The Cancer Komen Must Cure Is Right Wing Extremism
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and took possession of a troubled land that was more geographic expression than country (as Metternich once said of Italy), I remember thinking at the time that we were far less likely to export democracy to Iraqis than Iraqis were to teach us a lesson about how fragile are the cultural foundations upon which democracy rests.
American society has been fracturing for some time. This is due to many factors: growing anxiety over jobs in a global economy; changing demographics as the nation becomes less white and Christian; the rise of identity politics, specifically more politically aggressive religious groups; and communications technologies that allow individuals to self-segregate by ideology with dual citizenship to places like Fox “Nation” or Hannity’s “America.”
What may have once been an academic curiosity has now metastasized into a genuine concern: Intensifying political polarization is threatening the ability of our community to hold together as both our politics and our government become increasingly dysfunctional.
To better understand one’s country and its own internal dynamics it is often advantageous to step away and see what lessons might be learned by studying the experience of other countries.
And for America this is especially true of the Middle East, where the more intimately America becomes entangled with that troubled region the more our own domestic politics absorb through osmosis the Middle East’s distinctive tribal pathologies and torments as well.
Christian fundamentalists, for example, are not merely obsessed with Israel because daydreaming about the Jewish State’s eventual destruction by the armies of the Anti-Christ at the Battle of Armageddon lets them act out their rapture fantasies from the Book of Revelation. The Religious Right also draws inspiration from Israel for what the Right might be able to accomplish here as they watch ultra-Orthodox groups transform Israel’s democracy into a Jewish theocracy.
In an article titled “The Troubling Rise of Israel’s Far Right,” New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier cites reports in the New York Times showing that the list of controversies – and confrontations — between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews is growing weekly.
Organizers of a conference on women’s health, for example, barred women from speaking from the podium.
Ultra-Orthodox men spit on an eight-year-old girl “whom they deemed immodestly dressed.”
The chief rabbi of the Israeli Air Force resigned because the army would not excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform.
Jerusalem’s police commander was depicted as Hitler on posters because he allowed public buses with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in violation of that sect’s religious dogmas — an intolerance the American Catholic bishops might want to think about as they use words like “totalitarian” to describe their dispute with President Obama over coverage for contraception in health care plans.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews even went so far as to prohibit a distinguished woman scholar whose book on pediatrics was being honored by Israel’s Ministry of Health from sitting with her husband at the ceremony or accepting her prize in person since women were forbidden from stepping on stage.
The New York Times article, said Wieseltier “provoked widespread revulsion” in the US, as it ought.
The origin of the problem, both there and here, is the infusion of fundamentalism into politics.
Fundamentalism is less religious than psychological — an aspect of personality that abhors ambiguity and demands certainty, and thus authority, in every aspect of their lives, whether political or religious. Fundamentalism is fundamentally incompatible with liberalism and with the emphasis in liberal societies on the autonomy of the individual and individual free will.
“Like all liberal societies, says Wieseltier, “Israeli society contains anti-liberal elements, and these anti-liberal elements, both religious and secular, have become increasingly prominent, and increasingly wanton, and increasingly sickening.”
Of chief concern is the treatment of women in Israeli society.
The “odious misogyny of the ultra-Orthodox” is not yet typical of Israeli life in general since the ultra-Orthodox have seceded from it, says Wieseltier. But gender discrimination is typical of traditional Judaism where “there is no equality between men and women in theory and in practice.”
Whatever freedom women enjoy in Jewish religious life, he says, “has been accomplished by movements and institutions that have broken with the inherited understandings.”
There are many rabbis, even among the more orthodox, “who have shown glimmers of compassion for women and tried to mitigate their doctrinal contempt for secular Jews,” says Wieseltier.
But more typical is the rabbi who said that: “Only one who believes in the God of Israel and in the Torah of Israel is entitled to be called by the name ‘Jew.'”
Using that standard, said Wieseltier, one of the more extreme Jewish sects declared that the total Jewish population in the world amounts to only about one million.
