Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Hey, Must Be The Money

by digby

So I make myself some coffee and open my dead tree version of the NY Times this morning only to see a call for blogger ethics on the front page. How interesting. Another call for “managed civil speech” (which is claimed to be “freer” than unfettered free speech.) There was no word on who would be the managers of such speech, but I think we can count on those who call for it to be the ones who feel they are most qualified to define and enforce it. (Apparently, this will all be done “voluntarily” and will be dealt with through purges and link boycotts and the novel concept of moderated comment sections. Or something.)

Meanwhile, on the media page is a story about the execrable Don Imus and the fact that he routinely makes racist, misogynistic and eliminationist jokes on his show while half the Washington press corps spends time there kissing his ring. For some reason that kind of “incivility” doesn’t upset the journalistic prima donnas half as much as the uncivil blogosphere does.

So what’s up with this? The blogosphere is admittedly an uncivil place. Nobody disputes that. But it is comprised of a bunch of disparate individuals who are arguing amongst themselves with varying degress of seriousness and talent as part of the national (and international) dialog. There is a corner of it that is despicable and revolting, as the misogyny that set off this latest debate clearly demonstrates. But for inexplicable reasons it’s the liberal blogosphere that is being particularly attacked for our alleged incivility by the mainstream media. (I suspect it’s the fact that we drop the “F” bomb too much, which is simply shocking in American life)

However, for almost two decades now, talk radio has been spewing vile racist, misogynistic and eliminationst spew — and their stars have been feted and petted for it among the highest levels of the capital cognoscenti. I don’t know for sure why that would be, but I have my suspicions.

First of all, I suppose it’s possible that the media insiders all share the politics and beliefs of Rush and Imus and O’Reilly and Hannity and Savage. They could be crude racists and misogynists and haters of all forms of liberalism who love to make vulgar jokes at others’ expense. I have no way of knowing except for the company they keep. So that’s one theory.

The other is that they are, like a lot of people in this culture, drawn to anyone who makes a lot of money, and lord knows, these spewers of rightwing filth have made billions from selling their hate over the years. Many of the media insiders are extremely wealthy themselves, so perhaps they see Rush and Imus as being part of their social class and therefore are willing to give them a pass. That’s another theory.

Or maybe it’s because they all work for big media companies and there’s a certain synergistic pressure on all of them to kiss each others asses.

Or maybe it’s a combination of all these things and more.

Whatever the reason, it’s quite clear that mainstream media have either ignored, pandered to or actively embraced hate radio for almost two decades now. Nary a peep has been said about the relentless, daily drumbeat of demogoguery and loathing of their fellow citizens that these talk show hosts vomit onto the public airwaves for anyone with a radio to hear.

Imus seems to have garnered some tepid attention with his “nappy headed hoes” comment, although it’s not substantially different from the kind of racist, misogynist offal he’s featured on his show for years. So, in addition to having to apologize, he got a gentle little lecture from one of his “gang” today, mainstream journalist Howard Fineman of Newsweek magazine.

FINEMAN: Just before I came on the show, I was coming upstairs and my cell phone rang, and it was some listener who called me out of the blue. I’d never heard of the guy before. I’d never heard his name. He called me and he said, “Are you going to go on the show and finally confront this Imus guy? Are you going to quit enabling him?” And, you know, I thought about that, and I said to the guy, “You know, I’ll puzzle that through on the radio.” And I would like to continue to enable you to do a lot of the good things you do. Including, you know, talking about stuff happening in the world, which you do a very good job of on this show.

You know, the form of humor that you do here is risky, and sometimes it runs off the rails. Most of the people who listen to this show get the joke most of the time, and sometimes, you know, as David Carr said in The New York Times this morning, sometimes you go over the line so far you can’t even see the line. And that’s what happened in this case. And I think of all the stuff you’ve done and do do, and, you know, you make your mistakes — we all make our mistakes. We all make mistakes. This was a big one. And I thought that the way you handled it just now — and I’m not blowing smoke here — I believe it, you know, was very heartfelt. And I know you well enough to know that that’s the case and you’re going to do everything you can to set it right.

You know, I don’t know what’ll happen. I think — you know, it’s a different time, Imus. You know, it’s different than it was even a few years ago, politically. I mean, we may, you know — and the environment, politically, has changed. And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can’t do anymore.

IMUS: No, you can’t. I mean —

FINEMAN: You just can’t. Because the times have changed. I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama’s got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race.

IMUS: Amen.

FINEMAN: I mean, you know, things have changed. And the kind of — some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can’t do anymore. And that’s just the way it is.

IMUS: But I would say, in the spirit of charity, that the same black journalists who are calling for me to be fired had the option — and the same black leaders — they had the option to call me when I was asking for weeks about help in trying to get more information about sickle-cell anemia, about what the government was doing, about what could be done about research. And nobody — nobody — called me.

