Liberal Street Fighter – sick of the double standards
We’ve all read the stories, about how persecuted Christians built the church in pagan Rome (the website where I found the illustration to the right captioned it with The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Congregation.). The rightwing version of Christianity likes to talk about persecution all the time, and the Republican Party frequently uses tales of evil liberal elites, feminazis and gays to scare up votes.
This isn’t just true of the religious right, but of the free-market absolutists and conservative nominees for office and especially for the Federal Bench. There is no willingness to be clear about what they believe, no willingness to be clear and frank about their thinking, their motivations or their goals. Pretty cowardly, when you think about it.
Unlike real martyrs and people who’ve suffered REAL persecution for their beliefs, the Republican Right seeks special treatment, insists that their tender feelings and “rights” be protected, even when they are advocating beliefs or policies that will cause great harm to others.
They insist you be so careful with your language that you’re left with no words to speak, a strange twisted version of “political correctness” that is designed to stifle debate.
We are left with a repeating pattern over and over again. A winger says something egregious, then cries foul when challenged on it, claiming that they are being treated unfairly because of religious bigotry. Take this explanation of the frequently mouthed line that a homophobe “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”:
How exactly does that work? We hate sin by refusing to take part in it and by condemning it when we see it. Sin is not be hated, not excused or taken lightly. We love the sinner by being faithful in witnessing to them of the forgiveness that is available through Jesus Christ. A true act of love is treating someone with respect and kindness even though they know you do not approve of their lifestyle and/or choice. It is not loving to allow a person to remain stuck in sin. It is not hateful to tell a person they are in sin. In fact, the exact opposites are true.
If you try to confront this twisted mobius loop of tortured logic, you’ll be called a bigot.
We see this dynamic with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. From today’s press briefing:
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, some of you all wanted to focus more on religion. We focused on her qualifications and record.
Q Scott, isn’t the idea we ask the questions and you provide the answers?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, and I was providing the answer. Can I not say what I want to say?
Q Don’t you wish that Scott would get back to you?
Q Can you characterize —
MR. McCLELLAN: Isn’t it my right to talk and say what I want to?
Q I defend your right, Scott.
MR. McCLELLAN: You all want to focus on side issues like religion. We’ve said from the beginning —
Q Side issues —
Q You focused on religion.
MR. McCLELLAN: We’ve said — no, we have always publicly talked about —
Q When has religion been a side issue?
Q Scott —
MR. McCLELLAN: Come on, Jim, we’ve always talked about her record and her qualifications —
Q You call this a side issue.
Q Scott, yesterday —
Q The opposition to her is in your own party. What are you going to do about that?
Q Yesterday, Scott, the President said that the American people did want to know about her background, and that her religion was part of that. And you pointed out repeatedly that her religion was part of that, as a means of letting the American people know more about who Harriet Miers is. The question was whether or not she is the type of person that has the tenacity to deal with any criticism in a confirmation process. Could you describe her and who she is, relative to her tenacity? The President has called her a pit bull in size six shoes. Could you elaborate?
MR. McCLELLAN: Carl, what we have talked about publicly is her record and her qualifications and her judicial philosophy. Some have chosen to focus on other issues. We have focused on her record and her qualifications, because that’s what this should be based on. That’s why the President selected her, and that’s why he knows that she will make an outstanding Supreme Court Justice. And some people don’t want to talk about the record and qualifications. They’re interested in setting different standards —
Q But you also called her a woman of faith, a person of faith, yesterday. Those words came out of your mouth, she’s a person of faith.
MR. McCLELLAN: She is — and she is.
Use religion, and then whine when someone calls you on it. James Dobson claims on his radio program:
But we also talked about something else, and I think this is the first time this has been disclosed. Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.
So, even today, many conservatives and many of ‘em friends of mine, are being interviewed on talk shows and national television programs. And they’re saying, “Why didn’t the President appoint so-and-so? He or she would have been great. They had a wonderful judicial record. They would have been the kind of person we’ve been hoping and working and praying for to be on the Court. Well, it very well may be that those individuals didn’t want to be appointed.
John: For understandable reasons, because the grilling that they get in that confirmation process is just brutal.
So, these supposed patriots, passionate believers in Originalism or the Holy Free Market or some particular brand of Evangelical Christianity AREN’T WILLING TO FIGHT OPENLY FOR THEIR BELIEFS. I think Robert Bork is a wackjob, but at least he has the courage of his convictions. Increasingly, however, the right hides and cringes and whimpers “please don’t be mean to me” while their political movement engages in vicious character assassination, outing of undercover CIA agents and ramped up eliminationist language and the politics of hate.
It’s time to go on the attack against this tactic. Ridicule, berate, call them on their contradictions and copious bullshit. I’m willing to be tolerant, but NOT when someone uses their superstitions, beliefs or political ideology to attack or hurt others. The left has been far too polite for far too long. The rightwing likes to go on and on about strenth and convictions and how others are weak and they are strong, but strength is evidenced by a clear willingness to be honest about where you stand. The Republican Right fails in that over and over again. Orwellian language, hateful bigotry … the spew continues, followed by hiding behind the skirts of OUR tolerance and decency.
Enough. No quarter folks. Our leaders won’t do it, the media won’t do it, so WE must do it. If the fundies in your life send around distorted emails attacking gays or the ACLU or LIB-ruls or furiners, hit them back hard, hitting “reply all” on the email. Will people be pissed at you? Absolutely. You may lose a friend or two (if you can even still stand to be around them), Thanksgiving might become contentious. So what? They are destroying a secular culture that took centuries of work to (imperfectly) create. 30 to 40 years ago, when I was growing up, the kind of hateful language you hear from the religious right was a fringe thing, something you had to look for, now it’s part-and-parcel of cable television and talk radio.
