In a recent appearance on a Christian's Engaged live stream, Texas State Representative Matt
Schaeffer unabashedly espoused his radical Christian nationalist ideology. Schaeffer argued that every elected official
must prioritize worshiping God and translating Biblical commands in the public policy. He asserted
that any government failing to uphold biblical mandates is defying God. Schaeffer's rhetoric underscores
a concerning trend towards intertwining religious beliefs and political power, potentially undermining the principles
of secular governance and individual freedoms. His views extend to using state power to
outlaw abortion, framing it as a religious duty to protect the unborn. This
intersection of religion and politics raises questions about the separation of church and state and
the political consequences for civil liberties. Destroy some right wing watch by Kyle Madley
on March eight, twenty twenty four. Now, when I first read this,
I couldn't help but think this is he's almost preaching to his base here.
Is this is not just something that we hear from isolated incidents. It
used to be more isolated, but this is getting more and more popular in
evangelical circles. This type of rhetoric. You know, they whether you call
them Christian nationalists, just good old, plain old fashion fascist fascism in the
name of God or dominionism. What they're looking for is to control every aspect
of not their lives, but of everyone's lives. And you know, we've
we talked about different things before, and whatever bad beliefs they want to have,
I'll push back against them, but they have a right to believe that.
But once they start stepping even a peaky over on the other side of
infringing on someone else's rights, Look, I don't care what you think God
told you that. Don't tell me to do what your God told you to
do, go ahead and do it. But once again, I do find
it interesting that they're back to controlling women. We're going to make sure that,
you know, we tell make sure abortion because he really focus on abortion
as one of those major issues, which I'm actually glad they're doing, because
I think that the more we focus on abortion, the more fired up some
people will be about this rhetoric and push back against it. But for me,
at the ultimate the end of the day, it comes back to something
I've heard Jason talk about before, and that is that to me, they're
breaking their oath of office. They're unfitt And you know, this is unbelievable
because to say that God's rules are premiere. You know, I went and
looked in the oath of offices and the name and by the authority of the
State of Texas, I do solemnly swear affirm that I will faithfully execute the
duties of office in the State of Texas, and we'll do the best of
my ability to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of
the United States. So help me God. Well, fuck the God part.
But when it comes down to defending the Constitution, I don't think anyone
can claim that's what's going on here. Richard, Well, you know,
every time one of these people pops up, it makes me think about their
narrow, dogmatic positions. They always raise several simple questions which they generally can't
realistically answer without showing their sectarian dogmatism. For example, which god or gods
are you talking about? Two? What religion? Under which god or gods
you're talking about? I mean, Christianity has two or three thousand subsets Islam
has two major claimants. The Jews have five or six different levels of from
reform to you know, ultra acidic. I mean, so we get we
get to a place where what are we going to need a new supreme religious
court to decide whose holy book is the right one and what each page means.
I mean, you know, it's just because differences are going to arise.
So it just it just drives me crazy that these people are not there
to represent the people that voted for them, because you know, in my
district, if somebody's being like that, they wouldn't be representing me because I
don't believe even their shit. And so you know, you said what you
said about not doing their duty absolutely correct, But it's also just their frame
of mind that somehow, their narrow, you know, evidentiary less beliefs should
be telling other people what to do. And that's just crazy. I fully
agree, man, I really do. I'm sure Jason has some comments,
tell us, tell us Jason, oh god, I don't let me.
Let me let me say this in a sweet kind way. You know,
it just it fucking blows my mind. It really does, and it shouldn't,
but it does. You know, this man, is openly endorsing treasonous,
anti American ideals that directly oppose life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Look, I have no problem with somebody believing in religious bullshit, as
long as they protect my right to not believe in that bullshit. I'll gladly
support someone's right to uh not have an abortion as long as they defend a
pregnant person's right to choose. I'll gladly support the right to vote for some
stupid fucking idiot as long as they support my right to vote for another stupid
fucking idiot. To me, that's America in a nutshell. It's I may
hate you, sure you hate me, but we have common needs and we
need to defend the right of one another to hate each other in peace.
You know, again, it's treasonous, it's anti American, and these people
are scumbacks, they really are, and they're striving to tear us apart.
