“How do you see the balance between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause?” I asked.
There was a long pause. Civilians might reasonably plead ignorance, but not a general who has sworn on his life to defend these words: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“I have to write those things down,” Regni finally answered. “What did you say those constitutional things were again?”
Journalist Jeff Sharlet, speaking with US Air Force Academy Commander Lieutenant General John Regni, “Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military”, Harper’s Magazine, May 2009
“For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
“Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world…
“In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. …the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
From “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” by Umberto Eco, New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995
In the mainstream news media, there is much talk about the terrifying possibility of religious fundamentalists acquiring a weapon of mass destruction. Largely unreported is the fact that this has already occurred, not by the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but by Fundamentalist Christians in the US military, with control and access to incomprehensibly deadly weapons and a devotion to a homicidal and fascistic “End Times” theology Read the rest of this entry »