I’m not looking to get patted on the back for that, but those are the facts. So we — people can write and say whatever they want to say about me, but they have an obligation to respect the facts of my life and what I do. And I’m not trying to excuse or weasel out of anything. But a context and a proportionality to who I am and what I do and what my wife does is crucial. So, anyway, thanks.

FINEMAN: Well, I hope the women from Rutgers will meet with you, and — although I can understand if they won’t, but I hope that they do. This is what they call a teaching moment, you know, in child-rearing, they call a teaching moment. This is a teaching moment for us all. For everybody. You know, all of us who do your show, you know, we’re part of the gang. And we rely on you the way you rely on us. So, you know, you’re taking all of us with you when you go out there to meet with them, you know.

IMUS: Well, these people at CBS Radio, Les Moonves on down, have known me for years. I wouldn’t be on the radio this morning if they thought that I meant this or if they thought that I was a bad person. They know what the deal is with the show — everybody understands that. Same with — I’ve been on MSNBC for 10 years. I know everybody over there. From [NBC Universal president Jeffrey] Zucker on down. So —

FINEMAN: Well, we’ll see how it goes.

IMUS: They’re not fools, you know.

FINEMAN: We’ll see how it goes. Good luck with it.

You have to hand it to Imus. He knows very well what he brings to the table. And so does his “gang.”

I’m almost speechless at Fineman’s comments, though. A rich white man derisively calling black women “nappy headed hoes” has never been acceptable among decent people — never. Howard Fineman just lowered himself to the level of the most rank, putrid racist by implying that Imus is just a little bit behind the times with his bigoted remarks. I’m surprised he didn’t come right out and say that Imus should have used “less inflammatory” language to describe his racist revulsion for the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. You just can’t say those things, you see. (Maybe he could have given him some pointers on proper racist code like: “those are some rough looking, affirmative action queens.”)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz publicly derides liberal bloggers as racists for being rude to poor little Michelle Malkin, author of “Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores” and “In Defense Of Internment.” And the NY Times uses its front page to issue a call for blogger ethics. From where I sit as one of those loathesome pseudonymous bloggers, this looks a bit odd. In fact it looks as if the mainstream press is living in an insular little universe populated by rich rightwingers who either lead them around like pied pipers — or have welcomed them into their ranks. Either way, they continue to fail their readers with this increasingly difficult to sustain disconnect from the world in which the rest of us are living.

The discourse that everyone is so shocked to see is now uncivil and “nasty” was polluted decades ago by a bunch of rich, white businessmen who saw that they could make a very nice profit at exploiting the lizard brain of the American rightwing and help their political cause at the same time. The media thought it was all in good fun (and good for their bosses) just as they do today.

We bloggers didn’t make this toxic, fetid environment, we just live in it. And toxic and fetid it is. At some point the prim and proper MSM are going to have to put down the smelling salts over the uncivil blogosphere and deal with the fact that the world they enabled with their convivial chuckling and snorting at Rush and Imus over the years has brought us to this place. The rest of us are little busy fighting off the neanderthal thugs they helped create.

Update: Et tu, Oliphant?

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Playing Real Good For Free

by tristero

One quick break from theocracy to comment quickly on Gene Weingarten’s boneheaded article about Joshua Bell playing for free in the DC Metro. The article is everything others have said it is, condescending, elitist and obnoxious. But let’s not stop there. The idea that a world-class musician would forgo the proscenium stage and the snoots is a great one.

Accordingly, I propose divorcing the idea from Weingarten’s pomposities. Let’s get other great musicians play in public spaces anonymously and unannounced. It’s what the Beatles did in Liverpool. It’s what Bach did every Sunday, and at the coffee-house Collegium in Leipzig. Branford Marsalis, Zakir Husain, Rory Block, Leila Josefowicz, my God, there are so many great ones! Let’s get this music-making in front of people, so it becomes part of their lives. The problem isn’t with people’s ability to understand anything but the most insipid music around. The problem is that great music is too hard to find, too hard to learn about, too hard to hear live.

Great musicians performing in such a place as to be literally integral to a community’s daily life – man, now that’s a great idea.

Blog Against Theocracy Part VI: The Continuing Influence Of Pat Robertson

by tristero

Another bonus post (and there will be one more post of excerpts from Morecraft following this one even though the blogswarm is officially over). In the comments to Part V, Enlightened Liberal wondered whether there was any real chance of a Christian Republic, ie a theocracy, ever happening in the U.S. I referred him back to Part IV of this series. But the takeover of the Texas GOP by christianists is old news. Here’s an example “ripped from today’s headlines:”:

When Monica Goodling’s name erupted into the news last week, the mainstream press discovered suddenly that Pat Robertson’s Regent University exists. Not only that, the press learned that it has made a deep footprint in George W. Bush’s Washington…

The right has exploited the mainstream press’s ignorance about Robertson to avoid weathering the blowback from his most embarassing gaffes. Case in point: Two years ago, after Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, Fox News’ Brit Hume introduced what would become a central talking point for spinning the controversy. On the August 23, 2005 episode of Fox News’ Special Report, Hume declared, “The televangelist Pat Robertson’s political influence may have been declining since he came in second in the Iowa Republican caucuses 17 years ago. And he may have no clout with the Bush administration.”

