I wrote on June 3 about the murder of Dr. George Tiller in a Lutheran church in Wichita, Kansas. This week another right-wing terrorist – a notorious hater revered in places like Free Republic and Red State but labeled far too extremist by the neo-nazi group Stormfront – walked into the Holocaust Museum in the nation’s capital and opened fire, killing a security guard. In April of this year a younger neo-nazi wingnut hater killed three Pittsburgh police officers in a suicidal shoot-out because he was afraid Barack Obama was going to take away his guns.

Right wing domestic terrorism is all too familiar in this country. Timothy McVeigh was the most notable in terms of body count, but certainly was not the first or last of his ilk. The problem is present at all times, but the most deadly attacks happen more frequently when there’s a Democrat in the White House. The right wing propaganda machine (a.k.a. FoxNews) provides the verbal incitement, the loyal-but-stupid wannabe Rambos among Fox’s white sheet and dunce cap fan base do the shooting and bombing.

Also back in April the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a report on the rising danger of right wing extremism/terrorism, drawing predictable outcries of persecution from the Fox talking heads and conspiracy theorists. Despite the now obvious to everyone correctness of the DHS intelligence assessment. As if law enforcement suddenly remembered that there actually ARE laws in this country against yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, neo-nazi hate radio icon Hal Turner was arrested last week in New Jersey for issuing assassination orders to his fan base against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state official. Turner, who was exposed as a paid FBI informant and agent provocateur in 2007, was arrested by the NJ Capitol police and held for extradition, apparently because the FBI that has actual jurisdiction in crimes that cross state lines was reluctant to rein in their puppet.

What the hell is going on here? When will we see the familiar ugly mugs of Rupert Murdoch’s pro-terror spin machine frog marched off to prison where they belong for their roles in inciting murder? How long is it going to take to turn the law enforcement machinery in this country back to enforcing the laws? How many more innocent people have to die because Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or any of a dozen other hate-mongers don’t like their skin color or their religion or their birth place or their politics?

America has always been a violent place. Mass murder and genocide have always been the tools of state and law for the purpose of taking and holding the territory. Enforced social and economic inequalities, brutal slavery, indentured servitude and a serious lack of opportunity for at least a third of the population have been endemic from the beginning. And whole bodies of research in sociology and psychology have amply demonstrated for a full century that those inequalities are what lead to this nation’s reputation as Murder Capitol of the World. It is becoming perfectly clear that none of this will change under the Democratic leadership now firmly in control even as the world faces at least a decade of major economic depression. Something’s gotta blow, it’s going to blow soon, and it’s not going to be pretty.

So I’m going to say it right now, even though I don’t have a wingnut fan base or any reason to light the fuse on this overloaded powder keg – it’s not just fascistic neo-nazi FoxBots who value the second amendment and exercise it with responsible gun ownership. We lefty-type ’socialists’ are as likely to be armed as anyone else, we just aren’t famous for using those weapons against innocent people for no apparent reason. If the paranoid right-wing groupies really want to start something, there are plenty on this side of the barricades who can finish it.

So unless the machine that is our erstwhile government starts doing its job of protecting and defending We the People (of the US, not Dubai or Saudi Arabia), it’s going to find itself smashed into pieces so numerous and so tiny that it’ll never be whole again. Perhaps that it’s karmic due for being as corrupt as it is and has always been, but it’s not something the vast majority of us ever really want to see happen.

So wake up, America! Rupert Murdoch isn’t even a citizen of this country, he should not be allowed to control the propaganda or foment armed insurrection 24-7 on his cable network or in his big city newspapers. His puppets on Fox and Clear Channel radio need to be retired post haste to whatever off-shore haven they’ve banked their millions.

Because despite the violence endemic to our national nature and the sleight of mind distractions designed to keep the population cowering in abject terror of terror organized against us (this is called “state-sponsored terrorism,” like when the FBI pays people such as Turner to incite murder), some of us have NOT forgotten that this was once not just the land of the free, but also the home of the brave.

And we are not afraid.

We know these murdering terrorists all too well, as Tiller isn’t the first doctor they’ve attacked and/or killed. The goal of killing doctors who provide legal medical services is not to end abortion. Abortion is as old as the hills. Safe medical abortion is relatively new.