Ultimately, they're pitting workers against workers. I mean, look, if you
read that statement that the Texas GOP released, I think it was like twenty
sixteen, maybe twenty seventeen. I mean, I guess you'll have to be
sharing my terror it's this shit that's peddled in that document is anti working class,
anti freedom, anti democracy, anti American. It demonizes the poor,
it demonizes pregnant people, it demonizes queer people. It promotes misinformation, disinformation,
and anti scientific ideology that is eroding what little progress we've made in this
state. Again, I'm a Texan there and Richard Hill on this. These
are capitalists that are profiting off a title and a grift. They are using
the label Christian, They're lining their pockets, and they're scamming people who think
they represent their interests. All the while these same working class people are shooting
themselves in the feet. All these fuckers are laughing all the way to the
bank and living atrocious lives that do not represent the way I was raised as
a Christian, to give to the poor, to look out for the needy,
and to take care of your community, to defend the rights of others.
Even though you may disagree, it's not the same thing. It's this
Americ christ thing has fucking morphed into this capitalistic, imperialistic, fucking money grab
machine that use a single issue voting issues like abortion. That's all this fucking
piece of shit is jumping on it's single issue shit because he knows that's the
thing. I don't know. Look, Scott isshootes you because I'm going to
keep fucking ranting it just it makes me sick because this fucking piece of shit
is from my state and he doesn't represent the majority. That's the problem with
Abbott and all those people. Sorry, I can't get too political. I
just his views do not represent the views of the majority of the humans here
in this state and the needs, and what he is doing is harming those
people by spreading this. Sorry, Scott's to you. No, no,
no, I totally agree, and in fact, I'll just continue on your
rant. Right, we're talking about Christian nationalism. That's neither Christian nor nationalist,
right, It's it's not it's well, it is, but it's not
in support of Christianity in many ways. It's not in support of the United
States in many ways. As both of you were just saying, they're going
and they're violating their oath, they're violating the Constitution. They're trying to it's
not about governing. It's not about you know, improving the United States.
It's not about bringing us together as a people. It's about lining their pockets.
It's about getting their personal agendas pushed through by any means necessary and infidel.
You mentioned at the and the intro to this segment, you used a
word nijan. It's down here unabashedly. Okay. So that and that's the
really frightening thing here is because first of all they're doing they're they're really really
pushing the envelope here, if even that right, if not just blowing the
envelope totally out of the water, but they're doing it right out in the
open, and it's working. It's working in many ways. Obviously we're know
there's many people catching on it. They saw a big backfire when they you
know, in the in you know, when they were pushing the abortion issue
before, and so they saw, you know, they saw some pushbacks.
So there are people that are catching onto these kind of things. But there
are ways that that should be used. If if you if you do have
a belief if you do you know, if you do want to mold the
future of the country based on your beliefs, which is fine, you know,
that's that's part of what what being an American is all about, is
knowing that you'll be heard knowing that your voice matters, knowing that your voice
counts. There are things that you can do in in pursuit of that.
You can do. You can vote, you can uh, there's legal activities.
You can have discussions just like we're doing right now. You can think,
yeah, you can think, you can uh. You know, certain
types of advertising are perfectly legit ways of putting ideas out in the public sphere
and letting you know, the public digest them and you know, keep some
reject others, and and based on the merits of those arguments. There are
ways, though that that we're seeing come to four unabashedly coming to four,
that our manipulated, manipulative that are subterfuge, that are are trying to push
it in spite of what America wants, in spite of the will of the
people, for example, refusing to hold a vote on you know, for
a nominated Supreme Court candidate, right undermining confidence and elections, jerrymandering, more
severe forms of advertising, gas lighting. We see fake videos coming out,
we see all kinds of stuff happening, and and it's really it boils down
to, you know, if you really have confidence that your ideas are good
and are correct and our best for the country, then let's hear them,
let's discuss them, let's talk about them, Let's go through our normal process
of of of figuring out the way we as a group, as a nation,
as a as a planet, want want our future. You know,
that's kind of that's kind of what democracy is all about. Although we have
heard them bad mouthing democracy. We just a couple of weeks ago we had
our story about the Seapac speech that was literally talking about bringing down democracy,
democracy as a goal, saying it outright and openly, unabashedly bashing democracy,
and so you know, it's really just it's it's hard to imagine that this
isn't this How could this not just be a big dog whistle? I mean,
this is really they're they're using, They're pulling on these emotional strings,
they're pulling on these psychological strings. There's manipulation happening here. And you know,
as as somebody who's on the on you know that doesn't agree with this
particular stance, it's easy for me to see. It's easy for us to
see and to talk about what exactly is happening here. You know, I
try to put myself in the mind of people who disagree with me, and
and it's you know, this one's really hard for me to swallow. It's
it's hard for me to imagine that somebody can can sit there and not see
what's going on, but clearly that's happening. I mean, you know,
many people that we know personally, probably you know, are going along with
this particular view, and so it's really I don't know, it's really challenging.
