Somehow I still think people don't get who we're up against

Since Tuesday I've seen a lot of people posting that we shouldn't alienate the religious right, that we should try to reach out to them.

IMO-BULLS*IT!

Those of us who have posted about the threats from religion were never talking about mainstream religion inn the US. We're talking about Christian Reconstructionism (AKA Dominionism) and the Christian Identity movement. It is these groups that are the strongest portion of Bush's evangelical movement.

Start looking into the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and you will find in short order that they want to replace the Constitution with the Bible, and have Biblical punishments for Biblical crimes. In other words, homosexuality, adultery, sex before marriage, abortion, contraceptive use and a string of other "offenses" are all abominations before God, and all deserve the Biblical penalty-stoning to death. No plea bargining, no parole. Tie them up and get the sharp pointy rocks.

The entire concept of right vs. wrong has been turned on it's head under this sect. It's no longer about what other religions typically consider to be "right" and "wrong": it's about "saved" and "unsaved"-saved and unsaved have completely replaced good and evil.

Under Reconstructionism, a saved person has had all past AND future wrongs absolved-in other words, whatever they do from then on is automatically forgiven. Hell isn't the place where people who do bad things go, it's where the unsaved go. Anyone who isn't saved is doomed to Hell, regardless of what good things they have done; anyone who is saved is going to heaven, regardless of what bad things they have done. Since evil has been replaced by unsaved, anyone who is not a member of their church is under suspicion, and anyone who is not saved is an agent of Satan (at least until they are saved and Satan is cast out of them). And of course, anyone who is gay can never be saved...

Christ came to Earth in this philosophy (I really hate to use "philosophy" to describe it) in order to set up the ultimate Country Club. It's no longer about good versus bad. It's about who's in the club. Membership is very exclusive, my good man...

Remember what Pat Robertson said several months ago about Bush winning in a walk? "The Lord has just blessed him," Robertson said of Bush. "I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him."

So, please explain to me this: how exactly are we supposed to reach out and unite with people who believe that, because we don't share their beilefs, we are agents of evil? How exactly do you think we can show them our values have any merit when they believe that the only values that are not given directly from Satan are the ones they believe in?

There is no winning these people over. This isn't a difference of opinion on Biblical interpretation. These people are by normal society standards paranoid and mentally ill. The only way to see eye-to-eye with them is to let Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell mind-control you.

Americans!

Only if you want to be read, of course.

What is their percentage ot the population?

What percentage of the people who voted for HIM, in this last fiasco(given that there is any accuracy to the count) will fall away from that vote, once the chickens start coming home to roost?

of 20% of the entire country. More in some places, less in others
It has to be at least 11% - isn't that what Alan Keyes got?

the are to vote. I'm talking about pentecostals, LDS polygamists, jehovah's witnesses. The further out, they more likely to believe all govt is corrupted, so some of them need to be ommitted.

I am 99% sure they don't believe in government because it interferes with respect for God or something (don't quote me on that because I am not sure that is correct)

On edit: you just said the same thing I misread your post the first time (DUH! It's been a long day)

the military. If drafted, they refuse to serve and spend two years in prison instead. They do pay taxes because that is "rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's" and they do send their kids to public school, collect Social Security, etc., so they're not as free of the government as they would like to think. They view all government as inherently corrupt because it is "man's law" rather than God's law.

I can't see them joining up with Reconstructionists, though, because they believe that they are the only ones who'll be saved.

mormons and all

they turn off their microchips in the presence of heathens.

there is no winning these people over, damn straight.

they will have to lose,and lose big, to vote dem, and we will have to catch Dubya buggering Scott McClellan for that to happen. (and I'm not ruling that out)

edit: I just read your thread title again, no they don't get it, they think of fundies like buddhists, rational people practicing a spiritual discipline. I suggest they sit down and read the bible, really read it, and see that God in the bible is a cross between John Wayne and Goebbels. Their God is a sick motherfucker, and it is all there in black and white. I went there the other night, trying to post something pretty for despondent DU'ers, and every page I turned, it was just more and more depravity and violence and hate, and i'm an ex-fundie, born and raised, and I just cringed at page after page of patriarchal perversion.

Bush was saved after all...
although that is a homosexual act, so that might break the camel's back.

wouldn't surprise me one bit...

Old advertising line. ;-)

They've always been amongst those of us who have souls. They've always been a pain in the ass, because they've always been avaricious wrapped-in-sanctimony hypocrites. Maybe there's always a fixed-percentage of psychopaths in any given population which is somehow evolutionarily-advantageous to the population as a whole. Maybe they exist in what is probably a socially-fixed percentage of kids who are always unpopular in school and have decided to exact revenge as adults.