Morton Kondracke echoed Hume, exclaiming that “Pat Robertson’s day has long since passed…”

But in the wake of Goodling’s hotly publicized resignation, the mainstream press suddenly — and correctly — decided to judge Robertson by the fruits he has borne…

The Christian right is far more than a pantheon of charismatic backlashers with automatonic followers of “old men and women.” It is also a sophicated political operation with a coherent long-term strategy. Goodling may be out of a job, but thousands of capable Christian right cadres remain, waging the culture war from inside the White House, federal agencies and Republican congressional offices. Together they will continue to inflame conflicts that were previously unimaginable.

Anyone insisting in spite of continuously mounting evidence that the Christian right is going to simply shrink into oblivion because the Democrats control Congress, or because evangelical leaders are prone to scandal, should learn from Goodling’s example and take the fifth.

For details to back up these assertions, please visit the link.

Two points:

I am not claiming that Robertson is a follower of Rushdoony. He is not and there are important differences between the two men. I am saying that Robertson, Rushdoony, and Morecraft are all theocrats who share a common worldview and the common objective to transform the United States into a “Christian Republic” or a theocracy.

I am also not claiming that a full blown theocratic dystopia a la The Handmaid’s Tale is likely in America’s future. However, the theocrats have managed to undermine the separation of church and state in numerous different ways. Many of the goals of the theocrats, which were considered utterly crackpot, are now considered fit for mainstream discussion. Some examples include the establishment of an office of “faith-based initiatives,” the utterly substance-less “intelligent design” creationism, the advocacy of a minimalist federal government, the opposition to the U.N. and multi-lateralism, the establishment of a false dichotomy between a dominant “secularism” and a persecuted Christianity, the attempt to undermine and eliminate Social Security, and the placement within the American government, at all levels, of political operatives fully committed to destroying American liberalism.

By “American liberalism” I am not referring specifically to those of us who call ourselves “liberals” but something far broader. The goal of the theocrats is to replace the Englightenment liberal idea of a nation of laws and the consensus of the governed with a government of self-described superior beings who claim they derive their power directly from God.

Such claims immunize rulers from criticism or accountability from the people. Such claims are made, in many different ways, by the Bush administration. Only Bush, of all presidents, at least in recent history, has explicitly claimed that the reason he took the country to war was because God told him to. Furthermore, Bush has never discouraged his far right base from claiming he is God’s avatar on earth. (If anyone doubts this, I’ll gladly provide links.) But sometimes the claim that “God commands it” is minimized or simply assumed, in the theocrats’ support of such far-right goals as the elimination of Social Security, income tax, or participation in the UN.

These are extremely dangerous trends. Due to a highly sophisticated public relations campaign, the extent of christianist undermining both of American civic values AND the very infrastructure of American government (as with Goodling) has been grossly underestimated by the mainstream.

Why should we worry? Well, when you have an American president who follows God’s will rather than the will of the people, you end up quagmired in insane, immoral wars as in Iraq. You end with an erosion of scientific expertise. And you end up with a federal government which holds itself accountable to no earthly law or lawmaker.In short, you end up with precisely the situation we face today with the Bush administration and, at the local level, with christianist incursions into state, county, and city government.

That’s for starters. As bad as Bush is, if the theocrats aren’t beaten back to the fringes of American politics, it will get a lot worse.

Morecraft’s “Christian Republic” is merely a sick fantasy. But an America where a woman can’t get accurate information and medical attention regarding reproductive health issues from her government because doing so conflicts with some crackpot’s idea of what the Bible says is already a reality.

And that’s why those of us who’ve read in detail what the theocrats say, and examined what they claim as their goals in light of what the Bush administration is doing are deeply worried. Too many of their worst people are already ensconced in government. And too many of their worst ideas are becoming law, or already are law.

Long May He Write

by digby

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution says “Happy Birthday, Weirdo.” And he means it in the nicest possible way. It’s Seymour Hersh’s 70th birthday.

When asked what the secret is to being an investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh said, “I don’t make deals, I don’t party and drink with sources, and I don’t play a game of leaks. I read, I listen, I squirrel information. It’s fun.”

He never struck me as a cocktail party kind of guy. Here’s to more weirdos like him.

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New Life

by digby

I was explaining to a friend the other day that despite the fact that I’m not a religious believer, I like the spring festivals like easter and passover for all the reasons that I suspect humans have been celebrating at this time of year (in the northern hemisphere anyway) since cave days. Spring signals rebirth, new life, the world seems fresh again and alive with possibilities. It’s a beautiful time to appreciate both the spiritual and the natural world.

