The Amygdala Strain: Right-Wing Teabaggery as Psychological Pandemic
Symptoms of Amygdala Syndrome
By Brendan Beery Posted on June 28, 2011
Have you ever heard a teabagger talk and wondered what kind of infection could cause the human brain to suffer so much vascular reason-bleed?
When the debate was raging about whether the feds should rescue the auto industry, afflicted teabagger types argued that President Obama wanted to “bail out” car makers because he wanted to take over Detroit’s decision-making and run the car companies himself.
At the time, I asked myself what kind of grassy knoller could think that Barack Obama ran for President of the United States so he could run car companies. Who would run for an office the attainment of which would render him the most powerful human being on the planet and then, with the world’s most powerful military and a globe full of fans behind him, decide that he’d like to spend his time on Pennsylvania Avenue picking colors for the Ford Focus? This notion is insane.
More recently I was wondering how much differently my brain would have to be wired for me to believe that climate change is a progressive conspiracy the aim of which is to establish global socialist hegemony. The number of implausible clandestine folds in that galactic accordion of intrigue would be staggering—and yet there are tens of millions of stooges who believe it.
Around the time that George W. Bush was appointed president, I began to change my view of Republicanism. Whereas I have never agreed with overarching Republican policy objectives, there was a time when I at least regarded conservatives as serious people with serious arguments they brought to bear.
But it began to occur to me with the ascendency of a barefaced buffoon to the apex of right-wing politics that maybe conservatism was not just a political disposition. And as George W. Bush’s corporate-Jesus coalition evolved into a throng that could call Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann its own, Republicanism completed its transition from political ideology into psychological disorder.
The time has come to put a name to the psychological disorder that manifests in teabaggery and right-wing dogmatism. I’ve come up with a diagnosis that progressives should broadcast liberally and drive home relentlessly; I call it the Amygdala Syndrome, and I will forthwith begin referring to conservatism as such.
When our place on the food chain was not so secure, and we had to deal with predator cats on a regular basis, the amygdala—a pair of almond-shaped structures near the base of our temporal lobes—did great work. Our brain processed visual images of a shadow moving in the grass, and our amygdala shouted, “Danger!” In response, we froze. Our more logical information-processing centers kicked in, quickly trying to determine: Is this shadow a crouching tiger or a hidden rabbit? If the shadow was big enough, our logical frontal lobes responded, Close enough to a tiger for me, our amygdala sent a stronger signal of abject fear in return, and we ran.
Millions of years later, Homo sapiens is here—and we brought our amygdalas with us. Some of us, like kids in the inner city, or soldiers in the battle?eld, still need them a lot. … But for most of us, the amygdala … is responding to far less grave mysteries but is still sending us messages of anxiety and fear whenever necessary and much of the time besides, including when the boss says something harsh to us at work, a co-worker cuts us a nasty look, or when we hear an idea that con?icts with our worldview. … Oftentimes our ?rst reaction, even if it is about an intellectual subject, is an emotional one: We react to the ideas we hear with this primitive part of our brain. And when we feel emotionally committed to a position, that is precisely the time we’re in the greatest danger of reacting—not from our frontal lobes, like enlightened human beings, but from our amygdalas, like angry or frightened monkeys. (Emphases added).
Now, take a guess what researchers have discovered about enlarged amygdalas and the link between enlarged amygdalas and a certain political bent. That’s right: researchers have found that conservatives have larger amygdalas than normal people. It’s been reported that [ http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/29/conservative_brains/index.html ]
… research shows that people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala—typically thought of as the “primitive brain”—is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism. This one-two punch could be responsible for many of the anecdotal claims that conservatives “think differently” from others.
Look what happens when symptoms of Amygdala Syndrome (enlarged amygdala and small anterior cingulate) begin to manifest:
[If you or someone you know is manifesting symptoms like these, seek IMMEDIATE help!]
But all is not lost. As right-wingers have taught us, any predisposition that is simply hard-wired into one’s brain (like sexual orientation, for example), can be cured on bended knee. So if right-wingers pray hard enough, they should succeed in overcoming their own primitive reflexes and supplanting them with more evolved and sophisticated human behaviors.
Progressives should stop tiptoeing around the issue whether their political nemeses are deranged and just start saying it: right-wingers are sick; they suffer from a diagnosable psychological disorder; and it is called (from now on) the Amygdala Syndrome.
