Does Far Right hypocrisy
Know no Bounds?
It is almost mind numbing to consider
the abyss that has opened between the evangelical rhetoric espoused by the
extreme right in American politics and some statements made by those same self
serving, self righteous , and one suspects, self loathing sycophants. As Jesus called out the Pharisees for their loud public
prayer, self aggrandizing piety and
hypocrisy, it is time for America to call out the hypocrites of the lunatic
right for theirs.
let's start with Pat Buchanan, the
nattering nabob and largely irrelevant Faux News mouthpiece. Buchanan's new, or
rather continuing, smear target and bête noir is gay equality. He has recently stated that clergy should make a call
from the pulpit for a wave of civil disobedience with regard to resisting
treating LGBT persons equally based, of course, on religious convictions.
" Buchanan juxtaposes LGBT rights with the racial civil rights movement,
openly admitting that religious leaders will have to preach “principled
rejection” and encourage their congregations to disobey laws. He believes
“treating black folks decently” is the Christian thing to do, but the same cannot
be said for the LGBT community."
So, you ask, where's the hypocrisy, we
admit he's a hater, but he's right on race, isn't he? He's a fine Christian who
believes in the brotherhood of man, It's just gays he hates now, right? The
following are Buchanan quotes actually made during the years he was a Nixon speechwriter,
toady and dirty trickster:
As a
Nixon White House advisor Buchanan urged President Nixon in an April 1969 memo
not to visit "the Widow King" on the first anniversary of Martin
Luther King's assassination, warning that a visit would "outrage many,
many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps
worse.... Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most
divisive men in contemporary history."
Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, he denounced the notion
that "white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get
that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this."
OK, so you say that was then, but now
Buchanan is, as the Uber Christian he purports to be, a changed man? All that racist stuff he now admits was
wrong! So today's Buchanan only hates the LGBT community instead of everyone
not like him? I demur, and offer the following as proof of this man's
incredible well of drivel. I would also offer that someone who has all of
Buchanan's vitriol and rancor could only dredge it up from a bottomless well of
self loathing.
"Rail as they will about
'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures
of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive
world of Western capitalism."
"With 80,000 dead of AIDS, our
promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and
suicide,"
Writing of "group fantasies of
martyrdom," Buchanan challenged the historical record that thousands of
Jews were gassed to death by diesel exhaust at Treblinka: "Diesel engines
do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." (New Republic,
10/22/90)
Buchanan was also "credited"
(as if the following deserved credit) with crafting Ronald Reagan's line that the SS
troops buried at Bitburg were "victims just as surely as the victims in
the concentration camps." (New Republic, 1/22/96)
In a speech to the Christian Coalition, Buchanan
declared: "Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our
religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free."
As to any inference
that Buchanan has changed his spots on race lately: President Obama is both a “drug dealer” and a
“boy” who is facilitating the end of White America. We also can’t forget that the President is a
closeted Muslim who is also leading the “death of Christian America.” (Fox News)
“Barack Obama is a drug dealer of
welfare,” he said, speaking on “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “He
wants permanent dependency, in my judgment, of all these folks…somehow getting
benefits, benefits, benefits and paying no taxes.” The irony about this last comment is that as
a percentage of GDP (the real accurate measure) welfare spending is in 2014
will be lower than the last Bush budget. From a high in 2010, in dire economic
conditions, federal welfare has steadily decreased.
In summary, Buchanan remains the racist, homophobic, sexist,
anti-Semite he's always been. But enough about Buchanan, let's move on.
The Tea (a)Party has
always had tunnel vision on a scale comparable to that of macular degeneration.
Within hours of the recent, deplorable violence in Boston on Monday, and with little
(and in a sense conflicting) evidence the blame game of "who is responsible" was inevitable,
I suppose. The mainstream right wing
points to al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorists, or indeed anyone ethnically,
culturally or linguistically different from their white American heartland, and
then blames Obama. Some on the far left (outside of the U.S., at least) don't
necessarily implicate al-Qaeda, but points out the lack of attention given to
similar atrocities wrought daily on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan as a
result of U.S. foreign policy. And then blames Obama. The Tea Party ... well
... they just blame Obama.
Tea Party Nation head Judson Phillips
claimed in an e-mail sent to members that the Boston marathon bombing occurred
because “we have a government that is not committed to protecting America”
since it isn’t willing to “destroy radical Islam.” Phillips said that “Radical
Islam and perhaps even non-radical Islam” is a danger to western civilization,
arguing that Muslims believe that “non-Islamic nations may be conquered or
otherwise taken over.”
Apparently Tea party nation wants us to simply
kill all Muslim fundamentalists. How odd, considering that the Bush family ,
pater et filius, have deep roots and political ties to the world's leading
educators of Islamic radicals, the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia. So much so in fact,
that Bush the elder actually invited a
Saudi prince to Texas to confer with "W" before his 2000 campaign. If
the above is true, and it is, chapter and verse, the surely the real problem is
the Bush clan, which went to war twice to protect Saudis and their oil based
sheikdom, only to see the World Trade Center brought down by terrorist Saudi
nationals. But, wait, where is the ire, the indignation, the blame on George W.