So, with that in mind, I thought some of you might enjoy this much viewed YouTube video in celebration of spring:

Happy Easter everyone.

Update: And for those who are just too hardboiled and cynical to appreciate the above adorableness, here’s Tom DeLay comparing himself to Jesus. Yep.

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Blog Against Theocracy Part V: How A Christian Republic Punishes And Taxes

by tristero

In Part III of this series of excerpts from With Liberty & Justice for All: Christian Politics Made Simple, Morecraft was seen interpreting as “figurative” an unambiguously clear Biblical injunction, one that, in fact, many Jews obey literally. Morecraft also laid out his justifications for and vision of a “Christian Republic” for America, a substitute term, as Morecraft explicitly says, for “theocracy.”

However, Morecraft appears not to advocate a strong, theocratic state. In fact, the state, ie, the civil government, has a very small role in Morecraft’s Christian Republic. Its primary function, as shown in the following excerpts, is swift, ruthless punishment of all who disobey God’s law. According to Morecraft’s interpretation of the Bible, the state has no right to collect taxes for anything beyond these minimal functions, has no business running public schools, or Social Security, or much of anything else beyond punishment.

The theocrats’ seeming advocacy of a minimal state is a notion many wealthy far-right conservatives find extremely congenial. And, of course, it is no accident that christianists would choose to interpret the Bible so as to make its message palatable to the Ahmansons and the Hunts who bankroll them. The shared vision of a minimalist state that collects next to no taxes enables christianists and other conservatives to form large coalitions.

These coalitions are quite unstable, but they are also powerful. From the theocrats’ perspective, the fight to eliminate Social Security is far more than a moral imperative. It is a holy obligation which must be met or else God will continue to plague America with floods, pestilence, economic hardship, and suffering.

***

….in order to administer justice and keep the peace, the state has been given the power of coercion in the suppression of lawlessness. (p.;65)

God has not given the state the power of the sword to convert the world to Christianity. Nor was the sword given for conquest. The purpose of the sword is not to conquer the world for America. That is the Islamic view of Gaddafi, Khomeini, and Hussein, but it is anti-Christian. (p. 66) [NOTE THAT HERE MORECRAFT DIFFERS SUBSTANTIALLY FROM MANY OTHER THEOCRATS BY LIMITING ALL EVANGELICAL INITIATIVES TO THE CHURCH RATHER THAN THE STATE.]

In our culture, it is not the victim that is protected and pitied, it is the criminal. For this reason the Bible instructs the judicial system not to show mercy to the criminal. It does not have the option to pardon him for crimes committed. He must receive the punishment he deserves, if justice is to be done. (p. 68) [NOTE THAT THIS IS FINESSED, AT LEAST RHETORICALLY, BY OTHER THEOCRATS, WHO DECLARE “ABORTION IS MURDER” BUT STOP SHORT OF ADVOCATING THE DEATH PENALTY FOR WOMEN WHO TERMINATE PREGNANCIES.]

The domestic use of the sword includes the legitimacy of capital punishment…Genesis 9, Exodus 13, and Romans 13 may all be used as our scriptural support…

There are three fundamental reasons why capital punishment is essential to public justice: (1) the holy character of God; (2) the holy command of God; (3) the sanctity (holiness) of human life, the family, and God’s moral order. (p.71)

God says that capital crimes pollute the land and the only way of “un-polluting” it is by shedding the blood of the offender who committed the crime. How polluted is America! (p. 73) [NOTE: MORECRAFT IS SAYING THAT A MURDERER MUST BE PUT TO DEATH, NOT OUT OF RETRIBUTION OR DETERRENCE OR EVEN PUNISHMENT (SEE BELOW), A MURDERER MUST BE EXECUTED IN ORDER TO REMOVE THE MORAL “POLLUTION” HE HAS SPREAD OVER THE COUNTRY.]

The concern of capital punishment is not rehabilitation. It is not even, primarily, deterrence. It is pure justice. Therefore, only God can define capital crimes and He has clearly done so in the Bible. (p. 74)

For us today in America, there is a more specific reason why God has placed the sword in the hands of the civil government: the global threat of Marxist-Leninist Communism. (p. 75)[NOTE: MORECRAFT’S BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN 1995, I.E. *AFTER *THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION.]

