I TiVoed Rachel Maddow's 9:00 p.m. EDT show and just got around to watching it.
I was on my feet with my hands in the air because I could not believe that finally someone was on a TV speaking truth to power about the siege that this country is under from the right wing.
Rachel's first guest was Frank Schaeffer. He is a former right wing evangelical and the author of Crazy for God.
The video and partial transcript of that amazing interview below the fold.
A big thanks to bumblebums for posting the video.
Rachel: Do you think that calling the President a "nazi"...calling the President "Hilter"...is an implicit call for politically motivated violence?
Schaeffer: Yes I do. In fact this rings a big bell with me because my dad who is a right wing evangelical leader wrote a book called "A Christian Manifesto"...and in that book he compared anybody who was pro-abortion to the nazi Germans; and he said that using violence or force to overthrow nazi Germany would have been appropriate for Christians including the assassination of Hitler. He compared the Supreme Court's actions on abortion to that. And that has been a note that has been following the right wing movement that my father and I helped start...
So what's being said here is really two messages: there's the message to the predominatly white, middle-aged crowds of people screaming at these meetings trying to shut them down; but there's also a coded message to what I would call the "looney tunes" - the fruitloops on the side - that's really like playing Russian roulette. You put a cartridge in the chamber and you spin and once in a while it goes off, and we saw that with Dr. Tiller, we've seen it happen numerous times in this country with the violence against political leaders whether it's Martin Luther King or whoever it might be... we have a history of being a well-armed violent country. And so, really, I think that these calls are incredibly irresponsible.
The good news is is that it shows a desparation. The far right knows they've lost. They've lost the hearts and minds of most American people... But they also know that they have a large group of people who are not well-informed, who listen to their own sources, who buy the lies...and these people can be energized to go out and do really dreadful things and we've seen it in front of abortion clinics - I'm afraid we're going to see it with some of our political leaders. And the Glenn Becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing what I regard as an anti-democratic, anti-american movement in this country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and replace it with straight out intimidation.
Please watch the video in its entirety. There's a lot more there.
Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Frank Schaeffer. We needed this to be said on national tv.
Update: I actually just finished watching all of Rachel's program from tonight and it turns out the whole show was brilliant.
Here's another segment she did on debunking the whole "euthanasia" lie and exposing the Corp lobbyists and their "wholly-owned subsidiary, the Republican party" behind the recent showdowns at town halls being held by Democrats.
I especially love the way she smacked down that despicable woman, Sarah Palin.
Update 2: Some people had an issue with the previous title "truth to power." I changed it because I didn't want it to distract from the contents of the diary.
Thanks for the recs!
