More on the culture war and their movement from RadicalReports on substack, by Teddy Wilson.
"Must Reads
Katherine Stewart writes that “the American idea, as Abraham Lincoln saw it, is the familiar one articulated in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It says that all people are created equal; that a free people in a pluralistic society may govern themselves; that they do so through laws deliberated in public, grounded in appeals to reason, and applied equally to all; and that they establish these laws through democratic representation in government. While the American republic has often fallen short of this idea, many people rightly insist that we should, at the very least, try to live up to it. And in its better moments, the United States and its revolutionary creed have inspired freedom movements around the world. But in recent years a political movement has emerged that fundamentally does not believe in the American idea. It claims that America is dedicated not to a proposition but to a particular religion and culture. It asserts that an insidious and alien elite has betrayed and abandoned the nation’s sacred heritage. It proposes to ‘redeem’ America, and it acts on the extreme conviction that any means are justified in such a momentous project. It takes for granted that certain kinds of Americans have a right to rule, and that the rest have a duty to obey.” [Religion Dispatches]
Rachel Leingang and Alice Herman write that the ongoing “attempts to erode the separation of church and state – an increasingly powerful push on the right, with elected officials at the local, state and federal level explicitly stating they don’t believe there is or should be a separation, and that they intend to govern that way. Oklahoma has become a laboratory for this effort, and Walters, as state superintendent overseeing policy for K-12 schools, one of its most prominent proponents. He has pushed to create the country’s first Catholic public charter school. He bought Trump-branded Bibles that he wants to put them in classrooms. He has installed prominent rightwing figures such as the activist behind the anti-LGBTQ+ group Libs of TikTok and the leader of the Heritage Foundation on state education committees. This is what Christian nationalism looks like in governance – rejecting church and state separation and installing Christian viewpoints – and it’s on the rise with Trump back in the White House… Several groups have coalesced to provide an intellectual justification for the erosion of the separation of church and state – but few have found more success than David Barton, the founder of the Christian group WallBuilders and a longtime proponent of the idea that the founding fathers sought to create a Christian nation.” [The Guardian]
Robert Downen writes that “efforts by the Christian Right to put more of their religion in public schools are not new. But the tone of those debates in Texas has shifted this session, with bill supporters and some lawmakers openly arguing that such legislation is crucial to combating dropping church participation rates and what they say is a directly related decline in American morality. Last month, a Texas Senate education committee advanced two bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow school districts to set aside optional prayer time during school hours. And last week, that committee also heard testimony on a bill to mandate that schools teach an anti-communist curriculum — which supporters said is crucial to reaffirming that America is a Christian nation. Throughout those hearings, lawmakers and bill supporters frequently said that church-state separation is a myth meant to obscure America’s true, Christian roots. They argued that many of America’s ills are the natural consequence of removing Biblical morality from classrooms. And they framed their legislation as an antidote to decreasing church attendance, communism or eternal hellfire.” [Texas Tribune]
They already have: I just found them on UK yahoo. "From 1977 to 2020 in America, anti-abortion activists committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 threats of harm or death, 624 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to data collected by the National Abortion Federation. They have bombed 42 abortion clinics, set 194 on fire, attempted to bomb or burn an additional 104 and made 667 bomb threats." https://uk.news.yahoo.com/anti-abortion-movement-killed-people-094505241.html?
It boggles my mind that headlines like this are written in the US daily and the streets aren't swarming with people in protest. I've felt that way since 2022. But of course, the United States of America HATES women.
Thank you Jessica for your vigilance tracking and reporting all of this information. If you ever need a GoFundMe for mental health care, please let me know. It's all so disheartening, I don't know how you do it. SO thank you, thank you.
Civil wars have begun over less. We're really in kind of a soft civil war right now, The West Coast Colorado and New England (where incidentally something like 75% of GDP resides) against pretty much every other state.
