Archive for category Conservative
America’s Christians and Their Persecution Complex
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, This Blog on May 17, 2013
The argument goes something like this:
“Gay pride” necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. “Gay marriage” and other “sexual orientation”-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.[snip]
Still, know this: If you are a Christian in today’s America, you too will almost certainly find yourself with a similar decision to make. When man’s law violates God’s law, you will have to choose which to obey. Choosing God can mean persecution.
With Delaware’s vote to allow same sex marriage, the rocket scientists at American Family News have this to report:
Nicole Theis, president of Delaware Family Policy Council, says there is no protection in the bill for people of faith.
“Our immediate concern is that good people in this state will suffer discrimination simply because they believe marriage is between one man and one woman and that children deserve a mom and a dad,” Theis tells American Family News. “There’s minimal protection in this law, and we believe that passing legislation like this will trigger lawsuits and other forms of government retaliation.”
More dramatic though no more convincing is the video from Reach America, in which a group of grim faced teens inform viewers about all sorts of things that aren’t true – i.e. that the Supreme Court declared the bible unconstitutional and that prayer in school is outlawed and that the US was founded as a Christian nation. In the video, the students, obviously well meaning though wildly misinformed, simultaneously pose as victims, martyrs and bold warriors who will lead the world.
The story also goes like this: Read the rest of this entry »
The Right Wing Invents A Scandal: It’s not true but it doesn’t matter
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Bigotry, Conservative, Homophobia, Religious Fundamentalism, This Blog on April 29, 2013
A middle school in Red Hook, NY, conducted an anti-bullying workshop, working on questions of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The workshop was co-led by students from Bard College who are peer counselors at Bard.
So far, so non controversial.
What happened is that a student went home and complained to her mother – the story is now that the school forced girls to engage in lesbian kissing. A massive controversial discussion ensues on Facebook. Right wing media picks up the story that the school forced female students to kiss one another, that male students were taught how to identify which girls were sluts and were told to carry condoms at all times. Hysteria – not hysteria as in laughter but more in the nature of a moral panic – ensues.
Of course, none of those things actually happened and most parents are happy with the outcomes as well as the actual workshop. A few conservative parents are upset and the story with all its wrong details is being distributed around the right wing echo chamber.
The right wing picked up the mother’s complaint and ran with it – it appeared on Fox News. The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage has picked it up and used it in fundraising appeals. The false stories have made the rounds on the right (including a sensationalized account on WorldNetDaily). Expect to hear/read comments from conservatives about “that school in New York that forced girls to engage in “lesbian kisses” on comment boards and in discussion. What’s going on here is the right wing noise machine in full bore, blowing an entirely non-controversial incident out of proportion, creating a scandal where there is no scandal, feeding it into the right wing culture war community where it will become accepted as fact, and repeated ad nauseum.
The story in right wing media is not credible. Think about the details – does anyone seriuosly believe that an anti-bullying workshop would involve middle schools girls kissing each other? That an anti-bullying workshop would teach boys how to determine which of their classmates are sluts? It doesn’t pass the straight face test. Conservatives seem to have accepted accounts of the workshop without question at face value.
The dynamic at work here is deeper than simple gullibility or extremely credulity. Conservatives accepted the story on face value because it confirmed their existing biases about the general gone to hellness of the world. To put it another way, it’s not that the people believing this story are unusually gullible or credulous, it’s that they embrace a view of the world that tells them that school teachers and diversity programs and anti-bullying training are forms of indoctrination; these conservative parents expect to be outraged by what they hear about public schools, so they are primed to see scandal and depravity where none exists. The outraged conservatives hearing and sharing the story, expect public schools to try to indoctrinate their children in homosexuality, they’ve been told for years now that anti-bullying and diversity initiatives in public schools are nothing more than codewords for indoctrination. It’s a tiny step from believing that to believing students are being forced to kiss each other. Even if it didn’t happen in this case, conservatives will tell themselves it’s surely happening someplace else because that’s the sort of depraved thing that liberals will do if they think they can get away with it. To take one example, look at this comment from the WingNutDaily article:
If the liberals have it their way the law will destroy the meaning of family and the authority of parents completely. Remember what certain people were promoting on MSNBC? Your kids are not going to be your kids anymore so the government can brainwash them all they want and there won’t be a thing that you or anyone can do about it. Yeah, this is the culture that the lunatic liberals are creating. In certain European countries the kids are basically property of the state and not children of the parents. The kids in those countries are indoctrinated into anything and everything so long as it has nothing to do with God. This is powerful evidence of the type of utopian society and world that the lunatic liberals in the world are dreaming up and working towards making come true. The truth of the matter is that their dreams will, in fact, become nightmares. Their efforts will lead to catastrophe. No person should put up with the liberal lunatic agenda. It’s time for the anger of good citizens to be on full display and put the lunatic liberals in their place.
