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Showing Original Post only (View all)The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to "remodel" the nation [View all]
The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to "remodel" the nation
Religious right's blueprint for theocratic state laws keeps creeping forward. Is the left ready to fight?
Paul Rosenberg
April 13, 2019 4:20PM (UTC)
On April 3, USA Today published an array of stories under the banner, Copy, Paste, Legislate, exploring the political impact of model bills on state-level legislation more than 10,000 bills from 2010 to 2018 based on a two-year joint investigation with the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. The lead story headline said it all: "You elected them to write new laws. Theyre letting corporations do it instead."
OK, it wasn't quite all. While corporate influence was the strongest, figures revealed that conservative groups werent far behind: There were 4,301 bills from industry and 4,012 from conservative groups, far more than the 1,602 from liberal groups or the 248 classified as other. The hidden origins of these bills often hides their true intent. The most notorious such group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for instance combines business interests with movement conservatives.
But within the fold of conservative groups theres a whole other story to be told about the organizing of extremist religious conservatives, whose political mobilization, as Ive noted in the past, played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump. Indeed, just the day before Copy, Past, Legislate was published, the Texas Senate passed SB-17, a bill that would protect anti-LGBTQ discrimination by all licensed professionals who claim to act on a sincerely held religious belief.
Its time for Americans to wake up to the harsh reality that the religious right, fueled by their fear of loss of power from the changing demographics in our country and their support from the Trump administration, is emboldened and aggressively pursuing all means possible to maintain white Christian power in America, Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, told Salon. Project Blitz, for example, has already introduced over 50 bills in at least 23 states this year alone, she added.
One spin-off story published in the Nashville Tennessean dealt specifically with an anti-LGTBQ adoption model bill. (Simultaneously, NBC reported such bills were 'snowballing' in state legislatures.) The Tennessee bill came from Project Blitz, which was described as a legislative effort with the stated aim to bring back God to America." But as Salon has reported in the past, Project Blitz is much more sinister than that.
Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, was the first to discover its three-tier playbook, produced by a coalition of right-wing activists hed long been following, including Texas Republican activist and pseudo-historian David Barton, whose book, Jefferson Lies, which tried to remake Thomas Jefferson as an evangelical hero, was canceled by its publisher under withering criticism from conservative and evangelical scholars (followup here).
The authors of the Project Blitz playbook are savvy purveyors of dominionism, Clarkson told Salon at the time. They are in it for the long haul and try not to say things that sound too alarming. But they live an immanent theocratic vision. Not all their allies would go all the way with them, Clarkson told me, but the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to The Handmaid's Tale reason enough to warrant far more attention than theyve gotten so far.
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https://www.salon.com/2019/04/13/the-plot-against-america-inside-the-christian-right-plan-to-remodel-the-nation/?fbclid=IwAR0G2vKPMgPQZsSSaka5XXqWD7gpomt5G3r3Tlz-qf4gMQXGf2FVrGJ5D50
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The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to "remodel" the nation [View all]
babylonsister
Apr 2019
OP
Seperating rethuglicons from their corporate masters will be almost impossible BUT
democratisphere
Apr 2019
#35
For the second time this year I had to listen to a casher preaching while being checked out
yaesu
Apr 2019
#8
I'm not worried about the religious nuts. No matter what they do we are getting looser not
UniteFightBack
Apr 2019
#10
I recently received a flyer fromm the American Humanist Society. One of their main goals is
c-rational
Apr 2019
#13
What will they say/do when it is not their version of Christianity in charge?
keithbvadu2
Apr 2019
#30
Just imagine Westboro Baptist Church in charge? After all, they are Christians.
keithbvadu2
Apr 2019
#45
Aye, like I said decades ago there was never a Republican Contract with America rather they signed
cstanleytech
Apr 2019
#19