“Our worst enemies never eliminated so many of us,” said Wieseltier.
As the radicalization of Israeli Judaism continues apace, Wieseltier said the bigger problem is that “Israeli politics is open to these closers.” That is especially true given the outsized influence Israel’s parliamentary democracy gives to small parties.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is disgusted by the tightening grip of orthodoxy in his country he doesn’t seem to be doing much to stop it, says Wieseltier. “Nobody ever suffered political damage by pandering to obscurantism and folk religion,” he says. “And that is how gender segregation came to some of the public sphere of a secular state.”
All these developments are unique in their own way, “but the pattern is hard not to see,” says Wieseltier. “There are fevers on the right, anti-democratic fevers. These are the excrescences of Benjamin Netanyahu’s base. The outrage is not that these forces have gone too far, but that they have gone anywhere at all.”
The pattern is also hard not to see here in America.
An Israeli-style, orthodox-fueled fracturing of the American community took place just last week in the otherwise inexplicable schism that at least temporarily existed between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.
That two organizations so committed to the same vital mission of fighting for women’s health would be at bitter loggerheads is a stunning reminder of the destructive nature of fundamentalist mindsets that let nothing stand in their way of achieving their ideological obsessions.
“We’re talking about breast cancer here!” said one exasperated women’s health advocate when she first heard the news that Komen was pulling funding from Planned Parenthood.
As Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg reports, in the first 24 hours after Komen announced its decision to pull $700,000 in funding, Planned Parenthood raised about $400,000 from outraged supporters online. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg chipped in $250,000 and the Amy and Lee Fikes Foundation also donated another $250,000.
Within the Komen organization itself, the Connecticut affiliate publicly rebuked the parent agency over the new policy, says Goldberg, writing on its Facebook wall: “Susan G. Komen for the Cure Connecticut enjoys a great partnership with Planned Parenthood, and is currently funding Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. We understand, and share, in the frustration around this situation.”
The Denver Komen affiliate said it too planned to continue grants to Planned Parenthood no matter what the organization’s top executives might have to say about it.
And so it begins: the unraveling, fracturing and eventual disintegration of any organization, institution or communitiy invaded by the cancer of right wing fundamentalism which fails to find a cure.
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon, February 5, 2012
“Your God Is My God”: What Mitt Romney Could Say To Win The Republican Nomination
Governor Mitt Romney has yet to persuade the religious conservatives in his party that he is fit to be President of the United States. However, he could probably appease the Republican base and secure his party’s nomination if he made the following remarks prior to the South Carolina Primary:
My fellow Republicans,
I would like to address your lingering concerns about my candidacy. Some of you have expressed doubts about my commitment to a variety of social causes—and some have even questioned my religious faith. Tonight, I will speak from the heart about the values that unite us.
First, on the subject of gay rights, let me make my position perfectly clear: I am as sickened by homosexuality as any man or woman in this country. It is true that I wrote a letter in 1994 where I said that “we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern,” and for this I have been mocked and pilloried, especially by Evangelicals. But ask yourselves, what did I mean by “equality”? I meant that all men and women must be given an equal chance to live a righteous life.
Yes, I once reached out to the Log Cabin Republicans—the gays in our party. Many people don’t know that there are gay Republicans, but it is true. Anyway, in a letter to this strange group, I pledged to do more for gay rights than Senator Edward Kennedy ever would.
Well, Senator Kennedy is now deceased—so I don’t have to do much to best him and keep my promise. But, more to the point, ask yourselves, what did I mean by “rights”? I meant that every man and woman has a right to discover the love of Jesus Christ and win life eternal. What else could I have meant? Seriously. What could be more important than eternal life? Jesus thought we all had a right to it. And I agree with him. And I think we should amend our Constitution to safeguard this right for everyone by protecting the sanctity of marriage.
