Today on “Breitbart News Daily,” reality TV star and conservative activist Phil Robertson spoke with radio host Stephen Bannon and Citizens United president David Bossie about the Republican National Convention, and Robertson urged listeners to rally behind Donald Trump. The Duck Dynasty patriarch said that evangelicals must turn out and vote because they are facing “spiritual warfare” from “the depraved bunch, this political correct crowd” that is “of the Evil One.” Robertson…[warned] that “the alternative” to a Trump presidency is “depravity” and “moral bankruptcy.” After falsely claiming that Democratic delegates “booed God” at their 2012 convention, Robertson said that a Democratic victory in November would cause him to go into hiding: “If the Republicans and the evangelicals do not get off their posteriors and vote, I think I’m going to head back to the woods and hide out.”
Many Americans are pondering a move to Canada should Donald Trump win the Presidency in November (sadly, much as I’d love to head north, it’s not an option). It turns out that at least one person on the other side of the ideological fence is also weighing relocation options as well, though a bit closer to home. Not that many Americans would likely miss him, and if he chooses to disappear into the swamps of Louisiana…well, the words “gator bait” come to mind.
I could go off on a tangent about the laughable arrogance of putting the words “Breitbart” and “News” next to one another, but that’s another story for another time…and one I’ve addressed before. People like Robertson tend to gravitate toward Right-wing propaganda mills where they know they can count on a favorable reception…but that doesn’t make his claims any more credible.
Contrary to what Robertson (and the rest of the American Taliban) believes, America is not the rightful property and playground of Conservative White Christians. America isn’t even a Christian nation (Yo, Phil; you might want to read up on the separation of Church and State)…and no one’s God- not even Phil Robertson’s- get to be our government. While he’s free to weigh in at some considerable length about “spiritual warfare” from “the depraved bunch, this political correct crowd,” he’s merely exercising the same constitutionally-guaranteed freedom he’d blithely deny to those Not Like Us ©.
Robertson, like any American, is free to vote his conscience. What he’s not free to do is to expect his flavor of God to be installed as our government. When he retreats into the Louisiana swamp after Election Day, he should use the time to read up on American history- particularly as it pertains to the separation of Church and State. I’d suggest he might even learn something, but he’s just arrogant and convinced of his own moral superiority enough to be impervious to input which doesn’t mesh with his uber-Jesus-y view of the world.
If it’s a theocracy he wants, might I suggest he look at Iran and Saudi Arabia as examples of what can happen (and go horribly, irretrievably wrong) when government and religion are conflated?
