“Pretty boy” Pete Hegseth left a stinking path of adulterous cheating in his marriage path
Most of you have likely seen photos of an amped-up Pete Hegseth, covered in tattoos signifying various belief systems he adheres to. The documented laundry list of right-wing delusional markings imprinted on his body includes:
“Deus Vult”: This Latin phrase, which translates to “God wills it” and was a battle cry during the Crusades, is tattooed on his bicep. This tattoo was reportedly a reason a fellow service member flagged him as a potential “insider threat,” leading to his removal from duty at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
Jerusalem Cross: Located on his chest, this large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses is a historic Christian symbol representing the five wounds of Christ and the spread of the Gospel.
“Kafir”: Hegseth got a new tattoo in Arabic that reads “Kafir,” an Arabic word meaning “infidel” or “non-believer,” which has sparked outrage and criticism from some Muslim advocacy groups.
“We the People”: He has “We the people,” the opening words of the U.S. Constitution, emblazoned on his forearm.
1775, 13 stars, and an AR-15/American flag design: Above the “We the People” tattoo, he has “1775” in Roman numerals, representing the year of the Second Continental Congress, surrounded by 13 stars and an image combining an AR-15 rifle and an American flag.
Sword with Bible reference: A tattoo of a cross and sword referencing the Bible verse Matthew 10:34, which he interprets as “not peace, but a sword”.
All these religious undertones in ink became religious overtones in Hegseth’s public life. But it’s all pathetically hubristic garbage if you analyze it with the least bit of theological and historical context. The “five wounds of Christ” allusion is in reality a gory testament to excessive government authoritarian cruelty in the Roman Empire, which Trump and Hegseth seek to emulate. His cultural appropriation of the Kafir word meaning “infidel” aligns with the inane “not peace, but a sword” ideology of the Christian Crusades that wrought nothing but insane, warlike trips to the Middle East based on religious zealotry and political jealousy. That manic tradition of killing for dominance continues to this day. We saw it in two Iraqi Wars and the continual military-industrial support of Israel to our own country’s impoverishment.
Pre-Constitutional fervor
Even Hegseth’s claims to Constitutional fidelity, borne in the tattoo 1775, take an anachronistic off-ramp by celebrating a period before the United States was a fully formed nation. Combining that purposeful gap in patriotic fulfillment with an image of a deadly AR-15 rifle, created 200 years later, illustrates the irreconcilable inanity of Hegseth’s radical notions of what constitutes American ideals.
Proving that while Pete Hegseth is educated, he’s also willfully stupid. A Dumb Bro with a higher education degree is still a Dumb Bro.
The sick part of all this ill-educated symbolism is that the disgusting little prig had every opportunity to use his education and background to do somegood in this world. Instead, over time, he’s become a man addicted to many things; alcohol, sex, rule-breaking, adultery, lies, aggressive hyperbole, and death. He’s a fraud on par with his boss Donald Trump, and just as woefully bigoted, ignorant, and incurious. It
Selfishness as a worldview
But most of all, Hegseth is a selfish prick. He cares nothing about other people, other than to use them for his self-aggrandizing thirst for power and control. He stood before our nation’s generals spitting out threats amid calls for loyalty without having done a single thing to earn them.
Now, after retitling his responsibilities to the “Department of War,” he’s a man out of control and murdering people on the world’s oceans based on vague notions of “war” against the United States by people in little boats who could never reach our shores carrying drugs, if they were carrying any such cargo at all. We’re supposed to “trust the word” of the people carrying out the murders at sea that these boats are filled with dangerous drugs. But everyone allied with the Trump administration or forced to function in subservient roles is a demonstrated liar. Every. Single. One.
Turning Point terrorism
Another “pretty boy” fascist eager for death and destruction to bolster his sense of manhood
Thirst for Death
Hegseth’s addled-brained supporters love his unapologetic thirst for death. As reported by historian Heather Cox Richardson, “This evening, Andrew Kolvet of Turning Point USA posted on social media: “Every new attack aimed at Pete Hegseth makes me want another narco drug boat blown up and sent to the bottom of the ocean.”
To which Hegseth turned around, quoted Kolvet, and commented: “Your wish is our command, Andrew. Just sunk another narco boat.” Richardson notes: The U.S. Southern Command confirmed the strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific, saying that “[i]ntelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route…. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed.”
But even after they blow up the boats, they return to kill any survivors floating on the wreckage. These are war crimes by any definition of the word. But to Pete Hegseth, they are offerings to the Religion of Death he has tattooed across his body. This campaign is Pete Hegseth’s international Crusade, his Inquisition, and his Christo-fascist lust for bodies floating in blood to make himself feel like he’s serving the God of Destruction and Chaos. Hegseth is inked on the outside and hollow on the inside.
But he loves death, and he’s good at that it seems. Perhaps it was even Hegseth who did Turning Point’s “dirty work” in murdering Charlie Kirk? Who knows? There’s so much wanton killing, masked abduction and brutality, illegal ICE raids, warrantless beatings, and detention centers bordering on torture chambers that we can’t tell who’s killing who, or why?
It’s just “business as usual” in Trumplandia.
Like Father Trump, Like Son Hegseth
As long as we’re touching on Hegseth’s callow interests and Trumplike qualities, he also reportedly paid $50,000 to a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her. Hegseth never effectively denied the encounter, only its nature. He insists it was “consensual.
As noted on the website 19thnews.org: “She reported the matter to police, but no charges were ever filed against Hegseth. He and his representatives have maintained that the encounter was consensual. At the time, Hegseth was still legally married to his second wife and had recently welcomed a child with the woman who would become his third.
“But you acknowledge that you cheated on your wife and you cheated on a woman by whom you had just fathered a child? You have admitted that,” pressed Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“I will allow your words to speak for themselves,” Hegseth said.
Some contend that rape (or sexual assault) is as bad as homicide because of what it kills in the life of its victims. The National Library of Medicine seems to think so.
Recently I researched how Wheaton College felt about its graduate Russell Vought, whose fealty to Project 2025 is now on full display in his job serving the Trump Administration. I found a column by Timon Cline, whose bio reads: “Editor in Chief at American Reformer. He is an attorney and a fellow at the Craig Center at Westminster Theological Seminary and the Director of Scholarly Initiatives at the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College. His writing has appeared in the American Spectator, Mere Orthodoxy, American Greatness, Areo Magazine, and the American Mind, among others.”
I’ve dissected Cline’s column in the American Reformer attacking Wheaton College graduates for criticizing Vought and his version of Christianity. Cline’s writing in his column is featured here in bold. My analysis of his claims follow.
Wheaton Alumni Issue Attack on Russ Vought
Last week, Wheaton College did a very normal thing: it issued a congratulatory statement on social media to one of its graduates, Russ Vought (‘98), who was recently confirmed as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The author of this piece, Timon Cline, opens with a vapid attempt to normalize Russell Vought’s goal of replacing the Constitutional Separation of Church and State* with Project2025’s legalistic version of Christianity as law in the United States of America.
Cline ignores the fact that Vought’s views on religion ought to have nothing to do with his duties as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. But legalistic religious authorities have a long history of blurring the lines between religion and government. The Bible shows that John the Baptist and Jesus fought the Pharisees and Sadducees over legalistic scriptural interpretations used to create stumbling blocks to God and turn the temple into a commercial enterprise. We can draw a straight line from the practices of those religious authorities to the political and religious objectives of Project 2025 today. They are practically the same people in different eras.
Here’s the sad part. Christians were supposed to learn from Jesus’ example not to fall into legalistic worship patterns created under the “traditions of men.” But once legalistic Christianity consolidated with the Roman Empire, the course was set to impose authoritarian, persecutorial religion for millennia to come. Over time, conservative Christianity became the one thing Jesus most despised, a legalistic religious institution bent on absolute power and authority. Even Reformation attempts failed to eradicate these instincts, and Evangelical Protestant legalism with its literalistic Bible interpretations and “apologetics” are just as bad, if not worse, than the original Catholic model of absolute authority and political control.
That hypocrisy is evident in all of Russell Vought’s attempts to impose a controlling version of religion in the name of Christian nationalism here in America. That’s why Wheaton College alumni protested when the school casually congratulated Vought for his “success” in government. Cline finds that ethical accountability offensive, and seeks to dismiss the corrupt nature of Voughts political theology by heightening the importance of Vought’s position. This is Cline’s attempt to overwhelm resistance to Project 2025’s objectives. Cline writes:
“Few people reach such a high level in American government, and Vought has done it twice. Certainly, this is something worth celebrating for any college, especially for a small evangelical college. Wheaton graduates have done impressive things, but very few have served in such an elevated position as Vought. Though a not insignificant amount have served in government, most of Wheaton’s well-known graduates are theologians and evangelists–think Billy Graham, John Piper, and William Lane Craig. Perhaps, Dan Coats, former Director of National Security, and Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, are the only Wheaton alumni to rival Vought in achievement in government service.”
Wheaton has long claimed Billy Graham as a celebrated graduate, and that’s fair enough. He wasn’t a perfect man, we must note. At one point he stated that Jews had a “stranglehood” on America that must be broken, and Graham tolerated segregation at his rallies to mollify whites offended by integration. Such are the habits of many so-called conservative Christians, who always seem willing to compromise their biblical principles to satisfy political allies and “save face.” But many also have disturbingly secret skeletons in their closets. Dennis Hastert is one such notable Wheaton College alum. Hastert’s political career ended in disgrace when his hush money payments to cover up a child sexual abuse case became known. Yet Cline casually dismisses that corrupt behavior out of deference to people in powerful positions. One has to ask, is that what Jesus would do?
From this theologically corrupt standpoint, Cline begins his line of questioning (he is a lawyer, after all) why Wheaton College removed its post about Russell Vought. Given the shallowness of Cline’s premise, the argument seems to be, “He’s certainly no worse than any other conflicted Christian hypocrite.”
In fact, there’s no stopping Cline’s vacuous strains once he’s gained momentum. He tries justifying Wheaton’s complicit honoring of Vought as a “simple congratulatory statement.”
Wheaton’s post was a simple congratulatory statement including a call to prayer for Vought—a standard 1 Timothy 2:2 practice, it must be said. A day later, the post was removed and replaced with a new one. The “significant concern expressed online” led Wheaton to delete the post. The College did not want to make a “political endorsement,” it said. The College explained to Fox News that the post had led to thousands of “hostile comments,” which prompted them to remove the post “rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction,” adding that said removal did not constitute an apology for expressing congratulations to Vought.
What Cline chooses to ignore is that Wheaton College recognized (or was forced into admitting by its protesting alumni) that its announcement constituted patent approval of Vought’s Christian hypocrisy in turning legalistic scripture into law. Jesus once warned:
25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Despite such clear scriptural warnings that legalistic religion used for political purposes offended Jesus, Cline whines that Wheaton’s action was “unfair” to Vought somehow, and proceeds to malign its graduates for standing up to Vought’s brand of Right-wing Christian nationalism. He writes:
In other words, what Wheaton itself characterized as a typical announcement was rescinded because enough people dislike the recipient. As Chase Davis posted on X, this is a “glimpse into how Christian colleges and seminaries have been captured by emotional sabotage. Is that really the standard under which Wheaton wants to operate? Vought appropriately commented with one word: “Sad!”
Even this backpedaling was not enough. Wheaton alumni have begun circulating an Open Letter against Vought which American Reformer has obtained and is printed in full below. As is usually the case, Wheaton’s capitulation to the mob has not satisfied it. Now it must be rebuked.
Let’s consider what Cline is trying to accomplish here. It’s nothing short of gaslighting to advance the notion that Vought is somehow theologically and constitutionally “pure,” which is what conservatives always love to claim. But let’s be clear: Project 2025 is a patently extremist view of American government, if you can even call it that. But consider this view from the Global Extremism Project website:
“Within weeks of taking office, Trump issued sweeping executive orders, attempting to grab more power for himself and the executive branch. The dismantling of federal agencies and firing of tens of thousands civil servants has accelerated the far-right and authoritarian takeover of government institutions that will hurt ordinary Americans. And this is just the beginning. Christian nationalist ideals are set to shape this administration, and this country, as Project 2025’s architects work to consolidate power, dismantle progressive policies, and entrench their agenda.”
The ”agenda” Cline supports is rife with bigotry and authoritarian construction and the Project 2025 mission is both vicious and dauntless. The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” That’s a threat, not diplomacy. Whe Roberts insinuate violence if people don’t fall into line, he’s not exaggerating.
The Kettering Foundatio analyzed Project 2025’s goals: “The plan is ambitious. The Mandatefor Leadership is both specific in detail and vengeful in tone. Its central agenda is to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Christian nationalism believes that the Christian Bible, as God’s infallible law, should be the basis of government and have primacy over public and private institutions. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic.”
Cline likes to pretend that this agenda does not threaten the nation. But speciously, he’s never done whining either. He winces at objections to his call to install Trump as king.
Predictably, the Letter picks up media narratives about Project 2025.
What exactly is it about Vought’s contribution to Project 2025, “Executive Office of the President of the United States,” that is offensive, misguided, or unbiblical? Likely, none of the signatories have read the 900-pageMandate for Leadership, but surely, they have perused Vought’s chapter, right? The Open Letter denounces Vought and Project 2025 as authoritarian. Strange given that the first citation on the first page of Vought’s chapter is to Federalist No. 47 wherein James Madison warns against the accumulation of all governmental powers into the same hand or hands. Vought proceeds to argue for constitutional restoration over and against bureaucratic theft of power.
Cline’s argument that Project 2025 is “constitutional restoration” is a patent lie, and he gaslights by quoting James Madison when the Project’s goals have no intention of respecting those limits. There is also no “bureaucratic theft of power.” What he’s calling “bureaucracy” is regulatory agencies created by Congress to protect human and consumer rights, manage financial industries, and protect environmental health and sustainability. Those are basic governmental principles aligne with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without monopolistic industries trashing the country, stealing money through Big Pharma and privatized health insurance, and raping the environment from shore-to-shore.
But Right-wing autocrats want those protections out of the way principally to reward the super wealthy with the right to “privatize the profits and socialize the losses.” Cline goes on to play dumb in the face of his own specious arguments. Instead, he replaces bureaucracy with autocracy. Listening to his ugly rationalizations we find a series of contradictions that current forms of government are “overreaching.” Instead, he says Vought and Trump and Musk and Johnson deserve the “whole hog” right to do whatever they want to Americans. But especially Trump, for whom Cline seems to have a political hard-on.
In truth, everything in Vought’s summation of the constitutional power of the executive is mainstream and unsurprising. An executive acting like an executive may seem odd to us now—so accustomed are we to neutered figureheads in the Oval Office, to a “feeble executive” and thereby a “feeble government.” Checks and balances, separation of powers, requires not only that each branch does not encroach upon the power of the others, but also that each one fully exerts the power granted to it. Effective government is hardly unconstitutional. Neither is a well-managed budget according to the actual priorities of government. That is, use of taxpayer dollars for things more pertinent to their safety and flourishing than DEI operas and comic book campaigns in Europe or gender studies programs in the Middle East or spreading atheism in Asia–all things prioritized by the previous administration to the tune of millions.
In those last few lines, Cline paints himself into a partisan corner with his spoiled and possibly uneducated punk attitude. He’s so desperate to hate on liberalism that his word salad denigrates Black history and human equity enlightened dramas here and abroad as “DEI operas.” Apparently, the only programming, theater or movies Cline can handle are Christian-oriented biopics of blabbering demagogues like Reagan and Bush, albeit with a litany of Trump’s Greatest Hits thrown in as croutons on a Christo-fascist salad.
