Friday December 03, 2010
A MIGHTY FORTRESS. At Big Journalism, Dana Loesch is mad at a Newsweek column (also referred to as "Media"):
“Most evangelical Christian conservatives I know would at least be uneasy about the prospect of the government leaving the poor to their own devices and having churches pick up the slack,” he says.
Wrong. Heinously, irresponsibly, embarrassingly wrong. This from Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. His sound bites are all about stoking libertarians to feel like disenfranchised underdogs with the goal of rousing them to lash out at the big bully Christian conservatives.
I'm not sure how that's supposed to work -- maybe she means the libertarians and glibertarians, who are warm to see Americans deprived of social services and have the upper hand in the Republican Party now, are supposed to be outraged that some followers of Jesus Christ -- maybe the weak sisters in the GOP evangelical bloc that came apart in the late 00s -- take the "least of my brethren" stuff seriously. If so, they don't know Christians like Dana Loesch knows them:
Lynn should perhaps study the faith before he attempts to try to emotionally blackmail the faithful. That’s precisely what should happen: churches should be doing more, people of faith should be doing more and want to do more because big government is an attempt to remove action from faith thus making the faith less viable. When taxes go up, tithing goes down. When the government assumes the role of the shepherd, the power of churches is diminished. It’s another way to attack religion and for the state to eradicate it from society.
Thus, the more people we can turn out into the street, the stronger the churches get, because the increasing masses of the poor, having no recourse, will be forced to turn to them for soup and a cot. Then we'll have a healthy society (which, despite Loesch's inapposite citation of the Declaration of Independence, sounds rather medieval.)
Perhaps sensing she has not made the sale, Loesch then yells for a while about how the "various groups comprising the tea party movement" better stick together or they'll never overcome "the left: the communists, the socialists, the say-their-anarchists-but-are-actually-socialists."
She needn't worry, nor does she seem to know how the game is played:
When out of power, you rouse the Christians with culture war controversies -- which seem to be making a comeback now. When in power, you talk about Jesus and hand out presents, as Bush did when he got into office, showing his appreciation for the evangelicals who supported him by ladling out cash in the form of "Faith-Based and Community Initiatives."
Loesch appears to believe that the Tea Party thing is all new, and those who once had their hands out are now pushing away. But the hands are always out, and the only ones who ever really get pushed are those with the least power.