Bryan Fischer

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• Bryan Fischer is still trying to impose Biblical law on the animal kingdom.

Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance is at the center of the Religious Right’s growing push against “the Green Dragon,” otherwise known as the environmental movement. As noted in the latest Right Wing Watch In-Focus, Beisner has his PhD. in Scottish history and absolutely no scientific credentials, however, he does have close ties to corporate-financed, anti-environmental groups such as the Acton Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Now, right-wing activists like David Barton, Wendy Wright, and Bryan Fischer are heavily promoting Beisner’s film (which they are also featured in).

According to Beisner, environmental protection is “anti-biblical” while heightened carbon dioxide emissions are good for the earth. Even though actual scientists have concluded that the rapidly increasing human emissions of carbon dioxide cause warming temperatures, drought, and rising sea levels.

While climate change threatens to reduce precipitation and produce devastating food shortages, Beisner wrongly claims that climate change will increase the food supply and, in fact, goes so far as to accuse the EPA of intentionally seeking to "hurt the poor":

Beisner: A lot of agricultural economists think that the increased crop yields that we've seen over the last forty to fifty years, something in the neighborhood of twelve to fifteen percent of that is attributable directly to increased carbon dioxide, which means that food gets more plentiful and that helps the poor.

Well, the EPA wants to hurt the poor [in] two ways: one, by raising energy prices by forcing us to switch from carbon-based fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas, to much more expensive and much less reliable fuels like wind, solar, and bio-fuels. And two, they want to hurt the poor by lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which would reduce plant growth efficiency, reducing crop yields, reducing food availability, raising food prices. So it's a double whammy on the poor.

Then David Barton, of all people, accuses scientists of ignoring anything that does support their worldview and manipulating data to support it, while complaining that it is all plot to increase government control and play God:

Barton: This is not about science, this has nothing to do with science. Science is a vehicle to give them more control over the lives of individuals.

Green: So there's no intellectual honesty then there?

Barton: No. There's no intellectual honesty. You find something that lines up with your worldview and you say "here it is, this is what I've always believed, I knew it was out there." And you find a fake science like the IPCC at the UN which has its own agenda ...

Green: And they're willing to put out supposed data, that's false ...

Barton: And the great proof that it's a philosophical worldview is when you refuse to listen to opposing data. When you get all these scientists on the other side ... who roll out all these studies that say "no, no, no that's wrong." When you won't listen to opposing data, science has nothing to do with it. You're into a worldview conflict at that point and your saying that my worldview demands that I have more control over your life, over what you do, that's why government does exist, you're hear to serve government, not vice versa, and this is the vehicle to do it. This really has nothing to do with science.

But what happens is, not understanding that, a lot of Americans buy into that this is science.

Green: Oh, they've been indoctrinated with it in education for the last twenty years.

Barton: Are you kidding me, Earth Day in the schools? We've got to save the Earth? I mean, that's like a tick ... trying to save a whole heard of cattle. I mean, ticks go along for the ride, they don't manage the cattle, they don't tell them where to go. And that's our arrogance in thinking that we can do something to save the planet and control where the planet goes. You know, we're just along for the ride and we're insignificant peons on this thing

Green: Well, arrogance is the right word. I mean, it really does, we get to the point where we think - not that we shouldn't do the things we can do, of course you do the things that are responsible - but we think that we can control this whole thing. We think we're God.

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer explained that the only real difference between liberals and Islamic radicals was that "so far [liberals] haven't taken to killing people."  But other than that, they are pretty much the same because both groups hate America, freedom, and God:

There's this odd collaboration between liberals in America and Muslims. Liberals reject the Judeo-Christian tradition just like Islam does and that's where, I think, the linkage is. I mean, you look at Islam, they're going to behead homosexuals; liberals want them coronated; we want them helped. So these are poles apart, so why is it that liberals in America are so fond of and go to bat for Muslims all the time? It makes no sense in any kind of rational world.

But there isn't any rationality in liberalism. It's not rational. It's not logical. It violates everything we know about history, everything we know about logic, everything we know about morality. All of those are violated by a liberal worldview. So what is that they share in common? Well, I think what they share in common, the reason that they bond together, you know the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they both have in common one enemy: the Judge-Christian system of values, the Judge-Christian system of truth claims and values. They both hate the Judge-Christian tradition with equal passion and so that's what bonds them together.

And they hate America with equal passion. And they hate democracy. They hate freedom of speech, they hate freedom of association. So what Muslims and liberals share together is this hatred of the United States, this hatred of classical American values, this hatred of the Judeo-Christian values system.

And the illustration of the way in which Muslims hate democracy just as much as "regressives" do ... I'm not saying "as much" because Muslims are willing to go much further in their opposition to democracy than Democrats are. They'll try to shut you down, they'll try to engage in electoral fraud, they will try to use intimidation, they will try to use the courts, they will try to shout you down, but so far they haven't taken to killing people.

Like Jerry Boykin before him, the AFA's Bryan Fischer wants it known that he will never engage in any sort of interfaith dialogue with a Muslim and vehemently opposes allowing Muslims to worship in Christian churches, because all it does is allow demon spirits to compromise the building:

I would never participate in interfaith dialogue with a Muslim. You have all these Christians out there, these pastors, wonderful interfaith dialogue. You have pastors allowing Muslims to come in and hold their worship services in their church buildings, which in my mind is just compromising those places spiritually. So there is no way that Christians ought to open their sanctuaries to those that are serving Allah. Allah is a demon God. He's not the true god. You're inviting all of the spirits that are associated with Islam, that further Islam, that promote Islam, you are inviting them into your building and compromising your building spiritually in doing that.

Of course, on the flip side, Fischer has no problem entering a mosque and praying that God will tear it down.

