{"id":27746,"date":"2014-01-07T00:43:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T03:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=27746"},"modified":"2016-10-01T23:50:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T02:50:18","slug":"mrff-advocates-blame-christians-for-buddhist-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/mrff-advocates-blame-christians-for-buddhist-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"MRFF Advocates Blame Christians for Buddhist Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein has been recycling the same examples for years when recounting his status as a martyr &#8212; dead animals left on his doorstep, a backwards swastika crudely drawn next to his front door, etc &#8212; though there has been admittedly no connection between these &#8220;attacks&#8221; and the work of his MRFF &#8220;charity.&#8221; He <a href=\"http:\/\/www.krqe.com\/news\/crime\/hate-mail-brings-out-bomb-squad\">finally gained a fresh story<\/a> when a Buddhist priest mailed him a single-page letter that said it was &#8220;treated&#8221; to explode 30 minutes after opening (Mission Impossible-style, apparently). It was obviously a hoax, as confirmed by the local bomb squad.<\/p>\n<p>To be clear, threats against life and property are to be universally denounced, regardless of the ideology of the persons involved. (To be fair, this <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/03\/weinstein-fails-to-intimidate-with-lawsuit-military-complaint\/\">includes similar language from Mikey Weinstein<\/a>, which has included his desires for physical violence against his opponents and threats of &#8220;confrontation&#8221; with this site.)<\/p>\n<p>The threat isn&#8217;t really the issue here, though &#8212; it&#8217;s what its turned <em>into<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It is well-known that Weinstein has publicly <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/17\/religious-freedom-critic-weinstein-admits-targeting-christians\/\">stated his opposition to Christians<\/a>. What some haven&#8217;t yet learned is <em>Weinstein<\/em> gets to <!--more-->decide who is the &#8220;<em>right kind<\/em>&#8221; of Christian deserving of liberty &#8212; and who <em>isn&#8217;t<\/em>.\u00a0 It turns out Weinstein has been able to <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/05\/weinstein-defines-religions-assigns-followers\/\">discern the religious beliefs<\/a> and ideologies of every person he&#8217;s talked to or about &#8212; even if there was <em>no public information<\/em> upon which to base such a conclusion (as with <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/07\/michael-weinstein-equates-us-army-with-racists-rapists\/\">this Army Colonel<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/19\/fundamentalist-agnostic-wrote-armys-spiritual-fitness-test\/\">this psychology professor<\/a>, for example).<\/p>\n<p>In other words, even if someone didn&#8217;t say they were religious <em>at all<\/em>, if they dared to oppose Weinstein he declared them to be not only advocating Christianity, but also the wrong <em>kind<\/em> of Christianity for military service and liberty protected by the Constitution. In summary, Weinstein has repeatedly declared that his ideological opposition &#8212; his bogeyman &#8212; is Christians who want to take over the world via the US military.<\/p>\n<p>It was only natural, then, that his acolytes pick up on that theme and run with it after he received this threatening letter. In just one example of many, a supporter who uses the <em>nom de plume &#8220;<\/em>godlessveteran&#8221; is a well-connected individual who has made it his semi-life purpose to defend the MRFF throughout The Internet. He <a href=\"http:\/\/www.krqe.com\/news\/crime\/hate-mail-brings-out-bomb-squad#comment-1180652315\">responded<\/a> this way:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/godless.png\" width=\"560\" height=\"66\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Insane Christers are unbalanced and hateful enough to make and carry through on those threats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>godlessveteran apparently failed to read two important lines of text within the threatening letter [ellipses original]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have absolutely no interest in your idiotic Christian religion&#8230;I am a thrice ordained senior priest at The Zen Buddhist Temple[&#8230;]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The person sending the letter claimed to be a Buddhist and actually <em>mocked<\/em> the Christian religion. (Why Weinstein bothered to mail him a fundraising letter at all is a mystery, though Weinstein&#8217;s donations appear to have fallen off, so he may have expanded his mailing list.)\u00a0 In fact, despite some of the drama from the MRFF, the letter wasn&#8217;t all that obscure: it even included a return address and signature block &#8212; apparently from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zbtc.org\/staff.html\">Buddhist Rev Ray Witham<\/a>, now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buddhanet.info\/wbd\/search.php?keyword=kenosha&amp;prev_keyword%5B%5D=lakeland+zen+center&amp;newsearch=new&amp;search=Search&amp;country_id=0&amp;province_id=70\">of Wisconsin<\/a>.\u00a0 But godlessveteran was only one of several people who have been on Weinstein&#8217;s train long enough to <em>know<\/em> that everybody who doesn&#8217;t like him <em>must<\/em> be a Christian. Right?<\/p>\n<p>Weinstein&#8217;s &#8220;war&#8221; against Christians is so well-known that even his own supporters assume that anyone who doesn&#8217;t agree with him &#8212; anyone who <em>threatens<\/em> him &#8212; <em>must<\/em> be a Christian.\u00a0 The <em>truth<\/em> is that <em>many<\/em> people of <em>many<\/em> ideologies disagree with Weinstein&#8217;s attacks on religious liberty &#8212; though Weinstein would have you believe it&#8217;s only seditious Christians who think he&#8217;s wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if all else fails, Rick Baker &#8212; resident MRFF conspiracy theorist &#8212; will drop by to reassure everyone that this actually <em>was<\/em> a Christian deceptively hiding their &#8220;true&#8221; religion. How will he know that?<\/p>\n<p>The same way Mikey Weinstein knows the religious beliefs of every person he &#8220;fights,&#8221; apparently. If it fits their narrative, those will be the facts &#8212; even if they aren&#8217;t true.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-action=\"like\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein has been recycling the same examples for years when recounting his status as a martyr &#8212; dead animals left on his doorstep, a backwards swastika crudely drawn next to his front door, etc &#8212; though there has been admittedly no connection between these &#8220;attacks&#8221; and the work of his MRFF &#8220;charity.&#8221; He finally gained a fresh story [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[37,96,4552,85,5218,7,4543,10,171,420],"class_list":["post-27746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-buddhism","tag-christian","tag-godlessveteran","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-raymond-witham","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-rick-baker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}