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Today's GOP: Have Americans Gone Crazy?

GOP extremist, GOP Senator Joni Ernst

With the GOP suddenly speaking well of France and other member countries of the European Union, some in Europe must be wondering what has come over the erst while French hating Republicans.  But the bigger question in the minds of most foreigners, I suspect, especially from my own experience traveling outside the USA as far back as 2004 when my son and I were in Canada (every Canadian we met said we Americans deserved better than the Chimperator) and even as recently as this past September when the husband and I were in Venice and Greece, is how and why has America gone so insane and allowed the insane far right to be ascendant.  A piece in Salon looks  at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States.  Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.

I still remember a time when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world for way too many reasons to go into here.

That’s changed, of course. Even after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I still met people — in the Middle East, no less — willing to withhold judgment on the U.S.  Many thought that the Supreme Court’s installation of George W. Bush as president was a blunder American voters would correct in the election of 2004. His return to office truly spelled the end of America as the world had known it.  Bush had started a war, opposed by the entire world, because he wanted to and he could. A majority of Americans supported him.  And that was when all the uncomfortable questions really began.

In the early fall of 2014, I traveled from my home in Oslo, Norway, through much of Eastern and Central Europe. Everywhere I went in those two months, moments after locals realized I was an American the questions started and, polite as they usually were, most of them had a single underlying theme: Have Americans gone over the edge? Are you crazy? Please explain.

Then recently, I traveled back to the “homeland.”  It struck me there that most Americans have no idea just how strange we now seem to much of the world. In my experience, foreign observers are far better informed about us than the average American is about them.   This is partly because the “news” in the American media is so parochial and so limited in its views both of how we act and how other countries think — even countries with which we were recently, are currently, or threaten soon to be at war.


Take the questions stumping Europeans in the Obama years (which 1.6 million Americans residing in Europe regularly find thrown our way).  At the absolute top of the list: “Why would anyone oppose national health care?” European and other industrialized countries have had some form of national health care since the 1930s or 1940s, Germany since 1880.  Some versions, as in France and Great Britain, have devolved into two-tier public and private systems.  Yet even the privileged who pay for a faster track would not begrudge their fellow citizens government-funded comprehensive health care. That so many Americans do strikes Europeans as baffling, if not frankly brutal.

Sweden led the way in the 1930s, and all five Nordic countries pitched in during the postwar period to develop their own variations of what came to be called the Nordic Model: a balance of regulated capitalism, universal social welfare, political democracy, and the highest levels of gender and economic equality on the planet. It’s their system. They invented it. They like it. Despite the efforts of an occasional conservative government to muck it up, they maintain it. Why?

In all the Nordic countries, there is broad general agreement across the political spectrum that only when people’s basic needs are met — when they can cease to worry about their jobs, their incomes, their housing, their transportation, their health care, their kids’ education, and their aging parents — only then can they be free to do as they like. While the U.S. settles for the fantasy that, from birth, every kid has an equal shot at the American dream, Nordic social welfare systems lay the foundations for a more authentic equality and individualism.

These ideas are not novel. They are implied in the preamble to our own Constitution.

Knowing that Americans used to support such ideas, a Norwegian today is appalled to learn that a CEO of a major American corporation makes between 300 and 400 times as much as its average employee. Or that governors Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chris Christie of New Jersey, having run up their state’s debts by cutting taxes for the rich, now plan to cover the loss with money snatched from the pension funds of workers in the public sector. 

Implications of brutality, or of a kind of uncivilized inhumanity, seem to lurk in so many other questions foreign observers ask about America like: How could you set up that concentration camp in Cuba, and why can’t you shut it down?  Or: How can you pretend to be a Christian country and still carry out the death penalty? The follow-up to which often is: How could you pick as president a man proud of executing his fellow citizens at the fastest rate recorded in Texas history?  (Europeans will not soon forget George W. Bush.)

Other things I’ve had to answer for include:
* Why can’t you Americans stop interfering with women’s health care?
* Why can’t you understand science?
* How can you still be so blind to the reality of climate change?
* How can you speak of the rule of law when your presidents break international laws to make war whenever they want?
* How can you hand over the power to blow up the planet to one lone, ordinary man?
* How can you throw away the Geneva Conventions and your principles to advocate torture?
* Why do you Americans like guns so much?  Why do you kill each other at such a rate?

