Food Stamps Recipients = Wild Animals?

Former Texas legislator Rick Green, a speaker for David Barton’s Texas-based WallBuilders organization and Barton’s sidekick on the daily WallBuilders Live radio program, clearly has a pretty low opinion of people who receive food stamps. In a repellent Facebook post  last week (image below), Green compared people who receive that government assistance to wild animals who become dependent on food from humans visiting national parks:

What a country…

The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service asks us to “please do not feed the animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.

Never mind that the country is digging itself out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Most of us — but apparently not Green — might expect that public aid for struggling families would be higher than usual. What’s really astonishing here is the sneering contempt that Green has for those families.

Green and Barton claim WallBuilders promotes Christian values and what they see as America’s Christian heritage. We fail to see such values in Green’s disgusting attack on the poor and unemployed.

Advertisement

Saving America from Marxists and Progressives!

“Saving America from Marxists and Progressives” is just one of the sessions at an upcoming right-wing confab being promoted by Eagle Forum and its far-right affiliate in Texas. The group promises that Eagle Council XL in Virginia next month (September 16-17) “will be a tremendous experience in training to accomplish our legislative and political goals.” Some of the other sessions participants can attend:

• How to Stop Liberals from Stuffing the Ballot Box (But what about right-wing efforts to limit ballot access for minorities, the poor and the elderly?)
• How to Keep Foreign Laws Out of U.S. Law (Sharia hysteria!)
• How to Be a Delegate to the Republican National Convention (What about the Democratic National Convention? Looks like Eagle Forum is playing fast and loose with its tax-exempt, nonprofit status.)
• How to Stop School Tax Increases and Bond Issues (Education is overrated anyway, right?)
• Will Agenda 21 and U.N. Treaties Steal Your Property? (Black helicopters!)
• Saving College Students from Leftwing Indoctrination (Once Eagle Forum is finished with defunding public education, who will be going to college anyway?)

Participants also get a two-hour tour of the U.S. Capitol led by Texan Rick Green from David Barton’s historical revisionist outfit WallBuilders. But will Green explain how his experience as a former two-term Texas legislator with no degree in history qualifies him as an expert who can really instruct his tourists about “the rich history of faith behind our nation’s founding”? While he’s at it, actually, maybe he can also explain why he thinks torturing detainees isn’t any worse than his sister teasing him when they were kids. (Green appears to have removed that pro-torture post from his website, but nothing ever really disappears from the Internet.)

Most Eagle Council XL attendees probably won’t care, of course. They’re more interested in learning how to save America from Marxists, liberals and public schools.

Islam According to WallBuilders

Those WallBuilders folks exaggerate and distort reality so much that even fellow religious-righters sometimes have to correct them. Take, for example, Tuesday’s WallBuilders Live! radio program, hosted by David “Separation of Church and State Is a Myth” Barton and sidekick Rick “Texas Supreme Court Justice Wannabe” Green.

Barton Colleague Seeks High Court Seat

It’s bad enough when legislators try to use government to promote their own religious views over those of everybody else. It’s even worse when politicians try to use the courts to do it. So anyone who supports religious freedom should be concerned that former state Rep. Rick Green — a Republican from Dripping Springs southwest of Austin — is seeking a seat on the Texas Supreme Court. And if he wins, Texas will have a justice who not only opposes separation of church and state but also excuses torture by our own government.