I don’t have to tell you what is at stake. If gays are allowed to marry, it will debase the institution for the rest of us and perhaps loosen its bonds. Liberals scoff at this. They wonder how my feelings for my wife Ann could be diminished by the knowledge that a gay couple somewhere just got married. What an odd question.
On abortion—some say I have changed my views. It is true that I once described myself as “pro-choice.” But again, ask yourselves, what did I mean? I meant that every woman should be free to make the right choice. What is the right choice? To have as many children as God bestows. I once visited the great nation of Nigeria and a met woman who was blessed to have had 24 children—fully two-thirds of which survived beyond the age of five. The power of God is beyond our understanding. And this woman’s faith was a sight to behold.
Finally, I would like to address the scandalous assertion, once leveled by the Texas Pastor, Robert Jeffress, that my church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—is “a cult.” In fairness, he almost got that right—the LDS Church is a culture. A culture of faith and goodness and reverence for God Almighty. Scientology is a cult—this so-called religion was just made up out of whole cloth by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. But the teachings of my Church derive directly from the prophetic experience of its founder, Joseph Smith Jr., who by the aid of sacred seer stones, the Urim and Thummim, was able to decipher the final revelations of God which were written in reformed Egyptian upon a set golden plates revealed to him by the angel Moroni. Many of you are probably unfamiliar with this history—and some of you may even doubt its truth.
I am now speaking to the base of our party, to the 60 percent who believe that God created this fine universe, and humanity in its present form, at some point in the last 10,000 years. Let me make one thing absolutely clear to you: I believe what you believe. Your God is my God. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and the Son of God, crucified for our sins, and resurrected for our salvation. And I believe that He will return to earth to judge the living and the dead.
But my Church offers a further revelation: We believe that when Jesus Christ returns to earth, He will return, not to Jerusalem, or to Baghdad, but to this great nation—and His first stop will be Jackson County, Missouri. The LDS Church teaches that the Garden of Eden itself was in Missouri! Friends, it is a marvelous vision. Some Christians profess not to like this teaching. But I ask you, where would you rather the Garden of Eden be, in the great state of Missouri or in some hellhole in the Middle East?
In conclusion, I want to assure you all, lest there be any doubt, that I share your vision for this country and for the future of our world. Some say that we should focus on things like energy security, wealth inequality, epidemic disease, global climate change, nuclear proliferation, genocide, and other complex problems for which scientific knowledge, rational discussion, and secular politics are the best remedy. But you and I know that the problem we face is deeper and simpler and far more challenging. Since time immemorial humanity has been misled by Satan, the Father of Lies.
I trust we understand one another better now. And I hope you know how honored I will be to represent our party in the coming Presidential election.
God bless this great land, the United States of America.
By: Sam Harris, Sam Harris Blog, January 15, 2012
Will The GOP Field Ignore Another Pastor Who Says God Sent Hitler To ‘Hunt’ Jews?
Has the GOP primary gone off the rails before the first vote has even been cast?
In 2008, Sen. John McCain rejected the endorsement of John Hagee, a far-right pastor who had called the Catholic Church the “Great Whore” and said that Hitler was sent by God to be a “hunter” of Jews who had not yet moved to the land that would become Israel. McCain wasn’t exactly running as a moderate – look who he chose to be his vice president – but he knew, at least this time, that a line had been crossed.
Today’s GOP presidential candidates seem to have no such scruples.
Compare Hagee’s statements to this passage from a 2004 sermon by Mike Bickle, megachurch pastor, big-time evangelical, and star speaker at Rick Perry‘s August prayer rally-cum-campaign launch. In a video found by Brian Wilson of Talk to Action, Bickle prophesies that in the End Times 2/3 of all Jews “will die in the rage of Satan and in the judgments of God.” He goes on to discuss a disturbing and ultimately dangerous theory of the Holocaust even more outrageous than that pushed by Hagee:
The Lord says, “I’m going to offer two strategies to Israel, to these 20 million.” He says, “First, I am going to offer them grace, I am going to send the fisherman.” Do you know how a fisherman lures? I mean do you know how a fisherman does their thing? They have the bait in front, luring the fish. It’s a picture of grace. … And he says, “And if they don’t respond to grace, I’m going to raise up the hunters.” And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler. He drove them from the hiding places, he drove them out of the land.
