October:

The Treasury Department, in a detailed study it declined to make public, has concluded Mr. Obama has the authority to suspend the vast majority of those sanctions without seeking a vote by Congress, officials say.

While Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate sanctions, Congress can take that step. Mr. Obama’s advisers concluded last year that the White House would probably lose such a vote. The Times quoted a senior WH official: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation [for] any comprehensive agreement for years…

It’s no secret that Republicans don’t like what they’re hearing about the negotiations with Iran, and they have hit on an interesting tactic for weakening them. Republicans would have trouble passing any new Iran sanctions in order to disrupt a deal, since they would have limited Democratic support and would need to overcome a presidential veto.

But, you don’t need to hold a vote to write a letter.

So, these 47 Republican Senators usurp the role of the president during a nuclear treaty negotiation. The Constitution does not give the Senate the right to undertake negotiations with a foreign government, or to threaten a government we are negotiating with, as a part of their role to “advise and consent” to treaties.

Having a world view that distrusts Iran is understandable, but trying to undermine good faith negotiations with a foreign government just hurts America. It is clear that Mr. Obama has been building his deal on unsteady ground, particularly since Democrats lost control of the Senate last November.

It is also true that Republicans are doing Netanyahu’s bidding, attempting to scuttle any deal that slows or halts Iranian nuclear enrichment, but does not completely dismantle Iran’s program.

We are so lucky to live in an age when the real patriots (Republicans) understand that laws do not apply to them. Laws like the Logan Act, passed over 200 years ago, which forbids unauthorized meddling in foreign affairs.

These are the same people that equated simply questioning the Bush government’s actions in Iraq with terrorism, by burning Dixie Chicks CD’s, back when people bought CD’s.

Quite the elastic set of principles in that bunch.

With this letter, they’re beating the drums for a larger war in the Middle East, this time, with Iran, much in the same way they did in Iraq. Republicans have become enablers of the politics of fear. They have become far too easy to rattle, and too willing to say no preemptively on so-called principle.

Rather than shaking our heads and moving on, we need to remember that, when you don’t turn out for elections, things can always get worse. This is a textbook example.

Friday Music Break – March 6, 2015

Today we celebrate Eddy Grant. This politically-grounded songwriter had his first #1 UK hit in 1968 as performer and songwriter for the group The Equals, with his song “Baby Come Back“. It is worth a listen if you are a Grant fan, because it is highly unlikely that you have heard it.

But today, we focus on two Grant protest tunes, one which most have undoubtedly heard, and another that most Americans have probably not heard before.

First, the most likely unheard “Gimme Hope Jo’anna“. During the apartheid regime, “Jo’anna” meant Johannesburg. So the song is about the apartheid regime in South Africa, and was subsequently banned there. It is unusual to portray an evil regime as a woman. The play on the name of Johannesburg, the upbeat, happy sounding tune make this a rare protest song. Here is Eddy Grant doing “Gimme Hope Jo’anna” live in London in 2008 celebrating Nelson Mandela’s birthday accompanied by an undistinguished Kurt Darren, a South African music personality:

Sample Lyrics:
Well Jo’anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don’t care about the rest at all
She’s got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure will make Jo’anna see
How everybody could a live as one

Next, the song most have heard, “Electric Avenue”. The song’s lyrics refer to the 1981 Brixton riot in London, the title referring to Electric Avenue, a street in the Brixton area of London. Here is “Electric Avenue”:

Sample Lyrics:
Now in the street, there is violence
And-and a lots of work to be done
No place to hang out our washing
And-and I can’t blame all on the sun

Despite that fact that you can dance to them, Grant’s songs are pointed criticism of the racial politics of the 1980’s.

See you on Sunday.

Reading List Q1 2015

Here are books that the Wrongologist read over the past few months. All were about war, both new and old, and all are highly recommended:

April 1865, The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik (2001). Richmond fell in April 1865. Followed by Appomattox. After that, there was Lincoln’s assassination, and a nearly-successful plot to decapitate the Union government. Then came the real possibility of prolonged Southern guerrilla warfare, which Jefferson Davis considered, and Lee would not. Had Davis decided on guerrilla war, it might have ended any chance at a national reconciliation. This is a great (and short) history of the end game of our Civil War.

The Republic of Suffering-Death and the American Civil War (2008) by Drew Gilpin Faust. It’s hard for us to appreciate just how deadly the Civil War was: 620,000 dead soldiers, (2% of the US population at the time), at least 50,000 dead civilians, an estimated 6 million pounds of human and animal carcasses to deal with on battlefields. When the war began, neither army had burial details, graves registration units, means to notify next of kin, or provisions for decent burial. They had no systematic way to identify or count the dead, and until 1867, no national cemeteries in which to bury them. In an unusual twist, in 1866, the Union Army opened an office in Ford’s Theater to record deaths, house the war records and assist families to find lost loved ones. In 1893, it collapsed, killing 22.

