I’ve never much cared for the phrase “Taliban wing of the Republican Party” because it’s too frequently misused and applied to conservatives who don’t deserve it. But those in attendance for this weekend’s conference on “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” deserve the “Taliban-wing” label — they’ve worked hard to earn it. These folks aren’t just conservative, and aren’t simply fringe right-wingers, they literally want to follow in the Taliban’s footsteps and replace American law with their interpretation of Scripture. It’s genuinely scary.
Dana Milbank had an item over the weekend, for example, reporting on the conference. He explained that lunatics like Phyllis Schlafly believe Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s ruling forbidding capital punishment for juveniles “is a good ground of impeachment.” Similarly, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira said he draws inspiration from Joseph Stalin: “He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem,’ ” Vieira said.
Likewise, Salon’s Michelle Goldberg found no shortage of insanity at the event.
The world inhabited by most of those at the conference seems so at odds with empirical reality that one expects it to collapse around them. With each new lunacy perpetrated by religious fundamentalists, progressives tell each other than any second the pendulum will swing the other way and some equilibrium will return to our national life. They’ve been telling each other that for more than four years. But the influence of religious authoritarianism keeps growing.
The Confronting the Judicial War on Faith Conference was not large — it drew at most 200 people. The speakers and attendees, though, included many of the core figures of the religious right. Even if they fail in their far-reaching plan for eviscerating the judiciary — and in the near term they almost certainly will — the Republican Party will try to push through aspects of their agenda.
But what really matters here is not just the pathological rhetoric that emanated from the hotel, but rather the connection between the insane activists at the conference and the elected officials who legitimized their madness with their presence.
To be sure, I realize that both the left and the right have their fringes. On any given weekend, someone could probably find a group of liberal activists giving well-received speeches on outrageous subjects and radical ideas (banning the combustion engine, giving cats the right to vote, whatever). With this in mind, the fact that 200 right-wingers got together to dream about impeaching judges and imposing Biblical law on America may seem like little more than bizarre trivia.
It’s not. Actual members of Congress and their staffs were on hand to partake in this lunacy. It’s bad enough for Republican activists to be so far detached from reality, but for GOP lawmakers to offer this conference an official imprimatur is the kind of thing that, at a minimum, requires an explanation.
* Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri) shared the stage with prominent adherents of Christian Reconstructionism, a Calvinist doctrine that calls for the subordination of American civil law to biblical law.
* Tom DeLay (R-Texas) appeared via video (he had been scheduled to give the keynote address, but withdrew to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II) and reassured the crowd that he’s committed to Congress “reasserting our constitutional authority over the courts.”
* Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) told attendees that he supported retaliating against judges in the Terri Schiavo case.
* Michael Schwartz, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn’s chief of staff, talked openly about impeaching judges who failed to toe the far-right line. Schwartz recommended trashing the very idea of judicial review, saying that until we throw the principle out, “it is a sick and sad joke to claim we have a Constitution.”
How, exactly, can lawmakers and their staffs appear at such a conference, say such twisted and bizarre things, and not face questions about their judgment? When George W. Bush appeared at Bob Jones University in 2000, many questioned why he’d appear at such an institution. More recently, any Dem with even tangential connections to MoveOn.org or Michael Moore is quizzed about alleged ties to the “far left.”
But here we have Republican officials hanging out with theocrats at a convention at which veiled threats at assassinating federal judges were applauded. A few lawmakers, including Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, had the good sense not to show up at the event, despite initially being listed on the conference web site.
But, call me crazy, shouldn’t those who did attend face some scrutiny about the radical company they chose to keep over the weekend?