Driving Votes: Coleen's Blog - Archived Entry

The right has convinced some working class folks in our country that big government is stealing from their paychecks to give to allegedly undeserving poor people. This faith-based party led by christian zealots scapegoats the most disadvantaged classes for its own failure to extend prosperity beyond the top 1% of Americans, the wealthy patrons to which the republican party caters. Far from being squandered on social welfare, our money is spent on war, the lining of business men's pockets and increasing the wealth and influence of affluent religious organizations.

Consider the following:

- Almost 49% of Americans' tax dollars go to military expenditures.

- In 1996, the Federal government spent 13,688 times more money on corporate welfare than on social welfare: 167,000,000,000 vs.12,200,000. (The New Yorker, Feb. 26 and March 4, 1996. "DEVIL WOMEN: With a little imagination, poor women can be blamed for just about everything", by Kathy Pollitt).

- The catholic church, one of the largest sects of christianity, is also one of the wealthiest organizations in the world with a multiplicity of assets, including billions worth of tax-free land worldwide.

Despite their enormous wealth and government subsidies, Christian churches across most sects practice tithing, encouraging their members to pledge 10% of the gross annual salary to their church's "charitable" exploits. Thus, the evangelistic political party wants your taxes and your tithing, roughly about 40% of you paycheck. Joe Blow cowboyservative thinks that the $10 of his annual taxes that is spent to subsidize the electricity bills of elderly people and single mothers in his community is an outrage. The PR arm of the republican party has convinced working people that it's acceptable to spend your money on this country's political and religious nobility and wrong to help thy neighbor.

The log cabin party is no stranger to this kind of "turn-the-other-cheek," two-faced hypocrisy. Supposedly an advocate of state's rights, it rails, theoretically, about the evils of big government and then wants to federally control women's wombs, how you shag in the sack, commitment between queers, and your kids' worship of the divine. Conservative hypocrisy was rampant at the catholic college I attended. Sale of condoms was forbidden on campus. In a panel discussion on the subject, one sweater-set clad christian deemed it a violation of church law to have birth control sold just yards away from the campus church. A feminist colleague of mine countered wryly with the observation that no good christian had a problem with the Army ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp) headquarters' adjacency to the church even though this organization, in its very mission, violates one of the ten commandments: thou shalt not kill.

Despite contradicting the tenets of their faith, our country's bloated military industrial complex is the beloved beast of the christian right. The Bush administration has further extended this centralized power, violating our Bill of Rights and the Geneva Treaty alike. How can Bush call himself compassionate when he intends to wage war-without-end, executed the most prisoners in US history when governor, and approved of Geneva treaty-violating treatment of prisoners, with results so violently pornographic they make Clinton's "scandal" look like puppy love? This Orwellian hypocrisy masks rampant criminal actions and we, the working class, foot the bill. Why is it so hard for people to see through the right's flimsy rhetoric? Perhaps for the same reasons that the person who lost the contest for votes in 2000 is our president - it's easier to follow authority than question it.