ACLU

Rep. Virgil Goode, Jr. (R-Virginia), in a letter to constituents obtained by a Charlottesville newspaper, joined a right-wing attack on an incoming Muslim congressman, and linked the presence of the Koran in Congress to a supposed need for draconian immigration laws to stop the influx of Muslim congressmen streaming across the border. "[I]f American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran," wrote Goode.

When right-wing columnist and radio host Dennis Prager lashed out against incoming Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) for “announc[ing] that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran,” he created a small firestorm. Wrote Prager late last month:

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

He added, “If you are incapable of taking an oath on [the Christian Bible], don't serve in Congress."

Not least among the criticisms were (1) that the Constitution specifically prohibits any religious test for office, and (2) that members of Congress do not take their oaths of office on the Bible at all. Instead, they raise their right hands as a group, and then pose for pictures after the fact.

However, Prager stood by his ridiculous attack, and a few right-wing figures came out of the woodwork to support him. WorldNetDaily wove a complicated conspiracy attempting to link Ellison to international terrorists, and Roy Moore – the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from office for refusing to relinquish a two-ton Ten Commandments monument from his court – argued that Islam “rejects our God” and is “simply incompatible with our law.” William Donohue of the Catholic League and Don Feder, under the auspices of his obscure group “Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation,” issued a joint statement calling critics of Prager “scurrilous” and repeating the false factual claim that all congressmen historically swear an oath on the Christian Bible. Feder went further, writing, “It’s no coincidence that most terrorists on four continents are Muslims. Nor is it a coincidence that those who are killing U.S. servicemen in Iraq do so in the name of the bible of Islam. And it isn't by chance that Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and Imanutjob in Iran all cite the Koran as the source of their lunacy.” Feder added that he would rather Ellison swear on “The Pop-Up Kama Sutra.”

Now, at least one fellow congressman is joining this quixotic right-wing campaign against Ellison and the U.S. Constitution. Goode, a Republican representing the southside of Virginia, wrote his letter in response to constituents complaining about Ellison. One accidental recipient forwarded it to an alternative newspaper in Charlottesville. In it, he connects the anti-Islam message of the Right to the anti-immigrant positions that he has made his political hallmark:

Dear Mr. Cruickshank:

Thank you for your recent communication. When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

The Ten Commandments and “In God We Trust” are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, “As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office.” Thank you again for your email and thoughts.

Sincerely yours,
Virgil H. Goode, Jr.
70 East Court Street
Suite 215
Rocky Mount, Virginia 24151

UPDATE 12/21:

Tell Goode to apologize!  A spokesman for Goode says that the congressman “stands by the letter” and refuses to apologize for the letter he wrote to constituents despite universal condemnation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Virginia Muslim PAC, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, the ACLU, and at least one Democratic congressman. A spokesman for incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) called the remarks “offensive.”

Goode has made illegal immigration a primary target of his congressional career – introducing a bill to build a fence along the US-Mexico border and pushing to make English the official language of the US. 

Representative Ellison has the right idea about what it means to be an American - telling Rep Goode that he has “nothing to fear” because “the fact that there are many different faiths, many different colors and many different cultures in America is a great strength.” 

You can call Goode’s office at (202) 225-4711 and ask that he apologize for his intolerant and divisive comments about Muslims and immigrants. (Let us know how your call went here.)

According to Burt Prelutsky, “Christmas” has become “a dirty word” in that “people are being prevented from saying it in polite society for fear that it will offend.” Those of us who have turned on the TV or radio, entered a store, or merely walked around town in the last week may be surprised to hear about the anti-Christmas police state, in which people “are being prevented” from uttering the name of the holiday.

Then again, if that claim surprised you, you will be even more surprised that Prelutsky’s analysis leads to the “Jewish question”:

Although it seems a long time ago, it really wasn't, that people who came here from other places made every attempt to fit in. Assimilation wasn't a threat to anyone; it was what the Statue of Liberty represented. E pluribus unum, one out of many, was our motto. The world's melting pot was our nickname. It didn't mean that any group of people had to check their customs, culture or cuisine, at the door. It did mean that they, and especially their children, learned English, and that they learned to live and let live.

That has changed, as you may have noticed. And I blame my fellow Jews. When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian, agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists and the ACLU at the forefront.

But those of us who witnessed last year’s sorry “War on Christmas” are not surprised – because Prelutsky published the same article one year ago. (See PFAW’s “Right Wing Outrage,” 12/9/05.)

And if you’re concerned that questioning the ability of Jews to “assimilate” to American society is now an acceptable form of discourse, Prelutsky says there’s nothing to worry about:

[T]he dirty little secret in America is that, in spite of the occasional over-publicized rants by the likes of Mel Gibson and Michael Richards, anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in society; it's been replaced by a rampant anti-Christianity.

It took James Dobson of Focus on the Family weeks to finally fight back against former Congressman Dick Armey’s attacks on him – but it only took Armey one day to respond.  

For some time now, Armey has been leveling allegations that “Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies” who rely on “demagoguery” to manipulate the “intellectually lazy” and accusations that Dobson is a power-hungry egomaniac, to which Dobson finally replied by calling Armey a sell out for working with the ACLU and dismissing him has a non-entity who is merely seeking to make a name for himself.

This time around, Armey wasted no time in attacking Dobson, belittling him for insinuating last year that the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants was gay

Having read Jim Dobson’s latest lecture, I feel a little bit like SpongeBob SquarePants: maligned and misunderstood. But it would be unfair, I think, to suggest that SpongeBob has become bitter over his experience with Jim Dobson; he seems to have moved on.

