Hedges and Me

I've been reading Chris Hedges of late and I find his writing to be clear and forthright as well as resonating with my thoughts and feelings of the past 20-25 years.  He has put a voice to many of my thoughts and feelings as well as educated me so much in the history of the real world.

I just completed Hedges' "American Fascists: The Christian Right and The War on America." The book was published in 2006 and reading it six (6) years later is eye opening as the to "progress" made by this fanatical and apocalyptic group.

I have wondered with the republican presidential ticket for 2012 being so incompetent how the presidential race could even be close.  A factor of course is racism within the good 'ol USA. But to me that did not offer enough evidence.  Then of course the anti-abortion issue is another factor including  a girlfriend of one of my grandson's who told me I could not be Catholic and vote for President Obama because he was "pro-choice." But that too was not enough evidence to account for the closeness. But putting these two groups together in a religious context as Hedges describes the right wing/fundamentalist faction of Christianity (Christo-fascists) in "American Fascist" provides more than enough evidence to explain the closeness of the 2012 presidential race.

I post for you the conclusion of his book as we approach the 2012 Election:

"I do not deny the right of Christian radicals to be, to believe and worship as they choose.  But I will not engage in a dialogue with those who deny my right to be, who delegitimize my faith and denounce my struggle before God as worthless.  All dialogue must include respect and tolerance for the beliefs, worth and dignity of others, including those outside the nation and the faith.  When this respect is denied, this clash of ideologies ceases to be be merely a difference of opinion and becomes a fight for survival.  This movement seeks, in the name of Christianity and American democracy, to destroy that which it claims to defend.  I do not believe that America will inevitably become a fascist state or that the radical Christian Right is the Nazi Party.  But I do believe that the radical Christian Right is a sworn and potent enemy of the open society.  Its ideology bears within it the tenets of Christian fascism.  In the event of a crisis, in the event of another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a huge environmental disaster, the movement stands poised to manipulate fear and chaos ruthlessly and reshape America in ways that have not been seen since the nation's founding.  All Americans -- not only those of faith -- who care about our open society must learn to speak about this movement with a new vocabulary, to give up passivity, to challenge aggressively this movement's deluded appropriation of Christianity and to do everything possible to defend tolerance.  The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians," and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanist" are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms, and ultimately our democracy.  Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice."