Kyle Mantyla's blog

In an email sent out earlier this week, the Family Research Council urged activists not to make any donations to the Republican National Committee until it "grows a backbone" and starts defending the Religious Right's agenda with more vigor:

Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don't give them a dime of your hard-earned money. If you want to invest in the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who reflect your values and organizations you trust--like FRC Action. At least then you can relax, knowing that your money will be spent advancing faith, family, and freedom!

This announcement is generating lots of press for FRC, so we feel that it ought to be pointed out that FRC has been saying this since at least 2008, when it first grew outraged that then-Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Rep. Pete Sessions, met with the Log Cabin Republicans (emphasis added):

According to a press release from the pro-gay "marriage" group, Log Cabin Republicans, one of the first stops for the newly elected Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), was the fundraising dinner for the homosexual organization. The release states that Representative Sessions said that the GOP cannot win elections and reach out to voters if it continues to oppose the issues that Log Cabin stands for, presumably including same-sex "marriage." My team sought clarification from Sessions' office and was told he did speak to the Log Cabin group, but that a copy of his remarks was not available. If the Log Cabin portrayal is true, it is disturbing on a number of accounts. One, Sessions' new position as the head of the NRCC is to train and recruit new candidates for the Republican Party. If this is his idea of "campaign advice" then the Republicans better prepare for a longer term in the minority then they faced prior to 1994. Secondly, if the GOP is serious about reaching out to new voters, especially African-Americans and Hispanics, then it should look closely at the exit polls on issues important to families. Both minority groups strongly support traditional family values that embrace life and protect marriage, two things the Republican Party once stood for also. Under these circumstances, pro-family voters should reserve judgment about giving their financial support to either political party.

In 2010, FRC explicitly told activists to stop donating after it was reported that the RNC had spend nearly two thousand dollars at a bondage-themed strip clup in California (emphasis added):

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is at the center of another controversy, this one regarding nearly $2,000.00 spent at a bondage-themed strip club outside of Los Angeles. Information about the $1,946.00 dollar expenditure at Voyeur West Hollywood became public when the RNC released its most recent financial disclosure report. The public controversy over the expenditure led to the firing of the staffer yesterday who had incurred the expense. This latest incident is another indication to me that the RNC is completely tone-deaf to the values and concerns of a large number of people from whom they seek financial support.

Earlier this month the RNC made a big deal about hiring "renowned Supreme Court lawyer" Ted Olson to represent the RNC in a campaign finance case that is expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yes, this is the same Ted Olson that is trying to overturn the results of the marriage amendment in California. The outcome of Olson's challenge to Prop 8 goes far beyond nullifying the votes of nearly 7 million voters in California; his efforts could lead to the overturning of amendments and laws in all 45 states that currently define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

I've hinted at this before, but now I am saying it--don't give money to the RNC. If you want to put money into the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who you know reflect your values. Better yet, become a member of FRC Action and learn about the benefits it offers, including participating in the FRC Action PAC which can support candidates who will advance faith, family and freedom!

For years now, FRC and others in the movement have been issuing idle threats to the GOP about withholding support and leaving the party, but every time an election comes around, they all dutifully fall right in line.

• PFAW: Edit Memo: Senator Grassley's Misleading Spin on Judges.
• Annie-Rose Strasser @ Think Progress: North Carolina Lawmaker Calls Muslim Prayer ‘Terrorism.’
• David Edwards @ Raw Story: Inhofe: ‘MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore’ created global warming hoax.
• Timothy Johnson @ Media Matters: NRA News Attacks Buzzfeed's Al Qaeda Story To Downplay Need For Stronger Gun Laws.
• Gavin Aronsen @ Mother Jones: GOP Congressman Compares Background Checks to Rwandan Genocide.

• Fox News reports that "at least a dozen members of Congress have signed a letter demanding the Secretary of the Army rescind and apologize for a briefing that labeled Evangelical Christians and Catholics as religious extremist groups."
• Jim Graves, who barely lost to Rep. Michele Bachmann last time around, will be launching another campaign to face her again in 2014.
• Ken Hutcherson says "progressives on the left side of the debate have an agenda, and it's the same one Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin had."
• James Dobson grieves "over what Obama and the majority of Congressmen have done to the American family" and says " our government is secretly at war with the traditional family."
• Ben Carson has withdrawn as the commencement speaker at the John Hopkins School of Medicine graduation ceremony.
• Finally, apparently being gay is itself a sign that a person had an unhealthy relationship with their parents, which only proves that letting gay couples be parents is a really bad idea: "If two opposite sex parents are necessary to the raising of healthy children, how ironic, then, is the position held by proponents of same sex marriage that they can do the same when in fact they themselves are living out the negative consequences of not having had healthy relationships with two biological parents. They now wish to impose the very same deficits on the next generation of children, and then to declare this arrangement 'healthy.'"

Yesterday, Janet Meffered responded to reports that a Michigan high school had canceled a speech by Rick Santorum by declaring that soon "Christian who supports real marriage might be made to wear a yellow patch on the sleeve, a ‘badge of shame’ to identify us as ‘anti-gay haters.’ Kind of like the Jews in Nazi Germany.”

