From The Revealer comes this fascinating account of Chuck Colson's determination to continue to suck at the government teat while shoving his Abrahamic religion down the throats of a, literally, captive audience. Ah, those poor, persecuted, powerless xians!
Look, I don't care if they are using tax dollars for some potentially nice purpose. These "faith-based initiatives" take tax dollars and use them to subsidize government-preferred religions. Money, as everyone knows, is fungible. Every dollar that the religious groups don't have to raise for their "good works," (which, in Colson's case, essentially amounts to prostelityzing, but let's put that to one side because it would be true even if the good work were say, running a soup kitchen in the church basement), is a dollar that they can use to pay their director or lease him a nicer car or whatever. Which means that now that Bush has gotten the ministers addicted to these tax dollars, they will do whatever it takes to turn the flock out to vote for the candidate most likely to keep them in their Cadillacs.
Has Chuck Colson ever done an honest day's work in his entire life?
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"Nicole Greenfield: Former Nixon 'hatchet man' and current Bush ally, Chuck Colson, is in the news again after an Iowa judge ruled that his InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a state-funded evangelical Christian prison program, violated the separation of church and state. The controversy began over three years ago when the relatively small non-profit organization, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, filed a lawsuit against Colson's multi-million dollar, international non-profit for using taxpayer's money to fund a religious program. AU's victory over InnerChange--or InnerChange's defeat by AU--is a true David and Goliath story.
Although Colson himself doesn’t officially respond, the president of the larger Prison Fellowship ministry organization that created InnerChange, Mark Earley, reacts in a BreakPoint commentary. Earley not only sees 'religious freedom' at risk, but believes the decision jeopardizes the fate—both immediate and ultimate—of prisoners as well. He applies the persecuted church rhetoric laced throughout evangelical narrative, but here it's flipped--tpersecutortor isn't the large and powerful state, but rather a small non-profit group.
Explaining their decision to appeal, Earley does all but declare: this means war. And the next battle is not one that he and Colson are willing to lose. Lucky for them, theyÂ’ve got Alito, Roberts, and Bush in their arsenal. But despite the overwhelming combined power of these men, Colson and Earley are sure to employ the persecution narrative once again, only this time presenting themselves as poor, weak, and caring Christian Davids against a unjust, all-powerful, and anti-Christian Goliath of a state."
1 comment:
I remember back about 40 years, when "parochiaid" was a hot button topic in my state. At the time it primarily meant tax dollars going to Catholic schools.
A product of Catholic grade school, I didn't think it so bad if some programs got funded, since the schools and their teachers had to meet state accredidation standards. On the other hand, respectful of the Constitution, I figured the opponents had a valid point.
Of course much of the opposition was based in anti-Catholicism. How dare those filthy papists from those inferior southern and eastern European countries (those no-good Irish, too) lay claim to good (anglo, protestant) American tax dollars!
Now the protestant fundies want their turn at the trough, and they and Catholics have made a devil's bargain. Amazing how a little mutual hatred can be ignored when grabbing taxpayer dollars is at stake.
Of course, each faction thinks it will land on top in the end, once they can turn on each other after those "godless liberals" are vanquished.
May these people using religion as their scam be sentenced to an eternity of whatever hell they'd cast others into.
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