" Consistently stigmatized the poor. (Reagan often told the story of a "welfare queen" in Chicago who turned out to be a figment of his speech writers' imaginations. According to the story, she drove a Cadillac and had cheated the government of $150,000 using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen social security cards and four fictional dead husbands. Once again, all of that was a lie.)
" Halved the budget for public housing.
" Closed shelters for the mentally ill.
" In so doing, created an epidemic of homelessness virtually unknown since the Great Depression.
" Spent the entire decade of the 1980s supporting oppressive governments Central America -- specifically in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
" Oversaw the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, thus opening the publicly owned radio airwaves to dominance by privately financed right wing programs whose bread and butter soon became the "false accusations" and "malicious speech" Isaiah saw as incongruous with the light Jesus subsequently saw as characterizing the City on the Hill.
" Inspired his self-proclaimed acolytes (in our own day) to introduce savage reductions in Food Stamp programs for the hungry, and elimination of unemployment benefits.
And that's the short list of the horrors of the "Reagan Revolution." None of it has anything to do with Jesus' vision of a City on a Hill. Rather Reagan policies fly directly in the face of that vision.
The point is that the right wing in this country (personified in Ronald Reagan) has hypocritically identified itself as somehow "Christian" while turning that tradition squarely on its head.
Progressives are missing the boat by surrendering to that hijacking of Jesus' meaning and message, when in reality that message supports their cause, not that of their reactionary opponents.
It's high time for progressives to go on the offensive by recognizing and employing the power of myth and image so successfully manipulated by the religious right.
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