Republican Party a Cult?
jabr314159 says, "The Tea Party is a cult."
juca says, "I agree... but I'd say the entire Republican Party is a cult at
this point."
****
Who Is the Tea Party?
A brochure put out in 2010 by the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee (DCCC) entitled Sarah Palin's Tea Party Primer, says:
"A recent poll by CBS News and the New York Times provided a scary picture
of Tea Party supporters. Here's what it found:
92% believe President Obama is leading to country to Socialism.
59% either believe or don't know if President Obama was born in another
country.
24% believe it is sometimes justified to take violent action against the
government.
66% doubt the impact of global warming.
64% believe resident Obama has increased taxes. (He cut them for 95% of
Americans.)
66% have a favorable view of Sarah Palin.
59% have a favorable view of Glenn Beck.
57% have a favorable view of George W. Bush."
The brochure quotes Sarah Palin as having said in her keynote address to the
Tea Party Convention on February 6, 2010:
"I am a big supporter of this movement. I believe in this movement."
****
In 2011, when I was dating the beautiful Adeline Lopez, she said she wasn't
worried about Sarah Palin posing a threat to our democracy, saying Sarah
Palin is a joke, and will never be president.
But Addie said Michele Bachmann has a degree from an accredited law school,
and, therefore, poses a real danger to our secular democracy.
(Addie also said she liked Bill Clinton, and that it would take Barack Obama
a second term to undo the damage caused by George W. Bush!)
I agree with the characterization of Michele Bachmann and other Republicans,
"Tea Party" Republicans, etc. as "fanatical Christians," but they shouldn't
be discriminated against merely because of their religious identity.
If these conservative Christians were to study recent history, they would
know that just a few decades ago, they were the ones being discriminated
against.
I would refer you to Juli Loesch's essay, "Life and Peace" from the '70s, in
which she describes making a completely secular case against abortion at an
antinuclear gathering, a liberal gathering, and they refused to listen to
her merely because of her religious identity.
Similarly, in his 1979 book, A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the
Seventies, UC Berkeley law professor John T. Noonan, Jr. describes the
religious discrimination pro-lifers faced in the '70s, even from their
fellow Christians.
Now that pro-lifers have some power and influence within the Republican
Party, they're discriminating against animal rights activists on the basis
of religious identity...
...trying to sweep a serious moral issue under the rug by depicting it as
someone else's "religious belief," which they mistakenly think doesn't apply
to them.
The irony here is that a lot of liberals look at abortion the same way!
(And these conservative religious nut jobs have the gall to claim they
"cover" or "do unto others..." !)
Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a Hare Krishna devotee, was elected to Congress in
2012 and sworn in on the Bhagavad-gita (Hinduism's most sacred scripture),
rather than on the Bible or the Koran.
Thomas Jefferson, the architect of American democracy, was politically
laissez-faire toward all belief AND disbelief, saying, “The legitimate
powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others.
But it does no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no
god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Another reason I side with the secular left over the religious right!
On the political left, no one cares about your religious identity or your
religious belief, or lack thereof.
Or maybe in Tulsi Gabbard's case it's because Hawaii is a blue state, with a
large Buddhist and Shinto population?
When I asked Upendra dasa in 1985 if Hare Krishna devotees faced hostility
from Christians in Hawaii, he was surprised by my asking such a question,
saying, "White Christians are a minority in Hawaii."
"That's good!" said my roommate John Anklow, a Reform Jew from New York,
visiting California in 1986, when I repeated Upendra's words to him. "They
should be a minority everywhere."
Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building,
Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202) 220-3066
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
430 South Capitol Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
202) 863-1500
www.dccc.org
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