'CHRISTIAN PATRIOTS'
You can find them in many places. People who pound their chest about being Christian and parade around physically and mentally as though they are leading a new crusade to save America and the Church. Oh, how they love themselves. They have found a way to twist and concoct their small world so that it fits their view of religion and partiotism snugly. They have always been with us. Their "brand" can be found in every religion and every nation.
During the civil rights movement and before, they used both the Bible and the Constitution to somehow present slavery as just fine, and state's rights were presented as democracy's way to maintain bigotry in law and religion. They were easier to spot then. They lost both the Civil War and the civil rights battles of the 1960s, and they learned from their mistakes. They are still parading, still being self-righteous, still displaying the Bible, and still hating the "other" [that would be blacks, American Indians, Latinos. outspoken women, liberals, non-northern European immigrants, etc.]. If you get in the way of their bigotry, they have now organized the media and every segment of society to come down hard on you. They will get you. Whether it is rigged elections or rigged wars, they will get you.
Today's targets are different than the ones of the 1960s. These haters have expanded their hate boundaries. They rub their hands together in sickly joy and there are now so many more to hate. Arabs and Moslems have joined the list of hate targets. They condemn Moslems and ask us why would they hate us so much, and then they tell us it is our freedom and democracy. Though the U.S. has been in league with ruthless dictators in the Middle East, why would they hate America? Huh? Consider...
"The First Crusade...set off on its two-thousand mile jaunt by massacring Jews, plundering and slaughtering [Moslems] all the way from the Rhine to the Jordan. 'In the temple of Solomon,' wrote the ecstatic cleric, Raimundus de Agiles, 'one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses' bridles, by the just and marvelous Judgment of God." -Herbert J. Muller
And more mythology is burst when we actually READ what our Founding Fathers wrote and said. We strut and parade our democracy-religion as though it is the personification of Christianity. How about listening to the voice of a real Founding Father: "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion." -John Adams [yes, THAT John Adams]
"He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end loving himself better than all." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Oh, how the bigots love to mention our Founding Fathers! "The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system." -Thomas Paine [yes, THAT Thomas Paine]
Today's "Christians" would do well to get away from so much bigotry and hate. How about trying the Bible? "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus." -Galatians 3:28 [Who and why are you excluding? Are you above the Bible?]
Let us not forget the other corner of the government of the trinity: free enterprise. Few things have been given so much leeway, so much money, so much power, and killed so many lives for profit as free enterprise. In the U.S. it can reign supreme. The right-wing wants it free from restrictions so it is allowed to kill more civilians, grant the wealthiest Americans more favors still, and free enterprise works very, very hard to propagandize the public into believing that absolutely free enterprise is a wonder of the right-wing.
Let me close with a quote from the most famous right-winger of all time, the guy American big business helped to power, the guy who cherished the free enterprise system, THE right-wing powerhouse:
"We stand for the maintenance of private property ... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order." -Adolf Hitler [quote from "Peter's Quotations," by Laurence J. Peter, Bantam Books, page 205]
