Here's what's happening in our country, as told by a man who
understands the motivation behind the birthers, tea baggers and the
intimidation that Glenn Beck's loonies are inspired to inflict.


Rachel Maddow's first guest this evening was Frank Schaeffer. He is a
former right wing evangelical and the author of Crazy for God.

Rachel: Do you think that calling the President a "nazi"...calling the
President "Hilter"...is an implicit call for politically motivated
violence?

Schaeffer: Yes I do. In fact this rings a big bell with me because my
dad who is a right wing evangelical leader wrote a book called "A
Christian Manifesto"...and in that book he compared anybody who was
pro-abortion to the nazi Germans; and he said that using violence or
force to overthrow nazi Germany would have been appropriate for
Christians including the assassination of Hitler. He compared the
Supreme Court's actions on abortion to that. And that has been a note
that has been following the right wing movement that my father and I
helped start...

So what's being said here is really two messages: there's the message
to the predominatly white, middle-aged crowds of people screaming at
these meetings trying to shut them down; but there's also a coded
message to what I would call the "looney tunes" - the fruitloops on
the side - that's really like playing Russian roulette. You put a
cartridge in the chamber and you spin and once in a while it goes off,
and we saw that with Dr. Tiller, we've seen it happen numerous times
in this country with the violence against political leaders whether
it's Martin Luther King or whoever it might be... we have a history of
being a well-armed violent country. And so, really, I think that these
calls are incredibly irresponsible.

The good news is is that it shows a desparation. The far right knows
they've lost. They've lost the hearts and minds of most American
people... But they also know that they have a large group of people
who are not well-informed, who listen to their own sources, who buy
the lies...and these people can be energized to go out and do really
dreadful things and we've seen it in front of abortion clinics - I'm
afraid we're going to see it with some of our political leaders. And
the Glenn Becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing
what I regard as an anti-democratic, anti-american movement in this
country that is trying to shut down legitimate debate and replace it
with straight out intimidation.