America in Crisis

AMERICA IN CRISIS

Introduction

America is in crisis not unlike the crisis it faced on the eve of the American Revolution in 1776. What kind of crisis does America face? When we look upon America today we see much pain, suffering, and misery within the human condition. We are separated from one another – by nationality, by culture, by language, by politics, by religious beliefs – almost to the point of our ultimate destruction. Moreover, within each of these categories we are further separated – reactionaries against modernists, traditionalists against futurists, isolationists against cosmopolitans, conservatives against liberals, dogmatists against free thinkers – until we threaten to use the “nuclear option” even upon ourselves.

What is the nuclear option? The nuclear option, also called the "constitutional option," is an attempt by the presiding officer of the United States Senate to end a filibuster by majority vote. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the term was coined by the Republican Senator from Mississippi Trent Lott.

In 2005 then-Majority Leader Republican Bill Frist of Tennessee threatened to use the “nuclear option” unless the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed President George W. Bush’s Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservative nominees Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and Janet Owen who had all been designated by professional legal associations as “dogmatic,” “extreme,” and “activist conservatives” to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Republicans complained that the Democrats' judicial filibusters had already killed three of President Bush's Court of Appeals nominations: Miguel Estrada, Charles Pickering, and Carolyn Kuhl as those judges had withdrawn their nominations rather than continue to fight the filibuster.

If there was any doubt that the Radical Religious-Right was the instigator of the thereat to use the nuclear option that doubt was erased when Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, and several other prominent Christian conservatives endorsed the nuclear option as a necessary means of getting state conservative judges onto federal appellate benches. On May 1, 2005, in an interview on ABC's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Pat Robertson said that Democratic appellate federal judges are a greater threat to American unity and stability than Al Qaeda, Nazi Germany, or Civil War. On Sunday, April 25, 2005, the Family Research Council sponsored "Justice Sunday" featuring Senator Bill Frist by telephone hookup which was a clear violation of the separation between Church and State. Justice Sunday was a 90-minute simulcast over right-wing Christian radio and television networks that enthusiastically supported the nuclear option. In January 2005, Dr. James C. Dobson, head of the Focus on the Family, threatened six Democratic senators if they blocked conservative nominees.

In response to this threat, Democrats threatened to shut down the Senate and prevent consideration of all routine and legislative Senate business. The ultimate confrontation was prevented by the Gang of 14, a group of seven Democratic and seven Republican Senators, all of whom agreed to oppose the nuclear option and oppose filibusters of judicial nominees except in extraordinary circumstances.

It is this compromise; specifically the agreement not to filibuster judicial nominations, initiated by the Gang of 14 that prevented those Senators opposed to affirming the nominations of John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and Samuel Alito as a Supreme Court Justice from doing so. Both Roberts and Alito are right-wing ideologues who in their decisions as federal appellate court judges wrote that they did not believe the Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion was constitutional and given the proper interpretation of the privacy clause could be overturned. However, both swore under oath that they respected the precedent of Supreme Court cases regarding such topics as abortion and affirmative action and would consider and vote on new cases brought before the Court in their light.

Yet, both Roberts and Alito cast their first votes as Supreme Court Justices to make so called “partial birth abortion” unconstitutional as well as to make the right of employees to file suit for wrongful termination predicated on certain grounds that their civil rights had been violated unconstitutional.

The engine driving both President Bush and the Republican Senators to appoint and confirm these highly biased and unqualified judges to lifetime positions as federal appellate judges and Supreme Court Justices are Radical Religious Right-aWing Conservatives. Much has been written about the danger posed to America by Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives. However, many of those who see this danger believe that what has happened in America since the rise of the Radical Religious-Right is nothing more than a blip on the history of American religion and politics. They believe that with the revelation of ineptness and corruption of the Bush administration, future presidents cannot be as destructive to America and the world as is Mr. Bush. They also believe that when Mr. Bush leaves office, the Radical Religious-Right will leave with him. None of these assumptions could be farther from the truth.

It is estimated there are approximately100 million people who designate themselves as “conservative Christians” in America today. That means that one out of every three people in America is an Evangelical, Fundamentalist, conservative Roman Catholic, or biblical inerrant believing Christian who believes God has ordained them to make their faith beliefs the law of the land. Thus, the danger they pose to America will remain with us for generations to come.