Humans of course have more choices than bears and deer and burrowing critters who consume certain plants to induce abortion. Humans decide to have sex (most of the time), then they decide to have or not have a baby. It is apparently the freedom to choose that the antis so vehemently disagree with, so they engage in acts of terrorism with the intent to scare doctors away from providing the safe medical procedure.

Now, the denizens of Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups don’t offer to cover the costs of prenatal and delivery care for those who think abortion is the best answer to their life-dilemma. Nor are they noted for assuming responsibility to care for the children they demand be born, by support, adoption or fostering. And they don’t much care about the heartache they’d visit on women and families faced with the birth of a child that is seriously compromised genetically or developmentally and has no chance for a decent life.

The specter of innocent fetuses (or just collections of rapidly-dividing cells) being removed is a much more powerful incentive to opposition than the true reasons for the fundamentalist religious objection to this medical procedure. Let’s face it – God is the #1 abortionist in the universe, causing at least a third of all pregnancies to end in ’spontaneous’ abortion. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that life – or even human life – has ever been considered “precious” to the Judeo-Christian God who demanded blood sacrifice, or to his fervent followers.

The FBI defines terrorism as:

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

That’s clear enough. The government ruled in 1973 that women have a right to choose whether or not to have a baby, up until viability when states may exert their interest in the unborn child. In Jesus’s Jihadists Sara Robinson wrote:

The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don’t comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act.  They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries — the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple — Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as “Jesus’s Jihadis.”

The surest, quickest way for radical fundamentalist wingnut-ism to go away is for them to turn terrorist against other members of the faith. Make no mistake – Roeder’s choice of setting for his crime means as much as who the target was. After the Department of Homeland Security issued its Report on Rightwing Extremism naming anti-abortion groups as an example of the genre, Jay Sekulow of the right wing American Center for Law and Justice issued a statement:

“This is an outrageous characterization that raises serious questions about the leadership and direction of the agency charged with protecting Americans in the ongoing battle against terrorism. Why would the Department of Homeland Security single out groups like pro-life supporters when they should be focusing on identifying and apprehending the real terrorists – like al-Qaeda – groups that have vowed to destroy America?

Well, fact is that the United States government is a democratic republic by charter, does not recognize any state religion or denomination, and prohibits agents of the state to proselytize religion on government’s dime. It has three branches, one of those to decide matters of law, and it decided a long time ago that women have a right to privacy in terms of their reproductive functions. Religion has gifted American law with many of its most blatantly useless and/or actively harmful legislation over the years, and these eventually came to be struck down. Prohibition, slavery, eugenics, miscegenation, anti-abortion. Because forcing everyone to abide by one’s own religious beliefs doesn’t work.

What these religious terrorists want is to “destroy America.” They want to abolish the Constitution and the entire body of US law in order to erect something quite else in their place. A theocracy – government by religious authority and religious law – is not a democratic republic. These extremists are every bit as dangerous to the body politic as al-Qaeda, moreso because they live among us rather than in caves in Central Asia. These people share our schools and workplaces and streets and neighborhoods. They are invisible because they look just like us.

So yeah, I think religious and other extremists in our midst DO need attention from DHS. Hopefully before any one or more of them pulls a Timothy McVeigh and kills a lot of innocent citizens. I figure if the anti-terror apparatus is going to waste time and money spying on groups of overage pacifist Quakers, they ought to be spying on the really dangerous groups too.

Alas, the now-marginalized Republican Party is desperately attempting to solidify the ‘base’ it lost in the past two general election cycles, even to the point of declaring wealthy radio hate-monger, opportunist, chickenhawk and drug addict Rush Limbaugh to be their new Dear Leader. Whoa. Can things get weirder than that?

Aparently so. We’ve got Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg talking about beating up editorialists with baseball bats on cable television. We’ve got Total Gym shill Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck talking about setting up sleeper cells, and some actual Senators and Congressmen talking secession! No, that wasn’t just a Sarah Palin deal for Alaskan Independence. They might be serious this time.

Neo-Nazis planning those “dirty bombs” Bush-II used to love so much as a scare tactic, total idiots stuffing the SCOTUS with challenges to Obama’s citizenship while telling troops they don’t have to obey the orders of the Commander In Chief, things are getting weirder by the day. Sedition. Advocacy of open rebellion, talk of terrorist acts and assassination.

These things were illegal – and considered real threats to National Security – back when it was liberals said to be doing the organizing. Why isn’t it illegal now? Was Timothy McVeigh a liberal nutjob or a militia wingnut? Our home grown terrorists and assassins aren’t generally from the ranks of the left, at least not since the Weathermen got shut down during Tricky Dick’s reign.

