by Tim
First of all, this election has proven that the Religious Right in America have usurped the name and power of the Republican Party. We can no longer look upon the GOP as a party of fiscal restraint, small government, and flexibility. It is now the party of corporate bailouts, omnipresent government, and hatred of dissent and pluralism. The moderates have been silenced, the fanatics now reign. Friends of liberty take heed!
The war on terrorism has become the vehicle of global alienation for the U.S., while here at home it only serves to cow the average citizen into humble submission to the will of government. The Religious Right believes in the ultimate supremacy of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and therefore is perfectly content to paint the foreign affairs crisis as a cosmic battle between American civilization and heathen barbarism. This aura of fear, which envelopes Middle America, has allowed the Bush Administration to launch attacks on our constitutional system unparalleled since the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Patriot Act, prototype of the legislation of fear, is a blatantly unconstitutional document that, day by day, erodes the bedrock of our nation. With Bush's re-election, we may be facing Patriot II, and we will have to fight it.
At home, the battle of the cosmos is extended to all facets of our culture, every aspect of our lives. This domestic struggle is the key to Bush's election victory, not his policies on Iraq and terrorism. During the campaign, the media briefly noted that the Bush/Cheney camp was requesting lists of worshipers from churches throughout the South and the swing states. Although this met with passing criticism, it quickly disappeared from public view, and was forgotten. Two weeks before Election Day, a Gallup poll noted that, for voters, the most important election issue was not terrorism, not Iraq, but instead, moral values! This should have sent a clear signal to the media and the Kerry/Edwards campaign that something was amiss. Something was indeed horribly wrong. Evangelical Christian grassroots organizations were passing out literature in the South and in swing states, like West Virginia, that claimed that a Kerry Administration would automatically legalize gay marriage and ban the Bible! This ludicrous charge was only briefly denied by John Edwards on a morning talk show.
The briefly noted pamphlets, and the weak attempt to rebut them, spurred four million Evangelical Christians who had abstained from voting in the last election to vote in this one. The most ridiculous of lies spurred some of the most ignorant and bigoted of Americans to vote. This election is clearly the greatest victory of the Religious Right. The reverberations of this victory will affect nearly every decision of the second Bush Administration, and hence the assault on our Constitution and our Liberty shall continue. The mob of religious zealots and moral hypocrites have won; America has spoken. Friends of Liberty can only respond, "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."