Republicans, like Christians, place little value in facts, especially when those facts contradict their beliefs. Not much can be gained from a political debate with Republicans by employing logic and reason, because the fabric of their magic cloak is spun from the mythological yarn of the Bible. For these right wing religious zealots and their political wing, the Republican Party, an entire system of beliefs begins with a leap of faith, which according to Wikipedia, "is the act of believing in or accepting something intangible or unprovable, or without empirical evidence," and therefore requires one to suspend factual based reasoning. Certainly not all Republicans are true believers, but they recognize the value of a voting bloc that can be relied upon to ignore reality and turn out to vote on faith and emotion. Likewise, many conservative Christian leaders may not have complete confidence in the religious devotion of those Republican officials but nonetheless are happy to have a political front that can be manipulated into advancing a Christian agenda under the guise of patriotism, religious freedom and individual rights.
Fact based arguments are also too complicated and time consuming for mainstream media to cover in anything but a perfunctory way, and too complicated for the average person to grasp in the sound bite, headline driven format fed them on a daily basis. John and Jane Q. Citizen are busy working, trying to raise their kids and pay their bills. They don't want things to be complicated. Their lives are already complicated enough. Republicans know this. Democrats too often ignore it. Republicans communicate to John and Jane by scaring the hell out of them with easy to understand horror stories about Ebola, ISIS, illegals stealing all the jobs and spreading Ebola and bringing ISIS terrorists with them; melodramatic tales of Obama trampling on the Constitution, taxation, tyranny, Benghazi, Obamacare, death panels and how poor people are to blame for poverty. There are three basic categories of Democratic responses. Many play defense with flaccid rebuttals, dry dissertations and lengthy lectures filled with scholarly citations proving that the right is wrong and the left is right. Some just walk away from their party, like Allison Grimes and Mary Landrieu, and shift their message to the right in what has come to be known as Republican light. Then a relative few, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders proudly stand their ground and passionately fight for what is right.
In the spirit of disclosure, I should tell you I am the son of a physicist and although I grew up to be an artist, musician and atheist, and not a scientist, I was raised to understand and respect the scientific method. Let me also go on record saying I know many morally upstanding, progressively minded Christians, currently personified by the Great Jesuit, Pope Francis, who have warm hearts, are doing good deeds and speaking out for the poor and disenfranchised, and I intend not to belittle or insult them, but I fear with what I am going to say, I will anyway. I have no problem with people believing in Christianity, or Buddhism, witches and warlocks, Zeus and Pan or Bilbo and Frodo for that matter. What I do have a problem with is people of "faith" trying to legislate public policy based on their "intangible" and "unprovable" beliefs, and so the target of this rant are conservative/fundamentalist Christians, as they are the dominant religious political force in our country, those who take the Bible literally, conduct their lives accordingly, and insist that the rest of us do the same. They have forged an unholy trinity with the barons of capitalism, those seemingly omnipotent oligarchs the Koch brothers and their ilk, and the Republican Party. This fraternity of prolific proselytizers, unscrupulous capitalists and scoundrels--Christians, Kochs and the GOP--are by themselves capable of plenty of malicious mischief, but in triadic synergy their alliance poses the most existential threat to our democracy since slavery and the Civil War.
A liberal democracy by its very nature does not work for people who consider their beliefs and interests inherently superior and beyond question. The people who shout the loudest about free markets are the very ones who actually don't believe in a "free" market at all, but rather special access to markets, tax incentives, and asymmetrical influence on the political process. They demand tax breaks because they are the ones taking risks and creating jobs, all the while doing neither because of the "uncertainty" created by Democratic policies. Risk and uncertainty walk hand-in-hand. And then the very people who pound the pulpit and preach vociferously for freedom of religion are the ones most likely to support laws that force their religion on others and discriminate against non-believers. No thank you.
Christians believe that the mother of Jesus was a virgin because, you know, the Immaculate Conception, which is really on par with the notion that babies are delivered by storks and such. They believe that a 600 year old Noah kept "seven pairs of each kind of clean animal and two pairs of each kind of other animals" on earth afloat on his Ark for over a year. (Genesis 6:19-20; 7:2-3).
By “clean” the Bible means animals that were "acceptable for sacrifice." That is why seven pairs of the clean animals were taken – so some of them could be sacrificed after the Flood was over without endangering the species.
