Joe Walsh has made a name for himself as a “family values” Republican.  He has also made a name for himself as a dead beat dad who owes over $100,000 in child support, ignores court dates, and takes his girl friend on expensive vacations while claiming to be too poor to support his children.

He has also just been given an award for his services to’ family values’ by the Sauronic Family Research Council. Its president, Tony Perkins, said “We thank Cong. Walsh who has voted consistently to defend faith, family and freedom.”   Perkins gushed “Cong. Walsh and other ‘True Blue Members’ have voted to repeal Obamacare, de-fund Planned Parenthood, end government funding for abortion within the health care law, uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, and continue support for school choice. I applaud their commitment to uphold the institutions of marriage and family.”

Walsh responded “I am proud and honored to be recognized by the Family Research Council as the only member from Illinois with a 100 percent pro-family voting record.”

The FRC is the conservative organization that hosts annual “values voters” conventions where major aspiring right wing Republican politicians fall all over one another trying to address. (Sarah Palin made headlines when she did not attend.)  It is a major voice in the moral and social disease called the modern right wing.

The mind boggles.  What is going on with these people? It is as if they are proud of what decent people would call moral depravity and want to rub all our faces in it. Or is as if, fundamentally, they believe in nothing.

But these people claim to be religious!

Actually I think there is a connection between their religion and their nihilism.

Their deity demands subordination or damnation.  It is described in terms of its power, not its goodness, except when goodness is defined by power.  He who has the most power determines what is ‘good.’

This means there are no ultimate values beyond power.

This is also a ‘christian’ (I will not dignify this word in this context with a capital ‘C’) version of the emphasis on power and will that characterized the anti-democratic fascist right in Europe after WWI.

The depravity of Joe Walsh and the FRC is a direct outgrowth of defining the Highest in terms of power and a demand to submit or else.