This afternoon Tuesday June 10,James Von Brunn age 89 went on the attack, after a lifetime of nurturing ,promoting anti-Semitic ideas, Von Brunn a avowed racist decided to go out with a bang. A bang that has been heard around the world, the bang is called White Supremacy and it's rounds where aimed at the Washington DC Holocaust Museum,targeting the innocent people inside and assaulting the memory of 6 million people murdered.
Many American have been lulled into the belief that this type of hatred no longer exist in the country. We have convinced ourselves that with the election of President Obama neo Nazis, kkk were things of the past.
Von Brunn because of his age may be anomaly but the ideas of organized racism and lone wolf terror ta tics are the norm for many in the far right racist movement.
Just last week a notorious Internet racist broadcaster who has encouraged this type of racist violence for years, was finally arrested for threatening people with violence. Numerous time he would broadcast that "violence solves everything". Today we have seen that violence.
We at Right-Wing watch believe this violence is just a beginning.
We will be posting more infor soon - RWW
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
When Religious Bigotry is the Default Setting
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
When Religious Bigotry is the Default Setting
by Frederick Clarkson
When Religious Bigotry is the Default
Sat May 30, 2009 at 08:03:14 PM PDT
This is a story of term that turned up in what, by Religious Right standards, was a mild diatribe issued by the Family Research Council. It was issued in response to a mild call for support for President Obama's health care reform plan by some liberal and centrist religious groups. But it is a story that offers insight into the politics our time as viewed from the window of history. So please bear with me as we take the long view of rhetoric emanating out of the heat of the moment.
Our history as a nation has for many been a struggle for equality. Although the framers of the Constitution set out a way to work it out through peaceful democratic processes; it goes without saying that his has not all gone smoothly, and although we have come a long way, we have a long way to go as well.
One of these struggles has been for religious equality. The framers established the principle well in Article 6 of the Constitution declaring that there would be no religious test for public office anywhere in the U.S. The implications of this were that there would be no religious test for citizenship and voting. Whether people were religious or not, or changed their mind along the way, would be irrelevant to their status as a citizen. The principle was further fleshed out in the First Amendment.
Frederick Clarkson's diary :: ::
Our dark episodes in this regard are seen as dark as they are in no small measure because the idea and goal of freedom on conscience in society founded on religious pluralism is an important element of our national identity and rightly seen around the world as one of our shining accomplishments as a nation.
But our identity and accomplishments in this regard do not go unchallenged.
The modern Religious Right takes no satisfaction in this history (and often denies it); does not believe in the value of separation of church and state as a legal guarantor of freedom of conscience for all. Rather, they see it as an obstacle to their theocratic objectives rooted in the overlapping ideologies of Christian nationalism and dominionism.
The other day I posted a diary about how a classic frame used by the religious right turned up as one of the GOP's talking pointsabout the Sotomayor nomination. In addition to worries about abortion and marriage equality, the GOP claimed Sotomayor "could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for... completely secularizing the public square."
This false equation of anti-religionism with the Left is at least as old as McCarthyism ("Godless Communist", anyone?) when in fact, it is progressives who have historically taken the lead in advocating for religious freedom, religious pluralism and separation of church and state. As I wrote:
...faith and religion are not now, nor have they ever been, the exclusive province of political conservatives. Most importantly though, this pitting of the religious as against the secular; conflating the idea of faith itself with opposition to the constitutional doctrines related to religious equality and pluralism -- is integral to the identity of the Religious Right itself.
That is why is it is a framing that feeds the charge that Democrats and liberals are trying to drive people of faith out of the public square. That this is a preposterous and factually unsupported charge does not alter the fact that it is an idea embraced as true by many including some Democrats; and that it remains a pernicious and resilient dimension of public discourse.
All of which brings us to this little gem from the Family Research Council:
"Using their spiritual credentials, liberal groups like "Faithful America," Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, and others are taking to the airwaves to endorse the President's health reform plan as some sort of scriptural mandate.
"God desires abundant life for all people," says one ad. "It's time we step up and ask our politicians to move the debate forward." We've seen this approach in the debates over climate change and abortion. Now we're witnessing the Left's new strategy to use the veneer of religion to cover a socialist agenda... We must not allow liberals to treat the scripture as silly putty and distort its words to mask their anti-family, anti-faith, anti-freedom agenda." (emphasis added)
Whatever the president's health plan may be, and whatever liberal and centrist religious groups get behind it, one thing of which we can be certain is that it does not comprise an "anti-faith agenda."
In fact denouncing the policy views of religious liberals as anti-faith, (or anti-God, anti-Christian) is flat out religious bigotry. While we have seen this kind of thing many times from the Religious Right, it is long past time we got very good at calling it out for what it is.
People of many varied religious traditions, and none at all, will be for the or against the plan. And people both for and against it may be informed in their view by their particular faith or not. But being for or against the president's health plan has nothing to do with faith itself.