Lenin said that Marxism is Humanism. It is what humanism looks like when it grabs total political and military power. Humanism is the belief that man is God, that man has the ability to determine good and evil for himself, with no reference to God and the Bible. Marxism is the political application of humanism…which is the use of terrorism to reach one’s goals. (p. 75 – 76) [NOTE: MORECRAFT FOLLOWS THIS WITH AN EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION OF THE DANGERS OF “COMMUNISM” IN AMERICA. ASIDE FROM THE USUAL ACCUSATIONS – “the radical liberal and socialist, Mike Dukakis”- MORECRAFT, LIKE ROBERTSON IS PROFOUNDLY WORRIED ABOUT GEORGE H.W. BUSH AND “NEW WORLD ORDER.” (p.80)]

Some knowledgeable people think World War III is over and we lost. Phase I was the Cold War of the 1960s. We lost it. Phase II was the Détente in the 1970s. We lost it. Phase III, in the 1980s was the encirclement, isolation, terrorization, and strangulation of the U.S.A. Phase IV in the 1990s is the progressive surrender of the U.S.A. and its merger with the Soviet system. (p. 80) [NOTE: BEFORE DISMISSING THIS AS FAR REMOVED FROM MAINSTREAM REPUBLICAN DISCOURSE, PLEASE RECALL GEORGE W. BUSH’S REMARKS ABOUT THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM, THE CONTEMPT OF JOHN BOLTON AND OTHERS FOR THE U.N., THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY MADE BY PROMINENT REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN, AND MANY MORE STATEMENTS, ALL OF WHICH ARE, AT THE VERY LEAST, CONGRUENT WITH MORECRAFT’S WORLDVIEW. THE POINT IS THAT THE IDEOLOGY OF THE THEOCRATS OFTEN COMPLEMENTS THOSE WHO ARE NOT THEOCRATS, ENABLING THE FORMATION OF POWERFUL COALITIONS. ]

…in the final analysis, we must not put our faith in missiles, or SDI, or conventional military power, or arms treaties. Our ultimate and final security is Almighty God, our ultimate Peace Shield (Psalm 3:3f), if we, as a nation, are being faithful to Him (p. 84)…Without national repentance, all our might will not protect us. (NOTE: THIS WAS ECHOED BY ROBERTSON AND FALWELL AFTER 9/11. D’SOUZA’S RECENT BOOK IS A VARIATION ON THE SAME THEME: AN IMMORAL U.S. BRINGS UPON ITSELF ATTACKS LIKE THOSE ON 9/11. THEY ARE GOD’S PUNISHMENT. AND OUR MISSILES WON’T SAVE US.)

Others object by saying that this view of the power of the sword is contrary to Jesus’ teaching of love. They say, “Should not love and forgiveness dominate life. Did not Jesus say to love our enemies?” But that is not the only thing Jesus said or did. In John 2:13-16, Jesus used violent and potentially deadly foce to clean out the Temple of thieves and frauds…[NOTE HOW MORECRAFT ACKNOWLEDGES, ONLY IN THE MOST INDIRECT MANNER, THAT JESUS PREACHES A DOCTRINE OTHER THAN SWIFT, RUTHLESS, UNCOMPROMISING PUNISHMENT.]

In John 2:15 we read, and He (Jesus) made a scourge of cords… This was not a feather duster. A “scourge of cords” is several leather straps with sharp and heavy pieces of bone and metal in the end of each leather strap. When it struck a person, it would not only rip and tear out flesh, it could very easily kill, blind, maim, or fracture bones.

So, in John 2:14-16 we read,

And He found in the temple [thieves, frauds, and moneychangers.] And he made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money-changers…

Imagine the picture. Tables overturned! People probably jumping out of windows and running out of doors to escape Jesus swining His scourge of cords. This was the use of violent force to maintain God’s order. It was not inconsistent with anything else Jesus ever said, since as the Son of God, everything He did was thoroughly righteous and everything He spoke was thoroughly infallible. (p. 88-89)

***

The presupposition of income tax, property tax and inheritance tax is that the state owns your income, your property, your family’s future, and everything about you. [NOTE: THE WORD “PRESUPPOSITION” IS A CODE WORD. IT REFERS TO VAN TIL’S DOCTRINE OF PRESUPPOSITIONALISM. MORECRAFT’S POINT IS THAT ANY PRESUPPOSTION THAT CONTRADICTS THE PRESUPPOSITION THAT THE BIBLE IS THE TRUE WORD OF GOD, AND INERRANT, CAN NEVER BE TRUE. HERE, A HUMANIST STATE THAT COLLECTS INCOME TAXES, ETC HAS A FALSE PRESUPPOSITION THAT DENIES THE TRUTH OF GOD’S WORD]

…no one and no human institution, including the state, has the right to tax anybody beyond what God has commanded. (p.93) [NOTE THE POTENTIAL FOR COALITIONS WITH “SECULAR” LIBERTARIANS, CORPORATE REPUBLICANS, AND OTHERS OPPOSED TO “BIG GOVERNMENT” ON NON-RELIGIOUS GROUNDS. NOTE ALSO THE POTENTIAL FOR IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT BETWEEN THE THEOCRATS AND OTHER CONSERVATIVES].

