Category: racism

More on The Response: Did Hitler mimic the Indian reservations?

Here is a tale of two supporters of The Response.
John Benefiel is founder of the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network and endorser of the upcoming prayer meeting, The Response, initiated by Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and funded by the American Family Association. Benefiel has focused on repairing relationships with Native Americans. His reasons are spiritual. For instance, he teaches that Oklahoma’s high divorce rate is due to the fact that Oklahoma was once home to the Indian Territory, a place where the government broke covenants with Native Americans. Over the years, people have been inspired by dark forces to break their marriage vows because the government broke vows with the native nations of the land. Thus, the support for making amends with native people is not simply to do the right thing, rather the big picture is to clear the land of demonic influence so that Benefiel’s version of Christianity can take hold.
Bryan Fischer is an Issues Analyst for the AFA, the group funding the event endorsed by Mr. Benefiel. Mr. Fischer has said that Native Americas were morally disqualified from ownership of their lands because of their savagry and immorality. The AFA website provides Mr. Fischer a forum to say the Indians got what they deserved because they refused to convert to Christianity. Fischer and Mr. Benefiel surely seem to disagree about this matter.
Mr. Fischer also preaches that the Nazi party was full of gays, Hitler was gay and needed gays to enforce his evil intentions. According to Fischer, gays in the Nazi military gave the world 6 million dead Jews.  
Mr. Benefiel has something to say about Hitler and the Nazi era as well. Roll the tape:

The only reference to this possibility that I can find is John Toland’s biography of Adolf Hitler, where he wrote:

If we believe Bryan Fischer (which I don’t), then Hitler was some kind of gay and his brutality was because of it. Now we hear, from Apostle Benefiel and author John Toland, that the Nazis were inspired by the cruelty of the Christian nation America toward our indigenous people. Wow.
Benefiel and President Obama have something in common according to Fischer. According to Fischer when we consider America’s treatment of Native Americans, there are two conceptual options:

The template that the left has generated is that the displacement of indigenous tribes by European colonists and settlers was irredeemably evil. All the land which now comprises the United States was stolen from its rightful owners. Our very presence on this soil is a guilty, tainted presence. 
So the question is whether that template is right, or whether the displacement of indigenous nations was consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations and history. 
A lot is at stake here. If Americans believe that the entire history of our nation rests on a horribly evil foundation, then there is nothing to be proud of in American history, and our president is correct to identify America as the source of all evil in the world and to make a career out of apologizing for her very existence. 
If, however, there is a moral and ethical basis for our displacement of native American tribes, and if our westward expansion and settlement are in fact consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations, then Americans have much to be proud of.

On the matter of native people and the evil perpetrated, Benefiel and President Obama are on the same page.   
Obviously making amends with Native Americans is a big deal to Benefiel. And to his credit, he has investigated and documented the evil treatment of indigenous people by the American government. However, given his belief in curses and apologies, it is hard for me to understand how he can endorse an event like The Response, funded by the AFA, which condones Bryan Fischer’s derogatory views of Native Americans as a race of people.   
One observation that I can make here is that Christian conservatives are not as monolithic a group as those outside the group think we are. Since I would be somewhere in there, the boundaries expand to even greater reaches.
It does raise for me a question about the intent of events like The Response. To which god are these folks praying? Are they praying to the one who demands an apology for evil done to Native Americans, or the one who empowered the Europeans to displace the indigenous people?
Well, at least The Response is bringing people of competing ideologies together.
(Thanks to Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch for the tip.)
Video is derived from this sermon.

Marriage pledge authors backtrack on slavery reference

The Family Leader organization removed a reference to slavery in their “marriage pledge” in the midst of complaints and negative media scrutiny. According to Politico:

A social conservative Iowa group has retracted language regarding slavery from the opening of a presidential candidates’  pledge, amid a growing controversy over the document that Michele Bachmann had signed and Rick Santorum committed to.
The original “marriage vow” from the Family Leader, unveiled last week, included a line at the opening of its preamble, which suggested that black children born into slavery were better off in terms of family life than African-American kids born today.

Given the spokesperson’s explanation, I don’t think the group really gets why they were wrong:

“We came up with the pledge and so we had no idea that people would misconstrue that,” she said. “It was not meant to be racist or anything. it was just a fact that back in the days of slavery there was usually a husband and a wife…we were not saying at all that things are better for African-American children in slavery days than today.”

A husband and a wife who may not live together, with one on one plantation and the other on another.
The Bachmann campaign said Michele Bachmann only meant that she agreed with the pledge part, but not the rest of it. Really? You mean you don’t read what you sign?

