Family Research Council

On Saturday, Donald Trump spoke with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, the extremist Religious Right leader who has been rallying conservative activists around Ted Cruz, on Perkins’ radio program “Washington Watch.”

The GOP presidential frontrunner went on his usual rants about the so-called “War on Christmas” and how this anti-Christmas spirit is undermining religious liberty. Trump, who has made attacks on Muslims a central part of his campaign, said that Christians in America are losing their religious freedoms, unlike Muslim-Americans, whom he said have been able to “band together better or something.”

Well, Tony, I can, tell you this, that religious liberty is very important to me, and I see more and more, especially, in particular, Christianity, Christians, their power is being taken away. I just watch it and I get angry at it. You look at what is going on with other religions, you look at, as an example, what’s happening with respect to Muslims and others where perhaps they just band together better or something. But, you know, the Christian, every year, you just see it more and more.

You know, you go from one thing to the next to the point where it’s not politically correct to say ‘Merry Christmas’ to anybody or you go to stores and you don’t ever see the word ‘Christmas’ anymore. You don’t see that term anymore, Tony.

One of the things I always say, and I say it lightheartedly but I mean it, it’s actually not supposed to be so lighthearted, and I get standing ovations, especially in Iowa and certain places, is we are going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again. Because you go into these stores and you don’t see anything having to do with Christmas and it’s disgraceful, frankly, as far as I’m concerned, and that’s the way it should be and I feel strongly about it.

Perkins went on to praise Trump’s brave stand in favor of Christmas, which led Trump to discuss the case of a Washington state high school coach who was placed on paid leave after coercing students into religious activity. Trump said it was “incredible” that this coach was disciplined while he, Trump, has been “lambasted” for trying “to see what’s going on with” the “whole thing with the Muslims.”

You know, when I see coaches being fired or suspended because they’re having a prayer for football players, the players are grabbing each other’s hand and praying before or after a game and they suspend the coach or fire the coach in some cases, I say, that’s not happening, if I get in, that’s not happening, Tony, I’ll tell you right now and I’ll make a big deal out of it.

I mean, we have some very important problems, when you look at ISIS and the disaster of Obamacare and our military and our vets not being taken care of properly, but you know that’s still something that is very important to me. How do you suspend a coach because he is practicing his faith?

Then, when I want to see what’s going on with, as an example, you know, it’s been a very big subject, the whole thing with the Muslims, and you get lambasted for doing something and yet they’ll fire a coach who’s a Christian coach because he’s saying a prayer on a football field with his players. It’s an incredible situation that’s taking place and not a good one!

Donald Trump’s call to bar all Muslims from entering the country was widely recognized as an appeal for explicit religious discrimination and generated significant pushback.  But many of Trump’s right-wing defenders have turned to an argument that has long bounced around Religious Right circles: that Muslims are not entitled to the religious liberty protections of the First Amendment because Islam is somehow not a religion. A few years ago, for example, retired Lt. Gen Jerry Boykin called Islam “a totalitarian way of life” that “should not be protected under the First Amendment.”

At this week’s Republican presidential debate, Rick Santorum explained why he believes Islam is not protected under the First Amendment, an argument made repeatedly by the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer. Here’s Santorum:

The fact of the matter is, Islam is different. I know this is going to come as a shock to a lot of people, and I mean this sincerely. Islam is not just a religion. It is also a political governing structure. The fact of the matter is, Islam is a religion, but it is also Sharia law, it is also a civil government, it is also a form of government. And, so, the idea that that is protected under the First Amendment is wrong.

Conservative columnist and radio host Andrew McCarthy has similarly defended Trump’s comments, saying that Islam is not merely a religion because it “has ambitions to be more than a religion, that is to say that it is an ideological, sweeping system that does not recognize a division between spiritual life on the one hand and political and civic life on the other.”