Humanistic taxation is idolatrous…It is a denial of the fact that all property and life in America belong to Jehovah. In recognition of this biblical principle, the U.S. Constitution does not allow for the ownership of land by the federal government, except for that which is necessary for military installations and government buildings. (P. 95) [NOTE ONCE AGAIN THAT THIS SEEMINGLY CRACKPOT IDEA IS CONGRUENT WITH THE PRACTICE OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.]

The IRS is a clear indictment against America for her rebellion against God. (p. 95)

[NOTE: MORECRAFT QUOTES THE FOLLOWING FROM TITHING AND DOMINION BY R. J. RUSHDOONY AND EDWARD POWELL]

This destructive principle of ungodly state taxation can be seen in every area of life. Businesses and charitable foundations, etc. are licensed (a pagan form of taxation), which means that they operate at the pleasure of the state, and are, thus, owned by the state.[NOTE: THE OPPOSITION TO THE STATE LICENSING BUSINESSES IS RELATED TO THE CONTEMPT FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE EXPRESSED BY RUSHDOONY AND OTHERS. RUSHDOONY BELIEVES THAT TO SAY A STATE “TOLERATES” A RELIGION IS EQUIVALENT TO SAYING THAT THE STATE LICENSES A PARTICULAR RELIGIOUS PRACTICE WHICH IT CAN PROHIBIT WHENEVER IT WISHES. THEREFORE, RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE, IN THE LIBERAL SENSE, IS A SHAM. FOR THEOCRATS, STATES SIMPLY FOLLOW A GOD, EITHER THE GOD OF HUMANISM OR THE “TRIUNE” GOD. IN REALITY, NO STATE CAN PERMIT ANY OTHER GOD BUT THE ONE IT FOLLOWS. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE IS DISCUSSED BY MORECRAFT LATER IN THE BOOK.]

Social Security Taxes on the Churches and on individuals are also destructive. Social Security taxes on individuals have increased over 650% since the program began, and it has increased unemployment significantly. …It hs caused 97% of everybody over 65 years of age to be utterly dependent upon a humanistic state for their very existence. It also defrauds and robs young adults who will never see any of their money …(It is already bankrupt, however, nobody will admit it.) (p. 100)

God taxes everything in principle.He does not tax everything specifically. [There are] three basic taxes revealed in the Bible.

First is the Tax of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a tax on our time and energy. God says we owe Him one day in seven…

Second is the Tax of the Tithe…He commands us to give him 10% of what we earn in ordert to finance the advance of the kingdom of God….

The third is the Head Tax of Exodus 30:11-16. This is the only tax in the Bible which the state may levy on its citizens. It is a flat-rate tax. (p. 102)

…if the state administers any other tax but the one God has required [the Head Tax], the state is saying that God is not sovereign.

…How can we reform our unjust, humanistic tax system in the United States of America? How can we abolish the IRS? (p.103)

FIRST, replace every political leader who votes like he believes that the state has original ownership and sovereignity over our lives…(p. 105) [NOTE: WHILE THIS SOUNDS SIMILAR TO CERTAIN STATEMENTS OF PEOPLE LIKE GROVER NORQUIST, THE REASONING IS VERY DIFFERENT. WHERE NYQUIST CHERRYPICKS AND DISTORTS ECONOMICS BEYOND RECOGNITION TO RATIONALIZE HIS POSITION, MORECRAFT CHERRYPICKS AND DISTORTS THE BIBLE]

***

While Morecraft clearly states that a Christian Republic (a theocracy) has only a small role for the state, he surely knows that in practice the Church will preside over nearly all the functions – education, infrastructure, social security – that a modern democratic government provides but with one crucial difference. The checks and balances of democratic accountability will be entirely eliminated.

This becomes clear if you read carefully what he says. Morecraft interprets the Bible as saying that God endows the church with nearly unlimited power to administer and evangelize God’s law, Indeed, Morecraft has made it clear that the Church’s power extends not only over Christians, but over all non-Christian members of the state as well.

In short, Morecraft’s “minimal state” theocracy has only a superficial appeal to small-government conservatives, Stripped of his self-serving interpretations and distortions of the Bible’s words, Morecraft is calling for the establishment of a totalitarian American state disguised as an American Christian Church with unlimited power. Morecraft’s Church/State will be administered by a group of men with an unrestricted license to coerce, torture, and murder any and all who oppose them.

Provided, of course, that the Bible says they can.

And since those in charge of the Church/State are the only ones whose reading of the Bible can serve as the basis for punishment, it is more than likely they will determine that the Bible tells them they can do whatever they want.

For example, since they are good men –God wouldn’t permit them to lead the Church if they weren’t – who are piously carrying out God’s orders, it is an outrageous assault on Christian faith to question their motives, or otherwise oppose them. And that is precisely how theocrats behave when you do so, as if you have unfairly attacked their faith.

Bottom line: When you read him in depth, it is very clear that what Morecraft is talking about has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. And theocrats who avoid the term “theocracy” but talk in vague generalities about how Christians are oppressed in the US and how they must “re-establish” a Christian American Republic are not devout Christians but fascist thugs who debase Christianity and smear the name of Jesus.

