Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for and the result of America's evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party. It is the ultimate expression of an alternate reality, one that has the mistrust of the US government as its bedrock "faith," second only to faith in Jesus.
To understand why an irrational self-defeating action like destroying the credit of the USA might seem like the right thing to do you have to understand two things: that the Republican Party is now the party of religious fanatics and that these fanatics -- people like Michele Bachmann -- don't want to work within our system, they want to bring it down.
In the scorched-earth era of the "health care reform debates" of 2009 and beyond, Evangelicals seemed to believe that Jesus commanded that all hospitals (and everything else) should be run by corporations for profit, just because corporations weren't the evil government. The right even decided that it was "normal" for the state to hand over its age-old public and patriotic duties to private companies -- even for military operations ("contractors"), prisons, health care, public transport, and all the rest.
The Religious Right/Far Right et al. favored private "facts," too.
They claimed that global warming wasn't real. They asserted this because scientists (those same agents of Satan who insisted that evolution was real) were the ones who said human actions were changing the climate. Worse, the government said so, too
"Global warming is a left-wing plot to take away our freedom!"
"Amtrak must make a profit!"
Even the word "infrastructure" lost its respectability when government had a hand in maintaining roads, bridges, and trains. In denial of the West's civic-minded, government-supporting heritage, Evangelicals (and the rest of the Right) wound up defending private oil companies but not God's creation, private cars instead of public transport, private insurance conglomerates rather than government care of individuals.
It only remained for a far right Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to rule in 2010 that unlimited corporate money could pour into political campaigns -- anonymously -- in a way that clearly favored corporate America and the super wealthy, who were now the only entities served by the Republican Party.
Where does this all come from?
The 1970s Evangelical antiabortion movement that my father Francis Schaeffer, C. Everett Koop, and I helped create seduced the Republican Party. By the early 1980s the Republicans were laboring under the weight of a single-issue religious test for heresy: abortion. Abortion was "murder" and since the US government "allowed abortion" it was no longer seen as legitimate by the anti-abortion activists.
I was there -- and/or Dad was -- participating in various meetings with Congressman Jack Kemp, Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush, Sr., when the unholy marriage between the Republican Party and the Evangelical "pro-life" community was gradually consummated. Dad and I -- as did many other Evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell -- met one on one or in groups with key members of the Republican leadership quite regularly to develop a "pro-life strategy" for rolling back Roe v. Wade.
And that strategy was simple: Republican leaders would affirm their antiabortion commitment to Evangelicals, and in turn we'd vote for them -- by the tens of millions. Once Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, "we" would reverse Roe, through a constitutional amendment and/or through the appointment of antiabortion judges to the Supreme Court or, if need be, through civil disobedience and even violence, though this was only hinted at -- at first.
When Evangelical and Republican leaders sat together, we discussed "the issue," but we would soon move on to the practical particulars, such as "Will blue-collar Catholic voters join us now?" (They did.) Soon Evangelical leaders were helping political leaders to send their message to the "pro-life community" that they -- the Republican leaders -- were on board.
For instance, I organized the 1984 publication of President Ronald Reagan's antiabortion book with Evangelical Bible publisher Thomas Nelson. Reagan's book had first appeared as an essay in the Human Life Review (Spring 1983). I was friends with Human Life Review founder and editor: the brilliant Roman Catholic antiabortion crusader Jim McFadden. He and I cooked up the presidential project over the phone.
The president's book expressed his antiabortion "views" as ghostwritten by McFadden in order to cement the Reagan "deal" with the antiabortion movement. We called the book Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. I suggested to Reagan's people that two Schaeffer family friends -- C. Everett Koop and Malcolm Muggeridge (a famous British writer/social critic and convert from Far Left politics to rabid Far Right Roman Catholicism with whom my father once led a huge "pro-life" demonstration in Hyde Park, London) -- provide us with afterwords to "bulk out" an otherwise too brief book, which they did within a week or two after I called them.
