That is the whole argument the right used to create the “moral majority,” though.

I really don’t think you should just flat out refuse funding for religious organizations, but I do think there should be more required of religious organizations and nonprofits in order to receive tax exemption status, especially if they receive federal or state funding on top of tax exemption.

Like there’s a giant hospital monopoly in my state that receives grants from the state, and nonprofit tax exemption status despite the fact that the 2 CEOs both make over $1.5M each.

Meanwhile, the state is playing the whole “no doctors will take medicaid at the current rate, so we have to make cuts to state Medicaid.”

Here’s a fucking idea, how about you don’t give state grants to hospitals with staff that (allegedly) won’t accept state Medicaid or better yet, say that if the hospital is going to be receiving state funds in addition to that sweet ass nonprofit status, not only will they be expected to accept Medicaid, they also have to cap administrative salaries.

Same for churches or any other religious organization. Tax exemption status should be based on showing that you’ve earned that status by actually contributing to improving society. Otherwise it’s just corporate welfare.

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But then you have a state authority discriminating against an organization based on the religion of the organization.

I think there need to be some major changes regarding how tax exemption status is handled, but some churches do a lot of good and offer a lot of help to people in communities that would literally have no where else to turn to.

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Unfortunately, it seems that any organization or even any non federal jurisdiction, that doesn’t want to promote the agenda of the current federal government, and you accept funding, you’re falling into a trap.

So what is the solution to that?

We stop depending on the federal government for funding? I’m sure they would agree is the solution, yet they still expect us to pay tax dollars.

Maybe we should stop allowing the federal government to enforce restrictions that don’t pertain to protecting the rights and liberty of citizens, and we increase the power of people within communities to place restrictions on federal and executive authority over domestic issues.

TFW your government literally just hooked a brain dead pregnant woman up to life support against the wishes of her family, to force her to give birth, but somehow tries to paint political promises of baby baskets for newborns as dystopian nightmare fuel.

Disagree, that’s basically saying if you vote in your best interest you can’t complain.

What the actual fuck

What the actual fuck is wrong with these idiots?

The headline is that Stephen Miller of the Trump administration, owns stock in Palantir. Miller is not Peter Thiel. Miller is the angry bald guy that is always dramatically screaming we should be more aggressive with deportation policy.

Because he, and 10 others in the administration, own stock in the company that also receives millions in federal contracts regarding immigration and deportation, one might suggest Miller has a vested interest in the policies he is always aggressively screaming about being necessary for America’s safety.

Considering that even the conservative Cato institute has said the deportation policies outlined in the big beautiful bill, will ultimately cost tax payers trillions of dollars to fund, one might suggest that the policies Miller and others in the administration have put forth, are actually driven by greed rather than any ideology or belief that what they are doing is in America’s best interest.

The blurb mentioning Thiel’s company is to provide context to the reader about how much money his company has already made under this administration.

Given that Thiel and the entire administration do all seem to be in agreement that democracy should be dismantled in order for a ruling class of chosen elite to take it’s place, one might begin to wonder, if that is really a good idea. It would seem then, that it is as newsworthy as anything else documenting more blatant corruption and scamming of America by the chosen elite who are leading this administration, and hoping to convince everyone what they’re doing is in America’s best interest.

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The investment, held in one of Miller’s children’s brokerage accounts, raises conflict of interest red flags as the tech company continues to play a substantial role in the work of U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the group’s report “very silly”

… This is the same official spokesperson that downplayed concerns about Trump trying to shut down the office of Civil Rights and Liberties, and then like a month later defended DHS and the Pentagon hooking federal employees up to a lie detector test to find leaks

The watchdog group that obtained Miller’s filing identified 11 other administration officials who either currently hold or have owned stock in Palantir, though none with holdings as large as Miller.

Guess he has a vested interest in acting like a hateful psychopath, and gleefully breaking apart families. It’s good for business.

Fear is not necessary.

Really have to disagree with you here, fear is how groups of people are kept under control. It’s the basis of authoritarian regimes

How did Bush gain support for the patriot act despite the fact that it clearly violated civil liberties?

