A couple of days ago, I asked, What's next, wholesale body bags? to address the wave of terroristic violence that has overtaken the country. In our society of mega-extreme-new-improved-more-bigger-better-faster-now provocation to consume, I fear there's one direction the wave can go. Bigger.
Frank Schaeffer inspired my article and StopDomesticTerror.com because, as he says today on HuffintonPost,
I started pondering the question of what we could do right after the assassination of Dr. Tiller by a religious extremist...because that did not really address the core problems.
In fact as a former right wing religious "pro-life" leader I felt compelled to publicly apologize (in the Huffington Post) for the "America-is-like-Nazi-Germany" rhetoric that my late Evangelical leader father and I helped create in the 1970s and 80s that inexorably led to justifying violence in the Tiller case.
Beyond the courage to presume to apologize for such a thing, his current article at HuffingtonPost shows that he's no shrinking violet when it comes to calling dark-colored, sharp-edged shovel-shaped things, 'spades'. But in doing so, Schaeffer's not involved in petty name-calling since there's a purpose for laying the issues out in stark terms. The reality is pretty stark.
That's the motivation for his current effort:
The campaign includes letters from attorney Kevin Zeese and myself to Attorney General Eric Holder asking that he take the issue of domestic terror seriously by investigating and prosecuting threats and acts of violence. I'm working with others on a campaign to reach religious leaders who enable and encourage this violence, and asking for the launching of investigations into the use of the media and web organizations by the right wing to foment violence. It is time to combat hate speech.
We have a long horrible legacy of violence against public figures. The worst chapters in our history have been written in blood by extremists when they felled our moral and political leaders. We must act now to avert another tragedy.
Sign on to our campaign at www.StopDomesticTerror.com.
You should go and read "Organizing to Stop Far Right Violence" if you are concerned with the hateful atmosphere that currently envelopes our political dialogue.
Read my "StopDomesticTerror.com - Murdered MDs? Presidential assassination? Hangings? Military coups? What's next?" to see how the right-wing fringe is inciting its base to what President Bush's Executive Order 13224 explicitly defined as terrorism in the days after 9/11.
But then go to www.StopDomesticTerror.com.
current article at HuffingtonPost