Bryan Fischer

Today, Bryan Fischer posted a new column explaining why his previous column declaring that Native American's were "morally disqualified" to control North America and asserting they remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because of their refusal to convert to Christianity had been pulled from the AFA 's website.

It turns out, he was simply trying to point out that the "displacement of indigenous nations was consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations and history" and that, therefore, the founding of this nation was not rooted in evil. But because "America is not mature enough" to handle that discussion, Fischer was forced to remove his post:

A lot is at stake here. If Americans believe that the entire history of our nation rests on a horribly evil foundation, then there is nothing to be proud of in American history, and our president is correct to identify America as the source of all evil in the world and to make a career out of apologizing for her very existence.

If, however, there is a moral and ethical basis for our displacement of native American tribes, and if our westward expansion and settlement are in fact consistent with the laws of nature, nature’s God, and the law of nations, then Americans have much to be proud of.

This latter view certainly would not compel us to believe that Americans were never guilty of evil themselves. But saying that America was wrong here, or there, is certainly a different thing than saying that the entire American experiment is rooted in evil.

It’s one thing to have folks throw trash in the stream on occasion, because the trash can be fished out and the water’s purity can be restored. It’s quite another thing for the stream to be polluted at its headwaters. If the stream is toxic from its very source, then everyone who drinks from it drinks poison into his soul, and we certainly should not be bottling this water and shipping it overseas to peoples looking to slake their thirst for a model of liberty, freedom, prosperity and security.

So this is a conversation that needs to take place. But based on the reaction to my column of Tuesday, America is not mature enough right now for that robust dialogue to occur. Until it is...

The American Family Association has tolerated a lot of Bryan Fischer’s anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic, anti-whale, and anti-bear screeds, but the group is now cracking down on its Director of Issues Analysis for claiming that Native Americans were justifiably forced out of their land and are to this day punished with poverty and alcoholism for not converting to Christianity.

The Native American Rights Fund said Fischer’s comments are “not worth dignifying with a reply,” and AFA blogger Elijah Friedeman called Fischer’s views “repulsive.”

It appears that the AFA is now expunging Fischer’s vicious article on Native Americans, along with Freideman’s denunciation - they have even removed his column from Renew America where it was also posted.

Fischer’s original article has been removed from the AFA’s Focal Point blog (while leaving his radio commentary on YouTube); similarly, Friedeman’s reaction was taken down from the AFA’s website and is no longer listed on his blog either.

You can still read excerpts from Fischer’s abhorrently bigoted article on RWW and watch him ridicule Native Americans:

It took a few hours, but thanks to Bryan Fischer's good friend Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho, CPAC got its first Birther reference:

We have often asked if someone - anyone - would be willing to stand up to Bryan Fischer and his unrelenting bigotry and the answer has always been "no," as leading Republicans and presidential contenders have continued to embrace him despite his outrageous views and offensive comments.

Just yesterday, Fischer declared that Native Americans were "morally disqualified" from controlling North America and are plagued by poverty and alcoholism today because they refuse to embrace Christianity.

This sort of claim is nothing new from the likes of Fischer, so we didn't really expect anyone on the Right to so much as blink an eye, much less actually stand up to him.

And we certainly didn't expect that is someone did actually do so, it would be another American Family Association blogger and radio personality.  But that is exactly what has happened.

Elijah Friedeman is a seventeen-year-old a high-school senior who writes "The Millennial Perspective" for the AFA's RightlyConcerned.com blog and appears twice a week to deliver commentary on "The Matt Friedeman Show" on American Family Radio.

And today, much to Friedeman's credit, he put up a post on the AFA blog rejecting and distancing himself from Fischer's bigotry:

Native Americans were immoral, so they deserved what happened to them? I find the idea repulsive.

Yesterday, Bryan Fischer posted a blog about how American indians disqualified themselves from any claim to land in America by their sexual immorality and violence. I want to officially reject and distance myself from that viewpoint.

...

