An Open Letter to All Republicans From a Former Religious Right Activist
Dear Republicans: This election all Republicans who love America must vote for Obama. A vote for business-as-usual and a continuation of the Neoconservative/Religious Right/ party of corporate American alienation is a vote against America. As a former Republican activist, I appeal to your patriotism and honor.
Unless you haven't been paying attention to the recent history of the Republican Party you will know that today Republican ideology and energy is derived from three sources:
* The Religious Right,
* The Neoconservative Movement,
* Corporate business interests.
You also should know that when it comes to the Religious Right my late father and evangelist, Francis Schaeffer, was the intellectual voice that made it happen. As his young sidekick (in the 70s and 80s) I helped take his message to a huge evangelical audience.
I mention this by way of saying that even if you hate my guts -- for having dropped out of the Republican Party, for writing novels that make fun of you, and for reregistering as an independent voter, let alone for supporting Senator Obama -- perhaps you should listen up. I happen to know what I'm talking about.
So let's look at the three power centers that drive the Republican Party today.
The Religious Right
The Religious Right came about for one reason and one reason only: it was a reaction to Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion in 1973. The Supreme Court essentially created the culture wars. (A state-by-state approach to legalizing abortion would have been better and resulted in much the same situation we have today in terms of the availability of abortion.) Take Roe out of the political mix and there would be no Religious Right.
That said -- certain power-hungry individuals (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Rove, Reed et al.) took the energy of our original pro-life movement and used it to build a hate campaign reminiscent of the early momentum that drove European Fascist parties in the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s. Fear of the "other" gays, immigrants, intellectuals, artists, the media, feminists, etc., morphed into a general critique of "the elite" which turned out to be anyone with an education or even big city dwellers. The Religious Right became a crude populist movement pitting the resentful rubes against the rest.
Take a hard look at yourselves. Play back this year's Republican convention and you'll see an all-white crowd of people screaming for offshore oil drilling -- fat lot of good that will do! more carbon! more polution! -- and essentially reacting like starved hyenas when presented with a piece of juicy carrion. At the convention Sarah Palin and others produced nothing more than a snide list of smart ass put downs aimed at the really dumb, with so little substance that former conservatives such the late William F. Buckley, for instance (let alone my late father) would simply have been ashamed to be in your company. You have become a hate-filled rabble proud of your ignorance and resentful of the rest of your own country, resentment that's exceeded only by your maudlin (and false) sense of victimhood.
People that hate half the population of their own country can scarcely be called patriots. On the contrary, people who exult in mocking as their only way to "contribute" to solving our huge environmental, energy, military and economic problems are true subversives.
The smell emanating from your convention was that of a beer hall putsch circa 1930s, not anything remotely like participation in a democracy. Now you all know what it felt like to be in a lynch mob minus the hanging. You should be ashamed. But shame is something that apparently Republicans are no longer capable of feeling, at least when you get together in a mob.
If you could feel shame there would have been a series of contrite public apologies at your convention for the incredible fiasco of non-governing that has typified the Bush administration. My pension, other people's pensions, our homes, jobs and economy are in chaos because of you. Young Americans are dying in Iraq because of you. The world is a more dangerous place because of you. America is hated because of you. Yes, that is you personally. I blame all of you.
You are the people who gave us eight years of Bush. My Marine son fought in his wars. Cowards, where were most of your sons and daughters? The President's daughters were getting arrested for under age drinking and harassing their Secret Service detail. The rest of you were shopping.
Far from saying you're sorry for the state our country is in you're trying to change the subject by reviving a culture war that has nothing to do with the principled fight against abortion of the 1970s that my dad and I began, and everything to do with simply hating people not like yourselves. The ultimate irony is that you're doing this in the name of Jesus Christ, someone, by the way, whom I try to follow as a Christian. You have become blasphemers by dragging our Lord into your political games.
The Republican Party and the Religious Right have become "Christian" warmongers who applaud the use of torture, start needless wars, fight against civil rights for gays and other disadvantaged Americans, and perhaps worst of all, in terms of the long-term impact, have literally turned your hands against God's creation.
