The Christian Right Is Quite Scary, But the GOP's Economic Agenda Is America's Big Nightmare

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The Christian Right Is Quite Scary, But the GOP's Economic Agenda Is America's Big Nightmare

The Republican corporate agenda is a serious threat to society.
By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

Woe to the American president who says anything sensible on the subject of religion. President Obama forgot that unwritten rule recently at the National Prayer Breakfast when he pointed out what an eighth-grader could tell you: that acts of violence have been committed in the name of many faiths, not just Islam:

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Cue Christian right fake freakout. The holy rollers, naturally, seized the opportunity to present themselves as persecuted patriots defending America’s regular folk against godless liberal elites. They came charging out of the gate, sending blast after blast of ridiculousness across the media.

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America’s Christian right has a long history of demonstrating its devotion to fanaticism, extravagance and folly, but since the Reagan era, these tendencies have been deployed very effectively by politicians who want to appeal to the sensibilities and loyalties of ordinary Americans while picking their pockets. That’s what this latest round of rabble-rousing is really all about.

From talk radio and cable news pundits to reactionary evangelical pastors, the holy rollers form strategic alliances with politicians who back corporate power and wealthy individuals, working overtime to whip their followers into a religious frenzy sufficient to make them forget that their wages are falling and they will not be able to afford to send their kids to college or to go to the doctor. As Sophia Rosenfeld once put it in the Washington Post, you've got to beware of Republicans bearing the common touch because before you can bat an eye, they have stolen your retirement money and shoveled more money toward the rich. Masking the elitism of their economic policies and politics with fundamentalism in religion has been a tried-and-true formula for the 1 percent to expand their power.

Read more:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/christian-right-quite-scary-gops-economic-agenda-americas-big-nightmare?akid=12798.1924881.yl7sf3&rd=1&src=newsletter1031986&t=3

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