One Down

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
-Jerry Falwell on 9/11

With Falwell gone, who will protect us from Tinky Winky's
Big Gay Illuminati and their insidious Man-Purse Agenda?

I can honestly say that I am glad the man is dead. He has been waging a campaign against human rights since 1973, when the Supreme Court of the United States had the temerity to give women sovereign rights over their own bodies in Roe v. Wade, outraging a young Falwell with their decision.

Calling feminism a "satanic" movement, in 1979 he founded the ultra-right wing fundamentalist lobbying cartel, the so-called 'Moral Majority', whose main goal was the destruction of the walls between Church and State, the ultimate target being an American Christian Church/State- the sort of New Rome that attracts apocalyptic nut jobs who think it's OK to attack abortion clinics and shoot doctors while simultaneously ranting about the Islamo-Terrorists
that we need to be protected from- at the price of our civil liberties.
Unless you were gay or female. Then you weren't supposed to have any civil liberties in the first place.
His vision was one of a Christian America that would assert itself in a global struggle with the 'rising tide of evil' in the growing Muslim world.

The sort of Nationalistic Christian America that would return to the days of the Holy Crusades, using it's military might to spread it's ideology outside it's own borders, while using the so-called 'word of God' to oppress and suppress any at home who might disagree, including politicians and the press.


"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

Twenty years later, most of it under the sway of the Religious Right, and the country is in the worst shape since the Depression. Falwell's ideology was a great fit with the Reagan-Era neo-cons who help anoint Bush 43 as our Emperor.
We got our Crusade.
It's called Iraq and it's going rather poorly, which any thoughtful person could have predicted.

The Generals and advisers who called the Iraq occupation a bad idea were fired, demoted or otherwise had their lives and careers torn apart- see war critic Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame for an example. Or they sold out, drank the Kool-Aid, repeated the party lies, were pilloried as scapegoats and retired in disgrace: see Colin Powell.

I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

I love the irony of Falwell invoking evolution so much that I'm re-pasting the quote.

The Religious Right can't evolve. It's fundamentally against evolution.

Much like a Great White shark, it doesn't have to evolve, merely adapt- it's already the perfect mindless and unreasoning devourer, with a nearly unstoppable and all-consuming appetite for more power and wealth, damn the costs in lives. Violence is inevitable in the face of such aspirations.
The same religious madness that drove generations of armor-clad European fodder to the meat grinder of Jerusalem during the Crusades is still in force today.

It's what makes people hate others simply because of the way the others love.

It's what makes people burn books that they've never read.

It's what makes people fly planes into buildings full of people they've never met.

It's insanity and it's advocated by both the Taliban and American Evangelists. Both groups spell god differently, but both strive for a militantly strict patriarchy of putatively heterosexual men; holding women as little more than breeding stock for more Jihadists/Crusaders.

Those are some of the 'old-fashioned values' our Evangelical Christians seek to return to. Imagine Cotton Mather leading a legion of Clayton Waagners with the world's most devastating weapons at their disposal. Their enemy: Anyone who stands in the way.

That's what Jerry wanted. He may still get it, but I imagine it's going to be hard for for him to enjoy it from his reserved suite in the darkest pit of Tartarus.