Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
Many commentators and pundits have worried out loud that the Texas "precedent" of using vigilantism to end safe, legal abortion in that state is either wildly unconstitutional or, if it stands, will set a precedent to take down other rights like free speech or protest.
Republicans are playing with fire here, but it's not just around abortion rights. They're also explicitly going after a wide variety of other rights that Americans have fought to maintain for centuries.
If they achieve their endpoint - the direction they're currently heading - they will ultimately see their own rights stripped away as well, leading to the end of our democratic republic.
Just look at the horrors they're pursuing:
Lacking any meaningful evidence whatsoever of "voter fraud," Republicans have now severely limited voting rights in 7 states and have bills pending with a good chance of passage in at least a dozen others.
Compounding this, and empowered by the Supreme Court, Republicans are using voter purges to strip people off the voting rolls in heavily Democratic areas of GOP-controlled states (like Brian Kemp throwing over a half-million Georgians off the rolls just before "beating" Stacey Abrams by only about 50,000 votes).
Ignoring decades of evidence (and common sense) that comprehensive sex education in schools lowers both sexually transmitted diseases as well as unwanted pregnancies, multiple states (Texas the largest) mandate that sex education be limited to "abstinence only" and forbid teachers from discussing birth control.
Pretending the brutal history of religious fanatics in New England (see Monday's rant) and the warnings of everybody from Jesus to Jefferson that it's vital to separate church and state never happened, Republicans embrace hardcore fundamentalist hustlers who will turn on them as soon as it suits their own twisted purposes.
Turning their backs on basic science, Republicans are rejecting both teaching evolution and wearing masks in our schools as, ironically, the Covid virus continues to evolve into more and more virulent strains.
Spitting on the graves of our Founders who in many cases laid down their lives to codify and sanctify the right to protest, Republicans have passed laws giving a legal pass to bigots who drive their cars into protests and kill or injure people.
Doing their best to prevent young people from learning that around half of our Founders were slaveholders, Republicans think they can whitewash (pun intended) our history rather than confront and learn from it to make our country better.
Embracing anti-government militia movements, Republicans celebrate and empower people who openly deify the likes of Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler while promoting anti-Americanism and even seditious insurrection.
Tolerating blatant lawlessness and corruption within their own party, Republicans support politicians who participated in a conspiracy to "hang Mike Pence" and murder Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even calling the conspirators currently in jail "patriots" and "political prisoners."
Sucking up to an obese orange-makeup-wearing billionaire who made his first fortune by stealing from his own family members and getting his Alzheimer's-addled father to sign papers he couldn't understand, Republicans continue to support a man who turned into a lifelong business model ripping off contractors and customers; lying to banks, insurance companies and the IRS; and taking dirty money from foreign oligarchs and tyrants.
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