Mike Bickle is not just any radical pastor preaching End Times scripture. He was a key organizer of Perry’s The Response rally this summer, lending a number of staff members of his International House of Prayer (yes, IHOP) to the event and emceeing the proceedings himself.
Bickle has a history of outrageous claims. In the lead-up to The Response , for instance, People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch reported Bickle’s theory that Oprah Winfrey is the precursor to the Antichrist. Asked about the extremism of Bickle and other The Response leaders before the rally, Gov. Perry said, “I appreciate anyone who’s going to endorse me, whether it’s on The Response, or whether it’s on a potential run for the presidency of the United States. Just because you endorse me doesn’t mean I endorse everything that you say or do.” That’s true. But Perry did more than accept Bickle’s help: he trotted him out to promote the event that served as a de facto launch of his presidential campaign.
Asked about Bickle’s more recently uncovered anti-Semitic rant, a Perry spokesperson performed a similar dodge:
Gov. Perry initiated the Response event for the sole purpose of bringing our nation together for the common cause of praying about the challenges confronting us. Those participating did so because of that common cause, and the issue you refer to has nothing to do with the goal and purpose of that event.
Only in today’s GOP does “bringing our nation together” entail hosting an event for the nation’s most vitriolic opponents of pluralism.
We need not even go as far as Bickle to see how much the GOP has changed in just a few years. Invited to speak alongside the controversial pastor at Perry’s marquee event was Hagee himself.
Neither Bickle nor Hagee has officially endorsed Perry. In fact, it’s the other way around: by placing them on the stage at a nationally televised event, you could say that Perry endorsed Bickle and Hagee. While McCain rejected the endorsement of someone who demonized people of other faiths, Perry is actively working to throw such people into the spotlight.
As Perry has embraced and promoted these proponents of religious prejudice, his fellow candidates have stood by in silence. Even when Perry endorser Robert Jeffress repeatedly called Mitt Romney‘s Mormon religion a “cult” and called Catholicism a “counterfeit religion” created by “Satan,” only one candidate (Jon Huntsman, a Mormon himself) challenged him directly — and Perry kept the endorsement. Even Mitt Romney, who tries to come across as the most reasonable of the bunch, has accepted the endorsement of prominent anti-Muslim advocate Jay Sekulow.
These candidates, of course, are entitled to their personal religious beliefs. But they are running to be the president of all Americans. If they stand by silently while people like Bickle, Hagee and Jeffress peddle bigotry against non-Christian religions, and even against other types of Christians, they’re giving us a hint of how they would approach their presidencies. It’s a frightening vision, and one that the American people are smart enough to see before they go to the polls.
Whatever our differences we should all, at least, be able to agree that Hitler was not sent by God to convert Jews to Christianity; that Catholicism, Mormonism and Islam like all religions are protected by the Constitution; and that Oprah Winfrey is not the Antichrist. Will Perry or any of his fellow candidates stand up and contradict Bickle, Hagee and Jeffress? Can’t we at least start there?
By: Michael B. Keegan, President, People For The American Way, Published in The Huffington Post, November 4, 2011
Mitt Romney, The Quiet Extremist
At the last GOP presidential debate, Americans of all political persuasions were shocked when the audience loudly booed Stephen Hill, an openly gay soldier who sent in a video question from Iraq about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We were even more shocked when it dawned on us that not a single candidate on stage was going to step up to defend Hill or even thank him for his service to the country. Rick Santorum, the only candidate to respond to Hill’s question, accused him of receiving “special privileges” for “sexual activity” and called the new policy that allows him to serve openly “tragic.” None of his fellow candidates contradicted him.
