One of the areas where the Religious Right has held the upper hand in public life is the matter of religious freedom. Those of us who agree with the cultural and constitutional traditions related to religious pluralism, rights of individual conscience, and separation of church and state can do better. Religious freedom ought not be defined by Christian supremacists of the Religious Right to advance their interests. The rest of us need to own it as a defining aspect of our political culture and our vision for a better world.
I was never a big fan of comic books when I was a kid, but on those occasions when I did spend some spare change on them, I treated "Archie" comics like they were radioactive. Who cared about the tame antics of the gang in Riverdale when there were superheroes to follow?
Times have changed. "Archie" is really hot now, and it's all thanks to a character named Kevin Keller. In the "Life with Archie" series (which gets the gang out of high school and follows their adventures in their 20s), Keller is an Iraq War veteran who comes home after being wounded. During his hospital recovery, he meets a physical therapist and falls in love. In an issue that came out Jan. 10, they get married.
In order to avoid a repeat of 2008, Religious Right leaders made an unprecedented show of unity behind Rick Perry's "non-partisan" prayer rally in Houston on August 6. One week later, while other candidates were involved in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, Perry announced his candidacy from Charleston, South Carolina. The latest poll, taken January 11, shows Perry with only 5 percent support for the January 21 South Carolina primary.
Can right-wing evangelical leaders unite in a last-ditch effort to nominate anybody but Romney? Which candidate would it be?
Up until recently Bob Reccord was the head of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is the convention's most popular agency, the one with the largest budget. He has retired from this post to take a higher office in the land. He is now according to Ethics Daily, the head of the Council on National Policy. According to many experts, this is the most powerful Religious Right organization in the nation.
From the nightmare in Norway, to the addled End Times predictions of Harold Camping; from class warfare in Wisconsin, to the rise of the Occupy Movement; from the shrinking Black population in New Orleans, to the anti-abortion extremism of Bleeding Kansas; from the American Legislative Exchange Council's increasing political influence, to several Republican Party presidential candidates getting the call to run from God; from Gingrich's bloviating, to Perry's "oops," to Romney's predatory capitalism; from the death of "compassionate conservatism" in the U.S., to the rise of class warfare in Canada; from Apple's shameful supply chain of poison and pollution, to Hobby Lobby's evangelical empire, these were some of the stories covered in 2011.
Finally, a late summer's visit to San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art taught me a lesson about history.
Who would have imagined that 2012 would start with Sheldon Adelson funding a film with a populist and anti-corporate raider message? And in support of Newt Gingrich? In South Carolina?
A $3.4 million dollar ad purchase by Winning Our Future, a Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, will flood the state with attack ads and a half-hour film describing the impact of Romney's Bain Capital on workers and communities. A 3-minute trailer of "When Romney Came to Town" can be viewed at www.kingofbain.com. The parts of the film I've been able to access indicate an abrupt reversal from the trickle down, "rising tide lifts all boats" ideology that the GOP has been marketing for decades. It is also a dramatic shift from Gingrich's own messages to Pastors Policy Briefings and in the related United in Purpose/Champion the Vote's DVDs which feature him. Will going after "predatory capitalists" be a new strategy for the GOP, or will Gingrich's nuclear option against Romney damage the party's core messaging?
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage thinks so -- and he is taking credit in a fundraising email (and blog post) for deflating the one-time Ron Paul surge. He wanted to remind Iowa conservative Christians that an anti-abortion candidate is not necessarily also anti-marriage equality. So NOM produced a pre-caucus TV ad that Joe Klein from Time among others thought was "very effective." Brown claimed that in a state where anti-gay marriage forces removed three Justices from the Iowa Supreme Court for having voted for marriage equality, this was an issue about which GOP caucus voters cared.
Gary North, son-in-law of the late Rousas Rushdoony, is one of the most prolific Christian Reconstructionist writers. He is also an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute (the U.S. center for Austrian economics), recipient of the its 2004 Rothbard Medal, and contributor of hundreds of articles for LewRockwell.com, the newsletter of the institute's founder and chairman. Link to my previous article on this topic, Waiting for the Day When We Can Say We're All Austrians: Ron Paul's Brand of Libertarianism.
North's writing explains the theocratic libertarianism of Christian Reconstructionism, a Dominionist movement which would dramatically reduce the federal government and control society through enforcement of biblical law at the local and state levels. Theocratic libertarianism has become a foundational philosophy for some of the Religious Right, but it is also surprisingly seductive to Tea Partiers and young people, some of whom may not fully understand what is supposed to happen after the federal government is stripped of its regulatory powers.
Mitt Romney's razor-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses was accomplished in large part the old fashioned way; sporting a huge bankroll, Team Romney blanketed the state with negative TV ads and eviscerated the campaign of perhaps his most formidable rival, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
John Terrence "Terry" Dolan would have been proud.
Before the Super PAC fundraising groups, before Karl Rove, before Frank Luntz's linguistic somersaults, before the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, before Fox News, and even before the closeted Senator Larry Craig's wandering bathroom leg and Ted Haggard's drug and sex scandal, there was John Terrence "Terry" Dolan.
Twenty-five years ago, Dolan died of AIDS. If you don't recognize the name, that's probably because you probably weren't sniffing around the entrails of the Republican Party's political machine during the late 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s.
Recent press coverage has described Rep. Ron Paul's appeal to young voters as based on the combination of his conservative economics with liberal social views. This might suffice as a simplistic explanation of the libertarianism of some Americans, but it does not accurately represent Paul's ideology. Paul's brand of libertarianism is shared with the frequently overlapping John Birch Society, Constitution Party and Conservative Caucus (both founded by Howard Phillips), and the American branch of the Austrian School of Economics - the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Like Paul, these groups are located on the ultra-conservative end of the political spectrum. Their distinguishing feature is a brand of libertarianism in which the federal government is to be dramatically reduced in favor of "states' rights" and, as described by the Constitution Party, local application of "jurisprudence based on biblical foundations." This is theocratic libertarianism, the type of libertarian "freedom" promoted by Christian Reconstructionist Rousas J. Rushdoony.
It looks like opponents of creationism are going to have their hands full in 2012. The new year is just a few days old, and already we've seen several anti-evolution bills popping up in the states.
In Indiana, state Sen. Dennis Kruse has introduced S.B. 89, a bill that would allow public schools in the state to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation."
In light of late polls apparently showing Rick Santorum "surging" in Iowa, it seems like a good moment to reprise a post from March, when Santorum visited Massachusetts.
Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) who is considering running for president, recently visited Boston, a major hub of Catholic politics and the biggest media market in New England. While minor appearances by non-candidates don't always make the news, Santorum's remarks to a small group of Church partisans made The Boston Globe because he not only denounced our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in his home town, but he attacked Kennedy's historic 1960 campaign speech in which he explained his unwavering clarity regarding the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. Kennedy's position had served as the standard for a half century of political leaders. (See Rob Boston's excellent defense of Kennedy's views on separation.)
Santorum has been trying to rebuild his political career since being unseated by Bob Casey (D-PA) in 2006. And while he may not catch fire on the campaign trail, Santorum's bombast in Boston is certainly part of an escalating war of attrition against the principle of separation -- and it may be a bellwether for what we might anticipate in the run-up to the 2012 presidential campaign.
print page
