Holocaust Museum Shooting Threatens to Undermine Right's Pro-Religion Image
www.usnews.com/usnews/photography/holocaust_museum_shooting/bigpicture.phpBy Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
The political right likes to portray itself as the defender of religious values, the nation's religious heritage, and religion per se against the secular liberal onslaught. Look no further than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's speech this week at the Republican Senate-House Dinner. Gingrich urged the GOP to defend religion's role in American society and history against attacks from liberal judges, academics, and the news media.
Might today's shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, on the heels of last week's murder of abortion provider George Tiller in Kansas, threaten that religion-friendly image? Today's shooting, in which police allege James Von Brunn opened fire at the museum, is the second in as many weeks in which a right-wing extremist has committed deadly violence in a religiously affiliated setting. Tiller was shot while handing out pamphlets at Sunday morning church services.
The alleged perpetrators in both instances were fringe figures, not mainstream conservatives, and there's no evidence that either is connected to mainstream conservative organizations.
But TV is a powerful thing. And video of faith-based crime scenes paired with stories of right-wing killers can create powerful impressions.
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Tags: religion | crime | Judaism | Holocaust
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lot about you
Thanks to El Chub Caba for "National Socialist" phrase
El Chub said Hitler was a National Socialist. The Nazi Party stole the word "sociaiist" and took over the formerly pro-labor, pro-worker party. Socialism opposes for-profit capitalism. But Nazis were so profit-seeking that they even sold dental gold, hair, fat, and ashes of victims. To give their buildings to Nazis, mental patients were killed. Hitler was an altar boy and was never excommunicated. Other Roman Cathoiic Nazis were Himmler, Goebbels, Dr.Mengele, Eichmann, and many others. Their mothers couldn't abort their conceptions because their Church bans abortions. Confusing the word "socialism" and wrongly attaching it to Nazism is hurting us now in arguments over "socialized medicine, That actually means non-profit, tax-paid health care. It means taking employers and insurance companies away from a system that will let us have affordable dentists and doctors. We have had socialized medicine in the military for a long time and it extends to dependents. I close by saying "fringe groups," if touched ever so lightly by religious propaganda, react as if they were swept along by the full weight of it.
Von Brunn was a National Socialist,.......
.......He has way more in common with the president and his Socialist Democrat Party.
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