Frankly, though, I don’t understand why Jim Dobson always feels the need to justify himself in such great detail. If he believes that Dick Armey is the only person who thinks he is a bully, it should be of little concern to him. On some issues, regarding interactions between us, his recollections are clearly different than mine. It seems, therefore, that Jim Dobson is no more willing to believe himself a bully than I am able to believe he is a gentle soul.

Armey then recounts several instances where Dobson has threatened the Republican Party with electoral repercussions if it did not deliver on the so-called “values voters” agenda before laying into him for trying to use the GOP to push his right-wing agenda

The “War on Christmas” season started early this year – way back in June. While it hasn’t gotten too much traction yet – apparently people have other things to do – now Jerry Falwell is joining the fight against “anti-Christmas organizations” like the ACLU that want to “steal Christmas.”

In his “Falwell Confidential” e-mail, the Moral Majority co-founder promotes the “Friend or Foe Campaign” run by his affiliated litigation group, Liberty Counsel. Falwell and Liberty Counsel hope to recreate the magic of last year’s holiday season by instigating boycotts of “retailers who ban[] expressions of Christmas” (by saying “Happy Holidays”) and threatening to sue schools or government offices that don’t adhere to the “Merry Christmas”-only lexicon. From the e-mail:

Anita Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, said, “Christmas is constitutional. We cannot allow our religious liberty and heritage to be swept from the public square.”

When enough people learn the truth — that we can celebrate the religious aspects of Christmas — the ACLU and similar “Scrooges” and “grinches” will lose their power to steal Christmas.

Do civil liberties groups have the “power to steal Christmas”? As he wrote last year, Falwell believes there is some kind of conspiracy on the part of “small minority of our fellow citizens” to “obliterate Christmas,” and the “Friend or Foe Campaign” was used to collect supposed evidence of the “War on Christmas” – even when the cases they found turned out to be trumped-up or bogus (see Right Wing Outrage for 12/20/05 for video of Falwell hyping a bogus story). Still, the efforts of Falwell and other Christmas warriors ensured that there was no time of year we were denied the political hysteria of the far Right.

In the past when right-wingers wanted to link some idea they didn't like to Nazism, they would use an analogy so they wouldn't have to take direct responsibility for raising the specter of Hitler. 

For instance, James Dobson attacked stem-cell research by making this not-so-subtle Nazi comparison  

In World War II, the Nazis experimented on human beings in horrible ways in the concentration camps, and I imagine, if you wanted to take the time to read about it, there would have been some discoveries there that benefited mankind.

Others, like Russell Johnson, prefer to innocently suggest that evangelicals who are pro-life but don’t get involved in politics are akin to “the kind of people who enabled Hitler to take care of Auschwitz."

The point is that people rarely make a direct connection between current controversies and Hitler, preferring rather to insinuate that certain things share specific qualities with Hitler or Nazism.  

No more.  Now, poor Charles Darwin is not only being compared to Hitler -- he's being held directly responsible for the Nazi genocide.

As we have noted several times before, D. James Kennedy is the main proponent of the “Darwin = Hitler” idea and now he is bringing his message to the masses

Author and Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy connects the dots between Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, a groundbreaking inquiry into Darwin’s chilling social impact. The new television documentary airs nationwide on August 26 and 27 on The Coral Ridge Hour.  

…

The program features 14 scholars, scientists, and authors who outline the grim consequences of Darwin’s theory of evolution and show how his theory fueled Hitler’s ovens.

“To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler,” said Dr. Kennedy, the host of Darwin’s Deadly Legacy. “Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.”

And should Kennedy’s rigorous logic and rock-solid arguments needs any further bolstering, it’ll undoubtedly be provided by noted scientific expert Ann Coulter, who is featured on the program.  An excerpt of her contribution was shown on this week’s “Coral Ridge Hour”  [Watch the video: Broadband or Dial-Up]

I’ll let the scientists decide what should be taught in science class,  but it seems to me the one thing that shouldn’t be taught in science class is a crack pot nineteenth century mystery religion … [public schools are] the left’s madrassas and they propagandize to the children six hours a day, 12 years of the child life.

Take that, Darwin!  Your meager little theory’s days are numbered, for there is simply no way that it will be able withstand this sort of attack coming from intellectual and scientific heavyweights such as Kennedy and Coulter.  

There is just so much to say about this recent Kathleen Parker column that it is difficult to know exactly where to start.  

Parker begins by dismissing concerns regarding the influence wielded by “Christianists” such as Jerry Falwell and John Hagee because … well … they aren’t as bad as Islamic terrorists

Although both groups may be "true believers," those who try to connect the dots of Christian belief, specifically evangelical Christianity, to Islamism seem willing to overlook the fact that Islamists praise Allah and fly airplanes into buildings while Christianists praise Jesus and pass the mustard.

 And though both groups of people may use scripture to shape their approach to the public square, Islamist interpretation of doctrine permits religious expression through suicide-murder, beheadings, public stonings (preferably of women) and Jew-hating, while Christianist doctrine deals in such wimpy notions as forgiveness, tolerance, redemption and cheek-turning.

Parker is confusing her terms.  Forgiveness and cheek-turning are Christian teachings – but Christianists refers not to all Christians, just to those who are part of a political movement that seeks to use government power to impose their religious beliefs.  Similarly, not all Muslims are Islamists -- those who want to use government power to impose their religious beliefs.  And not all Islamists resort to terrorism.

Parker’s setting up a straw man here – nobody is really equating Falwell with terrorist leaders.  And just because Christianist leaders aren’t recruiting suicide bombers doesn’t mean they’re harmless, or their political goals aren’t dangerous.

Parker goes on to note that Hagee is a vocal proponent of a joint US-Israel strike on Iran in order to bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.   But Parker doesn’t see this as much a problem because nobody takes him seriously - least of all the White House