Monday, June 22, 2009

Some musing on the overlap of the conservative and Christian Right

A recent blog post at Stupid Evil Bastard made me think again that a certain fundamentalist mentality overlaps on the right. People there tend to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the way they read the Bible, think in terms of the Founding Fathers in the same terms as prophets or saints, and tend to want to impose their notion of 1776 "fundamentalism" in rather the same manner.

If it didn't make me want to throw up in my mouth, I'd laugh. Under the "America" that the Founding Fathers envisioned, most of these folks wouldn't own enough property (in relative terms) to vote...and that's assuming that they weren't considered chattel in the mock-aristocracy that prevailed in post-Colonial America.

Dearest likes to say that ignorance can be cured; stupidity is forever. I'm not even sure that ignorance is that easy to overcome. I just want to wedgie the next mouth-breather who repeats the lie that liberalism and The Enlightenment are somehow antithetical to the America we've managed to create in spite of--d'ya hear me? IN SPITE OF--class warfare and sexism and racism and genocide and every artificial distinction that oozes from the underbelly of human nature.

Enough hagiography. And enough pretending that the Constitution was written on stone tablets brought down from Mount Vernon by George Washington. (Eek--throw in Charlton Heston and the NRA and you now have the Right in a nutshell. Sorry 'bout the mental image, folks...)