The entire concept of gender also seems to frighten Cline, who also adopts the idea that atheism is “the enemy” of justice and culture. For icing on the cake, Cline attempts a swipe at the “previous administration” by appealing, in the early part of the paragraph, that any initiative aimed at promoting factual history and human rights is a waste of taxpayer money.
Then comes the really ugly part of Cline’s petulant essay. He appeals to anachronism and Federalism as justification for his “winner-take-all” version of triumphal nationalism.
Moreover, an energetic executive is exactly what Alexander Hamilton presented in Federalist No. 70. Indeed, a single executive exercising control over the executive branch was the only path to true vigilance on behalf of the people, said Hamilton. A “vigorous executive” was not inconsistent with republican government but rather its guarantee. “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Surely, “all men of sense” would agree with this proposition, thought Hamilton.
To answer Hamilton’s question, we can turn quickly a personal, political, and economic analysis of Trump, who is not a man of “good sense” by any human standard. Certainly not morally, where Trump is a massive failure, having cheated on a series of wives, often with much younger women, as an NBC News story reported, “Trump was at one point friends with Epstein. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, before there were any public allegations of wrongdoing against multimillionaire money manager. “He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said then. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Trump also lacks truthful financial sense, as his own Trump University paid $25M in fraud fines. His Foundation closed after Trump was found guilty of stealing its funds. His business enterprises earned a $400M+ fine for lying about property valuations. Famously, he also bankrupted Atlantic City casinos. None of these habituated losses point to Trump as a “man of sense.”
He also led attacks on American democracy and the Republic, claiming that he lost the 2020 election due to voter fraud, all while conspiring to create “fake electors” to steal the election for himself. When his supporters came to Washington at his request, they responded to his urgent call to “fight like hell” and invaded the Capitol in a specific attempt to block the certification of Electoral College votes and install himself as President. Trump watched on TV as the rioters bearing Trump and Confederate flags bludgeoned Capitol police, broke into the building and vandalized the property while insane militia members led chants to “Hang Mike Pence,” which Trump never declined. Instead, he insisted Pence did not have the courage to “do the right thing.” You normally don’t get to just walk away from events like that, but Republicans declined the rightful impeachment of Trump for the insurrection, and Right-wing judges excused and delayed justice for high crimes. These were seditious actions.
All of this proves that men like Timon Cline know exactly what they’re doing by insisting that Trump has the right to absolute power. They throw his abuses right back in our faces, proving that Cline is a sycophantic Christian nationalist and an avid fascist. He denies this in “theory,” but he admits it in practice.
The so-called unitary executive theory is not a theory; it is not authoritarianism. It’s just Article II of the Constitution. Russ Vought’s crime, then, is that he wants a well-functioning, secure constitutional order, the only path to ensure, in his words, “the survival of self-governance in America.” And the big reveal over the past few months from outlets like ProPublica is that Vought is aligned with the presidential administration in which he is now serving. Shocker.
It is clear that Timon Cline would suck at the game of poker because he always overplays his hand. He goes on to re-write biblical and American history in revisionist fashion.
If Project 2025 proposed a true monarchy, the Wheaton alumni have a problem. If such a model is “unbiblical” then King David is in trouble. But, in fact, Project 2025 is, in large part, a repudiation of the trajectory set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s long tenure which was as close to a monarchical “restructuring of society” as America has ever gotten. (Indeed, FDR was quite effective in his use of the OMB itself.) If anyone is responsible for the omnipotent, unaccountable bureaucratic deep state, it is FDR and his progeny.
First off, King David was a genocidal, adulterous asshole, whom God disavowed at the end of his earthly life telling him, “No you can’t build a temple in my honor. You have too much blood on your hands.” But Cline seems not to care that his supposedly “biblical” heroes are everything America is supposed to resist. We are supposed to learn from David’s example not to act like him. But evangelical American Christians love to proclaim that “God works with flawed people” because secretly, they understand their entire theology is a hypocritical trashpit of cherry-picking creationism and longstanding bigotry based on tiny bits of scripture that amount to a house of cards.
And so predictably, Cline also chooses to ignore the fact that FDR came into power after Robber Baron capitalists crashed the economy in a spectacularly speculative fashion. Unemployment reached 25% during the Great Depression, while the Dust Bowl raged across the American plains because lying Christo-fascists dismissed the environmental realities of arid country to promise hapless farmers that “rain would follow the plow.” God hates liars, but liars hate to admit they’re ever wrong. Look at Trump.
Amidst these 1930s Right Wing failures, FDR used the government to restore a sense of balance and security in the face of rampant abuse by free market capitalists whose “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” approach was the perverse form of socialism preferred by greedy capitalists. Trump and Project 2025 seek to return to those failed policies again in America and are proceeding with fascist fervor led by the corporatist Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation’s murky band of bigots, economic terrorists, and Libertarian hustlers.
I read Project 2025 and found it grossly unpalatable in tone and objectives. It is a fascist document much like Hitler’s Mein Kampf. There are similarities to its authors, and Trump, and one other famous fascist. As the United States Holocaust Museum website note, “Mein Kampf promoted the key components of Nazism: rabid antisemitism, a racist world view, and an aggressive foreign policy geared to gaining Lebensraum (living space) in eastern Europe.” Do you note the similarities to Trump’s approach here? He’s trying to annex Canada and Greenland for “living space” and “security” for America.
There’s also similarities between Hitler’s economic aims and Trump’s constant grift of selling Trump Bibles and other crap bearing his image. The parallel is that Trump spent time as a political exile, and like Hitler, rose to power again due to populist rhetoric of hate and malignant dog-whistle racism. “Hitler began writing Mein Kampf in 1924 in Landsberg prison, following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German republic in November 1923 in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Although his coup failed, Hitler used his trial as a pulpit to spread Nazi propaganda. Largely unknown before this event, he gained immediate notoriety in the German and international press. The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment, of which he served less than 9 months. With his political career at an all-time low, he hoped that publishing the book would earn him some money and serve as a propaganda platform to air his radical views and attack those whom he accused of betraying him and Germany.
I created this timeline to show how we’ve moved from MAGA to fascism.
Cline doesn’t recognize it as such, but he’s an avowed fascist. He openly attacked Wheaton College grads for not sharing his brand of Christo-fascist hatred. He also tears at the fabric of scripture itself to score points with his Right Wing audience.
Apart from this fearmongering, the Open Letter lodges a litany of leftwing complaints. The issues? Vought’s goals do not sufficiently prioritize illegal immigrants, homosexuality, and abortion, and do not pay adequate homage to the altar of “racial injustice.” All these typically left-of-center hobbyhorses, apparently, have biblical precedent, according to the Wheaton alumni.
The alumni also complain that Project 2025—the entirety of which they pin on Vought—is insufficiently “concerned with governing faithfully as Christians.” A speech from Wheaton president Phil Ryken is quoted wherein Ryken elevated the type of Christian who can “carry forward the Great Commission.” And I had thought Christian Nationalism was the problem, not the solution. Curious.
The ardent cynicism with which men like Cline engage with these subjects borders on pathological. So there’s an instructional moment here. Pathology is “the study of disease, including its causes, mechanisms, development, and effects,” and Cline’s version of religion and politics is a virus feeding on its host of religious and political conservatism.
At the end of the previous paragraph, Cline conflates the Great Commission with political authoritarianism, perhaps believing that the call to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” is a political call to action. Cline and his ilk take that “commission” to mean “convert or die,” which is why the Crusades took so many lives, and why the Wheaton College mascot was once the Crusaders. But the Wheaton College alumni questioning Vought’s nationalistic tactics invite believers back to Jesus’ original intention: Offer love, not law. Welcome all, not just the chosen few.
But Cline is the unrepentant type, so he cherry-picks some targets much like his hateful hero Trump.
Since Wheaton alums seem so concerned about the OMB all of a sudden, where was the outrage over Shalanda Young, President Biden’s demonstrably unqualified director, and her enthusiasm for federal funding of abortion? Of course, Young isn’t a Wheaton alum. But what about when Michael Gerson (‘86) went soft on gay marriage? Did a very concerned alumni letter circulate then?
Cline leaps to ardently ignorant conclusions here by trotting out terms that appeal to right-wing hypocrites. He maligns those who protect abortion rights, yet where is the right-wing call for men to stop impregnating women rather than blaming women for getting abortions after the fact? The ignorance of the so-called Pro-Life movement is going on fifty years of public whining when in fact, Jesus would tell them, “If you must depend on the law to bring about the Kingdom of God, you have already failed.” Birth control is readily available to prevent the need for abortions, but right-wingers oppose that too. See how lies add up to more lies?
But Cline isn’t with his brand of dishonest apologetics. Not yet. He blames honest Wheaton College alumni for holding “rigid ideological lines” defined as “too liberal” for Cline’s tastes. You’ll get to read that letter at the end of this piece, and will find that many of Wheaton’s graduates do understand scripture, and point that out in their letter protesting Vought’s perverted brand of dismissively bigoted religion.
But, clearly, alumni status is not the determinative criteria for alumni outrage. Wheaton students had no problem weighing in on Jerry Falwell Jr’s views on guns and Muslims, especially when the Washington Post was willing to publish their complaints. Nathan Heath, an analyst at NSI and the second signature on the Open Letter, was one of the authors on the Post piece along with Ciera Horton McElroy, the former editor of the Wheaton student paper and another signatory.
What is clear is that the Wheaton alumni opposing Vought possess their own “rigid ideological lines.” Vought and the Trump administration generally represent a rolling back of the status quo in which the largely millennial and obviously left of center Wheaton alumni are quite comfortable.
Their problem with Wheaton College’s congratulation of Russ Vought is not that he is a political figure; it is that he has the wrong political views.
So yes, Timon Cline. Let’s be clear. Russell Vought is the exact kind of religious authority that Jesus would find (and did find) disgusting for the love of power, self-righteous status, and personal aggrandizement. And you don’t get that?
And yet, Timon Cline is all about the language of victimhood and self-proclaimed persecution.
Obviously, congratulating an alum for achievement in government service does not constitute an endorsement of any policy or view. Deplorables like Vought, however, can receive no such treatment. Again, wrong politics. Wheaton couldn’t stop celebrating Michael Gerson whom they pronounced “God’s wordsmith.” Was this sacrilege? Too political? But then again, Gerson had the right politics.
To be clear, colleges should celebrate the accomplishments of their graduates. This is natural and appropriate. By any measure, Gerson was accomplished, but so is Russ Vought. Objectively so.
Cline’s claim here is not sophisticated. He avows fealty to triumphalism, not morality. Then he goes on to gaslighting the Wheaton alums once more by accusing them of Christian Nationalism.
The authors and signatories of the Open Letter should drop the pretense and simply admit that they would like their alma mater to support their vision for the country and not Vought’s. That is all that they are saying. This has nothing to do with decorum or precedent or norms. Indeed, the vision cast by the Open Letter is decidedly Christian nationalist, just of a different variety. The Open Letter is, in fact, asking Wheaton College to take a stand on policy, their policy. The College should not capitulate. Last I checked, Russ Vought, for all his alleged “authoritarianism,” had issued no such demand to his alma mater. Who is the better liberal here?
These word games from Cline are passive-aggressive instincts at play, defined as, “expressing negative emotions indirectly, often through subtle acts of resistance or defiance instead of directly addressing the issue, such as through sarcasm, procrastination, or withholding information.” Many passive-aggressive individuals are manipulative, abusive gaslighters who try to make other people think they’re the crazy ones. It’s a bit surprising that Cline didn’t see fit to insert the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” here. It certainly fit his other methods.
Or perhaps he accomplishes the same aim by claiming that the “marginalized and vulnerable” MAGA populace, including, of course, the avowed racists, anti-Semitics, Trump-flag waving militias and bitter CEOs having to recognize DEI policies that are so beset that they can’t function in this world? Cline seems to think so.
For all their moralizing about the “marginalized and the vulnerable” and government “accountability,” the Open Letter includes exactly no mention of the American people who have suffered under the unaccountable government of the past four years, or the past decade, for that matter. It is rich indeed, in the wake of the USAID revelations, to charge the incumbent administration with “authoritarianism,” unaccountability, and neglect of the public good.
The link he includes in that paragraph begins with deranged accusations that USAID promotes aggressively “anti-Christian” agendas. It reads: “While we shouldn’t celebrate the loss of anyone’s job, we should celebrate the dismantling of USAID, which for decades has been squandering our tax dollars to sow sinful corruption in other countries and indoctrinate the world with transgenderism, homosexuality, atheism, and eugenics.”
The amounts of money ascribed to these supposedly horrific aims are pittances, small amounts to support cultural diversity and realities that hard-line, dichotomous religious bigots love to deny. But there are practical solutions to which they object too.
$1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
$70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
Despite what numbskulls like Cline and his audience like to proclaim, transgender people are real, human beings. Recognizing their humanity is not “sinful,” nor is producing a play about the potential difficulties of dealing with rampant bigotry in places where intolerance and ignorance often rule. But Cline seems to think that’s what Wheaton College is nowadays.
Wheaton used to produce serious, thoughtful, and accomplished graduates, and it may do so again, if it can overcome evident mission drift. Where, on the present political spectrum do these infantile alumni think Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry, for example, would have landed? If Vought is unpalatable, then so are they. (Then again, there’s a reason Franklin Graham recalled his late father’s library from the College years ago.)
Cline doesn’t realize that Franklin Graham is frequently the opposite of everything his father ever stood for. He’s a mean-spirited cuss whose political instincts overwhelm any good work he does.
For example, based on Graham’s own words, we see how and why Right-wing Christians are now “pro-Russian.” Graham stated: In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” He dismisses the fact that Putin is a murderous thug and war criminal to equate the supposed “sins” of gay people with the likes of a man frequently throwing political opponents out of tall hotel windows. If Cline had any honesty in his soul, he would disavow such narcissistic self-aggrandizement as Jesus did. But Cline is not about Jesus. He’s about using fear and hate to control his little world. He even issues economic threats to the college in hopes of dunning them into submission. Cline is a brute.
In any case, Wheaton College has a choice: succumb to emotional terrorism or get back to the business of cultivating faithful national leadership on behalf of American evangelicals. The crop of alumni represented in the Open Letter reflects poorly on the College. Should we expect more of the same from Wheaton or more of the older produce like Vought?
At bare minimum, surely the Ryken administration recognizes the Michael Jordan rule: conservatives pay tuition too. But they won’t much longer if liberal alumni can force a denunciation of people who work in the White House.
Here’s the letter Wheaton College alums wrote to their alma mater.
An Open Letter from Wheaton College Alumni on Project 2025 & Endorsing Russell Vought To the Wheaton College Community and our American Neighbors,
We, the undersigned alumni of Wheaton College, write with deep concern over fellow alumnus Russell Vought’s role in forming and implementing Project 2025 on behalf of the current presidential administration. As Wheaton graduates, we were shaped by an education grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which states that the Kingdom of Heaven is known by the Fruit of the Spirit and made manifest by feeding the hungry, giving the stranger a place to sleep, clothing the naked, and caring for the sick. Our Wheaton education taught us that to serve the hurting and broken in our world is to serve Christ himself (Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 25:31-46). It is precisely because of our commitment to these values that we find Vought’s vision for government, as outlined in Project 2025, to be antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the mission of Wheaton College—and moreover, we are concerned by the college’s quick and public proclamation of support in social media posts on February 7th, 2025.
Institutional Endorsements Wheaton’s own statement, after removing their original post, says: “Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements.” However, it has been repeatedly clear that the institution is making public-facing posts that are divisively partisan, including its affirmation of Russell Vought on February 7th, 2025. Wheaton College also gave Fox News a very different response on February 10th, 2025:
“The social media post led to more than 1,000 hostile comments, primarily incendiary, unchristian comments about Mr. Vought, in just a few hours. It was not our intention to embroil the College or Mr. Vought in a political discussion or dispute. Thus, we removed the post, rather than allow it to become an ongoing online distraction. This was in no way an apology for having expressed congratulations or for suggesting prayers for our alumnus.”
