Barack Obama’s decisive win throughout almost the entire United States gave many of us hope that the threat of religious persecution and authoritarianism would begin to fade from our land.  To the degree that they could, a majority of Americans said “No way!” to America’s home grown Taliban.  I imagine most genuine Christians were as relieved as any Pagan with a brain.  Judging from the craziness appearing in ‘conservative’ media and their fans, I think our optimism is only partially justified.  We are not out of the woods yet.

Recently one of the loudest ranters among the culture warriors, Glenn Beck, did a TV show on all the ‘good Americans’ uniting to wage war against the horrible left wing menace that now threatens American freedom from the White House.  Glenn Greenwald did his usual wonderful job reporting Beck’s doings, but to a far smaller audience.  Beck represents the continued break down of what remains of respect for truth in broadcast journalism.

As Greenwald rightly notes, were there even an ounce of intellectual honesty in these people, they would have opposed the unprecedented claim of Caesar-like powers by George Bush, but they were too busy breaking Dixie Chicks CDs and condemning his other critics to note the hypocrisy on their part.  Worse, they and the men who encourage them by giving them national coverage and blaming ‘liberals’ for everything wrong in the world are doing all they can to make civil war a reality and not a fantasy.

Rush Limbaugh is another example, now invoking ‘God’ to justify writing most Americans out of being ‘real’ Americans.  In a very insightful piece  in Daily Kos, “proseandpromise”  discusses what the ‘conservatives’ really mean when describing themselves as Americans: a fantasy world of white, rural, fundamentalist, male population that in reality makes up a decided minority of us all.  The rest of us are written out of the country.  It is a violent totalitarian vision of a place that never existed.  Near the end of his very insightful piece, he writes

Before when they called me “unAmerican” I was annoyed.
Now I am angry and somewhat afraid.

How well is their encouragement of violence  working?  Last week James Adkisson was sentenced to life for murders he committed in shooting up a Unitarian Church in Knoxville.  Adkisson himself said 

Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

“This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It’s the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.”

“I thought I’d do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me….Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I’d like to encourage other like minded people to do what I’ve done. If life aint worth living anymore don’t just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

Where did he get those ideas?  Along with so many over paid media pundits, we have equally over paid right wing pens-for-hire like Ann Coulter.  She observes in her book, Treason: 
Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. (p.16)

Adkisson simply acted out the logic of agitators like Coulter.  Dead Unitarians are the result of people like her being believed by disturbed souls.

As many Pagans will know, Unitarians are one of the most important ‘bridge’ denominations enabling Pagans to become part of the mainstream spiritual community in the US. http://www.cuups.org/content2/ The more people can be kept from interacting with one another, the easier it becomes for cynical leaders to turn decent people against one another.  Even more than most right wing violence, an attack on Unitarians is an attack on us, and the more isolated we become as a community, the more vulnerable we become to the violence they would levy on us.  

With all the talk about terrorist violence that we have heard since 9-11, one fact has been oddly missing from most discussions.  In the US most acts of violence and terrorism have come from the political right, from people not far removed in their spoken words from the rhetoric Beck and others endlessly purvey.

Adkisson’s words are only a little different from the mentality Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other sorry excuses for human beings promote as common sense in their broadcasts.  After giving his chosen terrorists air time, Beck noted he “believes we’re on this road” He even wonders whether the US military would support the President or the terrorist ‘patriots’ were this to happen.  Give the shift in the character of much religious involvement in the military from relatively benign to aggressively subversive, this possibility of a violent fifth column cannot be dismissed. 

Far from being Americans in spirit, they resemble a primitive tribe where drawing lines and bashing whoever ends up on the other side matters more than any real issue.  They appear to be drug addicts for the highs coming from self-righteousness.  Principles, if any, are useful only for attacking others.  As when we were told communists tortured people because they were evil.  Now we are told we can torture people because they are evil.  This is the mentality of those who would wage ‘culture war’ on us.  

For those wanting to know more about the utter irrationality of the fundamentalist right, there is a very important piece by physicist and writer David Brin on this issue: An Open Letter to Researchers of Addiction, Brain Chemistry, and Social Psychology.

I have many reasons for urging interfaith work by Pagans interested in meeting people of other faiths.  Preventing people like Beck, Coulter, Adkisson and Limbaugh from realizing their dreams is one of them.