Faith and Freedom Institute Wants Neither

A new group, The Faith and Freedom Institute, has decided to fill in the vacuum of evangelical leadership created by the semi-retirement of James Dobson.  The FFI will combat “satanic wickedness” and will return America to a foundation of Biblical principles.

Notice that the Bible is on top, Faith comes before Liberty, the large cross, staff and sword, and immature hyperpatriocity of the eagle and flag. 

Why do they need to do this?  According to their home page:

The United States today is like a grafted tree (which tend to produce the best fruits).  It is producing fruit on some of its branches which is sour (that would explain the expressions usually found on the faces of radical religious right leaders (sour puss?)), ill-formed (the thoughts are, anyway), rotting in the core (because the radical right’s ideas are so out of date that they have rotted), non-sustainable (the political and religious right are trying to make America unsustainable), and unpleasant to the eyes (but the religious right is so good at closing their eyes, how would they notice?).  Other branches, although in the minority now (atheists and the non-religious make up just under 15% of America’s population, so are we the minority to which he refers?), continue to yield the kind of produce which the tree had given from its inception (it is called the liberal and progressive wing).  The nation today is not producing the products which our founding fathers thought they were planting (because we have sold out to the idea of unlimited profit, a powerful oligarchy, and persist in ignoring the 1st Amendment).

The Faith and Freedom Institute, based in Location TBA (I guess they haven’t found someone gullible enough to finance it), is a research (Biblical research has always struck me as mental masturbation (with some exceptions))  and action-based (Scary. For the religious right, action tends to mean working to deny the rights of other people (plus the occasional sniper or bomber)) organization which will educate (education is a good goal) all people regarding the facts and principles which made our country great (Fantastic.  All Americans should understand the enlightenment principles upon which our contry was founded).  The institute will address political (I’m assuming, of course, that they mean Republican conservative politics), moral (Whose morals?  Biblical morals?  A war against mixed threads and lobsters?), and biblical perspectives of the past (all Biblical perspectives are of the past, you morons!)  and present with the intent of leading (Is it just me, or does ‘leading’ make any one else think of propaganda and brainwashing?) our thinking (Try thinking without preconceptions.  I dare you.) and applications back to the values of our founding fathers (I really don’t think that idiots like Dull (what a perfect name), Donahue, Dobson, et al. would get along too well with Jefferson, Adams, Paine and Franklin.  Nor would they be too wild about lifestyles or religious and political views). The illegitimate grafting (of religion to politics and government) which has brought about undesirable changes (like massive debt, government incompetence, and multiple wars) must be removed (hopefully they mean by voting;  or is this yet more eliminationism?) in order to restore this nation’s vitality and sustainable fruit (And vitality and sustainability will come about by using facts and reality, not faith and myth, to run the government).

From NBC:

“America was founded with a spiritual basis (no, read the Constitution), but there are those who want to make it a purely secular nation,” (which is what our founding fathers intended) Dull said near Capitol Hill Thursday. “Because of the rejection of God and His values, we can expect nothing but His judgment (All quake before the judgement of a mythical being). All one needs to do is to read in history and find out how that when a nation forgot God, God forgot the nation.” (I get the feeling, reading these diatribes, that these folks don’t read history books.)

That is where Dull says the Faith and Freedom Institute plans to step in (a pile of shit). According to Dull, the Institute “is being formed to lead America back to the knowledge of God in order to save the nation from the judgment of God.” (Because faith-based government worked so well for the last eight years, right?)

“Without a doubt, we believe that there is a definite agenda (created by the religious right) to destroy America that is being empowered by satanic wickedness (Rolling on the floor and laughing my ass off) and enhanced by Godless citizens,” (Shit.  He means people like me.  But satanic?  I don’t believe in god(s), faeries, gnomes, competent Republicans, unicorns, or any other mythical being.  Why would I believe in(much less worship) satan?)  Dull said. “The Faith and Freedom Institute desires to put those who have an adverse vision for America on notice that we will not lie down and allow them to overtake us and our heritage (Translation:  “We will take away your freedom unless you subscribe to my faith),  but that we will intend to stand up and fight for those rights given to us by God Himself (No, enumerated and codified by the United States Constitution) and proclaimed by many who committed their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to make America work.”

As a result, Dull blamed things like economic failure and moral decline to abortion and same-sex marriages on an idea that “God is being forgotten.” (Not quickly enough!)

Dull said the new Christian conservative organization would provide educational opportunities in order to motivate leaders to call for a return to God and basic values. (That is called indoctrination, not education.)

“The Faith and Forum Institute intends to motivate religious, governmental and social leaders, as well as the general public to confess the sins of forgetting God and His word, to repent and turn back to God, and begin to live by the values that made America great,” Dull said.  (I could use this to fertilize my garden.)

If you can stand the idiocy, take a look at their site. 

Part of me is actually encouraged by this.  Obviously, the radical religious right is nervous.  They realize that, after controlling one political party for around 30 years, and having their picked man in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years, that the politics of exclusion, faith, zealotry, government hatred, and profit worship have failed (the only consistently good economy of the past 28 years was the 8 years of the Clinton administration (hmmm))).  They are panicking.  Rather than try to understand their failure, they are doubling down.  They believe that if they shout as loud as they can, the failed policies will suddenly begin to work.  Faith-based thinking leads to failure.

The Faith and Freedom Institute does not want faith, they want Americans to blindly follow, out of fear, the dictates of a small group.  They do not want freedom, they want to deny freedom to those not willing to pretend faith.  And they should be institutionalized.