From Palin to Phelps

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People get shot every day, but that does not take the sting from the January 8 shootings in Tucson, Arizona. We live in a nation filled with angry, violent people. Most of them hold their rage in check, but others act out their frustrations aided by the obscene ease of firearm ownership. Into this volatile brew, mix in the warped rhetoric of a politics of fear and who knows what might happen. Sarah Palin and other outspoken conservative ideologues hold up their pristine hands to demonstrate they have nothing to do with the hate-mongering that haunts our streets. She calls the jabs at conservatives “blood libel.” I say if you propagate the politics of fear you’re liable to get blood on those hands. Often in the bookstore I see titles like How to Talk to Liberals: If You Have to. The liberals I hear talking are only asking for dialogue and coexistence. One side wants a chance for everyone to be heard, the other wants to throw stones at those who are different.

Students do presentations in my classes. The assignment is to choose a social issue where the Bible is brought to bear on the topic and present to the class what you learn about the subject. Two groups last night presented on the Westboro Baptist Church and its outspoken pastor and founder, Fred Phelps. Both presentation groups showed videos of members of the Westboro Baptist Church speaking out about various and sundry liberal groups/causes/nations they hate. Plucking verses from the Bible like a chicken pecking at the ground, they cite only those passages that justify hating those who are different. They seem to have overlooked the part that says, “by their fruits you shall know them.”

On today’s schedule? According to the Westboro website: “WBC to picket the funeral of Christina Greene, the 9-year-old girl cut off in her youth for the rebellion of the parents, preachers, and leaders of this nation.” They’ll have a hard time finding any place in the Bible that condemns children, shy of sly old Elisha calling out she-bears to kill 42 of them. Having read the Bible for practically my whole life, I have a very difficult time reconciling those who use the Bible for conservative causes with their own sourcebook. What will it take for them to realize that “what I want” is only part of the picture? Whether presidential hopefuls or crazed curmudgeons, we would all sleep better if we took to heart that inequality is very easily transformed into iniquity.

4 thoughts on “From Palin to Phelps”

  1. Jim W.

    Steve, I love you, I respect you more than you can possibly know. Having said that let me take you to task a bit.

    I’m not sure I agree with how you have incorporated the Bible into the views of the various cast members of the tragic shooting in Arizona. The Westboro Baptist loons, all 72 of them, hardly qualify as representatives of mainstream American Christians. I have yet to hear or read any sort of religious aspect of the events or it’s participants, though I may have missed them.

    What I have observed is the unfortunate, and faulty linking of the shooting to conservatives in this country. I have heard over and over about Gov. Palin and her “target” ad, yet I have yet to talk to someone who has actually seen the ad in question. And worse yet my more liberal friends as well as the media have tried over and over to somehow make this ad, which precious few people have actually seen, the cause of the shooting. This leap simply cannot be made. Rush Limbaugh is a popular target for these attacks too. He has been doing his talk show shtick for 20 + years now yet if he were somehow responsible for the violence in our society we should be knee deep in bullet riddled bodies courtesy of anti-social right wing extremists, but we are not.

    This deranged shooter in Arizona was firmly in the left side of the camp, a self-confirmed communist, hater of President George W. Bush two facts, which the media not so curiously fails to report. However I would guarantee you that had he been a member of the Tea Party that fact would have been jammed down our throats 24-7.

    You mention, “hate mongering”, this is another of my pet peeves. That phrase along with “hate speech” gets bandied about constantly yet I have yet to hear or read the actual hateful words supposedly said by these right-wingers. I think too often the left sees “disagreement” as “hate” my own theory is that most, not all, liberals hold their own ideas of morality up as the standard society should strive for and anyone who dares disagree must logically be a hateful person. This attitude makes reasonable dialogue impossible.

    A point I have tried to hammer home is this; violence is not part of the conservative DNA yet it is firmly ingrained in the liberal makeup. I have never heard of a liberal commentator being shouted down at a college campus by a group of radical conservative students yet liberal demonstrators will commonly do this when Ann Coulter or David Horowitz show up to address a peaceful group of like minded conservatives. Does that sound like people who just want dialogue & coexistence? Maybe perhaps it is people like leftist icon comedian turned senator Al Franken who wrote books with titles like “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” and “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”, again reasonable dialogue? Coexistence? Really?

    I think we would agree that there are extremists on both sides of the political spectrum but for some reason it is only those on the right that get put under the microscope and it is that fact that really gets my goat.

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  2. Steve Wiggins

    Thanks, Jim.

    As you no doubt appreciate, my apocopated comments are intended to leave much to the reader’s imagination. That is why I keep my remarks brief. Certainly I agree that there are extremists in both camps, and seldom do they do their causes much good. Having said that, there is a very palpable threat that is felt by those of us who followed “the American dream” to get educated only to find both social and political cards stacked against us.

    To put the blame for the shooting on any one conservative pundit was not my intent. I have, since my youngest days, been an advocate of gun control. There is no question of where the strongest lobbying against gun control has its advocates. I know many friends who own guns, but having internalized what I understood to be authentic religion as a child, I would rather be shot than shoot someone. I do not own a gun (although shooting is admittedly fun), nor do I think most people should.

    I have always advocated dialogue, yet when I’ve come to the camp of “conservative” Christians, I am almost always immediately shut out of the discussion. Most famously, by simply being fired rather than listened to. There is no way to undo education. My mantra is education, not guns. If people shot with their mouths rather than with their firearms, we might actually get somewhere.

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  3. Jim W.

    Perhaps I’ve been overly sensitive since that tragic shooting in Arizona. I feel personally attacked when those of my political persuasion are vilified, even more than usual, as somehow having encouraged this tragic act.

    But when I get called “stupid” (not by you of course) simply for being a Republican (which did happen to me at a recent holiday party) I find it difficult to keep my cool. To lash back is instinctive and when I read this blog entry my first thought was, ‘No, not Steve too!’ It is true you do leave a lot to the imagination and perhaps I imagined too much. I, like your liberal friends you mention, want nothing more than open & honest dialogue without which we are forever destined to remain stuck in this divisive climate of nasty rhetoric. But, if I’m not mistaken, we both concluded that our country has gone too far down that path to turn about now. Hopefully both of us are wrong. You my friend can talk to me anytime and I promise an open mind.

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    • Steve Wiggins

      Hey Jim,

      Those of us who are not extremists all want to sit down and figure out a way of getting along — we may disagree about the means, but not the end. I never judge anyone on the basis of political party, but when individuals set themselves up as experts (many of whom clearly do not know what they are talking about!) they are fair game for ridicule. As you say, we’ve gone very far down a road from which we may not be able to turn back. Let’s hope that those of us who know people with different views aren’t too swayed by what media pundits say we should believe.

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