To many, the most baffling and important question of all is: Why do you send your military all over the world to stir up more and more trouble for all of us?

That last question is particularly pressing because countries historically friendly to the United States, from Australia to Finland, are struggling to keep up with an influx of refugees from America’s wars and interventions.

Did you note the question about claims of being a "Christian nation"?  While America pretends much more religiosity than old Europe, when it comes to governmental policy, the European models are much more in line with the Gospel message than America's vulture capitalist inspired model that kicks the needy to the gutter.   And who drives the effort to destroy the social safety net in the USA?  The Christofascist base of the GOP, of course.   I find the words selfish hypocrites on my lips.

Study: Gay Mormons in "Mixed Marriages" Likely to Divorce

Yet more cold water has been poured on TLC's ludicrous show, My Husband's Not Gay which aired this past Sunday.  Not only are most of the individuals in the show affiliated with "ex-gay ministries" - i.e., they are "ex-gays for pay" - but new studies indicate that closeted gay Mormons who marry women are 3 times more likely to divorce that are true heterosexual Mormon couples.  For anyone in touch with objective reality, the results should not come as a surprise. Meanwhile, the proponents of the "ex-gay myth" care nothing about the collateral damage done to straight spouses and/or the children of this faux marriages.  The Salt Lake Tribune has details.  Here are highlights:

The LDS couples profiled on TLC’s "My Husband Is Not Gay" may find these statistics sobering: Marriages like theirs — same-sex attracted husbands and straight wives — are two to three times more likely to end in divorce than others.

That finding and others come from a newly released in-depth survey of 1,612 self-selected LGBT/same-sex attracted Mormons and former Mormons, thought by researchers to be the largest study ever conducted with this population.

The study found that:

• Between 51 percent and 69 percent of mixed-orientation Mormon marriages end in divorce, well above the roughly 25 percent of LDS couples who split up.

• More than 70 percent of LGBT/same-sex attracted Mormons leave the LDS Church.

• 80 percent of respondents reported undergoing efforts to change their sexual orientation — 85 percent of which were religious and private efforts, 31 percent were private efforts only, 40 percent therapist-led and 21 percent group efforts.

• 53 percent rejected their religious identity; 37 percent compartmentalized their sexual and religious identities; 6 percent rejected their LGBT identity; 4 percent integrated the two.

Those whose mixed-orientation marriages ended experience "a kind of triple blame by their family and faith communities — first for being gay, then for having ruined the lives of their spouses and children by ... marry[ing] in the service of trying to ‘overcome’ their homosexuality, and then finally for having failed in the marriage and ‘given up,’ " he says. "They want their story to be known and not repeated; they want vindication for their mistreatment." 

The survey also concluded that many more LDS gays try "personal righteousness" efforts — prayer, fasting, church activity, temple worship and strict observance of the LDS health code — as a way to change their orientation than those who seek psychological interventions such as the discredited "reparative therapy."

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

The GOP's Hypocrisy on France

Remember how Republicans used to malign France and "Old Europe"?  Everything from France's health care system - one of the most cost efficient in the world - to liberal ideas to the decline of religiosity was open to attack and parody.  Now, a vast case of amnesia has seemingly set in as Republicans attack Obama for not attending the weekend march in Paris or at least not sending a high ranking American as a representative.  Perhaps it was a mistake, or maybe it was better not to give Islamic terrorists a chance to say America orchestrated the whole thing.  That's something open to debate.  What's not open to debate is the hypocrisy of suddenly French loving Republicans.  A column in the Washington Post takes deserved note of the hypocrisy overload.  Here are highlights:

There is a certain je ne sais quoi in conservatives’ criticism of the Obama administration over last week’s terrorist attack in France. 

A decade ago, Republicans in Congress were renaming French fries “freedom fries” and French toast “freedom toast” because of that country’s refusal to support the Iraq war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld belittled the “old Europe” French, President George W. Bush mocked an American reporter for speaking French to the French president, and conservative critics called the French “weasels,” “appeasers” and worse. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, was ridiculed by the Bush administration for being “too French” and looking French, and his fluency in French was a liability in the campaign.