Wheaton’s student body, and thereby its alumni family, have always encompassed a broad spectrum of social and political affiliations. What unites us is Christian orthodoxy. We ask that the college be mindful of public proclamations that translate as political endorsements—especially in cases where the issues, as in Project 2025, are antithetical to Christian charity.
Christianity and the Temptation of Totalitarianism Project 2025 is a blueprint for consolidating executive power to remake American government and society along rigid ideological lines. The plan proposes dismantling independent institutions, purging thousands of career civil servants in favor of political loyalists, and centralizing authority under one person. Such a system is not only dangerously authoritarian but also profoundly unbiblical. As fallen and sinful people, we acknowledge the need for accountability, regardless of how high or prestigious one’s position or office; indeed, leaders are held to a higher standard and are accountable not only to the people they lead, but to God himself (1 Timothy 3:1-10, Ezekiel 34:10). Project 2025 is less concerned with governing faithfully as Christians than with cynically using Christianity’s majority status to establish political dominance, remake the United States in their own image, and further marginalize at-risk populations.
The pursuit of unchecked political control dismisses the humility of Christ and the servant-leadership model that Wheaton instilled in us. In Philip Ryken’s plenary address at the Fourth Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, Wheaton’s president was forthright: “There is only one kind of Christian who is able to carry forward the Great Commission…and that is someone who embraces Christ-like servanthood as a way of life. We are all called to be servants.” The cost of service was high for Christ and his Apostles and is high for us as his followers today. As alumni of Wheaton College, we cannot lend credibility to a rejection of servanthood and an authoritarian restructuring of American society.
Marginalization of the Vulnerable Project 2025 promotes policies that target marginalized communities in ways that unequivocally contradict the biblical command to care for the least of these (Matthew 25:40). Among its stated goals are:
Gutting protections for undocumented immigrants and refugees, despite Scripture’s consistent call to welcome those same persons and condemnation of figures who do not (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Hebrews 13:2, Matthew 25:43).
Dismantling civil rights protections, dismissing the reality of racial injustice, and refusing to seek the biblical vision of reconciliation and justice (Isaiah 1:17, Amos 5:24, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Acts 10:28, Colossians 3:11).
Rolling back opportunities and protections for people with disabilities and LGBTQ individuals, failing to treat all people with the dignity and respect that every image-bearer of God deserves (Genesis 1:26-27 & 5:1, Psalm 8:4-6, Ephesians 4:29-32, Matthew 22:39, 1 John 4:20-21).
Going far beyond humanitarian restrictions on abortion, by limiting access to contraception, daycare, and medical interventions for life-threatening pregnancies; prioritizing surveillance and control of women in crisis situations. (1 John 4:18, Luke 8:43-48, Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalms 46:1-3, John 14:27, Isaiah 41:13).
Slashing educational resources and healthcare for families of little financial means, ignoring the Bible’s emphasis on honoring the poor the same as the rich, Christ’s statement that the poor are blessed and that the kingdom of God belongs to them, and his assertion that those who reject the poor reject Him and are in danger of judgment (James 2:3-4, Proverbs 22:2 & 31:8-9, Luke 14:13-14, Ezekiel 16:49, Luke 6:20, Matthew 25:41-43).
These policies seek to enforce a narrow and exclusionary vision of American identity that aligns with political imperialism rather than biblical Christianity. As Wheaton alumni, we worship in accord with people of all tribes, tongues, nations, and languages, in anticipation of celebrating side by side, as one Church before the throne of God (Revelation 7:9). We celebrate and exhort a return to Wheaton’s foundation as an institution committed to the defense of fundamental freedom for all peoples. Under the guise of limiting government, Project 2025 instead proposes consolidations of presidential power. We believe the design of our government, as reflected in the US Constitution, reflects healthy ideals such as the limitation of human power in order to protect the vulnerable. It would be disastrous to subvert such designs.
Moreover, Christ-like values and character, not raw notoriety and power, are critical to the witness of the Church. We celebrate the God-given differences and unique abilities that make up one Body of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Different social, economic, racial, and cultural identities are brought together by faith in Christ so that we as Christians can effectively live out the Great Commission and spread the good news to all peoples (Galatians 3:28, Mark 16:15). The domination of one American tribe and invalidation of all others undermines the Church’s global role. If not in agreement, we are nonetheless called to live together in unity, edifying each other and standing together as one Church (John 13:35, Romans 14:19, Psalm 133). Project 2025 espouses an abusive authority that is fatally misaligned with the Word that stands forever (Isaiah 40:6-8).
A Call to Faithfulness Wheaton College has stood as a beacon of Christian higher education, committed to rigorous intellectual engagement, faithful discipleship, and responsible citizenhood. To align, even indirectly, with a political vision that prioritizes power over service, exclusion over love, and coercion over conscience would be to abandon the very heart of our faith.
As Wheaton alumni, we publicly distance ourselves from Russell Vought’s work and reaffirm our commitment to the Gospel’s radical call to justice, mercy, and humility. Silence in the face of such an anti-Christian vision is complicity.
I downloaded the Project 2025 “book” from The Heritage Foundation website yesterday. Soon, I’ll dig into the contents and its proposals, but the first fascinating dissection examines the tone and nature of its introduction. This document is the product of frightened white men screaming into the void of their paranoia, defined as “a mental state where a person has an irrational fear of others and a persistent belief that they are being harmed or deceived.” The definition perfectly describes The Heritage Foundation and its pet Project 2025. The language is rife with raw hyperbole, blatant hypocrisy, and outright denial of the real cause of America’s disease of conflicted ideology, which is longstanding Republican incompetence in governance and blaming the Left for the problems it engenders.
The first paragraphs reap what it intends to sow, demonstrating the paranoia behind the document’s intention:
The Left has spent millions fearmongering about Project 2025, because they’re terrified of losing their power. And they should be. Project 2025 offers a menu of solutions to the border crisis, inflation, a stagnant economy, and rampant crime. It shows how we can take on China, fix our schools, and support families. But most importantly, it dismantles the unaccountable Deep State, taking power away from Leftist elites and giving it back to the American people.
The opening tactic, as you see here, is to accuse the other side of your own level of paranoia. This is the tone of the entire Project 2025 document. I’ve gone through the opening sections to examine how this fear-driven ideology stakes its ground and employs rabid hyperbole to incite self-righteous rage among its intended audience. They quickly move to accusations against the “cultural elite” they so despise.
“The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have once again driven America toward decline. The good news is that we know the way out even though the challenges today are not what they were in the 1970s. Conservatives should be confident that we can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture, revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left—at home and abroad. We did it before and will do it again.”
Notice the tactic of retreating to the Reagan Era to claim success in the so-called “Culture Wars.” Conservatives love to believe that Ronald Reagan restored conservatism to its rightful place to “unite the nation,” but that’s the first lie, because it ignores the fact that Reagan historically leveraged racial fears using terms such as “welfare queens” to enrage and divide Americans along bigoted lines. This salvo echoes to this day in Trumpism’s dog-whistle racism and fear of intellectual Black people while dismissing the many sins of men like Clarence Thomas whose long record of questionable behavior and ethical breaches earn no rebukes from hypocritical conservatives eager to claim Black men among their ranks. The Republican Party and its newest manifesto eagerly seek to leverage racism, bigotry, misogyny and Christian patriarchal rule over society as the foundation of what they want to call “democracy,” if that is a concern at all.
The passage above refers to revitalization of the economy, which Democrats under Clinton, Obama, and President Joe Biden all accomplished in the wake of Republican malfeasance and economic crashes wrought by massive tax breaks for the wealthy, refusal to respect or uphold financial regulations, and letting predatory lenders run amok with interest rates on credit cards to trading toxic mortgages. The cause of the 2008 recession was manifold, with both parties bearing aspects of blame, but the list of sins weighs heavier on the GOP side, because while selling subprime mortgages to consumers was a bad idea, like most sins, it was hiding the problem that made it far worse. The go-go, white-hot belief in eternal growth during the Bush era fueled conservative hubris that was too good to be true:
Subprime mortgage crisis: During the housing boom, lenders expanded their definition of creditworthiness and began offering mortgages to borrowers with poor credit histories. These high-risk loans, known as subprime mortgages, were packaged and sold to investors.
Deregulation: The financial industry was deregulated, allowing for speculation on derivatives backed by mortgages.
Excessive risk-taking: Banks created too much money too quickly and used it to speculate on financial markets and push up house prices.
Increased borrowing: Banks and investors borrowed more money.
Regulation and policy errors: There were errors in regulations and policies.
Before all that happened, we should not forget that it was the Savings & Loan crisis, as it was essentially Republican permission that first exposed the dangers of banking deregulations foisted on society by Reaganism. The Corporate Finance Institute summarizes it this way: “In conclusion, the banking and S&L crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s was caused by a combination of factors, including deregulation, interest rate risk, a volatile real estate market, risky loans, fraud, and mismanagement.”
This quick analysis of conservative deregulation efforts demonstrates how The Heritage Foundation ignores many things Reagan did wrong while claiming him as a hero for all time. Reagan Worship is at the heart of 2025ism, dependent on the emphatic denial that the despotic Grandpa people branded The Great Communicator led one of the most corrupt administrations in United States history. So the premise that going back to Reaganism would Make America Great Again is the principle falsehood behind conservatism’s sentimental views toward an eventually daft and dementia-ridden corrupt President. They’re repeating the same sin by re-elected a clearly compromised mental mess in Donald Trump after maligning Joe Biden as too old to run again. And worse, when Democrats took charge and counseled Biden to step down, the man did so in respect to his nation’s best interests. None of this can be said for Trump, whose mental deterioration is both evident and dangerous, but whose need to avoid convictions on multiple legal fronts forces him to run for his life. That’s the only reason, along with more opportunities to grift and steal from America’s wealth through personal and political channels, Trump had to again. Trump also wants to remake the world in his image. That’s how a toxic narcissist works.
And yet, the Republican Party loves to reminisce about Reagan’s own version of nation-forming, as “an unyielding Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, “I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together” about the Contras down south. *PBS report
Those are not the words of a man who loves freedom. They are the words of a man who fears failure because he thinks he’s the most powerful man in the world and can’t admit that people won’t do what he says. Later, in a comic parlay of desperation and determination, Reagan shipped 1500 arms to Iran for a seven-man hostage release after claiming he’d freed all those other folks as his term began. That tells us that Reagan, like today’s Heritage Foundation, sought to undermine honest democratic processes to conduct shadow government activities, all while blaming the “Deep State” for supposedly secret ventures.
If “freedom is a fragile thing,” then so is democracy when it is gutted by the willful actions of a unitary executive and crooked accomplices. Nixon led the way on that, Reagan echoed it, and eventually it was the irascibly domineering VP Dick Cheney who gave voice to it. But all along, it was Republican administrations wishing their guy was king. At the same time, it was those “kings” who led the way in terms of criminal indictments and convictions compared to Democrat presidencies.
Reagan presided over the HUD scandal under James Watt and the Iran-Contra scandal, busting unions and gutting the middle class were just some of the ways Reagan used the government he claimed to despise to dismantle financial protections for Americans and mess around on the world stage. It is also speculated that Reagan played loose with constitutional laws to free the hostages held by Iran, but solid proof never emerged. But do we doubt that there were such efforts given the later actions by Oliver North to commit acts of subterfuge?
That sort of willful denial of past transgressions, extending to the likes of Newt Gingrich and his dismissive views on marriage, leaves The Heritage Foundation able to claim all kinds of high-minded family values and patriotism without a shred of guilt over the bogus values apologetics for Reagan, the Bushes, and now Donald Trump, a serial adulterer and constitutional shredder par excellence.
Republicans went full fever dream over Bill Clinton’s Oval Office blowjobs and the Blue Dress, but so-called righteous Republican never questioned Nancy’s astrological addictions in defiance of Christian despise for such things, much less her dirty little mouth. The euphemistically named “Christian Right” also “looked the other way” when it came to Nancy Reagan’s hooky-spooky astrological beliefs and Hollywood habits.
Nor did anyone follow up on Nancy Reagan’s odd reputation as shared by political commentator Hunter S. Thompson, who said, “I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.”
She put her mouth to other clandestine uses with her seemingly innocent anti-drug “Just Say No” campaign preaching substance abstinence to white suburban kids. But the people victimized by that campaign were instead thousands of Black Americans rounded up and jailed on small drug charges. But Republicans used that legacy as an accusatory tool of Jim Crow imposition on Black Men.The for-profit jail industry that emerged to reap dough from that travesty turned out to be a favorite among conservatives eager to punish Black Americans for standing up to White Authority of any kind. Private prisons also replaced slavery as tools for cheap labor.
It all began even earlier, under Nixon. As documented in the OpenSecrets website: “Since President Richard Nixon declared the national “War on Drugs” in the 1970s, the American prison population has skyrocketed; the same is true of the numbers of people locked up in private prisons, especially since the 1990s. Of the 2016 contributions that went to candidates or parties, 85 percent went to Republicans. That’s higher than in most previous cycles, but consistent with the conservative leanings of this industry. Since 1990, private prisons have given 73 percent of their total party-and-candidate contributions to Republicans.” The criminal persecution and prejudice against of Black men and women, on top of economic losses wrought by the disadvantage of slavery, is responsible for that culture’s familial difficulties, pursuant crime and gang activity, and the still-relentless blaming of “minorities” and immigrants for America’s problems. Many Black Americans lead the nation in every human endeavor, which is proof that the prejudice aimed against them in this nation is the travesty for which the country needs to account. That’s why the claims of The Heritage Foundation drip with bloody irony when making statements such as these in Project 2025:
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation[.]1 “
The Heritage Foundation loves to ignore the Republican affiliation with its dirty bedfellows, such as those openly waving flags at the insurrection. These include Confederacy holdouts, neo-Nazis, the KKK, anti-Semitic groups and influencers, and backwoods militias eager to overthrow the government using AR-15s atop their bulging waistbands. The GOP loves such complicity in its stalwarts and doesn’t seem to care if they stand for everything America isn’t supposed to be.
P25 loves to ring the bell of “family values” and freedom based ostensibly on the Constitution as one bookend and Christian values on the other. But the volumes between constitute a condensed library of bigotry, discrimination, religious persecution, and self-proclaimed victimhood. There’s also irony amid transitional statements like this one:
“Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”
Supposedly, conservatives don’t like the government interfering in the lives of people. That’s the opposite of conservatism. It’s unclear what or how The Heritage Foundation plans to do to impose “the family as the centerpiece of American life,” but if you look at the weird calls for corporal punishment tin schools, one wonders if Project 2025 isn’t a massive excuse for profligate child abuse. Yahoo News reports, “Oklahoma State Rep. Jim Olsen says corporal punishment in schools has been “successful” for centuries and should remain legal, even for students with disabilities.”
Pro-Life? More like Pro-Sperm.
Any organization refusing to hold men accountable for abortions caused my male imposition of sperm on women is hypocritical.
That’s right, every single abortion in America is caused by a man’s sperm.
But the so-called “Pro-Life” movement never mentions that fact. Instead, they persist in accusing women of being irresponsible by holding to what are now called “reproductive rights.” To enforce this misogynistic worldview, the Heritage Foundation identified potential Supreme Court justices willing to overturn the established law of Roe vs. Wade and throw the abortion rights issue back to the jurisdiction of states. Those justices acted deceitfully in their testimony, insinuating they respected established law on abortion, but in effect, they lied. Now the tragedies of undercutting women’s healthcare rights results in death for women facing medical emergencies.