Until we find a vaccine to prevent it or an antidote to cure it, we will have to rely on “shame therapy,” which looks something like this (after clicking the ‘play’ icon, click Watch on Youtube to view video [i.e., gotta click through on this one, just use the link]):
I am Michele Bachmann and and my lawyer swears I'm not a
Michele Bachmann is a Proud Republican Goddess God Bless America
"Any of you who have members of your family that are in the lifestyle - we have a member of our family that is. This is not funny. It’s a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It's anything but gay." - Mrs. Bachmann
Millions of television viewers wished they could be Mrs. Bachmann as she grabbed The Greatest President Ever and sucked his face following his 2007 State of the Union Address
Michele Bachmann is the Republican Representative of Minnesota's 6th congressional district. She has verified God selected her (really!) to succeed previous Republican Mark Kennedy, who vacated the seat after the rate of home foreclosures in his district rose dramatically. Mrs. Bachmann reported that she fasted for three days, asking the Almighty for his permission to run for Congress. Apparently, the King of Kings gave her the go ahead on the second day of the fast[1]. It is unknown why she and her allegedly heterosexual husband, Marcus, continued their fast for the third day. "Its, like, all I have to do is want something," said Representative Bachmann, "and God, in His infinite Wisdom, always gives me permission to give it a try." Like Norm Coleman (who is, unfortunately, Jewish, but still an honorary Republican though he won't be taken in the Rapture like most Republicans, and was not, of course, allowed to head the National Republican Senate Committee because of his Biblical taint), she's been sent to help the half Canadian, half liberal state of Minnesota regain its American, 1950s, Southern roots by instilling the values and vision of Ronald Reagan.
Family background
Bachmann was born Michele Amble and grew up in Anoka, Minnesota (a.k.a. Lake Woebegone). She is clearly the product of Intelligent Design and not a "redart" as she's fond of saying. However her lack of blond hair makes it unclear whether she shares the pure genetic roots of Ann Coulter.
At the age of thirteen she became "financially independent". i.e., an orphan. She was accepted to the world-renowned Winona State College (now Winona State University), where God first contacted her and showed her a vision of her future husband, Marcus Bachmann, working on his family’s farm in Wisconsin. (A subsequent vision of her husband at a leather bar in Milwaukee was dismissed by Bachmann as “the work of Satan.”)
5 years years after her first child was born, Mrs. Bachmann decided to become a stay-at-home mom. She has taken in 23 foster children, all of them teenage girls because “there’s no safer place for a teenage girl to be than around Marcus.” She has no recollection whether they used any of them as baby sitters. This effort has in no way benefited the Bachmann family financially; they do it for love.
The Carter Mistake
Michele began dating Marcus Bachmann in 1976 when they were working together for the election of openly "born again Christian" Jimmy Carter. The couple later abandoned their support for Carter after discovering that he was a Democrat.
After Carter became President, Michele and Marcus attended the Christian documentary film “Fetus, Do Yo’ Stuff". Inspired by the film, the couple decided to become sidewalk counselors in an attempt to dissuade women from seeking abortions. They abandoned these efforts as “ineffectual” after picketing in her pumps made Michele's feet hurt.
Marriage, Law school, and Reagan
Michele married Marcus Bachmann in 1978 on his family's dairy farm where they lived and worked for awhile after their marriage. One morning while she was milking a cow, Jesus appeared to her at the bottom of the bucket and said to her: “Why art thou squirting me? Get thee to law school.”
She enrolled at Coburn School of Law, an affiliate of Oral Roberts University. Bachmann chose to attend Coburn’s unaccredited law school because it was built in accord with “God’s commission to Oral Roberts”, a televangelist.
In 1980 while attending Coburn, Bachmann joined the Republican campaign to elect Ronald Reagan, impressed by the candidate’s divorced status and his campaign promise to use illegal means to secretly arm terrorists. 6 years later (1986), Bachmann earned a Juris Doctor. After receiving another message from God, this time to study tax law - Mrs. Bachmann swears on her orphans — went on to earn a Legum Magistra degree.
Taxes
Mrs. Bachmann likes bills that have taxpayer and rights in them, provided the bill carefully defines what rights a taxpayer has so they can't use them to support bears or anything else gay.
From 1988 to 1993 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bachmann became an Internal Revenue Service attorney, well known for their interest in and care for taxpayer rights.
Protesting Abortion
The arduous task of raising 5 biological children and 23 foster teenage girls revived Mrs. Bachmann’s interest in abortion. She and around 30 other abortion opponents protested a $3 million appropriation to build a county morgue at a local medical center. Bachmann reasoned that it was wrong for the state to tax her for a morgue at a medical center that also performed abortions because “the dead people to be stored at the proposed morgue would undoubtedly be pro-life.”