Back in September, Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins defended similar comments by Ben Carson:

“Religious freedom and our liberty is ordered liberty under the Constitution,” Perkins said. “And as Dr. Caron pointed out, and I know this is driving the left crazy, that Islam is not just a religion, Islam is an economic system, it is a judicial system, it is a compressive system which is incompatible with the Constitution. That’s what Dr. Carson said and he happens to be correct.”

More recently, Perkins defended Trump with a dubiously specific statistic, saying that “only 16 percent of Islam is a religion — the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic and political system.” Televangelist Pat Robertson also said this month that people should not view Islam as a religion but rather a “political system masquerading as a religion.”

Wait a minute. Aren’t these the same people who repeatedly insist that the Bible is the final authority on everything, from laws regulating personal relationships to economic and tax policy, and environmental protection? Anti-marriage-equality activists have insisted that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling was in violation of “God’s law” and therefore “illegitimate.” 

David Barton, an oft-discredited “historian” and Republican Party activist who is currently heading up a Ted Cruz super PAC, argues that the Bible opposes minimum wage laws, estate taxes, capital gains taxes, any progressive form of taxation and even net neutrality. He says the Constitution came right out of the Bible. If you applied Tony Perkins’ calculations to David Barton’s Bible, what percentage would come up as religion?

Many Religious Right leaders have embraced Seven Mountains dominionism, which is grounded in the belief that the right kind of Bible-believing Christians are meant to control all the important spheres of culture, including government, business, education, and entertainment. For example, the American Pastors Network’s Sam Rohrer says this:

Government leaders are charged with wielding the Word of God as an instrument of Justice, promoting God’s moral law as the foundation of right and wrong, encouraging those who do well biblically, and executing judgment on those who break the law.

Along those lines, three Republican presidential candidates, including current Iowa frontrunner Ted Cruz, recently joined a “religious freedom” rally organized by a pastor who argues that the Bible requires the government to execute gay people.

And don’t forget David Lane, whose American Renewal Project is mobilizing conservative pastors to get more involved in politics — and who argues that America was founded for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, and that the Bible should be a primary textbook in public schools.

So, a thought for Religious Right leaders: If you are going to argue for stripping Muslims of their First Amendment religious liberty protections based on your interpretation of Islam as an enterprise that is more political and ideological than religious, you may have to trim your own political sails quite a bit. Either that, or quit pretending you are proponents of religious freedom, and admit that you, like Bryan Fischer, believe the First Amendment applies only to Christians, or, like Tony Perkins, that gay-supporting Christians don’t deserve the same legal protections because a “true religious freedom” has to “come forth from religious orthodoxy.” Just don’t try to pretend your definition of “religious freedom” owes anything to Thomas Jefferson or the First Amendment. 

Earlier this week, "Coach" Dave Daubenmire appeared on "Talkback with Chuck Wilder" radio program to discuss his long history of anti-choice activism. During the discussion, Daubenmire asserted that Republicans and Religious Right groups do not actually want to end abortion in America because they make too much money exploiting the issue.

After claiming that Democrats will never end abortion because the federal government gives hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, which he falsely claimed then gets "recycled out" into Democratic campaign coffers, Daubenmire said that Republicans and groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association don't really want to end abortion either.

"I want people to understand this because I know this to be the truth," he said. "Republicans raise hundreds of millions of dollars fighting against Planned Parenthood. All those pro-life Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, I could just go on and on, the American Family Association, they raise hundreds of millions of dollars to end abortion and, Chuck, what do you suppose they do with that money? Yes, you're right. They funnel it to pro-life representatives. So neither one of those people, neither group, Chuck, wants abortion to go away. The Democrats want it to stay because they can raise money on it and the Republicans want it to stay because they can raise money on it. I know that sounds callous, brother, but I'm just telling you that's the way that game is played."

The National Review reports today that Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, convened a meeting last week at which several dozen influential Religious Right activists sought to unify their support behind a single presidential candidate. Ted Cruz ultimately won a supermajority of those involved, and as a result “an avalanche of endorsements is forthcoming from conservative leaders,” including a looming endorsement from Perkins.