The conservative faction of America even preaches that pregnancies wrought by rape should be “brought to term.” By those measures, women are nothing but vessels for male sperm according to The Heritage Foundation.
There is nothing “pro-family” about blaming women for problems caused by men or supported by busybody moralizing Christian women behaving like Conservative Mean Girls looking to control other women’s lives. They may “pray” to end abortion, and that’s fine. But then they vote for men willing to stick their dicks into women’s lives without remorse.
The hypocrisy of the Pro-Life defies its supposed roots in Christian values. The Bible shows Jesus dismissing those accusing a woman of adultery by stating, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.” With that statement, Jesus indicts not just the men seeking to kill the woman according to their laws (an idea recently raised in some US) but also indicts the authoritarian state from which the stoning tradition emanated. In other words, Jesus indicted the men who brought the women before him, not the woman accused by them.
This proves that if Jesus were alive today, he would say, “If you must depend upon the law to bring about the kingdom of God, you have already failed.”
So yes, on every issue, The Heritage Foundation fails America with its dystopian Project 2025.
(dys·to·pi·an/disˈtōpēən/ “relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.) version of authoritarian rule over society.
The HF P 25 is not only dystopian, it is fascist at its core. Consider the definition fascism as it relates to what you’ve already read and learned here, and what is about to come:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy (Christianity), subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race (White people) and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
That last note about fascism on the Right, strong regimentation of society and the economy is ardently resisted by Republican fascists claiming instead that they advocate “free market economics.”
But since Reagan the forcible redistribution of wealth from the middle class to America’s wealthiest citizens is not a product of the “free market” at all. Reagan’s specious version of “trickle-down economics” is an economic experiment rewarding corporatism and a plutocracy aided by massive tax breaks for the uber-wealthy while workers’ wages remain flat or depressed. Efforts to raise minimum wages are called “socialism” by economic cynics, a gaslighting of the lower and middle class to subjugate their interests.
A small sector of the US population now possesses more wealth than the other 96% combined. Statistics aren’t the point. The real matter is how factions of society impacted by these policies now believe that the people who caused them are the cure to their problems! The wealthy plutocrat named Donald Trump makes all sorts of promises to Make America Great Again while bloating the national debt by 25%, promising tax cuts for the middle class that expired, and giving billions over to the rich who fund his feckless whims of tariffs, false accounting and outright lies. He’s promised to exclude corporations from environmental legislation who ante up billions to avoid being accountable. That’s environmental injustice bought and sold. The people typically victimized by environmental pollution are the poor, especially minorities.
The Heritage Foundation reflects this vow to sell off American virtues to the highest bidder by dismantling governmental protections and blaming Americans for their own problems:
“Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.”
There’s another counter to this P25 argument. The “administrative state” under Trump’s rule led to an attempt to overthrow the government after he lost the 2020 election. His lies about election fraud, the plot to assemble fake electors and his attempted coup through the January 6th insurrection all prove that his vision of the “administrative state” is a fascist form of government where he rules like a king without question of his authority. The Heritage Foundation knows this, but refuses to admit it. In fact, it is their entire goal to use Trump as a leveraging device, wait for him to croak from his bad habits, and put in place a theocratic state ruling over the United States of American with administrative impact forcing itself into every aspect of our lives.
But oh, yeah, there’s also the “border crisis.” Let’s talk about that.
“Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.”
Hey guys, you know who welcomed millions of immigrant into America over the last fifty years? That’s right: it was companies seeking cheap labor while privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. And the accounting of supposed “costs” to Americans in terms of taxes covering immigrant needs seem to ignore the tax contributions of those targeted by such accusations.
And yes, our schools and public facilities need support to deal with language-challenged immigrant children and adults. But that support should come from the companies employing cheaper immigrant labor, because they are privatizing the profits and exporting the costs to everyday Americans. That’s true in Big Ag. That’s true in the restaurant industry, hospitality, you name it. That’s not how the “free market” is supposed to work. If you use the product, which is immigrants, you should pay the bills for those benefits. What we’re actually seeing is socialized corporatism. The Nanny State of corporate welfare is the real problem, not benefits earned and secured by Americans through Social Security, Medicare, or Veteran’s Affairs.
But all P25 wants to talk about is God, because, you know, that sounds righteous and true.
“Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”
Well, now we see how hypocritical the Heritage Foundation is. They opposite aims than to secure the “Blessings of Liberty.” People already suffer the effects of Right-Wing identity politics suppressing women’s rights, Black and civil equity, human diversity, or any kind of inclusion. The Heritage Foundation advocates fascism, not freedom, and is in truth a godless organization in all its principle claims. It spits on Jesus by seeking to create a society divided along ideological terms with specific terms of discrimination.
Anyone familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan knows better. It was self-righteous religious zealots passing by the man left for dead in the ditch because he was considered “unclean” according to religious and cultural laws imposed by legalistic authorities. Instead, the Good Samaritan, a man from a people despised by the community, who saved the man from suffering, paid for his care (that’s socialism) and even funded his needs until he was nursed back to health. If left to the devices of The Heritage Foundation, that man rots in the ditch because he’s unworthy of protection under “God’s Laws” according to biblically literal interpretations of anachronistic scriptures. The Good Samaritan, while well-off, constituted a “radical, bleeding-heart do-gooder” of the type that Jesus proclaimed as worthy of God’s grace.
All of this proves that Project 2025 is a gaslighting pack of self-righteous lies.
“In 1979, the threats we faced were the Soviet Union, the socialism of 1970s liberals, and the predatory deviancy of cultural elites. Reagan defeated these beasts by ignoring their tentacles and striking instead at their hearts.”
No, Reagan did not “defeat these beasts.” Conservatism emphatically lost the battle to control the lives of people based on identity politics, but now they’re engaging in warlike attempts at a fascist takeover of American laws.
For sure, the Moral Majority movement took hold in the United States. It’s denial of reality became the foundation of right-wing politics. Religious conservatism embraced that fight by opposing the teaching of evolution and scientific truth in public schools, seeking to replace it with the “science of denial” based on creationism and euphemistic Intelligent Design. This inane ideology of denial infects nearly 40% of the American population. That is the “majority” that supports the likes of a devilish liar like Trump while claiming he’s a “man of God” made in the image of King David while insisting, quite devilishly in its own right, that “God works with flawed people.”
Well, guess what? John the Baptist would argue with that. The “man of the wilderness” defined the religious and political authorities of his day in advance of Jesus’ arrival on the scene. John called the religious authorities a “brood of vipers” in an echo of the legalistic Serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in that holy parable of humanity’s creation. The Baptist also tossed out religious rituals and the “pay for play” model of Prosperity Gospel in force at the Temple, where money-changers turned God’s house into a commercial enterprise. John later paid the price for his honesty when King Herod, the prophetically perfect model for Donald Trump in his melding of politics and religion, had John’s head chopped off on a promise to his daughter that if she danced lasciviously for his audience the King would grant her any favor she asked. Her corrupt mother asked for the head of John the Baptist because “he publicly denounced her marriage to Herod Antipas, criticizing it as unlawful since she was previously married to Herod’s brother Philip, which went against Jewish law; this public rebuke deeply offended Herodias and fueled her desire for revenge against John.”
Oh, my Lord! What does that say about the serial adulterer and thrice-married and divorced Donald Trump? It does not sound like John the Baptist, the precessor to Jesus in Judeo-Christian heritage, would approve of the sexually abusive narcissist whose relationship with Jeffrey Epstein revealed that he “likes them young?”
Well, even so. The Baptist’s disapproval still does not make it an “American Value” or representative of the liberties promised in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Separation Clause in the 1st Amendment proves that there shall be no state religion. But if the Project 2025 initiative DOES succeed, shouldn’t it impose John the Baptists indictment on the likes of Donald Trump? Okay! Bring it on! Let’s see it!
What about Russia and Putin?
As for threats from the Soviet Union being “defeated” by Reagan, America now lives under the thumb of Vladimir Putin’s dictates through Trump, including collusion that he denies, and documented election interference by the Russian state through American social media and even its conservative talking heads on Fox, Newsmax and many other outlets trumping talking points straight from the Pipeline of Putin. Trump is also a kompromat to Russian interests and investment in his businesses. And whether Trump likes to admit it or not, the information revealed about him in the dossier a few years back rings all too true given his corrupt and perverted behavior confessed in public and alluded in his Jeffrey Epstein affiliations.
But look at how P25 tries to avoid their support of a corrupt felon and adjudicated rapist.
“In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government.”
Well, we know that Reagan once stated, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” And yet P25 plans to use the government to impose its well over all Americans. Again, the hypocrisy and gaslighting the fear and bigotry, the outright hate and delusion are all wrapped together in the paranoid fascism and accusations of the Right that the Left, whose main mission is equal rights, is somehow the cause of America’s problems.
Just look at the fascist tone of this insane statement:
“Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using government alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies to accomplish this existential task.”
See how that works? When liberalism advocates for personal freedoms, it’s evil. But when conservatism threatens fascist impositions, it is liberty at work. These people are nuts. They are consumed with a paranoia so deep it infests their minds like brain worms. Perhaps that’s why RFK, Jr. is so popular a choice for an administrative post.
Here’s more P25 paranoia:
“Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.”
This might be justified given the many churches seem to be little more than political delivery points for fascist right-wing agendas. The entire premise upon which tax-exempt status is granted is avoiding political purposes through religion. That’s based on the First Amendment Separation Clause. So, get a clue, Heritage Foundation. The only reason churches would lose tax-exempt status is by doing your bidding. You’re the cause, not the solution to religious loss of liberty.
But Oh My God, the next bit of language sounds like Civil War.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.”
That’s a violent threat. That’s viciousness as policy. That’s un-American, and yet Trump embraces it by stating he plans to persecute “the enemy within.” The sociopathic tone of the hate directed toward “woke culture warriors” shows zero empathy for people long victimized by the longstanding cultural contract of bigotry imposed according to by race, sexual orientation, gender, and religion. Fascism loves to ignore its hateful side and history to claim perpetual authority.
“This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Well, look at that. A great example of censorship to impose bigotry and thought control. That’s George Orwell’s 1984 in action. Then look at the terrified word salad that comes along next. Paranoid much?
(“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
That’s censorship, people. The Heritage Foundation wants to “cancel culture” everything it fears. What goddamned hypocrites.
Oh, and naked pictures? Well, that has to go too.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.”
Art by Christopher Cudworth titled, “Commisseration” ®2022
As for child sexual abuse. Do you know who conducts some of the worst child predation and pedophilia in America? It’s religious institutions ranging from the Catholic Church to Protestant and Evangelical Youth Pastors. Even the Boy Scouts of America, a highly conservative organization, paid out billions to victims of youth sexual abuse for conduct documented for decades. Even former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert got caught hiding illicit behavior and child abuse from his wrestling coach days. The bigger they are the harder that fall.
All forms of child sexual abuse are awful, but The Heritage Foundation ignores the facts of its real sources to aim hatred at others, especially targets like Drag Queens, while ignoring its closest friends sticking their hands down the pants of boys and girls alike.
What P25 really fears is how many of its own folks can’t resist some good fapping. Even Speaker Mike Johnson enlisted his son as an anti-porn agent, which suggests it was a big problem for both of them. That’s pretty typical out there in the world of suppressed sexual urges. Many of the world’s worst offenders become anti-this-or-that oppressors until they’re ultimate exposed as liars about their own natures. And yes, porn is addictive. So if that’s a problem for you, take personal responsibility, get some treatment, and deal with it like one should for any addiction. Here’s a quick little fun game. When you read the next P25 excerpt in bold, replace the word “pornography” with “football,” and the language is pretty revealing and a bit amusing. Add in gambling and the whole package of the NFL, which behaves like a pornography invading every possible day of the week while claiming family values and military patriotism, feels obscene.
“Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
Man, Oh Man. That’s some Orwellian language right there.
But let’s move on to education, a favorite target of Right Wing despotism and fear.
This writer is a substitute teacher with five years of experience working in public schools from Pre-K through high school. I’ve earned high praise as a teacher for encouraging kids with a wide range of capabilities to learn the best way they can. I’ve also learned skills in classroom management and teaching correct behavior. But the P25 wants to blame public schools for somehow undermining parental authority. Let me clue you in on something. That’s about as far from the real problem as you can get. If anything, it is self-righteous conservative parents bitching about their kid’s grades and telling teachers how to do their job that is the problem. =P25 loves bitching about education because they hate it as a path to critical thinking, which is what public schools and colleges are supposed to do; help us learn to think for ourselves. Any parent that doesn’t agree with that is a control freak, and potentially abusive in their indoctrination habits, oppressive insecurity, and inadequate feelings of self-importance. There, we’ve said it. Schools have a balancing role in society. The idea that parents are perfect and own all rights to their child’s mind is a product of a deeply flawed tribal narrative.
“In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue.
P25 won’t admit it, but ‘school choice’ is a euphemism for ‘we don’t want our kids to learn science or history that conflicts with our conservative beliefs.’
Just look at what comes next in the P25 Manifesto. This is what this entire document is about. It is equivalent to a Unabomber Level incendiary call to gut American society and replace it with a paranoid religious conservative dystopian version of reality. Look at what they fear most:
“The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.”
No, you specious bigots. The United States has a racist and bigoted history of discrimination that needs to be taught to be understood. Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. If the Heritage Foundation lived up to its name, it would abide in that premise. Instead, its denials are a dishonest attempt to avoid conservatism’s deep role in the ugly aspects of our nation’s history. You’d rather lie to yourselves than admit that truth! The Heritage Foundation avoids our nation’s heritagebecause we are not a perfect country. Germany had the guts to apologize for the Holocaust. Gutless conservatives want to proclaim United States’ innocence in the face of all its transgressions. That is the sign of a deeply dishonest mindset.
The same thing goes for conservative, legalistic Christianity, a belief system long used to foment and support the ugliest forms of indoctrination and domination, especially of indigenous peoples. That bwing of religion focused on absolutism is evil in using its twisted version of God and Christ to marginalize people through biblical literalism and its supposed infallible authority.
“Of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for the American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling the original constitutional intent. Conservatives desire a smaller government not for its own sake, but for the sake of human flourishing. But the Washington Establishment doesn’t want a constitutionally limited government because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power.”
The eternal whine about government size is the originalist complaint that the “Founders” never intended for government to grow. That’s idiotic. As for being “accountable by the people who put them in power,” what was that event on January 6th about again? Was that a “constitutionally limited government” at work for the people? Or was that the product of a conservatively supported lying fascist trying to gut the government for selfish purposes. We know the difference. The Heritage Foundation is the organization that aggressively denies our nation’s laws.
“In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective, and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself. The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives and many Republican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments.”
This is utter nonsense. The worst offense when it comes to superseding the 1789 Constitution and its amendments is the conservative gutting of the Second Amendment by splicing it in half to give unrestricted gun rights to any Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to carry military-grade weapons around and conduct mass shootings of children in schools, people in churches, concertgoer and 4th of July parade crowds. The Second Amendment call for a “well-regulated militia” is the originalist value that should be restored.
“Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass a budget—and 12 issue-specific spending bills comporting with it—every single year. The last time Congress did so was in 1996. Congress no longer meaningfully budgets, authorizes, or categorizes spending.”
Hey boys. Back when Clinton was President, he worked collaboratively with Republicans to balance the budget. Cross-party collaboration is how this is supposed to work. But the Tea Party radicalized the process and now MAGA extremists want to punish Americans for playing by the rules and make their own set of rules.
“The term Administrative State refers to the policymaking work done by the bureaucracies of all the federal government’s departments, agencies, and millions of employees. Under Article I of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” That is, federal law is enacted only by elected legislators in both houses of Congress.”