The mortality rate in the South exceeded that of any country in WWI. In addition, the South lost nearly 2/3rds of its wealth in the war.

Embattled Rebel (2014) by James M. McPherson. This short book lets you view the Civil War through the eyes of Jefferson Davis. Davis was an interesting character, he was a one-eyed and sickly micromanager.

McPherson shows how Davis gradually lost support of many Southern politicians, and a few of his generals. He was a West Point graduate, he had fought alongside many Civil War generals on both sides, and he appointed generals who were his West Point buddies. He had long personal feuds with General P.G.T Beauregard, and later, with General Joseph Johnston. Both would not keep Davis informed of their maneuvers, their true troop strength, or their tactics. McPherson summarizes the flawed strategic and logistics position of the Confederacy: The lack of well-trained, well-armed men, the lack of effective railroads, and the lack of usable waterways. The Confederacy started the war undermanned, understaffed, and under-equipped, and it went downhill from there.

Here are three books about the Afghan and Iraq wars, two that deal primarily with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and one that deals with official corruption.

Redeployment (2014) by Phil Klay. Redeployment is a collection of stories around the experience of soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. These stories have no sappy sentimentality or macho muscle-flexing. They are as real and honest as anything you’ll find being written about how these wars have affected America’s young men and women who were sent there, often multiple times, and who have been irrevocably changed by it. A shattering, must-read book.

Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (2013) Edited by Matt Gallagher. This collection offers a deeply personal look at the human ravages of our Middle East wars; the impact of fear, violence, destruction and death on its warriors, both male and female alike. It portrays PTSD as a nightmare; the psychic suffering of re-integrating into society with brain injuries, trauma such as faces burned off or limbs and genitals blown away. This is truth-telling that only those who were there can write. “Play the Game“, by Colby Buzzell shows the ball of emotions a combat vet experiences as he wanders around Los Angeles in a fog. Mariette Kalinowski’s amazing story, “The Train“, is perhaps the collection’s most affecting story. If there are Americans who still mistakenly believe that women weren’t damaged by serving in combat, they need to read “The Train” to see how PTSD is not an illness of just one gender.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War (2014) by James Risen. Risen reveals a litany of the unseen costs of our war on terror: From squandered and stolen money, to abuses of power, to wars on decency, and truth, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Risen makes two overarching points: First, the enormity of waste and corruption generated during the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq. Consider: The US government, eager to reflate Iraqi currency post-Saddam, sends plane after plane load filled with US hundred-dollar bills from the US to Baghdad. Why? Because printing new Iraqi Dinars would take too long. A large proportion of that cash simply goes missing.

Second, Risen makes the point that the false legitimacy of surveillance and torture as promulgated by GW Bush, Cheney, the CIA, NSA and their Justice Dept. acolytes that morphed our security apparatus into one that believes total surveillance of American citizens is not only desirable, but necessary.

Our government has done some things that are as shameful as those of its wartime enemies. And it has worked very hard to cover them up.

What are you reading?

Is Snowden the First, or Last of His Kind?

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right saw “CitizenFour” a few days after the Oscars. It is interesting that the Academy recognized both “American Sniper” and “CitizenFour.” The former bagged one Oscar, for Best Sound Editing, while the latter won for Best Feature Length Documentary. One made big bucks, the other is already on HBO. Both celebrate heroes, one a tool of the Global War on Terror, the other a whistleblower computer geek who saw that the War on Terror was compromising our Constitution.

Laura Poitras accepted her Oscar, but Edward Snowden couldn’t, because of that little “treason” thing.

As Kunstler says: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

He [Snowden] appeared to know exactly what he was doing, and with quiet, unshakable moral commitment. And then he disappeared down the gullet of America’s modern times nemesis, Russia, where he continues to taunt with his very existence, the NSA gameboys, lizard-lawyers and puppet-masters who cordially invite him back home to face, ho-ho, our vaunted justice system. Of course any six-year-old understands that they would love to jam Snowden down some federal supermax memory hole as an example to any other waffling NSA code-jockey having second thoughts about reading your grandpa’s phone records.

Snowden is a much more interesting hero than the sniper, Chris Kyle. The documentary follows Snowden, who was hiding in plain sight in Hong Kong in the spring of 2013, after he stole over 220,000 files belonging to the National Security Agency. Glen Greenwald, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras later began revealing to the public the extent to which the American government was spying on everyone’s electronic life while ignoring that pesky US Constitution, and setting the USA on a track towards becoming a police state.

