Tony Perkins Says Muslim Immigrants Threaten Our Country from Within

People for the American Way reports that yesterday, Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said that “legal immigration is a big problem” because “people that have come in from Muslim Countries” may “threaten our country from within.”

Listen courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Apparently, Perkins thinks the military can’t protect us because he also claimed that the U.S. military has “turned…into a parade that looks like the bar scene in Star Wars.” Which doesn’t sound all that bad, when you think about it. That looked like a tough crowd:

Surprise, surprise. They’ve destroyed religious freedom in our military, they’ve turned it into a parade that looks like the bar scene in Star Wars and they are wondering why they can’t recruit people. It’s beyond words.

Maybe Perkins thought it was a gay bar, or he saw a bunch of people who weren’t white males, and assumed they must all be, well, you know, inferior genetic stock.

It’s an ethnic nationalist thing Hitler would understand.

Of course, religious freedom in the military was not destroyed. What happened in truth is that religious freedom was preserved in the military, which was never intended to be, after all, a crusading army out of Islamic nightmares.

Of course, we already have people threatening our country from within. Including Tony Perkins. A few immigrants hardly seem a problem for a country that has withstood a sustained, decades-long assault on the United States Constitution by the Religious Right.

Liberals and progressives tend not to take Tony Perkins very seriously, but as PFAW points out, “2016 Republican candidates have extensively praised and courted Tony Perkins in the past”:

  • Jeb Bush said earlier this year: “I have a lot of respect for Tony and his group. I talk to him, I have an open dialogue with him.”
  • Ted Cruz’s go-to dinner date in D.C. is Perkins.
  • Bobby Jindal appointed Perkins to a seat on Louisiana’s Commission on Law Enforcement.
  • Rick Santorum said that FRC’s message “was one that was very much consonant with mine.”
  • Scott Walker is in regular contact with Perkins.
  • Almost all of the Republican presidential candidates have appeared on Perkins’ radio show and/or spoken at Family Research Council events.
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    Republicans Support And Defend Extremism Against America

    Republicans are ardent defenders of right-wing extremists posing the greatest terrorism threat to the United  States and since they are loyal supporters of their so-called champions of freedom; what better way to protect the real threat to America than shut down the Department of Homeland Security?

    The Countering Violent Extremism Summit Will Not Ignore Homegrown Terrorism

    obama no ground troops isil

    Despite the insistence of Republicans that the War on Terror is unidirectional, that it extends only outward, in the direction of Islam, it is omnidirectional, and extends inward as well as outward. The Western World, like the Middle East, is facing terror from within.

    Fox News and Republican politicians would have you believe that Islam is waging a Jihad against America and Christianity. But Islam is actually engaged in a civil war, into which we have allowed ourselves to be drawn.

    The real war is much broader in context: it is against violent extremists – any violent extremists. And those violent extremists are a global phenomenon, not limited to radical Islam. Yes, Islamic youth have been radicalized. So have Christian. Homegrown terror is a very real cause of concern in the Western world.

    At the three-day-long CVE Summit, or Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, which begins today in Washington D.C., and includes representatives from over 60 countries, the Obama administration is showing that it recognizes this. The struggle against violent extremism is, as a senior administration official has stressed, “a long-term investment.”

    The White House summit was previewed in a background conference call with senior administration officials, yesterday afternoon. It was suggested that for more information, listeners appeal to 2011’s Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.

    While the idea that “the government does not have all the answers in combatting violent extremism” will no doubt appeal to Republican sensibilities, the idea that there are terrorists other than the Islamic kind must rankle.

    According to a senior administration official during yesterday’s call,

    CVE efforts are premised on the central goal of preventing violent extremism and the extremists themselves and their supporters from inspiring, radicalizing, financing or recruiting individuals or groups in the United States from committing acts of violence. read more