It's really challenging. But I want to ask a question to the panel
here. Do you think that part of all of their plan is to normalize
Christian nationalism? Are they trying to just are they trying to just push it
in our faces so that we get used to it. If so, do
you think that they're going to be successful? Infidel what do you think about
that? I think that there's definitely a segment of that group that is looking
to normalize these absolutely bigoted, intolerant views. I think that it's shortsighted.
I am afraid that I know people, my wife's family in particular, who
were completely a political who now are completely on board with all this, but
they're overlooking the fact that they're an extreme minority religion. They are not mainstream
Christianity. And what I think that they fail to understand is that if you
normalize something like this and we really do become that Christian nation that they like
to falsely portray us as our origins, what you're going to get is the
same violence that we saw in Europe before this country. Because then once the
Christians, for the lack of a better way to put it, get in
the power, then the problem is going to be is who's really a Christian,
Who's Christian enough? And then you're going to see people who thought that,
hey, we were going to do things my way because a lot of
them I think are politically ignorant, and I don't mean that as an insult,
they just really are not well educated on politics. And they've been drafted
in in this cause because their church preaches this to them weekend and week out,
and they become politicalized and radicalized and they're going, yeah, yeah,
yeah, we need to make this a Christian nation again. We need to
do this, we need to do that, and they forget that as soon
as some of the people that are in power who are screaming that, they're
going to be like, oh, well, you know, you. You
don't accept the Trinity, You're you're not really a Christian. You don't do
this, You're not really a Christian. And they're going to see the same
problems and difficulties that we saw in Europe come, you know, centuries ago,
right back here. Our founders are smart enough to realize we don't want
to recycle that. And that's why the rules were the way they were.
Whether you think they were Christian or not, they knew one thing. We
left that behind for a reason. And I say, now, hey,
wake up, open your eyes and realize we left that behind for a reason.
Let's leave it there. We have enough things that we can disagree about
and work out among ourselves. We don't need to fight the fight that we
had hundreds of years ago. Again, right, Richard, what do you
think? What do you think totally that you know, the dictatorial nature of
the Church of England is what created America to many de Greece because people had
to get the hell out of there. You know. The other thing that
scares me, having a science background before I got into doing legal stuff,
is that if we get into these beliefs that don't deal with evidence and rational
thought and logic, we are going to fall behind scientifically from the rest of
the world, and our economy is going to go straight to hell if there's
in hell. I mean, you know, if you bring up kids telling
them that evolution isn't true and that you have to believe this the earth is
six thousand years old and that's it, and all that kind of stuff,
they're not going to learn things properly. I mean, the one thing about
science is that language is the same in every country. You know, two
and two is four, you know, everywhere. I mean, you know,
that's the thing that that's the language we can communicate with. But when
everybody has their own religious views that are dogmatic, sectarian and against each other's,
then it doesn't look like there's a good hope for for the world staying
you know, peaceful. And the history has been that it hasn't. And
so, you know, if we can get these people to try to think
about stuff as opposed to you know, prophesies, which is their favorite thing
to do like this guy was doing, we have some hope if people will
start thinking more and be critical and analytical and you know, check stuff out
and see what makes sense, not what you want it to be. Because
your parents told you you had to believe that, right, you know,
And that's the problem. And these these guys want to get control of everything
and tell us how to live. And I don't want anybody telling me how
to live. So do you think maybe they're doing maybe they're like because they're
bringing it up in stump speeches. Now they're bringing it up in you know,
in the news, and they're they're talking about it unabashedly, right,
And so do you think, Richard, do you think that that's part of
the plan? Though? Do you think we want to because there's things that
you say quietly, and there's things that you say all loud, and now
they're saying this out loud. Do you think they're trying to make it?
Put that in, make it part of the normal, you know, American
vernacular? Are they trying to change? It's not the American minacular. There
is no question in my mind that these people that talk like that, they
want a theocracy and they want to you know, be again, you get
back to that same old thing. Who's going to interpret the word of God?
I mean, this is this is always the big fight amongst these people,
right, I mean, even with the with the Islamic religion. There's
two major secs, Sunni and Shia. You know, wherever it is,
there's going to be different interpretations when it's not being done on a rational,
evidence based basis. So you know, they want to have a theocracy because
they think that'll give them more control to deal with And I know everybody on
this panel understands this. Dealing with the other that's one of the things they
want to do is you're not the same as me. So I have the
religion, I have control. I can dominate you and push you aside and
make you a second class citizen or a third class citizen, or dead or
in jail if you don't agree with us. So that's what happens. And
you know, just the whole thing about the sexuality stuff, it's been scientifically
established for years that a certain percentage of human beings are going to be homosexual.
