Is the Religious Right Dying?

I grew up expecting the problems an Orwellian world would create, but the Falwellian worldview that we meet daily in the U.S. is far worse and one that will NOT disappear quickly, if at all, in his demise. Faux-universities of the Falwell & Robertson ilks will generate the illusion of an education just as that of Bob Jones has been doing for most of the 20th century; in reality, they are propoganda machines & the stuff of which the so-called culture wars are made & maintained. There will always [?] be an army of uneducated legions in the U.S. which make up the congregations of religious Right [I refuse to use the term 'christian' in any way for these underlings]. The 'homeschooling' phenomenon has mushroomed in the last generation & a half and will produce uncooth denizens for the fundamentalist operations. In addition, our public schools are socially promoting fundamentalist & minority children in large proportions whose economic future is glib & who will populate those megachurches & storefronts galore because their only options are NO options [i.e., Hobson's Choice]. Without reason or success on their side, they will be as rabid as they hear they should be from the platform [notice: not pulpit] of their pseudo-church. Post 9/11, these units contributed to a huge Islamophobia with their "instruction" classes with little semblance to what a Comparative Religion course would provide, but they "believed" hook, line & sinker. So their next campaign of "Evil Muslims in Our Midst" has a readymade audience, & their having been brainwashed & spoonfed Dominionism makes them ready not only to defend the "War against Christmas" but to retake America to be a Christian nation again. Nothing could be clearer about this than the documentary JESUS CAMP which should be obligatory educational viewing just to know who our enemies are, & the Ted Haggard part at the end --PRE-caught in the homosexual prostitute anomaly-- will scare you further on the megachurch contributions which he said they are appearing at the rate of a new one every 2 seconds: still scary as overstatement or what these types believe about us. Perhaps their overt Islamophobia will make moderates who wanted to include these extremists as christian will alienate them farther to the fringe, but the damage that they have done & will do before they are marginalized will be immense. Europeans view all of us as what they hear of the fringe and to some extent, rightly, if we do not rid ourselves of this plague on our houses. Fundamentalism does not see itself as political, which it is, and religious never, which they are: a carbon copy of Islamist extremists who account for so much of the bloodshed in a variety of places today. And when our Pentagon military is so beholden to Colorado Springs for its marching orders, note our problem in its true proportions. [Can anything other than a draft & seachange to an intelligent expediary-type military save us?] We need a return to progressive taxation to help pay for a revamped educational system to include the immigrant & indigent poor among us, but those with money would rather have a source of daylabour without citizenship.

The problems of an entrenched fundamentalism are immense. Damn be Ronald Reagan for moving them to the fore & legitimacy within the GOP. It will take generations after I am dead to isolate these fringe christian groups, unless we can manipulate their Islamophobia & Dominionism to public disdain. Let's only hope so.

Hander,

You haven't seen anything yet!!!

Next time you look in a mirror, remember that you are looking at someone who is ill prepared for the future that awaits him.

Kathleen Parker has a very perceptive Op-Ed in today's [5/2107] Philadelphia Inquirer [A11] whose title is "Falwell's incautious words articulated what many feel." It may be brought up at www.phillynews.com or other papers no doubt who subscribe to the Washington Post Writers Group. His death in his office is labeled "prosaic" & his pronouncements [such as the Post 9/11 nonsense] "made him easy to dismiss as a ranting fool." He is just one of the "characters" facilitated by the media in the service of ratings. "Nothing quite makes one want to sign up with the immoral minority than a band of white males declaring themselves the 'moral majority'". This was his HUBRIS, a word unknown in fundamentalism, and with it comes a history of time that their self-acclaimation loses entirely. His death "has elevated speaking ill of the dead to the level of sacrament." Christopher Hitchens has written GOD IS NOT GOOD as a condemnation of these types, & he appears at The Free Library of Philadelphia tomorrow night in its writers series [I will be in attendance].
Hitchens also suggests he "probably didn't read the Bible -- or 'any long book.'" He owned a private jet & was not phased by criticisms of his opulent lifestyle in the face of pervasive poverty.

The last sentence is eloquent in speaking for us all the annoyance with these types:
"For Americans ready to see religion return
to the private parlor, his departure is the
peace that passeth all understanding."

May he & his kind find the Hell they have preached and be truly confused at their reward.