With Obama’s approval ratings hovering somewhere between 69 and 85% across the board, these people whose Neocon hero left office with less than 30% approval must surely be very frightened about their marginalization in last November’s election to “Southern Regional” that couldn’t even carry most of the south. They aren’t all that many, but they have powerful advocates in mass media and in the halls of Congress, and are being actively encouraged toward violence. The weak-minded among them will snap – that’s inevitable. Will we bring their puppeteers to face justice for yelling FIRE! in the theater?

These crazy people have always been with us, a reliable 20% of the population in the best of times but mostly lazy and/or inept. Perhaps Obama can manage to get some sort of universal health care concessions to cover psychiatric treatment most people can’t afford these days. In the meantime, I personally have been encouraged by some cross-linking of the Netroots DKos community and official FBI monitors of hate speech and crime, assassination threats, etc. That might seem like an odd pairing to you too, dear readers, but the pendulum has officially swung. America must be dragged – kicking and screaming if need be – into the 21st century.

I was born in the ’50s, but I sure don’t want to go back there at this late date. My memory is pretty good, and things weren’t really so great back then. I also remember ‘63 and ‘68. Things weren’t so great then either. In fact, I’m sick and tired of having all my hopes toward the future on the political and popular fronts dashed by assassin’s bullets and seditionist’s bombs. I’m not afraid of crazy Muslim Mullahs in caves halfway across the world, refuse to live my life in fear of them. There are people born and present right here in the U.S. of A. that are a heck of a lot bigger threat to my peace and prosperity quotient. I say we stop them this time before they kill hundreds or thousands of us.

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

One of the reasons we voted Monday instead of Tuesday (when the library’s One-Stop will be open until 9 instead of 5) is because of what happened to Obama supporters in Fayetteville on Sunday. Not only were McCain/Palin supporters stationed to shout epithets and harass the long voting lines after Obama’s speech, but about 30 of the attendees of that rally got their tires slashed. Very ugly.

When I had finished marking my ballot, I fed it into the second of two machines there to take ballots. I don’t know why there were two, perhaps they switch them off day to day. It’s the first time I early voted at the library instead of journeying to the County Seat to vote at the courthouse. There are just two precincts at this end of the county, both actual polling places are in churches. I don’t like to vote in the First Baptist Church.

I noted the number on the machine (like a glorified copier) when I fed my ballot in, so I’d see it counted. It was. Number 445, in fact. This particular machine had received 444 votes since early voting opened last Thursday, and it’s not open on Sunday. That number reflects what must be extremely close to all the duly registered voters in both precincts of our town! Even if we’re up to maybe 900-1,000 people by now, there probably aren’t more than 500 of ‘em old enough to vote.

My husband made small talk with the poll ladies (who were all very nice and helpful) while we waited for grandson to finish registering and vote.  They said turnout had been surprising, and that new young voters had been registering in droves even though there’s only one high school and community college in our county, both in the seat. They’d apparently heard nothing about the Fayetteville rally on Sunday or the ugly antics of McCain supporters. We were the only voters there so close to closing, so it’s not like the conversation would have upset any other voters.

Now, I remember when Jesse Helms ran this state with an iron-fisted “machine.” Back when our poll was in the train station I’d see ambulances lined up to wheel elderly people in from nursing homes to vote, many of whom didn’t look able to punch those cards and couldn’t see well enough to know which to punch. They got a lot of help, of course, but to me it was quite the spectacle. Back in those days (early ’90s) you had to ‘prove’ you were out of state (or would be) on election day to vote absentee, otherwise you had to physically show up no matter how disabled you were.

After the 2000 election fiasco (when about a third of voters got ‘lost’ and a lot of dead people were on the rolls), they went to no-excuse absentee. Then after the 2004 fiasco when Diebold’s glorified Etch-a-Sketches threw state races into turmoil, they came up with early One-Stop voting and paper ballots. This year I expect there may be no more than a dozen voters who put it off until November 4th.

So… I am now wondering what it will be like when “election day” comes and nobody shows up… because they’ve already voted.

The parties may have to play catch-up with the voters this time. It’s entirely possible that this state will have been firmly decided well before November 4th. Wouldn’t that be a gas?