Once they were "on board," Republican leaders like Senator Jesse Helms and Congressmen Jack Kemp and Henry Hyde (to name but three whom I met with often, in Jack's case in his home, where I stayed as a guest) worked closely with my father and me, and we (along with a lot of other religious leaders) began to deliver large blocs of voters. We even managed "our" voters for the Republican Party by incessantly reminding our followers of "the issue" through newsletters, TV, and radio broadcasts.
Fast-forward thirty years to the early twenty-first century:
The messengers, leaders, and day-to-day "issues" changed, but the volume and tone of the anti-government "debate" and the anger in reaction to the Obama presidency originated with the antiabortion movement. To understand where that anger came from and who first gave voice to it, consider a few prescient passages from my father's immensely influential book (influential within the Evangelical ghetto, that is) A Christian Manifesto, which was published in 1981.
As you read these excerpts, bear in mind what would take place in the health care "debates" over what came to be disparaged as "Obamacare" thirty years or so after my father's book was read by hundreds of thousands of Evangelicals. Anti-health-care-reform rhetoric -- "Death Panels!" "Government Takeover!" "Obama is Hitler!" -- that the Far Right spewed in the policy debates of 2009 and beyond seemed to be ripped from the pages of Dad's and my writings.
Note the ominous rhetorical shadow Dad's book cast over a benighted and divided American future, a future that produced the climate of hate that eventually spawned the murder of abortion providers such as Dr. George Tiller in Wichita in 2009 and the threat of destroying America's credit in an effort to literally defund the USA.
Here's a bit from Manifesto on how the government was "taking away" our country and turning it over to Liberals, codenamed by Dad as "this total humanistic way of thinking":
"The law, and especially the courts, is the vehicle to force this total humanistic way of thinking upon the entire population.*
And this:
"Simply put, the Declaration of Independence states that the people, if they find that their basic rights are being systematically attacked by the state, have a duty to try and change that government, and if they cannot do so, to abolish it."
Then this:
"There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate. . . . A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion. . . . It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates its authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation."
In other words, Dad's followers were told that (1) force is a legitimate weapon to use against an evil government; (2) America was like Hitler's Germany--because of legal abortion and of the forcing of "Humanism" on the population--and thus intrinsically evil; and (3) whatever would have been the "appropriate response" to stop Hitler was now appropriate to do here in America to stop our government, which Dad had just branded a "counterfeit state."
Dad's books sailed under the radar of the major media. But his work, and the work of other anti-American religious right leaders shaped a generation.
For instance Michele Bachmann credits reading my father's books as to what inspired her to enter politics as a means to "serve the Lord."
Republican Apocalypse Now
To understand the extremism coming from the right, the fact that there are members of Congress who seem to be genuinely mentally unhinged leading the charge on the debt ceiling, you need to understand that this hatred of all things government has theological roots that have nothing to do with facts.
Theology is -- by nature -- not about reason but about faith. If God's will is to be served then so be it if America is plunged into chaos! This debt ceiling fiasco is just another chapter in the "culture" wars.
The extreme language of Evangelical/"pro-life" rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts.
And the anti-government charge is being led by people who are either true believers, thus unable to reason, or people catering to the true believers so that they can remain in the good books of the Tea Party, which is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His new book is Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway.
Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer
Don't let them veer off into free markets, morals, God, Ayn Rand, and throwing off the yoke of big bad government.
I guarantee they won't have one. For the Tea Party, the future for America looks...
...blank.
The Republican base has always had a conspiratorial and reckless element. The John Birch Society was proclaiming the government was run by communists and illegitimate long before the abortion debate. Ayn Rand celebrated the violent demise of the modern state for a libertarian paradise in the 40s and 50s - and she was an atheist. White Supremacists and neo-Confederates also believe the government is illegitimate, but not because of abortion. All of these strains of the right are present in the Tea Party mania, not just the social conservtives. Michelle Bachmann is a religious fanatic, but Rand Paul and Paul Ryan are not.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone remembers that it wasn't Reagan who single-handedly invented anti-government passion and the bedrock sense that it must be overthrown by any means necessary. Reagan just moved these elements from the fringe to the Republican mainstream.
How large a voting block is the John Birch Society?
How large a voting block are the neo-Confederates and White Supremacists?