This is because the Radical Religious-Right sees itself as God’s instrument to “take back America for God;” that is, a Christian God they have created according to their own faith beliefs. For the Radical Religious-Right this is not politics; although that is the method they use to achieve their goal. To the Radical Religious-Right they are waging a cataclysmic battle between good and evil; a battle between those who fear God and the godless secular humanists of America for America’ soul.

It must be understood that to achieve this goal they will do anything possible without regard to what is legal, ethical, or moral as was demonstrated time and again during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. It is also demonstrated by Mr. Bush’s “Faith Based Initiative Programs” that have funneled countless millions of dollars in violation of the constitutional separation between church and state to religious organizations. These faith based organizations are dedicated to “Abstinence Only Before Marriage” programs in public schools that have been proven by study after study not to work and to faith based women’s health centers that are virulently against contraception and abortion that deny women the full range of gynecological and family planning health care they need.

The Difference Between Conservatives And Liberals

Who are these conservative Republicans and what makes them so different from liberal Democrats that they have no respect or regard for the Constitution of the United States and seek to remake American into a theocracy in their faith image?

Conservatives most often are people:

Who seek regulators and regulations in their lives because they do not trust people to live "inside the lines."
That may think for themselves but such thinking is fettered by the constraints of institutional “do’s and don’ts” especially religious ones.
Who are not creative but prefer to "keep things going as they are” in the name of “stability."
Who do not believe other people should be allowed to live their lives in ways conservatives deem "destructive" to either themselves or others.
That need authority figures in their lives to point to and for guidance in how to live their lives.
Who prefer jobs that are objective; that is, have a proscribed method that leads to predictable results that translate into the money that buys institutional recognition and security.
Who believe that people are not capable of living by their own moral agency predicated on their informed conscience because to do so allows them to make decisions and act upon them that are opposed to conservatives beliefs of what is right and wrong; moral and immoral; especially regarding contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.
Who believe people need God and the church to tell them what is right and wrong, morally and immoral, and consequently what they can and cannot do in their lives.

Liberals are most often people:

Who are open to alternative possibilities in all aspects of their lives.
Who believe that it is their right to think for themselves.
Who are creative.
Who accept differences in others including their thoughts, beliefs, and behavior.
Who do not feel much of a need for authority figures in their lives.
Who are "people people.”
Not motivated by money or institutional expectations of boundaries.
Need to live by their own moral agency predicated on their informed conscience and reject the need of God or the church to tell them what is right or wrong; moral or immoral; especially regarding contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.

Many of the conclusions cited above are not new. For instance William Gladstone (1809-1898), four times Prime Minister of England summarized the difference between liberals and conservatives when he wrote, “Liberalism is the trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of the people, tempered by fear.”

Thus liberals and conservatives operate from two diametrically opposed world-views. Liberals are open, flexible, and self-determined. Conservatives are closed, ridged, and need boundaries imposed upon them which they in turn try to impose on liberals.

The question to be asked is, “Is it better to live one’s life as a liberal or a conservative?” My unabashed answer is it is better to live one’s life as a liberal. It is better because regardless of what conservatives may think and believe, conservatism as practiced within the limits of religious dogma and doctrine denies the fullness of living as God created us by the exercise of his gift of Free Will exercised by the hermeneutic of an informed conscience. Moreover conservatism by its very definition, but especially when weighted down by religious dogma and doctrine, is incompatible with the Constitution which is a document of entitlement of individual rights and liberties exercised and informed by one’s conscience protected by the constitutional principle of privacy

Conservatives will respond that yes, we have Free Will and may use our informed conscience, but the exercise both of them must be within the parameters given by the church which received them by biblical inerrancy, natural law, or divine revelation. Although that line of argumentation may be conclusive for conservatives, it is only conclusive because that is the paradigm they choose to invest with divine absoluteness.

Contrarily, if one does not accept that paradigm as either divinely transmitted or absolute, the argument ceases to be credible. It is reduced to the value of human opinion as pronounced by a particular sect of Christianity. That makes it not only one expression of a particular value by a discrete faith tradition, it shrinks even more when it is recognized that Christianity itself is only one very small expression of the divine when considered in light of all of the world’s religions.