That's a scientific reality. And these people keep saying, well that was
a choice. I mean, where are these you know, they just talk
out their butts. They don't even look at research and what's done. Richard,
Let's put a pin in that. Let's put a pin in that right
there, talking out their butts Okay, I want to get Jason's out of
Jason's opinion. Are they normalizing Christian nationalism? Is this a strategic move that
they're doing by the way that they're bringing it up, the way that they're
pushing it and basically pushing it into the news cameras, right, They're putting
it in all of our tongues, in all of our minds. Is that
part of a plan? Is are they trying to normalize things? It's already
been normalized since Limbaugh. I don't think. I don't think they're trying.
I think it's already been done. I think the reason Trump was elected is
because Limbaugh existed. I think the current landscape is directly related to people like
am Alex Jones and other media things. I don't know. I think that
the Christian nationalist language has been getting established since Reagan and focus on the family
and all this stuff about purity and then all these things the way they established
it. And if you look at there's myriads of empirical studies that show you
that religious belief in itself is negligibly harmful, even if it's especially if it's
like a culturally relative belief that doesn't the thing that gives it fucking power and
the power to do what we're all pissed off about is an authoritarian government.
So you take authoritarianism, ritual talitarianism, you mix it with religion, and
Richard's like, who's going to interpret it? The government, that's who's going
to interpret it. So what we're seeing now somebody else. Yeah, well,
what we're seeing and where we see it get power is when a government
starts to interpret the religion for everybody else and on, you know. So
when you start thinking about it, that's what the theocracy is. That's the
government interpreting the religion on it, for everybody else and enforcing that interpretation the
governmental and it's and it's it's it's authoritarianism and totalitarianism. So you get a
religion that already has an authoritarian backbone, and then you get a government system
that is an authoritarian backbone, and they merge so perfectly. This is how
cults, This is how cults start. A cult generally is not a far
deviation from the already pre existing major religion in that region. That's how they're
able to do it. That's why in let's say in California, you have
little you have things like transcendental meditation and meditation and a lot of hippie shit
that's just like normal. That's called culturally, you know, acceptable beliefs out
there. But that's why you get cults that are able to kind of branch
off but still have that same ship. That's why Texas you have Christian cults,
That's why you have other cults of different because it takes what's already pre
existing and just deviates a little bit, and just deviates a little bit.
That's all you're doing. Whenever religion and government merged together. You're taking what
the religion has, you're taking what the government has, and you're all just
kind of working and you're not really deviating too much. But then you put
people in power and figureheads and you enforce it, and after a while,
everybody just kind of recognizes that they were already bowing to an authoritarian religion.
So sacrificing your empathy for authority, which we've seen in empirical studies across the
board and we know about already, is already second nature. So of course
you're going to sacrifice your empathy for authority because you've been trained since your fucking
developmental years to do that automatically without question, and to feel guilt and to
feel shame and to feel like you deserve to be punished for not doing that
and for being skeptical. So yes, I believe it has already happened.
I just believe the language changes, just like instead of charisma, and my
kid says, oh, they've got that riz like it just means charisma.
You know, that shit is seen, it's like, okay, So that
stuff's like cool and kind of edgy, you know what a scene for me
was like talking about you know, the words may change and delivery may change,
but it's still the same shit. And it's been going on since Reagan
era, and all we're seeing it now is just a different name to the
same fucking dog. I don't see anything different. I just see people being
bolder and more actually being a much harder line, and people deviating more from
reason and being okay with it. And we actually see this increase across the
board globally, we have seen an increase in religiosity as opposed to a decrease
due to the Internet, due to time to space compression, due to global
like true globalism. You know what I'm saying, like global connection. We
people thought that religiuriosity would plummet, but actually now it is skyrocketing, and
it's ridiculous, and I just I don't know. I feel hopeless most of
the time whenever we talk about these things, because I'm looking at a country
to where the majority of the people believe that there's gonna be a judgment day.
I mean, I don't know. I get ran bout this. I
can talk about this for two hours, so I don't know. It's easy
to make these decisions when you know that there's that big prize at the end.
