Mister Tredyffrin and Friends

If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles… if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle. – Sun Tzu

Know your enemy - a core tenet in just about any strategy of war, business, sports, schoolyard playgrounds, and certainly the political landscape. And who is this bleeding-heart liberal Democrat’s Number One enemy? Nope. Wrong. It ain’t the Republicans. They’re not even Number Two.

Number One I’ll save for another post. But in my opinion there is certainly a group here in Chester County, Pennsylvania that is a lot more dangerous than the local Republican party. By far. No comparison.

Follow up:

I speak of Chester County ACTION. It’s a cute, contrived acronym for “Americans for Christian Traditions In Our Nation". I kid you not. President George Bush and the rest of the rank-and-file Republican structure warn us to beware and fear the Fundamentalist Islamists. I encourage you to fear Fundamentalist Christianists at least as much.

You can’t just ignore these folks. Please, oh please, visit their web site and get angry. Because, unfortunately, getting angry is the only way to generate enough momentum to educate and thus diminish the influence these people have on the good people of our community.

You see, that is their appeal - to the inherent “goodness” in people. Their words sound so nice. So sweet. So simple. What could be better than family values, after all? God, family, and country? But if you delve a little deeper into their web site, you will discover just how they define “values” and just how sharp the lines are drawn between “us” and “them". And just who “them” are, and where “them” belong.

Their very usage of the term “Christian” in the title of their organization is offensive, even blasphemous. Philosophies, political or otherwise, based upon intolerance, exclusion, ignorance, and hatred should never be associated with true Christianity - just as they should never be associated with Judaism, Islam, or any other mainstream religious movement. Unfortunately, it is all too common a tactic for the ultra-conservative right-wing Christian Fundamentalist: to hijack the teachings and lessons from peaceful and humble Christian traditions for their own twisted reasons. It is truly analogous to the abominable justifications that some terrorist organizations pretend to find in the Islamic faith. Truly.

Monsters!

Apparently there is a horrible society of goblins or something-or-other living here in Chester County. I don’t know what they look like. I don’t know what they’re called. But ACTION is here to protect us from them. And, like Harry Potter’s he-who-must-not-be-named, they’re not going to tell us who these goblins are, either. It suffices their purposes, after all, that you are simply afraid.

For over four years, a different organization has been working against the values we hold so dear. As a result, this group has targeted conservative, pro-life committee people for their seats on the local Republican Committee. Unfortunately, several conservative committee people lost their positions. – Chester County ACTION home page

You hear that? Monsters! Run! Get those pitchforks and torches! Rally in the city square! Stand proud in formation behind the ACTION banner and we’ll fight them! Who, you say? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that later. For now, though, March! Fight! Yell some slogans! Okay, not so much marching and fighting and such. That’s not this group’s style.

Do you have what it takes?

Recruit: Our top priority is to recruit candidates to run for grassroots level political positions. – Chester County ACTION “About Us”

The expressed goal of this organization is to find, recruit, train, and insert ultra-conservative politicians into the local Republican Party, as long as they already subscribe to, or are willing to be indoctrinated into, their core code of tenets. No, you won’t find that core code, either. But you will get hints of it in their questionnaires to candidates running for office. Not surprisingly, things like the definition of marriage, stem cell research, school voucher programs, indecency on TV and radio, the ACLU, global warming alarmists, and Roe v. Wade come up a lot.

Please go to their web site. I provide here (as well as in the other text boxes on this page) direct links to some of their literature.

I believe that the Democrat Party has totally rotted from within; as a party, it is now impossible for them to renew themselves. Having repudiated almost every core moral and patriotic value once held by “rank and file Democrats,” the Democratic Party has become a nest for Socialists and Al Gore alarmists. As a party, they have rejected the traditional family unit in favor of non-procreating arrangements under the guise of personal liberty. – State Representative Samuel Rohrer’s speech to Chester County ACTION 5 May, 2007

In September of 1774 when Congress met, they opened with a prayer and reading of four chapters from the Bible. Today Christians are loosing [sic] their influence and must stand up. We must be the salt and the light in all aspects of society. Psalm 33:12 declares, “Blessed is that nation who’s God is the Lord.” – Jan Matthews, Chester County ACTION essay

Although the actual numbers vary from precinct to precinct each election cycle, the reductive formula outlined above is sound. You and fourteen households can make someone a member of the Chester County Republican Committee. From that perch, you will be one of four hundred or so [Republican] committeepersons who will vote to endorse the candidate who will win the primary and general elections and be the next public official for the office at issue. – “How to make your vote count one thousand times", Chester County ACTION

Chester County ACTION would like to give you some information on the candidates who are running for office in your district because we know that a State Representative can become a State Senator and then can become a Congressman just like Jim Gerlach. Congressman Joe Pitts used to be a State Representative before he became a Congressman. State Representative Curt Schroder used to be the Chester County Prothonotary. Therefore, it is not only important to be informed about the race for Governor or the race for U.S. Senate, but the races for the State Senate and for State Representative are equally important. – Chester County ACTION Newsletter, October 2006