Concerned Women for America is promoting National Marriage Week USA, which runs from February 7-14, appropriately encompassing Valentine’s Day.
The event’s professed goals sound laudable:
Watching the Iowa caucuses last night, the rising popularity of libertarianism really struck me. Although Ron Paul came in third place, he had near majority support among Republican voters under 30. If we are not proactive, libertarianism could be our future.
If you do not find that scary, check out the Tea Party plan to destroy the government and any sense of collective responsibility for societal problems.
Let’s hope the religious impulses on the Right will continue to temper the threat of radical individualism, even as they pose their own threat to democratic values.
Better yet, let’s hope the religious Left and the Occupy movement are able to turn things around and revive the values of fairness, accountability, and respect for human dignity.
It has been a year since I started blogging for Tikkun Daily, covering the Christian Right beat and other issues related to ideology. I remember my first post, which called for an end to toxic discourse, in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and Sarah Palin’s shameless commentary before and after.
I am often very pessimistic about politics and the future of our society, but in reflecting on the past year, I realized that there are a lot of positive signs. Below is a list of the top ten that arise from my Tikkun Daily beat.
Members of the Tikkun Community might be interested the Rev. Richard Cizik’s piece in this morning’s Washington Post.
According to an article in the Washington Post, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll reveals some interesting data on what people think about changes in wealth distribution. As most readers probably know, “income disparities between the highest earners and other Americans have reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.” The good news is that 61% of all adults know that the income gap is larger than in the past, and 60% want the federal government to enact policies that will lessen that disparity – and consequently, help rebuild the middle class.
I am not someone who usually agrees with Chuck Norris, who is a staunch Christian conservative activist, in addition to being a martial arts star. Consequently, I was shocked when I came across his recent column on the American Family Association website and found that I agree with it 100%!
What does the Christian Right have to say about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement? I have been asking that question for weeks and have not found much about it on the websites I regularly visit.
Now, Pat Robertson has finally spoken out. He says Christians should not be involved in the OWS movement.
I think this is a rebellion. I think it is atavistic. Nobody knows exactly what it is, they don’t know what they’re doing, why are they there? Well they’re just mad. Well, is it right for a Christian to get involved in a protest of anger?
Hmm. Did he think the question was about the Tea Party?
(Actually, he has also recently condemned Republican extremism, but only because it might cause the party to lose the election.)
Robertson goes on to say that he does not condemn all protests.
If you’re going to demonstrate demonstrate for righteousness, demonstrate to lift the yoke of oppression, demonstrate to help those that are poverty stricken. But don’t just go out and mess up a park and just scream and tear up things. Why would you get involved in something like that? It’s formless, it has no purpose, but it could be used for radicals who want to destroy this nation, and that’s the bad part of it.
Hmm. Either Robertson is woefully ignorant about the OWS movement and just doesn’t get it OR he is purposely disseminating misinformation. You decide.
The Values Voter Summit will be held this week in Washington (October 7-9, 2011). For only $99, plus housing, food, and transportation costs, summit attendees will have the opportunity to hear a wide array of right-wing speakers, including not only the usual suspects but also the leaders of some up and coming organizations. Since I believe it is important to know what is being said on the Right, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of Summit speakers with links to some of the interesting websites.
I think it is fabulous that Chaz Bono is a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” this season. He is the first transgendered competitor on the show, and one of the first on television, and I think his presence is going to push our culture in a positive, more inclusive direction.
And I am appalled by the opposition that his participation has wrought, particularly all the mean-spirited and ignorant comments from people who don’t have any understanding of the experience of being transgendered yet think they can stand in judgment of another person’s choices – especially when the ignorance comes from professionals who ought to know better.
I haven’t been able to write anything lately. Honestly, I don’t know what I have to say that is positive at this point. It’s demoralizing to watch what should have been a Democratic presidency disintegrate.
Why is the left so weak in this country and the right so strong? There are many reasons for our sad situation, but one of the most important is the monetary advantage held by the right. This is a difficult problem to solve, but one vitally important piece of the solution has to be passing a constitutional amendment to undo the Citizens United decision. Corporations should not be able to pour unlimited money into elections and call it free speech. Corporations are not people, they should not have free speech rights, and money is not speech! That is just common sense.
When I was a little girl, my mother made me return my school-issued raffle tickets to my third-grade teacher and tell her my parents don’t believe in gambling. It was a hard thing to do at the time, but I believe it built character. It also left me with a deep-seated opposition to legalized gambling. While I am not as absolutist about it as my mother, I just do not believe that it is right to look to gambling as a way to solve our social problems, whether it is school funding or a lack of jobs.
The Christian Right is already starting its Get Out the Vote Campaign, and the Religious Left should be doing the same.
The right-wing Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC) is calling on conservative churches to get people registered to vote:
Are you sure all your friends, family members and fellow church attendees are actually registered to vote? You can fix that.
Sadly, about half of U.S. churchgoers still aren’t registered to vote. That means millions of conservative people of faith and Tea Party friendly voters are forfeiting their voice at election time. In order to restore America’s greatness and founding principles, we must have every member of our grassroots team on the playing field and ready to make an impact in 2012. The time to start organizing our team for game day 2012 is now with a voter registration drive.