Saturday Night At The Movies

The Walter Reed Memorial Film Festival

By Dennis Hartley

As the Iraq “war” grinds on and we sadly gird our loins to deal with a whole new generation of physically and/or psychologically scarred vets, it’s time to take a look at some of the films that have tackled the difficult subject of “coming home”.

Hands down, one of the most powerful movies ever made about the physical ravages of war is Dalton Trumbo’s 197l anti-war classic “Johnny Got His Gun”, adapted from the director’s own novel. Timothy Bottoms is a horribly wounded WW I vet who lies in a hospital bed for the duration of the film, re-living his war trauma and reviewing his life. His injuries are so grave that, in addition to the loss of all his limbs, he has lost the ability to speak (what is left of his torso and head is wrapped in gauze, mummy style.) Hence, we only “see” Bottoms in black and white flashbacks, with the actor providing voice-over to parlay the racing thoughts going through his mind as he lies helplessly in his hospital bed. (In all seriousness, I would not recommend this film for claustrophobics.)

It is worth noting that director Trumbo was one of the “Hollywood Ten”, blacklisted during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s. His impressive screenwriting credits include “Papillon”, “Spartacus ”, “Exodus” and “Lonely Are the Brave”. I find it very interesting that this uncompromising, stridently anti-war statement by an American director is only available on PAL format DVD (although, if you ever catch a screening of Metallica’s “One” video, it features excerpts from the film).

Another under-screened entry in the genre is “Rolling Thunder“. Directed by Peckinpah-influenced John Flynn (“The Outfit”, “Best Seller”) and boasting a cynical, tough-as-nails screenplay from Paul Schrader, this pre-“Rambo” action drama offers enough subtext to belie its “Vietnam vet on a murderous rampage” setup.

William DeVane is quite convincing as tightly-wound Vietnam POW Major Charles Rane, who comes home to San Antonio. Despite the perfunctory welcome home gestures from community and family, it becomes obvious that Rane is alienated by his war trauma (just like Travis Bickle, he rarely removes his mirrored sunglasses to allow people “inside”). Adding insult to injury, Rane’s home is invaded by a gang of ultra-violent thieves. Rane is tortured and left for dead (sans a hand) and his wife and son are murdered. After recovery, Rane emerges with a (sharpened!) hook, a devoted “groupie” and a trunk full of weapons, and heads for Mexico to find the bad guys and take ‘em out, in a typically cathartic Schrader “Taxi Driver” style crescendo of violence.

Despite releasing studio AIP’s rep for spewing out low budget exploitation product, this 1977 film was actually one of the first to take a genuine stab at addressing the Vietnam vet zeitgiest; it was released the same year as the higher-profile “Deer Hunter” and a year before “Coming Home” (which likely explains how it got lost in the shuffle). This is another film begging for a DVD release; although it has been showing recently on some of the premium cable channels-so check those listings!

War is unhealthy for vets and other living things: The Best Years of Our Lives, The Razor’s Edge (1946), Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Deer Hunter (HD DVD), Rambo:First Blood, Dead Presidents, Who’ll Stop The Rain, The Indian Runner, Jackknife (VHS only),The War at Home (1996)

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Blog Against Theocracy Part IV: Takeover Of The Texas GOP

by tristero

For those of you following this series, this is a bonus post. One of the biggest misconceptions of American theocracy is that, “intelligent design” creationism aside, the most crackpot forms of christianism, such as those of Joe Morecraft and R.J. Rushdoony, are too marginal ever to worry about. Not so, unless you think Texas Republican politics has had nothing to do with national poltiics for the past seventeen years:

In February 1990 I received an unsolicited video in the mail. The video came from a Dr. Stephen Hotze and was entitled “Restoring America: How You Can Impact Civil Government.” Filmed at a church in my neighborhood, I recognized the actors as the pastor and congregants of an Independent Fundamental Baptist church (the Jerry Falwell kind). The video was a guide on how to 1) take over a Republican Party precinct meeting, 2) elect “Christian” delegates to the GOP District meeting, and 3) put planks supporting the theocratic agenda of Christian Reconstructionism into the party platform…

I knew that a good friend of mine, a retired moderate Baptist preacher (Jack Selcraig, recently deceased), chaired the GOP precinct in my neighborhood. I called him and advised him about the organized attempt to takeover of his precinct. He survived the challenge that year (they ousted him the next election cycle), but nearly all of the other Republican Party precinct leaders in Harris County lost their chairs.

Hotze’s dominion over politics in Houston, Texas (the third largest city in the U.S.) began that year — just in time to prepare for service as host of the 1992 GOP National Convention. His reign lasted for around a decade — until he was arrested for D.W.I. and fell from the good graces of his Fundamentalist followers. The machine he created, however, still rules over the Harris County Republican party and his success inspired and emboldened theocrats to takeover GOP precincts all over the country.

