Politics, Religion

The Head and Not the Tail

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

During the Republican presidential debate on Monday, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann announced that she had filed paperwork for a 2012 run. She has a J.D. from Oral Roberts University and an LL.M. degree in tax law from the William & Mary Law School, and worked as an attorney representing the IRS.

During Monday’s debate, she responded to a question about the U.S. involvement in Libya with the phrase, “We are the head and not the tail.” That phrase, with a slight rewording, comes from Deuteronomy 28:13, “The Lord will make you the head and not the tail,” and is a rallying cry for the New Apostolic Reformation. In theocratic circles, it’s used to explain why they have been chosen by God to take Christian dominion over the earth. It is a “dog whistle” that will appeal to the evangelical right in upcoming primaries.

In a June 2008 speech, from the floor of the U.S. Congress, about the high price of energy, Bachmann said:

We can be less dependent on foreign oil. In fact, we can become independent of foreign oil and we can become a leading exporter of energy to the world and we can become the head, and not the tail. [emphasis added]

During an interview by Iowa Public Television on the price of gas, Bachmann stated:

People are very upset right now and rightly so, gasoline is about $4.00 a gallon, they haven’t seen the economy turn around and what I want people to know is that this is not systemic, we don’t have to stay this way.  We can again be the head and not the tail in America. [emphasis added]

Bachmann has also been a long time fan and promoter of faux-historian David Barton, who appeals to those who prefer their history tailored to match their desires. While at Oral Roberts University, Bachmann was greatly influenced by former Professor John Eidsmoe who argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again.

The Wisconsin Tea Party dropped Eidsmoe from a speaking engagement when it was discovered that he had spoken before the League of the South, labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Imagine that, too racist for the Tea Party.

H/T: The Daily Beast, Talk to Action, Rachel Tabachnick.
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38 thoughts on “The Head and Not the Tail”

  1. A belief 230 years that civilized people could meet and devise a nation ;s laws without imposing any one religion over another was also an interfaith debate with the condition that church or synagogue or mosque regulations be considered separately . In the United States and most of the Western world, any adult can join any religion , in theory anyway. Families who are able to accept their adult children’s spiritual search outside the religion they were brought up in is a healthy way to understand generational and cultural gaps.

    I agree with Mr Spindell . I don’t think Oral Roberts Law School is much more than a wierd hybrid of lectures by literal Bible thumpers about Christianity Rules the One True Anerican Country /

  2. “What can Rep Bachman teach us from her class books and class notes from her years at Oral Roberts U?”

    wisely skeptical,

    Perhaps it’s my prejudice but I can’t even wrap my head around the concept the Oral Robert’s U could provide any sort of valuable education.

  3. so much for the separation of church and state…on ANY level….

  4. How many years of actual taking law courses does the Oral Roberts Law School require of its students? Rep Bachman does show intelligent potential for all sorts of wothwhile studies . She emphases the Crusader catechism excesses that most Roman Catholics have grown up to look at in the post Vatican 2 as flawed , exclusionary theology . The founding fathers USA had the best ecumenical basis for religious interfaith undestanding ever . What can Rep Bachman teach us from her class books and class notes from her years at Oral Roberts U?

  5. Mal – “since 2008 I have learned . . . ” Gee, I wonder if anything important happened in 2008 that might have ignited the fire of knowledge in the damp leaves of your , what we shall call for lack of a more suitable term, brain? HMMMMMMM let me see, anything? Anything at all to cause this great awakening?

  6. A careful reading of the story on the Obama impersonating comic getting the boot makes me think the story is a bit different than what the media has portrayed it as. The crowd did not react badly to the Obama jokes at all. It wasn’t until he started taking potshots at the Republican candidates that they pulled him. Seems more like they got their precious fe-fes hurt than they found his Obama jokes tasteless.

  8. eniobob, We used to have Anne Richards and Molly Ivins in Texas. Now Rick Perry and the teapublicans have overrun the place. Still think if Perry gets in he can possibly win the nomination. He is turning more religious everyday so he can peel off some off Bachmann’s voters. He appeals to Wall Street with his low tax and anti-regulation agenda and can cut into Romney’s Wall St support.

  9. A great blast from the past:

    Texas politics and missing Molly Ivins
    Published: Monday, June 20, 2011, 6:47 AM

    “It was often said of Molly Ivins (August 30, 1944 – January 31, 2007), the newspaper columnist, political commentator, humorist and author, that with her sense of humor and ability to tell stories, she made herself famous and the Texas legislature infamous”

    http://blog.nj.com/njv_linda_stamato/2011/06/texas_politics_and_missing_mol.html

  10. Anybody remember the “New Nixon”?

    Well, it seems we have a “New Bachmann”.

    “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr) … translated: “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”

  12. SwM, he had to have been really bad to get booted from the stage in mid-performance, no matter what the audience, but more surprising since it was a GOP meeting. One has to wonder if he would have been booted if it had been at the ‘Right Online’ convention, being held right down the street from Netroots Nation 2011.

  15. Just what we need in the race, another crazy dominionist trying to get their hands on the nuclear ‘button’. “President” and “death-cult member” are words that should be mutually exclusive in American politics. While the Reconstruction movement divorces its goals from the apocalyptic movement, the end-timers, the Reconstruction movement’s success is intrinsic to the end-timers goals. These are all very dangerous people.

    “Reconstructionists aren’t shy about what exactly it is they are pursuing: “The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise,” Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.””

    http://motherjones.com/politics/2005/12/nation-under-god

  17. A different perspective:

    Bachmann can’t run from her birther bona fides
    By David A. Love
    9:06 AM on 06/15/2011

    “U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann made the most of the recent Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire to officially declare her candidacy for the GOP nomination. By all accounts, the Minnesota lawmaker and Tea Party favorite scored big points at the debate, showing her ability to hold her own in the field of conservative presidential hopefuls.
    And apparently, as the first woman to enter the race, she no longer looms in the shadows of Sarah Palin. A former tax lawyer for the federal government, Bachmann is perhaps as far to the rightward fringes of the political spectrum as the former Alaska Governor — just as insane, but marginally brighter.
    Michele Bachmann is positioning herself as the true conservative in the race. Given her record of protesting outside of abortion clinics and fighting against statewide curricula even before she entered politics, she has true hard-right bona fides.”

    http://www.thegrio.com/politics/bachmann-cant-run-from-her-birther-bona-fides.php

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