THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
VA State Sen. Dick Black (R)
Virginia state Sen. says immigration used as "ethnic cleansing," to shatter US religious "cohesion" https://t.co/p5BRQjwyJ0 @RightWingWatch
— Imagine 2050 (@Imagine2050) July 25, 2016
On Friday’s episode of “The John Fredericks Show,” Virginia state Sen. Dick Black, a far-right extremist who served as Ted Cruz’s Virginia campaign co-chair, said that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are using immigration to commit “ethnic cleansing,” accusing Democrats of bringing only Middle Eastern Muslims into the country so that “nobody can organize against them.”…. “The Democrats have a laser focus,” Black said. “Everybody they put on that [Supreme] Court is a wicked SOB and they never change. They could care less what the law says. They’re there as politicians and they’re there to do the bidding of their party. And so anybody who thinks that we can count on having fair elections in four years and redoing things, that’s a pipe dream, it’s not going to happen because Hillary Clinton is going to keep the borders open, we’re undergoing this immense immigration, which really amounts to ethnic cleansing. That’s what they’re trying to do…. “They’re trying to shatter the cohesion of the American people, not only in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of religion,” he continued. “They’re bringing in people from the Middle East, zero, zero Christians. They will not allow Christians to come in. All of them have to be Muslim. What they’re trying to do is just shatter any cohesion so that nobody can organize against them.”
The late Will Rogers once said, “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” Despite attempts by many on the Rabid Religious Right to attribute some sort of hyper-organized malevolence to Democrats, the fact is that my party doesn’t have its $#!% together enough to be guilty of what Black believes. There’s no attempt to destroy Christians, whether by ethnic cleansing or any other means. Most Democrats self-identify as Christian…something I suspect Black ignores because it doesn’t mesh with his paranoid delusions. No one’s trying to force anything on anyone…except for Black, who seems to believe his flavor of Christianity to be the One, True, and ONLY Faith ©.
What Black refuses to recognize is that America isn’t a Christian nation and that the separation of Church and State is both legitimate and real. American governance is by law and custom secular, and no one’s God gets to be our government. To attribute to Democrats what you wish to be able to do yourself seems the worst sort of dishonesty and hypocrisy.
Despite Black’s overheated imagination, there’s no grand Democratic plan to eradicate the Christian faith by flooding America with Muslim refugees. In a country in which roughly 3 of every 4 Americans self-identifies as Christian, there’s simply no way to stealthily wipe out the majority religion. Democrats tolerate Christians- because most Democrats ARE Christian. They just don’t share Black’s belief that God is an angry, mean-spirited son of a bitch who monitors our every thought, word, AND deed 24/7/365 and will happily and willingly smite anyone who dares step out of line.
Oh…and not getting your way in every public policy decision is not ipso facto evidence of “ethnic cleansing” or “trying to shatter the cohesion of the American people.” In a country of almost 300 million people, to infer some sort of religious and/or ethnic “cohesion” seems absurd. America is what it is- a vast melting pot, a melange of ethnicities and creeds- and always has been. Our shores have always been open to those from around the world, not just those who happen to believe and look like us.
No reasonable American would deny Black his constitutionally guaranteed right to live as he chooses and practice his narrow, bigoted brand of Christianity. That’s what America is about- freedom- and that means the right of every American to live, love, and worship (or not) as they see fit. No one gets to impose their beliefs on others or assume their faith to be The One, True, and ONLY Faith ©. It’s one of the biggest- if not THE biggest- reasons America has lasted as long as it has and is still going strong. We allow people to be who they are and believe what they will.
Even Dick Black.
