From PFAW's Right Wing Watch, one of our most valuable resources:
Religious Right organizer David Lane, who recently led an Iowa summit which featured Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Reince Priebus, believes that the US will see car bombings in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa…if we’re lucky.
Lane told conservative talk show host Steve Deace that such attacks would occur as part of God’s “process of mercy,” otherwise, God will be finished with the US and the country will “get judgment like Nazi Germany.”
Such car bombings will take place, Lane explained, as a result of abortion rights, the national debt and “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration.”
Several thoughts about this after the orange squiggly doodads...
1. I'd just like to make note, yet again, of the double standard enjoyed by the "Christian" Right in our public discourse. Way back during the 2008 election, President Obama was politically forced to disavow Rev. Jeremiah Wright for impolitic statements like the one about America's "chickens coming home to roost" on 9/11.
Yet "Christian" Right figures like David Lane, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc. are effectively saying exactly the same things—that America "deserves" terror attacks because of what they see as America's sins.
(It should also be noted here that Wright was referring to economic, social, and military injustices done by the West to the people who actually engaged in the terrorist attacks, while the "sins" referred to by Lane, Falwell, Robertson, etc. are acts of justice [LGBT rights, feminism, etc.] that never directly affected any of the 9/11 terrorists.)
Despite saying basically the same thing as Rev. Wright, not only can politicians continue to freely associate with Falwell (well, not so much anymore), Robertson, Lane, etc., they can actively seek these people's endorsements! Imagine the furor if a 2016 Democratic candidate sought the endorsement of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Lane recently held a conference in Iowa featuring likely 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Think we'll see a media circus on this that forces them to disavow Lane? I doubt it.
2. The David Lane who just now predicted car bombings in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Des Moines, is the very same David Lane who, not even a month ago, called for Christians to engage in violent revolution and acts of martyrdom against the American government for the "crime" of acknowledging LGBT people as equal (to the extent that it has) and not being a "Christian" Right theocracy. (As Frederick Clarkson notes in the above link, the post was even too whacko for World Net Effing Daily, who removed it.)
The proximity of those two statements is downright chilling—and one could certainly be forgiven for wondering if "predicting" these car bombings as acts of God's "mercy" toward the people, less than a month after calling on his followers to become martyrs in a violent revolution, might be seen as a call to his followers to do exactly that.
Think about it this way: If he were Daud al-Lain, a Muslim cleric wearing a turban, saying the same thing, do you doubt for one second that he would be Public Enemy #1 within a matter of days?
Is there any way the entire American national security apparatus wouldn't see a Muslim cleric calling for his followers to engage in violent revolution and acts of martyrdom, and then not a month later "predicting" car bombings in two major American cities and Des Moines, as a clear call to terror, and at the very least bring him into the local FBI bureau for a question or ten?
If law enforcement isn't paying attention to David Lane, I'm thinking they probably should be. This is one case where I think the national security apparatus would be fully justified in getting a warrant from a judge and keeping him under close surveillance. While there's nothing illegal about what he said—Brandenburg v. Ohio set a pretty high bar for criminalizing statements like these, and rightly so in my opinion—it certainly should warrant a bit of attention from law enforcement, no?
3. I don't think it's an accident that Lane referred to America as "Nazi Germany." Keep in mind that in the past couple of decades, the terror attacks on America by right-wing "Christians"—the Atlanta Olympic bombing, the shooting of George Tiller, etc.—have been their reactions not against LGBT rights, but against reproductive choice, which is commonly referred to in "Christian" Right literature as a crime akin to the Holocaust.
Lane did reference abortion in his interview with Steve Deace, alongside LGBT rights and the national debt—setting up reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and economic progressivism as part of a whole system which, to Lane's mind, makes the American government (and, by extension, anyone who is politically opposed to the "Christian" Right) equally evil to Nazi Germany, and equally deserving of violent retribution.
Again, this is nothing new: The "Christian" Right crossed the Godwin Rubicon a few decades ago, and has been nothing if not consistent in trying to link their social conservatism with an economic program that favors the wealthy and powerful, if only to get their followers to skip all those parts in the Bible that support wealth redistribution.
But it is yet another data point that shows why contemporary Republicans, faced with people who actually believe all of this stuff about the American government being Nazi Germany (and yet somehow still waving the flag proudly, not sure how the cognitive dissonance works there), representing districts gerrymandered so that the Republican electorate is as extreme as possible, are so unwilling to compromise on anything with the President—because if they agree even on the legitimacy of the existence of the public whose common good deserves consideration, they're agreeing with a philosophical structure that their constituents are being told is the same as Nazi Germany.
Time for a new 50-state plan?
4. Finally, if nothing else, this should do away permanently with any pretensions on the part of libertarians (civil or otherwise) that Rand Paul is at all one of them. As I noted in my first comment, ol' Rand was one of the presidential hopefuls (alongside Ted Cruz, whom we all know to be a hard-right authoritarian extremist) who appeared at David Lane's Iowa summit this past weekend, and yet he uttered not even a whisper of rebuke against Lane or the authoritarian, theocratic vision he's pushing.
I believe in neither philosophy, but I do know that theocracy and libertarianism are 100% incompatible. Rand Paul might be saying some things that civil-libertarian progressives agree with on the NSA, but those who are concerned about their civil liberties should never, ever, under any circumstances, utter even a syllable of support for Rand Paul, who has proven that he's more than happy to stand and promote an open advocate for theocracy when it suits his political purposes.
That is all.