Stalin lives

You will forgive me, I hope, for blogging on the same subject as yesterday's entry - the conference entitled "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith". The Arkansas Democrat Gazette has published an article on the conference entitled, "A wake-up call for the Sane Majority". Here's how it gets started:

Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and mass murderer.

And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama's Judge Roy" Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the jurisdiction--er, left town to attend the pope's funeral, addressed the group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an expert in constitutional law.

Now the part that is really chilling to me is this:

Vieira said that his "bottom-line" solution for renegade judges was Stalin's: "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ' No man, no problem. '"

The audience reportedly didn't gasp. They laughed. "' No man, no problem, '" he repeated for emphasis. "This is not a structural problem we have. This is a problem of personnel."

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank supplied the full Stalin quote, which is quite famous: "Death solves all problems: No man, no problem." He speculated that Vieira couldn't possibly be urging the killing of Supreme Court justices. But he put the remark in the context of recent threats by DeLay, who said that "the time will come for the men responsible for [Terri Schiavo's death] to answer for their behavior," and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, RTexas, who mused that unpopular judicial decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

Think about it folks. The right-wingers are now quoting Stalin. In a positive sense. This is clearly an incitement to violence. Why these people aren't arrested and questioned regarding possible terrorist involvement is beyond me. Actually, no it's not beyond me. You all know the acronym: IOKIYAR - "It's okay if you're a Republican." Can you imagine Democrats getting away with saying something like that about conservative judges?