Actually, I've wondered if they sexually-reproduce(they aren't usually very attractive people), or do they get cloned in Mordor?

One thing I know is THEY SUCK, and they're dangerous. Definitely, Night of the Living Dead material.

Gyre

should be alienated from any decent society. People need to be exposed to their ignorance and hate. That's my 2 cents.

so we don't sound like we are bashing Christians.

I like Radical right. And Radical religious right. But it would be nice to get religious out of the phrase.

Ideas?

We keep saying Bush is a radical over and over and it will stick.

Of course, we need help in the media (see the "watch only Olberman" thread)

:D

An oldie but a goodie.

</pompous off> :)
How about "Country Club Christians"?
I think the implications might get through to people about what their priorities really are.

It's not JUST the religious right. When bsuh* held his convention in 2000, he made damned sure to include lots of blacks and latinos on stage with him. It wasn't because he thought he was going to get the minority vote. It was an attempt to fool the people in the middle that he wasn't racist because, and here's the important part, MINORITIES ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES THAT CARE ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS.

Well, the radical religious right is NOT the only people who care about religion, and when the left carelessly attacks "Christians" without carefully specifying who they're talking about, non-radical people of faith get offended, and rightfully so.

Furthermore, there is a small, but loud, minority within the left that are brutally hostile to anyone of any religion. While the majority disagrees with them, they do not loudly object to it. It's seen by most as an offense, but a misdemeanor one.

On DU, if you use a racial epithet or call a republican female a "bitch", people will raise hell. But say that "people who believe in God are mentally defective" and most DUers shrug and say "What's the big deal?"

I see it happening here.

.

about how we address them. You are right. Very often people lump any religious belief together with Dominionism. As for myself, I consider myself a Christian liberal, so I do resent it.

But, I still say we have no chance of working with the extreme religious fundamentalists as members of the dominionist movement. They are not representative if the mainstream, and we simply cannot afford to ignore their beliefs and try to work with them as if they were any other group. It is their stated goal to bring about the end times. How is that different than terrorism?

It's about seperating them from the other Christians, the ones who can be spoken to. If even you are resentful of the way people lump all Christians together, imagine what it's like for a Christian who is not as politically aware as you, and has no idea what Dominionism is. They hear someone talking about bad Christians, and they don't know you're talking about a small bunch of radicals.

I prefer that we would avoid using the words Christian and religion in relation to them. I don't think we should be associating radical extremists with either of the two because they are neither Christian or religious.

and I have been consciously trying to avoid calling them Christian. I don't believe they are, especially given the fact that all their statements come from the Old Testament (not Christian) Paul (never met Christ), or Revelations (written 150 years after Christ).
Not sure what to call them then, really. I did think "Country Club Christians" would be appropriate; although that does use Christian, it enforces the fact that it's faked and is more about a status symbol than anything else. Other than that, I am open to suggestions.

that words like "radical" "extremist" "Taliban (or Talibornagain)" are relevant. I don't have a precise phrase to give you. Like you, I'm a bit at a loss, but I appreciate your gracious responses and for hearing me out.

BTW, I have funny Dead-related story about your handle "Estimated Prophet". PM me, and when I get the chance, I'll write it up for you.

What we do need to do is make sure that we are specific about those who we have to oppose, and not run over bystanders on the way.

and again, I'm not bringing this up to bash Christianity. Dominionists aren't Christian. They shouldn't really be called religious. They're schizophrenic and paranoid psychotics, IMO.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2613121&mesg_id=2614530

Is completely futile--you can't reason with the insane.

Many blacks and latinos are both religious and conservative, particularly on social issues. When you say the "religious right...is insane" they rightfully believe you are talking about them.

Just curious?

.

If they are "religious and conservative on social issues" I don't care if they are flaming orange... they can kiss my ass and are welcome to be included in my comments about the "insane"

and you want to toss that away?

that there are big differences.
The Dominionist sect is very strongly white. Black fundamentalists just don't interact with them that much. Black fundamentalists also believe in the rapture, but they don't try to make plans to force it happenning. They also don't generally get involved in removing the separation of church and state.
I'm afraid I don't know much about Latino trends.

like "Christian", "religion" or "fundamentalist" when talking about the Dominionists and other radical extremists.

None of those three terms accurately describes the group we are opposed to

unless you argue theology. You won't change their mind, but you'll bore the audience into changing the subject.

I always found that to be very good advice.

And run very fast!

She answered the southern fundies who asked her if she was saved by saying "no, I'm a Satan worshipper". She thought that was a hoot.

and people seem more interested in deciding if it's going to be the Green Party or Evan Bayh that "talks them into seeing it our way."

