Frank Schaeffer: Wall Street Protests and the Religious Right

If the Wall Street protests are to mean anything long term they have to also focus on the enablers of the top 1 percent that have raped the 99. Fundamentalist religion made this rape possible.

The source of the empowering of the top 1 percent super wealthy and the economic rape of rest of us is the religion of Evangelical fundamentalism. Note I didn't say religion per se, but religious fundamentalism is responsible.

Why?

Because without the fundamentalists and their "values" issues the lower 99 percent could not have been convinced to vote against their (our) economic self-interest, in other words, vote for Republicans serving only billionaires instead of the rest of us.

Wall Street is a legitimate target for long overdue protest but so are the centers of religious power that are the gate keepers of Republican Party "values" voters that make the continuing economic rape possible.

Fundamentalist religion -- Evangelical and Roman Catholic alike -- has delegitimized the US Government and thus undercut its ability to tax, spend and regulate

The fundamentalist have replaced economic and political justice with a bogus (and hate-driven) "morality" litmus tests of spurious red herring "issues" from abortion to school prayer and gay rights. The result has been that the masses of lower middle class and poor Americans who should be voting for Democrats and thus their own economic interests, have been persuaded to vote against their own class and self interest.

This trick of political sleight of hand has been achieved by this process:

1. Declare the US Government agents of evil because of the fact that "the government" has allowed legal abortion, gay rights etc.,

• Declare that therefore "government is the problem" not the solution,

• Now that the government is the source of all evil thus anyone the government wants to regulate is being picked on by satanic forces. The US Government is always the bad guy,

• Thus good God-fearing folks will always vote for less government and less regulation because "the government" is evil,

• So unregulated corporations, banks and Wall Street are always right and represent "freedom" while government is always wrong and represents "tyranny."

http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2011/10/wall-street-protests-and-religious.html