Isn't that nice? Biblical proof that Christians have always been concerned for endangered species--the clean ones at least!
Then there is the Resurrection, when Jesus rose from the dead three days and nights after his crucifixion--did anyone say zombie apocalypse?--and, according to Genesis, the Earth is 6,000 years old.
The genealogies listed in Genesis chapters 5 and 11 provide the age at which Adam and his descendants each fathered the next generation in a successive ancestral line from Adam to Abraham. By determining where Abraham fits into history chronologically and adding up the ages provided in Genesis 5 and 11, it becomes apparent that the Bible teaches the earth to be about 6000 years old, give or take a few hundred years.
It is smart how they left a few hundred years of wiggle room in case they overlooked something, like a missing ancestor or two, should a religious scholar come along some day to recalculate the numbers and find they were off by, oh, I don't know, a few billion.
Likewise Republicans believe in trickle down economics, that cutting taxes and regulations on the wealthy and their corporations will inevitably incentivize them to invest in America and create jobs, that eliminating the minimum wage will encourage the working poor to get better jobs and both evolution and climate change are scientific "theories" at best and complete hoaxes at worst. It doesn't matter that evidence to support Republican policies, like the colorful tales in the Bible, is threadbare or non-existent, anecdotal and self-referencing, and that basically all existing credible and verifiable data are to the contrary. At least it matters not to Christians, Kochs and Republicans. What matters is that they recite their credo often enough and loud enough to convince themselves, and the malleable, inherently racist, low information Fox News audience, that anecdotes and Biblical citations are equivalent to double blind studies and statistical analysis. What matters is they tell a compelling story, spin a good yarn.
While many Democrats have been steadfast in their condemnation of Republican policies, almost all are loathe to attack the leap of faith mentality. This is where scoundrel politicians who espouse trickle down economics, propose personhood legislation and deny anthropogenic climate change, draw their inspiration. Religious detractors risk offending not only fundamentalists, but liberal/secular Christians, those who identify as "spiritual" and children who believe in Santa Claus as well, therefore exposing themselves to public shaming for waging a "war on religion."
"Daddy, why do Democrats hate Christmas?"
"Gee, son, I think it is because they don't know that Jesus is love and the Bible is truth."
"I feel sorry for them."
"Yes, son, let's pray."
Well screw all that. There comes a time when we tell our children there is no Santa Claus, because to let them go on believing into adulthood sets them up for disaster by teaching them that magic trumps the laws of physics, reindeer can fly, elves exist and stuff like that. Likewise it is time to tell adults that the Bible is a potpourri of mythology and fantasy with a small dose of history thrown in for good measure. People living in the fairyland world of Fundamental Christianity can believe what they want but should not be in charge of making policy on public education, scientific research, climate change, healthcare, foreign policy and pretty much anything that requires an open mind willing to consider opinions and evidence that run contrary to their faith. The time has come to expose the connection between Christianity and Republican political policy, to put them on the defensive, along with their Oligarch financiers, and stop pretending that fundamental Christian activism is compatible with Democracy. It is not.
In his essay "Is Religion Compatible with Liberal Democracy?" Marc D. Stern addresses the importance of the separation of church and state.
All liberal constitutional democracies impose restrictions on what private activity government may and should regulate, including, of course, religious behavior, and what values it may assimilate, and enforce, as its own.
There are several broad generalizations that can be made about the role and place of religion in liberal democracies. First, in a liberal democracy, citizenship is not dependent on adherence to an official religion or even a state approved religion. Religion, therefore, is not a constitutive element of citizenship.
This principle is today accepted universally in the Western world. Equally well accepted is that in a liberal democracy the government may not penalize citizens (or more correctly, if less succinctly, persons within the jurisdiction) because they profess a faith that is not shared by a majority of their fellow citizens. It is also settled that in a liberal democracy citizens enjoy the freedom to express their religious views, and to form institutions consistent with those views, without fear of punishment or civic disability.
It is likewise universally accepted that liberal democracies cannot compel the doing of religious acts or attendance at worship services, although there is less than full agreement over the extent of this principle as it applies to children in state-run schools. Whether the state can compel participation in some form of prayer services, and, even if not, what constitutes coercion to participate in religious activities, are sharply disputed questions.