How ironic. The conservative Supreme Court has, for the last decade, been making laws and imposing legislation right and left. So shut the hell up about Congress, P25. You’re way off base about this one.
“This exclusive authority was part of the Framers’ doctrine of “separated powers.” They not only split the federal government’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers into different branches. They also gave each branch checks over the others. Under our Constitution, the legislative branch—Congress—is far and away the most powerful and, correspondingly, the most accountable to the people.”
Here’s a real winner of a statement. The Republican-led House is the least effective legislative body in the history of the nation, and the Republican-led Senate refused to affirm the impeachment of Trump for the insurrection. Stop the apologetics for an incompetent political travesty on the Right.
“Unaccountable federal spending is the secret lifeblood of the Great Awokening. Nearly every power center held by the Left is funded or supported, one way or another, through the bureaucracy by Congress.”
Again, the US military once had an audit done and the accountants assigned to that task gave up. No one can tell where the money’s spent, what goes where, or what military-industrial contractors are benefitting the most.
“Let’s be clear: The most egregious regulations promulgated by the current Administration come from one place: the Oval Office. The President cannot hide.”
And you see no irony in this statement when considering that Trump lied to the American people repeatedly about the threat of Covid? And that he golfed far more than he governed, and cheated at that? And his workdays started at 11:00 am to allow time to paint his face and execute his combover. And when presented with information it had to be summarized on one page so that his short attention span could handle it? And can he even read?
We’ve seen it all by now, and the President can hide. A ton. And Trump attempted coercion of Ukraine, and tried to hide it with obstruction of justice, to gain political dirt on his opponent Joe Biden. And, Trump engaged in election lies that led to an insurrection, and tried to hide that. He also hid Classified documents in his personal residence, and tried to hide that too. He tried to hide his scandalous relationship with a series of high-profile porn stars, including $130,000 payoffs as hush money, a case that is concluding as this piece is written. He also “hid” from the public a sexual assault years ago on a woman whom he defamed and now has to pay millions of dollars because he lied about it.
With all these clear indications of your pet president hiding the truth, what are you people at The Heritage Foundation doing beside kissing each other’s rings? Oh wait. We’re about to see. You’re going to project all these faults on others. That’s the way you do it. You get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?
“A conservative President must move swiftly to do away with these vast abuses of presidential power and remove the career and political bureaucrats who fuel it.”
We’ve heard how you think this is supposed to work, but the incoming President is currently beholden to technology billionaires and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who dictates American foreign policy to a “conservative President” too damned weak yet patently narcissistic in his public shows of “strength” to stand up to authoritarians and wealthy figures he admires.
“As monolithic as the Left’s institutional power appears to be, it originates with appropriations from Congress and is made complete by a feckless President. A conservative President must look to the legislative branch for decisive action.”
Hey, Heritage biggies, what are you really talking about here? President Joe Biden stabilized the economy after Trump crashed it just like Obama did after Bush crashed it. And Reagan didn’t do anything good for the economy either! His buddie GHWB promise “no new taxes” but whoopsie doops! Many times now, Democrat Presidents saved America from economic devastation with steady hands and wise policy. There’s nothing monolithic about good governance. But Republicans don’t recognize it, so they blame others for the problems caused by conflicted ideology and religious denial.
“Finally, the President can restore public confidence and accountability to our most important government function of all: national defense. The American people desire a military full of highly skilled servicemen and women who can protect the homeland and our interests overseas. The next conservative President must end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.”
Does this statment mean The Heritage Foundation wants to start wars? Because that’s what Bush did after letting America’s guard down, allowing terrorist attacks in New York and DC, (including our Pentagon, for God’s Sake) and going to war on false premises and lies, conducting torture in the same cells used by Saddam Hussein, and generally messing around to the tune of $7T of unbudgeted war spending with no result but death and injury, mental suffering and PTSD for thousands of servicemen and women of all diversity spectrum willing to serve but deemed “suckers and losers” by the likes of Donald Trump, a draft-dodger.
“The next conservative President must possess the courage to relentlessly put the interests of the everyday American over the desires of the ruling elite. Their outrage cannot be prevented; it must simply be ignored. And it can be. The Left derives its power from the institutions they control. But those institutions are only powerful to the extent that constitutional officers surrender their own legitimate authority to them.”
Here’s a question for all your die-hard conservatives out there: What is “The Left?”
It’s people who believe trust that an understanding of the humanities, science, critical thinking and cultural equity are good things. Those are American values held closely by the Founding Fathers. So we have to surmise that it’s conservatism that undermines democracy when it chooses bigotry over equality, and fascism over democratic rule of law.
“To most Americans, this is common sense. But in Washington, D.C. and other centers of Leftist power like the media and the academy, this statement of basic civics is branded hate speech. Progressive elites speak in lofty terms of openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization. But too often, these terms are just rhetorical Trojan horses concealing their true intention—stripping “we the people” of our constitutional authority over our country’s future.
Perhaps it’s Time for a reality check, folks. Common sense does not mean acting like the world was created in six literal days, or that a global flood once covered the whole earth. We need to start with baseline concepts of reality if we’re going to discuss common sense.
And, when you talk about “openness, progress, expertise, cooperation, and globalization,” those are all aspects of the American experiment that promoted growth and international respect.
“Instead, they believe in a kind of 21st century Wilsonian order in which the “enlightened,” highly educated managerial elite runs things rather than the humble, patriotic working families who make up the majority of what the elites contemptuously call “fly-over country.”
That’s quite a hard-on The Heritage Foundation has for the name “Wilson.”
Are they talking about that volleyball in the movie Castaway? Because that Wilson guy seemed like a good friend in a time of need, and America needs one of those right now. But also, no one on the Left calls middle America “fly-over country.” We live her. That’s a term invented by the Right to claim self-victimhood. Oh my gosh, they’re still bent over Wilson. Look at this.
“This Wilsonian hubris has spread like a cancer through many of America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture. Those who run our so-called American corporations have bent to the will of the woke agenda and care more for their foreign investors and organizations than their American workers and customers.”
There is no “woke agenda.” There is a commitment among respectful people to honor the personal autonomy of all people. We understand you’re either too stubborn or willfully ignorant to grasp that, but we know why. You’re profoundly afraid of people different than you––including young people, because THF is primarily angry old white men and batty bigoted control freaks––who want to punish people for being themselves rather than cowing to some whitewashed version of a Republican tombstone.
And take note, if you’re supposedlly “pro-life,” because when it comes to “cancer,” let’s recall who got rid of the vicious threat of “pre-existing conditions” as a determinant for who in American can get healthcare coverage and who can’t. The ironically “Darwinian” call by conservatives to exclude those with health problems from the healthcare system is a product of abjectly dismissive corporatism, not a liberal agenda. The real “death squads” acting on Americans are healthcare insurers denying claims and letting people die to collect more profits. If you couldn’t figure that out, that’s why the United Healthcare guy got shot. Got a clue yet?
Here goes P25 xenophobia next:
“Progressive policymakers and pundits in America either fail to understand this premise or intentionally reject it. They enthusiastically support supranational organizations like the United Nations and European Union, which are run and staffed almost entirely by people who share their values and are mostly insulated from the influence of national elections. That’s why they are eager for America to sign international treaties on everything from pharmaceutical patents to climate change to “the rights of the child”—and why those treaties invariably endorse poli- cies that could never pass through the U.S. Congress.”
Okay, you’re xenophobic. We get it. But collaborating with the world’s other nations on healthcare, for example, could help us prevent future pandemics. Obama planned for that and Trump gutted our agencies tasked with that purpose, then denied the threat of Covid and blamed everyone else for his lies and incompetence. He’s a vicious liar, that one. Selfish. Fearful. Narcissistic. Dismissive. A grifter willing to sell $100 Bibles made in China while screaming about Chinese influence on America.
“That’s why today’s progressive Left so cavalierly supports open borders despite the lawless humanitarian crisis their policy created along America’s southern border. They seek to purge the very concept of the nation-state from the American ethos, no matter how much crime increases or resources drop for schools and hospitals or wages decrease for the working class. Open-borders activism is a classic example of what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—publicly promoting one’s own virtue without risking any personal incon- venience. Indeed, the only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys.”
Illegal immigration went down during Obama’s presidency. Get a clue.
And you don’t get to cite Dietrich Bonhoeffer about “cheap grace.” This is a complete misuse of that term, and an ignorant one at that. Bonhoeffer stood up to the specific forms of fascism the Heritage Foundation and P25 are now proposing. He gave his life defending genuine Christian principles and proposed that Christianity should give up its religiosity and embrace the “this worldliness” of its Judaistic heritage. He did this because religious legalism in league with political fascism led to The Holocaust, in which Hitler stated, “We’re only doing to the Jews what Christianity has been doing for 1500 years.” So you fake Christians at the Heritage Foundation do not get to use Bonhoeffer as an example of your virtues. You are the precise opposite of everything he stood for.
But now, let’s look at your other abuse of Bonhoeffer’s words…
“Cheap grace” aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”
On this subject you are absolutely wrong. The term “Environmental justice” describes how the poor and those of racial origins other than white peope are most often victims of pollution caused by industry and bad public policy. There is nothing ‘extremist’ about holding corporations responsible for these abuses accountable. But you flip it around casually to support your absolutely dishonest notions about “cheap grace.” You should be ashamed. Or do you have no shame, just a lousy grasp of theology and an addiction to stealing words from heroes to make yourself look heroic? You’re frauds. Just like Trump.
“At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human. Stewardship and conservation are supplanted by population control and economic regression. Environmental ideologues would ban the fuels that run almost all of the world’s cars, planes, factories, farms, and electricity grids. Abandoning confidence in human resilience and creativity in responding to the challenges of the future would raise impediments to the most meaningful human activities. They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.?”
Oh, so it’s still all about oil and gas, is it? And we know you think climate change “isn’t real.” That’s one more layer of terminal denial employed as an ideology of selfish profit-making and dismissal of accountability.
“The same goals are the heart of elite support for economic globalization. For 30 years, America’s political, economic, and cultural leaders embraced and enriched Communist China and its genocidal Communist Party while hollowing out America’s industrial base. What may have started out with good intentions has now been made clear. Unfettered trade with China has been a catastrophe. It has made a handful of American corporations enormously profitable while twisting their business incentives away from the American people’s needs.”
It’s frustrating to read statements like this when it was America’s corporations shipping jobs overseas in search of cheap labor while America’s unions were gutted first by Reagan and decades of corporatist dissolution. How Republicans try to claim the high road on this issue? Could you be any more specious about cause and effect? Yes, you can. So let’s see it.
“For a generation, politicians of both parties promised that engagement with Beijing would grow our economy while injecting American values into China. The opposite has happened. American factories have closed. Jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing economy has been financialized. And all along, the corporations profiting failed to export our values of human rights and freedom; rather, they imported China’s anti-American values into their C-suites.”
What the heck does this mean… “Our manufacturing economy has been financialized.” Talk about Orwellian speak. Who taught you English? Do you just make things up to sound smart? Because you’re not sounding smart making statements like this that mean nothing.
But by the way, when it comes to American industry’s interests, President Joe Biden just blocked the sale of US Steel to Nippon in Japan. Democrats have stood by workers and manufacturers for decades, and Biden’s infrastructure investment is forward-looking and futuristic. Trump promised to bring back American jobs and did nothing.
“When the Founders spoke of “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. Many find happiness through their work. Think of dedicated teach- ers or health care professionals you know, entrepreneurs or plumbers throwing themselves into their businesses—anyone who sees a job well done as a personal reward. Religious devotion and spirituality are the greatest sources of happiness.”
This religious language is steeped in dog-whistle bigotry. If an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained, then leave people alone. Stop legislating religious morals based on anachronistic values long debunked by biblical scholars willing to confront the age-old tradition leading to persecution of Jews, gay people, Black people, women and more. You’re hypocrites on every front.
“The American Republic was founded on principles prioritizing and maximizing individuals’ rights to live their best life or to enjoy what the Framers called “the Blessings of Liberty.” It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live. It’s this inalienable right of self-direction—of each person’s opportunity to direct himself or herself, and his or her community, to the good— that the ruling class disdains.”
You don’t even hear yourselves speak, do you? Everything you cite here is exactly what liberalism advocates. But because you disapprove of gay people, or don’t want to hold men accountable for causing abortions, or think that teaching real American history with all its abuses and genocide, racism, slavery, and Confederate treason is going to ruin young minds, you’d rather lie that it’s bigoted people who are beset by government and “the Libs.” That’s just perverse logic.
“Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women, mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism. To the Left, these assertions of patriotic self-assurance are just so many signs of our moral depravity and intellectual inferiority—proof that, in fact, we need a ruling elite making decisions for us.”
Americans were not “left to our own devices.” People in that era arrived through principles of Enlightenment, not religion, at a belief that America should be self-governing, not subject to a king’s rule. But conservatives of the day wanted to stick with Britain! You’ve been on the wrong side of history from the beginning, and now you’re gutting our constitution with a “Promise” of a ruling elite based on theocracy, fascist instincts and denial of the Constitution as proven by Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government. Donald Trump is not a president for all people. He’s stated that emphatically.
“The promise of socialism—Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism, whatever name it chooses—is simple: Government control of the economy can ensure equal outcomes for all people. The problem is that it has never done so. There is no such thing as “the government.” There are just people who work for the government and wield its power and who—at almost every opportunity—wield it to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second. This is not a failing of one nation or socialist party, but inherent in human nature.”
There you go again, throwing words around to sound smart? It’s hilarious that you claim that there’s no such thing as “the government.” You’ve already spent thousands of word outlining what the government should be and needs to be, and haven’t even gotten to the part where you map out the dogmatic tactics you plan to employe. Interestingly, on review, the entire document created as Project 2025 amounts to a denial of its own existence because every contention is a dystopian dream that you’re somehow persecuted when the entire “plan” is to in turn… persecute, disenfranchise, punish, and depict “the other” as “the enemy within.” You’re clearly a paranoid pack of fools with an 8th grade grasp of civics, immature, and decidedly antagonistic.
“Analogous pro-growth reforms for America’s voluntary civil society are also in order. America is not an economy; it is a country. Economic freedom is not the only important freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom to assemble also represent key components of the American promise. Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights. “
When people are called to account for bigotry, lying about science, repeating disinformation as truth, claiming “alternative facts” (as Trump did) and generally trolling members of society as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to gaslight people into submission, they are not the persecutors you claim. They’re standing up for the freedoms you say you defend yet abuse. The Fox News Network paid $750 in defamation lawsuits to a election machine tech company it publicly maligned. And Trump earned fines of $450M for illegal business practices. These are the abuses evidencing real corruption. And those people shouted down at school board meetings? Free speech works both ways.
“Ultimately, the Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee.”
Um, let’s review the evidence here when it comes to “all men are created equal.” First, it is religious beliefs that deem folks the “chosen people” of God. America’s history includes the ugly effects of Manifest Destiny used to commit genocide and hold slaves, both of which defied equality for all “men.” It was conservatives denying women the right to vote, and it’s conservatives to this day denying gay people the right to marriage, all based on “special status” of the Christian religion as a dictator of values for America. That’s unconstitutional.
“Conservatives have just two years and one shot to get this right. With enemies at home and abroad, there is no margin for error. Time is running short. If we fail, the fight for the very idea of America may be lost.”
Look at the fear and desperation and the acknowledged brevity of the entire P25 premise, which is this: impose thy will on others quickly before they see the lies upon which it is based. That’s why Trumpism and MAGA works. They are shallow, slogan-based claims to authority based on fear, willful ignorance, self-proclaimed victimhood and dystopian paranoia. The Right Wing media leverages these fears for profits.