A Bachmann spokeswoman said earlier Saturday that reports the congresswoman had signed a vow that contained the slavery language was wrong, noting it was not in the “vow” portion.
“She signed the ‘candidate vow,’ ” campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, and distanced Bachmann from the preamble language, saying, “In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible.”

GOP candidates under fire for signing family pledge

I can see why too.
Here are the first two bullet points which are designed to make the case for the pledge that Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum signed (Pawlenty, please, step away from the pledge):

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA?s first African-American President.
LBJ? 1965 War on Poverty was triggered in part by the famous “Moynihan Report” finding that the black out-of-wedlock birthrate had hit 26%; today, the white rate exceeds that, the overall rate is 41%, and over 70% of African-American babies are born to single parents – a prime sociological indicator for poverty, pathology and prison regardless of race or ethnicity.

The first bullet point is causing all kinds of trouble for the pledge, as it should. What is with the word, “yet?” Do you really want to compare days when masters physically and sexually degraded parents of children; when masters owned families and separated children from them, two parents or not, to now? Any point that might be made about the advantages of two parent families is lost. I’ll take the single-parent version now if my  alternative is the two-parent type under slavery.
I am aware that the writers of the pledge probably meant that both slavery and the decline of the two-parent home are bad. However, the juxtaposition is insensitive and misleading to the max.   
There are other problems with the pledge, namely the clause which insinuates sexual orientation is a choice and changeable. Overall, this is the kind of thing that should be ignored by any candidate who wants to appeal to the rest of the country and GOP, outside of a small group in Iowa.

Rut like rabbits? Backtrack like crazy!

First Bryan Fischer said:

Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. Welfare has subsidized illegitimacy by offering financial rewards to women who have more children out of wedlock. We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it’s no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits.

“Rut like rabbits?” Backtrack like crazy! Then he changed it to:

Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. Welfare has subsidized illegitimacy by offering financial rewards to women who have more children out of wedlock. We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it’s no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of those who engage in random and reckless promiscuity, whether they are Caucasian, Hispanic, or African-American.

All that because the Left Went Wiggy!
Fischer’s observations about poverty and rutting came in a column where Fischer said Jesus groomed the Apostles for political office (now edited to remove the rut).  We don’t have much information about the later lives of the Apostles but I don’t think they went on to stellar political careers.

Bryan Fischer, GOP Kingmaker, part 2

I asked the question, Is Bryan Fischer the New GOP Kingmaker?, in a January 19 post. Apparently, in Iowa, socially conservative GOP candidates believe they must pass through Fischer’s radio show on their way to a GOP victory. As I proposed here and here, this is lunacy and will come back to haunt the candidate that manages to prevail and win the nomination. In a more direct and entertaining manner, George Will advanced essentially the same argument, with Gingrich and Huckabee in focus. 
The left will hammer this home every chance they can. Case in point, this article from Mother Jones.

For GOP presidential hopefuls, its become necessary to court the crazy. Earlier today, Tim Murphy told you about Newt Gingrich’s remarks at an American Family Association forum in Iowa, where the former House Speaker—and likely Republican presidential contestant—lavished praise on Islamophobe conspiracy theorist David Barton.
But wait, there’s more: The Iowa Independent reports that Gingrich, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are scheduled to appear on Bryan Fischer’s radio show today. Fischer, the AFA’s issues director, has long been a leading basher of Muslims and gays and lesbians. He has said that inbreeding causes Muslims to be stupid and violent; he has equated gay sex with domestic terrorism; and he has claimed that Hitler and his stormtroopers were gay. Yesterday on his blog, Fischer wrote that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion does not apply to Islam:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

I addressed Fischer’s out-of-context quotes from Justice Joseph Story last week. Fischer cited the 19th century legal scholar to support his views of the First Amendment. However, considering Story’s views in the context of his massive commentary on the constitution revealed that there is no religious test for involvement in government and no intent of the framers to limit religious freedom to Christian denominations.
The MoJo writer forgot another group Fischer’s has had in his supremacist view – Native Americans. Maybe the GOP hopefuls think that Fischer is safe because he attacks Muslims and gays – two groups not high on the GOP constituent list. But Native Americans?
Circling back to Fischer’s comments about the First Amendment, Fischer would have to carry his thinking further and say that religious freedom does not apply to Jews, Buddhists, Latter Day Saints, etc. His reading of the First Amendment is dangerously flawed. John McCain initially courted the religious right through John Hagee during his election run in 2008 which failed miserably due to Hagee’s public statements on Catholics and more. Fischer is building up a treasure trove of such statements on a variety of groups which make Hagee look like a moderate.