Perkins previously served as a state lawmaker in Louisiana and unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2002. His career was not without controversy: He spoke at least twice to the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens and reportedly “paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,500 for his mailing list” while working as the campaign manager for failed U.S. Senate candidate Woody Jenkins. “The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke,” reported The Nation.

Despite Perkins’ high standing in the conservative movement, his positions place him far outside the mainstream. This isn’t just because he opposes things like gay marriage and abortion rights, as most conservative leaders do. Instead, Perkins has a record of labeling his political opponents as satanic, conjuring up wild conspiracy theories and backing extremist legislation around the world, including a Uganda bill that would have imposed the death penalty or life prison sentences for some gay people.

Of course, seeing that Cruz has already touted endorsements from a convicted abortion doctor stalker, an activist who wants abortion providers to be executed and activists who link gay people to everything from Ebola to Amtrak crashes to terrorism to the Holocaust, Perkins will fit right in.

Perkins on LGBT rights:

• Accused the government of backing “the promotion of same-sex relations” as part of its “push for population control.”

• Said that “the human race would be extinct” if homosexuality were to become “normal.”

• Defended Uganda’s “kill-the-gays” bill as a “laudable” effort “to uphold moral conduct.”

• Claimed gay youth have a higher suicide rate because they intrinsically know their sexual orientation is “abnormal.”

• Asserted that there is “a correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia” and that pedophilia “is a homosexual problem.”

• Alleged that America’s enemies would celebrate the lifting of the military’s ban on transgender service members.

• Said homosexuality is incompatible with evolution, which he doesn’t believe in.

• Repeatedly predicted that a Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage would lead to a “revolution” and “the dissolution of our republic.”

• Urged states to defy court decisions in favor of marriage equality since they are “inconsistent with nature itself” and “certainly inconsistent with scripture.”

• Claimed that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling has led to an anti-Christian “onslaught” and “crackdown.”

• Likened homosexuality to alcoholism and drug addiction.

• Said lawmakers who backed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell have “the blood of innocent soldiers on their hands.”

• Blamed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for military suicides, sexual assaults, the Secret Service prostitution scandal and the inevitable reinstatement of the draft.

• Claimed that militaries that allow LGBT people to serve openly — which includes Israel’s — are “the ones that participate in parades, they don't fight wars to keep the nation and the world free.”

• Claimed gay parents “provide distorted values to innocent adopted children.”

• Urged gay people to seek conversion therapy to “escape the homosexual lifestyle.”

• Asserted that gay marriage “perverts the word ‘love’” and has “exacerbated” problems facing the black community.

• Called on troops to fight the gay “agenda” as an enemy within.

Perkins on LGBT rights supporters:

• Predicted that LGBT rights backers will “start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians” as part of their dreamed anti-Christian holocaust.

• Said of LGBT rights advocates: “They’re intolerant, they’re hateful, they’re vile, they’re spiteful.”

• Attacked LGBT rights supporters for “advancing an agenda that is both destructive to our society and, more importantly, destructive to the individuals involved,” claiming that LGBT people are “engaging in an activity and behavior and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.”

• Described LGBT rights activists as pawns of the Devil: “The Enemy is simply using them as pawns, they are held captive by the Enemy.”

• Insisted that LGBT rights advocates inspire ISIS terrorists and act like terrorists themselves.

• Compared LGBT rights supporters to the Charlie Hebdo attackers. 

• Argued that LGBT rights activists want “the indoctrination of our kids” because “there is an emptiness within them” and “they are looking for that acceptance.”

• Warned that “global homosexuality” and “radical sexualism” is promoting “immorality” and the persecution of Christians.

• Called the It Gets Better Project a “disgusting” attempt to “recruit” children “into that lifestyle” and have them come out “as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion).”

• Said LGBT rights advances in the U.S. have “deadly consequences” and led to an “increase in persecution abroad” against Christians.

• Urged Mitt Romney to fire a gay foreign policy adviser.

