A wake-up call for the Sane Majority

[Guest guest]

Gene Lyons

 

Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

 

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/story/adg/113393

 

Does it strike you as odd that

 

persons calling themselves Christians

 

are furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing

juveniles unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such

individuals describe themselves, straight-faced, as

adherents of the " culture of life " ? Are you surprised to learn that

people called conservatives would quote Joseph Stalin? Yes,

that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and mass

murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened

recently at a Washington conclave held by something called the

Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not

household names, many in attendance were familiar

controversialists, representing right-wing groups like the Family

Research Council, the American Conservative Union, etc.

Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with

unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge

Roy " Ten Commandments " Moore. House Majority Leader Tom

DeLay, having fled the jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the

pope’s funeral, addressed the group on TV. But the

real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an expert

in constitutional law.

 

Vieira attacked the theological right’s latest whipping

boy, Ronald Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony

Kennedy. True, Kennedy supplied the swing vote in Bush vs.

Gore, the 5-4 decision that gave the 2000 election to George

W. Bush. But he also wrote recent majority opinions

invalidating Texas’s anti-sodomy law and forbidding the execution

of juveniles.

 

In so doing, Vieira insisted, Kennedy upheld " Marxist,

Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law. "

 

And the solution? If not impeachment, Vieira said that his

" bottom-line " solution for renegade judges was Stalin’s:

" He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever

he ran into difficulty: ‘ No man, no problem. ’ "

 

The audience reportedly didn’t gasp. They laughed. " ‘ No

man, no problem, ’ " he repeated for emphasis. " This is not a

structural problem we have. This is a problem of

personnel. "

 

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin

quote, which is quite famous: " Death solves all problems:

No man, no problem. " He speculated that Vieira couldn’t

possibly be urging the killing of Supreme Court justices. But

he put the remark in the context of recent threats by DeLay,

who said that " the time will come for the men responsible

for [Terri Schiavo’s death] to answer for their behavior, "

and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, RTexas, who mused that unpopular

judicial decisions could lead people to " engage in

violence. "

 

Assuming Vieira’s not actively delusional, however, what

would be the point of invoking one of the 20 th century’s

great monsters if not to sanction violence? The avowed goal of

this outfit is " Christian Reconstructionism, " the notion

that the U.S. government derives its ultimate authority not

from " the consent of the governed, " as Jefferson wrote in

the Declaration of Independence, but from the Bible as

interpreted by Puritan divines.

 

The U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from establishing an

official faith. If these people get their way—and Sens.

Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Sam Brownback, RKan., a recent

convert to Opus Dei, an authoritarian Catholic sect, have

introduced a bill to strip federal courts of the power to rule

on religious issues—an established church would be exactly

what we’d get.

 

What kind of church? Well, the late R. J. Rushdoony,

spiritual father of Christian Reconstructionism, favored a

Taliban-like, Old Testament moral code, with homosexuals,

abortion doctors and women guilty of " unchastity " put to death.

 

No, that’s not going to happen. Even so, such rhetoric

should be a wake-up call to what it’s tempting to call the Sane

Majority. " True Believers " are an enduring human type.

Zealous theocrats afflict every society from Afghanistan to

Arkansas. They always know the absolute truth and strive to

inflict it on others. Their obsessions usually revolve around

sex, like those zealots in Saudi Arabia’s religious police

who prevented 15 teen-aged girls from fleeing a school fire

because they were improperly dressed. For years now, the

national discourse has been driven by persons whose

moral/theological views are somewhere between childish and insane.

Most others either tend toward partial agreement on " wedge

issues " like gay marriage or are too polite in the

ecumenical sense to argue. Instead, they wait quietly for the

metaphorical pendulum to swing toward the center. Hence,

politicians like DeLay and Bush never pay the price for consorting

with extremists. It’s time to remind these jokers

that regardless of how " devout " they claim to be, this is

the United States of America and the rest of us are not

obliged to pretend that their political opinions are

sanctioned by God, nor even that they are sane.

 

—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little

Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.

 

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