For this person it’s all part of a grand conspiracy. The breathless recounting of the event on right wing blogs and websites comes complete with denunciations of the evils of liberalism and public schools and gay people and fervid theorizing about the nefarious machinations of homosekshuls intent on destroying the family. The CBN (that is Christian Broadcasting Network) report ends with the warning that “school officials are planning more of these workshops!” The report – word for word – crops up on dozens of websites, propagated throughout a network of right wing blogs, bloggers, opinionators and semi-real news websites, to be forwarded, linked and discussed on other sites.
The story of the lesbian kisses is admittedly a minor one, but it’s a valuable case study in how the right wing works to spread misinformation throughout its network of activists, voters, bloggers and communities. Even if Fox were to retract the story today, it has spread far and wide, believed by who knows how many people. Like other right wing atrocity narratives, it will be reported again and again and no matter how many times its refuted, it will keep coming back. It will become the justification for right wing groups attempting to hold their own workshops at which people witness for Jesus and talk about becoming “ex-gay” and spread misinformation about gay people. When pushed on it, they’ll defend themselves with the story about the forced lesbian kisses in middle school.
The George W Bush Rehabilitation Project Continues Apace (updated)
Posted by Glenden Brown in American People, Conservative, George W. Bush on April 28, 2013
With the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library, the right wing and mainstream media have swung into action with the full scale George W. Bush Rehabilitation Project.
The goal of the project is relatively modest – convince the real world that Dubya wasn’t such a terrible president, that he made bold and enduring decisions that will shape the world for the better for generations to come.
It’s crap. Bush’s presidency was eight years of disasters compounded by his blind ideological governance. Charles Krauthammer this morning at the D-News which begins with a massive lie:
The most common “one sentence” for George W. Bush (whose legacy is being reassessed as his presidential library opens) is: “He kept us safe.”
Except of course for that one time. In September of 2001. You remember that one right?
Bush’s presidency was eight years of disaster, corruption, scandal and failure. I agree with Paul Waldman’s assessment:
Nobody could argue he didnothing good; for instance, he put resources toward addressing the AIDS crisis in Africa, knowing that there was little domestic benefit to be had. And from what one can tell, in person Bush was usually a nice guy. But we shouldn’t let the mists of time make us forget all the awful things he did, too. Presidents have to be judged by their actions and the effects those actions have on the country and the world. Bush’s eight years in office were a string of disasters, and not little ones either. His disasters were grand and far-reaching, from the hundreds of thousands who died in Iraq to the squandering of trillions of dollars to the abandonment of New Orleans during Katrina. A few years later those things may no longer make us boil with rage. But we shouldn’t forget them.
The argument was never he was a bad man (although that is debatable) – a rich entitled jerk, yes, intellectually incurious, self confident in his own judgement to the point idiocy, but he was also a bad president. An honest assessment of his administration has to include the fact that in its ruins were the seeds of the tea party and its attendant lunacies. The Obama administration has failed to clean up all of Bush’s messes, but don’t forget they were Bush’s messes.