• Attacked the Day of Silence and anti-bullying initiatives.

• Claimed state hate crimes laws breed “chaos” and lead to “indoctrination of our children in schools and the loss of religious freedom and the freedom of speech.”

• Insisted that the 2009 Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act made it a “federal crime” to be a Christian.

Perkins on religious freedom and religious minorities:

• Said Democrats are “mostly aligned with a lot of the Jewish lobby” as they “enjoy the money coming from the Jewish community.”

• Warned that “liberal Jewish folk” who support marriage equality and abortion rights are undermining Israel.

• Lambasted Christians who support Planned Parenthood and abortion rights as phony Christians.

• Asserted that Christian pastors who are willing to marry same-sex couples shouldn’t have the same religious rights as conservative Christians since their stance isn’t “based on orthodox religious viewpoints.”

• Argued that Muslim-Americans shouldn’t have First Amendment freedoms because Islam “is incompatible with the Constitution” and dominated by terrorists.

• Defended Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigration since “only 16 percent of Islam is a religion.”

• Alleged that the Constitution doesn’t protect Muslims since their faith “will tear and destroy the fabric of a democracy.”

• Called Islam an “evil” religion.

• Attacked supporters of refugee resettlement as those who “hate America” and seek to bring in Muslims to undermine “the values of America.”

• Criticized the military for using “goofy” breathing exercises and yoga to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

• Said the government shouldn’t treat those who adhere to “fringe religions” as equals to Christians.

• Labeled advocates of the separation of church and state as “cultural terrorists.”

Perkins on President Obama:

• Called on Americans who voted for Obama to “repent” for electing someone with “a disdain for Christianity.”

• Said it “makes sense” to think Obama is a secret Muslim since he’s “overly deferential to Islam and almost hostile to Christianity” and refuses to help Christians in need.

• Argued that Obama’s political agenda “paves the way for what scripture calls the Antichrist,” God’s judgment and the divine destruction of America.

• Blamed the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College on Obama’s “religious hostility” and claimed sexual assaults on college campuses are also Obama’s fault.

• Alleged that Obama is waging a “war on Christians” rather than fighting ISIS.

• Said of Obama: “I think he has been the worst president this country ever had and if he has four more years in the White House I don’t know that the country can survive his attacks on the family.”

• Called Obama his “worst nightmare” and a “threat to America.”

• Likened Obama to an evil king who was punished by God in the Bible.

• Repeatedly called for Obama’s impeachment because “his actions suggest he is doing more to help our enemies than to help our country.”

• Compared Obama administration policies to violent anti-Christian persecution under ISIS.

• Warned that Obama wants to “eliminate” Christian teachings.

• Claimed Obama administration officials have done “nothing” to stop ISIS because they are “busy pushing their own radical social policy agenda.”

• Accused Obama of having “endangered our country” by supporting LGBT rights and wanting to throw Christians in jail.

• Defended a conspiracy theory about Obama deliberately spreading to Ebola in order to justify marital law.

• Engaged in birther conspiracy theories.

• Said that Obama “despises the military and everything that it stands for and has systematically been dismantling it and demoralizing our military.”

• Warned that Obama wants public school students “indoctrinated with a liberal ideology that celebrates sexual perversion.”

• Asserted that Obama is imposing Sharia law on the military.

• Said Obamacare will lead to the “destruction for our nation.”

• Feared America will not “have a future as a country” if Obama won re-election, which he said would “destroy this country.”

• Attacked Obama for quoting Abraham Lincoln.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins jumped into the debate over Donald Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. yesterday, citing the same shoddy Center for Security Policy poll as Trump to say that “we shouldn’t be embarrassed to say that we oppose those who want to come to the United States to destroy it.”

In an email to FRC members last night with the subject line “How Do You Solve a Problem like Sharia?,” Perkins did not mention Trump’s proposal directly, but alluded to the “national discussion” about “who should and shouldn’t be in the country.”

