Revising America - Bachmann Style

There are few things more disheartening to me than to see people of the Christian faith attach themselves to the bandwagon(s) of political candidates for no reason other than having heard a candidate spout a couple of religious buzzwords. A candidate mentions "faith" or "family values", or in some cases "pro-life", and voters/potential voters are ready to hitch up to them for the long haul - with no idea what those words actually mean to the candidate, and no idea what motivates the candidate's ideas on faith.




I hate our current presidential primary process. I'm of the opinion that it doesn't yield an electable candidate from ANY party these days. Every word and move of the candidate is scrutinized, with mass media at every turn, from the pros, to the tabloid crowd, to Joe the Plumber types with hand-held cameras and video-phones, to bloggers like yours truly (even though I don't do a lot of politics here). Any and every shred of honesty, dignity, and integrity is ground out of a person when they always have to be "on" - trying to please and appease just enough of the audience, issuing enough vague but tasty soundbites, non-denial denials, forward-thinking backpedals, half-truths and whole lies to get themselves elected. Playing to their base, but trying to do so in such a way as to not play to their base and appear appealing to the other side and the all-important "swing voter" segment.


Much of the conservative sector of Christianity is likely to attach itself to candidates like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, being lured in by the "pro-life" aura of both, swayed by Bachmann's use of words like "godly" and "submissive" *wink*, failing to see past the religiosity of those words to the core of what she's driven by, and swayed by Perry promoting notions like "public schools should teach creationism" without thinking of the ramifications of the idea. Where the rubber meets the road, more professing Christians are worried about their culture, and the promotion thereof, than their faith, and the promotion thereof...and such gives rise to the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity.


For any of the readers here who may be near to jumping on the Bachmann bandwagon, you should seriously consider what's said in this interview about Bachmann's religious beliefs - and their source. Please watch, and consider, what's said in the video there. She's a P/QF whackadoodle, influenced by hyper-fundamentalist cultural "Christians" (read: cultic nutjobs) like Francis Schaeffer and Rousas Rushdoony.


I think Frank Schaeffer is spot on in the above interview. Despite draping themselves in the American flag, people like Bachmann (and Perry) loathe America as it exists today. They want to change practically everything about it that doesn't fit within a narrow, fundamentalist view of what American society should be, and I agree with Schaeffer that if the hyper-fundamentalists have their way, America would look something more like a "Christian" version of modern day Iran than anything the founding fathers ever envisioned (a theme I've consistently harped on from the beginning of this blog). I'm no fan of the absolute power of judges in our judicial system, but I'm an absolute enemy to any political or judicial system where judges are accountable to religious rulers or religious law. That isn't freedom in any fashion.


From the link on Rushdoony above...

"The purpose of regeneration is that man reconstruct all things in conformity to God's order, not in terms of man's desire for peace," Rushdoony warned in his Institutes of Biblical Law. "This purpose and mission involves law and coercion."

Let me repeat all of this in easy to understand words – Rushdoony believed that his system would be based on violence and coercion, not the ballot box.

Apparently the 1988 Bill Moyers video 'God and Politics: On Earth as it is in Heaven' states that Rushdoony believed that the bible identified 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty.

In fact, we have been unable to find such as list (at least based wholly on Rushdoony’s statements alone. From what we can see with the turgid prose and mediaeval theology of The Institutes of Biblical Law, it seems highly likely that that 15 cases could be inferred from Rushdoony’s work.

The late Greg Bahnsan, an Orthodox Presbyterian minister and follower of Rushdoony, listed fifteen crimes that deserve capital punishment in the Reconstructed society. These included murder, rape, sodomy, Sabbath breaking, apostasy, witchcraft, blasphemy and incorrigibility in children.

Rushdoony told Bill Moyers in 1988 that "The Bible identifies 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty. Abortion is treason against the family and deserves the death penalty. Adultery is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to death. Homosexuality is treason to the family, and it too, is worthy of death." (R.J. Rushdoony, to Bill Moyers on television. From a PBS Home Video: God and Politics: On Earth as it is in Heaven, 1988.)

These are the ideas of the people who've influenced Bachmann. Rushdoony himself is considered the originator of many, maybe most, of the modern P/QF ideas, or at a minimum, responsible for the original ideas (worship of the nuclear family unit/authority-submission concepts/neo-conservative homeschooling) that the whackadoodles who succeeded him built upon.

Bachmann was asked about being submissive to her husband during the FoxNews Republican candidate debate on August 11th. She's yet to directly answer that question. Anyone in her campaign with any political savvy knows that if she answers that question honestly and directly, she has NO chance to win the election. Hence, you get half-truths, deflections, and rabbit trails about "respect". The fact of the matter is, few of us feel that someone who can't even lead within her own home is qualified to be the Leader of the Free World.  As you can see, the "submission" issue is already grinding the honesty and integrity (assuming some exists) right out of her.

Her views on homosexuality are downright ignorant. From the link...

Bachmann and her husband, Marcus Bachmann, run a Christian counseling business that offers "reparative" therapy for homosexuality, which backers believe can "cure" people of being gay. Marcus Bachmann stressed that the facility only offers "reparative" therapy if a client requests that type of treatment.


Wow. 


At the rate she's already dodging and weaving her way around tough questions with non-answers, at the rate she shifts and forms her words and answers based on the pulse of the audience, she may spontaneously combust from lack of integrity before the primary process even gets kicked off.


But at least she's been entertaining...





Those remarks were uttered on August 16th...the 34th anniversary of Elvis' death.


If you decide to vote for this woman, don't say you weren't warned. Her America of choice looks nothing like America as we know it, nor does it resemble any America that's ever existed anywhere outside of the narrow minds and revised history of fundamentalist Christianity.