Similar scenes unfolded in earlier debates, when crowds cheered Texas’ record breaking number of executions and applauded the idea of an uninsured man dying of a treatable illness.
These reactions hopefully say little about the average GOP voter — most decent people of any party recoil at the idea of insulting an active servicemember or of a sick neighbor dying — but the candidates’ silence spoke volumes. Today’s Republican presidential candidates, even the supposed moderates, live in fear of crossing a small base that has developed an alternate view of reality and a dangerously skewed notion of liberty. Chief among these is Mitt Romney, who started his career as an East Coast moderate but now knows that extremists are the only thing that can keep him from the GOP nomination. The former moderate is now, paradoxically, the most beholden to the extremist fringe.
Romney is still trying to have it both ways — to retain what little is left of his “moderate” persona while cheerfully appeasing the most extreme elements of the corporate and religious Right. He is banking on being able to get through the primary with both of his personas intact. Unfortunately for him, it’s not working.
In fact, Romney’s eagerness to appease has placed him solidly in the far-right — and increasingly unpopular –Tea Party camp of the GOP.
Romney wears his pro-corporate politics with the pride of a Koch brother. He told an audience in Iowa recently that “corporations are people” — a bold statement, even for a multi-millionaire who made his fortune partly on the profits from outsourcing American jobs. And he hasn’t backed down from his claim — in fact, he keeps repeating it.
Romney may think that corporations are people, but he seems to think that they deserve more care and concern from the government than working, tax-paying, family-feeding citizens. His economic plan calls for the vast deregulation of financial markets, whose lack of constraints in the Bush era led to the catastrophic economic collapse from which we’re still digging our way out. In contrast with his policies as governor of Massachusetts, where he helped close a budget gap by eliminating $110 million in corporate tax loopholes, Romney has now signed a pledge rejecting all efforts to raise revenues by making the wealthiest pay their fair share in income tax or closing loopholes that help companies ship jobs overseas. Instead, he has called for reducing corporate income tax, which is already so low and riddled with loopholes that some mammoth companies didn’t pay any last year. When a debate moderator asked the GOP candidates if they would accept a budget compromise that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases, Romney joined all the others in saying he would reject it.
It’s perhaps not unexpected that Romney has joined the Tea Party herd on fiscal policy — after all, he’s a wealthy man himself and stands to lose a little if Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy and other hand-outs to the most fortunate are rescinded. But he has also, in more of a stretch, wholeheartedly embraced the social extremism of the Religious Right.
Romney’s still distrusted by many on the Religious Right — he was for abortion rights before he was against them, once promised to establish “full equality for American gay and lesbian citizens” and distributed pink fliers at a gay pride parade, and, of course is a Mormon. But that hasn’t kept him from kowtowing to the Religious Right leaders who still hold enormous sway in the Republican party.
In the most recent illustration yet of Romney’s quiet acceptance of the Radical Right, he is scheduled to speak at next week’s far-right Values Voter Summit, a Washington get-together sponsored by designated hate groups the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. At the event, Romney will take the stage immediately after AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer, a man whose record of outspoken bigotry is so shocking he would be an anathema to any reasonable political movement. Fischer wants to deport American Muslims, says gays are responsible for the Holocaust and claims Native Americans are “morally disqualified” from controlling land. He also claims that non-Christian religions don’t have First Amendment rights – among the faiths he has singled out as exceptions to the free exercise clause is Romney’s own Mormonism. I have called on Romney to distance himself from Fischer’s bigotry before handing him the microphone on Saturday… but don’t hold your breath.
Participants at the Values Voter Summit rarely check their less savory values at the door. At last year’s event, which Romney also attended, FRC president Tony Perkins managed to simultaneously insult both gay troops and several allied nations by insisting that nations that allow gay people to serve openly in the military “participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the nation and the world free.” Neither Romney nor any of the other GOP luminaries present spoke up in response.