Warning that unlike previous generations today’s immigrants don’t want to “come to America and assimilate,” Perkins declared that the U.S. may soon “lose our identity in the shadow of muliticulturalism.”

He then addressed the debate about Muslim immigration, writing, “What most people either don't realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion — the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn’t a judicial or economic code — but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment.”

How Do You Solve a Problem like Sharia?

The word "contentious" doesn't begin to describe the American immigration debate over the last two decades. But in recent days, the lines are being redrawn -- and with it, the national conversation. The focus is no longer being dominated by illegal immigration south of Texas but "legal" immigration coming from across the Atlantic, where a bold new enemy is exposing weaknesses in the West's tolerance.

Attacks in Paris, followed by a mass shooting in California have made believers of Americans, who doubted that radicalized Muslims were one of the greatest threats to our nation. Now, with President Obama offering to throw open the door to more Syrian refugees, more voters from both parties are ready to put the brakes on the process until a better, safer vetting protocol is in place.

As the national discussion turns to immigration, people are starting to stake out positions on who should and shouldn't be in the country. But first, we need to consider one of the unfortunate realities -- in America and elsewhere -- which is that the purpose of immigration has changed. It used to exist for people who wanted to come to America and assimilate. Now, in a dramatic shift from even our grandparents' generation, the "sensitivity" and "diversity" doctrine of the modern age is suggesting that we create cultural enclaves, where outsiders come to our country and live as if they never left home.

That doesn't work, as Europe will tell you. Instead, we lose our identity in the shadow of multiculturalism. It's happened in France, and it's happening in Britain. Leaders are learning a painful message that if you tiptoe around the global realities, you'll pay for it. If people want to live in America -- including Muslims -- they need to embrace our Constitution and our culture. Others have said in less artful ways what conservatives have been warning for years: there is no such thing as coexistence between Sharia law and our constitutional republic. That isn't religious prejudice, but an ideological reality.

What most people either don't realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion -- the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn't a judicial or economic code -- but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment. Under the framework proposed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Santorum, America wouldn't vet refugees based on religion but an ideology that's incompatible with American liberty. "I've proposed actual concrete things [like eliminating the visa lottery system] and immigration law that would have -- not the effect of banning all Muslims, but a lot of them," Santorum explained.

The bottom line is this: the U.S. Constitution is an agreement between people about how they'll be governed. What good is it if people immigrate to America with the sole purpose of undermining that contract? We shouldn't be embarrassed to say that we oppose those who want to come to the United States to destroy it. And while most Muslims are not radicalized, Sharia certainly encourages it. Based on polling from the Center for Security Policy, that's the system most would choose. The majority of Muslims in America believe they "'should have the choice of being governed by Sharia [law].' Sharia authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings, and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women."

In America, we have freedom under the construct of ordered liberty. Even the Wall Street Journal struggles with the clash of these ideologies. "Certainly Islam and the America way of life are compatible in as much as America is capable of welcoming Muslims who are not Islamic supremacists. On the other hand, it's always struck us that categorical statements to the effect that Islam [is peaceful] are far more hortatory than empirical -- which is to say that there is a gap between Islam as it actually exists and Islam as...President Obama would like it to be. How wide that gap is, and how dangerous, we do not know." Nor, I would argue, should we risk the future of our nation to find out.

An urgent fundraising appeal from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins today:

I've never seen a year like 2015.

And 2016 may be worse—unless Christians like us get ready now.

In 2015, radicals in Washington (including the government), New York, Hollywood, big corporations, and every part of America have declared war on your values. Your family. Your religious beliefs and freedom.

 

…

LAST WINTER, a major city ordered pastors to surrender their sermons on transgenderism and homosexuality for challenging the mayor's push for a dangerous special rights ordinance.

EARLY IN THE YEAR, sexual radicals and huge corporations attacked states that attempted to pass laws protecting freedom to believe, and "politically correct" extremists tried to destroy the career of a Navy Chaplain because he counseled from the Bible.