Mrs. Bachmann said in regard to abortions being legal in America that “in effect, since 1973, I have been a landlord of an abortion clinic, and I don’t like that distinction.” She is presently working on the legal grounds with Alberto Gonzales for stopping abortions based on "in effect dislike".
Despite what you may have heard Michele Bachmann Is totally not racist!
Charter Schools for Dummies
In 1993, Mrs. Bachmann joined with other parents of Stillwater Minnesota to open a K-12 charter school: The money the school received from public taxes went toward surging Christianity into the curriculum. New, improved courses included:
* “The Bible’s Truth versus the Lies of Science” * “Geology: Our Six Thousand Year Old Earth” * “Why Do the Jews Continue To Reject Him?” * "12 Christian principles" * The Biology of Fetus Murdering * Beginning, intermediate, and advanced Creationism
In an attempt to keep the school, Mrs. Bachmann appeared before a concerned group of parents. She angrily attempted to “excommunicate them and all their sinful progeny”, but the Democrats had Clinton in the White House.
Opposition to "Profile of Learning" and "School-to-Work" policies
Bachmann began to have difficulty with the foster children placed in her care. She was often puzzled by the behaviors and attitudes exhibited by these teen girls (e.g. giggling whenever they were threatened with “a good old-fashioned ass whuppin’”). Bachmann finally concluded that their problems were the fault of the Public School system rather than due to any personal failings in her or any of the other individuals involved.
She began to speak out against public education, gaining attention with outspoken criticism of Minnesota's Profile of Learning and School-to-Work policies.
The Profile of Learning was a program of graduation standards in Minnesota. The program was controversial with local conservatives because it would have required students to show that they had actually learned something while at school. Bachmann and others also criticized the Profile for focusing "on attitudes, values and beliefs of students, and teaching controversial secular values like “don’t steal” and "put down that gun" as part of the regular school curriculum.
Bachmann also opposed Minnesota's School-to-Work program. School-to-Work was enacted so that Minnesota could get additional Federal funds by complying with the School To Work Opportunities Act passed by Congress in 1994, but Bachmann and other local education activists claimed that it was “a thinly disguised conspiracy by Federal government officials to indoctrinate our children with the principles of world socialism and fatten them up with publicly funded lunch programs so that they could later be taken away in black helicopters and sold as “human livestock” to hungry big-headed aliens operating out the basement of Area 51.”
Michele declares herself Representative!
Gaining support of Local Religious Conservative Think-Tank
Bachmann's opposition to the Profile and School To Work caught the attention of an organization called the Local Religious Conservative Think Tank (or LRCTT, pronounced “lur-k-tih-tih”.) Like Bachmann, the LRCTT advocates equal time for Intelligent Design creationism theory in the science classes and maintains that we will all have real pet dinosaurs when we get to heaven. LRCTT opposes gay marriage, saying: "Legalizing 'marriage' for homosexual couples will push the homosexual indoctrination agenda forward very far and very fast and this will ultimately lead to unsupervised dancing.”
LRCTT represented the feeling of many Christian social conservatives that public school education programs are in reality covert attacks on their faith, particularly the gym classes. At a seminar featuring Bachmann, a LRCTT director spoke of the federal education reforms passed by a Republican president and Congress as “a conspiracy against Christianity…Enemies of Christianity in the United States government are even now training our children to accept a future new one-world, globalized, politically correct society incompatible with our founders’ Christian worldview. They are replacing traditional education with federal indoctrination so that our kids will end up exported from this Earth to be the slaves of the secret technocracy who have built underground bases on the dark side of the moon—“ but then the men with the nets came in and got him again.
Throughout Bachmann's political career groups like LRCTT have been her strongest local supporters. Most of these groups have a tax-exempt status under 501c(4) & 501c(3) tax laws and many receive free medication. Bachmann for her part continues to direct anyone seeking her views on public education reform to LRCTT's website ( http://www.theyrecomingtotakeusawayhahatheyrecomingtotakeusawayhohoheeheehaha.com )
Fighting The Public School Curriculum
Bachmann and her supporters believe that public schools are teaching an “anti-Christian” worldview. In particular she objected to the sex education curriculum and proposed an Abstinence Only approach that “discouraged masturbation on demand (except in cases where the life of the mother was in danger.)”
Bachmann also lobbied for introduction of Intelligent Design creationism into the state’s public school science curriculum to balance the lie of evolution. She argued that it was “impossible for dinosaurs who can sing and dance like Barney to have evolved through random chance.”
Bachmann regularly asserts that homosexuals are seeking to infiltrate public schools. “Our children are the prize for this community,” she warned. In support of her claim that homosexual values were being taught to elementary school children as part of the curriculum, Bachmann produced hidden camera videotape of a kindergarten teacher instructing her students to re-decorate the classroom and re-arrange its furniture.
