Cool Bunny

"Our goal is a Christian nation.  We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country.  We don't want equal time.  We don't want pluralism."  Randall Terry, Indiana News Sentinel.


When James Dobson of Focus on Family complains about “activist” judges, he really means those judges who render decisions he and his followers disagree with.   And when he calls the Supreme Court “out of control,” “unaccountable” and a despotic oligarchy, rest assured he isn’t referring to the Supreme Court that placed George W. Bush in office back in 2000.   He’s talking about the Supreme Court that places barriers between Mr. Dobson’s religious dogma and the institutions of our secular public government.   Never mind that it’s exactly the same court in both cases.

What Mr. Dobson, Senator Frist, and Congressman DeLay are really talking about, however much they may obfuscate the real objective, is a judiciary brought to heel, and a court system that is neither independent nor free.   What they want is a legal system that supports their religious agenda.   Lest we doubt it, this was made abundantly clear during the recent events centering around the death of Terri Schiavo.  When the state courts repeatedly failed to provide the decisions the Christian jihadis wanted, their supporters in Congress intervened to allow the Federal courts an opportunity to do so.  Ignore that this simply ran roughshod over the long-standing conservative championing of states right.   Just as in the election of 2000, when they couldn’t get the result they wanted in the state court, they’d try to get it in the Federal Courts.  Of course, in this case the higher courts failed to provide the “correct” decision.  

The result was an explosion of outrage and thinly veiled threats against the judiciary from elected officials on the right.   Now there is an orchestrated campaign to bring the courts to heel, exemplified in the recent “Justice Sunday” event attended by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist himself.   When the judiciary fails to give the desired results, change the judiciary so that in the future it WILL mouth the “correct” responses.

Though they claim to represent the majority of Americans, and deny any effort to suggest their opponents are not also people of faith, the reality is that the only organizations engaged in this effort are those on the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and the Christian religion.   How representative can it be when the hosting organization, the National Religious Broadcasters, requires its members to sign a distinctly evangelical statement of faith, one that would pretty much exclude not only Catholics, but also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others.   Are we to believe that R. Albert Mohler, Jr. Of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a primary participant,  no longer considers the papacy a “false and unbiblical office” or thinks that any belief system which will lead not to “the cross of Christ [but] toward another way of ultimate meaning is, indeed, wicked and evil”?

In a pattern that would make Joseph Goebbels proud, they first proclaimed the continued refusal of Democratic Senators to rubberstamp judicial appointments an assault on “people of  faith,” and only later (less loudly) say “oh, we didn’t really mean it.”    But of course they did.    It’s always the initial declaration that gets the most attention......and Dobson’s supporters are not fooled for a minute by the subsequent “clarifications.”    

The message was first delivered to the faithful to inspire them, and only later is the broader public told not to worry.    These people may be religious fascists, but they aren’t stupid.   They know full well that the majority of the American public does not share, much less support, their evangelical jihadist agenda, so they have become quite sophisticated, even Orwellian, in their use of language.   It is designed to be understood by their followers, while never arousing concern or fear in the broader population.

Our homegrown Christian Jihadis are not interested in a Federal judiciary that is independent, they want a Federal judiciary issuing decisions that conform to THEIR standards, beliefs, and demands.   Prayer in schools, no civil rights or legal protections for gays, the teaching of Biblical dogma and doctrine as THEY perceive it in science curricula, and the display of Christian symbols and teachings in courtrooms, schools and other public institutions is what they want, and they want a judiciary that will not simply accept such things but will actively push it.   

To people who believe the United States was meant to be an explicitly “Christian” nation politically and legally as well as sociologically, a strict interpretation of the Constitution demands an active effort to introduce Christianity into the secular political and legal milieu.    Anything else, to these folks, would be mistaken.

Seventy years ago the Nazi Party came to power in Germany by democratic means and, as they had long promised,  having used the tools of democracy gain power, they then dismantled it, instituting a profoundly undemocratic regime.   One of the first things the new regime did was reshape the judiciary to make it more compliant, bringing it into line with the desires and intentions of the new rulers.   Judges who failed to rule according to what the new leadership wanted were intimidated, dismissed or simply sent to camps.   In short order, the regime had a judiciary that rendered the “correct” decisions.    

Lest you think that this is an outlandish comparison, consider this.   A conservative lawyer, recently addressing a conference on “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith,” declared: “Stalin had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem’. . . . We are in this mess because we have the wrong people as judges.”   The implication is clear.   Remove the judges perceived to be a problem, and then there will be no problem.   That isn't how democracy works, but then as Randall Terry, a well-known Christian Jihadi activist suggested (see above), they aren't interested in democracy as we know it and the Founding Fathers clearly intended.

In fact, Christian Jihadis make no secret of their intent to seek dominion over America’s political system, and do not hide their belief that the nation should be a Christian, biblically based political/legal entity.     Like the Nazis of seventy years ago, they will use the machinery of democracy to gain power, but once having done so, do not expect them to yield it again without a fight.    One of the steps necessary to achieving that objective is a judiciary that not only doesn’t stand in their way, but actively supports their agenda.    And this is what Mr. Dobson, Senator Frist, and Mr. DeLay are really talking about.    Their followers and supporters certainly understand it, the rest of the nation needs to understand and believe it as well.....before it's too late.

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