I think you included the following quote in the P25 doc, but it might have popped up somewhere else too. It’s appropriate describing what’s going on in America, but not in favor of P25.
Just two years after the death of the last surviving Constitutional Convention delegate, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln warned that the greatest threat to America would come not from without, but from within.
A delusion is a false belief that someone holds onto, even when there is evidence that it is not real. Delusional means having a fixed false belief that is not changed by conflicting evidence.
The last eight years with Donald Trump in the political spotlight are a massive experiment in mass delusion. As the prime proprietor of expressions such as “fake news” and “alternative facts,” The Donald eagerly convinced millions of people that despite massive evidence of his fraud, corruption, and criminality, along with outright confessions of sexual abuse, adultery, and forced admission of paying off porn stars to hide his indiscretions, it was anyone who questioned his behavior that were supposedly “deranged” and exhibiting Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The tactic of using coercive means to make people question their grasp on reality is better known as gaslighting, “a form of emotional abuse that involves manipulating someone into questioning their own reality, feelings, and sanity.” But the MAGA crowd loves nothing more than seeking to “own the Libs,” so the term Trump Derangement Syndrome manifested itself as the best way to drive sane people crazy.
In fact, the lies of Donald Trump are what feed a delusional need to feel empoweredeven when the facts are clearly not on your side. In other words, embrace the lies. Trump privately told journalist Bob Woodward that he knew Covid was deadly, but in public, he insisted it would all “go away” like magic by spring.
Those actions exhibit clear evidence of a delusional need to deny reality. Trump promulgated a fixed false belief because it benefitted his perception of having everything under control when in fact, Covid ravaged the American populace worse than almost any country on earth. Trump then doubled down on his delusion by standing on a balcony exhibiting false bravado in the face of his own dangerous infection with the disease. And yes, Trump recovered thanks to having access to the top medical staff in the country. But millions of other Americans, especially those with pre-existing health conditions and compromised immune systems and little access to medical assistance were not so lucky. They died or suffered long-term effects from their illness. Meanwhile, Trump interfered with medical research in his selfish attempt to limit fear so that the economy he inherited, and did nothing to improve, would not collapse before his eyes.
Trump’s supporters took his delusions as God’s honest truth, resisting mask mandates and even vaccination guidelines to further “own the Libs.” But men like Herman Cain paid a deadly price for their delusional obstinance. He died from Covid, as did many other Trump sycophants and MAGA deniers. But Cain’s was particularly tragic as he openly defied the need for protection against the disease.
A news story cited, “As a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, Cain was one of the surrogates at President Donald Trump’s June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma – which saw at least eight Trump advance team staffers in attendance test positive for coronavirus. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh has told CNN that Cain did not meet with Trump at the Tulsa rally. Cain had posted a photo of himself at the rally, seated closely among other attendees without a facial covering.”
It’s not only Covid through which Trump’s delusional denials of reality caused pain and suffering in the nation. His 2020 election lies led to the mass delusion of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection in which thousands of fatefully delusional Trump flag-bearers and domestic terrorists, Right-wing militias, neo-Nazis, cross-bearing Christian nationalists, Confederate flag-waving bigots, insanely violent attackers, invaders of the US Capitol, and murderous sycophants changing “Hang Mike Pence” sought to overthrow the United States government based on false claims that President Joe Biden’s win by more than seven million votes was fraudulent.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 06: Protesters gather on the second day of pro-Trump events fueled by President Donald Trump’s continued claims of election fraud in an to overturn the results before Congress finalizes them in a joint session of the 117th Congress on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Yet Trump’s delusional fan base even sought to deny this evidence of sedition, fictionalizing stories that it was Democrats or the FBI posing as Trump supporters who committed acts of violence. Others insisted that it was just a “walk-through tour” of the Capitol welcomed by police and the Senate and House members who, in reality, ran for their lives and hid from threats of injury or death at the hands of Trump’s vigilante army of delusional nutjobs.
We’ll repeat the definition of “delusional” here to emphasize the point. Delusional: having a fixed false belief that is not changed by conflicting evidence.
Yes, Trump Delusion Syndrome is real. It’s still with us, as proven by the election of their delusional figurehead to carry out delusional policies against immigrants, gay and transgender people, Black folks, women, and anyone else their fascist instincts depict as “the other” by calling American citizens “woke” for standing up for their own rights.
Trump Delusion Syndrome equate to insanity and fascism, plain and simple.
You’ve seen the trucks with American flags flying on one side while a Trump 2024 flag flaps around on the other. You’ve seen the Red Hats and the Rallies, where people applaud the hate-filled language of their leader, who mocks the disabled, and whose patent distrust and disdain for immigrants is evident despite the dog-whistle language meant to cloak the hate behind it. You’ve heard the MAGA Candidate threaten his political opponents with prison time and, worse, the death penalty if necessary to dispatch those daring to question his authority. You’ve watched the former President Trump mug obsequiously for the camera with that smug smile backed by the phony victimhood speaking style. “They hate me!” Trump gaslights the world in quasi-religious fervor. “They are persecuting me, and they are persecuting you.”
Trump is the face of an American movement claiming to represent patriotism, but it is not. Instead, it is Hatriotism, a political strategy that thrives on vicious accusations against liberalism, the true foundation of democracy and the Republic, our laws, and our government. Yet according to Hatriots, these institutions are the enemy of the people. The conservative members of the Supreme Court, all of whom hate the rule of law if it contradicts their ideology and political alliance, just proved that.
Supreme Hate
The conservative Supreme Court demonstrated that it is a tool of the Hate Machine that was once the Republican Party. The SCOTUS granted Hatriotism full approval by granting immunity to Donald Trump, the man who disrespects our nation’s laws and resists their natural limits at every turn. Given that judgment by the six conservative members of the Supreme Court, there is now no limit to what hate will be allowed to do to anyone the GOP decides to punish, with Trump leading the way.
Russian collusion by imitation
Indeed, Hatriotism looks much like the power politics of regimes run by the vicious whims of authoritarians. Over in Russia, Vladimir Putin has ordered his perceived enemies extinguished at will. Some fall out of high windows while others face the silent death of poison. Do we think Trump will act any differently here in America? When it comes to international politics, Putin’s hate-filled paranoia deemed Ukraine part of Mother Russia. To prove it, he’s tried to beat his perceived child into submission.
Trump’s feverishly transactional style is no different. His admiration for dictators is apparent, as is his disdain for what he brands “shithole countries.” Hate is the political blood running through Trump’s veins.
Daddy issues
History is also rife with the childishness of world leaders running around with parental bugs up their asses. Hate-filled despots and insecure wannabe kings all seem to have Mommy and Daddy issues driving their furious need for approval. President George W. Bush invaded Iraq to show his father that he could do what Daddy could not, which was to capture Saddam Hussein. The torture committed in Iraq under the son’s watch was the hate-filled byproduct of that compensatory need for approval.
The Trump Saga is driven by Daddy Issues too. That dynamic holds a far worse menace for us in America and abroad. A Washington Post story about the Trump Family history reveals the source of the insecurity on display in everything Trump does, “We know that many presidents have had daddy issues: dreaming of their absent fathers, chafing at their judgments or struggling under their legacies. When discussing his father in his memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump stresses the business savvy he gleaned from the late Fred C. Trump. “I learned about toughness in a very tough business, I learned about motivating people, and I learned about competence and efficiency.”
Tough to take
In Trump’s case, that pursuit of “toughness” is mostly about covering up his long line of grandiose mistakes. His many failed business ventures. His bankruptcies and fraud. His three failed marriages that succumbed to his infidelity. Now he’s a convicted felon hiding behind claims he’s never done anything wrong, all while hiding his vanity behind a prodigiously dyed blonde combover shading a face painted to disguise a complexion that without makeup resembles a pale grocery store tomato.
Faux Christians
Despite all this vacuous dishonesty, Trump refuses to confess any flaw, a trait that his Christian evangelical supporters seem to adore despite the call to repent of sins founding their tradition. Instead, they excuse Trump’s hateful attitudes by comparing him to the likes of King David, the genocidal despot whom God refused to honor at the end of his life because he had too much blood on his hands.
That murderous legacy already exists in the latter-day interpretation of the Second Amendment, a law split in half by conservatives on the Supreme Court so that hate can be armed in its battle with cultural progress and peace in America. The first half of the Second Amendment, the part about a “well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state,” has been hijacked by hate-filled anti-government soldiers of fortune that spend most of their time blasting cement-filled Home Depot buckets with ammunition hoping someday they’ll have an excuse to turn the slogan “How Doers Get More Done” into a full-blown takeover of the American government.
Hate on the march
Those were the same disturbingly small-minded militants of Hatriotism invading the Capitol on January 6, 2020. They waved American flags but also Confederate banners, proving their cause was nothing more than treason disguised as a righteous cause. They were called to arms and used sharpened flagpoles to thump and stab Capitol police, all while welcoming into their ranks the racists and anti-Semitics, the Bison Heads and suburban nutcases, many of whom wound up arrested and convicted for their crimes of obstructing governmental business and destroying government property.
That’s Hatriotism in a nutshell. It lacks the consciousness and conscience to realize it has the entire American Experiment wrong. That’s why Make American Great Again fits Hatriotism so well as a slogan. It calls the nation back to a time when prejudice was “normal,” and when bigoted forms of religion held sway everywhere from town hall meetings to public school systems. Hatriotism wants––indeed needs––to lurch backward in time because it is a form of hate that Americans embracing principles and conscience seek to leave behind.
Right now the haters seem to have the upper hand, but the Union fought slavery and bigotry in the past. We’ll do it again in the present to resist the deplorable, despicable nature of Hatriotism. That’s our only choice as Americans.
Photos of oil on water by Christopher Cudworth 2017
On Christmas Eve the Christian world fills with anticipation as one of its high holy days is about to arrive. Millions will attend church to celebrate Christmas Day, the traditional time affixed to the birth of Yeshua, or Jesus.
Yet we now recognize the Christmas season as we know it is a fabrication. The most ardent biblical literalists are the ones that have exposed the ruse, and confessed. The website Answers In Genesis fashions itself a key defender of all things “inerrant and true” about the Bible, and even it has grave doubts about the time of year in which we celebrate Christmas.
After careful scriptural exegesis of the Jewish calendar and its documentation of the time of year in which John the Baptist was born, Answers In Genesis says:
“This would have put John the Baptist at about six months in the womb around August/September. Assuming about nine months for pregnancy, John would have been born about November/December by the modern calendar based on the assumptions we used.
If the Holy Spirit did come upon Mary in the sixth month (Elul) or around August/September, as it seems to indicate in Scripture, then Jesus should have been born about nine months later, which would place His birth around May/June. Since John the Baptist was still in the womb of Elizabeth when he leapt for joy in Jesus’ presence (Luke 1:39-42), this means that the conception had to take place within the next three months or so of the visit by Gabriel—before John was born. Regardless, by this reckoning, the birth of Christ isn’t even close to Christmas on the modern calendar.”
Answers In Genesis is not alone in this correction of supposed history, but this example makes the point that harsher cynics have long claimed: Christmas is an invention of religion designed to serve a specific purpose. The narrative of Jesus born in Bethlehem was cobbled together by a series of Gospel writers who either copied one another or chose a different emphasis depending on how they viewed the Christ story.
The Nativity with the animals gathered around and Wise Men attending is also manufactured for the purpose of giving the Christmas story a focus. People need that. It helps them pass along the Christmas tale to new generations. The story of the baby Jesus lying in a manger is appealing to parents sharing the tale with younger generations.
And so it goes. In the modern era, it has become a bit more difficult for Christians to defend the verity and meaning of this story because the season has become perverted by the massive commercial significance of the holiday season. This has not been the fault of the secular world. Many people celebrate Christmas because it’s fun, but that permission has long been granted by the competing tale of Santa Claus bringing gifts to small children and adults alike around the world. Christians have willingly conveyed this myth for over a century now. There is likely no turning back.
The history and popularity of the myth of Santa Claus is irrelevant to the true meaning of Christmas. But it does have a parallel significance in where we are in Christmas traditions today. Some Christians claim that Christmas as a religious holiday is under siege by secular forces who want to ban the words “Merry Christmas” from the cultural lexicon. The so-called “War On Christmas” is preached from the pulpits of Fox News and pasted like butter on the bread of social media for so-called devout Christians to spread the word that Christianity is under attack.
This serves as an important lesson on the real meaning of Christmas. If Christianity truly is under attack, then it is justified in every sense of the word. The holiday as we know it has been whored out to commercial interests just as the Jewish temple was once prostituted by the religious authorities in Jesus’ day. He attacked those authorities first through his words, warning them of their hypocrisy for making rules from scripture and basically charging people admission to the temple of God. Jesus castigated those same authorities as a “brood of vipers” for clinging to this power and lording themselves over others.
Jesus was born into this world to challenge that type of false authority. That baby in the manger was born out of need, not from kingly circumstance. His principle message was preached first by John the Baptist who exemplified the simplicity and virtue of true devotion to God in his call to repentance.
Jesus embraced and carried this message all the way up the chain of culture to the ultimate seats of power. He offended the chief priests and denigrated the scribes for the slavery of soul they imposed upon the rest of society. And when those offended gathered themselves in righteous fury they captured Jesus and delivered him to the Romans with the intent to dispose of the itinerant preacher they considered a blasphemer.
Do you see it now? Jesus was born to expose such charlatans. That is the real meaning of Christmas. And if we were to apply that meaning to the world today, who would those charlatans be? They would be religious authorities sacrificing true devotion to God for access and control of political power. They would be leaders who were unwilling to confess their own lack of virtue, yet who claim to know the true heart of God out of their own bold ego. They would be all those who embrace such leaders and buy into their serpentine logic that trying to act like God equates to being like God.
The characters we know as Adam and Eve fell for that trick once long ago. Christians call it Original Sin, and it resonates through the world to this very day.
So when you find a moment to consider the real meaning of Christmas, consider not how or where Jesus was born, but why. And apply that lesson to all that you do. The world will expose itself one egregious scam at a time.
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative by the time you are forty, you have no brain.” –Winston Churchill
Years ago I read a massive two-volume biography of Winston Churchill. It was with great disappointment that I learned that the author of those first two books had died. The third would have covered the period including World War II, and that would have been fascinating to study the actions and philosophies of the man that ushered Great Britain through the war.
Yet even with Churchill, his strong points as a war leader turned out to be challenges of a sort in the political realm. He was initially defeated for the role of Prime Minister after the war, yet returned to that role again before suffering physical and mental decline that may have resulted from strokes and heart issues.
A wealth of protectors
While obviously a man to admire, Winston Churchill’s determination that conservatism was the ultimate form of philosophical sophistication may have been formed more from his upbringing in a wealthy English family than his own evolution as a military man and spokesman. He was great at both those things, but there is an abiding factor to how these were developed and sustained that made it possible for Churchill to think like a conservative at all.
That factor was the presence and alliance of both the United States and the Soviet Union in World War II. Without that partnership, Great Britain would have been sunk under the pressures of Germany to take over much of Europe.
It was the liberal support of America’s Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and the hard right determination of Joseph Stalin that fought back Germany’s considerable will to conquer and subjugate. That enabled Churchill to essentially occupy an important middle ground from which he could flexibly consider and pursue his necessary options. That is conservative in the good sense of the word, in being considerate.
Modern times
Fast forward to the current world perspective in which we live. America’s President Barack Obama has behaved as a noted centrist on the world stage. And like Churchill, there have been wins and losses, risks and seeming triumphs associated with that centrist position. Obama has been the considerate if quietly brusque leader, not prone to launch off new wars, yet capable of effecting deadly drone strikes that many people protest as cruel and miscalculated.