The Religious Right, however, sees it differently. In their view, it really is an anti-faith agenda because it deviates from their particular idea of what a Biblical society should look like; their particular idea of God's plan. And as it happens, their particular idea of God's plan does not include those who believe differently than they do. Indeed, to hold a different religious view, or no religious view, is in itself deemed anti-faith.
So it is not merely inflammatory rhetoric to call religious liberal support for the president's health plan "anti-faith." It is an expression of a profound set of beliefs that we underestimate at our peril.
When Religious Bigotry is the Default Setting
by Frederick Clarkson
When Religious Bigotry is the Default
Sat May 30, 2009 at 08:03:14 PM PDT
This is a story of term that turned up in what, by Religious Right standards, was a mild diatribe issued by the Family Research Council. It was issued in response to a mild call for support for President Obama's health care reform plan by some liberal and centrist religious groups. But it is a story that offers insight into the politics our time as viewed from the window of history. So please bear with me as we take the long view of rhetoric emanating out of the heat of the moment.
Our history as a nation has for many been a struggle for equality. Although the framers of the Constitution set out a way to work it out through peaceful democratic processes; it goes without saying that his has not all gone smoothly, and although we have come a long way, we have a long way to go as well.
One of these struggles has been for religious equality. The framers established the principle well in Article 6 of the Constitution declaring that there would be no religious test for public office anywhere in the U.S. The implications of this were that there would be no religious test for citizenship and voting. Whether people were religious or not, or changed their mind along the way, would be irrelevant to their status as a citizen. The principle was further fleshed out in the First Amendment.
Frederick Clarkson's diary :: ::
Our dark episodes in this regard are seen as dark as they are in no small measure because the idea and goal of freedom on conscience in society founded on religious pluralism is an important element of our national identity and rightly seen around the world as one of our shining accomplishments as a nation.
But our identity and accomplishments in this regard do not go unchallenged.
The modern Religious Right takes no satisfaction in this history (and often denies it); does not believe in the value of separation of church and state as a legal guarantor of freedom of conscience for all. Rather, they see it as an obstacle to their theocratic objectives rooted in the overlapping ideologies of Christian nationalism and dominionism.
The other day I posted a diary about how a classic frame used by the religious right turned up as one of the GOP's talking pointsabout the Sotomayor nomination. In addition to worries about abortion and marriage equality, the GOP claimed Sotomayor "could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for... completely secularizing the public square."
This false equation of anti-religionism with the Left is at least as old as McCarthyism ("Godless Communist", anyone?) when in fact, it is progressives who have historically taken the lead in advocating for religious freedom, religious pluralism and separation of church and state. As I wrote:
...faith and religion are not now, nor have they ever been, the exclusive province of political conservatives. Most importantly though, this pitting of the religious as against the secular; conflating the idea of faith itself with opposition to the constitutional doctrines related to religious equality and pluralism -- is integral to the identity of the Religious Right itself.
That is why is it is a framing that feeds the charge that Democrats and liberals are trying to drive people of faith out of the public square. That this is a preposterous and factually unsupported charge does not alter the fact that it is an idea embraced as true by many including some Democrats; and that it remains a pernicious and resilient dimension of public discourse.
All of which brings us to this little gem from the Family Research Council:
"Using their spiritual credentials, liberal groups like "Faithful America," Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, and others are taking to the airwaves to endorse the President's health reform plan as some sort of scriptural mandate.
"God desires abundant life for all people," says one ad. "It's time we step up and ask our politicians to move the debate forward." We've seen this approach in the debates over climate change and abortion. Now we're witnessing the Left's new strategy to use the veneer of religion to cover a socialist agenda... We must not allow liberals to treat the scripture as silly putty and distort its words to mask their anti-family, anti-faith, anti-freedom agenda." (emphasis added)
Whatever the president's health plan may be, and whatever liberal and centrist religious groups get behind it, one thing of which we can be certain is that it does not comprise an "anti-faith agenda."
In fact denouncing the policy views of religious liberals as anti-faith, (or anti-God, anti-Christian) is flat out religious bigotry. While we have seen this kind of thing many times from the Religious Right, it is long past time we got very good at calling it out for what it is.
People of many varied religious traditions, and none at all, will be for the or against the plan. And people both for and against it may be informed in their view by their particular faith or not. But being for or against the president's health plan has nothing to do with faith itself.
The Religious Right, however, sees it differently. In their view, it really is an anti-faith agenda because it deviates from their particular idea of what a Biblical society should look like; their particular idea of God's plan. And as it happens, their particular idea of God's plan does not include those who believe differently than they do. Indeed, to hold a different religious view, or no religious view, is in itself deemed anti-faith.
So it is not merely inflammatory rhetoric to call religious liberal support for the president's health plan "anti-faith." It is an expression of a profound set of beliefs that we underestimate at our peril.
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