You have a little fool for a vice presidential candidate who says she doesn't believe that human beings have anything to do with the phenomena of global warming and the endangering of all human life on this planet. Dream on. This fool claims to know what she knows because of an absolute "I don't blink" confidence in herself. So on top of everything else this fool who says she is a Christian, proves she is not. She lacks any shred of decent humility, the most basic biblical virtue.
The Neoconservative Movement
Let's be honest: the Neoconservative Movement is nothing more than an kill-all-the-Arabs, pro-Israel-at-any-cost, morally bankrupt lobby that actually turns out to be anti-Israel. Why? Because taken to the logical conclusion the neoconservative's position on everything--from illegal West Bank settlements, to making war on Iran, not to mention the absolutely useless waste of life that's taken place in Iraq, warlike preparations against Syria and just about every other Middle Eastern country, no, scratch that, every other country in the world--puts Israel in worse jeopardy than ever before.
Fortunately for everyone, it seems that most Israelis "get" this, as well as most Jewish Americans (who vote Democratic) even if a few Neoconservative Jews, most Evangelicals and all the other Republican zealots don't. (Most Jews also know that the idiot fringe so-called Christian Zionists like Rev., Hagee, are no friends to Israel, rather they are perpetuating a doomsday nineteenth century Armageddon/ "Rapture" cult that wants to use the Jews as cosmic "End Times" cannon fodder.)
Get it through your thick heads: a state of permanent war between the West, including Israel and the United States, and the Muslim world is a war that Israel will eventually lose. Do the demographic math!
Republicans: You have been tricked and misled by; Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney, Jr. Dick Cheney. These neofools have unwittingly set in motion the destruction of Israel (probably in our lifetimes) and have maybe killed America too. Bastards! Republicans: It will be remembered that you embraced these world-hating self-deluded paranoid blabberers and made their twisted sound-bite polemics your own.
Those who, like me, actually believe that Israel has the right to exist should look on the Neoconservatives listed above with the same loathing that we look back on the idiots who goaded Europe into World War I, also in the name of "nationalism," "democracy" and "freedom."
Belligerent posturing is not a policy, it is idiocy. You Republicans have become the party of perpetual fear and aggressive non-provoked war, seeing enemies where there are none and/or provoking former friends to become our enemies, and/or faking reasons for war and/or wasting our soldier's blood in places such as Afghanistan, where our cause was just but you fumbled the ball.
Your moron vice presidential candidate is still at it! While turning her son's deployment to war into a flag-dishonoring political circus stunt she repeated the Bush lie and said that her son was going off to fight the perpetrators of 9/11. This is a barefaced lie and you all know it. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. The only reason we attacked them is because the fools listed above decided it would be good for Israel and our stupid "president" went along.
Now you belligerent asses are supporting the same idiot (McCain) that helped bring us Iraq. He is now champing at the bit to revive the cold, and maybe a hot war with Russia! Have you gone mad? Can't you see you have an old foolish semi-senile man mired in the bathos of post-Vietnam "we were denied victory" psychosis for a candidate? Don't you know that Bush has made us weak?
You Republicans did to our military what the USSR could not do: demoralize it, stretch it beyond breaking and set it back decades. And now you want MORE wars?!
Corporate Business Interests
The Republican Party claims traditional values. It has propagated a laissez-faire attitude toward corporate interests and has -- literally -- stood back and encouraged the rape of the earth. You are the party of the earth-hogging SUV. You have literally sowed the wind and reaped the hurricanes.
This is as self-defeating as it is embarrassing for those claiming the moral high ground, particularly those who say that their philosophy represents traditional Judeo-Christian values. We all live here for crying out loud! Will you now fight our God and Creator too for the "right" to burn the last drop of oil while on a weekend jaunt to nowhere in your all-terrain piece of garbage?