Saw this great post at Mano Singham’s place – the video of Chris Hayes is worth the time. Singham’s title may win for most understated condemnation in a while: Thatcher and Bush were just as bad as you remembered them
I like Chris Hayes’ point that some of the “praise” for Bush amounts to “Yeah! He made decisions!” as if making decisions itself is a victory and the consequences are entirely secondary. Bush’s administration was every bit as bad as you thought.
The Lykov Family, Religious Faith and Religious Persecution
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, This Blog on April 9, 2013
I hope I’m not the only person who read the story of Lykov family and felt a sense of both grief and outrage at the pointlessness of that family’s many years of suffering, isolation and privation.
Slowly, over several visits, the full story of the family emerged. The old man’s name was Karp Lykov, and he was an Old Believer—a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century. Old Believers had been persecuted since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday; for him, Peter was a personal enemy and “the anti-Christ in human form”—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar’s campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly “chopping off the beards of Christians.” But these centuries-old hatreds were conflated with more recent grievances; Karp was prone to complain in the same breath about a merchant who had refused to make a gift of 26 poods [940 pounds] of potatoes to the Old Believers sometime around 1900.
Things had only got worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov’s brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html#ixzz2PVdGTg89 Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
Note to Shit-Kicking Conservatives: We (U.S. & World) Are Moving on Without Your Tired Lame Bigoted Asses.
Posted by Cliff Lyon in American People, Conservative, Homophobia, People Are Nuts, Racism, Republicans on March 17, 2013
Each years CPAC showcases the steady, incremental march toward the obsolescence of conservatism. And while conservatives are by nature regressive and behind the times, as the brutal velocity of progress in science, communication, education et. al. increases, conservative ideas are more obsolete than ever. Traditional Conservatism is by all accounts, DEAD.
The Republican Party has become authoritarian out of necessity. Moderates are leaving the party in increasing numbers. Inter-party calls for sanity fall on deaf ears. Example: CPAC went for Birthers and extremists like Trump and Gomert over far right assholes like Chris Christy.
An Open Letter to all People Who Hate the President
Posted by Cliff Lyon in 2008 Election, 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Bigotry, Conservative, Conspiracy theories, Racism on March 7, 2013
Reprinted in full from Progressive Press
“It’s fine to be a conservative who disagrees with Obama politically. He is a fallible human being. Like any politician, he deserves criticism now and then. Progressives criticize him all the time because his policies are more conservative than many thought he would be.
If you would say “Obama is wrong on this issue and here’s why”, I could respect that. But it’s something else to be a hard-core Glenn Beck parroting, Bush-was-God, Obama-is-Satan, damn-the-facts, anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-is-a-communist, conservative.
Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend the level of hatred you have for President Obama. This hatred is not about dissent and it began long before he even took office and doesn’t seem to stem from anything he’s done as president. Read the rest of this entry »
Melissa Harris-Perry: Voting Is Not a Racial Entitlement
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Liberal, Voting Rights on March 4, 2013
Melissa Harris-Perry wrote an insightful letter to Antonin Scalia in response to his comment that voting is a racial entitlement. Seriously, read the whole thing, but a couple highlights:
Commenting on Congress’s nearly unanimous re-authorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, you said, “I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”
You went on to say, “I am fairly confident it will be re-enacted in perpetuity…unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution…It’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress.”
Racial entitlement? Not a question you can leave to Congress? Even for you, Justice Scalia, this is a particularly willful misreading of the Constitution you claim to adore.[snip]
Contrary to what you are suggesting, the Voting Rights Act was no gift given by the government to black people. Its primary purpose was to enforce a right that was already enshrined in the Constitution but had been repeatedly flouted by Southern governments.
The Real World Effects of “Negative Liberty”
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Environment, Global Warming, Health Care, Iraq, ObamaCare, Tax Policy, Tea Bag Party, Tea Party, This Blog on February 20, 2013
Delving further into Tom Allen’s Dangerous Convictions, Winning Progressive points out four specific examples of how conservatives principles have led to disastrous real world policy consequences:
- Budget
- The Iraq War
- Health care
- Climate Change
Consider the area of tax policy – conservative principles say “tax cuts pay for themselves” despite significant real world evidence that’s not the case. Read the rest of this entry »
Dangerous Convictions: Dogmatism versus Empiricism
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Liberal on February 19, 2013
I caught some of this on C-Span over the weekend. Nice catch to the folk at Winning Progressive for summarizing Allen’s perspective.
