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Showing posts with label bryan fischer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bryan fischer. Show all posts

14 December 2012

Conservatives React to the Newtown Shooting 14DEZ12

IT is disturbing the level the extreme right wing is willing to lower themselves to at times of national tragedy. One has to wonder if they would have the same callous attitude if a member of their family was one of the victims. Here is just a sampling from Mother Jones....
As news broke of the Newtown school shooting, horror and grief transcended party lines. But for some conservatives, the shooting—and the ensuing calls for reassessing gun policies—also presented a political challenge. Some notable tweets:
Some suggested that the fix is not fewer guns, but more:
Ann Coulter:
Chris Loesch, husband of conservative commentator Dana Loesch:
In just the past four years, the NRA has helped pass weaker gun restrictions in 37 states, making the weapons easier to own, carry and conceal. At the same time, gun violence has increased in America.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate, told Fox News the shooting happened because "we removed God from our schools. (h/t ThinkProgress)
HUCKABEE: Ultimately, you can take away every gun in America and somebody will use a gun. When somebody has an intent to do incredible damage, they’re going to find a way to do it… People will want to pass new laws, but unless you change people’s hearts, they’re our transition to the pastor side. This is a heard issue, it’s not something, laws don’t change this kind of thing.
CAVUTO: How could God let this happen?
HUCKABEE: Well, you know, it’s an interesting thing. When we ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools have become a place for carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, responsibility, accountability? That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police, if they catch us. But one day, we will stand in judgment before God. If we don’t believe that, we don’t fear that.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association took a similar tack on his radio show today, claiming that God has abandoned our schools because prayer is no longer allowed.
Blogger Mike Vanderboegh offered an elliptic Biblical reference on his blog, quoting a Wikipedia article about the ancient Ammonite god who demanded child sacrifices.
Conservative radio personality Steve Deace took to his Facebook page to complain about politicizing the tragedy while also blaming public schools.

Deace wasn't the only one who lashed out against people who speaking against gun laws. Michelle Malkin's aggregator account, Twitchy, offered this:
Rush Limbaugh struck a related note on his radio show:
And even as we speak, the Drive-By Media and the Democrats are attempting to politicize the issue to advance their own agenda. In this case, probably an assault on the Second Amendment again. I guarantee you that they are overturning everything they can in their quest to be able to blame this on Republicans. This, to them, is an opportunity.
(After the Aurora shootings, our colleague Adam Serwer weighed in on why national tragedies are political.) 
Brandon Darby, an one-time radical leftist turned FBI informant had yet another takeaway:
And the NRA? It has been silent since this tweet, just before news of the Newtown shooting broke.
Meanwhile, The Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson has moved on:
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22 November 2010

Christian Right Activist Blasts Medal of Honor as 'Feminized,' Sparks Fury 20NOV10

THIS is disgusting, and pathetic, and bryan fischer doesn't represent Christian or family values in his latest rant.....
While a divided nation last Tuesday finally rallied around one bright shining moment of patriotic glory -- President Obama's awarding of the Medal of Honor to Afghan hero Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta -- a popular right-wing Christian commentator sharply split opinions even within his own camp. He blasted the award as "feminized" because it honors Giunta for saving his comrades rather than killing the enemy.

The Army's official citation details how Giunta "exposed himself to withering enemy fire" during a daring effort to engage the enemy and extract his wounded comrades from an ambush. But Bryan Fischer, a columnist for the American Family Association who has often provoked headlines and consternation with his commentaries, read the narrative as hardly the sort of thing American soldiers were once known for.

President Obama awards Medal of Honor to Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta"When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements," wrote Fischer, director of issue analysis for the AFA, a longtime lobby on the Christian right. "That kind of heroism has apparently become passé when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."

"So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things, so our families can sleep safely at night?" he asked.

Fischer based his claim on a line in a column in The Wall Street Journal by William McGurn, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. In the midst of his high praise for Giunta's heroism, McGurn noted that rather than "Rambos decorated for great damage inflicted on the enemy," every Medal of Honor awarded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "has been for an effort to save life."

In fact, that's not exactly the case. The official account of the first Medal of Honor given for service in Iraq, to Army Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, shows how, among other courageous acts, Smith "braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons," losing his life in the process."

But such details didn't stop Fischer from asserting that "We have feminized the Medal of Honor" -- a claim that sparked a string of fierce criticisms on the blog post that are continuing.

"Your artciles [sic] reek of ignorance and evangelical stupidity," said one of the first commenters.

"What utterly disgusting, false and un-Christian drivel," said one of the most recent.

Fischer is hardly one to slink away under hostile fire, as he told me after a post last month in which he said that the firefighters in South Fulton, Tennessee did "the Christian thing" by letting a family's house burn because they were delinquent on their $75 annual fire protection fee.

That was the column that had generated the most outrage among all of Fischer's writings, until the Medal of Honor article. But in characteristic fashion, Fischer wasn't retreating. In two follow-up posts he pointed out that he believed Giunta did deserve the award, and that the media "so badly twisted and distorted my words that they are accusing me of saying the exact opposite of what I actually said."

My point in all this is that we appear to have reached a point in awarding the MOH that we are squeamish about awarding to those who "take the hill" as well as awarding to those who throw themselves on a grenade to save their comrades.

Fischer reiterated his central criticism that "our culture has become so feminized that we have become squeamish at the thought of the valor that is expressed in killing enemy soldiers through acts of bravery."

Indeed, while Fischer's column irked many of his allies, his views are in keeping with a strain of conservative American Christianity that frets about the "feminization" of the faith as evidenced by the widespread emphasis on God's love and mercy rather than his anger and punishment, for example. And some such Christian conservatives are also concerned about efforts to accept gay clergy and to portray Jesus as a passive, wimpy victim rather than a tough-guy martyr like the Messiah portrayed in Mel Gibson's movie, "Passion of the Christ."

"Jesus' act of self-sacrifice would ultimately have been meaningless -- yes, meaningless -- if he had not inflicted a mortal wound on the enemy while giving up his own life," Fischer wrote in his original column on Giunta's Medal of Honor. "The cross represented a cosmic showdown between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and our commanding general claimed the ultimate prize by defeating our unseen enemy and liberating an entire planet from his bondage."

With repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy still possible during the lame duck session of Congress after Thanksgiving, it's likely that Fischer -- and others -- will have plenty of other opportunities to make their point, and perhaps with more support from their own troops on the religious right.
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