Pensees: Homeschoolers=Terrorists?

Homeschoolers=Terrorists?

Dumb Evangelicalism is not patriotic.

Now, let’s get it straight from the get-go. I’m not a bleeding heart, red-white-and-blue, swearing-my-allegiance-to-the-flag type of guy. Nor do I think that Jesus is a Republican. But I like to be free, and I am grateful for the freedom that the United States of America has had. Has. It’s slipping.

I am very mad that a 16-year-old homeschooler is being treated like a terrorist even if it can ultimately be proven that he really did make the bomb threat. If it is true, and I emphasize if, then treat him like a criminal suspect and indict him. But if one cannot see the government’s efforts to promote paranoia about the “far right” and those weird evangelicals who do homeschooling, one has to be naive. Remember, Napolitano’s effort to scare everyone on April 14?

Freedom in this country is being taken away and it is not Barack Obama that is primarily responsible; it’s thanks to laws that were handed to him on a silver platter by the Bush Administration. It’s also thanks to dumb evangelicals. Freedoms that are so basic to our American heritage are being lost. Forever. But if it is done in the name of patriotism by a pro-life president, fine.

Freedom is disappearing, in part, because American Christians and political conservatives are so naive and partisan that they cannot think anything but the party line. You may think that Lew Rockwell is off his rocker to the libertarian right, but I personally agree with the columnist who wrote yesterday about this whole sordid affair:

As of today (May 5), a criminal complaint in this case does exist, but Ashton has yet to be charged with a crime. Were we living in a country in which the habeas corpus guarantee was operational, Ashton would most likely be free, and a lawsuit against his persecutors would probably be in the works.

However, the late Bush administration, with the enthusiastic support of nearly every conservative commentator and activist of any consequence, quite thoughtfully disposed of the habeas corpus guarantee. And since Ashton is being held on terrorism-related charges, his status is analogous to that of an “enemy combatant” – which is to say, he can probably be held indefinitely, and even be subjected to the same “enhanced interrogation” methods that so enchant many of the pew-defilers in conservative “Christian” congregations.

Habeas corpus? The poor child probably doesn’t even know the word, but he sure yearns for the concept. Thanks in large part to gullible Christians who think that America is always going to be friendly to the Gospel, the child is not getting to experience it. From day one of the Patriot Act I dared to say that President Bush was doing America a disservice and you would have thought I had spit on the flag by the reactions I would get from most of my American friends. (By the way, I say the same thing about waterboarding. It’s almost childish to think that waterboarding will always be handled appropriately and that it is completely infeasible to to imagine that it may one day be used against pastors for hate crimes such as speaking out against homosexuality.) It’s “patriotic,” it’s America first, Bob. In the pro-war, pro-Bush era of Evangelicalism it was safer to swear as a pastor than to thoughtfully reflect on the possible dangers of Bush’s doctrine for future generations of Christians.

To be opposed to the Patriot Act was to be opposed to patriotism. After all, if it is called patriotic it must really be patriotic, right? That’s how simple minds work and when it came to selling anything the Republican Party could always count on Evangelicals to provide enough simple minds to get their bad ideas into policy if they played the pro-life and the patriotic card.

Of course, patriotic is not synonymous with biblical, christian, or even commonsensical even though too many American Christians have thought so. But that is another topic for another post.

The point of the matter is this: As a minister of the Gospel there is one thing that very much interests me; and that is freedom. I predicted that the Patriot Act would be used wrongfully against innocent people, particularly Christians, if it wasn’t scratched from the books.

As we speak a homeschooled boy is in custody without normal rights or the usual American privilege of due process. Little is known about him because our government can treat him as an enemy suspect merely on the basis of suspicion.

History has shown that laws that originated with good intentions to curb bad things morphed in very little time to become laws useful in the persecution of Christians.

I suggest to my American friends that if they really want the America they think they have they better put up a fight for their liberty and harass their government for taking a 16-year-old (even if he is a criminal) and stripping him and his mother of his rights.

To be gullible is not patriotic. And to blame everything un-American on the present administration is, well, gullible.