”Christian?” “Patriots?”

by Groff Schroeder

Between years 0 and 33, true non-violent revolutionary Jesus Christ rejected greed, selfishness, self-righteousness, and violence, teaching us to treat others as you would have them treat you (aka the golden rule), and to “render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s” (aka pay your taxes and avoid politics). Between 1776 and 1783, true American patriots fought the Revolutionary War, and freed themselves from the deeply entwined King and Church of England. In 1789, America’s patriots ratified the United States Constitution (aka established a secular government based upon Enlightenment principles, legal precedent, and the rule of law). And in 1791, America’s patriots ratified the Bill of Rights (aka Constitutional guarantees of human freedoms and civil rights).

In 1860, southern states seceded, formed a Confederation, and waged war upon the United States so that eleven right wing states could continue to violate the Constitution by holding almost 4 million human beings in involuntary servitude (aka slavery). After failing in war in 1865, Confederates attempted to prevail by decapitating the United States government through the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Another attempt to decapitate the government of the United States of America occurred on January 6, 2021. After failing in overturning the 2020 election through the illegal intimidation of state election officials and the presentation of fraudulent electors, a mob attempted to prevail by violently attacking the United States Congress to thwart the peaceful transfer of presidential power and kill the Vice President of the United States and (apparently) the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Then as now, our American democratic republic is under direct, ongoing attack. Naked, unlimited, unregulated, and undisclosed bribery was recently legalized by extreme, right wing politicians controlling the Supreme Court, violating not only the US Constitution (Article 2, Section 4) and federal law (US Code Title 18, Section 201), but also undermining trust in key institutions of democracy, eroding the rule of law, and granting corporations, individuals, organizations - and even foreign governments - vast, illegitimate, and unchecked political power. Amoral economic attacks, such as the longstanding regressive “starve the beast” policy, have intentionally saddled the United States, the American people, and generations to come with enormous deficits and debts.

Once again, we the people must work to regain our: fiscal responsibility, hard won freedom of religion, civil right to associate with physicians, human right to privacy, civil right not to incriminate ourselves, human right not to endure cruel and unusual punishment, human right not to be held in involuntary servitude, civil right to equality under law, and right not to have taxpayer funded public school staff indoctrinate our children with fundamentalist religious beliefs alien to our own. We must work to support and defend the rule of law, the United States Constitution, the American democratic republic, and the United States of America itself from other Americans who call themselves “Christians” as they self-righteously judge their neighbors, criminalize often life-saving medical procedures, and basically enslave pregnant women to not only right wing politicians, but also rapists. And we must actively defend American democracy from people who call themselves “patriots” as they slowly, surely, amorally, and increasingly openly convert the American democratic republic into a “Christian” theocratic totalitarian dictatorship, ruled by Dominionist Sharia Law that has much more in common with the Catholic Inquisition and Islamic Sharia Law than the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Published in the July 13 through 19 edition of the Colorado Springs Independent with the quotation below.

If we think there is undermining now, just wait if Sharia is adopted or utilized by justices of the United States.

Donald Trump