The root of the problem, Allen argues, lies in what the media routinely ignore: those statements made by members of Congress as they declare why they will support this policy or oppose that one.
Allen knew his public statements were straightforward expressions of his reasons. He believed most of his Democratic colleagues also said what they truly believed when they spoke about public issues. But what of Republicans? Time and again he asked his fellow Democrats: “Do they really believe what they say?”
The answer, Allen came to recognize, was “Yes, Republicans really do believe what they say” … even when what they say is demonstrably, empirically false.
Why is that?
Allen argues that Republicans argue from principles, and when facts contradict their principles the facts must be wrong. What’s more, Allen writes, Republicans reject the possibility that Democrats might argue from facts. Instead, Republicans presume that Democrats argue from opposing principles, hence their claims President Obama and Democrats are “socialists” whose response to any problem is “more government” and “less freedom.”
In the past I’ve touched on similar concepts. The problem is a fundamental disconnect in the way the two parties view the world. Republicans for example see government only in terms of bigger and smaller, not in terms of better or more effective.
A key divide is between negative liberty and positive liberty:
In the Republican worldview, “freedom” means only negative liberty: the absence of interference from others. That worldview dismisses positive liberty: the presence of opportunities and resources to fulfill one’s own potential.
John McGowan’s book American Liberalism talks about the idea that government is a necessary agent of freedom – government facilitates greater freedom. The expansion of government doesn’t negate the expansion of freedom. That’s positive liberty; the Republican view is based on the idea that if government passes a new law, we are all less free. Anti-discrimination laws mean people’s freedom has been curtailed. Arguments against the Affordable Care Act’s component on birth control made more sense when seen in this light.
WP is going to be exploring Allen’s view further so watch for updates. Read the whole thing, it’s worth your time.
Conservative Patriot Gives In: “As half the nation is in sheer awe of this American Idol “rockstar” presidency.”
Posted by Cliff Lyon in Authoritarianism, Conservative, Laugh, Liars (politics), Tea Bag Party, Tea Party, The Koch Brothers, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority on February 19, 2013
I’ve followed this Facebook page for several months. Its one of the best in it’s genre; an excellent reference for study of the authoritarian mind and an excellent resource for tracking the Tea Party memes since 2010.
Its run, and run well, by a single person. Id love to speak with him and find out how I’ve been “dumbed-down.”
He posted the following today:
Conservative Patriots of America: Folks, I cannot do this any longer, it is of NO use. As half the nation is in sheer awe of this American Idol “rockstar” presidency, and the mainstream media is further enabling the STUPIDITY & NONSENSE with the dumbing-down of the citizens, Obama has just played his 115th round of golf — lucky he, huh? Well, how about that UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, or the fact that he met with his now defunct “Jobs Council” only FOUR TIMES before dissolving it — or that National Debt, or that China owns us — I mean, REALLY, WHERE do I begin??
I have sat at my computer for nearly THREE YEARS wasting my time & energy on a matter that cannot be resolved. We are less than one month into the second term, and if any of you have any “foresight,” methinks you will agree with me that NOTHING is going to get done, NOTHING is going to get better, and NOTHING can be done about it. I’ve done what I can & that’s about it, there is nothing more I can do or say. I’ll be hanging Old Glory upside-down for the next four years.
Oh, and to the Trolls, P.S. Do NOT talk about Bush’s vacations, the world was a MUCH different place during Bush’s 2 terms — find something else to bring to the table on this presidency. Join us at: Conservative Patriots of America — on facebook.
Here’s a picture from his page that almost made me want to join up with them “patriots.”
Isn’t being anti-choice messing with family?
I sent him a Tweet asking him to contact me through Facebook. I hope he’ll give me an interview.
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