Rick Perry - Why We Should be Afraid

It's no secret that Texas governor - and now presidential candidate - Rick Perry has aligned himself with some of the most hate-filled and extremists elements of the Christianists. "The Response" last weekend was but the latest of Perry political fellatio efforts to secure the support of the ultra far right. Besides siding with extremists, Perry's record in Texas is not exactly comforting. Yes, he brags about job creation - but most of the jobs created have been at the bottom rung of the employment ladder. Certainly not jobs that allow one to prosper and raise a family. Karen Ocamb looks at why we should be fearful of a Perry candidacy at LGBT Pov. Here are highlights (I recommend that you read Karen's article in full):

Republicans might be divided about who best represents their political values right now but if, in the end, Republicans chose Texas Gov. Rick Perry as their presidential standard-bearer to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012, Americans should expect nothing short of a political holy war.

As Iowa voters drove to Ames for their curious Straw Poll that may weed out some GOP presidential contenders, Perry was in Charleston, South Carolina for the RedState Gathering where, as anticipated, he stole the national show by announcing his 2012 presidential run.

Mainstream journalists seem to think Perry has gotten past the brief controversy over the large prayer rally he organized, unabashedly meshing Christianity with politics – something Perry denied during the rally. In fact, most mainstream journalists paid scant serious attention to “The Response” at the time, shrugging off the rally’s subtitle – “a call to prayer for a nation in crisis.”

But the nation is in crisis and during such times, many people turn to religion for comfort and communion with others. They become “prayer warriors.” And while hard-core politicos might shrug with some bemusement at the emotional pitch in this video – religious people of all stripes will find in it something familiar. If former Texas Gov. George W. Bush was someone voters felt they could have a beer with – Perry is someone with whom they can pray.

As ThinkProgress has pointed out, God is in the mix on everything, including the bad economy. PERRY: I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles . . . .

But there is way more to this story, in addition to Perry’s explicitly antigay beliefts. In advance of Perry’s announcement, Rachel Maddow reported on some of the themes and through-lines Perry’s prayer rally prophets espouse . . . And Perry picking these radical fringe Christians – who believe they are prophets and apostles with a direct line to God – elevates the fringe Christians from the self-contained Christian church, TV and online networks to the national stage. And apparently Perry believes he’s been anointed by these prophets to be the “instrument of God” to bring about that theocracy.

On the excellent watchdog website Talk to Action, Rachel Tabachnick and Bruce Wilson have been studying, researching and writing about the New Apostolic Reformation [NAR] – the religious extremists to whom Perry is enthralled – for several years. . . .

The apostles of the NAR view themselves as leading the one legitimate church and unifying Christianity for the end times. In their end times scenario, it is necessary to take control over societal and governmental entities before Jesus can return. But first, as could be heard repeatedly in the messages at Rick Perry’s prayer event, the church has to repent and be cleansed.

In the context of the teachings of the NAR, the repeated calls for repentance of the church at Perry’s prayer event were about cleansing Protestantism of its toleration of homosexuals, a woman’s right to choose, and most importantly – of its toleration for religious pluralism, separation of church and state, and secular government. Again, toleration of those things of which they disapprove is not a virtue, but a sign that one is controlled by demons.

And now those martyrs to the cause, as well as the NAR prophets, have a politician around whom they can rally. If these troops are mobilized – and if the NAR’s amorphous identity can be masked to recruit the tired, poor and afraid – this 2012 election should be like no other we’ve seen.

These people are scary and constitute a clear and present danger to constitutional government if they - and Perry and those like him - are not stopped and defeated electorally.