So, if they are going to track abortions, let's start tracking vasectomies. And let's look for "coerced" vasectomies. The problem with a lot of men is they have absolutely NO IDEA what women have to endure every day just to exist in a public space. I got the following quote from Ms: "No laws exist to control men's bodies." From a November 2024 protest sign outside the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.
If any healthcare provider is not willing to provide medically necessary care to a patient because of their personal beliefs then they are in the wrong profession.
Having worked in a woman’s hospital as a nurse at one point in my career, it is more often the support staff of the procedure than the physician. There are physicians who will not provide abortion care, but much more often it is the nurses, and anesthesia providers who refuse to participate in the care of the patient. Where I live, they are allowed to be conscientious objectors. I witnessed preop area nurses who would not start the IV, PACU nurses who refused to care for the patients. The reality of all these situations were abortions of medical necessity. The facility did not provide elective abortions. The women who worked there were often refusing to care for a woman whose wanted baby had defects incompatible with life. I always thought it was tragic and my co workers moral superiority complex as disheartening.
Very sad. When will we learn to live beyond good vs. evil nonsense? We should work towards making ‘conscientious objection’ illegal. It should be called ‘dishonorable disobedience’ because it is a refusal to treat based on personal and non-verifiable beliefs, which is inappropriate and harmful. It represents an abuse of medical ethics and professional obligations to patients.
Imagine if there were such doctors that refused to treat cancer patients because they believed “cancer cells” were a life worth fighting for? But no, that would be absurd! God put those cancer cells there, how dare you remove them.
More on the culture war and their movement from RadicalReports on substack, by Teddy Wilson.
"Must Reads
Katherine Stewart writes that “the American idea, as Abraham Lincoln saw it, is the familiar one articulated in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It says that all people are created equal; that a free people in a pluralistic society may govern themselves; that they do so through laws deliberated in public, grounded in appeals to reason, and applied equally to all; and that they establish these laws through democratic representation in government. While the American republic has often fallen short of this idea, many people rightly insist that we should, at the very least, try to live up to it. And in its better moments, the United States and its revolutionary creed have inspired freedom movements around the world. But in recent years a political movement has emerged that fundamentally does not believe in the American idea. It claims that America is dedicated not to a proposition but to a particular religion and culture. It asserts that an insidious and alien elite has betrayed and abandoned the nation’s sacred heritage. It proposes to ‘redeem’ America, and it acts on the extreme conviction that any means are justified in such a momentous project. It takes for granted that certain kinds of Americans have a right to rule, and that the rest have a duty to obey.” [Religion Dispatches]
Rachel Leingang and Alice Herman write that the ongoing “attempts to erode the separation of church and state – an increasingly powerful push on the right, with elected officials at the local, state and federal level explicitly stating they don’t believe there is or should be a separation, and that they intend to govern that way. Oklahoma has become a laboratory for this effort, and Walters, as state superintendent overseeing policy for K-12 schools, one of its most prominent proponents. He has pushed to create the country’s first Catholic public charter school. He bought Trump-branded Bibles that he wants to put them in classrooms. He has installed prominent rightwing figures such as the activist behind the anti-LGBTQ+ group Libs of TikTok and the leader of the Heritage Foundation on state education committees. This is what Christian nationalism looks like in governance – rejecting church and state separation and installing Christian viewpoints – and it’s on the rise with Trump back in the White House… Several groups have coalesced to provide an intellectual justification for the erosion of the separation of church and state – but few have found more success than David Barton, the founder of the Christian group WallBuilders and a longtime proponent of the idea that the founding fathers sought to create a Christian nation.” [The Guardian]
Robert Downen writes that “efforts by the Christian Right to put more of their religion in public schools are not new. But the tone of those debates in Texas has shifted this session, with bill supporters and some lawmakers openly arguing that such legislation is crucial to combating dropping church participation rates and what they say is a directly related decline in American morality. Last month, a Texas Senate education committee advanced two bills that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and allow school districts to set aside optional prayer time during school hours. And last week, that committee also heard testimony on a bill to mandate that schools teach an anti-communist curriculum — which supporters said is crucial to reaffirming that America is a Christian nation. Throughout those hearings, lawmakers and bill supporters frequently said that church-state separation is a myth meant to obscure America’s true, Christian roots. They argued that many of America’s ills are the natural consequence of removing Biblical morality from classrooms. And they framed their legislation as an antidote to decreasing church attendance, communism or eternal hellfire.” [Texas Tribune]
Have you heard of this website? https://abortiondocs.org/
“Operation Rescue” is back. This legit looks like a hit list. They’re going to get someone killed.
