Paradise Lost

[DemocratsForProgress]

Jeff Rosenzweig: Paradise Lost

“As above, so below,” says a venerable precept of esoteric thought. A modern addendum might be, “And it gets even worse farther down.”

By 121 votes, Republican Bob Beauprez won election to a House seat in the Colorado 7th in 2002. He was reelected in 2004. There were rumors of a Beauprez Senate run in 2008, but it never happened. This year, he’s challenging Democratic incumbent Governor John Hickenlooper, after losing the 2006 gubernatorial race to Hickenlooper’s predecessor, Bill Ritter. Beauprez can afford to indulge his electoral fetish, since profits from real estate development and a controlling interest in Heritage Bank have given him a net worth of an estimated $100 million. And he’s evidently convinced that he has something to contribute to the body politic. But what?

If you guessed intellectual acuity, guess again. In 2012, Beauprez was interviewed by Christian internet radio host Perry Atkinson, who raised the topic of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty then still in negotiation. That gave Beauprez an opening to yammer about “American sovereignty” and “individual liberty and freedom” and “our right to arm ourselves, especially as individuals.” None of it had anything to do with the UN treaty, of course, but Atkinson’s is an audience that clicks in just to have its confirmation bias legitimized, not to be “informed” in any generally accepted sense of the word. Beauprez obliged, claiming the treaty would “cede” sovereignty to the UN and restrict, if not destroy, 2nd Amendment rights, assertions that still echo throughout the cyber-right. He broadened his critique to describe the administration as “pushing the boundaries like none I think we have ever seen,” which even the laziest student of American history should be able to recognize as a fictional construct, and not even a clever one. He also said, “I hope and pray that… we don’t see another revolution in this country. I hope and pray we don’t see another civil war,” which in the context of the interview was as good as saying he hopes and prays for just that.

Which brings us to Paradise. Teddy Bear Paradise – a Texas woman whose parents had the good sense to name Denise – is now in custody after pleading guilty to threatening the President. It seems Ms Paradise sent him a letter saying she was going to kill him, something she later reiterated to the Secret Service...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/08/16/paradise-lost/

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1. Thanks for finding

this excellent article. But how sad that in our beautiful state we are moving toward the crazy right where Bob Beauprez and Teddy Bear make sense to many who call themselves "educated Christians". God help us all.