Tyranny of the Majority

The San Francisco Guardian has a lengthy and thoughtful article that looks at the horrific precedent posed by Proposition 8 if it is allowed to stand. While a number of states have passed anti-gay marriage amendments, only in California did such an amendment take away a right which had been upheld by the state's highest court. Arguably, if equal protection means anything, all of the anti-gay amendments are unconstitutional and need to be struck down, but Proposition 8 needs to fall the most of any of these hate motivated initiatives. As I have said in prior posts, the "deeply held religious belief" justification for passage of these types of amendments is bullshit and nothing more that phony icing on a poisonous legal precedent. Here are some story highlights:

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[The} basic issue: can a simple majority of voters take away rights from a protected minority group, one the judicial branch has already ruled is entitled to the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples? The implications of that answer are so profound that City Attorney Dennis Herrera, in a City Hall press conference after the court announced its decision, cast the matter as no less than a "constitutional crisis."

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"This measure sought to do something that no other constitutional amendment has ever done here in the state of California, and that is to strip a fundamental right from a protected class of citizens and in doing so, it did not merely undo a narrowly disfavored Supreme Court ruling. Its legal effect is nowhere [near that] simple or elegant. Rather, it upended a separation of powers doctrine deeply rooted in our system of governance. It trounced upon the independence of the state's judicial branch and it eviscerated the most fundamental principle of our state's constitution. And if allowed to stand, Proposition 8 so devastates the principle of equal protection that it would endanger fundamental rights of any potential electoral minority, even for protected classes based on gender, race, or religion. And it would mean a bare majority of voters could enshrine any manner of discrimination against any unpopular group, and our state constitution would be powerless to disallow it," Herrera said.

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Beyond the historical and precedent-setting nature of the case, the council's executive director Rick Schlosser told the Guardian that Prop. 8 discriminates against Episcopal, Unitarian, and other churches that believe all people have the right to marry. "We work on a lot of religious freedom issues and there's a huge number of churches that support the right of people to marry," Schlosser said. "There are a lot of churches that think it's their religious duty to perform same-sex marriages."

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"Equal protection under the law is what separates constitutional democracy from mob rule tyranny and it is a principle that reaches back eight centuries to the Magna Carta and it has guided the founding of our nation and our state," he said. "So I understand that on same-sex marriage, the emotions on both sides run high, but it's important to understand the legal stakes are even higher. The cases before the high court today are no longer about marriage rights alone. They are about the foundations of our constitution. And as citizens we share the blessing of a common jurisprudence, and I refuse to accept that it is beyond us to find common ground in its enduring and deeply American principles: equality under the law, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary." . . . . Essentially, this is no longer a case about same-sex marriage.

American Freedom Campaign

Before I get to the office and the day gets busy, I wanted to note a website that I heard about when I turned on the TV while having my morning mug of strong coffee. It was the tale end of a segment on Joe Scarborough with Naomi Wolf that involved a discussion of the erosion of Constitution under Chimperator Bush and an organization that had been organized to resist the subversion of the Constitution and citizens' civil rights. The web address is: http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/

The organization's agenda is as follows: At critical moments in our history, Americans have been called upon to protect our Constitutional guarantees of liberty and justice. We face such a moment today. The American Freedom Campaign is a non-partisan citizens' alliance formed to reverse the abuse of executive power and restore our system of checks and balances with these ten goals:

1. Fully restore the right to challenge the legality of one's detention, or habeas corpus, and the right of detained suspects to be charged and brought to trial.

2. Prohibit torture and all cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

3. Prohibit the use of secret evidence.

4. Prohibit the detention of anyone, including U.S. citizens, as an "enemy combatant" outside the battlefield, and on the President's say-so alone.
5. Prohibit the government from secretly breaking and entering our homes, tapping our phones or email, or seizing our computers without a court order, on the President's say-so alone.

6. Prohibit the President from "disappearing" anyone and holding them in secret detention.Prohibit the executive from claiming "state secrets" to deny justice to victims of government misdeeds, and from claiming "executive privilege" to obstruct Congressional oversight and an open government.
7. Prohibit the abuse of signing statements, where the President seeks to disregard duly enacted provisions of bills.

8. Use the federal courts, or courts-martial, to charge and prosecute terrorism suspects, and close Guantanamo down.

9. Reaffirm that the Espionage Act does not prohibit journalists from reporting on classified national security matters without fear of prosecution.

In my view, these are serious issues about which much of the American population is clueless.