Presumably? Why?

Last week I pointed you to this post from Orcinus on the rise of Republican extremism and how it has filtered up to the highest levels of the party leadership. Saturday's post has this scary article detailing another example of this extremism.

The event in question in the article was a conference sponsored by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration entitled "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith."

The article notes that many of the speakers argued that Justice Anthony Kennedy and many other federal judges needs to be impeached for "bad behavior". One speaker favorably quoted Joseph Stalin, adopting his motto, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." He tried to make it more palatable by leaving out the "Death solves all problems" part, but I think the sentiment is clear. The Post writer, however, draws the opposite conclusion:

"Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence."

I'm not sure why the writer presumes Vieira has something less extreme in mind. I'm sorry, but using a quote from the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world in which that murderer describes purges as a solution to political problems sounds very much like an advocation for violence. Sure, Vieira didn't say, "We should kill judges", but he didn't have to. The implication is obvious. Context, as we all know, is vitally important, and the context here is all about getting rid of the judiciary system as we know it.

The problem, as I see it, is that the media, Democrats, moderate Republicans and most of the American voting populace fails to understand what the radical wing of the Republican party is all about. In fact, more than not understanding, they cannot comprehend of an American political party adopting the murderous rhetoric, philosophy and tactics of Stalinists and fascists. And yet, that is what the Republican party leadership and their counterparts in the conservative movement are increasingly doing. Right now their scope seems limited, but do we really think that their eliminationist focus is going to stay solely on judges? Hell no! I'll point you to Sam Rosenfeld's post in Tapped which includes this list of horribles presented by one speaker:

"My job is stand in the breach between the left and the president’s judicial nominations . . . You know who they are. You’ve seen them. The pro-abortion fanatics and the radical feminists, the atheists who file lawsuits attacking the pledge of allegiance and the ten commandments, the environmentalist tree-hugging animal-rights extremists, the one-world globalists who worship at the altar of the United Nations and international law, the militant homosexuals and the anti-military hippie pieceniks, the racial agitators who believe we are all created equal but some are a little more equal than others, the union bosses and the socialists posing as journalists and college professors, the government bureaucrats and the tax-and-spend junkies, the Hollywood elitists, the air-headed actors and singers who think that we actually care what they think, the pornographers who fund the leftists and who won’t be happy until every Bible in every child’s hands is replaced with the latest copy of Hustler magazine, and of course the gun-grabbing trial lawyers and their willing accomplices in the United States Senate who won’t be happy until they disarm every last citizen down to the last bee bee and paintball gun."

Read through that and tell me that these radical fundies and friends will stop at the judges.

Anyway, these are the people that we're up against. They hate democracy. They hate freedom. They hate diversity of opinion, diversity of race, diversity of belief. They want to institute a theocratic plutocracy (yes, I mean plutocracy) and it's a damn scary thing.