Well, as has been reported on Crooks and Liars and MSNBC, the day before Broughton brought his loaded assault rifle to a demonstration outside where the President was speaking in downtown Phoenix, Pastor Anderson was preaching hate for President Obama, and praying for the Chief Executive's death.
And when I say, "preaching hate," I don't mean that as a figure of speech.
"God hates Barack Obama," the preacher told his congregation. "I hate Barack Obama."
In a rambling, hour-plus sermon that knocks "sodomites," disses Pentecostal Christians, and offers up a birther fantasy of Obama playing baseball in Kenya as a child with a stick and a mango, Anderson talked about how Obama would be in town the next day, and that some of his parishioners might be attending, although he couldn't personally make it due to previous plans.
For Anderson, Obama cannot be "saved," and because Obama backs access to abortion for women, he deserves to die.
"You're gonna tell me that I'm supposed to pray for the socialist devil," asked Anderson, rhetorically, referring to Obama, "[this] murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children, and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial birth -- and all these other things -- you're gonna tell me I'm supposed to pray for god to give him a good lunch tomorrow, while he's in Phoenix, Arizona. Nope. I'm not going to pray for his good. I'm going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that's how I'm going to pray."
Obama's death, in Anderson's eyes, would be just punishment for advocating for a woman's right to choose. Calling Obama, "one of the rulers of the darkness of this world," and drawing upon fire and brimstone from the Old Testament, he gets wierdly graphic about what he'd like to see done to the POTUS.
"If someone's gonna twist my arm behind my back," he tells the sunday-go-to-meetin' crowd, "and tell me to pray for Barack Obama -- this is what I'm going to pray, because this is only prayer that applies to him: Break his teeth, oh God, in his mouth, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away, like an untimely birth of a woman -- that he thinks -- he calls it a woman's right to choose, you know, he thinks it's so wonderful, he ought to be aborted. It ought to be, `Abort Obama,' that ought to be the motto."
Anderson also makes clear that his message is political as well as religious:
"Obama is overturning the U.S. Constitution, overturning the Declaration of Independence, overturning everything we believe as a country, overturning 200 some years of history. He is the revolutionary. And it's a socialist, communist revolution. We are the counter-revolutionaries, saying, `No, we don't want change.'"
Was Christopher Broughton in the congregation that Sunday, August 16? Did he hear and absorb this message from the man he described as "my pastor" on Alex Jones' August 20 radio show?
"Let me tell you something, I don't love Barack Obama," intoned the wacky pastor the day before Obama's arrival on August 17, "I don't respect Barack Obama. I don't obey Barack Obama, and I'd like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail tonight. Because he needs to recompense, he needs to reap what he's sown.
"You see, any Christian will tell you that someone who commits murder should get the death penalty...And when Barack Obama is gonna push his partial birth abortion, his salty saline solution abortion, hey, he deserves to be punished for what he's done."
This is the church AR-15-slinger Christopher Broughton said he "proudly" attends; "the best church in the world," according to him.
And this is why I can't blow off what Broughton did by bringing his loaded AR-15 outside the President's address to the VFW. I don't think it was just a stunt. Rather, I think it's a disturbing harbinger of what's to come.
***I should note that it was actually an Arizona DPS officer who Tasered Anderson at the Interstate 8 U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in April. Border Patrol agents were involved in his arrest, and Anderson says they abused him as well, but it was a DPS guy who fired the Taser at Anderson. I made a minor correction to the copy to hopefully avoid any confusion on this point.
