There is a man who frequents the business where I work. He tries to recruit me for the Free Presbyterian Church. I do not feign interest. I tell him straight up that anything that comes out of Northern Ireland cannot possibly be apolitical. Alabama fascists are obtuse. The clown just keeps talking.
The FPC was founded by Ian Paisley, who is also the political leader of radical Ulster Unionists. The FPC is a growing force among Alabama conservatives who believe that Baptist churches are not sufficiently anti-Catholic.
The manufacturing economy of Northern Ireland collapsed around 1970. The region became a nest of welfare bums. The Protestant welfare bums want more than their fair share, so they try to starve the Catholics into submission. That's national socialism. What a sorry excuse for a witness for Jesus Christ.
The member of the Free Presbyterian Church is stout, about six feet tall, and has a goatee. He has a cheap beer habit. Last night he mentioned the North American Union. That is a mythical Canadian plot to invade the USA and Mexico. The John Birchers have a racist theory that cheap labor from Mexico is part of a plot to destabilize America. But they don't want free trade with Mexico, they dislike charities that help people in Mexico, and they don't like Mexican citizens receiving remissions from outside of Mexico. If you were born in Mexico, they imply, God committed a sin by creating you. To rectify the problem, you should just die.
I told the FPC member my paranoid liberal conspiracy theory about the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota about two years ago. American right-wingers who believe in the NAU had motive to sabotage the bridge ...to stop the imminent invasion from Canada.
The FPC member told me that such a plot should be applauded, would have been an act of heroism. I reminded him that people got killed trying to drive over that bridge. He said that this would be an acceptable price to pay to stop the disintegration of the United States. Remember, this is a part of the country where Nathan B. Forrest is revered as a god.
SEPTEMBER 11 2001: NEVER FORGET !
If you superimpose today's conservative ideology on the 9/11 atrocities, a Southern Republican would conclude that Mohammed Atta and Company did exactly what they were supposed to. A kid is born in Egypt, Yemen, or somewhere. He is ethnically incorrect: an illegal person. If he converts to Christianity and becomes a U.S. citizen, he is still an illegal person sucking up our oxygen. His mission is to end his own life, maybe taking out some Catholic boys in the process.
America has remade itself according to the template designed by the Taliban. Like a Communist Bloc nation, we export people. There are more refugees FROM America now than immigrants. We have become a nation from which people flee. That is the core of the Bush legacy.