Civil Commotion

Albert the Pious approvingly quotes himself saying something painfully stupid.

Notice the retweets and favorites; a lot of the evangelicals out there think this is important stuff you have to know. But notice this, too: Disdain for the Supreme Court, disdain for higher education, and a complete explanation of the world in Genesis’ incontestably false story of The Fall. These people are seriously out-of-touch with reality.

Wiley Drake, the one-time vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention who first came to the attention of the not-crazy world by praying for the death of President Obama on his radio show, has announced that he is a candidate for President.

The nation needs to return to the Judeo-Christian principles on which it was founded, said Drake, who serves as pastor for the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park.

“We need to get a pastor back in charge,” he said. “Politicians used to be right men. Now they are wrong men.”

Back in charge?

Writing in The Atlantic, a Yale historian reprises the very point I made here: We should rebuke our history, not whitewash it.

Wholesale “name-changing” in the form of erasure is bad history and, worse, it represents the forfeiture of an important educational opportunity. Teaching students about whatever structural racism continues to exist in America requires using every available artifact, including Calhoun College.

[ … ]

The U.S. should own up to the past, see it for what it was, not brush it away.

It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

Billy Graham

Sadly, helped in no small part by his son Franklin and the influence of the Graham name, ‘conservatism’ and yahoo fundamentalism are indistinguishable nowadays.