Charlie Pierce at Esquire‘s Political Blog on “A Dangerous Law and the New Formula of Conservatism“:
I’d like to congratulate the state of Michigan for passing the worst bill in the history of the universe. Read it fast and it just looks like the average rancid river of swill that flows forth any time you have your state government over to people who have developed their political philosophies while waiting on hold for Sean or Rush in their cars everyday during evening drive. But, close up, floating in the middle of it, there’s one particular chunk of offal that makes the rest of the rushing current smell like roses and daffodils. It says this:
This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.
Holy god.
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I may be unversed in the subtleties of writing legislation, but this certainly seems to me to mean that, if a kid thinks another kid is a great big “faggoty-fag-fag,” and he goes out of his way to beat that kid to a pulp, he can come to the principal or the guidance department or the school board and say that, well, sorry if he offended anyone, but he learned this stuff in the Bible. Leviticus made him do it. And the principal, or the guidance staff, or the school board, or the beaten kid himself has to take this pious savagery seriously, instead of telling the kid that he’s expelled and Jesus can be his cellmate…
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In a very real way, this one passage in one piece of really bad legislation is the entire raison d’etre of American “conservatism,” and of the political party that it has turned into its mindless vehicle over the past four decades. Every element of the “movement” is in there. There’s religious paranoia and cultural sociopathy combining to produce a completely irrational sense of victimhood. There’s the carefully chosen choice of targets, and the subsequent inflation of that target into the “real” threat from the “real” oppressors. And then, finally, there’s the framing of legislation to say one thing, but mean another, while maintaining your inherent right as one of society’s overdogs to do pretty much anything you want. You play the victim to reinforce your own long-established privilege.
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Without this formula, Republican politics would have no platform. There would be no all-powerful ACORN, pulling strings behind the scenes even though it went broke a couple of years ago. There would be no George Soros, the palindromic plutocrat financing all the critters that dance in Bill O’Reilly’s head. Rick Santorum’s would not get to gussy up in Scripture his tremulous inbred revulsion over other men’s penises. Ron Paul would not hear the black helicopters. Michele Bachmann would not have a vehicle for her concern over AmeriCorps and the incipient Obama Youth. Newt Gingrich would not have any career at all, and Herman Cain would not be able to blame the bitches. And even Mitt Romney wouldn’t be able to go before audiences made up of people who hate him and tell those audience that he shares their fear of the awesome, nation-destroying economic deadweight that is the National Endowment for the Arts…
How long until the first Wingnut Wurlitzer blogger yowls that Pierce’s croooel wurds are oppressing them, and should not be permitted?
MI Rethuglicans Side with the Gay-Bashers (Sun to Rise in East)Post + Comments (38)