By hosting a voter registration drive, you can help your fellow citizens make their voices heard in elections that determine whether our country honors the sanctity of life and marriage, confirms judges who won’t legislate from the bench as judicial activists, reigns in out-of-control spending which burdens future generations and stands up for our ally Israel.
Beyond a few academics, who talks about cultural Marxism anymore? I actually hadn’t heard the term used in contemporary politics, until right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik invoked it in his 1518 page manifesto against Islam and multiculturalism.
So imagine my surprise, when I came across an attack on “cultural Marxism” on the Family Research Council website this morning! The article is titled “Activists’ Game Plan Against Religion, Life, and the Family: The UN, the Courts, and Transnationalist Ideology.” The article begins with an attack on the famous 19th century work by Frederick Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), but focuses mostly on contemporary international law and the right-wing battle against feminism and gay marriage. Although the author doesn’t seem to know what “cultural Marxism” actually is, the invocation of the term is striking, in light of recent events.
In the Christian Bible it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24).
Michele Bachmann says she is a Biblical literalist and claims to be a submissive wife. As documented on the Slate website,
In a speech at a mega-church in the Minneapolis area back in 2006, Michele Bachmann explained her decision to pursue tax law. It wasn’t her choice, exactly. God had already told her to go to law school; God had also told her to marry a fellow named Marcus Bachmann. Now Marcus told her “to go and get a post-doctorate degree in tax law.” This was not a particular desire of Michele’s (“Tax law? I hate taxes!”), but she was certain God was speaking through her husband. “Why should I go and do something like that?” she recalled thinking. “But the Lord says, ‘Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.’”
Bachmann’s speech was captured on video and is available for viewing on YouTube.
The shocking acts committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik put right-wing extremism back on the radar of threats we should be concerned about.
One might refer to him as a right-wing Christian terrorist. While I believe that Breivik violated the tenets of Christianity when he engaged in terrorism in Oslo and massacred children at a Labour Party youth camp, he explicitly claims the mantel of Christianity, believing he acts to defend European Christendom from Muslim immigrants and multiculturalism. Thus he is similar to “Islamic” terrorists, who violate the principles of Islam yet explicitly claim to be acting in the name of Islam. If we use the religious label in one case, we should probably use it in both cases.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ought to be monitoring right-wing extremists, but apparently they are not currently doing so. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), right-wing violence is on the rise. As Mark Potok explains in “The Year in Hate & Extremism,”
There was good news on the front page of the New York Times this week. Apparently, “a leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of the several preventive services under the new health care law,” and the Obama administration is “inclined to accept the panel’s advice.” Even better, no Congressional approval is required.
As Senator Barbara Mikulski put it, “We are one step closer to saying goodbye to an era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition. We are saying hello to an era where decisions about preventive care and screenings are made by a woman and her doctor, not by an insurance company.”
Affordable contraceptives are sorely needed in the US, where “nearly half of all pregnancies” are unintended, and “about 40 percent of unintended pregnancies” end in abortion. Since women living in poverty are four times more likely to become pregnant unintentionally, there is reason to believe that price is an issue.
Because making contraceptives more accessible should decrease the number of abortions, the Christian Right ought to be rejoicing about this proposed policy. Strangely, however, the Family Research Council (FRC) opposes it. It is not strange that the Catholic Church opposes the measure, since they consider contraceptives immoral, but Protestant Christianity allows for the use of birth control. What gives?
Do feminist organizations have anything to say about the battle over the debt ceiling? If they do, it certainly hasn’t gotten much coverage. It seems that they should, since many of the budget cuts proposed by the Republican Party and the Obama Administration will slash funding for programs that meet human needs (and employ women).
Well, as it turns out, feminist organizations do have something to say about the budget. The National Organization for Women (NOW), for example, makes the following point:
Very soon, members of Congress will reach an agreement on how to reduce the federal deficit. As much as $4 trillion could be cut from the federal budget over the next decade. These cuts will touch upon virtually every program that serves and employs women. Currently, some negotiators are refusing to accept new taxes to raise revenues as part of the package, which could result in deep benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and an array of other critical safety net programs. The economic well-being of women, communities or color, persons with disabilities, low-income earners and their families are at stake.
In response NOW, along with the National Council of Women’s Organizations, is asking our elected officials to “Respect, Protect, Reject” – to make sure “women are respected” in budgetary negotiations, “that programs which disproportionately serve and employ women are protected,” and that “any effort to undercut these programs [is] rejected.”
The good news is that President Obama has the power to end the potentially disastrous battle over raising the debt ceiling! The bad news is that he has yet to act on it.
If Obama could end this crisis, why wouldn’t he? Why would he instead propose taking money out of the economy during a recession by cutting spending and raising taxes? This will only make things worse, which is obvious if you know anything about the basic principles of Keynesian economics.
Again, the President has the power to solve the debt ceiling crisis without capitulating to the Republicans, who seem determined to tank the economy. What am I talking about? Well, according to the Washington Post, the President could simply rule the debt ceiling unconstitutional because Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says the “validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned.” This tactic has been suggested by “law professors, Democratic senators, and liberal commentators,” such as Katrina vanden Heuvel, as well as by Secretary Geithner as far back as May.
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