Soapbox

The Party is Over

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/tea-party-leader-defends-attack-lawmaker-muslim/

Dear members of the Tea "We want to defend the constitution against you liberals" Party:

      Since you're so fond of the constitution, you might want to investigate a little thing called the first amendment. Oh, I know, you just LOVE the first amendment when you've said some horribly racist or homophobic thing  or are encouraging people to instigate armed insurrection against the duly elected government and don't want to get nailed for it. Freedom of speech! Only Nazis believe in political correctness! 
      But even if you insist on believing that the Establishment clause of the first amendment was not intended to create a "separation of church and state" (after all, what does that commie Thomas Jefferson know about the Constitution?) it does say that there can be NO religious litmus test for public office.

    In other words, despite what Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation says, you cannot remove congressman Keith Ellison from office simply because he's a Muslim. I know, I know, 9/11, hate our freedoms, kill the infidel, blah blah blah I repeat, you cannot remove him from office simply for being a member of a religion that you don't like.  
    This is actually a good thing. No, really. This is part of what makes America great. I bet. Because, you know what, out of the billions and billions of Christians in the world, there are a LOT out there that I don't like, and you probably don't either! The ones who use God as a shield to hide behind while they are hating, oppressing, attacking and even killing innocent people, just for starters. How about the KKK and Christian Identity folks who thinks God made blacks as "mud people"? How about the ones who say that God killed all those innocent people with Hurricane Katrina because Mardi Gras is too gay?! I really hate that.

     Never would I suggest that a person who is Catholic is unfit for public office because some Catholic priests attack children like wolves and some Catholic bishops and cardinals keep throwing those wolves back in the lambs' pen. Never would I say that all Baptists are evil just because Fred Phelps is a pustulant boil on the face of humanity.

      So tell this guy he is wrong. Tell him he does not speak for you. Tell him that it is a violation of everything America stands for, and that this intolerance is damaging to this nation and far more dangerous than a person who calls God by a different name.
     Use that free speech and speak up! Make one of your famous signs and refuse to accept the idea that only members of certain religions- and only the right members of that religion ('cause I"m pretty sure my kind of Christianity would get me kicked out of Judson Phillips' America!) are capable of serving in a secular, civil government.

    Look, I understand that both the democratic and Republican parties have you frustrated and angry. Me too.  And it was fun, wasn't it? All the rallies and signs, all the excuses to shout and let out your frustrations? But the party's over. It's time to stop and think before the election. Don't wait until the morning after when you'll have to look in the mirror, see your rumpled hair and bleary eyes and wonder what in the hell you did to yourself and your reputation last night.
    Ask yourself- is this who you want to be- the party that wants to create a rich, white male theocracy where evolution is taught as a "fringe theory" and we judge people on how straight they are, how white they are and how many guns they own? You want to be the party that believes the civil rights act went too far, the party that throws people in handcuffs because they ask inconvenient questions? Were you really out there marching to create a party that demands budget restraint while writing blank checks and belligerently asserts their right to offend and demean everyone who doesn't look like them?

     We already have the Republican party for that. Please, offer us something new.
    
      Thanks.
     Sincerely, your friend,

                   Rational America