And now, that very same Monsieur Kerry, the secretary of state, and his boss, President Obama, are being condemned by conservatives for . . . not being nice enough to the French.
Quelle horreur!
 
The cause célèbre this time is the failure of the Obama administration to send anybody of higher rank than the U.S. ambassador to attend Sunday’s march in Paris showing solidarity against the terrorists.

“Our president should have been there, because we must never hesitate to stand with our allies,” proclaimed Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican agent provocateur from Texas.

Fox News’s Greta van Susteren said the absence was “embarrassing” and that “Obama should not have snubbed Paris.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — like Cruz a would-be presidential contender — declared it “a mistake not to send someone.” (For the record, neither Cruz nor Rubio attended the march.)

Largely absent from this condemnation of the American government’s slight of the French were the French themselves. French President François Hollande said Obama had been “very present” in the response to last week’s attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market. 

Officials I spoke to said it was a simple screw-up: They didn’t understand how significant the event would be, with leaders of some 40 countries in attendance.

But the notion that Kerry, of all people, was slighting the French is a bit incroyable. The son of a diplomat, Kerry has close family in France and learned the language at a Swiss boarding school. After the initial massacre in Paris last week, he addressed the shooting at an appearance with the Polish foreign minister, in both English and in French. French TV channel TF1 said that Kerry’s “poignant statement in French” would “go down in history.”

Not too long ago, Kerry’s Francophilia earned him ridicule. Tom DeLay, a House Republican leader, would greet crowds by saying, “Hi. Or, as John Kerry would say, ‘Bonjour.’ ”

But now Kerry is being called insufficiently pro-French . . . The conservatives are guilty of a bit of inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, in criticizing the Obama administration for snubbing a people they not long ago called cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Another "Ex-Gay" Leader Admits the He's Still Gay

There's been much deserved blow back against TLC for airing its "reality show "My Husband's Not Gay" because it seeks to perpetuate the myth that somehow gays can "pray away" the gay.  It simply doesn't happen - I tried for 37 years and know that it's a lie.  If one needs further proof, Randy Thomas, formerly vice president of the now defunct Exodus International, once the largest "ex-gay" ministry has admitted that he's gay and  always has been.  Sadly, it would be foolish to expect Thomas' admission to do anything to stop the efforts of Christofascist to continue to peddle the myth that gays can change - there's too much money to be made and the myth is necessary for duping simpleton GOP elected officials.  Here are excerpts from Thomas' blog post finally admitting the truth and reality:

I have read many stories of people who have “come out again” or accepted they are gay after some time in the ex-gay world. Many of their stories are compelling and well-written. But, sometimes I wish they would get to the point right off the bat. Just say it and then tell the story. So that is what I am going to do: I am gay.

What Led To This Post?  The past six or so years have presented an opportunity to question my beliefs and evaluate my experiences without an idealized agenda. Then in 2011, as a result of all the turmoil that erupted at Exodus International (my former employer from 2002 to 2013), I began to dig deep and ask hard questions. Who am I? What do I make of my journey to date? How does God view me, my state of being? I questioned/pondered/re-examined all this and more again. Then in January of 2013, a man named Michael, someone I dated for a little while 24 years ago committed suicide. We remained good friends up until his death. His death was shocking and I still mourn his passing. Michael had several difficult issues contributing to his suicide, and I know he also struggled with his faith and sexuality. His death shook me to my core and made all the questions I had been asking were even more stark, consequential, and pressing. After being laid off from Exodus International (as a part of closing it down) in August of 2013, I began to have the personal space to think things through without distraction or filters.

Some snapshots of my history, at the age of 10 I was “out” to myself, I came out to friends at 16 and out to everyone as a gay man at 19. At 19, I paid a heavy price for coming out. I was as liberal a Democrat as one could be too. Then I became a Christian and moved toward being an ex-gay poster boy (the last Executive Vice President of Exodus International). At one point I was featured in a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times and featured in a book by Watergate figure Charles Colson called The Good Life.

Whether anyone cares, pays attention, approves, disapproves, friends or unfriends me isn’t the point. The point is that I need to stay true to how I am wired, be honest, and consistent with what I believe to be true in this regard. Writing this post is something I need to do as a part of taking personal responsibility for my past journey and being honest in my present reality.