If you studied language and critical theory, you would KNOW that the right -- and not just the religious right, but the AUTHORITARIAN RIGHT is attempting to erase modernity and the enlightenment.

Simply think back to what we revolted from -- a king & a corrupt church. Then, tell me EXACTLY how one-party rule and the rule of the religious right are any different. Just because, for now, there's still a "middle class?" Right.

I've been trying to figure out their motives all day -- to decide, like cracking a secret recipe, just exactly which and how much of certain GOP ideological factions are represented in the "inner circle."

I've seen the maps of the "right-wing conspiracy," -- the Scaifes and the Heritage Foundation and Regenery; and I've studied, extensively the large religious organizations -- the Moonies, The Cedars, the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, Tyndale House Publishers; and I've studied the neoconservative AEI, the Strauss, the PNAC. I've also looked back into the "old school" conspiracy theories the "old money" type.

I've read that the battle, in these kinds of battles, is never actually between the people, but between the intellectual ideologues of the two factions -- the idea people.

I am only 30 years old, but I've been WELL AWARE of the authoritarian right since I was about nine years old, and have been following them dilligently for the last ten or so years.

I feel like kind of an "odd man out" on DU, because I'm more of a libertarian-leftist than a socialist or a democrat, but I think that I've stressed an absoute contempt for the GOP, which would go beyond any disagreement that I could have with those who wish for altruism, whether coersed or noncoersed.

I was a state socialist, until last April, when I saw this coming -- for good, for real, and that if this election wasn't outright stolen, that it would be won by the religious right. Either way, though I hoped for the best, and that we would win, and had faith -- I knew what was going to happen if we did not.

I spent the summer reading libertarian and anarchist philosophy and literature -- part out of fear, and attempting to build a plan, and part out of, well, empathy, for those who have, all along, believed that they've been "ruled" by an authoritarian left. And soon, I think many DUers here, will agree with me, when they're introduced to the authoritarian right.

Part of the bewilderment that we all feel is that our "reality" is slipping away from us. I'm sure most of us, just as myself, grew up with the pluralistic society, the democratic society, the muliticultural society -- even under Reagan, when I was raised as a child, these things were still accessible and taught.

I've posted, before, this quote -- I'm sure most have seen it:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' -- From the Suskind NYT article.

I'm quite sure that many don't know what we're dealing with, here.

I want to go on, but I'm so tired -- and no one really wants to discuss this, but I'll try, just to ease your mind that "someone" knows.

Most of us realize that they've peddled propaganda to people. What most people don't know is that that type of propaganda plays off of false dilemmas and false binaries and logical fallacies -- which are especially appealing to the totalitarian mindset. I don't have time to explain everything they do, but that Lakoff guy is on to a lot of it.

At any rate, it happens the same way, time and time again -- it's partly biological -- and we all have it to an extent. The psychological components are usually exacerbated by the tendency to split and project and scapegoat -- which is part of the totalitarian brain. The totalitarian brain also responds to fear, alarmism, a strong leader and authority which makes them "ripe for the picking," so to speak for unscrupulous people with power-mad domination plans. In other words: sheeple, explained.

As humankind has proven, again and again -- there's no shortage of those who are willing to manipulate and make submissive large populations for personal gain.

I've mentioned before -- the coalition of the GOP -- the neocons, the corpo-fascists and the Christian Reconstructionists. What are their bonds? What are their differences? Find the answer to this, and you can take them apart.

You can even start on the lower level -- what's the coalition between a Rapture Pearl and Maxim Brad? The freeper that doesn't want the left to tell him that he can't pinch womens' asses, and the religious nut that doesn't think we should think about "nasty places" at all. Communists? Homosexuals? What "other" and why?

I think the answer is in the brain, first and foremost, and then, further -- what's being sent to the brain, and by whom? We know the propagandists -- Rush, Hannity, the publishing networks, the church organizations. But who is really originating these messages, and why?

Notice, also, the GOP's complete abandoment of any actual steps toward small government and smart fiscal policy. I would suggest that they're stringing along the "red stater libertarians" just as much as they are the religious right. Why would they want to concede ANY power at this point? The only thing they have left to do is get a 2/3 majority in the house and senate, and they have complete control over the government and the Constitution.

Anyway -- the first impulse is to turn to the money. The oil and defense contractors. Bush and Cheney we know about. Frist -- Big Healthcare. The pharmaceutical and weapons industries and the creditors, which, if I'm not mistaken are some of the top contributors to the GOP.

But it's more than that -- what about the ideologues? The people locked up in the AEI ivory tower, somewhere, crafting messages to send to their sheeple that "people in ivory towers are not to be trusted?" The Catholic hard right -- which may have played a role in this election, and which MANY people underestimate while they're fingering the protestant fundies as the "crazies."

