WWJD? The Religious Right's Backing of Walker's Union-Busting

[Zephie]

Today’s conservative Christian leaders say that Jesus opposes a secure living wage, and that workers should accept as good slaves whatever treatment their employers dish out.

While the assault on unions by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP governors and legislators seems driven mostly by the billionaire Koch brothers and corporate-funded groups, religious right leaders and activists have spent decades creating fertile soil for anti-union campaigns through the promotion of “biblical capitalism,” which researcher Rachel Tabachnick describes as “the belief that unregulated capitalism is biblically mandated.”

Pseudo-historian David Barton, a frequent guest of broadcaster Glenn Beck, is using his newly enlarged audience to promote American exceptionalism (America was created by its divinely-inspired founders as a country of, by, and for Christians) and Tea Party-on-steroids economics (Jesus and the Bible oppose progressive taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and minimum wage laws). The religious right has a long practice of claiming divine mandate for its policy agenda as it makes for an exceptionally potent political argument: if God supports radically limited government, then progressive policies are not only wrong but evil, and supporters of liberal policies are not only political opponents but enemies of God.

Two days after the November 2010 elections, Barton, Newt Gingrich, and Jim Garlow (who runs Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership group), held a conference call with pastors to celebrate conservative political gains. On the call, Garlow and Barton asserted a biblical underpinning for far-right economic policies: Taxation and deficit spending, they said, amount to theft, a violation of the Ten Commandments. The estate tax, Barton said, is “absolutely condemned” by the Bible as the “most immoral” of taxes. Jesus, he said, had “teachings” condemning the capital gains tax and minimum wage.

http://www.alternet.org/story/150500/wwjd_the_religious_right%27s_backing_of_walker%27s_union-busting

[northoftheborder]

1. These Prepubs are so scary and disgusting I'm speechless....

[mod mom]

2. The new fangled pro-American Jesus is against the teaching of the social gospel.

He is pro-war (on America's side of course) and favors Wall Street greed over the hardships of the working poor. He backs those who destroy the earth for corporate profit motives because of course his father put the resources there for man to exploit!

:mad:

[BadgerKid]

3. And they'll get your little dog too!!! n/t

[jdadd]

4. I found him.......

[OnionPatch]

5. It's also biblically mandated that people treat each other as "brothers."

No one, I mean NO ONE, would expect their brother or sister to work all day, every day of their lives, without decent compensation. The way the right treats the working class is despicable and not even remotely Christian.

[Fuzz]

6. American Jesus doesn't care about people. The whole died for your sins thing is for the afterlife,

he didn't care about people while they were alive. That's why he didn't feed or heal them.