The GOP now the "Torture Party" and the "Klan Party."

And I am well aware that most Republicans are not racist, or not openly racist.  Most of the people I know would never associate with a Klan member any more than they would openly endorse torture.  But those who vote Republican are supporting both.  They just don't want to acknowledge it.

The most recent example comes with the incoming Majority Whip, who, as it turns out, spoke at a White Nationalist conference back in 2002.  Of course, he "didn't know" they were racists, even though he has always spoken well of David Duke, and the Iowa Cubs knew enough about the conference to move hotels.

But the reality is that since the Dixiecrats left the Democratic party, the Republican party has been growing more and more racist.  After all, it was Ronald Reagan who made his famous "state's rights" speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi--where civil rights workers were murdered.  Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond led the right wing of the GOP for years.  And now, the GOP is the party that has decided that reducing black vote is a good thing, and that prosecuting cops who kill black men is a bad thing.

But they aren't racist. Just ask them. They can't be racist. Racists are bad people and they aren't bad people. And me pointing out that their party has just named a racist to be their majority whip will not change a thing.

If torture is the new GOP horror, the existing original sin is racism. And not one conservative Christian I have asked has addressed this in any meaningful way. I might as well ask for proof that Sarah Palin treats her critics with something approaching Christianity. I might ask to see pictures of a Yeti. Or a Republican to acknowledge climate change.

"Torture is the sort of thing we Americans do."

The saddest sentence I have seen of late comes from this Dish post, "America’s Tortured Conscience":

We Americans like to think that we are good people. (“We are awesome!“) Now it seems clear enough that torture is the sort of thing we Americans do.

Let that sink in a second.

And this from Mother Jones. I knew that we prosecuted Japanese for waterboarding (and remember famously John Ashcroft vociferously objecting to the idea that our waterboarding was the same as the Japanese. But I didn't realize that we prosecuted Japanese officials for other treatments--some of them not as bad as what we did to suspected terrorists. Wow.

And this last note, and one I meant to add to yesterday's post. In 2004, the common defense from conservatives was fear; even from my Christian friends. I remember one of SOF's friends reminding me that "9-11 was scary," as if I had somehow not lived through that day.

But even if we excuse the fear from 2004 (and certainly from 2001), what is their excuse today? Why would these same people of faith have not even thought about the fact that they tolerate the evil of torture?

So conservative Christians still support torture

I wish I could be shocked by this, and I am very mindful that every other demographic group has far too many people who find torture a reasonable and moral way to confront terrorism. But I am so disheartened that people of faith are leading the charge in the wrong way. Still.

Readers will recall that when we first heard of the torture issue, I told SOF that this might be that wedge between the conservative Christian movement and the modern GOP. I didn't expect them to become Democrats, mind you. I just expected them to stand up to Bush and Cheney and tell them that if they tortured, conservative Christians would stay home. They couldn't support and defend torture. They just couldn't.

But they did. And they did with an edge. Our friend Tony and I ran into a SBC pastor from Oklahoma who suggested that me even raising the issue of torture was helping the enemy. Not that torture was bad, me talking about it was bad. Tony later said that he had to stop talking about it in SBC circles, because other Baptists pushed back so hard. When I posted this story yesterday, I had two friends tell me that they knew long term missionaries who recently returned to the US and were shocked by the torture news. In both cases, they were told by American evangelicals that they were wrong--torture wasn't anti-Christian.

In that same post, I felt so bad for the Christian friends who felt the need to point out they didn't support torture. But I also understood the non-Christians who shook their head in complete disbelief. How could a faith that was premised in overcoming the torture and execution of Christ somehow look at torturing Muslims and think that was ok? How could people who watched Mel Gibson's film on the crucifixion and focused on the issue of torture suddenly reverse themselves to find it acceptable?

Via Slactivist, I found this heartfelt plea to Christians to remind them that the practice is antithetical to the very basis of the faith. You Cannot Be Christian and Support Torture - Brian Zahnd:

I don’t know of a greater indictment against American evangelicalism than the fact that a majority of its adherents actually admit they support the use of illegal torture on suspected terrorists! The release of that survey in 2009 was the point where I stopped self-identifying as an evangelical. Today I’m not quite sure what brand of Christian you should categorize me as, but it’s not that!

Evangelical support of torture is what we might call an “eruption of the real.” It’s a horrifying moment of unintended truth-telling where we discover that allegiance to national self-interest trumps allegiance to Jesus Christ.

I have one conservative friend who, I think, simply thinks I have lost my mind over this and other issues. Perhaps he is right. Yet, I can't stop thinking about the problem of a religious faith based in morality and sacrifice becoming one that more easily defends the powerful and attacks the weak. All of that makes more sense when you see them defending torture.

Anyway. About me continuing to rant on this. There are times when I feel that I should just give up and look the other way. It is useless and meaningless to shout into the darkness about poverty or racism or torture. I was pleased to find this very thoughtful essay by Bill Leonard on the issue of torture, race, and Christian conscience. (A nation confronted by conscience). He raised the hope that we could, as a people, question our assumptions about our own moral authority and the idea of American exceptionalism, as well as to discard the idea of a Christian nation. But his quote from Elie Wiesel spoke to me about perhaps why I continue to speak and write on this issue:

In Words from a Witness (1967), Elie Wiesel told of a rabbi whose conscience compelled him to declare: “‘Please do not be murderers, do not be thieves. Do not be silent and do not be indifferent.’ He went on preaching day after day, maybe even picketing. But no one listened. He was not discouraged. He went on preaching for years. Finally someone asked him, ‘Rabbi, why do you do that? Don’t you see it is no use?’ He said, ‘I know it is of no use, but I must. And I will tell you why: in the beginning I thought I had to protest and to shout in order to change them. I have given up this hope. Now I know I must picket and scream and shout so that they should not change me.’”