Bachmann also made a high-profile attempt to remove a controversial children’s book from the elementary school reading list. The book, entitled “King and King,” purports to acquaint children with the concept of adult homosexuality by telling the story of two kings who get married. Though Bachmann’s attempt to ban the book was unsuccessful, she did manage to get some of the book’s more explicit sequels banned: “Two Kings and a Pair of Queens”, “Two Kings With Jacks to Open”, and the author’s condemnation of anti-homosexual violence, “A Straight Beats Two Kings.”
Running for School Board
In 1999 Bachmann made her first electoral bid, as a candidate for a seat on the School Board in Stillwater, Minnesota. The race was considered controversial because: 1) Bachmann and four other conservative candidates were endorsed by the GOP in what had always been a traditionally nonpartisan race, 2) Bachmann and other conservative candidates for School Board didn’t have any children attending public school in the district (preferring to home school or private school) 3) Bachmann and the other four conservative candidates did not openly display their hatred of public education. they were, in fact, stealth candidates. meaning, they were not candid about their position regarding public education. only through the due diligence of a group of parents in stillwater, minnesota were they exposed to be the interlopers they were.
Bachmann and the other candidates were defeated at the polls, but the race raised her political profile among her future “base” (pro-life creationist evangelical voters who fear that socialist homosexual imperial stormtroopers are coming to take away their handguns and sodomize them.)
Representing Minnesota's 6th
THE EVIL OF "HOOT SMALLEY" On April 27, 2009, Representative Bachmann set the historical record straight, noting during a speech before Congress (yes, she blurts these things out in public) that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ushered in the Great Depression by using his presidential powers several years before he even became president to ram through legislation named after semi-famous country and western crooner, Hoot Smalley.
LIBERAL "SCIENCE" IS MISLEADING - Representative Bachmann, in another public display, demonstrated her vast knowledge of and facility with science by explaining that, because carbon dioxide exists in nature, adding tons of carbon dioxide unnaturally cannot possibly have an effect on the global environment. In fact, the more the better! It has been suggested that, since arsenic occurs naturally in nature, Mrs. Bachmann should try ingesting pounds of it to prove that a naturally occurring substance causes no harm regardless of amount. One should note that the response by Representative Blumenauer was too long. He stated that "My good friend, the gentle lady from Minnesota, doesn't think . . ." That statement by itself was sufficient without embellishment.
The political and intellectual genius of Mrs. Bachmann is obviously self-evident in this list of important, inciteful, and powerfully moving quotes:
“(Gay marriage) is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that.”
“During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed … The government spent its wad by April 26.”
I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”
Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.
“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”
Does that mean that someone's 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser.
[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.
A woman (Terri Schiavo) was healthy. There was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill.
I think there is a point where you say enough is enough to government intrusion. …Does the federal government really need to know our phone numbers?
“Unelected bureaucracies will decide what we can and cant get in future health insurance policy. Thats why theyre called death panels.”
This cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass.
Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal, a lot of the questions that are asked. I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that.
And what a bizarre time we're in, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.
Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man!?
It is horrific to know that in the African American community, 50 percent of all African American pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, 50 percent. That is a genocide of African Americans of the United States. It should not be. There are Americans all across this country who would love to adopt African American babies, but they can't because 50 percent of all African American pregnancies today are ending in abortion.
If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.
I'm very concerned about the international moves they're making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.
Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.
There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.
I don't know where they're going to get all this money because we're running out of rich people in this country.
This is an earthquake issue. This will change our state forever. Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.
We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves.
I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.
“If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”
“Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch.”
“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. Its all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”
“Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth's lifecycle. And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occuring in Earth.”
“The President of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.”
“I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I'm not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I'm not a scientist.”
The Battle Against The Illegal Alien Trying To Steal Her Job!
Michele was able to hold off this assault on her innocence and seat!
Now, she hopes to spread her wealth of knowledge around in another committee!
You go Michele!
Hobbies
In addition to her autograph, photo, and video collection of The Greatest President EVER, Mrs. Bachmann enjoys kissing grabbing and molesting him when they meet. She also just loves the music of Anita Bryant.
* Bachmann and Bush meet * The New York Times can't find a stained dress * Bachmann and President Bush video * Housing And Racial Philosophies * Christian Violence Against Heathens * Supporting our troops with bootstraps
Mrs. Bachmann and her husband, Marcus (who Mrs. Bachmann insists is heterosexual, more or less) are avid teabaggers. They engage in teabagging at home, on the campaign trail, in the green room of Fox (Godly) News, and in front of the foster children they've been able to keep track of. Mrs. Bachmann strongly recommends that Godly, conservative parents encourage their children to begin teabagging as early in life as possible by inviting the children to join in while their parents are teabagging. Mrs. Bachmann has proposed making the teaching of teabagging mandatory in public schools, noting that religious private schools have engaged in the practice for decades.