Conclusion
The Republican problem is a systemic disparagement of government, community, faith in our institutions, family, God's creation and the mitigating institutions that put a check on something any party aligned with a religious movement should know all about: sin. Greed is not the only problem. Human weakness and stupidity (i.e., "sin") is the problem! And the genius of the American system is supposedly that we have a system of checks and balances to mitigate our fallen state. You have destroyed those checks and balances.
Bush felt no guilt about promoting completely unqualified people to high posts merely on the basis of social, ideological or political connections. I'll take that a step further: I don't think Bush ever wanted the government to work. You Republicans hate our government as bitterly as our terrorist enemies do. You have been trying to deconstruct it. Since the government is seen as the enemy of freedom by you, if it doesn't work so much the better!
We have met the enemy and he is us! When Islamists tried to destroy our country by flying planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers, we rightly called them terrorists. When the Republicans in the Congress and the White House set about destroying our country, our standing in the world, our military and our economy, but much more effectively, you called them statesmen. It is time for all Americans -- including all you who are patriotic Republicans -- to sweep away these putrid earth-consuming, family killing, government bashing "me" worshipping individualistic fools--that or to watch our country be swept away by them. We can't afford eight more years of this willful ignorance. Obama in 2008!
Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.
NOW IN PAPERBACK
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
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Kudos! Mr. Schaeffer. Very well said and true.
"People that hate half the population of their own country can scarcely be called patriots. On the contrary, people who exult in mocking as their only way to "contribute" to solving our huge environmental, energy, military and economic problems are true subversives. " I agree Frank, that the Left has to get over their hate for half of our population, and until then we cannot call them patriots. And they need to get out of the way of drilling in profitable areas, nuclear energy, clean coal! I agree wholeheartedly with you. Or, were you not speaking of them?
Semper fi
Sure. Read again the part about playing victim boy.
You are right that there is hatred ON both sides FOR each side.
The key difference the becomes how that hared is expressed.
When the artists, intelectuals, gays, and Jews get fed up with the conservative nationalists, they produce books, poetry, speeches, songs, artwork, parades to articulate their disgust.
When the conservative nationalists get fed up with the artists, intellectuals, gays, and Jews they produce the Chinese cultural revolution, Holocaust, and Khmer Rouge to articulate their disgust.
sorry keyboard sticking that second line should read "the key difference then becomes how that hatred is expressed"
Your snide attempt at humor only reinforces the point being made by the article. The "Left" doesn't hate the right - the emotions are more like pity and frustration, but not hate. The Left is by instinct more inclined to be inclusive - just compare the images from the two recent Party conventions. What we on the Left have realised, however, is that many on the right really do feel hatred towards us. Who can, or should, forget the words of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when they blamed "liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters" for bringing "God's wrath" upon America. Are you standing behind that kind of "patriotism"?
his was really illuminated for me when I went down south for collee after living in Bston my whole life. . I'm ot going to lie and say that liberal Bostonians didn't think they were "better" than rural conservatives, they did look down their noses at them and poke fun at them.
When I moved down south I was simply shocked at the HATRED profused for not ony liberals but for anyone who wasn't a white conservative anglican. I saw many t shirts, bumpers stickers, etc which joked about KILLING yankees. I heard jokes all the time about how the only good yankee a dead yankee. The Jewish temple in my town was defaced with swastikas. When a hispanic girl ran for class president at school the latin american house on campus was completely defaced with "NO S P I C S FOR PRESIDENT" painted across the front. Flash forward to a few months ago when there was that shooting at the unitarian church, I went to the conservative blogs and the most common comment I saw was "sincewhen did it become illegal to shoot liberals?"
Lierals may hate conservative politics, but many conservatves activly wish death and vience upon anyone who doesn't think, act, and look just like them.
Frank, thanks for that, especially your characterization of the neocons. You are right about most Jews - they do vote democratic. And, you're also right about most Israelis - having blind support from a president of a weak America is more dangerous than thoughtful support from a strong America. That said, though, the people who really need to read your words are unlikely to see them on this Website. Unfortunately, you're preaching to the choir. I hope you will find a way to get it posted on Websites where it may actually give pause to a few readers who are not hard-core ideologues.