How large a voting block are Ayn Rand devotees?
And
How large a voting block are the fundamentalist/evangelicals?
I think the last group is by far the largest, by orders of magnitude.
And Frank Schaeffer was in the midst of forming THAT voting block, with all the inside information that any rational person would give credence to.
Yes, Reagan did not single-handedly invent the inti-government passion that is fundamental to the modern GOP. Francis and Frank Schaeffer were intimately involved in founding the ideology that now controls the GOP. The John Birch Society didn't do that. Ayn Rand didn't do that. The militia movement didn't do that. Fundamentalism/evangelicalism did that!
The fact that Schaeffer was in the midst of the religious right doesn't bolster his credibility on this issue - if anything it dilutes it. He has no perspective on this. The roots of the Tea Party are not the religious right.
Grover Builds Coalitions, all of whom see Govt as the Satan to fight- until they can just fight...reagan invented grover, grover brings us ALEC, ALEC is from Weyrich, et al,, and besides, ALEC mainstreams SEVEN MOUNTAINS/FAMILY BS to the US through Austrian Economics and State Legislations....there you Go! also: http://www.lewrockwell.com​/rockwell/next-30-days.htm​l Rockwell's Next Thirty Days
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. if you can't connect the dots, i blame your homeschooling. chuckle.
love, Soup
What do I believe?
Why do I believe it?
Ultimately, I could no longer persuade myself that the Bible was anything more than ancient writings, and the Old Testament a collection of myths and revisionist history from exposure to Babylonian religion and lamentation of the "godly" state Israel used to preside in, in the gilded memories of those who longed for the "good old days."
I wish that Christians today would reflect on the teachings of Jesus, rather than the teachings of Paul. Paul, brought up in legalism of the Pharisees, could never quite leave the frame of mind of legalism, while casting aside circumcision and unclean foods. And the book most quoted by today's Christians seems to be I Corinthians -- a book written to admittedly the most screwed up of the ancient churches.
Where are the lamentations for the letters of John? Especially I John 4:8 -- "He who does not Love, does not know God, for God is Love"?
Typical. Any time a leftist voice raises even a word of criticism, opponents always deny it and commit the Accuse The Opponent of What You're Doing.
You may be independent and non-religious, but if you respond with "pathological hatred" to Frank Schaeffer's reasoned criticism of the right's hatred, then you're a "phony rational person:" that is, a sophist who uses the tone of "objectivity" to prevent certain views or information from being given a fair and serious hearing.
For the past 10 years I have been covered in the employee dependent group of the indigent county hospital, where we get great care, as long as you don't mind the day long wait if you are in a hurry to see a specialist in less than a few months. While the academic doctors that staff this hospital's clinics are salaried, they definitely aren't working for free or even for typical government wages. The top administrative docs approach a million a year in salary, well earned as they struggle to keep the ship afloat. Remember, this is a government hospital. The staff are almost entirely liberal Democrats. Good people all. Ms. Pelosi visited and thinks they're great, and they are. Again, it's complicated. Keep stirring it up!
The backfire effect causes people who are confronted with evidence that disproves their beliefs to 'double down' on their beliefs, rejecting the contrary evidence and becoming more fervent in supporting their position.
The just-world fallacy has people believe that losers 'deserve' to be losers.
Mr. Schaffer, I don't see an OFF switch to what is happening. It seems to me that in order for it to get better, first it has to get much worse.
How many have to die of starvation, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of access to medical care, health problems from dirty wasteful energy, and mistreatment of those seen as 'deserving' mistreatment, before the born-again currently holding the reins begin to be horrified and disgusted by what they have wrought?
It's very sad - McCarthyism almost pales by comparison to this as it is much broader-reaching and I can even feel it's tendrils creeping across the atlantic to the UK.
F&F
They are very dangerous in that they see the middle ages slipping away in the rear view mirror and it freaks them out. They long for simpler times that have long passed and see the modern world as evil. These folks are our Taliban, and if they had their way, anyone with a brain and the freedom to use it would be stoned in the street.
I am proud to become your ninth Fan, and I wish you many more.
Oh, and of course this excellent comment is also
Faved!