On his radio program today, Bryan Fischer discussed the same story and made a similar prediction, saying "we're getting to the point where these homofascists are going to force us to wear on our sleeve some kind of identifying marker so people will know who the racists and the homophobes and the bigots are":

On his radio program today, Glenn Beck continued his truly unhinged crusade against Common Core by pointing out that Exxonmobil supports it while alleging that the company is only doing so because someone in the government called in a favor and maybe even secretly promised them drilling rights for doing so.

The all-encompassing reach of Common Core has led Beck to decide that he will not allow his children to ever attend college because he will not allow them to be indoctrinated and become part of "the system that is coming." Beck then became very serious and cautious, telling his audience to "just be aware that there are many ways to mark people" and warning them to "be very careful":

On Tuesday evening, the President and the First Lady hosted the latest "In Performance at the White House" event which consisted of a tribute to Memphis soul music.

And Glenn Beck was reasonably outraged about it on last night's program, demanding to know why the Obama's are living like royalty when global economic and social collapse is imminent.  Beck even posted paintings of Barack and Michelle dressed like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette while warning that "we're headed for a monarchy," only this time "maybe Marie Antoinette and King Louis keep their heads while all of their subjects lose theirs":

• Sofia Resnick @ The American Independent: University of Texas professor behind controversial study wades further into gay-marriage debate.
• Adam Serwer @ Mother Jones: At Howard University, Rand Paul Falsely Claims He Never Opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
• Andrew Kirell @ Mediaite: Beck Disregards Small Sample Size, Takes Basketball Shots To Prove He’s ‘Three Times As Good As President’.
• Warren Throckmorton: After getting history wrong, David Barton claims he was misunderstood about the destruction of Indians.
• Andrew Kaczynski @ BuzzFeed: Republican Congressman Cites Biblical Great Flood To Say Climate Change Isn't Man-Made.

• It looks like the Religious Right is threatening to leave the GOP ... again.
• Happy Anniversary, David Barton.
• Sen. Rand Paul says America needs a “spiritual cleansing of the people.”  If we were like the Religious Right, we'd freak out because that kind of sounds like "ethnic cleansing" and start warning that Paul wants to kill all non-Christians.
• Apparently Rush Limbaugh thinks "the onus is on the black population" to realize the GOP is not racist.
• Finally, Rick Scarborough says "the goal of Obamacare has always been to drive everyone into a single-payer, government system.  Once that goal is achieved – and it is about to be achieved – Big Brother Government will control every citizen who wills to live and find medical care."

A few weeks ago, we posted some audio clips from a "WallBuilders Live" radio program in which David Barton explained the concept of just war theory during which he justified the brutal treatment of Native Americans by white settlers and the American government on the grounds that they needed to be destroyed in order to be taught a lesson and eventually made civilized.

Shortly thereafter, WallBuilders posted a message on its Facebook page claiming that Barton was not "justifying" this sort of treatment but merely "explaining" what had happened:

David was not justifying, but merely explaining the historical context of what happened, in the same way that he explained the British march to the sea. He made a parallel between the two as to tactics and strategy that were used during war at that time. David was explaining the historical events regarding King Philip's War, not the atrocities that were in general committed against the Indian tribes and nations, which we in no way condone. There is a big difference between justifying and merely explaining or reporting.

Like so much of Barton's work, this explanation holds up only so long as one blindly accepts Barton's nonsensical interpretation and doesn't bother to verify what he says, which is pretty easy since we produced a transcript of it at the time.

As anyone can see, Barton was not merely "explaining" what happened but was actively defending it on the grounds that "you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists." As Barton said at the time, the Indians had "declared war on all the white guys" and so "we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over" until they got the message:

You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It's got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that's why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes ... What happened was the Indian leaders said "they're trying to change our culture" and so they declared war on all the white guys and went after the white guys and that was King Philip's War.  It was really trying to be civilized on one side and end torture and the Indians were threatened by the ending of torture and so we had to go in and we had to destroy Indian tribes all over until they said "oh, got the point, you're doing to us what we're doing to them, okay, we'll sign a treaty."

...

Take, for example, what happened in the western plains wars in the late 1800s when we were taking on the plains Indians.  I'm not talking about treaties, I'm not talking about behavior of Americans toward Indians or vice versa, there were violations on both sides of nearly every treaty.  I'm talking about what happened in ending those wars after Custer and everything that went on.

People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains.  Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn't go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that's where they got their meat, that's where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees.

If you don't have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo.  That's what brought those wars to an end, that's what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.

The focus of the radio program was a discussion of just war theory and Barton's purpose in bringing up this issue was to explain that these tactics were justified specifically because they do not appear to be justifiable.

Barton was not merely "explaining" what had happened, but was justifying it on the grounds that when your enemies refuse to abide by the "rules of civilization, you still have to secure the life and the property and the protection of your citizens" in whatever way you can.

Last month, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by American Atheists seeking to prevent a pair of beams in the shape of a cross that was pulled from the debris of the collapsed World Trade Center from being included in the official 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

On today's "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Mat Staver and Shawn Akers discussed the lawsuit, with Akers calling it "religious McCarthyism" and saying that it is ironic that "extremists from a particular religion brought down the Twin Towers, but the atheists are coming in to finish the job":