[I]n the past Bryan Fischer, when challenged on biblical commands to smite the enemy, has refused to answer, stating that a question like that about the Old Testament should be answered by a Jewish scholar. The sudden decision to embrace God's command to destroy the Canaanites, when in the past he has avoided it, is interesting to me.

Another point Bryan Fischer offers up as a reason for the indians' expulsion from their lands is their spiritual belief in something other than Jesus. There are many groups throughout history, and even today, who reject Jesus and the influence of Christians. However, that in no way gives Christians the authority to take their land, kill them, break our treaties, and force them to live on reservations.

...

Since, as Bryan Fischer points out, the United States of America is immoral, using his standards we deserve to be destroyed. Does that mean we should helping our nation's enemies bring judgment on America? Absolutely not. Our mission as Christians is to love.

We aren't here to bring or justify judgment; that's God's job. Our duty is to love people, to help others, and to share the gospel of Jesus with everyone around us.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it

One of the staples of Bryan Fischer's daily radio program is the reading of, and expounding upon, the latest blog post he has written.  And today was no exception as he dedicated more than ten minutes to reading his latest post in which he claims that God used the Europeans to conquer North America because Native Americans were "morally disqualified" from exercising control and that they remain mired in poverty and alcoholism today because they refuse to give up their "superstition" and embrace Jesus.  

During the program today, Fischer hammered home that latter point, saying that Native American fathers much get their children off of the reservation so that they can assimilate into mainstream society and convert to Christianity instead of embracing the silly Native American superstitions demonstrated during the Tucson memorial service:

Bryan Fischer is back with another history lesson for us all - this one on how the Native Americans deserved to lose control of North America because "the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality" made them "morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil."

You see, there are three ways that control over land is established: settlement, purchase, and conquest.  And in the case of Native Americans, it turns out that they were just like the Canaanites who were so immoral that God decided that "the slop bucket was full, and it was time to empty it out" and so he tasked Israel with being the "custodian to empty the bucket and start over."

And in North America, that task fell to the Europeans ... and Fischer notes that "many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism" because they refuse to embrace Christianity, as demonstrated by the Native American invocation at the Tucson memorial:

The native American tribes at the time of the European settlement and founding of the United States were, virtually without exception, steeped in the basest forms of superstition, had been guilty of savagery in warfare for hundreds of years, and practiced the most debased forms of sexuality.

...

The Lewis and Clark journals record the constant warfare between the nomadic Indian tribes on the frontier, and the implacable hostility of the Sioux Indians in particular.

The journals record the morally abhorrent practice of many native American chiefs, who offered their own wives to the Corps of Discovery for their twisted sexual pleasure. (Regrettably, many members of the Corps, Lewis and Clark excepted, took advantage of these offers and contracted numerous and debilitating sexually transmitted diseases as a result.)

The native American tribes ultimately resisted the appeal of Christian Europeans to leave behind their superstition and occult practices for the light of Christianity and civilization. They in the end resisted every attempt to “Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness,” to use George Washington’s phrase.

They rejected Washington’s direct counsel to the Delaware chiefs in 1779, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.”

Thomas Jefferson three times signed legislation appropriating federal tax dollars for the evangelizing of the Native American tribes. It all came to nought, as one tribe after another rejected the offer of spiritual light and advanced civilization.

...

God explained to the nation of Israel that because of the “abomination(s)” of the indigenous Canaanite tribes, the land had become unclean and “vomited out its inhabitants (Lev. 18:25).”

Is this to say the same holds true for native American tribes today? In many respects, the answer is of course no. But in some senses, the answer is yes. Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.

The continued presence of native American superstition was on full display at the memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shooter, when the “invocation” (such as it was) was offered by a native American who sought inspiration from the “Seven Directions,” including “Father Sky” and “Mother Earth,” rather than the God of the Bible.

