Right, Righteous, Republican Rascals

It is no secret that there are a bunch of right, righteous, Republican rascals trying to take over our government and install a theocracy modeled according to their interpretation of the Bible.

In such a theocracy, because they define the United States as a "Christian" nation, any constitutional barriers to that would be removed, as would any constitutional barriers to the melding of church and state. Laws would be based on the Old Testament which means that homosexuals, adulterers and other biblical miscreants would receive the full brunt of godly punishment - some Reconstructionists have even called for the death penalty.

With the meltdown of the Bush presidency, the recession which has arrived in spite of Bush's denials, the ungodly war in Iraq which seems never-ending and sucks up huge gobs of borrowed monies, the program of the Reconstructionists or Dominionists, as they are sometimes called, has been delayed slightly.

Kevin Phillips, in his book, "American Theocracy," notes how [in the late 1980s and 1990s] the Republican party emerged "as a powerful vehicle for religiosity and church influence, while state Republican parties, most conspicuously in the South and Southwest, endorsed so-called Christian nation party platforms.

"These unusual platforms, ... set out in varying degrees the radical political theology of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, the tenets of which range from using the Bible as a basis for domestic law to emphasizing religious schools and women's subordination to men."

Phillips points to the 2004 platform of the Texas Republican Party. "It reaffirms the status of the United States as a 'Christian nation,' regrets 'the myth of the separation of church and state,' calls for abstinence instead of sex education, and broadly mirrors the reconstructionist demand for the abolition of a large group of federal agencies and departments, including the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency."

If the Texas Republicans had had their way in 2004, the United States as we know it would have ceased to exist. That bothers me just a little bit!

The danger posed to our Democracy by these right, righteous, Republican rascals is no idle threat. And while the advancement of their cause may be delayed, it is not stopped.

Democracy is extremely fragile. It's destruction and replacement by right-wing Christian fascism, while not certain, is certainly possible. That, too, can happen here!