Their Trump Cards

Paul Weyrich, founder of the notorious Heritage Foundation, coined the term ‘moral majority’ in the 1970s. Looking for a hot button political issue that would stir up a conservative Christian base, he turned to the Supreme Court Case Green v Connally (1971) which challenged racial discrimination in private school admissions. So in 1973, his buddy Joseph Coors, the Colorado beer magnet, ponied up money to start the foundation.

Their big moment came when Jimmy Carter’s IRS threatened to rescind Bob Jones University’s tax exempt status over this issue. Weyrich and his cronies framed it as church v state and cried that the government was breaching this rock solid divide.

How ironic that four decades later, the Heritage Foundation is trying to wreck that divide and force religion and the Ten Commandments down public institution’s throat. But I digress…

The abuse of white privilege and scaring Christians with the boogie man is nothing new. The Patriarchy started with The Prince of Darkness millennia ago and today the conservative right is still scaring them with people of darker skin. These simpletons are quite easy to scare, as it turns out.

Weyrich admitted years later that other conservative hot buttons, like abortion, were not a strong enough rallying cry in the mid-1970’s, so they played their racism card. Only Catholics carried strong anti-abortion convictions back then.

Enter the 1980s and the birth of black entertainment. Rap music burst onto the scene just when shows like Cosby’s and comics like Eddie Murphy ruled network and cable television. The world became a little less white and racist views were publicly shunned, though never buried far beneath the surface.

Jerry Falwell took Weyrich’s idea of a moral majority and ran with it. Religious leaders like he and James Dobson (Focus on the Family) pivoted from the race card to the sex card. They championed the cause they deftly named ‘pro-life.’ It became the new hot button rallying point, and folks like Heritage Foundation couldn’t have been more pleased.

These crusades to deny women and minorities equal rights and equal access were sold in churches and across America’s airwaves. Packaged as they were as an assault on “family values” and the Christian faith, it was easy for the right to gain traction in the church.

Fast forward to 2016 and DJTs first presidential run. The Heritage Foundation was quietly running that ship from the shadows. Their leadership basically served as his transition team. This is well documented. They also began secretly crafting their Christian Manifesto that they would unleash under the title Project 2025. This go-round they would openly run DJT’s campaign and administration, despite his desperate claims to the contrary.

Again, black and brown people (i.e. immigrants) figured prominently into the platform as did their disdain for Roe v Wade (i.e. women’s rights). They attacked both right out of the gate. It’s like they have no other cards in their deck. It’s always racism and sexism that riles their religious base. And of course this is all fueled by the fear that non-Christian, non-whites are quickly becoming the majority. White privilege is on shaky ground for the first time in recent history. Christianity is slowly losing its stranglehold on the West. And stupid people would rather give oligarchs and the super rich more control thinking this will stop the bleeding. It’s the reason our country is flirting with fascism. It’s also why people can’t leave the church fast enough.