Bush? Clearly there was actual warning
by the Bush FBI of malfeasant foreign nationals and their nefarious schemes.
"W" wasn't blamed even though a Clinton threat assessment warned of Al
Qaeda.
President Obama was blamed for Boston by what is admittedly a fringe offshoot of the Tea Party. I'd have
used the term "lunatic" fringe, but I reserve that term for the main
body of the party. Although no foreign terrorist
group has claimed responsibility as is their norm, although there is zero
evidence of any organized effort, even though the radical Islam course would
have probably have been a suicide bombing, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Blaming Obama for everything -- the fact that
cats have fleas, your poor golf score, jock itch, rain last Wednesday -- has become such a right wing national (and
maybe global) sport that it has become more than tiresome , apart from the fact that opposition to Obama's
second term is more grounded in socio-cultural prejudice than it is in
political deliberation.
And finally to the last subject of the rant, a brief discussion of the hypocrite that is
Antonin Scalia. I had, mercifully, not
had the Justice's name cross my mind for several days, and then an article in
today's paper drew my attention. It seemed harmless enough . Entitled
"High court wrestles with dispute over girl's adoption," the articled
details an unfortunate case in South Carolina. A baby girl, born in S.C. to Native
American parents was placed for adoption, her mother having died and her father
having renounced any and all interest in her. Her adoptive parents, non Indian,
were suing to retain custody after the father changed his mind.
The case was granted certiorari under the
federal Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The law
was passed because of a then common practice of removing Indian children from
their natural homes citing child welfare issues with placement, in the vast majority of cases,
in non-Indian families. The law gives tribes and relatives a permanent say in
decisions affecting the child. The Justices, are torn, rightly so, over the law
vis a vis the best interests of the child. So far, so good, you say where does
the Scalia factor come in? Well, the gist
of the last paragraph of the item is as follows: Scalia laments that the law
clearly favors the biological father and, unfortunately does not direct the
courts to take into account the best interests of the child, stating, "I know a lot of kids that would be
better off with different parents, said Scalia, who has nine children. Scalia has written that "it is our moral
heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human
beings."
Still, what's the problem? Well, judging by the things he has said in
court or written in his legal opinions about gays and lesbians, he doesn't
really mean it. The problem is that Scalia suddenly places child welfare over
biological parent's legal rights, even though he has staunchly bashed Gay
marriage and gay adoption. “there’s considerable
disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child
in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.” So, Mr. Justice, let's make sure we understand, even though a
committed gay couple wanted to give a decidedly better upbringing, home
environment and life to a child whose crack head mom tried to pimp him or her out (I wish that
never happened, but the truth is heartrending) the child would be better off
with mom than the gay couple? Really? just how morally bankrupt can one be and
still sit on the high court?
Not content with to analogizing laws
singling out people on the basis of sexual orientation to laws banning murder,
(yes, he did!) Scalia suggested in one dissent
that the relationships of same-sex
partners were comparable to those of roommates. "[Colorado's ban]
prohibits special treatment of homosexuals, and nothing more," Scalia
wrote. "[I]t would prevent the State or any municipality from making death
benefit payments to the 'life partner' of a homosexual when it does not make such
payments to the long time roommate of a nonhomosexual employee." Again, "Men
and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are all subject to [Texas']
prohibition of deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex."
That should sound familiar: It's the same argument defenders of bans on
interracial marriage used to make, arguing that the bans were constitutional
because they affected whites and blacks equally.
Claims that same-sex parents produce less positive
child outcomes than opposite-sex parents—either because such families lack both
a male and female parent or because both parents are not the biological parents
of their children—contradict essentially all social science research on the subject. Decades of social science research, especially
expert evidence introduced in the
district courts, all available to Scalia in Amicus curiae briefs confirm that
positive child wellbeing is the product of stability in the relationship
between the two parents, stability in the relationship between the parents and
child, and greater parental socioeconomic resources. Whether a child is raised
by same-sex or opposite-sex parents simply has no bearing on a child’s wellbeing.
The
clear and consistent consensus in the social science profession is that across
a wide range of indicators, children fare just as well when they are raised by
same-sex parents when compared to children raised by opposite-sex parents. And
yet, when struggling for a “concrete” harm that could come from gay marriage,
Scalia went with “considerable disagreement among sociologists.” So we’ve gone
from a weak claim — “considerable disagreement” over harm is not the same thing
as actual harm — to an explicitly wrong claim, a claim which he clearly knows
has zero substantiation. Like Buchanan, Scalia is a Catholic; unlike Buchanan,
in fairness to Scalia, he has none of
Buchanan's other execrable biases except in this area, I even loved his
appearances in Boston Legal and I respect his intelligence, but he has been so far off the rails here that the single
sentence in the news item almost made me
spit my coffee.
There,
I feel better now. Good night Gracie.
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