Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Wonder- I've got a mission for you

Wonder, my darling cousin, and I were having a bit of a discussion a while back about the responsibility of progressive Christians to call out the lunatic right-wing fringe on their atrocious behavior.

See, I am not a Christian so when I call them the lunatic right wing fringe then I am a heretic who will burn in hell. My opinion does not matter to them cause I'm probably out at night worshipping Satan and sacrificing babies. Wev.

But Wonder is a Christian. And a pretty damn good one at that. There haven't been enough people like her calling out the crazies. It is that side of Christianity that really needs to call people on this kind of very non-Christian activity. (Bolds mine)

But I can tell you that I get -- I don't think I'm in double digits, but it started at about 10 o'clock last night; after the press conference in the morning, I've had nine death threats since about 10 o'clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They're very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We've had our tires slashed, we've had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we've had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.
Where might these types of threats be coming from? How about the scary evangelical wing of our own military.

I read an article a few years back (and I'm sorry I can't link to it but our library's search program seems to be screwed at the mo) about how our military is becoming more insular and separate from the population in general. In previous generations there were drafts that brought in a good cross-section of the general population. But without a draft (and mind you I am not a fan of drafting young men and women into wars they may not support) our military is increasingly made up of people who consider themselves apart and above the citizenry they are supposed to protect.

Now add to the already separatist nature of those who chooses to join the military the belief that they are also above anyone who does not share the exact same faith that they do, and the idea that serving god comes before serving country. You now have a massive deadly force of religious soldiers groomed on every front to not respect the basic principles of freedom that our country was founded on, like separation of church and state or religious freedom.

If this kind of behavior is allowed to continue in our military it will not be long before the screaming meamies on the right have a private army to create a military dictatorship here.

So Wonder, and Christians like you, the mission I charge you with is bringing your religious nuts back into line before they destroy the rest of us. You must call them on behavior (like threatening to rape someone's wife) that Christ would have found abhorable.