Listening to Ed talk, you’re pleasantly surprised. He gets the concepts, he articulates them beautifully.

Towards the end of the movie, one of the characters (Greenwald?) makes an amazing statement. He says:

What we used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And now people are saying privacy is dead.

Is that what we’re all fighting for? Liberty? Is that a concept that unites the left and the right in America?

You’d expect people to be up in arms about “CitizenFour” but the truth is they just don’t care. That’s our government’s job. If we don’t let the agencies run wild, ISIS will attack Kansas. So we suspend your rights for a while. That’s right, the head fake of fighting “terrorism” has caused us to let our First Amendment freedoms go down the drain, and if someone like Snowden blows the whistle, they are a traitor, or a pariah.

Snowden sparked a debate about how to preserve privacy in the information age—and whether such a thing is even possible. If Snowden hadn’t come forward, the steady encroachment of the surveillance state would have continued, and most people might never have known about the government’s efforts.

There’s something hollow in the soul of America today. Right and wrong used to matter. But now, the government works to keep the average person off balance via subterfuge and fear. And very few of us grasp the facts, even when they’re staring us in the face.

So, we’re dependent on lone wolves to help us see. Snowden says he’s only the first, that the government may get him, but others will follow in his wake. Really?

Once upon a time, “CitizenFour” would have incited a national debate. Now it’s just grist for the mill, Snowden’s character has already been assassinated by the main stream media, and his Oscar-winning movie will come and go.

All of the political debating about immigration, DHS funding, taxes, and ISIS are the sideshow. The main event is how they’ve got our number and we’re already living in 1984. And you believed it couldn’t happen here.

The truth is it already has. We need more Snowdens. People who will say, as Snowden did:

There are things worth dying for.

Today’s Reason for Rejecting Conservative Republicanism

Yesterday, we highlighted an effort by a county Republican Party organization to establish Christianity as the state religion of Idaho. Turns out, that idea was smack in the mainstream of Republican ideas: A national poll of Republican primary voters conducted by Public Policy Polling finds that 57% percent of these voters support establishing Christianity as the national religion, while 30% oppose making Christianity the nation’s religion. Well, this means that 57% of Republicans hate America plain and simple. They want to turn our nation into something out of the Dark Ages.

A number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, but Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the US into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s cross-tabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among supporters of Mike Huckabee (94%), Rick Perry (83%), and Ben Carson (78%).

Now the poll was small, only sampling 316 Republican primary voters. Sample sizes of 300-600 are the norm for national telephone pollsters. While 316 is on the low end of that, PPP says that its margin of error is ± 5.5%, so some will say that it can’t scale up. However, PPP has been very accurate in the past.

The same poll also found that 66% do not believe in global warming, and a plurality (49%), do not believe in evolution. So, not only do they wish to establish a national religion, but it appears that their version of Christianity is one that is at odds with the scientific consensus in climatology and biology.

These data were buried deep (starting on page 14 of 47) in a report about how Scott Walker leads in the national eye test competition among Repubs.

Here’s a repeat of yesterday’s reminder: The First Amendment to the US Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. There’s a reason that our Founding Fathers wanted to establish a strict separation of Church and State, and the poll results bear out that wisdom. If things were left up to today’s Republican primary voters, we’d already be a theocracy, perhaps as self-righteous and intolerant as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The ignorance of our Constitution displayed by the poll results speaks to a voting populace that simply doesn’t care about tolerance, multicultural diversity, and most certainly, not about religious freedom.

America ought to be better than this. Instead, a significant portion of the electorate would be perfectly happy to turn this into a Christian theocracy…a recipe for tyranny by these good, God-fearing Christian patriots.

Our Founding Fathers lived at the end of a 300-year period where Europe had been racked by wars of religion, fought between adherents of various “Christian” sects, and they were only a little over a hundred years removed from the English civil wars of the mid-1600’s which were strongly influenced by religion. The colonies themselves mirrored Europe’s religious division, Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, and many German religious refugees in New York and Pennsylvania. They had darned good reasons to not want any religion to be given preeminence.

And today, we see religious violence in Asia (Burma, India, and China) and in the Middle East. Why would we want to revisit that here, in a nation that knows better?

From fear of Jihadi John, to fear of immunizations, to denial of climate change, it doesn’t seem that Conservative American Christians are comfortable with the idea of critical thinking; it seems to require too much of them. How would atheists, or non-Christians of all stripes survive under the US Christian state? Luckily, that would take a Constitutional Amendment, which could prove very difficult to enact.

How did Conservatives, noted in the not-so-distant past for a fierce commitment to logic, become such prisoners of their various religions?

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Politics of Fear