Frank Schaeffer Explains Who Are These People? Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within

[Emit]

Glenn Beck and The 9/12 Marchers: Subversives From Within

Who are these people?! Where do they come from?! Ordinary Americans might wonder why anyone would stoop so low as to follow Glenn Beck, Fox News and Dick Armey (and their corporate sponsors masquerading as "FreedomWorks") as they organize their "9/12 March On Washington" to cynically exploit the 9/11 attack.

Patriotic Americans might question the organizer's aim to provide a media forum for dimwitted right wingers to scream "Liar!" "Socialist!" "Antichrist!" "Muslim!" "Death Panels!" "He's not an American!" and so on and on and on about the commander in chief charged with defending us from further attacks. And some people might even cry "shame on you!" to the more mainstream Republicans participating that include Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, as well as GOP Reps. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Pence of Indiana, Tom Price of Georgia, and South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint.

Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan, I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days.

Let me also answer this question: Who are these people? ...

Cont'd at:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html

[waiting for hope]

1. Frank Schaeffer should be commended for

speaking out, I wonder if he has had any death threats?

From the article:

~Snip~

Bipartisan Pipe Dream

Because you can't be bipartisan with people who don't play by the same rules -- say accepting the will of the people -- as you do. Obama is not alone in his gentlemanly wishful thinking. For instance consider New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus saying in his book (The Death of Conservatism) that the the conservative movement is over.

Tanenhaus rightly points out that the extremism of the right has driven away traditional Republicans. I ought to know! I, as a life-long Republican and former Religious Right activist helped create this situation. But Tanenhaus and others like him just don't get the fact that the far right is resurgent, in fact more dangerous than ever as a wounded animal is dangerous. They don't get it because kindly liberals also live in a bubble.

The kindly liberal reasonable bubble of an open free culture in which reason, argument in fact prevails is far removed from the other America, one of militia training camps, fundamentalist churches, parents who follow Dobson's "parenting" advice by "breaking" their children and whipping them (as Dobson tells them to do in his books) and thus raising the damaged and dangerous automatons of biblical vengeance and sadism.

~Snip~

Why try to play nice? I'm tired of this "spirit of bipartisan" bullshit.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. And these people have embraced the language of revolution and civil war

why I find it hilarious when people find even the concept laughable.

These are the heirs of Calhoun...

[waiting for hope]

6. What these people want is to go back in time

to about over 2,000 years ago - I'm sure having many wives wouldn't bother them, owning slaves would be a big boon and being able to beat your wife is a wet dream for them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Yeah but people do not see the danger they pose

they are a fifth column who do not believe in the US... as a democracy...

[Shallah Kali]

10. They think they are laughable loons not realizing the damage they have already done for years

from school boards up to helping W get placed in the White House. Others just hear Christian and think it is their sort of Christian who helps the poor, wants their kids to be ethical, etc. not realizing these self-proclaimed Christians want to bring back stoning of everything from astrologers to gays.

[catzies]

24. Yes. To them, the "Good Old Days" were the Dark Ages.

The last time religion ruled the world...

[Emit]

15. Yes he should.

Long term the Religious Right subculture has to be understood, then exposed for what it is: an anti-democracy movement built on willful lies with potentially violent underpinnings in the thrall of an apocalyptic cult of revenge on everyone not like "us."

Boy, he spits it out there in the article in no uncertain terms. Wouldn't surprise me if he receives death threats from some of these fanatics he's calling out.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. Exactly. The Dems aren't ready yet for this fight. But it is upon us.

Scary stuff, but Obama and Dems/liberals need to pay attention!

[RagAss]

5. yes...these people are armed to the teeth and we think words will win this battle.

We need to wake up...or sleep forever.

[malaise]

4. Must read

K & R

[Cha]

8. Thanks Frank Schaeffer!

"The generation raised on the belief that the US government is illegitimate because it is trying to "impose" non-biblical laws on people has hit the streets. These are the people who grew up indoctrinated into an alternative reality. Today they are out there waving signs of Obama dressed as Hitler. They are buying weapons and ammunition. Some are in the growing and revived militia movement. They are Dick Armey's foot soldiers. People like Armey and Beck can count on the ignorance of their dupes. It's against their religion to read a real newspaper, watch anything but Fox or go to a real school."

[Emit]

11. indoctrinateed "to see their own society as the enemy"

chilling. absolutely chilling.

