Newt Reveals Plans to Wage Holy War on Atheists in America
It is absurd that we would be drawn so often back to the “War on Christianity” meme that seems to form the heart and core of every Republican campaign in 2012. Even the battles surrounding issues like marriage equality and women’s reproductive rights are framed in terms of “religious freedoms under attack” as though somebody is being told they can’t practice their religion if other people have an equal amount of liberty. And rather than focusing on the absurdity of claiming persecution on the basis of equal rights, the media legitimizes the Republican narrative as something deserving discussion.
Newt Gingrich likes to harp on the subject of “religious freedom” as much as the next Republican. Of course, as we have shown here repeatedly, the phrase “religious freedom” is a stand-in for something else: the privileging of Christian belief over all other forms of belief – or disbelief. Religious freedom should mean equal freedoms for all with regards to belief and that is what the First Amendment establishes by prohibiting government establishment of religion, originally applied to the federal government in the First Amendment and later applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment in the wake of the Civil War.
But this isn’t what the GOP wants. The conservative Christian-driven GOP wants the establishment of Christianity as a state-sponsored religion in contravention of the First Amendment and all rhetoric directed at the topic is toward this end and this end alone. Newt Gingrich is no different. CBN claimed Monday evening to have received a document from the Gingrich campaign that shows how seriously their candidate takes this mythical war on Christianity. According to The Brody File, they “obtained an exclusive document that lays out in detail Newt Gingrich’s plan on day one of his administration to create, through Executive Order, a Presidential Commission on Religious Freedom in the United States.”
The document has been posted on Newt.org as of Tuesday in all its dubious glory. It would obviously have been crafted (and leaked) to show how serious he is on the subject of “religious freedom.” It would also demonstrate that Gingrich is well aware of how important it is that he makes a serious attempt to draw conservative Christian voters away from Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, who have more God-cred than does he, especially at a time when Newt is struggling with falling poll numbers. The Brody File further claims that “While Gingrich knows this commission will be welcomed by conservative evangelicals (read: key primary voters), this should not be read as an attempt to pander.”
http://www.politicususa.com/en/newt-reveals-plans-to-wage-holy-war-on-atheists-in-america
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The 20-page-long document states that the Religious Freedom Commission would have as its purpose to:
“Examine and document threats or impediments to religious freedom in the United States and to propose steps for reaffirming and protecting the foundational principle of freedom of thought, conscience, and religious belief upon which our republic is built and thrives.”
Translation: to wage war on secularists, atheists, pagans and everyone else who dares object to what Christians see as their right to completely ignore the First Amendment, or to repurpose it as a document establishing Christianity as America’s state religion.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/newt-reveals-plans-to-wage-holy-war-on-atheists-in-america
The document can be found here...
http://www.newt.org/presidential-commission-religious-freedom
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