Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Smart people saying smart things (3.24.25)

Smart people saying smart things (3.24.25)

Last updated on: March 24, 2025 at 3:54 pm by Fred Clark

0 Comments

Smart people saying smart things (3.24.25) 2025-03-24T15:54:50-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

David M. Perry, “The Trump administration is ready to abandon kids like my son”

Attacks on disabled people are emerging on all fronts. The new “Make America Healthy Again” campaign reads as a targeted attack against support for conditions such as autism or mental illness, not to mention chronic diseases of all sorts. As they did during the last Trump regime, Republicans are seeking to gut Medicaid. Looming closures of Social Security Administration offices around the country will make it much harder for recipients of disability insurance and benefits under the program to apply, get approved and contest denials.

Then there is the Education Department. … The White House is still attempting to abolish the department by executive order. For decades, federal funding has been absolutely crucial for special education programs. The Office of Civil Rights in the department provides the means for disabled students and their families to demand accountability and compliance with the law. Terminating the department could also accelerate the devolution of public education into state voucher programs for private schools, which are not legally required to accept disabled students.

Robert O. Paxton, in Anatomy of Fascism

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Liz Dye, “One Firm Fights, One Firm Forfeits”

Willie James Jennings, “Whiteness rooted in place”

This is what we came to call European: the power to transform the land and the perception of the people. A racial vision started to emerge. It floated around in many places with many differences in body type, skin color, and so forth. It didn’t come out of nowhere. But now, inside this matrix, it starts to harden. It starts to become a way of perception, not simply of a conjecture. This is where Whiteness begins.

So unless you know that this is a Christian operation, you cannot grasp the absolute power of race to define existence right now, even when people move beyond that Christian matrix and say they don’t confess it or agree with it. They are still inside it. That’s my definition of Whiteness: it is a way of perceiving the world and organizing and ordering the world by the perception of one’s distorted place within it. But it is also more than a perception: Whiteness includes the power to place that perception on other people and to sustain it.

Ansley Quiros, “Christianity, White Supremacy & the Rise of American Nazism”

It’s horrifyingly germane now. And it was then, part of the broader story of American racism and the American Right, which I should have known. After all, I had just read J. Kameron Carter’s masterful book Race: A Theological Account, which sets out to understand how “the discourse of theology aided and abetted the processes by which ‘man’ came to be viewed as a modern, racial being.” Though it’s a deep and complex book, the origins of this racializing, Carter concludes, are in a heretical anti-Semitism. “The genesis,” he writes, was in “the theological problem of Christianity’s quest to sever itself from its Jewish roots” which required first casting Jews “as a race group in contrast to Western Christians”– a non-Occidental, later non- white, group– and then deeming themselves superior. It’s a stunning, deeply intellectual and theological history, but what’s clear from Carter’s telling is that all racism is first anti-Semitic, an anti-Jesus Christ heresy. It’s been there all along. And it’s still here right now a fundamental part of the American far Right.

Inae Oh, “In Your Face: The Brutal Aesthetics of MAGA”

The new look among MAGA women is consistent with the conservative movement’s decades-old willingness to embrace women’s rights—up to a point. As Ronnee Schreiber, a politics professor at San Diego State University, notes: “The caveat is, ‘Of course, women should have the ability to make choices, but we don’t want to go as far as the feminists.’”

At a time when the GOP is viciously exploiting transgender Americans as a cultural scapegoat, Schreiber notes, hyper-femininity also helps reinforce the “norms and differences between femininity and masculinity.” In this way, women in Republican politics show their male counterparts that they are committed to the same conservative goals, but are not threatening. “It reaffirms the femininity of women,” she adds, “even if they have power.” Here is the gender-affirming care the right can celebrate.

Heather Cox Richardson, “March 22, 2025”

Senator Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation. On June 1, 1950, with McCarthy sitting two rows behind her, Smith stood up in the Senate to speak. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she said. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves, she said. She condemned those trying to stifle dissent.

“I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear,” she said. “As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist. They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”

Senator Smith ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Holly Brewer, “The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a King”

The Founders were hardly all wise or all knowing, but they did understand a history that we have now forgotten. There’s a reason that they so carefully included accountability for governors, and presidents, and wanted it for kings. They not only experienced abuses of power at the hands of royal governors, and at the whims of kings, abuses they recounted in the Declaration of Independence. They knew as basic history that this question was at the center of disputes over the actions of unrestrained monarchs during England’s two revolutions in the seventeenth century.

The 1686 case of Godden v. Hales affirmed the power of James II, king of England, to ignore all laws and not be bound by them. Like the decision in Trump v. U.S., the judges could cite no substantial precedent. Before the decision, James II personally interrogated the justices, all of whom held their positions at his pleasure. When it appeared that some of the 12 justices on England’s highest court might not rule as he wished, James II fired them and replaced them with other more amenable justices. After the decision, which cited “the King’s will,” James II’s actions became increasingly egregious, so much so that there was a revolution against him, called the “Glorious Revolution” because his soldiers refused to fight for him. The Convention Parliament that met afterward, in the spring of 1689, requested all of the records from the case be brought to them. They then fired all of the high court justices, levied fines on them, ruled that they could never again hold any office. They also decreed that no high court decisions from the reign of James II could ever be cited as precedent.

Today’s Supreme Court has just recreated one of the most despicable cases in English history, a case that signified the apex of absolutism in British history and was repudiated by a revolution for the damage it caused. Their language about presidents facing no responsibility for criminal actions if they are remotely related to their official responsibilities is substantially the same ruling for Trump that Godden v. Hales was for the king of England in 1686.

Uncategorized

smart

Previous Post

March 21, 2025

LBCF: A Grief Denied

Next Post

March 25, 2025 'For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed'

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"My thoughts on impeaching Pete Hegseth, from the Chernobyl miniseriesValery Legasov: And now Dyatlov will ..."

Skybison

The possibility of possibility

"https://bsky.app/profile/cpsc.gov/post/3mzxprzskrs26"

Jon Maki

The possibility of possibility

"Is that Melon Usk in the picture?"

MG Remoaner

A Psalm for Election Day

"I remember A: but not B:. It was just A: for floppies and C: for ..."

MG Remoaner

A Psalm for Election Day

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What woman followed Naomi to Bethlehem and later married Boaz?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Ruth Sarah Hannah Esther