[Mari333]

9. knr

[Luminous Animal]

12. I wish people would stop calling our President...

the Commander in Chief. Though the President is CiC of the armed forces, he is not CiC of the citizenry. Our culture and society is militarized enough without ascribing a role to the President that is clearly outside of the Constitution and un-democratic, to boot.

[Emit]

13. I think the author used it in an appropriate context

"...and so on and on and on about the commander in chief charged with defending us from further attacks." :shrug:

[ddeclue]

14. So would it be disrespectful to start referring to the Senator from South Carolina as Sen. DimWit?

:rofl:

[leftrightwingnut]

16. These anti-American theocratic subversives do not play by the rules.

What should our response be when they lose the "game of checkers" and pull out the "lead pipe?" They may very well get their revolution.

At some point their noise and fury will wake a great sleeping bear. And it will be angry. Then their rule-less tactics will come back to them many times over.

Sometimes you get what you wish for.

[SpiralHawk]

17. The k and the r

eom

[Solly Mack]

18. some excellent points

K&R

[SpiralHawk]

19. An excellent quote about the anti-American nature of the right wing

"Today the right wing America haters actually are doing to America what no "illegal" immigrants ever do: work to overthrow our democracy and replace it with a theocracy. The home-schooled, privately educated brainwashed horde are an antidemocratic, fundamentally anti-American political movement."

[Solly Mack]

21. Yes

It really is - "are an antidemocratic, fundamentally anti-American political movement."

[lyonn]

30. That one really hit home, ouch

How do we fight that? Are there statistics on how many are members of the Radical Religious Right?

These are the people that keep this cowardly athiest quiet most the time about religion.

[Stables2010]

20. Great read

Helps you understand where these irrational people are coming from. e

[tnlefty]

22. Welcome Stables2010.

:hi:

[redqueen]

23. K&R

Thanks for posting this.

[Kablooie]

25. What he describes is the Taliban. Exactly! The exact same, dangerous people with a different name.

[TxRider]

32. Ding ding!

That exactly what they are.

I've seen the madrasa.. err church school.

My little sister went to one for a while when she had some issues in our public school (don't ask) and boy are those folks like that. She hated it, but as chances end up she ended up buying her first house right next door to that school. They didn't burn her house or shoot at her, but it was not a comfortable arrangement and confrontations by them were not rare.

Every time I see a video of a madrasa in Pakistan brainwashing kids I think of that school.

I don't label home schoolers like that though, I've never met a home schooled person like those people. Far from it, though I'm sure there are a few out there.

It's a very good thing these people are a pretty small minority.

[Martin Eden]

26. Wow. If Schaeffer has them pegged, it's even worse than I thought ...

... because the home & Christian-schooled are not the only idiots getting caught up in this hysteria.

[Kingofalldems]

27. KO should have this guy on===> pronto

[GrilledCheeses]

28. K&R

[bullwinkle428]

29. The next time someone at DU starts crying about how unfair it is

to compare the extremist fringe of the religious right to the Taliban, we need to point them in the direction of Frank Schaeffer.

[Kablooie]

31. Sounds like we may be heading towards another civil war? And with the same basic sides?

[robertpaulsen]

33. These paragraphs scare the living fuck out of me.

Evangelical Red Guards

Over the last 30 years Evangelical fundamentalists have managed to do what Chairman Mao failed to do with his Red Guards: indoctrinate a whole generation of evangelical people to see their own society as the enemy and act like subversives from within the culture. These people are as anti-American as Al-Qaeda. The "Christian Reconstruction" movement is working for theocracy. Reconstructionism (of which Gary North is one leader) says that the law given for the political and legal ordering of ancient Israel is intended for all people at all times.

Reconstructionist leader David Barton gives a definition:

"The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

Who are Glenn Beck's foot soldiers? In effect what we have is a group of indoctrinated people who have never actually lived in America because they were brought up deliberately cloistered from it by their parents and churches. Because they are legally "Americans" they can move freely around our democracy trying to destroy it working within the United States. Today they are acting like a fifth column, no, they are a fifth column. Some of them have not just seceded metaphorically, there is even a growing movement for states to secede literally.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html

What scares me most is how true it rings. I went to a private Christian elementary school for 3 years, Junior High for two years and high school for one year before I finally escaped. Frank Schaeffer speaks the truth, this is exactly how they think!

[Emit]

34. They scare the heck out of me, too

esp since all the crazies now seem to all be gathering steam and combining efforts, funded by corporatists, of course.