Even though I have issued two apologies to the gay community (here and here) and found my first sense of identity and community as a gay youth/young man, I am not sure many will accept my apologies or this disclosure. I would definitely understand some people’s reluctance given my history. That said, while I care about what others think, I am doing this because I feel it is the right thing to do.

I am gay. I am ok with who I am. I hope we can continue to journey together.

Kudos to Thomas for at last being honest with himself and the world.  I do have to worry, however, about all those who were harmed by the lies disseminated by Exodus International before its closure.

God, Gays and the Atlanta Fire Department

The Christofascists are always looking for new "martyrs" who are held up as proof that Christians are "under attack" and subject to "persecution."  It is all part of their agenda to claim special rights for themselves while trampling on the rights of others and, as in the instance of former Atlanta fire chief, Kelvin Cochran, ignoring normal personnel policies and intimidating subordinates.  Despite warnings and a suspension for forcing his self-published book on department employees, Cochran continued to violate directives and ultimately was fired.  Now he is a Christian martyr in the ruse that the "religious liberty" of Christians is under assault.  If anything is truly under assault it is the religious freedom of everyone but far right Christians.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at Cochran's justified firing.  Here are excerpts:

Mr. Cochran, a veteran firefighter, is also a deeply religious man, and he was eager to bring his Christian faith into the daily functioning of his department — or, as he put it in a book he authored in 2013, to “cultivate its culture to the glory of God.”

But, as the book revealed, his religious beliefs also include virulent anti-gay views. He was fired on Jan. 6 by Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed, for homophobic language in the book, “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” Among other things, he called homosexuality a “perversion,” compared it to bestiality and pedophilia, and said homosexual acts are “vile, vulgar and inappropriate.”

Mr. Cochran had already been suspended for a month in November for distributing the book to staff members. Following an internal investigation, the mayor did the right thing and dismissed Mr. Cochran for what he called poor judgment: specifically, for failing to get approval for the book’s publication, for commenting publicly on his suspension after being told not to, and for exposing the city to possible discrimination lawsuits.

Cue up the outraged claims that Mr. Cochran’s rights to free speech and religious freedom have been violated — an assertion that is as wrong as it was predictable.

Mr. Cochran said he was fired “for no reason other than my Christian faith.” But he and his sudden coterie of supporters have it backward. This case is not about free speech or religious freedom. It is, as Mr. Reed said at a news conference, about “making sure that we have an environment in government where everyone, no matter who they love, can come to work from 8 to 5:30 and do their job and then go home without fear of being discriminated against.”

Unfortunately, Georgia’s lawmakers are headed in the opposite direction, considering for the second year in a row a “religious-freedom” bill that, like others around the country, would do little more than provide legal cover for anti-gay discrimination.

The First Amendment already protects religious freedom. Nobody can tell Mr. Cochran what he can or cannot believe. If he wants to work as a public official, however, he may not foist his religious views on other city employees who have the right to a boss who does not speak of them as second-class citizens.

Few are more selfish and self-centered than the "godly folk" who think they are above the law and policies that govern others.

More Monday Male Beauty

Faced With legalization of Gay Marriage, Virginia Republicans Manuver to Block Gay Rights

Prior posts have noted the efforts of Del. Bob Marshall to legalized anti-gay discrimination on a broad scale.  Marshall - who has stated he'd like to drive all gays from Virginia - has many allies in the Virginia GOP and, most importantly, is pushing the anti-gay agenda of The Family Foundation ("TFF"), a hate group in all by formal SPLC designation.  Countering these efforts are Gov. Terry McAuliffe (about whom TFF has nothing good to say) and Democrat members of the Virginia General Assembly who want to drag Virginia once and for all out of a 1800's style theocracy.  The Washington Post looks at the vying efforts.  Here are highlights:

With the legalization of same-sex marriage in Virginia, Democrats and some Republicans have unleashed a torrent of proposals intended to reflect the new reality in time for the start of the legislative session on Wednesday.

Liberal lawmakers have jumped at the chance to remove language banning gay marriage from the state’s constitution and statutes — a move that could energize their most ardent supporters in a year when all 140 General Assembly seats will be up for grabs.