They already have: I just found them on UK yahoo. "From 1977 to 2020 in America, anti-abortion activists committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 threats of harm or death, 624 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to data collected by the National Abortion Federation. They have bombed 42 abortion clinics, set 194 on fire, attempted to bomb or burn an additional 104 and made 667 bomb threats." https://uk.news.yahoo.com/anti-abortion-movement-killed-people-094505241.html?
Yikes
And Trump will welcome the killers at the White House
It boggles my mind that headlines like this are written in the US daily and the streets aren't swarming with people in protest. I've felt that way since 2022. But of course, the United States of America HATES women.
Embryonic personhood…
'Give Them a Chance': Over a Million Embryos from IVF Can Be Adopted from 'Frozen Orphanages' | CBN News
https://cbn.com/news/health/give-them-chance-over-million-embryos-ivf-can-be-adopted-frozen-orphanages
The last thing anyone sane should want, is for their extra blastocysts to be trafficked to religious weirdos.
Thank you Jessica for your vigilance tracking and reporting all of this information. If you ever need a GoFundMe for mental health care, please let me know. It's all so disheartening, I don't know how you do it. SO thank you, thank you.
Civil wars have begun over less. We're really in kind of a soft civil war right now, The West Coast Colorado and New England (where incidentally something like 75% of GDP resides) against pretty much every other state.
So, if they are going to track abortions, let's start tracking vasectomies. And let's look for "coerced" vasectomies. The problem with a lot of men is they have absolutely NO IDEA what women have to endure every day just to exist in a public space. I got the following quote from Ms: "No laws exist to control men's bodies." From a November 2024 protest sign outside the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.
If any healthcare provider is not willing to provide medically necessary care to a patient because of their personal beliefs then they are in the wrong profession.
Having worked in a woman’s hospital as a nurse at one point in my career, it is more often the support staff of the procedure than the physician. There are physicians who will not provide abortion care, but much more often it is the nurses, and anesthesia providers who refuse to participate in the care of the patient. Where I live, they are allowed to be conscientious objectors. I witnessed preop area nurses who would not start the IV, PACU nurses who refused to care for the patients. The reality of all these situations were abortions of medical necessity. The facility did not provide elective abortions. The women who worked there were often refusing to care for a woman whose wanted baby had defects incompatible with life. I always thought it was tragic and my co workers moral superiority complex as disheartening.
Very sad. When will we learn to live beyond good vs. evil nonsense? We should work towards making ‘conscientious objection’ illegal. It should be called ‘dishonorable disobedience’ because it is a refusal to treat based on personal and non-verifiable beliefs, which is inappropriate and harmful. It represents an abuse of medical ethics and professional obligations to patients.
Yes, and they should lose their license to practice.
I would be fine if medical schools screened and rejected these folks who want to withhold care. Schools only have so many slots…
Cut out these people from the start.
Imagine if there were such doctors that refused to treat cancer patients because they believed “cancer cells” were a life worth fighting for? But no, that would be absurd! God put those cancer cells there, how dare you remove them.
Exactly.
I’ve also wondered why I’ve never heard of a Jehovah’s Witness doctor denying anyone a blood transfusion and killing that patient.
Sadly a lot of them are.
they are just a business, care has nothing to do with it :(
To some yes, to many of us, no. Sorry, I may not have responded to the question correctly, you mean medical schools are just a business?
I meant health care center's not the schools. I probably didn't follow the comments correctly.