Marble Composition

Tapping at The Gates

Before the election in 2004, Karl Rove, President Bush's political advisor and now Deputy Chief of Staff, targeted some four million evangelicals that he believed had sat out the 2000 election. And while this strategy seems to have worked, these folks have now come calling believeing they deserve their due, and perhaps rightly so. I'm beginning to wonder if the Republican party has bitten off a bit more than they can chew with these people, but that remains to be seen.

What we do see are statements like this from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism,"

and

"For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."

Not satisified enough with gains in the House, the Senate, and their evangelical President's re-election, they now have their eyes keenly focused on the judiciary. Given that there may be at least one vacancy on the Supreme Court, and possibly two more at the end of the court's current term later this year, the evangelicals want someone installed that will tow their line. They just may have found that someone in Antonin Scalia, who, as a Bush favorite and a Vice Presidential hunting buddy, may well ascend to the position of Chief Justice when our current Chief Rehnquist retires. In addition, the President will have another selection to make to fill Scalia's spot, and if that person makes it through the Senate confirmation, the Court will be tipped farther to the right from 5-4 decisions to either 6-3, or even 7-2.

In "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason", Sam Harris writes:

Men eager to do the Lord's work have been elected to other branches of the federal government as well. The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, is given to profundities like "Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world. Only Christianity." Apparently feeling that it is impossible to say anything stupid while in service of this worldview, he attributed the shootings at the Columnine High School in Colorado to the fact that our schools teach the theory of evolution. We might wonder how it is that pronouncements this floridly irrational do not lead to immediate censure and removal from office.

We might indeed, and it seems Good Ol' Tom may be headed right off the cliff, especially if Ronnie Earle gets to the bottom of all of Tom's shenanigans. Sam has more, and this ain't all about Tom DeLay:

"Facts of this sort can be cataloged without apperent end--to the vexation of reader and writer alike. I will cite just one more, now from the judicial branch: In January of 2002, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic, deliverd a speech at the University of Chicago Divinty School on the subject of the death penalty. I quote Scalia at some length, because his remarks show just how close we are to living in a theocracy:"

While Sam is quoting Antonin at some length, we'll quote, uh, Sam at some length (trust me, it's worth it):

"This is not the Old Testament, but St. Paul....[T]he coreof his message is that government--however you want to limit the concept--derives its moral authority from God....Indeed, it seems to me the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral....I attribute that to the fact that, for the believeing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a bug deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next?...For the nonbeliever, on the other hand, to deprive a man of his life is to end his existence. What a horrible act!..."

"The reaction to people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. We done done that in this country (and continental Europe has not) by perserving in our public life many visible reminders that--in the words of a Supreme Court opinion from the 1940's--"we are a religious people, whore institutions pre-suppose a Supreme Being"....All this, as I say, is most un-European, and helps explain why our people are more inclined to understand, as St. Paul did, that government carries the sword as the "minister of God," to "execute wrath" upon the evildoer."

Now where have I heard that "evildoer" thingy before...hmmm...
Take it Sam:

"All of this should be terrifying to anyone who expects that reason will prevail in the inner sanctums of power in the West...It is remarkable that we are the last civilized nation to put "evildoers" to death, and Justice Scalia rightly attributes this to our style of religiosity."

Yes, terrifying indeed. For a little perspective, Sam saw this coming long before the current filibuster whirlwind ratcheting up on Captitol Hill. Coming from someone of Tony Perkins' ilk, or from SpongeDob Stickypants himself is one thing, but from a Supreme Court Justice? And what might the Taliban and these people have in common? Sam?

"It is no accident that people of faith want to curtail the freedom of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existance of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith."

Let's snag a nugget of wisdom from the Billmon when he says,

"Which brings us back to motives -- and not just Dobson's. The image I get from watching the Christian right these days is of a race car driver at the starting line, ferociously revving the engine and waiting for the checkered flag to pop the clutch."

Which, for some reason, brings me to this born-again Christian: four-time NASCAR Winston Cup Champion, or things go these days, Nextel Cup Champion Jeff Gordon.

Be sure to tune into Justice Sunday.

I keep wondering if this perversion of our American democracy, one that looks more like a meth-lab inspired display of The Crucible will ever really take hold, but these concentrated attacks from Protestant fundamentalists upon our way of life are unconscionable, immoral, and certainly not in keeping with our Founding Fathers' vision of America.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 4/14/2005 08:17:00 PM