Happiness is a Warm Gun, Momma*

*The Beatles still a "blessing" and a "miracle".

I saw the carry rally in Richmond. It was pretty pathetic. Late middle-aged white men with potbellies with holsters on their waists. It occurred to me that the hundreds of junk e-mails I receive every day advertising viagra, cialis, and ED come from "cookies" implanted on conservative websites. This is the crowd for those advertisements. In Michigan they allowed the carry crowd to take their arms in the state legislature while it was in session. Crazy.

I'm having a tough time adjusting to the new definition of "patriot". Let's see. The federal government is evil. The most subversive man in the United States is the President. A true patriot doesn't pay taxes and is against them. Public schools are for losers. The second amendment is absolute, while the First Amendment is conditional. The primary government is the state but that shouldn't be funded either. The separation of church and state is a myth perpetrated by liberals. Torture should be permitted against Muslims, who are terrorist by definition. White people can't be terrorists. The government should get out of our business except to protect us against gays and atheists. The free-market can solve any problem better than government. The military is great. The only proper role of the federal government is to protect the country from threats real or imagined. The role of society is to maximize individual freedom except if that individual does things we don't agree with. People who receive services from the government are leeches and lazy unless they're me.

Some of this lunacy appeared throughout the teabaggers' rallies around the country. A couple with 9 home-schooled children protested in Boston against socialized health care but admitted they had Medicaid because they wanted more children but couldn't afford the private health insurance. A retired military officer protested government handouts but admitted that all his healthcare was handled through the VA. An older woman was protesting entitlement programs but admitted she received social security and Medicare. When this was pointed out to her, she acknowledged maybe she wanted less government but with her social security and Medicare. Patriots in Spokane, Washington wanted all relations of the state with any UN agencies to be terminated.

The slogan of "Take Our Country Back" clearly is racial. The utter incoherence of the whole teabagger phenomenon underscores that the anger has very little to do with any real initiatives by the government and a whole lot to do with a black man winning the Presidency. The tip-off to this is that 58% have a high approval rating of George W. Bush and another 50% believe that Sarah Palin would be an effective President. This is the rump of the last Bush supporters in the country--a residue of the Christian Right and the extreme conservatives. You can almost map it out according to the demographics I posted yesterday. The predominance of the South and Midwest are the two regions of Christian fundamentalism and neo-secessionist thought. The Western teabaggers lean libertarian.

The real delusion is that they overwhelmingly believe they represent the views of America. We saw by the polling data that they almost always vote Republican and consider themselves conservative,even extreme conservatives. What Republicans don't get is how far the Christian Right, which these people represent in part, has taken over their party. When you see a Michelle Bachmann, a Sarah Palin, a Jim DeMint, a Steven King, a Tom Coburn, you are seeing the result of the Christian Right's efforts since the mid-1990s to take control of the Republican Party. Andrew Sullivan diverted his attention from the pedophile scandal in the Vatican to this yesterday saying, I believe, accurately that the Republican party has been reduced to Theocons and Neocons, who now work synergistically. That's why he believes the former half-governor of Alaska is a serious political threat.

Frank Schaeffer wrote a piece yesterday on the Huffington Post entitled The Perpetual American Lynch Mob, where he traces the violent language in our political discourse right now to his and his father's efforts to create the anti-abortion movement.

He talks about "what our Christian Founders had in mind" according to the fundamentalists. "They don't often say so openly but their ideal turns out to be a white's only evangelical country filled with consumer goods where no gays, blacks, or other "foreigners" need apply and everyone goes to church but no one lives by following the actual incovenient tolerant and inclusive example set by Jesus.....In this sense these "Christians" are in fact anti-Christian and these "patriots " turn out to be anti-American."

Or as Frank puts it another way, " (A long list of Founding fathers) 'had in mind' turns out to be a white,racist, homophobic, myth-believing nation of Village Idiots suckled on Fox News and wet dreams of the 'Rapture'.

What has been missing from conservatives like Doug Brooks or Bob Tyrrell is any awareness of this happening to the so-called conservative movement and particularly on this destructive scale. The Republicans have just capitulated to the Religious Right because they depend on its organizational structure.

One of the interesting side stories to this is how the John Birch society regained their place in the conservative movement after decades in exile through the Religious Right. I will write more about this later when I deal with the issue of Christian Zionists, another favorite topic of Frank Schaeffer's.