A 2013 HuffPost/YouGov poll revealed both bad news and good news. The bad news being 34% of adult Americans would favor establishing Christianity as the official state religion in their own state. 34%, even though the Constitution clearly establishes the separation of church and state! I am willing to bet when asked these same people would say that Obama is the one destroying the Constitution. I guess the good news is that 47% would oppose their state declaring Christianity as its official religion, a plurality but not a majority. The same poll found a slightly better result when asking about a Constitutional amendment establishing Christianity as the nation's official religion: 32% in favor and 52% opposed.
The fact that a majority opposes a constitutional affirmation of national Christianity doesn't protect us from a theocratic takeover. Republican success at voter suppression and strategic off year electioneering, and the alliance of theocrats and oligarchs, are all indications that our democracy is in serious danger. Christian fundamentalists are co-opting the language of the Constitution to suggest it is a Christian document rather than secular. The corporate wing of the GOP, with the complicity of the Catholic controlled Supreme Court, have successfully established the right of individual owners and their families to subject their employees to their beliefs under the protection of religion, while at the same time operate with impunity under the protection of corporate law.
It is well past time to start holding the GOP accountable for their past performances and shaming them for hitting the American people over the head with the same stinking dead fish economic and social policies year after year after year. It is time to shame the oligarchs for robbing the Treasury of the United States, and padding their bank accounts on the backs of the working poor and middle class. And it is time to call out conservative Christians out for their hypocrisy and bigotry. Enough already!
Follow below for my "Shame on you Republicans" suggestions.
Shame on you Republicans for insisting on cutting taxes on the wealthy, cutting regulations on their corporations and driving us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, for which you are also to blame for the same damn reasons. The only time in the last 90 years that taxes were lower and regulations weaker than during W's presidency was in the years leading up to the Great Depression. Same policies, same results.
Shame on you Republicans for the Southern Strategy, which admittedly was designed after the passage of the Voting Rights Act to insure a Republican Southern electoral majority by stoking the racist fears of whites and pitting them against blacks and Democrats. What a healthy democracy needs are leaders who work to bring her citizens together rather than promoting divisiveness and hatred.
Shame on you Republicans for being okay with torture, lowering our moral bar and adding fuel to the Muslim extremist fire. "As far as I’m concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized." Dick Cheney.
The new revelations about the Bush administration's secret torture programare sickening:
Interrogators forced food into a detainee's rectum. Others were forced to stand for hours on broken feet. One detainee died after suffering hypothermia.
But today, one of the key legal architects of the torture program, former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, is the dean of a Christian law school.
Gonzales has never apologized or repented for his role in drafting and approving the infamous memos that provided the administration's legal justification for torture. And the new report reveals that he was briefed on the specifics of what was happening years before President Bush was.
Shame on Republicans for supporting the war in Iraq based on lies and costing our nation over 4,000 dead, 30,000 wounded and several trillion in debt, while on the other hand fighting against spending money in our own country, on our own citizens for things like health care, unemployment insurance, supplemental nutrition, head start, student debt relief, infrastructure, scientific research and things like that. Why is it okay to squander blood and treasure on foreign wars but not spend money on the well being our own people?
Shame on you Republicans for funding the Iran/Contra civil war with profits from arms sales to Iran and crack sales in primarily black, Los Angeles inner city neighborhoods while simultaneously increasing criminal penalties for the recipients and consumers of your marketing campaign.
Shame on you Republicans for undermining voting rights with voter suppression laws ostensibly written to fix non-existent fraud, but admittedly really intended to keep minorities, college students and the elderly from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
Shame on you Republicans for denying equal protection under the law by opposing marriage equality.
Shame on you Republicans for denying equal pay for equal work.
Shame on you Republicans for subsidizing the labor of major corporations who reap billions of profit while paying their employees less than a livable wage forcing them to rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and other government assistance just to pay their rent and feed their children.
Shame on you Republicans for corrupting our electoral process by declaring that money equals speech and that corporations are people.
Shame on you Republicans for perpetuating a broken immigration system by demonizing hard working undocumented immigrants and refusing to vote on legislation passed over a year ago by the Senate.
Shame on you Republicans for not purging your party of admitted racists and making blocking Obama at every turn your primary mission instead of actually serving the country by producing some work product, simply because Obama is black.
I've got to go to bed, so feel free to add to the list in the comments below.