The proposals also could force skittish Republicans to take a stand on gay rights, possibly pushing them into an awkward balancing act between fears about primary challenges from the right and the potential for alienating moderate general-election voters. 

On Monday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said scrubbing the state code of references to “husband and wife” in exchange for the gender-neutral term “spouse” will help attract businesses to the state — the centerpiece goal of his governorship.

With gay marriage in particular, polls show that the overall electorate slightly favors it. Yet Republicans are unlikely to budge until the U.S. Supreme Court defines marriage once and for all.

“The lack of a clear and definitive answer from the Supreme Court and pending cases in other parts of the country creates legal uncertainty for the commonwealth. It is unlikely that the House would make significant changes to the law while this uncertainty remains,” said Matt Moran, a spokesman for Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), who himself faces a challenge from the right in an evenly split district.

Four Democrats — Sen. Adam P. Ebbin and Del. K. Robert Krupicka Jr. of Alexandria and Sen. Janet D. Howell and Del. Scott A. Surovell of Fairfax — filed resolutions seeking to remove the ban from the state constitution. Amending the constitution requires passage in two legislative sessions with an election in between as well as voter approval. 

Conservative activists say the proposals are nothing but red meat for the Democratic base, not unlike other parts of McAuliffe’s legislative agenda.

Susan Swecker, a longtime Democratic activist and national committeewoman, said Democrats’ bills show the party is “marching in lock step” with voters, who have rewarded Democrats with all five statewide offices.  “There’s been a sea change,” she said. “In the last 10, certainly 20 years, a change in how people feel about this issue.

Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax) said such bills will have little chance until federal law includes the LGBT community as a protected class.

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) filed two “conscience clause” bills: One would block McAuliffe from making nondiscrimination against people because of their sexual orientation a condition of entering into a government contract. The other says anyone who gets a license or authority from the state would not have to serve or counsel same-sex couples if he or she has moral or religious objections. 

[James] Parrish of Equality Virginia called the licensure bill “extremist, hateful, and discriminatory.” He said: “Discrimination under the guise of religious freedom is still discrimination, and Virginia is better than that.”

Personally, I don't see any pro-gay measures passing the Virginia General Assembly - the Virginia GOP is too focused on groveling to Victoria Cobb, president of TFF and putative dominatrix of the Virgina GOP.   The good news is that Gov. McAuliffe will veto whatever batshitery the Republicans manage to pass during the coming legislative session.

America’s 10 Worst Terror Attacks by Far Right Extremists and Christian Fundamentalists

If one only listens to Fox News and various right wing news outlets, one would quickly believe that only Muslims commit terror attacks and atrocities.  However, a post at Civil Commotion sets one on the right path:

There is something here that needs to be faced: Islam today is what Christianity once was — domineering and brutal. The Roman church ruled the West for 1000-years, and gave us the grotesque indecencies of the Inquisition, the witch burnings, and the auto da fe (sometimes claiming the lives of dozens in a single huge fire); it did not, inspired by its own teachings, end violence. It was secularism that tamed Christianity, the [Albert] Mohlers and [former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin] Cochrans of the past, and secularism is more needful than ever as they come to grips with the fact that their backward-looking worldview has lost to the progress of knowledge.

The pious Christian crowd and Fox News followers obviously won't like hearing the truth.  A piece in The Raw Story  reminds us of some of the heinous deeds done by fundamentalist Christians and elements of the far right.  Here are highlights:

From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. . . . many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.

In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.

Below are 10 of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years.

1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012. The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11 America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. . . . .  On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented . . .

2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009. Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have had a field day. A physician was the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.

3. Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008. On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto. 

4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. To hear the Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the Army of God, a loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.

5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996. Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. 

6. The murder of Barnett Slepian by James Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later.

7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others.  . . . .  The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved. 

8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter.

9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984. One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.

10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995. Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. . . . . Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history: 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured.

The foregoing is not intended to diminish the heinous nature of the terror attacks in Paris last week.   But, if one reads the excerpts above, one thing becomes quickly apparent: most of the terror attacks, like in the Paris attacks, were motivated at least in part by fundamentalist religious belief.   Yes, we need to rid the world of Islamic extremism.  We also need to rid the world of fundamentalist Christian extremism as well.