Measured out with coffee spoons: Violence is okay now, like hate and greed. Oh Boy!

The late Bill Buckley wanted something else just as much as he wanted his conservative movement to flourish. He wanted to keep the kooks, misanthropes, the Birchers, white nationalists, the neo-Nazis OUT. Most commentators consider him to have been successful, especially considering there are 4,500 species of actual cockroaches and possibly an infinity of human RWNJ ones. And one of those was really deadly.

In 1960, conservative Protestants and Catholics were in strong opposition to each other. No more. Today evangelicals form a social and political monolith. But I could find you in one hour over a hundred protestants on the right who will secretly admit that they think their Catholic friends are going stright to Hell. My childhood among right wing fundamentalists taught me that, unlike Catholics, nothing about social responsibility. We rushed over Matthew 25 or ignored it. Every sermon was about how to save your ass from Hell. Sometimes preachers were grateful and moved that God provided Christ's crucifixion and resurrection as a way to be "saved." But mostly it was shouting, banging on the pulpit, telling you how you were BORN on your way to Hell, and the only thing to do was to be BORN AGAIN. The rhyme that still echoes in my brain was "Repent, Believe, and Christ Recieve." Repent from your drinking, smoking, dancing, card playing, movie going, adultery and fornication, or just your lust. And what would show the world that you were born anew? Well, when you still did that stuff, say you're sorry.

At age 5, as my dad backed out of our parking space after church one Sunday, my little voice came from the back seat, asking a question that had been bothering me from parts of that morning's sermon. "Daddy, if Jesus loves the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white they are precious in his sight, WHY DON'T WE?"

Do you know what I was taught about social justice? That my works, deeds, and actions do not matter to God, "lest any man should boast." Only the grace of God could save me, and once saved it seemed that everyone acted as though they had been give a Get Out of Hell free card and so could do anything except work for Social Justice, pinko commie BS. If you are unfamiliar, read about the Christian Right's interpretation of Christianity. Why do they say Jesus would "pack heat" for just one thing?

Do we all learn in history class that the Southern Baptist Convention broke away from American Baptists and established itself because American Baptists were Abolutionists. The whole Convention was born to support SLAVERY. I don't have enough friends to covene enough fingers and toes to count the people I have heard say they HATE Lincoln, that he was our worst persident, and that they are GLAD HE WAS ASSASSINATED.

Okay, back to Buckley. When he began in the Seventies to make nice with the Falwells, Bob Jones University, he defeated or abandoned his goal to keep out the kooks and haters. He opened the door wide. They came in droves and they hijacked the Movement, making any legitimate conservative movement impossible. In the early days, I even wrote Buckley a letter, begging him not to fool around with those fundamentalists. I was nobody. I'm sure nobody read it.

Don't be nostalgic for Buckley. If he were here, he would not be able to keep the kooks out anymore.

What we have is a Republican Party controlled and dominated by HATE, GREED, and the quest for POWER, power to control everyone else, to get everyone else's money, to disregard even everyone's very life. We have thugs and goons and pieces of merde who are hostile to education, to knowledge, to books, to science. They are even hostile toward scientific work that might save their own lives by curing cancer and Alzheimer's.

We've got Trump, refusing to shake hands with Merkel, shoving the leader of Montenegro, a Balkan state of about 600,000 people, not knowing Israel is in the Middle East, ad infinitum.

And we've a brand new jewel in our crown today, Greg Gianforte, Montana's newest Representative, who truly attacked, assaulted a reporter the night before the election. And the voters who used to be law and order types cheered him and elected him.

It all comes back to the voters. Something is wrong with our voters. Even Appalachian Trail fan Mark Sanford said that SOMETHING WEIRD IS GOING ON OUT THERE.