Right, you know, this is just filthy rag. You're making no
decisions. You're literally making no decisions. It's easy to give your decision making
ability over. It's funny because Hobbes argues for that, you know, but
not in so much this way. This is more like you're sacrificing your decisions
on the altar of Christ. Being a slave to Christ. Of course,
people are going to be okay giving over their freedoms and rights because they're already
fucking prime to since birth, to be a slave to Christ, to be
a slave to Allah, you know, to be all these things. I
have no power. I'm just part of this flow. You know, that's
what it is. It's just priming to give over your fucking any part of
your will or freedom to the machine man. It's disgusting. What you're saying
is we have Christian national is already normalized to the point where we have this
population that are prime to receive that kind of thing. As you mentioned before
that there's there's tons and tons of research that shows that there's connections between you
know, individuals who are prone to accept an authoritarian position are prone to accept
an authoritarian rule. I've seen videos saying yeah, I would accept the king,
no problem, and you know it's you know these are and you know,
at the same time they're wearing the American flag. I was like,
well, I'm not sure if you're you know, maybe you should read that
history book. I think we had a problem with the last time we had
a king. That's why we got the United States here. But it's so
it's like we're baby stepping to tyranny, right, We're starting We're starting out
here at this level where we have, you know, people that are prime
to this, and then it's just an easy push. It's just an easy
push off the edge and I did have one other question. I want to
quick maybe we can just get a quick answer from the panel here. Everybody
kind of has mentioned you know, they have their right to believe what they
want, but it's when you start pushing it on other people that we run
into problems. So let's talk about this specific article here about Matt Schaeffer.
Does his sincerity? Does that matter if he's sincere? Shouldn't we support his
right to say these kind of things or does that matter? Should he should?
Should he have the right to express his views even when we rage against
those views themselves. Does sincerity matter? Infidel, I think that sincerity matters
in one sense, but not at all when it comes down to the acceptance
of his message, because at the end of the day, like many other
people, they want to bring about the end of the world. They're looking
to bring about in apocalypse. So when you sincerely believe in a belief that
the end goal is to bring about the end of the world literally, I
think we should all not only be hesitant and as Jason mentioned, frightened and
concerned about it, but adamantly oppose that in every possible way. Richard and
I would say, at all this is one of the reasons why these folks
don't pay any attention to what's happening to our climate. You know, I
have two grandkids, and you know they're like six and eight years old,
and thirty years from now when I'm dead, I would like them to be
able to breathe the air. You know, it would be real nice that
they would have an environment, a planet that was healthy and safe to be
on. But the way things are going, especially with these people who think,
well, Jesus, you know, Jesus is going to come in the
next twenty or thirty years anyway. You know how many times people have predicted
that when it didn't happen, they keep predicting. If you look at the
Bible, he said it was going to happen within a generation of him,
and it never happened. I mean, it's a joke, but it really
as a destructive thing in our society because it keeps us you know, sincerity.
I don't care about his sincerity. What I can care about is if
he tries to implement that stuff. I mean, he can say whatever he
wants. We have sincere or not. There's a line across this line.
Chris sincerity has nothing to do with whether I'm going to accept it or not.
It's it's based on the actual politics of what he's laying down and with
what he said. I'm against him as long as I'm breathing. Okay,
so, Jason, Then if so, if sincerity, regardless of sincerity,
Richard is saying, regardless of sincerity, you can't cross this line, should
we support his right to rile up his troops to try to push across that
line. Is that within the bounds of a sincere belief? Or should we
push back against that as well? Well? I mean, you know,
I mean, the guy's representative and he's supposed to represent Look, I just
I can't view that guy other than a fucking traitor and treason is what he's
doing right now is anti American. And I don't I don't give a fuck
about this sincerity. So maybe you think he's already across the line. He's
not trying to push across the line, he's trying to drag you serious,
we've all been so primed to like accept this type of red, all of
us, even all of us on this panel, We've all been so primed
to like we've heard this shit so much that look, Here's the fucking problem
is that if this dude was Islamic, people would be fucking burning down his
house. If this dude was of some obscure like smaller religion, people would
be calling him insane and crazy. If the god name that he was using
was a different god name and he was saying this shit, they'd be saying
he'd be out of awe. He'd already be outsted out of office, saying
that he's anti American, that he's trying to impose insane religious shit on people.
I mean, this is the only reason nobody is freaking out over this
is because we are already accepting Christian nationalism as a norm in our fucking life.
Everybody is just about to privilege. Then it comes back to privilege.
Yeah right, yeah, okay, all right, well thanks everyone. If
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