The bottom line is that while conservatives deny the legitimacy of the above, liberals embrace it and that is the greatest distinction between them.

Rise Up America

The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is right. It is not too late. It is not too late for people who revere individual rights, liberties and social justice to throw the radical right-wing Republican conservatives out. Yes, let's give them and their radical right-wing money men the bums rush right out of government.

The Black Liberation mantra of the 1960s-1970s was, "Power to the People!" A slogan, yes; but a true one. Our Constitution is structured so that the people, you and me, have the power to throw the bums out but only if we vote.

People who care about other people, primarily liberal Democrats, were complacent in 2000 and did not vote in sufficient numbers which allowed the conservative Republican dominated Supreme Court to appoint, yes appoint; not elect, George W. Bush president. That never should have happened! But, did the liberal Democrats learn their lesson?

NO! By the election of 2004 the Democratic Party and its candidates were too busy trying to be politically correct in responding to the Kafka-like political version or Evangelicalism created by the Radical Religious-Right. They allowed the nation to be hoodwinked by Karl Rove's smoke and mirror act reminiscent of McCarthy's "communist behind every tree and bush" fear mongering where Rove substituted the fear of gay marriage for fear of communism with churches being forced to marry gay people against their faith beliefs.

To their profound discredit, some Roman Catholic bishops jumped on the bandwagon with their own brand of McCarthyism. They did so by telling Catholic candidates they must proclaim the Church’s dogma regarding abortion and then vote according. They made it absolutely clear that if Catholic candidates for office did not comply with this demand, especially the Democratic candidate for president John Kerry, he and they risked publicly being denied Holy Communion.

So much for the constitutional separation of Church and State as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned. So much for the continual declarations by Pope Benedict XVI that the Roman Catholic Church respects duality and pluralism in government, does not seek power, and does not interfere in the political affairs of sovereign nations. So much for the lies, lies, and more lies perpetrated by the Vatican that it has no ambition other than the saving of souls.

My Native American ancestors had an expression used to describe someone who uttered such false declarations and Pope Benedict would do well to listen and learn from it: “White man speak with forked tongue.” I emphasize the pope should listen and learn because to my ancestors, a man’s honor and integrity was contained within the bond of his word. To them, truth was not an abstract concept or ideal seldom realized. To them, truth was a living entity by which all men are judged.

Ronald Reagan called the former Soviet Union "the evil empire." When he visited Berlin he challenged Mr. Gorbachev to “take down that wall.”

We now have our own evil empire in America. It is the collusion, an ecclesial conspiracy if you will, between the Roman Catholic Church and Evangelicals to destroy the constitutional separation between Church and State and in its place create a theocracy according to their faith beliefs.

We, The People Of America, who believe in the values of the Constitution as promulgated by the Founding Fathers, especially the separation of Church and State, are now challenged to rebuild the wall of separation between Church and State. The fox of conservative Christianity and conservative Republicanism is guarding the Constitutional hen house and We The People have no place to roost in safety or peace.

What it means to be Christian, what it means to be an American, and what it means to be America, have been hijacked by a Radical Right-Wing ship of state; more to the point a ship of Radial Religious Right-Wing truncated myopic fools, whose legacy over the past seven yeas has been pain and misery both in America and the world.

But, Mr. Herbert is right. It is not too late. It is time to rise up! Rise up liberal Democrats! Rise up New Jerusalem, and retake America! Rise up and restore both the Constitution and America to the vision of the Founding Fathers! Rise up, rise up, and throw the bums out!

There Comes A Time

However it is not just liberal Democrats who must rise up. All Americans whether they are Republicans or Democrats who are patriots, true patriots and not in the words of Thomas Paine summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots, must rise up now and stop the malignancy of Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatism that is destroying both our country and the world.

There comes a time whether we are a Republican or a Democrat when we must take off the rose colored glasses. There comes a time whether we are a Republican or a Democrat when we must put the good of the nation above our personal religious beliefs and political opinions. There comes a time whether we are a Republican or Democrat when we must answer the question, “Is America a nation governed by the Constitution and the laws that stem from it or do we accept the end of the ‘noble Experiment’ as European nations described the fledgling representative democracy we call America?” There comes a time whether we are a Republican or Democrat if we answer that question as a patriot we must declare, “No, Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives cannot do business this way in my name!”

America, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, is in crisis! Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives are responsible for events that threaten not only the safety, sanctity, and security of America but of the entire world. They justify their actions by claiming, as does President Bush, to be a “compassionate conservatives” and “born again Christians.” The fact is they are not conservatives, compare their “conservatism” to the classic conservatism of “Mr. Conservative” Barry Goldwater, and they do not understand the meaning of compassion.

The fact is they are not “compassionate conservatives.” We need only to follow the advice of Jesus when he told us how to tell a false prophet; that is, by the fruit of their works. When we apply this method to Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives we find their works are just the opposite of historic conservatism.

True conservatives are traditionally pro-military and promote a strong national defense; yet, they have also been isolationists that fought to keep American out of World War I and World War II.
True conservatives would never consider a first strike against a sovereign nation much less bomb a sovereign nation and occupy it without substantial proof that American was in imminent danger of attack.
True conservatives are fiscally prudent and are dedicated to creating the lowest budget deficit possible; not creating the highest budget deficit in America’s history.
True conservatives work to achieve the lowest unemployment rate possible. They believe every able bodied person who can work must work.
True conservatives would never sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that are designed to put American workers out of work by outsourcing American jobs to Third World countries.
True conservatives value the separation of Church and State because they do not want the State to impose rules and regulations that govern the practice of religion or the Church to remake American into a theocracy in its faith image.

The fact is they are not born again Christians. Born again Christians live their life as Jesus taught in the Summary of the Law: The first and great commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, with all thy mind, and all of thy soul. And the second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself. Those who are truly born again Christians would never use the term “born again Christian” to turn the ethical and moral teachings of Jesus upside down and inside out to justify their unethical, immoral, and illegal behavior to achieve the goal of remaking American into a theocracy in their faith image.

American in 2008 is not unlike the American Colonies in 1776. Why? Because in both 1776 and in 2008 the people suffer under the tyrannical rule of a man named George, ours driven by Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives, who believes he is chosen by God to rule over us. The people of 1776, who in a few short years would call themselves Americans, had the courage at the very real prospect of being hung by the neck until dead for treason to rebel against their King George. We, the American people of today, will not be hung by the neck if we fail to depose Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatives but do we even have the courage to try?

To answer that question I am reminded of some of the most patriotic words every written. Thomas Paine wrote the following words on December 23, 1776 and General George Washington read them to his troops on Christmas morning, December 25, 1776. It was all he had to give them that Christmas morning as their future – the future of life and death – and the future of the nation hung in the balance. Little did any of them know that these words would be all they would have to sustain them through the long bitter years of war to come.

These words resonated in the hearts of Washington’s soldiers on that Christmas morning in 1776, and I hope they resonate in yours as well.

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Conclusion

Yes, FREEDOM is highly rated and very dear. America is in crisis today because what it means to be a Christian, what it manes to be an American, and what it means to be America has been hijacked by the Radical Religious-Right and they, in the words of Ian Henderson in his book, Power Without Glory, have transposed our political and national realities into an ecclesiastical key. That is so important let me state it again: Conservatives have transposed our political and national realities into an ecclesiastical key.

How highly do we Americans in 2008 rate our freedom? Have we become so complacent that we no longer value freedom? Or, have we become so complacent that we no longer are willing to pay a proper price for it?

The conservatives of the Radical Religious-Right do not believe that we value freedom – especially the rights and liberties granted to us by the Constitution. They do not believe we are willing to pay the price – the price we must pay to force them from positions of influence, power, and out of office to end their tyranny and regain our freedom.

Are they right or are they wrong? I urge you to reflect on the words of Thomas Paine. Then I ask you to decide what freedom, what the Constitution, and what being an American means to you.

Finally, I ask you to make a decision: Are you a summer soldier and sunshine patriot or are you willing to take a stand and fight the tyranny of Radical Religious Right-Wing Conservatism as our Founding Fathers fought the tyranny of King George in 1776?

If you do, then join me in taking back America. If you do, then join me in reclaiming the Constitution of the United States as it was meant to be when it was written.

If you do, rise up! If you do, rise up New Jerusalem and retake America! If you do rise up and restore both the Constitution and America to the vision of the Founding Fathers!

If you do, rise up, rise up, and throw the bums out!