Along with his video tape, Hotze sent a written agenda and instructions for how to conduct a precinct meeting. He also suggested resolutions for the party’s platform. Today, nearly all the planks that Hotze suggested can be found in the current platform of the Texas Republican Party

If you click on the first link, Bruce Prescott has made available the audio track from this video online.

Trash Talkin With The Terrorists

by digby

I’ve always wondered why Chris Matthews has Kathleen Parker on his syndicated week-end show so often. She’s an attractive woman, but she has the personality of a door knob and makes deadly boring television. Today, I realized it’s because they share the same anachronistic 50’s sitcom view of life.

Parker’s WaPo column begins rather humorously, although it’s clear she didn’t intend it to be:

On any given day, one isn’t likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He’s a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.

But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.

Well, isn’t that something? A lying, Jew-hating, cutthroat thug he may be, but he does make a good point when he sophomorically attacks the west with silly, schoolyard taunts unworthy of anyone over 8. It’s “dead-on” that the British navy is a bunch of pansies who have women “fighting their battles” for them. Well, a stopped clock and all that…

Just because we may not “feel” humiliated doesn’t mean we’re not. In the eyes of Iran and other Muslim nations, we’re wimps. While the West puts mothers in boats with rough men, Muslim men “rescue” women and drape them in floral hijabs.

We can debate whether they’re right until all our boys wear aprons, but it won’t change the way we’re perceived. The propaganda value Iran gained from its lone female hostage, the mother of a 3-year-old, was incalculable.

Ok wait a minute. Who are the rough men and who are the ones with floral scarves and aprons again? It’s so hard to keep your moral clarity straight when the rightwing of the Republican party keeps endorsing the view that we should capitulate to the islamofascists one minute and resist them to the death the next. But whatever. Parker says with stalwart assurance that the propaganda value of this woman being “rescued” by the Iranians is “incalculable.”

I agree that it’s entirely possible that the Iranians and al-Qaeda and all sorts of unsavory types around the world have become emboldened by American (and British) military policy, but I doubt that it has much to do with women in combat. The problem is that our president, in his ignorance and hubris, has just proved to the entire world that the United States has no earthly clue what it is doing. The administration even insists to everyone who will listen that the US intelligence services couldn’t find water if they fell off a boat.

Any administration that really cared about national security would not have lied about something so obvious as Saddam’s mythic weapons cache with such assuredness and then blamed the entire US intelligence service when they were not found. If you want to make a country look weak and inept, that’s one excellent way to do it.

And then there is the fact that the Iraq occupation itself is in total chaos. The North Koreans went right ahead a built a bomb while John Bolton was swinging his ineffectual little stick around. Guanatanamo is an immoral embarrassment that nobody on earth sees as anything more than an unsophisticated propaganda ploy that blew up in our faces. And after almost seven years we have no idea where Osama bin Laden is.

Let’s just say that those, among many more, might be the bigger propaganda victories with “incalculable” value to the enemy than some British sailor in a headscarf.

Parker is parroting the Dick Cheney fifth grade schoolyard school of foreign policy. The entire world rests on whether the United States out trash-talks the enemies of our nation, who are lurking everywhere, throwing rhetorical zingers about our national manhood. Failure on the ground is meaningless in any substantial sense. What matters is if we keep swaggering around like we know what we are doing even when its patently obvious that we don’t.

The problem, you see, is that up until now they haven’t taken us seriously. Only by repeatedly making threats, giving bellicose speeches and invading countries willy nilly will they realize that we can’t be defeated. To the Schoolyad School, Ahmadinejad is, therefore, a very serious foe even though he’s actually a sort of circus clown who doesn’t wield any real power. He is a first class insult artist. Indeed, Parker’s instinct to capitulate to his taunts by banning women from the military is testament to how formidable he is to these people. One off-hand comment about British manhood and she starts shrieking like a ninny that he’s right.

Cheney knows that the way to win his GWOT has nothing to do with better intelligence, competent leadership, sophisticated diplomacy or even superior military might. What we must do is psych the terrorists out with our patented Hollywood macho style (and that doesn’t include wimminfolk on the boat.) As Parker says in her column, it’s all about how we are perceived.

Pay no attention to all the actual dead people lying around. They’re just extras in our rhetorical battle of wills.

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They Work For You

by digby

Let’s help push MYDD over the top today.

I don’t know how many of you know how hard Stoller and Bowers work, but lets just say it’s a good thing they are young. Between blogging, activism, advocacy and a myriad of institution building projects, these guys are progressive machines. They are smart, dedicated and filled with passion. And they are making a difference.

The party has long needed to get in touch with its inner RFK (h/t Ezra) and this is where you will find it — these guys have a fierce and relentless commitment to making this country a better place. They work for all of us and we should support their work.

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