IN THE SUMMER, sexual activists used the Supreme Court's arrogant decision imposing same-sex marriage on America to assail the fundamental rights of anyone who disagreed . . . even throwing a Christian county clerk in jail.

IN THE FALL, they pressed ahead with a campaign of policies and laws trying to erase the distinction of men's and women's restrooms and persecute people of faith who disagree.

• The Rachel Maddow Show: Cruz in questionable company, offers bizarre response to shooting.
• Dan @ TFN Insider: If Gov. Abbott Really Supports Religious Freedom, Why Is He Bullying Faith-based Organizations?
• Rachel Percelay @ Media Matters: This Hate Group Leader Has Hosted Most Of The Republican Presidential Candidates.
• Alan Colmes: Planned Parenthood attack an act of 'Christian terrorism'?
• Nathan McDermott @ BuzzFeed: Ben Carson’s Story About Ben Franklin Is Contradicted By Ben Franklin.
• Joe Jervis: Harlem Hate Pastor James David Manning Meets With Donald Trump.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said on his radio program last night that efforts to resettle some Syrian refugees in the U.S. show that President Obama and liberals “hate America” and that the “ideals of America” are “foreign to them.”

Perkins addressed the attempts by a number of governors to block the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states after a Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the terrorists who attacked Paris last week. (How the passport got there, and whether it is real, are still unclear.)

Perkins took a call from a listener who asserted that “Islamic people, I think, in general do not come here to enjoy the values of America” and instead immigrate to America for “ominous” reasons.

“I think we need to really start being serious about what are we going to do with our Muslims who are here now, never mind bringing more in,” the caller said.

Perkins agreed with the caller’s concerns, saying that while he believes in religious freedom, Christianity and Judaism are religions, “not a political, economic, judicial system, a military system as Islam is.” He cited statistics from a sham, unscientific online poll commissioned by the anti-Muslim group Center for Security Policy, which he claimed showed that the majority of American Muslims “want Sharia law.”

“Notice how Christian nations open their doors to everybody, how we’re welcoming to the hurting, to the poor, to the helpless?” Perkins said. “It’s those values that make us what we are. But it’s those values that are changed when you have no cogent immigration system, no means of controlling and assimilating people into the country so they become American and America doesn’t become something else.

“You see, the president and the left, they hate America. They deny the whole idea of American exceptionalism, the ideals of America. That’s foreign to them. They deny what makes us exceptional and so therefore they want to change it.”

Earlier in the program, Perkins declared that in allowing the resettlement of Syrian refugees, President Obama is bucking his oath of office. “The president has an obligation to protect Americans from all enemies foreign and domestic,” he said. “And we’ve seen time and time again where the governors are actually doing what the president should be doing. But the president has the orientation of a community organizer, not a president of the United States.”

He again defended the governors who are trying to block refugees, saying that President Obama “doesn’t care” if there’s a Paris-like attack on the U.S. because he's not up for reelection and is “doing everything he can to, I think, promote Islam in this country.”

Last week on “Washington Watch,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins spoke with a caller who said that “people are tired of the ultra-liberal agenda being shoved down their throat,” saying that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision on marriage equality “woke a lot of people up” to the need to get involved in politics.

Perkins heartily agreed, claiming that Obergefell and the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance exposed that the gay rights fight isn’t about love and civil rights but about destroying freedom.

“I think what we’ve seen in the wake of that June 26 decision,” he said, “is that while people said this is all about two people who love each other being able to visit each other in the hospital and all that kind of stuff, which was baloney, they could have done that before without redefining marriage for the rest of the nation, what we’re actually seeing and what Houston has shown people is this is about forcing this on the entire nation at the risk of losing religious freedom, the freedom of speech, of facing onerous government fines and intervention. In Houston, Texas, if you would stop someone from going into a bathroom or somehow prohibit someone in a public facility, you could face a $5,00 fine.”

“There’s a lot more to this agenda,” he said. “It’s like an iceberg, like that iceberg that the Titanic hit, he only saw the tip of it.”