It’s directed at Republicans. And it’s not who you might suspect:
A day after the Democratic sweep of the midterm elections, Woodbury County Republican Chairman Steve Salem had harsh words for his own party, lambasting the influence of the conservative Christian right wing.
Salem said he coined a new phase: “You’ve heard of IslamaFascists — I think we now have Christian fascists. What is the definition of a fascist? Not only do they want to beat you, but they want to destroy you in the process.”
Salem said “if things keep going the way things are going locally and statewide, it is going to be more and more difficult for Republicans to recruit candidates. We have elements of the party who are moral absolutists, who take the approach that if you don’t take my position every step of the way, not only will I not support you, but I will destroy you.”
Now before we all get our schadenfreude on about Republicans eating their own, let’s consider something far more important: Mr. Salem is right. They are fascists …
(cont.)
The extreme conservative Christians which have infiltrated the GOP at all levels, local, state and national, are fascists. It’s not just the charge of wild eyed lefties or embittered Republican moderates (and I have no idea if Mr. Salem is a moderate). It’s the simple unadulterated truth.
Far right fundamentalist Christians proclaim an ideology that is as ugly and eliminationist as any other fascist movement in history. They believe America is, and always has been, a Christian nation and should be governed under Biblical law, not the Constitution. They have made explicit threats against liberals, atheists, Muslims and minorities at one time or another. Their use of eliminationist rhetoric is well known. They advocate for making homosexuality a capital offense punishable by immediate execution. And it has been their lone wolf followers who have used violence to murder abortion providers and commit other terrorist acts on American soil.
Their goal is Dominion. And they are very, very serious about it:
“The Christian goal for the world,” Recon theologian David Chilton has explained, is “the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics.” Scripturally based law would be enforced by the state with a stern rod in these republics. And not just any scriptural law, either, but a hardline-originalist version of Old Testament law–the point at which even most fundamentalists agree things start to get “scary.” American evangelicals have tended to hold that the bloodthirsty pre-Talmudic Mosaic code, with its quick resort to capital punishment, its flogging and stoning and countenancing of slavery, was mostly if not entirely superseded by the milder precepts of the New Testament (the “dispensationalist” view, as it’s called). Not so, say the Reconstructionists. They reckon only a relative few dietary and ritualistic observances were overthrown.
So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that’s fine with Gary North. “When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime,” he writes. “The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death.” Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: “And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.”
So I salute Steve Salem for speaking the truth too many Republicans have been afraid to speak about the faction that has taken over their party. Maybe more Republicans will step forward to denounce the radical and authoritarian visions of the far right wing of their party. The time for them to tolerate this extremism in their midst out of fear or because it won them elections should be over.