Herman Cain returned to Bryan Fischer's radio program last week where he reiterated his statement that, if elected president, he would not appoint any Muslims.  As he explained to Fischer, "the Constitution does not have room for Shariah law" and every Muslims believes in Shariah law, therefore they cannot work in his administration.

Fischer and Cain then bonded over the fact that every time they tell the truth, people accuse them of being bigots:

Bryan Fischer is doubling-down on his previous comparison of House Speaker John Boehner to Pontius Pilate and Nazi apologists over the budget deal which includes funding for Planned Parenthood, and is now suggesting that the Republican leader was “was more of afraid of answering to the Washington Post than he was of answering to God.”

While Planned Parenthood by law is prohibited from receiving federal funding for abortion services, Republicans originally wanted to stop the organization from receiving support for its work in a wide variety of women’s healthcare. Under the compromise deal between Boehner and President Obama, Planned Parenthood’s funding was secured and a vote to defund the organization failed in the Senate. Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, now claims that Boehner “sold out” the Tea Party to the “pro-death” Obama by having the government to “continue to pay Planned Parenthood to run their chambers of horror” and has allowed “the wicked to pollute the stream”:

The president was so committed to his pro-death platform that he was willing to see our soldiers go without pay. Think about that for a moment. It was more important to Mr. Obama to pay people to dismember babies in the womb than to pay the men in uniform who protect our liberties. Paying abortionists was more important to the president than paying soldiers.

Why did the speaker crumple while the president stood strong? The likeliest explanation is simple: the fear of man. The speaker has always seemed deathly afraid of a government shutdown, surrendering up his hole card before anyone had even anted up.

He seemed paralyzed at the thought that he would be blamed for a government slowdown, and everybody in the room knew it. He apparently was more of afraid of answering to the Washington Post than he was of answering to God. The Proverbs says, “The fear of man lays a snare” (Prov. 29:25),” and the speaker fell into a trap of his own making.

The speaker is afraid of the wrong people. Instead of fearing the New York Times, he should be living in mortal fear of the Tea Party. The Tea Party cannot help but feel they have been sold out, their pro-life convictions abandoned in exchange for a mess of pottage, a $352 million reduction in actual government outlays. That’s about what we will now continue to pay Planned Parenthood to run their chambers of horror.

I have no doubt that the speaker is a good man. He’s decent, upright and wanted to do the right thing. But the Scriptures also say, “Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked” (Prv. 25:26). When a good and upright man surrenders his principles under pressure from the wicked, the stream is polluted just as much as if he gone to the water’s edge and dumped the toxins in himself. Weakness is as deadly as malice. Allowing the wicked to pollute the stream when it is in your power to stop it is little different than doing the deed yourself.

Bryan Fischer’s recent attacks on African Americans, Native Americans, Muslim Americans, and the Constitution haven’t seemed to bother leading Republicans, who consistently appear on his show. But now, Fischer is going after the highest-ranking Republican official in the country: House Speaker John Boehner.

As part of the budget compromise to avert a government shutdown, Boehner withdrew the Republicans’ extreme and unpopular policy rider to defund Planned Parenthood. Defunding the women’s health organization was on the top of the agenda for Religious Right groups. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid guaranteed a vote on the defunding measure in the Senate separate from the budget deal.

Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, likens Boehner’s compromise on Planned Parenthood’s funding to Pontius Pilate approving the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and to “protecting the Nazi regime” during the Holocaust:

Pilate folded under politically-correct pressure, caved-in, and handed Christ over to their will. So Pilate new exactly what he was doing, he was caving-in to political pressure from his political opponents. What I think, frankly, John Boehner did on Friday night…. John Boehner blinked, rather than standing to defund Planned Parenthood and defend unborn human life, he caved, he folded, he capitulated…. One million dollars a day going to Planned Parenthood while they are butchering a population the size of Cincinnati. This is like the gas chambers, this is like Auschwitz, this is like protecting the Nazi regime while they are gassing Jews. Ladies and gentlemen it is absolutely no different in terms of the moral implications and the moral issues that are involved.

On Friday Right Wing Watch reported that Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issue Analysis for the American Family Association, urged the U.S. to require immigrants, Muslims in particular, to “convert to Christianity.” At some point after it was posted, the AFA removed Fischer’s article from their website and he then rewrote the three paragraphs RWW highlighted so that now the article argues the exact opposite of what he originally said:

In the original article, Fischer said:

Allowing Muslims to immigrate into the United States, a Christian nation by origin, history and tradition, without insisting that they drop their allegiance to Allah, Muhammad, the Qur’an, and sharia law, is to commit cultural suicide. We believe in freedom of religion for Muslims like we do for everybody else. But if they insist on clinging to their religion, they will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country which shares their values: death for those who leave Islam, the beating of wives by their husbands, and the labeling of Jews as apes and pigs.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our faith, our heroes, and our history. Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.

…

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), convert to Christianity, fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

Now, the three paragraphs read:

Does this mean that folks need to convert before they immigrate? No, but at a minimum, it would mean making sure that immigrants to the United States affirm and believe in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian system of values and truth claims over alternative value systems such as sharia law.

Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our values, our heroes, and our history.

...

So ancient Israel offers a paradigm of what a sensible and sane immigration policy looks like. It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself. If you commit to those things, you are welcome here. If you don’t or won’t, perhaps it’s best for you to stay home.

This wouldn’t be the first time the AFA censored their chief spokesman, as the group in February scrubbed Fischer’s article where he said that Native Americans were rightfully expelled from their land and are punished with poverty and alcoholism for not converting to Christianity. Just last week, Fischer removed and altered his piece claiming that African Americans “rut like rabbits.”

Unfortunately for Fischer, we saved a version of his original post:

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