And where they meet: Raytheon, one of the biggest defense contractors, is an evangelical nutjob. The Bush family, most likely, has more ties to international money and the Saudis than they do the religious right -- I'm QUITE sure that Chimpy's act is just that -- an "act." We know about the elder-elder Prescott and the elder George and the CIA. We know that the PNAC and the oil barons have submission of the Middle East as a common denominator. We know that the fundies also have a particular interest in Israel.

What's going to happen is, that since they've got complete control of the federal government, more powers will be moving up to the federal government, rather than -- as your "common sense" would tell you -- back down to the states, on which they've always campaigned -- using federalism as a rallying cry against the imagined "totalitarian left."

Anyway -- start believing your "lying eyes" because this story isn't a new story, and the Enlightenment was a very short period in human history, for a reason -- it simply wasn't very popular. Control and submission of the masses needed to acquire power and wealth are much more popular.

If you've been paying attention, you would see that they're trying to disorientate that which most of us have always used to describe and explore our world -- language, empiricism, epistemology, the scientific method, the free press, scholarship, modernity, secularism, etc. -- not necessarily because they believe in the hocus pocus they're peddling, but because it's much easier to control people who are not so grounded.

This is why 70 percent of people in Europeans nations don't just think we "elected" a "poor leader," -- they think we're BATSHIT CRAZY. They've had the privilege of being much closer to right-wing AND left-wing totalitarianism as we have, and are much more familiar with its face.

They act COMPLETELY OFFENDED when some random guy in a Moveon.org submission compares them to Hitler, but the day before the election, I listened to one of their top propagandists, Rush Limbaugh, rail on for TWO FUCKING HOURS about how "the Democrats and Osama AGREE ON EVERYTHING!!!!"

The "mainstream" media didn't stop them from peddling their lies, and doesn't plan to -- in fact, they LET them get away with framing the whole debate -- and why not? Who controls the networks? The same multi-national corporations that are IN-LEAGUE with these people. Why the hell would they let it, get out there?

Anyway, I am tired. Rest assured. Some people know. Some people are smart enough to take a broad survey of history and humankind and start calling them out for what they are, instead of trying to decide on a "pretty slogan" for "changing people's minds."

Keep a light on.

What is frustrating to me is that so many people seem to not see the implications of what we're talking about here.

Dominionists believe that since they are saved, all their actions are blessed by God. So, go right ahead and prove to them that the election was stolen. They will just say so what, we needed to steal the election to bring about Jesus' reign on Earth. Every country we invade for no reason, every right we lose, every person taken off to Guantanimo will be for what is right, because the Dominionists were saved and everything they do is automatically right.

It doesn't matter if they only comprise 20% of the population. they will get stronger, and they will get their way. Right now I don't believe that anything short of all-out war versus the rest of the world will get rid of them. Forget electing someone else-we will never have the chance again. We didn't have the chance this time.

Enlightened Americans think the 59 million who voted for Bush* are "bat-shit crazy". Our Ivory-Tower candidate couldn't step off his pedestal just once to swim in the current that defeated him. Stories are circulationg that Kerry ignored Clinton's advice on gay "marriage" and other "morality" issues. The results are in! Intellectualism, compassion and logic are trumped over and over again by illogic and emotion. The high road is less-travelled because most folk never leave the sewer they were born in! Until the Dems "get it", they'll be doomed to repeated defeats!

We can try to start reframing the discussion about right and wrong vs. saved and unsaved.

People of all faiths and no faith generally agree on right and wrong, and we must, as a diverse nation, work to do what we all agree is right.

As a nation, we are not required to follow the agenda of one religious group that divides us into those like them and those not like them.

If I could only come up with a pithy way to make this distinction.

And *GW has become their bestest friend b/c he hands out money to them.

I didn't like it when the "faith-based" programs first started and I don't like it now. They scare almost as bad as he does.

The whole privatization/faith=based economy is disturbing. If private organizations do indeed step in to pick up the slack, then OK, but what we saw with the tax cuts in the 80's was that the corporate heads just took their tax cuts and partied with them. Not that effective for getting the job done...

Walking on all fours even? Bush looks the part already!

we never lived in caves. There never were any primitive men. We sprang fully developed from the Earth and God's breath.

Right?

there just aren't very many of them. Most won't listen, and, as you point out, the real danger is from the Reconstructionists and Dominionists, not from assorted Baptists, mainstream Protestants, and Catholics who vote for W due to "moral values." The latter don't even know about the former.

and one of our duties should be to wake up those on the right to the evil they are in bed with, before they get consumed.