As flag-draped coffins continue to stream back to America under cover of darkness and a media blackout, as the funerals for the war dead continue to receive only local news coverage, as voices of dissent are systematically excluded by mainstream media, last week in North Carolina, the state that is home to Blackwater USA, there occurred an obscene spectacle of another sort in a Baptist church when a group of deacons voted to expel church members who don't support President Bush and his policies.
Bush supporters in the congregation reportedly stood and applauded as excommunicated Democrats walked out of their church. Bush made no public statement distancing himself from the events in North Carolina. He and his neoconservative cabal seem not to understand or care that theocracy, one-party government in which only those who hold certain religious views are allowed to participate, is antithetical to our form of government and our way of life. In fact, the president's silence signals his support for House Resolution 235, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act sponsored by Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina. HR 235, which now has 165 co-sponsors, all of whom wish to see religion further politicized, would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow churches and other religious organizations to engage in explicitly partisan political activity, including endorsing favored candidates and demonizing others, while maintaining their tax exempt status. If HR 235 becomes law, the only possible outcome is an America ever more deeply and dangerously divided.
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