Right-wing hate groups on the rise in US

This past week right wing hate groups were brought to the forefront of media attention when 9 members of the christian militia, Hutaree, were arrested and indicted of plotting to kill a Michigan police officer, and then bomb the funeral procession in an attempt to kill as many police officers as possible.

To them the federal government is the embodiment of the anti-christ, any and all government officials the foot-soldiers of the new evil world order. These guys are grade A crazy, but unfortunately they are not alone.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of right-wing “patriot” groups have surged from 149 in 2008, to 512 in 2009, an increase of 244%. (A list of these groups can be found here)

The SPLC is careful to make this distinction about “patriot” groups:

“Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist.”

I also want to make the distinction that these groups, these militias, are perfectly legal under the 2nd amendment to the constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So we have some data here. Right wing groups have grown drastically since 2008. The SPLC has also kept track of 73 instances of violent crimes, often including murder, committed by people connected to such right-wing groups since 1995 when Timothy McVeigh slaughtered 168 people in the Oklahoma City Federal building.

What could be the reason for the jump from 2008 to 2009? The SPLC believes that it might be linked to the election of a liberal black man. I’m inclined to agree since they point out that the number of active groups declined during the presidency of conservative George W. Bush; but this is not proof of cause and effect.

Secondly, why right wing hate groups? Where are the left wing hate groups? I did some looking around, and they are much harder to find than right wing hate groups. The nearest I could find was the Weather Underground, but they fell apart after 1973. Some might also claim that organizations like Greenpeace and PETA are left wing hate groups, but I would argue that they are not the same thing. Sure they have members that sometimes commit crimes like vandalism and destruction of property, but we don’t see Greenpeace or PETA creating organization wide plans to murder people that we find in right-wing groups.

I would think that the reason right-wing groups tend to be more violent is because they are often made up of angry white men with extreme religious and political views, whereas left wing groups are made up of angry tree-hugging hippies.

Oh progress…..

A lot of wind was taken out of my zealous sails the other day during a talk with my girlfriend on politics. She got me thinking about some of my positions and my initial gut reactions to them. I was furious about the healthcare bill because it was not liberal enough, but I guess she’s showed me that it was the best pragmatic solution possible. So perhaps I’m becoming more of a pragmatist. I don’t really have energy anymore for long, drawn out ideological fights over politics anymore.

With the progress on healthcare in mind, I wanted to sit down and examine my thoughts on where liberals and conservatives fall within the fight for progress.

For starters, I guess I should define what I think of as “liberal” and “conservative”. Conservatives, in my mind, are concerned with maintaining the status quo. This is to the benefit of their majority, or primarily White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Conservatives dream of the “good old days” of the past, and seek to return America to an idealistic version of the 50’s.

Liberals on the other hand are constantly fighting the status quo. The liberal base is made up of not just WASP, but of all types of minorities, be they racial, religious, or sexual minorities. This heterogeneous nature of liberals sometimes leads to in-fighting, and a lack of cohesion, which the conservatives exploit.  For liberals, the “good old days” were only good if you were a WASP male. It was back then that only men could vote, women were excluded from the workplace and equal education, and racial minorities were brutally kept in their place with violence and Jim Crow laws. Liberals fight the “good old days” of total WASP male domination in an effort to make the country’s laws more just for all. (It will be interesting to see what happens in 2050 when WASP becomes the minority)

To this end, when I look at U.S. history I can get a sense of progress towards the liberal goal of a more just and equal world. Sure there have been setbacks before, but progress eventually steamrolls through the resistance. Progress usually comes slowly, it’s a generational thing. A black man would by lynched if he was seen holding a white woman’s hand in the 50’s. Today nobody thinks twice. Each generation is slowly more and more tolerant than their parents, and so progress continues.

But if this progress is inevitable, then conservatives only act to retard it. They might want to completely reverse all the progress made, but being unable to change the mindset of entire generations, they fail to do this. My question is, if the social change is inevitable, why fight it? You’re just going to lose, like you always have in the past.

“The world is not ready yet” is what I would expect in response, which leads into the idea that if we changed, society would collapse. This is ridiculous. Society is not going to collapse. The only time a society collapsed in US History was when the south lost the Civil War. Their society based on the enslavement of an entire race of people collapsed, and in turn was replaced by a new society that had to undergo the growing pains of the civil right’s movement.

Lets pretend for a moment that when we wake up tomorrow, all the liberal dreams for society come true. The economy would not crash because women were being paid equal money for equal work. Straight marriages would not be worthless and destroyed because Bob and Dan down the street got married and now receive the legal benefits of marriage. God would not come down and smite the country if the various racial and ethnic groups lived together in mutual respect. No, the conservative fears about liberal social progress are unfounded. It just means that WASP males would no longer have privilege above all others, they would be equal, just like the rest of us.

It just frustrates me when conservatives slow the inevitable, because while we’re here arguing, people are suffering in an unjust country.

Heaven is Hell

As a little kid, did you ever take a plane ride and look out the window onto the clouds, hoping to see angels or perhaps a dead love one? I did, and I’m pretty sure millions of other kids have too.

Growing up, I never really thought of heaven much. I knew that I wanted to go there, but beyond that I didn’t give it much thought. Then I started thinking about all the people I knew who wouldn’t go to heaven, how it would make me really sad if someone I loved was burning forever in hell. How could I be happy in heaven knowing someone I loved was suffering? How could anybody?

I used to think that perhaps if I made a deal with god to trade spaces with someone in hell, he’d see the goodness in that act and we’d both be free to live in heaven. That or maybe if I just asked Jesus to forgive that person even if they didn’t ask for it…..

But what I really found fascinating was the idea of eternity. I was brought up to believe that if you were good and believed in Jesus you would spend eternity in heaven with god, where you would always be happy and feel no pain. Can you imagine eternity? Could you imagine being stuck in one place forever? I’d go crazy! I couldn’t do it, it would eventually become hell for me. The only way I’d be happy would to not exist, to not be conscious of time.

If I had to be conscious of time, I guess I could be happy if I had complete freedom of movement within time and space. I could be there for every event in human (and alien) history. I could go see the moment of creation, spend summers in distant galaxies, explore. Unfortunately, I don’t think my pastor thought this was part of the all-inclusive package.

The heaven that the people at places like “Liberty” “University” speak of would drive me up the wall. An all white gated community, where I am forced to be god’s cheerleader for all eternity. I’d be much more happy not existing.

White Jesus

The other day in religion class we watched “Jesus of Nazareth.” Something that caught my attention was just how white and European Jesus looked. Now I was raised as a christian, and every picture of Jesus that I had seen while growing up was of his as white and blue eyed.

The movie took this to a new level, making his eyes glow blue. It was as if he was radiating white blue eyed-ness, like some subtle Nazi master race propaganda.

Blue eyes is a genetic characteristic native to Europe and sometimes Northern Africa, not the middle east where Jesus is from. People in the middle east would also have had a darker skin tone, something more akin to olive, not Caucasian white. And don’t forget, Jesus was a jew, so he would have had their genetic characteristics as well.

Not the wonderful white savior you thought eh? There is an interesting article on how they came up with the above likeness of Jesus here.