They are bullies. They know that if what they really believe is highlighted and confronted with white-hot light of truth, most people will reject it. It’s time to be more forceful about confronting them. Like all bullies, they will fold when confronted. We need to step it up.
isn’t it?
“The grilling they get in that confirmation process is just brutal,” but not brutal enough. So many questions are asked, but so few are answered.
And if all they talked about was “her record and her qualifications and her judicial philosophy,” even Scottie would have nothing to say — because she obviously has none of those things.
Why don’t we just take a hint from the church, and use a little gentle Christian persuasion on them?
Time for my obligatory link on the topic.
The Republican party uses this same strategy to herd the Democratic party in general. The Republican talking heads on TV, in the blogsphere, etc. prattle on about single-interest groups, poll-driven strategies, reinventions, and what the people want. And the Democratic politicians, like a bunch of scared sheep, move along with what their opponents say they should do.
And, predictably, lose.
Would Jesus had supported Crusades and Inquisition?
Despite the Hollywood ep;ics, there is absolutely no evidence that Christians were thrown to the lions. Mind you they were dippedd in oil to provide an early streeet lighting scheme for the Appian Way.
well, sure, but since when does history have anything to do w/ the cozy mist the fundies comfort themselves with?
What you say is spot-on. But the lack of courage in convictions that galls me even more is when the Democratic leadership plays Republican lite, saying that’s the only way to win elections. And so the entire conversation’s center of gravity slips more to the right. If Democrats ever want to win, they need to yank the entire conversation to the left, but hard.
“This can’t be done; it’s a strategy for disaster.” we read, as recently as a poll day before yesterday in the WaPo. Guess what, people – REAL leaders lead. Rather than play catch-up with the polls they speak truth to power and change the landscape of the conversation. The Republicans knew this, as reflected in their disdain for the “reality-based” community – I don’t remember the rest of the quote exactly, but it was to the effect that they shaped reality.
No, they cannot change the laws of science (and neither can we) but they certainly change the landscape in which people live their daily lives: whether they have a well-paying job, an education, health care, a clean environment, a safe community.
It’s time for US to have the courage of OUR convictions and question the fundamental assumptions of the last 25+ years (even under Clinton, the trends in the wrong direction continued, just somewhat mitigated). Getting rid of the Republicans is just the beginning of the work that needs to be done; it’s going to take another 25 years to just re-establish the country moving in the direction and with the worldview it had before the “Republican Revolution.”
Time waits for no man, and the economy, climate change, the coming pandemic(s), the depletion of natural resources from energy supplies to worldwide fisheries are all bearing down upon us. We face a situation that may well soon be at least as bleak as it was when FDR was president. We are not going to address these problems successfully for our children by being Republican lite, trimming the sail a little bit around the edges.
We need the courage of our convictions, the nation needs us to have the conviction, the world needs us to have the courage of our convictions. For if we do not, we will as a nation die off as surely as any species that failed to meet the challenges to its existence, and some other nation(s) – China, India, Europe, Canada, Venezuela – will assume leadership in addressing the problems of the time and be the country the world looks to. We will be a history’s has-been, as surely as the British empire evaporated like the dew in the morning sun or the Soviet Union fell in on itself like an old storm-beaten barn. And in the cold calculus of nature and the sweep of history there will be a rough, untempered justice in that. We are no more special, no more exempt, no more a chosen people than the Soviets were, or Kipling’s countrymen assuming “the white man’s burden.” This is an old song that just gets replayed over and over again with creative flourishes but the same basic melody, like a jazz standard from sixty years ago.
So if we are to survive, to promote the values we say we stand for, for future generations, we had better have the courage of OUR convictions, starting TODAY. The Republican collapse that is beginning is an opportunity to start to move this country in a direction of true freedom and justice, but only if WE seize the moment.
it appears to me that it is nigh on to impossible to have courage, when we/they seem to have NO CONVICTIONS. Here it is time to gear up for 2006 and the Dems still have no stance, no clear message that tells people what they stand for, no convictions that I can ascertain. If we don’t know what they stand for. . .how can we possibly expect the general public to know?
There is no issue that they are willing to go to the mat for, unless it is being elected to office.
Some wingnut warmonger called me a “Liberal Nazi”…. I KID YOU NOT!
I was ina Chinese restaurant talking to the owner whose son is in Iraq and she asked me if I went to the Peace Vigil in town and I said I was in DC. We were sharing and even holding hands.
The wingnut went on to mutter to his family of three YOUNG kids that we should have all been shot dead. And my favorite, “Can’t imagine what those fuckign liberal nazis must be teaching their children”.
He muttered as he wore an Old Navy t-shirt with a flag emblazoned on it. He muttered as he could not directly debate with me. He knew he was an ignorant no nothing.
When I had told the owner I was in DC, he INTERRUPTED with a “what did you think of all those protestors!!!
I took a step forward, looked him in the face, causing him to turn away a bit, and boldy stated that my entire family was Navy and that I went to support the Military Families and the Veteran’s for Peace. That I had every right to be there. – or something along those lines.
I then went on the ask the woman if she had heard from her son. How he was doing. What branch… etc etc.
Liberal Nazi… unbelievable. All in front of his children.