Such are the risks of all world leaders. The apparently noble fight of America, Britain and the Soviets against the Germans, Italians and Japanese Axis was full of death and destruction. And while Germany clearly committed war crimes, the rest of the fighters were not a group of innocents. America ultimately dropped a massive nuclear weapon on Japan’s big cities, killing thousands of civilians in the process.
During the leadup to that event, America engaged in some rather heinous efforts to protect itself, ushering many of its own citizens of Japanese descent into camps. The object at the time was to “keep us safe” from perceived threats because Japan itself was such a threat.
Fear and strange decisions
Fear drives all kind of strange decisions in this world. And while some of our fears are very real, the collective anxiety of a culture can often be extremely misguided.
Such is the case wth current concerns over America’s possible acceptance of Syrian refugees. While France opens its borders willingly to Syrian refugees even on the heels of the terrorist attacks on its own soil, America’s arch-conservative population wants to ban them from entry into the country. All of this is based on the idea that terrorists will somehow disguise themselves as refugees and come to this country to kill Americans.
Raging debates
Having engaged in considerable political debate with a number of anxious conservatives on social media, a few simple things have emerged in the argument. 1) They don’t trust Obama or the government 2) They don’t trust the government or Obama 3) They really don’t trust either Obama or the government. That’s the substance of their arguments.
In the process of defending those arguments they also engage in considerable name-calling while simultaneously denying that the Bush administration or any conservative before him had anything to do with creating the terrorist problem in the Middle East. We all know that started with the Reagan administration, was fostered by the Bush relationships with the Saudis, and carried on with the patsy treatment of the bin Laden family right through the 9/11 terrorist attacks when our first priority was flying remnants of that family out of the United States when all other flights were suddenly banned. Conservatives also created the Saddam Hussein we overthrew, and set up the Shah of Iran that led to that country being so pissed off at the Western World.
Yet somehow it’s all Obama’s fault that we have problems in the Middle East.
Brotherly love
Of course, Jeb Bush, the equally inept brother of George W. Bush, is now running for President of the United States. And like any conservative worth his radical salt he has publicly claimed that his brother “kept us safe.”
So for the sake of analysis, we should examine what he might mean by that statement. The expectations of conservatives about what “keeps us safe” clearly breaks down into categories that were demonstrated by the Bush administration’s actions in the Middle East. And we’ll get to those in a minute.
But first we must admit there was little resistance by the Democratic Left to any of Bush’s policies overseas. That was a sick and sad chapter in our political history as well. Either by choice or by fear, the Left stood down under considerable pressure from conservative dominance of all three branches of government. That included the power of the Presidency, a willing Congress and Senate and even the Supreme Court that handed Bush surveillance powers that broke every rule in the Constitution about personal privacy.
So Bush and Cheney were given free license to engage in a series of cynical acts of aggression designed, in their minds, to “keep us safe” from terrorism. These included:
Bomb first, ask no questions later. When faced with threats, conservatives love to bomb things because it makes them feel as if they are taking action against that threat. Of course, civilian casualties resulting from those bombings inflamed hatred for the United States as innocents perished. But that’s the apparent price of thoughtless war. “Collateral damage” they call it. The ultimate euphemism of course. Conservatives bomb, and then move on without a second thought about what the real effects of such bombings could be in terms of perception among enemies or friends.
Torture is acceptable. Arguments in favor of torturing Iraqis and potential terrorist focused on the fact that such tactics were necessary to extract information that could “keep America safe.” That connection between information and actionable intelligence really never happened in any substantial way. And yet the apparent thought that our supposed enemies were being tortured made a certain segment of our society feel happy because we were “doing something” about terrorism. Never mind that many of the people we tortured and even killed through torture and mistreatment were in fact completely innocent.
Spying on your own people is desirable. How ironic it is that the political force in America that claims to hate government most and wants to reduce its influence in our lives should choose to open a surveillance program that brought government into the very conversations we all hold over our telephones and cell phones. It seems a common phenomenon that the things conservatives most hate in others they ultimately become themselves. It happens on the social front when people who claim to stand for family values turn out to be serial wife cheaters or sexual predators. This repression haunts the conservative party like a ghost of unvirtuous fact.
Always blame the other side. For all these insane actions and remorseless activities, conservatives have developed denial of responsibility for the evil outcomes into a very fine art. The virtual memo that says “never admit you were wrong” has been hard-wired into the consciousness of political, military and civilian conservatives. In fact, it is perhaps the greatest social conspiracy ever contrived as a political strategy. Its level of secrecy is protected by a devotion to denial and an entire lack of accountability. It is thus quite breathtaking in its scope and effect on civil discourse. Its main mouthpiece, of course, is Fox News, whose claims of being “fair and balanced” as a “news organization” are the absolute expression of the virtue of lying with a smile on your face and putting tits above the fold as a distraction of the very audience you intend to recruit.
There’s a reason for all this aggression, repression and secession going on within the conservative cult in America. Only when a conservative breaks completely free of the party entirely, which means they can never go back, do we hear an ounce of truth and admission about what really goes on behind the scenes. The recent inadvertent confession of a certain Congressman on the real reasons for the Benghazi investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are just one such example of politically motivated use of government to harangue and discredit anyone that dares resist the conservative cartel in America.
It goes back a ways
Resistance to this secret society of Conservatism with a Capital A (and its apparent arm, the CIA) is what got President Kennedy killed back in the 1960s. So the phenomena of killing threats to the cabal is not new.Kennedy was no saint, that’s for sure. But what he also represented as a political liberalism that some perceived as a threat to the security of America. But again, the considerations shown by John F. Kennedy in negotiations with the Soviets in the Cuba Missile Crisis are likely what prevented nuclear war. In other words, his small “c” conservatism kept us safe, just like Winston Churchill’s small “c” conservatism helped guide the Allies through World War II. It is this conservatism to which I believe Winston Churchill is referring in the quote above this column.
But it keeps happening that large “C” Conservatism is trying to kill its perceived enemies. And true to form, the conservative cabal went after Bill Clinton over engagement in a harmless blow job. The ensuing scandal turned into a political spectacle that distracted from Clinton’s ability to do his job, and keep us safe.
At that time, Clinton wanted to take action against bin Laden and potential terrorists in the Middle East, but was discouraged from doing so because it would appear he was attempting to “wag the dog” and escape accusations and impeachment over his extramarital affair. We seriously need to ask what would have kept us more safe in that scenario, the Starr Report or actually paying attention to real threats to our security. Capital A Conservatives clearly chose the former over the latter. America has paid the price ever since for this selfish, politically motivated debacle.
Fear, loathing and power
New House Speaker Paul Ryan
So you see, the goal of conservatism is never really to keep us safe. It is to gain and keep power, and that is all. Conservatives use fear to accomplish that mission all the time. That is why the call to war is so strong among them. War creates a deep tide fear in the populace, accentuated by methods such as “terror alerts” that the Bush administration turned on and off as needed to sway political will and push the perception of power in their direction. These are all tricks to get people to fall in line. Authoritarian thinkers on both the proactive and responsive side love these methods because it gives them a sense of control in otherwise chaotic circumstances. Of course it is all a ruse, but that does not matter.
Indeed, Conservatives with a capital “C” want Americans to behave like Pavlov’s dogs in response to the call for war and acceptance of violence as status quo. They wave flags as patriots in fear until the very meaning of the flag is all worn out. Our flag has come to represent a national attitude of fear and a worn out ideology as a result.
Witness the marketing methods of the NRA, which flouts fear about race and crime as reasons to arm American on claims that more guns will “keep us safe.” Again, these are lies of massive proportions. More Americans have died from gun violence on American soil that all the soldiers ever killed in foreign wars. This is not “keeping us safe.”
Money kills
In the end, the sad thing about all this fear and terror and power is that it is all about money. Conservatives simply love money and all that it gives them. That’s why so many conservative whine about high tax rates and complain about giving their dollars through any social programs that might help the poor or elderly. This is the brand of conservatism that has evolved in America; selfishness as a life philosophy. It stands in direct opposition to the Christian call for charity and even giving away all you have to serve God and Christ. But modern conservatives (oxymoron intended) ignore all that real Christian stuff. That part is old-fashioned to them.
And we must return to the fact that top level Conservatives have always liked war because it enriches them. Former Vice President Dick Cheney used the Iraq War to increase the value of companies like Halliburton in which he has long held financial interests. The snarling visage of the man who almost singlehandedly leveraged America’s fortunes into his own while ruining our reputation overseas is like the Ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge, who without ever having gone through the happy change that made him into an advocate for the Christmas Spirit acts instead like the Grinch Who Stole America.
No Churchill
Cheney was no Churchill, let’s all agree on that. He seems to have envisioned himself that way, but where he falls short is in the ability to recognize the advantage of being a smart conservative with a small “c.” That is one who knows that conservatism actually involves consideration. Cheney appears to have none of that capacity, and as a result his version of “keeping us safe” turned the Middle East into a morass of angry terrorist hornets hoping to break free and sting the invader of their nest.
So let’s stop pretending that stirring up the hornet’s nest in the Middle East with bombings, torture and boots on the ground is a conservative strategy at all. It is not a conservative strategy, and it does not keep us safe.
And as for hornet’s back home, we’ve already got a system in place to detect their angry buzz. Typically they can’t keep quiet. Not if we open our eyes and ears and pay attention. And let’s not ignore those clear warnings this time, as Bush did back when he and Cheney were plotting to take over the entire Middle East to steal the oil and get some archly conservative kicks. That was stupid. And we’re getting stung as a result.
At some early age it entered my head that perhaps everyone around me was in on a secret. That I was the only one that thought as I do, and that even my parents were putting me on, big time.
I worried that I was not a “normal” person.
It happened again to some extent when I was 13 years old. That’s the age when your interests begin to collide with the world, and that’s a dual problem because your interests when you are in middle school tend to be really intense, sometimes nerdy and ridiculously easy to ridicule.
My interests happened to be all over the board, from art to nature, but one avocation got me in trouble with my friends who all seemed to think birdwatching was stupid, silly and less than manly. They made up bird names with obscene roots and laughed when I told them I’d identified a certain species of importance to me.
Resilience
To my everlasting credit, I never let the teasing stop me from pursuing any of my interests, even at the vulnerable age of 13. Now the same people who used to ridicule will call with a “bird question” when something unexpected shows up at their feeder, or they see a bald eagle along the river. The enthusiasm they now show for such things is a much-delayed apology for the abuse long ago.
As an adult I was asked to teach Sunday School for the middle schoolers because no one else wanted to take on the task. I liked it. Working with a series of teacher-partners over a 12-year period, it was fascinating to see the variability in maturity and self-awareness among preteens.
Sleepy minds
Many Sunday mornings they’d arrive sullen and bored, aching to get back to their sleepy beds where the rest of the world could not reach them. But reach them I did.
The church absentmindedly neglected to shove some curriculum my way for years and years. The parents did not complain about my teaching so everyone must have thought it was working out okay.
Little did they know that Sunday School was a perfect place to get those preteens thinking about what matters in life beyond the Bible. Sure, we always talked about scripture in a roundabout way. I’d always have an idea to discuss and would bring them around to the topic by asking what they’d done during the week and even how they felt about it. They deserved that attention. The minds of preteens seem to be largely ignored by this world, as if they have nothing of value to say about it. But the world would be wrong about that. It always has.
The example of Jesus
You may recall that it was a preteen Jesus (about age 12) who stayed behind at a temple when he was supposed to be following his parents back home after a visit to the city. This is what transpired:
46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”[a] 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Echoes of Christ
In many ways that scene was replayed among the preteens who entered the middle school Sunday School class. They had ideas. They wanted answers. They asked questions and to the best of my ability I answered their questions or encouraged them to find answers, and at all costs.
That church did not preach tolerance for science, yet several of my former students went on to become chemical engineers and biologists and other occupations whose educational processes effectively denied what that simpleton religious worldview maintained.
Rational faith
You may ask why I remained a member so long (25 years) and I can answer that my rational faith survived outside of that venue, but was sustained by the fellowship that came through membership. I am now a member of a church that respects rational thought and yet embraces full discipleship as a matter of practice. In other words, a church that actually teaches what the Bible says to do. Instead of denial like the Pharisees and legalistic practices, my current church loves this world with all its heart, as an expression of creation, but not as an exclusive Creation that cannot be understood or appreciated by the human mind.
That’s what I taught all those years, and what it taught me in return was that the middle school, preteen mind appreciates honesty and respect. If you don’t give pat answers, it doesn’t feel like you’re patting them on the head, telling them to go away and quit thinking. For themselves.
Leadership
One year I had as students three young women that each vied for the title of Valedictorian at their respective high schools. Keeping them engaged was not that difficult, but keeping the rest of the class in pace with their challenging minds was interesting at times.
Yet it happened. The other kids knew and appreciated true leadership and intellect when they saw it. The girls in return were not disrespectful of their peers. Even those who were brought to the church by bus from underprivileged families participated in the discussions. I often thought about how much those women brought to the table, and the fact that women were not allowed to assume positions of full leadership at that church. It bothered me. So I ignored that example and let them be leaders.
It was proof to me that the Kingdom of God, if that’s what you call it, can embrace the rich in mind and the poor in spirit alike. The principle benefit was, in the end, an open regard for the preteen mind that perhaps they would never have experienced if shielded from the concepts we discussed in biblical context. Those were evolution as well as salvation. I told them there was no reason why the Bible and science could not be reconciled. I told them Jesus was the original naturalist. He used organic symbols in his parables to convey spiritual principles. Later I wrote a book and continue a blog about that subject and more.
Other subjects
We talked about fame and deception, hope and depression. We talked about their lives and encouraged them to keep the confidence of others. Basic human respect was at play at all times.
And we talked about Jesus. Not the Jesus of the Sunday School curriculum that sails around the landscape working miracles. We talked about the Jesus who cried and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, abandoned by his friends. We considered what that meant to be alone, to feel alone.
Then we talked about what it meant to be normal in this world. To have fears and feelings that you poorly understood. To be worried about what others thought about you and about how adults don’t have all the answers. Those were just some of the things discussed with those preteens. They just wanted to know what it meant to be normal, and what it meant if you chose to depart from those norms on your own.
Jesus was a helluva an example on what it meant to go your own way. It has costs, but sometimes its worth it. Not being normal, that is.
Mark 3:33 New International Version (NIV)33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
By Christopher Cudworth
It is not often preached from the pulpit that Jesus so profoundly emphasized the isolation of the human condition. In 50 years of cognizant Christian worship, I have not heard this isolation emphasized with much clarity or conviction. It is too lonely a piece of scripture upon which to focus. It can frighten believers and frighten away possible converts.
The power to stand alone is important, but not the point of Christianity.
Yet the Bible clearly shows that Jesus, and God especially, want us to know that to be human is ultimately to be alone.
Part of the plan?
Of course that is what Christian fellowship is designed to conquer. And the Kingdom of God is created here on earth to prevent this form of isolation. From others. Even from oneself.
Yet the undeniable message of Mark 3:33 is this: Even your family and friends can and will let you down. God alone is the ultimate solace.
This isolating message is likely ignored in the Christian church because it flies too near the methods used by cults to trap people into wicked devotion. The famously devious method of some network marketing organizations is to have you try to sell and recruit your friends into the organization. But people are repelled by such efforts. Those who see the folly and the scam are legitimately repulsed. Yet a desperate soul often tarries on, convinced perhaps of possible wealth if only friends and family really understood the potential in the scheme.
The ultimate effect of network marketing schemes is that they can divest people of their human network. Then the “organization” or whatever you want to call it (some call it “my business”) has you dead to rights. Because once you have scared off your friends and family, the network marketing organization (or a cult) sets out to replace that network with whatever they tell you is vital and true.
Who are my mother and my brothers?
