This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The far-right arm of the Republican Party should be formally added to the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. The venomous rhetoric spewed out by the likes of Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and tea partiers in general stir up our home-grown radicals such as the recent clearly-deranged gunman at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado.
As he was taken into custody, the gunman reportedly said "no more baby parts." The comments were obviously made in response to the horrendous images claimed to have been viewed by Fiorina in a Planned Parenthood film. She described seeing a fetus on the table "its heart beating, its legs kicking" while it was kept alive in order to harvest its body parts. Such a description was abhorrent to pro-choice and anti-abortion activists alike.
As it turned out, the film was non-existent, yet Fiorina refused to admit she had lied. She and the other Republicans who perpetuated the lie should be ashamed of themselves.
Even some mainstream Republicans have adopted the idiocy of the following scenarios: President Obama is a Kenyan and wants to seize the weapons of all Americans, Common Core is a secret plot to promote homosexuality and communism, military exercises in Texas were actually the first step to imposing martial law.
The SPLC summed this up perfectly: "Conspiracy theories are destructive to democracy, they substitute ignorance and suspicion for knowledge and reason, and make it that much harder to deal with the many problems ahead of us. As Francis Bacon suggested almost four centuries ago, conspiracy theories are a way for weak minds to deal with a complex world — and to wreck any chance for finding real solutions."
Sandra Williams
Salt Lake City