Family
* Harrison Bachmann [crossed through] Unfortunately we have received the sad news that Harrison was recently kidnapped, brainwashed, and forced to gay marry some dude. He is now a hardcore libural and terrorist agent. Michele was heartbroken and she was forced to disown him.
Bachmann for The Presidency
Michele Bachmann is Ready to be President in 2012! She is a rock star! Awesome!
By Decree & Power of Ballsiness Michele Bachmann! Shall Receive Lady Balls!
Other Great Michelles
* Michelle Malkin
Pro-American Tubes
* Official Biography! * Wisdom From Princess Michele * I Agree With Michelle Bachmann * Michele Bachmann brings more campaign donations to Democrats Real Americans * Michelle Bachmann crusade against the US Census gains more support * Real Americans launches website to help Michele Bachmann's election! * www.ElectMicheleBachmannOrWeAreAllGoingToDie.com * lubural lezbian bear-lover challenges True American Hero * Michele Bachmann to visit Sarah Palin * Bachmann for 2012! * Michele demands government to keep their greasy paws from her body! Yeah, Her Body Her Choice... to Keep it Pure! * Bachmann calls for a National Day of prayer to defeat Socialized Medicine! * Michele Bachmann find new political ally * Michele calls for Real America * Bachmann to choose God as her running mate! * Michele Bachmann to be crowned Queen of the Republican Party * Michele Bachmann wins more supporters * Michele Bachmann Celebrates the capture of evil census man * Bachmann to start her own Christian Punk Band and end Christian discrimination in schools * Michele Bachmann fights off communist bill to mandate abortion clinics on America's schools * Bachmann to topple mooslim tyrant! * Michelle Bachmann to sail new ship * Bachmann terrifies democrats * Michele Bachmann destroys Patriot Act by accident [struck through] rallies the base! * Michele Bachmann: Homeless are not real Americans anyway. And they dont vote either * Bachmann's Wish List * Michele Bachmann is no Welfare Queen! That's a lie! * Michele Bachmann to win 2010 election! * Democrats to steal Michele's seat! * Michele Bachmann continues Glorious Fight against evil census! * Michele Bachmann 4th Greatest American of 2009 * Michele Bachmann to rename our Nation: Amaricas! * Greatest Plan to save America * Michele Bachmann Demands Obama to use His Imperial Dictatorial Powah to Seize Free Oil. Declares Spill Not The Free Markets Problem: "Wall Street Doesnt Regulate Mother Nature * Bachmann against our Chinese Masters New World Order Masters [struck through] * Slavery is Back! And This Time is Whitey Time!!! * Michele Bachmann: Silly gays, Civil Rights is for Black People * Michele! The Musical * Bachmann calls mommy for help * Michele Bachmann to be rewarded for the long years of service [struck through] Sorry Michele, you lack the proper credential: real balls. * Michele Bachmann to be crowned "Queen of Tea Baggers" * Michele Bachman candidacy for Chairmanship stolen * Michele Bachmann to address the Nation * Michele Bachmann to bring more Party Unity * Tea Bagging Queen already making buzz! * a New Rebuttal from a Realer American * Michele Bachmann to write Real History book * Michele to liberate our troops from the iron grip of socialism: bootstraps! * Veterans for Bachmann [struck through] * Michelle Bachmann defeats formidable opponent by default * Micele Bachmann defeats communist traitor! Victory for Real America * Michele Bachmann is the Anti-christ! [struck through] Lies! * Liberal media terrified of Michele Bachmann * Michele Bachmann reveals sekret on how to make tons of money
Read more
Ann Coulter
Sarah Palin
Eva Herman "Nazi family politics were not so bad. The women got to stay at home and just live for the pleasure of their husband. Also concentration camps were not so bad, at least they got to shower every once in a while."
Copyright 2011 Wikiality.com, the Truthiness Encyclopedia!
Greg Carey Professor, Lancaster Theological Seminary Posted: 7/7/11 05:35 PM ET
When you attend a wedding at church, what passages of Scripture do you expect to hear? Congregations occasionally invite me to speak on the current same-sex marriage debates, and I ask them this question. Their answers are remarkably consistent.