I would take issue with your point on Roe versus Wade. I believe there would still be a religious right active in the land even without Roe versus Wade.
The advent of tele-evangilism and the vast sums of money raised would have created a substitute for Roe v. Wade IMHO.
And this too shall pass.... I hope.
I agree strongly with Frank's assessment re: Roe v. Wade. While evangelicals would have existed - and maybe even flourished, they would have lacked an issue to bring that evangelism into politics (though the school prayer issue was also used in the early movement.)
I've come to believe that abortion should have been left for states to decide.
and I believe it's for each individual to decide. There are too many laws trying to interpret common sense already.
I think he's probably correct but then gay bashing doesn't require this ruling and they seem to like using it. If it's not women, it's gays -- or vice versa.
The GOP will NEVER overturn Roe v. Wade. They must keep the divide alive so they can trot it out every election cycle as a bludgeon to bash the heads of low-info voters. As for me, when this election is over, my new cause will be getting the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) passed so that my granddaughter will not have it used against her in 2030.
I'm stunned !! I wish every Republican would read this.
I don't think that this country will survive another Republican administratrion.
This post was right on the mark.
I wish every Republican would read this too. Then they would be as mad as I am and realize that we have to vote McCain so all you crazy Democrats will shut up! Our sons and daughters not serving in the war? Lies. Being religious just because of Roe V Wade. Lies. Some of us love God and pray because we believe in Him and want to have a personal relationship with Him. I am a stay at home mom with 3 kids. My husband and I paid 100% for his education. We bought our home on our own. We make sacrifices so I don't have to work and can raise my children. We do not take money from our government. We are self sufficient. Lucky? No! We worked hard for what we have. Obama will raise our taxes and put us in danger. He is my worst nightmare.
My goodness sir! You have said what I've been ranting about for the past 30 years. The only shortfall of the article is there should have been more about Corporate Business Interests. Good Lord, the man sounds just like me except I have never been a member of the religious right. Thank God for Bach's Rescue Remedy or I'd never have lived through the past 8 years; no make that the last 30 years.
Thanks Frank
Wow! Righteous anger I not only can relate to but feel so deep in my soul!
Case in point: sgossage.
Meanwhile they all run away with their fingers in their ears crying NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA as loudly as they can.
Finally! This is outrage that I can relate to...I'm not alone out here! Real Christians
NO MORE YEARS, republicans!
NO MORE CHANCES for repubs. to screw America.
NO MORE YEARS FOR REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION!
ALL REPUBLICANS now put AMERICA last and want to DESTROY THE MIDDLE INCOME AMERICANS by handing them the bill for Republican FAILURES.
NO MORE YEARS. REPUBLICANS need to lose BIG.
Wow......a
Obama next 8 years!!
Thank you for your lucid arguments; I agree with all save one very small persnicketty point. You state that Roe v Wade should not have been decided by the Supreme Court, and that abortion issues should have remained to be decided on a state by state basis. Surely this would have given rise to unacceptable inequities as exist currently with the death penalty? This has come to mind in a more concentrated fashion partly because of the impending execution of Troy Davis in Georgia on 23 September, wilfully ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court is due to hear his further appeal on 29 Sept. Leaving abortion rights to the States can only result in gross injustices being perpetrated based on one's place of residence.
NO MORE CHANCES for IRRESPONSIBLE REPUBLICANS WHO CANNOT GOVERN.
NO MORE YEARS FOR REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION!
ALL REPUBLICANS now put AMERICA last and want to DESTROY THE MIDDLE INCOME AMERICANS by handing them the bill for Republican FAILURES.
NO MORE YEARS. REPUBLICANS need to lose BIG.
I like your mantra "No more chances for irresponsible Republicans who cannot govern!"
The Republican way !!
Force women to have kids then pull all assistance out from under them to make them ENDENTURED SLAVES !!!!!!!!1
It gives a whole new meaning to 'keep them barefoot and pregnant.'
That though also came to mind...
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