Ted “Cuban Anarchist” Cruz (R-TX) and Rand “Bad Pizza Crust” Paul (R-KY), the duo Bill Maher has labeled the “Insane Clown Posse,” both sound more like they’re running for high priest, or Pope, than for President of the United States.
Cruz spoke yesterday at Liberty University’s Convocation (you’ll remember Rand Paul spoke at the university’s convocation last October and plagiarized Wikipedia’s entry on the film Gattaca) and did his best Christian impersonation, saying things like “The Word tells us when two or more are gathered in His name, He will be there,” and, even better:
Today, religious liberty has never been more under assault. We are called to action as believers, not to sitting quietly and hiding our faith under a bushel, but to stand and speak no matter what the consequence.
Cruz ought to know that religious liberty is threatened: after all, he is one of those – along with fellow posse member Paul – leading the assault. Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller calls Cruz’s address at Liberty University less a speech than “a sermon — and a darn good one, I might add.”
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It sure sounded more sermon than political speech, but then the two are interchangeable in today’s Republican Party, which, as I have argued before, is less a political party than a religious denomination at this point (and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus admits it).
I am inspired to be here with you … with believers who are standing up with courage, who are standing up for the principles you believe in. You have the ability to change the state of Virginia. You have the ability to change the United States of America. The 10,000 people here — you have the ability to change the world.
What Cruz wants to change is our right to our own beliefs. According to Cruz (and Paul) their fundamentalist beliefs trump our own, no matter what they are, and the First Amendment applies to them and them alone. To the extent the federal government tries to enforce the true meaning of the First Amendment, that under the law, all religions are equal, the federal government must be a persecutor.
“The federal government has no business asking any Americans the content of our prayers,” said Cruz, in response to the IRS and tax-exempt status. It’s not like you have to twist a fundie’s arm to find out what he’s praying about anyway – they’re more than happy to tell you.
I mean, for once I would like to NOT know what they’re praying about!
It would be nice – truly refreshing – to find a fundie who actually cared that Jesus told them to pray in private and not in public, but at this point we’re more likely to find Amelia Earhart than we are a fundamentalist who listens to what Jesus said.
During his speech, Cruz appealed to two things he is actually opposed to – our country’s founding belief in religious freedom as established by the First Amendment, and Martin Luther King. But what the heck: if you can turn Jesus H. Christ into a fan of the ultra rich, radical liberal Tom Paine into a conservative, and Deist Thomas Jefferson into an Evangelical, then you can turn MLK into a fundamentalist demagogue.
Cruz, of course, also appealed to the right of corporations to “have religion” – a religion, no surprise, which trumps its employees’ religion:
How through the looking glass have we gone that the federal government is now litigating against our citizens trying to force us to violate our faith?
This is the sort of pabulum intellectually malnourished aberrochristians at places like ironically-named Liberty University love to hear. How dare the government protect ALL citizens! Don’t they see we have the right to persecute the non-believers? To smite them hip and thigh in Christ’s loving mercy?
Cruz is competing for the same crowd as Paul, of course, the Christian Nationalist crowd. Paul’s own vision for America was never meant to be, and if you’ve listened to Cruz’s father, you know you don’t want none of that in the White House either.
This is the same pabulum, of course, once served up by Rick Santorum before he over-indulged in horrible movies and overdosed with delusional self-approbation. It’s the same nonsense we’ll hear when Cruz and Paul have argued themselves into obscurity.
Because the one thing you can count on besides death and taxes and rich people buying elections, is that the Religious Right will never run out of people who want to destroy America.
Image from Liberty University
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