At the Values Voter Summit, as in the GOP debates, Mitt Romney will doubtless attempt to slide under the radar, never openly condoning extremism, but never contradicting it either. As he emerges as the GOP frontrunner, it needs to be asked: is Mitt Romney more moderate than his fellow candidates, or is he just better at strategically keeping his extremism quiet?
By: Michael B. Keegan, President: People for The American Way, October 4, 2011
Why Conservatives Hate Warren Buffett
Maybe only a really, really rich guy can credibly make the case for why the wealthy should be asked to pay more in taxes. You can’t accuse a big capitalist of “class warfare.” That’s why the right wing despises Warren Buffett and is trying so hard to shut him up.
Militant conservatives are effective because they are absolutely shameless. Many of the same people who think the rich should be free to spend unlimited sums influencing our politics without having to disclose anything are now asking Buffett to make his tax returns public. I guess if you’re indifferent to consistency, you have a lot of freedom of action.
Buffett has outraged conservatives by saying that he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. He’s said this for years, but he’s a target now because President Obama is using his comment to make the case for higher taxes on millionaires.
Thus did the Wall Street Journal editorial page call on Buffett to “let everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns.”
Somehow, the Journal did not think to ask its friends who battle vigorously for low taxes on capital gains to release their tax returns, too. But aren’t they just as engaged in this argument as Buffett? Shouldn’t accountability go both ways? Nor did the Journal suggest that the Koch brothers could serve the public interest by releasing a full accounting of all their political spending.
Buffett’s sin is that he spoke a truth that conservatives want to keep covered up: Taxing capital gains at 15 percent means that people who make their money from investments pay taxes at a much lower marginal rate than those who earn more than $34,500 a year from their labor. That’s when the income tax rate goes up to 25 percent. (For joint filers, the 25 percent rate kicks in at $69,000.) For singles, the 28 percent bracket starts at $83,600, the 33 percent bracket at $174,400.
So if an investor such as Buffett pockets, say, $100 million of his income in capital gains, he pays only a 15 percent tax on all that money. For everyday working people, the 15 percent rate applies only to earnings between $8,500 and $34,500. After that, they’re paying a higher marginal rate than the multimillionaire pays on gains from investments. Oh, yes, and before Obama temporarily cut it by two points, the payroll tax added another 6.2 percent to the burden on middle-class workers. That levy doesn’t apply to capital gains or to income above $106,800, so it hits low- and middle-income workers much harder than it does the wealthy.
No wonder partisans of low taxes on wealthy investors hate Warren Buffett. He has forced a national conversation on (1) the bias of the tax system against labor; (2) the fact that, in comparison with middle- or upper-middle-class people, the really wealthy pay a remarkably low percentage of their income in taxes; and (3) the deeply regressive nature of the payroll tax.
(Because this column appears in The Post, I should note that Buffett heads a company that owns a substantial minority share in The Washington Post Co. and for many years held a seat on the company’s board of directors.)
It’s worth noticing that while conservatives who talk about religion get a lot of coverage — and I will always defend their freedom to speak of faith in the public square — what really get the juices flowing on the right these days are tax rates. I’m not sure that a politician who renounced the Almighty would get nearly the attention Buffett has received for his renunciation of low capital gains taxes.
Advocates of higher taxes on the wealthy do not want to “punish” the successful. Buffett and Doug Edwards, a millionaire who asked Obama at a recent town hall event in California to raise his taxes, are saying that none of us succeeds solely because of personal effort. We are all lucky to have been born in — or, for immigrants, admitted to — a country where the rule of law is strong, where property is safe, where a vast infrastructure has been built over generations, where our colleges and universities are the envy of the world, and where government protects our liberties.
Wealthy people, by definition, have done better within this system than other people have. They ought to be willing to join Buffett and Edwards in arguing that for this reason alone, it is common sense, not class jealousy, to ask the most fortunate to pay taxes at higher tax rates than other people do. It is for this heresy that Buffett is being harassed.
By: E. J. Dionne, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 28, 2011
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