The Y’All Qaeda Files #2

Y’All Qaeda is what we call the fundamentalist right wingers who, hypocritically, pretend there is a (non-existent) attempt to impose a form of sharia law in America and yet are themselves trying to impose their own distorted theocratic views on the majority.  The Y’All Qaeda Files will document their hypocrisy wherever we find it.

 

Tennessee Republicans have introduced legislation that would establish the authority of God in the state’s constitution – and the Christian Right is aiming to make this the case right across America. As reported, the Tennessee move would add the following words to the State Constitution:

“We recognize that our liberties do not come from governments, but from Almighty God, our Creator and Savior” and would “establish the Christian Church within the legal systems of the state, rendering it a theocracy rather than a secular democracy. In a parallel move, fellow Republican Rep. Jerry Sexton, has proposed legislation that would designate the Holy Bible as the official state book of Tennessee.

Hard luck if you are not a Christian, I guess. Michigan also has House Bill 5958, The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA):

This bill legalizes a Christian extremist’s religious freedom to discriminate, and commit other breaches in law and social mores. The law makes it legal to refuse service, deny employment, housing, and violate other citizens’ rights, any rights, if a theocrat claims it violates their religious freedom and objects on religious grounds. As if this were not terrifying enough, our worst fears should be reserved for the Orwellian-titled  “conscience clause.”  This clause allows any Christian Fundamentalist working in the healthcare industry to cease a patient’s medical care if they claim their objection is founded on religious beliefs, and  the Healthcare provider would be obliged to send a patient away. This would give legal cover to religious pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions if they “think” a person is gay, a woman is a single mother, or the patient is the “wrong religion.” It would also mean a first responder, whether law enforcement, fire protection, or ambulance personnel can use “religious objections” to refuse to provide service to a person or group they feel violates their religious beliefs.

In Oklahoma, Think Progress reports:

Oklahoma Rep. Dan Fisher (R) has introduced “emergency” legislation “prohibiting the expenditure of funds on the Advanced Placement United States History course.” Fisher is part of a group called the “Black Robe Regiment” which argues “the church and God himself has been under assault, marginalized, and diminished by the progressives and secularists.” The group attacks the “false wall of separation of church and state.” The Black Robe Regiment claims that a “growing tide of special interest groups indoctrinating our youth at the exclusion of the Christian perspective” …

Efforts by conservative school board members in Colorado to make the Advanced Placement U.S. History course “more patriotic,” prompted a walk-out by students. Under the changes proposed in Colorado “students would only be taught lessons depicting American heritage in a positive light, and effectively ban any material that could lead to dissent.” In South Carolina conservatives asked the College Board to exclude any material with an “ideological bias,” including evolution. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia and North Carolina.

Far from sharia law being a threat the Christian Right is attempting to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, one state at a time.

And it is not just our minds that are threatened: The fundamentalist Republicans and Libertarians thunder against the threat of Islamic terrorism, and yet the typical extremist killer in the United States is a white male with a gun. As Alternet reports:

A 2001-2015 “Homegrown Extremism” analysis by the New America Foundation parsed the “ethnicity, age, gender and citizenship” of people who killed or violently attacked others, whether they were motivated by jihadist philosophies or other “right wing, left wing or idiosyncratic beliefs.” Of 448 extremists counted, white men who were U.S. citizens outnumbered every other demographic by wide margins …

As CNN’s national security reporter, Peter Bergen, reported last April on the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, is that “since 9/11, extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology” …

“Moreover, on Thursday, SPLC issued a report, “Age of the Wolf” … The report examines extreme violence in America between April 2009 and February 2015 and found “that domestic terrorism and related radical violence—as opposed to terrorist attacks emanating from overseas” is what plagues the nation.”

You are not about to hear any of those true statistics from Fox News or any of the other far right media. Why not?  Because it actively and conclusively contradicts the untrue story they want to peddle.

 

Previous Y’All Qaeda Files.

Image: Duck In Blue Water