The news from the Alaska State Legislature on their investigation of governor Sarah Palin’s abuse of power was not good. The Branchflower report [pdf] was released last week with some damning conclusions about the Palin’s personal vendetta against her ex-brother in law and Todd Palin’s immediate misuse of state resources and personnel to further their attempt to get Trooper Wooten fired from his job and denied worker’s compensation for an on the job injury. Beginning the very day after Sarah was elected governor.

Sarah Palin, now John McCain’s vice presidential candidate, spent the weekend expressing how happy she is that the investigation showed that she broke no laws, even though the actual report demonstrates clearly that she did violate ethics regulations – which is illegal. Especially in terms of allowing her husband, who was not elected to any office, to use state resources and personnel to pursue his family feud.

The situation is currently up in the air as to what the Alaskan legislature will do with the findings, state law seemingly requires that Palin be impeached for her violations. That of course cannot be accomplished before November 4th, but on November 5th Palin will be heading back to Wasilla, merely the governor again and not the VP of the United States. I predict she will be impeached by the time Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20, 2009. At which point she will be free to spend more quality time with the family she’s been so eager to exploit for her own personal gain.

Check out DKos front-pager Kagro X’s overview of the report and its findings in Todd Palin, Creepy “First Stalker”. These are not people we want in any position of real power over all of us, even if you happen to be John McCain. Who, despite his desperate desire to be President, was hoodwinked into allowing Dobson & Co. to pick his running mate sans vetting, and is finally coming to realize as their appearances become uglier and uglier that he’s been had big time. I think he’s purposefully throwing the race at this point. Possibly the most honorable thing he as a patriot has ever done for his country.

Now if he could just rein in his gangster-affiliated wife and HER thirst for power… This country absolutely doesn’t need a Cindy-Todd administration!

Before my beloved Father-in-Law died, my ‘challenging’ Mother-in-Law was one of my more inspiring (and intimidating) role models. She’d occasionally vote Republican (which Dad ALWAYS did), but more often went Democratic for reasons of weighed value to more inclusive values and concerns for all citizens, even if the system’s not perfect. She became an ombudsman fighting for the rights of nursing home patients, she sat on the local zoning board, and she was never afraid to give elected officials – any denomination – a piece of her ample mind whenever they deserved it.

But then the love of her life died, and she’s been lonely ever since. In clinging to something of him and his views of life, she became addicted to Fox News, which – it has been noted many times – is the most successful mass propaganda/mind-control experiment ever deployed by partisan human beings against members of their own species. It has turned her into a regular O’Reilly puppet, victim of subliminal programming, a hater of all who are different or disagree. She was someone who never had a hateful bone in her body in all her years before reaching her late 70s and falling to this addiction.

She’ll be 86 this year. We’ve got to go visit and do what we can to get her some help around the house or live-in care, since she’s too stubborn to do it herself, too independent to go to “The Home,” and still in possession of most of her mental faculties Fox hasn’t yet stolen from her. It’s very sad to see this wonderfully smart, able, strong and loving person become a grim, insulated hater. She hates gays, immigrants, blacks, Muslims, Democrats, the French… anybody Bill O’Reilly tells her to hate. Which – even more sadly – now includes her own children. My husband and I (confirmed liberals) as well as his younger brother, who is a conservative Baptist preacher with his own SBC church! Very strange.

She’s alienated her family, her friends… people she’s known for decades or for their entire lives. I believe it’s a crime to prey on people like Fox does. It does real harm to real people, and they’re doing it purely for the profit. They should be stopped, a treatment for the mind-disease they’ve caused should be high on the list of urgent NIH projects.

I’ve wondered in these last few years if there’s a possible class action lawsuit out there to be filed on behalf of regular people’s aging loved ones who have been twisted and corrupted by the Fox Network’s propaganda hypnosis. I’d sure sign on, she’d be an excellent witness who could make any jury cry.

In this vein, Marcos Moulitsas of Daily Kos offers some actual reality in his blog post, Wolfson and a whole lot of stupid. According to an article in The Hill, regular viewers of Fox News are way harder-core Republicans than the broader base of all registered Republicans are. In fact, self-identified conservatives, white evangelical Christians, gun owners and supporters of the Iraq war all give George Bush fewer votes of confidence than the Fox-Bots do.

There’s nothing “Fair and Balanced” about Fox News, and nobody pretends so other than the hypnotized ‘bots, or they wouldn’t have copyrighted that slogan as a trademark instead of an actual description of their coverage.

