The Liberal Theory of Causation.

DA-DI ^ | FR Post 8-11-02 | JOSEPH SOBRAN

[vannrox]

JOSEPH SOBRAN

THE LIBERAL THEORY OF CAUSATION

WASHINGTON -- Martin Luther King's "dream" has become America's nightmare. Ever since the Civil Rights movement began blaming white Americans for the sufferings of blacks, black crime -- especially black-on-white crime -- has exploded. Whatever King and his ilk intended, black thugs across the country got the message that they could murder, rape and rob with some covert sympathy from black leaders and white liberals. It's high time the black leadership took responsibility for the Willie Hortons they have spawned.

If you buy this argument, you should have no trouble buying the argument that the Christian Right is responsible for the murder of Matthew Shepard, the young Wyoming homosexual who was tortured to death by a pair of not particularly Christian toughs he met in a bar.

There must be a cliche factory between New York and Washington that specializes in tracing all evils to Christianity. Liberals usually sum up 2,000 years of Christianity in disparaging references and glib analogies to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials. On top of this, for some years now we have been told (by the National Holocaust Museum, for example) that the gospels "led to" the mass murder of Jews under Hitler.

So when the pathetic Shepard was killed, it took only a few moments for the liberal assembly line to put out the indictment: The Christian Right had given the killers a "license to hate."

Columnist Frank Rich of The New York Times heaps blame on Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, who says -- "disingenuously," according to Rich -- that his organization doesn't hate homosexuals and deplores violence against them. Rich doesn't explain how he knows that Bauer is disingenuous; he simply presumes bad motives in Christians. He explains that Bauer's group brands homosexuals as "subhuman," at which point "emboldened thugs take over." Cause and effect.

In the same vein, and on the same principle of causation, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post blames Bible-quoting Christian politicians -- Trent Lott and Dick Armey, among others -- for "legitimizing hate" by calling sodomy a sin. This, says Cohen, "dehumanizes" homosexuals. Such rhetoric has "robbed homosexuals of their humanity" and "sends a message to goons and others not given to great subtlety."

As spokesman for subtlety, Rich and Cohen leave something to be desired. Conservatives are fond of Richard Weaver's adage that "ideas have consequences," but Weaver was writing about ideas that slowly, over centuries, corrupt a culture. He didn't suggest that an idea published on Saturday would provoke a lynching by Tuesday.

Rich and Cohen ought to be aware that the idea that sodomy is sinful can be traced back further than the Family Research Council. We owe it to Moses, who claimed to have received it from a Higher Authority, and the sanctions imposed on it were somewhat stiffer than anything the Christian Right is suggesting. Like, fiery death.

According to the Bible, the people of Sodom weren't "subhuman"; they were willfully bad humans. There's a difference. You don't accuse subhuman creatures of sin, nor do you call them to repentance or offer them forgiveness.

But in the minds of 75-watt intellectuals like Rich and Cohen, Christians cause violence (even when they denounce it!) merely by expressing moral disapproval. Rich has even blamed Christians for protesting a play depicting their Savior as a sodomite.

The Liberal Theory of Causation (it deserves a name) owes little to Aristotle, Newton or Einstein. It's nothing more than emotional scapegoating: Whenever possible, blame Christians -- or conservatives, or just white males.

During the early '80s when a serial killer murdered a score of black children in Atlanta, liberals and civil rights leaders blamed it on the "climate of racism" somehow induced by Ronald Reagan. The killer was presumably a white racist Republican (if not a card-carrying member of the Moral Majority who espoused supply-side economics). This misguided suspicion served to protect the real killer, who turned out to be a charming young black man nobody mistrusted.

The Liberal Theory of Causation is actually designed to spray blame like skunk musk when something bad has already happened. It's totally useless for predicting future events.

[vannrox]

"...The Liberal Theory of Causation (it deserves a name) owes little to Aristotle, Newton or Einstein. It's nothing more than emotional scapegoating: Whenever possible, blame Christians -- or conservatives, or just white males.

..."

[LiteKeeper]

ordained Bump

[decimon]

Up until the time of the Civil Rights movement, it kinda made sense to blame white Americans for the suffering of black Americans.

[Blood of Tyrants]

And people still doubt the prophesies in Revelations.

[TopQuark]

On top of this, for some years now we have been told (by the National Holocaust Museum, for example) that the gospels "led to" the mass murder of Jews under Hitler.

Pat Buchanan and Sobran, not surprisingly, share the same tactics of relying on enticing half-truths. No one has ever said that the gospels --- a book holy to Christians -- led to Hitler. What has been said, is that the Church --- a social institution, led and populated by mere humans --- has for centuries fostered the negative attitude towards the Jews. Given the duration, much of this has been absorbed by the Europeans and retained even by atheists such as Hitler and Stalin.

Not the same thing, isn't it? But sounds great --- and entices Christians to believe that Jews blame the holiest of the holies for the emergence of Hitler. Sobran's and Buchanan's tactics are much the same of the Arab sheiks and Soviet communists before them. And both are pathetic in their attempts to promulgate their personal bigorty.