Why did Trump stand in front of a camera a few days ago and yell about how much danger we’re all in? You know he’s full of shit, but the person who is in an echo chamber, and never exposed to any questions of regarding his greatness, will believe he’s saying that because it’s true and he’s looking out for her best interest

But the pro life movement and the whole idea of a moral majority, was created by Weyrich to gain enough support for conservatives who created segregation academies in the south after the civil rights movement.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

When the supreme court threatened their tax exemption status, they knew the majority of Americans would not be sympathetic to them, and they needed a more palatable issue than segregation to gain support for the idea of a right to “religious freedom,” that would allow them to maintain tax exemption.

When I say it was like an advertisement campaign. I mean they literally created films back when that was the best way to spread messaging, and toured the country screening those films and giving speeches in order to create the pro-life movement.

I don’t think anyone has to be trained into this. That’s the problem. This is humanity’s default.

I think to some extent, that is the default when the amygdala is kicked into hyperdrive by fear and the prefrontal cortex goes offline.

But dividing the U.S. into such black and white extremes of left vs right is directly the result of the heritage foundation creating the whole moral majority narrative, and essentially creating an advertising campaign out of abortion and Roe v Wade.

Originally Americans weren’t even very divided on the issue, but Paul Weyrich seized the opportunity and targeted evangelical Christians several years after the Roe v Wade decision was even made.

Even leaders of the southern baptist church weren’t opposed to Roe v Wade at the time the decision was made.

I grew up in the southern Baptist church in the 90s, so well after the pro-life narrative had been established as unquestionable in the church. In no way was it some kind of rosey utopia back then, it was pretty awful, but even since then it’s gotten more extreme and politicized. Straight up denial and disgust with the literal word of Jesus and saying things like “empathy is a disease,” is something new that is being gradually inserted into everyday “Christianity,” so that eventually (just like abortion) it will just be accepted without question.

Strict hierarchy isn’t their goal: it’s how they think everything already works. I cannot overstress: everything. If a rightful authority moved a “falling rocks” sign, the rocks would fall somewhere else.

I don’t think it’s all conservatives, but I think this relates to an inability to understand what empathy actually is. When people see it simply as a “weakness,” or a tool used to manipulate and gain sympathy, they’re either ignoring or missing a very important aspect of how useful it can actually be.

Empathy is a nonverbal means of emotional communication, and it allows you to “think about what others are thinking,” and how it may or may not align with your own thoughts and conclusions.

The inability to do this, is actually itself a very big weakness that results in all or nothing/naked tribalism behavior. Then when people are like “why the fuck would you do that?” That’s when you start getting the justifications like if I didn’t do it somebody else would have, bc that’s what I would do, and I can’t really comprehend on a non surface level that other people aren’t me.

I was listening to a podcast today about the Iran Contra and the advisors to Reagan during his first administration. This was when the Heritage Foundation presence was really strong.

They tried to keep Reagan from ever interacting with Americans at a one-on-one level, because they knew if he heard about something from an individual (rather than just an abstract group of strangers), he would often feel compelled to help solve the issue.

I believe that’s kind of the case with the majority of conservatives, and humans in general. It’s a lot easier to ignore something if you can’t relate to it or if you just don’t let yourself think about it too much.

It was still shitty that Reagan’s policies ultimately harmed so many people, and definitely helped us end up where we are now. But it’s also kind of insane to think that the people advising him literally tried to shield him from the reality of what his policies were doing to individuals, because they saw his very basic level of empathy as a weakness, and the individual Americans who were asking for help as “manipulative,” simply because they were turning to their president to solve the issues he had created and had the power to fix.

I honestly believe the whole movement we’re seeing on the right by Christian nationalists to convince people that “empathy is a disease” is a way to keep their base brainwashed and under their control. If they train people that anger and accusations of manipulation should be the default response to anything that makes you stop and think too much when something feels morally wrong or unjustified, it makes it easier to outgroup/distance from and label the people that are being mistreated as other or somehow less than human.

I’m not joking, this is the Soviet dissident that helped create and still runs the business (Russia House) to this day.

Look a little familiar?

Also, if you think that’s bad, look at what they were up to just before the fall of the Soviet Union

And the fact that Weyrich was involved in the shadows of the Reagan administration when he wrote this op-ed after the Iran Contra.

Odd that Heritage Foundation members Weyrich and Krieble spent so much time in Moscow just before the fall of the Soviet Union…

Also odd they were there, and had everything set up and ready to create the first of its kind go between for U.S. and Russian businesses as soon as it fell.