For those of us who have ‘lost’ loved ones to the hatred spewed 24-7 on this insidious propaganda mind-control outlet, the harm is much worse than just a relative who doesn’t agree with our policy choices, it’s real, very hurtful damage to the few years those loved ones have left. Years which might have been spent just loving each other, spending time with the family (without spewing hatred), growing old gracefully and accepting the inevitability of cycles of life and death on planet earth.

So. If there are any class action lawyers reading this who would care to take ‘em on, there are a great many estranged loved ones of abused Fox-Bots out there who would join. I sure know I would.

Links:

OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism
SourceWatch: Fox News
OpEdNews: Fox fair and balanced

Rich takes a refreshingly detached look at the current situation in the Presidential candidate fields on both sides of the party divide, that stupid game I like to call “Dueling Religious Bigots.” In particular, Rich dares to take on John McCain’s coveted endorsement by the right-wing religious ‘base’ wannabe spokesperson, the Reverend John Hagee. Who stars in the amazing (and highly disgusting) video below, that everyone who reads this should watch – if for no other reason than to remind you WHY Democrats very much need to win big this November…

Now, we’ve all heard over and over again ad nauseum all about the strange racial ideas of Barack Obama’s favorite black clergyman, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama has reluctantly had to distance himself and even denounce his old friend after Wright went on the warpath to destroy his parishoner’s chances at the White House to the best of his abilities. Who knows why a black preacher would want to prevent the chance that we might elect our first black president? I expect hubris is right up there with the money for that odd situation.

But who besides Rich has bothered to take a real look at Hagee’s crazy views? Why is the mainstream media harping on Wright and giving Hagee a pass? Pertinent observation from Rich…

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

To which I say, Amen.

“We will never forget, we will never hide, and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself.”

So said Israeli President Shimon Peres at the main ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned his audience that anti-semitism is on the rise across the world today, and that insidious forms of Holocaust denial were asserting themselves even in nations that have every reason to remember with circumspection what occurred in Europe 63 years ago.

Iran’s quixotic dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a “myth,” and hosted a revisionist Holocaust conference in 2006. Given that Israel and Iran are currently at a heightened state of tensions – complete with bravado from Hillary Clinton about “nuclear umbrellas” and US defense of Israel (which has plenty of its own nuclear weapons) – it’s worthwhile for those who weren’t born when this horror occurred to take a long, hard look at reality.

Yet in Britain, Muslims have joined in commemoration events, which is a step forward, at least for those Muslims who have chosen to participate in the modern world by immigrating to countries like Britain.

A documentary film entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released just two weeks ago purporting to examine the censorship and discrimination in American academia against biologists and other scientists who criticize the Neodarwinian model of biological evolution. The never-ending Evolution vs. Creationism debates aside, a disturbing focus of the film are images linking Darwinism to Eugenics, and Eugenics to the Holocaust. This has resulted in the explosion of a very strange form of Holocaust denial coming from the ranks of science and academia that is a bit shocking.

Despite the ebbs and flows of partisan politics and election campaigns and candidates who will say or do anything to get themselves elected to power, today is a very good day to stop for a moment and asses our overall sociopolitical situation. We are at war on two fronts (again), and the costs are now coming due in increasing poverty and rising prices for every necessity of life. Will we again stoop to blaming the poor? Will we once again single out the religious for persecution and ‘elimination’? Will we allow the so-called “intellectual elite” to deny the lessons of real history in order to justify a renewed eugenics aimed (as always) at those they see as ‘lesser’ humans?

That seems a serious question to me. The quadrennial international convention of the United Methodist Church meeting on this day in Fort Worth, Texas, issued a historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of eugenics in the 20th century, apologizing for Methodist support of eugenic policies in America in the first half of the 20th century, and warning about a resurgence of eugenics in the 21st century. They are the first Christian denomination to issue such a resolution and apology, in recognition of the Holocaust such policies were used to justify.

Perhaps someday we’ll see a similar resolution from some organization of influence in biological/evolutionary science apologizing for the corruption of Darwin’s theory that was used to justify forced sterilization and miscegenation laws in this country and in Europe, and which did in fact get further corrupted by Hitler in his quest for “racial purity.” That too would be a step forward after more than 6 decades. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Links:

Marking annual Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day
Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day
Eugenics Apologies