Paying for “psycho-ceramics” (crackpots)

I have an important question: Why has the Internal Revenue Service let religious groups run their multi-million dollar political organizations scot-free with not one penny in taxation?

For instance, Pat Robertson is the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, (CBN), an enormous multi-million-dollar-a-year concern employing tens of thousands of people. He and his son hold a controlling voting interest in the cable TV Family Channel, which reached over 55 million homes in the U.S. as of 1993. The Robertson-owned media machine is also active in Europe, Africa, the Near East, Middle East and Far East.

They bragged about an earned revenue of nearly $114 million in 1992. That is million, folks. And that amount has only risen exponentially since then. Consider this: The Christian Broadcasting Network gave a $117 million endowment gift, plus an additional $109.9 million from the sale of stock, to Robertson-founded Regent University, a private university.

And it’s growing: CBN WorldReach worldwide campaign was launched in October of 1995, with a goal of winning 500 million souls to Robertson’s idea of Christianity. Middle East Television began, in the 1990s, broadcasting by satellite to a potential audience of 200 million people in 15 nations in the Middle East.

The mission statement of CBN, as stated on their website, is this:

To prepare the United States of America and the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Our ultimate goal is to achieve a time in history when “the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.”

Yikes! When we hear of the Muslims wanting to overrun the world with their religion, we are up in arms.

Robertson is founder and president of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a law firm and education group that focuses on “pro-family, pro-liberty and pro-life cases” nationwide.

Robertson’s television show, The 700 Club, is used to promote the political, I repeat, political, agenda of the radical, intolerant, far right wing of Christian fundamentalism. Their ranting and ravings are just like those of the early Third Reich.

A perfect example was his fundraising letter to Iowa voters about a ballot measure regarding the ERA, equal rights for women. “This is not about equal rights,” wrote Robertson, but, “…it is part of a radical feminist agenda, which is about a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

If you want a good definition of insanity, there it is. You have just read it. And this from a man who wanted to be the President of the United States. When you first read it you laugh. But then you quit laughing and think, “Good God…this psychotic man is serious.” You quit laughing and you remember that the language used in the early part of Hitler’s Germany was eerily similar.

And the IRS lets this man and his multi-million dollar political machine run free. Why?

Equally as frightening is this: his tax-exempt lobbying organization, The Christian Coalition, is seizing control of the Republican Party apparatus in many states and is spending millions of dollars in Republican campaigns.

George Bush, Sr., should have known better than to encourage such insanity, but he did not. Nor has his son, George W. Bush. And so Pat Robertson was given prime time for his convention tirade and he sat in the Presidential private box with Barbara Bush.

In the insane mind of a Pat Robertson and the like mentalities, the Satan, or the Devil, of their fantasies is everywhere. They spew out hate, bigotry, superstition and intolerance in being anti-everything. They are anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-single mothers, anti-working women, anti-public schools, anti-civil rights, anti-religious diversity, anti-gun control advocates, anti-mainstream-media (the “cultural elite”), anti-classic literature (Mark Twain), anti-all the other great spiritual traditions of our species that are thousands of years older than their Christianity, anti-the Bill of Rights, anti-the U.S. Constitution. (Go to your library and read again The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer.)

President George Bush, Sr., paid personal homage to Pat Robertson. He flew to Virginia Beach to appear side by side with Robertson before 1,100 cheering Christian Coalition members at their “Road to Victory” conference. One of the principles our country was founded on was separation of church and state. It was Winston Churchill who reminded us that when a political leader loses his integrity, it is a shameful sight.

My opening question was this: why has the IRS let Pat Robertson and other religious organizations run their multi-million dollar political organizations scot-free with not one penny in taxation?

That is my closing question. Why?

I only can hope that President Obama is asking the same question. My hunch is: he is. And should.