Alan Grayson's "Taliban Dan" Ad Was an Understatement

Digby says:

Here's a headline for you:

Alan Grayson Vindicated in 'Taliban Dan' Claim -- By Religious Right Leaders and Former Activists

That's from Adele Stan's article in Alternet about Sarah Posner's blockbuster piece this week in Religion Dispatches about Bill Gothard -- Daniel Webster's mentor and spiritual leader. Stan explains:

No less a source than FactCheck.org condemned Grayson for the ad, saying that Webster's words, made during remarks to one of Gothard's organizations, were taken out of context. Grayson's ad featured a clip of Webster saying, "Wives submit to your husbands." While the admakers unwisely edited the video of Webster's speech to suggest that was his own instruction (in reality, he was telling husbands that, when reading the Bible with their wives, to skip over those parts), a new report at Religion Dispatches by Sarah Posner makes clear that wifely submission -- even in the face of abuse -- is precisely the teaching given to Gothard's followers, who include Webster.

At the time Grayson ran the ad, people all over the political spectrum were in a tizzy about using the word "Taliban" because it was outrageous to even suggest that Americans could be as primitive as those Islamic fundamentalists who still stone women for adultery. There was plenty of scholarship showing Webster's mentor Bill Gothard's affiliation with groups that had once called for capital punishment for gays and adulterers, and there was a ton of evidence that he personally belonged to a patriarchal cult that sits at the very fringe of American religious life.

SNIP

I am told by many liberals that it's wrong to be concerned about the fact that Daniel Webster is one of the most powerful people in the nation. Or that others like him, including Jim Bob Duggar, are in politics. And I just can't go along with that. As far as I'm concerned it's the same thing as ignoring the rise of the Taliban back in the 1990s, when people like Grover Norquist and Dana Rohrabacher were extolling their virtues as men of God who were bringing order to chaos in Afghanistan while women's rights groups like RAWA were desperately trying to get the word out about the repression of women. We were told that women's rights have different cultural meanings and that it was inappropriate to be concerned. I don't think that worked out very well.

The fact is that women's rights are human rights and when patriarchal religious fundamentalists of any stripe become political everyone should be concerned, because it isn't "just about women" (although that's an offensive way to think about it in itself) it's about men too. These people are authoritarians and should be exposed for what they are.

Grayson tried to do that and used the "T" word, which is out of bounds because apparently Americans can never be compared to anything evil, whether historical or contemporary, even if the analogy is extremely apt. He got hammered not only for being imprecise in his ad but for taking on his opponents fringe religious views at all. I'm sure it was noted by other politicians and it will be a cold day in hell before anyone does it again. And that's too bad because Grayson was right. Webster is a member of a fringe, patriarchal cult that is as far out of the Christian mainstream as the Taliban is outside the mainstream of Islam which gained power through their political efforts. Let's hope the Christian Reconstructionists in the Tea Party (and there are many) don't have similar success. It may be unlikely but the fact that it's becoming increasingly impossible to even talk about this in real terms means I doubt anyone would even know it's happened until after the fact.

I urge you to read Posner's whole article. It's fascinating and important: “Taliban Dan’s” Teacher: Inside Bill Gothard’s Authoritarian Subculture.

Remember that this is where it all comes from: the prayer breakfasts, the bible classes in public school, the "in god we trust" license plates, the abortion restrictions to "protect" minors, the two-guns-in-every-crib laws, the severing of the social safety net, the draconian and self-destructive war on drugs, ad nauseum.

It all comes from the same Domininionist freakazoids out to restore the Inquisition.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?