Today’s Quotes: Christopublicans Intent on Taking America to a ‘Very Dark Place’

“I want you to know that the fundamentalist political movement is the beginning of a cultural revolution that will take our nation to a very dark place. You have to understand that this has been methodically planned and is being carried out with the utmost vigilance. In accordance with their worldview, my old friends do not in the least care about what you think. They are against democracy, and they are seeking to end the rule of the majority in our great country.

“They truly believe that if you have not been ‘saved,’ you are living under a curse and are incapable of knowing what is best and that because of this you should be ruled over. You should also know they do not believe that even centuries-old Christian communities (Catholics, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox, etc.) are ‘saved,’ only those who think like they do.” […]

“If I told you that the Amish in Pennsylvania were running for public office in record numbers with the intention of outlawing electricity and forcing others to act, dress and think like them, you would not believe it. Well, that is exactly what is happening in America, only it is not the Amish, it is the fundamentalists. It is not outlawing electricity, it’s placing limits on being a human with free will. Enjoying art and music, loving the person of your choice, dancing – the things that fundamentalists call ‘sins’ – are a big part of what it means to be a human.”
— Jason Childs, “I Was a Right-Wing Evangelical Pastor — Until I Saw the Light,” May 21, 2011.

“Rather than rethink their beliefs, conservative religionists decided to renounce secular higher education and denounce it as ‘elitist.’ Thus, to be uninformed, even willfully and proudly stupid, came to be considered a Godly virtue. And since misery loves company, the Evangelicals’ quest, for instance when Evangelicals dominated the Texas textbook committees, was to strive to ‘balance’ the teaching of evolution with creationism and damn the facts. In the minds of Evangelicals, they were recreating the Puritan’s self-exile from England by looking for a purer and better place, this time not a geographical ‘place’ but a sanctuary within their minds (and in inward-looking schools and churches) undisturbed by facts. […]

“…In denial of the West’s civic-minded, government-supporting heritage, Evangelicals (and the rest of the Right) wound up defending private oil companies but not God’s creation, private cars instead of public transport, private insurance conglomerates rather than government care of individuals.

“The price for the Religious Right’s wholesale idolatry of private everything was that Christ’s reputation was tied to a cynical union-busting political party owned by billionaires. It only remained for a Far Right Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court to rule in 2010 that unlimited corporate money could pour into political campaigns— anonymously—in a way that clearly favored corporate America and the superwealthy, who were now the only entities served by the Republican Party.

“The Evangelical foot soldiers never realized that the logic of their ‘stand’ against government had played into the hands of people who never cared about human lives beyond the fact that people could be sold products. By the twenty-first century, Ma and Pa No-name were still out in the rain holding an ‘Abortion is Murder!’ sign in Peoria and/or standing in line all night in some godforsaken mall in Kansas City to buy a book by Sarah Palin and have it signed. But it was the denizens of the corner offices at Goldman Sachs, the News Corporation, Koch Industries, Exxon, and Halliburton who were laughing.”
— Frank Schaffer, “Insider: The Christian Right is Aiming to Destroy All Things Public,” AlterNet.org, May 13, 2011.