How does that compare to Christianity? To the example set by Jesus in saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
We can take another example from the Bible to examine the issue of isolation. Just before he was taken into captivity by a calculating band of priests from the very faith he had come to fulfill, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.
Mark 14:32
[ Gethsemane ] They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”
Of course we know how that segment of the story comes out. His disciples, who are depicted in the Bible as often failing in tasks of devotion and understanding, cannot stay awake while Jesus goes to pray. They fall asleep and when Jesus returns, having prayed to understand the very life he would soon give away as redemption for all, finds his devoted friends asleep on the job.
The deeper meaning of disappointment
It happens often to all of us. People disappoint us. We disappoint other people. And look at the word structure of that word, “disappoint.” To dis-appoint is to disassociate, or to send away either by intent or by mistake.
Jesus tries to warn us that disappointment is a big part of the human condition. Our failures are characterized by many as our sins, or our almost predestined capacity to sin.
Sin is the ultimate isolation from God. It is what separated the proverbial Adam and Eve from God in the Garden of Eden. Another garden. Another time. The garden is supposed to be a place of consideration and worship, our connection to stewardship and creation. And yet here we have two biting examples in the Bible where a garden is a rife example of disappointment. God disappointed in Adam and Eve. Jesus disappointed in his disciples.
And what are we to make of the idea that the world can be such a disappointing place?
Friendship and fellowship
This message seems to run counter from the idea that our fellowship here on earth can be a salve for the soul. Well, it is not wise to give up on friendship and love so easily, now is it? Our relationships are clearly of great value in this world. Love is built around and in them. Our families are designed, both in faith and through nature, to be a sustaining force in this world. The friends we gather around us and trust are people in whom we find joy and support.
None of those truths is undermined by the example Jesus makes in both his statement about his mother and brothers or his disappointment in his disciples. Jesus is master not only of this world in the spiritual sense, but also of necessary hyperbole. His teachings are full of striking examples that cut through our perceptions of what human relationships really are, and what they offer.
Salvation
Our disappointment is our salvation, you see. Friends and family can and do disappoint us, just as we sometimes disappoint them. It is the isolating nature of the human condition to disappoint those we need and love the most.
But the real message of disappointment and resultant isolation is that God provides a model of unifying faith. Because to love is to forgive, even when our friends and family doubt in us, and disappoint. We trust in God because God trusts in us to make choices that reach across that disappointment to heal and forgive. God even asks us to love our enemies. That is a potent message if you want to understand the true “way of the world” through the eyes of God. You cannot ultimately conquer disappointment and isolation if you do not choose to love. You will be alone if you choose not to forgive, or fail in your devotion to a friend.
Yet when hurt comes calling, our natural tendency is to withdraw, pull back, and feel disappointment. We feel it so keenly we can begin to hate. Then we begin to seek targets for our hate because it becomes part of our nature. We look for the disadvantaged and the weak because in our own weakness and fear we want only to feel superior to others, somehow, so that we do not feel put down or pushed away from life itself.
The dangers of prejudice
Those are the foundations of prejudice of course. And of economic inequality, and caring not for the poor. We find the wealthiest among us susceptible to this isolating force of the “other.” Often that sense of disgust toward those we consider inferior becomes magnifying the more life seems to dispense fortune upon us.
Jesus recognized all this potential for prejudice, power and loss of imagination. Because imagining ourselves to be superior to others in any way is the ultimate sin, at least in the eyes of God. That is why Jesus told the wealthy to give away their riches and follow him. That is why it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to gain entrance to heaven. Wealth can be an isolating force.
It can, of course, also be an instrument for good. We see many examples of people who use their wealth for good. Even the robber barons of the early 20th century, who built monopolies and wealth beyond imagination through industry did turn around and do great things with their money. Carnegie. Rockefeller. The list goes on, and continues to this day.
So it is not wealth alone that is a sin, but wealth in some way that combines with isolation that God does not appreciate. Jesus broke through social strata and perceptions that people who were disadvantaged or different were somehow victims of their own sin. He also forcefully resisted the practice by priests of his day (and ever after, it seems) to turn scripture into laws that trap and hurt others. Jesus did not tolerate using God’s word for punishment and isolation. He would definitely not approve of the manner in which so many supposed Christians use scripture to create false social and economic strata today. The practice of using literalism to ostracize gays and women, for example, is abhorrent by nature to Jesus. The idea that the Bible is somehow a scientific text would also be absurd to Jesus, who taught in organic parables using examples from nature to teach spiritual concepts. Jesus was no literalist. He was no fool, in other words. Jesus disliked the actions of fools like that.
And what do we find as a result of such actions today? An increasingly divided faith, in Christianity. It has been that way since the start, it seems, where zealots who wanted a literal earthly kingdom ruled by Jesus were “disappointed” to find that his kingdom was one of spirit, not earthly wealth and power.
The many kinds of wealth, and corruption
Wealth is relative, of course. One of the catchiest devices of certain political parties is to figure out how to make people feel like they have ownership or a stake in the result of an election simply by making people feel like they will “win” somehow if they cast their vote in favor of the party making the promises. Of course, people can often be found voting against their best interests, be they economic or even spiritual, and voting on a one-issue platform that hands over power to people who pretend to care but really do not.
So we see that it is at times the power of isolating people from their best interests that is the most powerful political tool of all. Politics is the ultimate form of network marketing. It is the cult of all human cults.
Cutting through the lies
Jesus cut through the lies to make us understand that disappointment and fear of isolation is our worst enemy. Yet he calls us to stand alone first, to accept and understand that with the love of God, the grace of acceptance, we are never alone.
So have the courage to stand alone, and not be disappointed to the point of isolation when your friends or family fail you, or your work environment seems poison, or the very church that you attend turns out to be a flawed human enterprise. All these things are to be expected. Jesus and God want us not to be surprised by events like these.
Yes, we can still love the world, our friends and ourselves if we understand that the kingdom of God is made from the commitment to love and forgive. Then we will find and know our mother and our brothers, our sisters and our friends. They will be drawn to us by our humility and our example of faith. That is how it is all supposed to work.
This election year millions of ostensibly Pro-Life Christians will vote Republican because they feel that Republican politicians represent the best opportunity to strike down legalized abortions.
Of course Republicans line up like sheep to claim the Pro-Life mantle. Some indeed do try to pass legislation to overturn existing laws resulting from court rulings such as Roe vs. Wade, which delivered protection for legalized abortions in the United States.
Religion in the public sector
For perspective on the use of religion as a foundation for political alliance and public policy, you may recall that many people of conservative faith originally threw their hopes behind a largely politicized attempt to bar teaching of evolution in public schools in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. A teacher named John Scopes defied the Butler act, a Tennessee law prohibiting public teachers from denying the literalist interpretation of the biblical account of man’s origin. Scopes was actually convicted of defying the law, but was let go on a technicality.
What that story illustrates is not a flaw in the judicial system or public policy, but the eventual and necessary failure of a segment of society to impose a religious view on the society as a whole. States across the country now advocate teaching of evolutionary theory because it is founded on real, discoverable science, not just a religious view dependent on a narrow interpretation of scripture. Evolutionary theory is also (not coincidentally) supported and complimented by myriad other scientific facts and theories. Evolutionary theory has led to important discoveries in sciences ranging from medicine to genetics to astrophysics. It is an important theory not just because of what it says, but because it works. Just as importantly, the theory itself continues to evolve, because that is the heart of science, not a fixed, one-time snapshot, as if life were a Polaroid picture.
Creationism, by contrast, is essentially the practice of denying science to support an anachronistic worldview. It is nothing but a Polaroid picture of the process of creation. And like many early Polaroids, its picture of the world is mostly black and white and not very clear. In sum, creationism is a negative theory whose only contribution to the world is the surety it provides to its adherents.
Sum-negative thinking
The same sort of sum-negative-thinking theory is at work in efforts to ban abortion in America. Years before abortion was legalized, millions of women engaged in the practice on their own or through black market providers delivering abortion services. Abortion was not invented after it was legalized. Instead it was legalized to make the practice safer for women in need of abortions for legitimate reasons, including protection of a woman’s health in at-risk pregnancies, termination of pregnancies caused by rape and yes, selective choice to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
That last phrase is what causes abortion opponents the most pain. The religious view that life begins at conception––itself an evolving contention––is used to contend that all forms of abortion are a type of murder.
Here is where the Pro-Life movement begins to resemble the creationist argument in its religious framework. The Bible makes no specific reference to abortion anywhere in its text. The 10 Commandments do say “Thou shalt not kill” but again, the interpretation of that commandment is short on actual, specific substance with regards to abortion, except when supported by scripture such as Psalm 139:13, which reads “for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (NIV)
That very elegant passage makes a great case for protection of life in the womb from conception. You can see how that image would move and motivate people to advocate for protection of life and the banning of abortion.
But here we are faced with a difficult question. If the religious case for protection of life is so compelling, why hasn’t religion been able to convince our nation and the world that abortion is not a good choice for women?
Religion’s failures do not make good public policy
The answer is that religion has failed miserably in its chartered role of reaching the world through its ministries. This fact relates to its failure to make relevant sense of its message in several key respects.
The first of these is that the most conservative forms of religion fail to reconcile scripture to any form of modern knowledge, especially the sciences that informs and improve our daily lives. In that context, the continuing effort by literalist sects to impose teaching of creationism undermines the credibility of religion as a whole in the public sector. How can we trust what religion says on any practical issue if a big chunk of the faith is living in a dream world where something always has to come from nothing, and never changes?
Secondly, large segments of the Christian faith also take a contrary view toward practical solutions such as birth control that would prevent the need for abortion. This sort of denial is cruel, aggressively naive and irresponsible, yet the largest bloc Christian faith in the world would deny its believers birth control under any circumstances. How interesting that more than 90% of Catholic women ignore this “law” imposed by the church.
Then think about what the Catholic church actually advocates for a method of birth control. The so-called Rhythm Method suggests that couples conspire to engage in “natural” birth control by timing their copulation to avoid impregnation. What a cynical “solution,” for it actually advises lying about the reasons for sex!
There are many examples in the bible in which Christ states that the intent of an oath or an act is as much a sin as the actual act. The idea of trying to avoid pregnancy and essentially “trick God” through use of the rhythm method sounds much like that moment when Adam and Eve were caught sneaking around the garden after they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and figured out they were naked. God didn’t like that little ruse, so the Creator surely must not like the Catholic Church encouraging its members to engage in procreative trickery.
The Catholic Church does not have a very good record in many such areas of theology, having actively persecuted scientists like Galileo for discovering that the earth was not the center of the universe, and others for teaching that the earth was round. These were practical realities that eventually revolutionized the Christian worldview, but not with much help from the Pope, who also threatened the life of Martin Luther for contending that it was not good works but grace alone that earned the believer salvation. Religion has a pretty sorry track record when it comes to figuring out the truth when it conflicts with some literal interpretation of scripture.
Old habits and infallibility
Yet we live in a time where many Christian believers persist in old religious habits and claims of infallibility (especially Leviticus and other texts of law) that have long been ignored, proven wrong or debunked through scriptural scholarship and newly inspired interpretation of holy texts. That process continues as faith evolves, as it always has since Jesus Christ himself came along to deliver the knockout blow to the love of law over the opportunity for fulfillment, salvation and life through redemption from sin.
Pay attention to what was just said. The love of law is not where Christians should reside, in whole. Jesus taught that the law of God is best understood through tools of parable, metaphor and experience, which when used together give us greater perspective on the will of God. He also chastised the religious leaders of his day for turning scripture into law, and turning the lives of believers into unholy efforts to justify themselves before the church or before God.
That also means that Christians should not try to turn their personal faith into the strict law of the land. Because as soon as you begin defining the core of your faith through the imposition of law, especially in the public sector, you have failed God in the commission of faith. Obviously your efforts have not been good enough on behalf of God to reach the people whom you seek to reach through law and politics.
If that sound harsh or accusatory, the truth really does hurt sometimes. But truly, nothing is so cleanly evident than the failure of religion when it claims to be the salvation of the world but fails in some grandiose and crucial way.
In politicians, not God, we trust?
Instead of taking direct responsibility for the failure of faith to convince people of those moral objectives some believers who high, they crawl instead to politicians in positions of public power, convincing them that the most important goal of the republic is to impose Christian law on a secular society. This is the exact same thing Christians find so abhorrent in the Muslim world when religious law is imposed in place of democracy.
The cynical sideline to all this has been the efforts of groups from the Christian Coalition to the Moral Majority working to install politicians who favor religious law over public law, thereby creating a virtual theocracy. This is done in spite of the fact that our own Constitution guarantees freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion.
But when religion fails as it has on the abortion issue to convince people of its brand of morality, it is too hard for believers to admit or accept.
So you get pompously righteous politicians pumping their fists, proclaiming they are “on the side of God” while saying “We want to ban abortion!”
And why? Because it will get them elected and bring in campaign contributions. And yes, if they build enough consensus in America for their various pet “religious causes”, they may indeed seek to impose their religious worldview on the nation by banning abortion, teaching of evolution and taking away equal rights for gays and women and people of color. Well, America by definition and Constitution is supposed to provide equal rights for all, not just the religious citizens of the republic. Yet the Republican platform has determined that’s not good enough. They’ve made up their own agenda for America, supposedly in the name of God.
Failure twice over
We’ll state it plainly to make the matter clear. It is never right to use politics to compensate for the failures of religion. For religion to refuse to acknowledge its own failures and then blame America for persecuting the Christian faith is the ultimate hypocrisy. But that is the Republican platform these days, and it should be seen for what it is: A failure wrapped in political lies in an attempt to grab power.
So you should ask yourself: Is the reason you vote Republican because your religion has failed society? If so, then you should go to your church, not the voting booth as the means to effect change in society. Because if you really trust God, why do you need to rely on politicians to accomplish your aims?
And so it goes. In the modern era, it has become a bit more difficult for Christians to defend the verity and meaning of this story because the season has become perverted by the massive commercial significance of the holiday season. This has not been the fault of the secular world. Many people celebrate Christmas because it’s fun, but that permission has long been granted by the competing tale of Santa Claus bringing gifts to small children and adults alike around the world. Christians have willingly conveyed this myth for over a century now. There is likely no turning back.
Years ago I read a massive two-volume biography of Winston Churchill. It was with great disappointment that I learned that the author of those first two books had died. The third would have covered the period including World War II, and that would have been fascinating to study the actions and philosophies of the man that ushered Great Britain through the war.
Resistance to this secret society of Conservatism with a Capital A (and its apparent arm, the CIA) is what got President Kennedy killed back in the 1960s. So the phenomena of killing threats to the cabal is not new.Kennedy was no saint, that’s for sure. But what he also represented as a political liberalism that some perceived as a threat to the security of America. But again, the considerations shown by John F. Kennedy in negotiations with the Soviets in the Cuba Missile Crisis are likely what prevented nuclear war. In other words, his small “c” conservatism kept us safe, just like Winston Churchill’s small “c” conservatism helped guide the Allies through World War II. It is this conservatism to which I believe Winston Churchill is referring in the quote above this column.
Indeed, Conservatives with a capital “C” want Americans to behave like Pavlov’s dogs in response to the call for war and acceptance of violence as status quo. They wave flags as patriots in fear until the very meaning of the flag is all worn out. Our flag has come to represent a national attitude of fear and a worn out ideology as a result.
Cheney was no Churchill, let’s all agree on that. He seems to have envisioned himself that way, but where he falls short is in the ability to recognize the advantage of being a smart conservative with a small “c.” That is one who knows that conservatism actually involves consideration. Cheney appears to have none of that capacity, and as a result his version of “keeping us safe” turned the Middle East into a morass of angry terrorist hornets hoping to break free and sting the invader of their nest.
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