Someone invariably mentions 1 Corinthians 13, the famous "Love Chapter." Love is patient, love is kind, love never insists on its own way and so forth. Wonderful advice for marriage, but Paul was not talking about marriage. He was addressing a church fight: the believers in Corinth had split into factions and were competing for prestige and influence. We see echoes of this conflict throughout the letter, but especially in chapters 12 and 14, which surround this passage.
Others call out, "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16; NRSV). Another moving passage, but it's certainly not about marriage. Ruth addresses this moving speech to her mother-in-law Naomi.
The second creation story in Genesis comes up: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genisis 2:24). This passage is certainly appropriate to marriage, as it reflects the level of intimacy and commitment that distinguishes marriage from other relationships. Jesus quotes this passage, too, but he isn't exactly discussing marriage. Instead, his topic is divorce (Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8). When ministers read the Gospel passages at weddings, as they often do, the message seems a little off. I'd rather not hear about divorce at a wedding.
One other passage frequently surfaces in weddings but rarely in mainline Protestant churches, the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodists and United Church of Christ congregations that invite me to speak. Ephesians 5:22-33 commands wives to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives. Conservative Christians may try to explain away the offense of this passage, but there's no escaping its ugly reality. Ephesians calls wives to submit to their husbands just as children must obey their parents and slaves must obey their masters. See the larger context, Ephesians 5:21-6:9.
Not a Lot to Say
The point is, Christian weddings rarely feature passages that directly relate to marriage. Only one passage, Genesis 2:24, seems especially relevant, while other passages require us to bend their content to our desire to hear a good word about marriage. Things are so bad that the worship books for many denominations turn to John 2:11, where Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding feast, to claim that Jesus blessed marriage. My church, the United Church of Christ, has developed a new wedding liturgy [ http://www.ucc.org/worship/pdfs/323_346i_order-for-marriage-inclusive.pdf ], but it retains this common formula: "As this couple give themselves to each other today, we remember that at Cana in Galilee our Savior Jesus Christ made the wedding feast a sign of God's reign of love."
So we know Jesus blessed marriage because he attended a wedding? That's the best we can do? No wonder it's common for couples to struggle over the choice of Scripture for their wedding ceremonies. The Bible just doesn't have much to say on the topic.
Let's Be Honest
Unfortunately, many Christians use the Bible to support their own prejudices and bigotry. They talk about "biblical family values" as if the Bible had a clear message on marriage and sexuality. Let's be clear: There's no such thing as "biblical family values" because the Bible does not speak to the topic clearly and consistently.
It's high time people came clean about how we use the Bible. When Christians try to resolve difficult ethical and theological matters, they typically appeal to the Gospels and Paul's letters as keys to the question. But what about marriage? Not only did Jesus choose not to marry, he encouraged his disciples to abandon household and domestic concerns in order to follow him (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 9:57-62). He even refers to those "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:10-13). Whatever that means, it's certainly not an endorsement of marriage. Paul likewise encourages male believers: "Do not seek a wife" (1 Corinthians 7:27, my translation) -- advice Paul took for himself. If neither Jesus nor Paul preferred marriage for their followers, why do some Christians maintain that the Bible enshrines 19th-century Victorian family values?
Let's not even go into some of the Bible's most chilling teachings regarding marriage, such as how a man's obligation to keep a new wife who displeases him on the wedding night (Deuteronomy 22:13-21), his obligation to marry a woman he has raped (Deuteronomy 22:28-30) or the unquestioned right of heroes like Abraham to exploit their slaves sexually. I wonder: Have the "biblical family values advocates" actually read their Bibles?
Christians will always turn to the Bible for guidance -- and we should. If the Bible does not promote a clear or redemptive teaching about slavery, that doesn't mean we have nothing to learn from Scripture about the topic. The same values that guide all our relationships apply to marriage: unselfish concern for the other; honesty, integrity and fidelity; and sacrificial -- but not victimized -- love. That's a high standard, far higher than a morality determined by anachronistic and restrictive rules that largely reflect our cultural biases. Rules make up the lowest common denominator for morality. Love, as Paul said, never finds an end.
Ex-Evangelical Denounces Michele Bachmann & Calls Christian Reconstructionist Politics "Anti-American" August 17, 2011
This is a great summary of the Bachmann's extremest extremism, of their dislike of America, and of their desire for an Iran-like theocracy to replace the present 'democracy'.