And just for good measure, Fischer concludes that we have become just immoral as the Native Americans and so it is only a matter of time before God empties the "slop bucket" of America:

Even worse, the reaction will likely obscure the sobering lesson for today. America in 2011 is as guilty of “abominations” as the native American tribes we replaced. We have the blood of 53 million babies on our hands through abortion. We have normalized sexual immorality, adultery, and homosexuality, all horrors in the eyes of God, and are witnessing a surge in incest, pedophilia and even bestiality in our midst.

God warned the ancient nation of Israel not to lapse into the abominable practices of the native peoples “lest the land vomit you out...as it vomited out the nation that was before you” (Lev. 18:28).

Time eventually ran out for the Canaanites, because they filled up the full measure of their iniquity. Time ran out for the native American tribes for the same reason.

The only question that matters today is this one: how much time does America have left to repent of its superstition, its savagery and its sexual immorality before it is too late, before we will have filled up our own slop bucket and will have morally disqualified ourselves from sovereign control of our own land?

Today on his radio show Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who has already criticized CPAC over their inclusion of the gay conservatives group GOProud, is now upset with Sarah Palin. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Palin seemed to dismiss the complaints of boycotters, like Fischer, that GOProud should be excluded from the conference. Palin recently turned down the opportunity to give the keynote address at CPAC, which despite the outcry among the Religious Right will feature speakers like Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Phyllis Schlafly.

Fischer blasts conservatives who support “the normalization of homosexuality,” and says that “the homosexual lifestyle itself is extremely dangerous to human health and simple compassion dictates that we should discourage people from that kind of behavior just as we frown on smoking.” While he believes that “the homosexual agenda” threatens “the freedom of association,” he goes on to attack CPAC for associating with groups like GOProud and Palin for defending the decision. He praises Palin for her unpopularity among the left (and actually, most Americans), but adds that “if Sarah Palin continues to send such uncertain signals, [liberals] may start leaving her alone.”

He later takes a caller who wants to discuss a boy who sometimes wears skirts and jewelry, and Fischer discusses his own expertise in parenting, saying he would tell his children, “My responsibility in life is not to give you a happy childhood,” sternly adding, “By the way, if this question should come up in the future, you are having a happy childhood.”

Bryan Fischer’s appearance on Sons of Liberty, a Genesis Communication Network radio show, was filled with his characteristic rants about the purported ties between gays and Nazism, gays and the Obama Administration, and gays and "brainwashing" students in public schools. While such claims are nothing new coming from Fischer, the American Family Association’s Director of Issue Analysis, he was spewing out his anti-gay conspiracy theories on a radio program hosted by Bradlee Dean of the influential Minnesota ministry, “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide.”

Dean’s You Can Run has found supporters in Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer. Emmer’s campaign donated to the Ministry, and Bachmann even prayed to thank God about You Can Run “for how You are going to expand this radio program, how You are going to expand their video program, their publications, how You are going to advance them from 260 schools a year, Lord, to 2,600 schools a year.”

Fischer and Dean’s show was quite a meeting of the conspiratorial minds. Dean has claimed that Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, is using gay rights to topple the Constitution and introduce Sharia law, and that executing gays is “moral.”

As Good As You notes, “Warning, Anti-Defamation League: You might want to hire some extra staff to handle this one.”

Listen to Fischer argue that “the dots are pretty easy to connect” between gays and the Holocaust and that Hitler himself was a “homosexual prostitute,” while Dean asks Fischer, “Are you aware of the fact that President Obama has a 147 appointed homosexuals in his Administration?”

• Follow this logic: Peter LaBarbera is angry that liberals are attacking Chick-Fil-A while he simultaneously calls for a boycott of Chili's.
• Rick Santorum does not support Mitch Daniels' call for a "truce."
• Alveda King will receive the 2011 Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Hall of Fame Award.
• Bryan Fischer says Republicans in the House should refuse to fund implementation of the DADT repeal so as to save soldiers from being "forced to share open-bay showers with leering homosexuals and living quarters with fellow soldiers who may want to jump your bones."
• Finally, do you want to watch Cindy Jacobs ramble on for ten minutes about the situation in Egypt?  Of course you do.