Since I have taken a firmly anti-theocratic and anti-fundamentalist stance, you might come to the conclusion that I would view this story with some alarm. To the contrary. I find the idea compelling.
Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.Good riddance!
"We're going to force a constitutional crisis," said Cory Burnell, 29, an investment advisor who founded the group in November 2003.
"If necessary," he said, "we will secede from the union."
But why pick South Carolina? Let's be more generous. Give 'em Texas.
And then let's force anyone of a theocratic persuasion to move there.
I'm only half kidding. The cultural differences between normal people and the fundie maniacs have grown so wide that we may no longer be able to co-exist in peace. The blame for this sorry situation rests entirely with the fundies, who simply do not believe in toleration or co-existence. Their motto is: "As I believe, so too must you believe. As I do, so too must you do."
Rushdoony-flavored Dominionists literally want to re-institute slavery. They cannot tolerate any of the factors that made America prosperous in the 1950s and the 1960s: Strong unions, steeply progressive taxes, investment in infrastructure, a reliable social safety net, and a reverence for science. Europeans possess these things, and they now experience both significantly longer life spans and higher standards of living.
"Christians," like Libertarians, will not be persuaded by any argument based on results. They do not care that Europeans live longer and better than we do. They do not care that the average American was more prosperous before the Reagan "revolution."
They care about ideology, not about what actually works.
I say let them fester in their own puss-pool of piety and poverty. Let them go and be gone!
Best of all, the Christian Exodus movement represents a growing unease between the Republican Party and the Jesus nuts. (Incidentally, the above-linked article demonstrates the way in which the Republicans have used Christianity as a recruiting mechanism. The monster they created has grown beyond their control.)
No matter how much zealotry the GOP leaders display, they still must appeal to those who want to keep the church-state wall reinforced. The Bushites need the Wall Street vote as well as the Jesus vote. They can't maintain power if they thoroughly disgust non-theistic conservatives of a Libertarian stripe.
Hence, the Exodus. These "Christians" loathe the very concept of a Big Tent. They want their own tent, populated entirely by their fellow freaks.
Let 'em have it!
Once those ghastly Jesusbots have "raptured" themselves to some southern Bantustan, rational people can reclaim what is left of the United States of America.
GO! GO! GO!
4 comments:
What's more likely tohappen is something like the civil rights era in the south, where local officials brazenly refuse to enforce the law with respect to freedom of speech and separation of church and state.
But, this time around, the federal government, far from sending in the troops, will be offering encouragement and offering financial assistance in the form of "faith-based" incentives....
There's no happy outcome here, when 90% of the American public claims to believe in angels....
The guy stated he wanted to have a government like the one god gave to the world in the old testament, or words to that effect. In which case, he will have to do without the taxes that the blue states send to the red states, the medicines, hospitals, electronics, etc., that all us darwinists have come up with since the bronze age....And I wonder why he doesn't want to leave california just yet....could it be that he just loves all this hedonistic living??
As the "worried reader" you cite, I love your take on this.
I always did advocate a bumper sticker reading
GIVE TEXAS BACK TO MEXICO!
Since Bush has already rolled back American history to the McKinley administration, maybe it's time to roll it back until just before the Alamo and the annexation of Texas in 1845?
Um, let's see, that would put us back in the administration of James K. Polk.
Then we can continue the rollback till we get to Madison and eventually Jefferson -- finally, a president we can be proud of. That is, if you ignore his slave "wife" and other little details.
Or maybe we should just abolish the presidency. Switzerland gets along fine without one.
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