We speak with a former evangelical Christian, Frank Schaeffer, whose father’s writings and work played a key role in the religious development of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Frank Schaeffer recently wrote an article titled "Michele Bachmann Was Inspired by My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying." Schaeffer’s father was Francis Schaeffer, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian theologians and philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s. In a recent profile in The New Yorker magazine, Bachmann reveals she entered politics after watching Francis Schaeffer’s film, "How Should We Then Live?" The film was directed by his son, Frank, our guest today. "[Bachmann] doesn’t just come from the far right of evangelical politics. She comes from a fringe even of the fringe, which is the Reconstructionist, Dominionist movement," Schaeffer says. “The religious right that I was part of is fundamentally anti-American. They hate this country. They wrap themselves in the flag, but they hate America as it is." [includes rush transcript] Filed under Michele Bachmann, Republican Party, U.S. Economy, Election 2012
Guest: Frank Schaeffer, author of several books, including Sex, Mom, and God and Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. He recently wrote for AlterNet an article titled "Michele Bachmann Was Inspired by My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying."
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue looking at some of the Republican presidential candidates, we’re joined by a former Christian evangelical whose father’s writings and work played a key role in Congress Member Michele Bachmann’s religious development. Our guest is Frank Schaeffer. He recently wrote a piece called "Michele Bachmann Was Inspired by My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends — Here’s Why That’s Terrifying." Schaeffer’s dad was Francis Schaeffer, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian theologians and philosophers in the ’70s and ’80s.
In a recent profile in The New Yorker magazine, Michele Bachmann reveals she entered politics after watching Francis Schaeffer’s film How Should We Then Live? The film was directed by his son Frank, our guest today. Frank Schaeffer joins us from Boston, the author of several books, including Sex, Mom, and God and Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.
Frank Schaeffer, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about, well, Michele Bachmann and her relationship with your father, how she has felt about his teachings.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Well, when she was at Oral Roberts Law School, founded by someone called Herb Titus, who then went on and worked for Pat Robertson and the 700 Club and founded a law school for him, she was unwittingly being trained by one of my father’s closest disciples who had been at his ministry many times. And Herb Titus and my dad and people like Rousas Rushdoony and other founders of the Reconstructionist movement, or the Dominionists, because they want to take dominion over the earth, including American politics, really believe that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights should be replaced by what they regard as biblical law.
So what people have to understand about Michele Bachmann, and that I talk about in my book Sex, Mom, and God, is that she doesn’t just come from the far right of evangelical politics. She comes from a fringe even of the fringe, which is the Reconstructionist, Dominionist movement, that honestly, in the best of all worlds, as far as they’re concerned, would replace American democracy with a theocracy on a Christian level that would mirror something like modern-day Iran after it fell to the Ayatollah Khomeini.
AMY GOODMAN: At last week’s Republican presidential debate, Byron York of the Washington Examiner asked Michele Bachman about her relationship with her husband.
BYRON YORK: In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea. And then you explained, quote, "But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: Thank you for that question, Byron.
BYRON YORK: You’re welcome.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10th. I’m in love with him. I’m so proud of him. And both he and I—what submission means to us, if that’s what your question is, it means respect. I respect my husband. He’s a wonderful, godly man and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That’s how we operate our marriage. We respect each other. We love each other. And I’ve been so grateful that we’ve been able to build a home together. We have five wonderful children and 23 foster children. We’ve built a business together and a life together. And I’m very proud of him.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Michele Bachmann in the Republican debate. Frank Schaeffer, can you explain this whole issue of submission?
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah, sure.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote a piece called "Are Michele Bachmann’s Views about 'Christian Submission' Even More Extreme than She’s Letting On?"
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah, that piece is on AlterNet right now, and I wrote it because, actually, what you just heard Michele Bachmann say there was a well-rehearsed, planned, bare-faced lie. In 2006, she made it very clear she went into law school because her husband told her to. She ran for politics because her husband told her to. And she used the word "submission."
You have to understand, in the evangelical circle she comes from, there’s a whole movement called the Quiverfull movement, which is about having a full quiver of children, no birth control, lots of kids, five kids, 24 foster kids, whatever—homeschooling, train your kids at home, take them out of the public school system. She’s been in this movement for more than 20 years. And my father and people like Herb Titus and the other people who influenced her helped form that movement. In that movement, wifely submission is an Old Testament principle of absolute misogyny that puts the husband at the head of the house in the most traditional sense. And that’s what she’s been part of.
Now, with a wink and a nod to her own audience watching her on Fox Television, she’s basically saying this: "Look, you know that I know that you know that when I say "wifely submission," that’s the world I come from. However, we’re trying to win a national election here, so I’m going to soft-pedal this." And, of course, they’ll let her get away with this godly lie for the greater good, which is to insinuate herself into mainstream American politics as a radical anti-feminist coming from the far right fringe of even the evangelical movement. There are lots of evangelicals that don’t sign onto her view on so many issues, and this would be one of them. But for purpose of the election and thinking forward to maybe getting the nomination from the Republicans, she has to tell these well-rehearsed lies to somehow soft-pedal this extreme background she comes from.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about Michele Bachmann’s views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. These are the comments she made in 2004.
STATE SEN. MICHELE BACHMANN: This May, homosexual and lesbian activists who live here in Minnesota will be able to travel to Massachusetts to have their same-sex relationships declared marriages by the state of Massachusetts. Upon returning here to Minnesota, they will be able to demand legal recognition through our state court system. And at that point, an activist judge could very well rule in their favor and then strike down Minnesota’s current Defense of Marriage law. If we allow this to happen, group marriage, polygamy, and things much worse may not be far behind.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Michele Bachmann in 2004. Frank Schaeffer?
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Well, look, you know, I spend the whole of my book Sex, Mom, and God basically following several themes, and one of them is that if you believe in the, quote, "inerrancy of Scripture" — in other words, it is without error; everything it says is true, historically, geologically, scientifically, sociologically, scientifically, and every other way — then you have signed onto a Bronze Age myth. And one of the primary tenets of that myth is a misogynistic view of women, and also a view of gay people, which puts them outside of the mainstream of just human existence. And so, you have her husband trying to pray away the gay through his counseling services and so forth.
Again, mainstream U.S. America doesn’t understand that people like Michele Bachmann have signed onto Bronze Age mythology, including its misogyny, its homophobia, its racism, and all the rest of it, and that that is the religion they are part of. When it comes to politics, they try to dress that up, downplay certain things, omit other things, and bare-face lie about some things like the submission issue. But the misogyny, the homophobia, that is at the core of the Bible, which they hold up as the, quote, "word of God," which, in their view of politics, coming out of the Reconstructionists, should take over the laws of this country at some point, which is what they’re all pushing for when they talk about taking America back, taking America back for God. What they really want to return to is the Bay State colonies under Governor Winthrop, and that’s their ideal society, plus maybe modern medicine, so they can live a little longer and get their prostates checked, etc., etc. But essentially, we’re looking at people whose best of all worlds is the Bronze Age in the state of Israel, back in the day when someone lost their virginity, so they would be stoned to death in the gates of their father’s house. This is the book they’ve signed onto.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank Schaeffer, in Ryan Lizza’s piece in The New Yorker about Michele Bachmann, he writes that Francis Schaeffer "was a tremendous philosopher," according to Bachmann, quoting. Bachmann said, "He wrote marvelous books and was very inspirational." Again, Francis Schaeffer is your father. Talk more about where you come from, because you embraced what your father believed. You, yourself, were a well-known evangelical leader—
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —before you, well, turned against it all.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Well, you know, my own journey is one where I had to confront the fact that we were simply wrong on a whole number of issues. And this began in 1984 when my dad died. And like some North Korean despot, I was becoming his sidekick. You know, evangelicals and the North Korean government have this same idea, and that is that fathers pass on the mantle to their sons or families, or at least the mailing list. I was following in my dad’s footsteps, as someone in my young twenties. But from about 1984 on, and certainly by 1990, I had jumped ship.
And I guess I can just put it this way: it struck me, in many areas, but one principally in terms of politics, that the religious right that I was part of is fundamentally anti-American. They hate this country. They wrap themselves in the flag, but they hate America as it is: the America that embraces gay people, is multicultural, is a homogeneous society that seeks to incorporate all races and ethnic creeds into its culture. The America they love is the, quote, "Christian America" that they keep harping back to, that people like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, etc., all want to take us back to. But it’s an America that never existed and certainly doesn’t now. And I think it was just that sense of alienation from my own culture, my own time and place, that began a train of thought that, in the end, took me very, very far away, as I explain in Sex, Mom, and God and give the reasons for my departure there. But in a nutshell, it’s just I happen to not be an anti-American person.
And I think that really what people would have to begin to understand is that the language of the right, where they’ve talked about patriotism and the past and so forth, really turned against them would be appropriate, because it’s that basic lack of patriotism that does not like the laws of the country, so it tells people to revolt. This flirtation with secessionism that people like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin’s husband have played with, these sort of violent overtures saying, you know, "We would know what to do with the chairman of the Fed in Texas: we’d treat him rough" kind of stuff, you know, this is the language of people who are unpatriotic, essentially hate their country, want to defund the U.S. government completely, and in the best of all worlds, would literally overthrow our system of government.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Frank Schaeffer, I want to thank you for being with us. We will speak again soon. Frank Schaeffer is author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. He also directed the film How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, that has so inspired Michele Bachmann.
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