Posted on 05/25/2004 1:10:56 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
The word "fundagelism" has never appeared in the columns of this newspaper. The term is, however, current in the blogosphere - that cyberforum which nowadays carries the most interestingly paranoid political debate. "Fundagelism" is not a word that trips easily off the tongue. It's a crunching together of the even more mouth-boggling compound "fundamentalist evangelism".
George W Bush is a fundagelist. Dad wasn't. George H Bush (not renowned for his Wildean wit) delivered his most memorable wisecrack on walking into a room full of fundagelists: "Gee! I'm the only person here that's only been born once."
His son is truly twice born, with two dads. Nor are the parents equal in the eyes of their son. The journalist Bob Woodward, as he recalls, asked the current president if he ever turned to the ex-president for help. "Well, no," replied Bush Jr: "He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher father that I appeal to."
There are, it is estimated, 90 million evangelical Christians in the US. If they can be mobilised, they will form a rock-solid foundation for November victory for the Republican incumbent. Chads need hang no more.
Of course, not all American evangelicals are fundagelicals any more than all Muslims are Islamic extremists. But lukewarm evangelicals (like the Islamists) are more likely to vote for their own kind - even if extremist - than the opposition.
What do fundagelicals instinctively oppose? Gay marriage, abortion, gun control, taxes, the UN (and the currently top-rated candidate for anti-Christ, Kofi Annan), withdrawal from Iraq, Michael Moore, Janet Jackson's left breast.
What do they believe in? Christian values and the future as foretold in the Book of Revelation. According to a Time Magazine poll (which strains credulity but seems to be valid) 59% of Americans trust that St John's prophecies will be fulfilled - probably during their lifetime. November could be a last opportunity to vote for God's preferred candidate. Iraq (ancient Babylon) figures centrally in the fundagelist vision of things, as does the Rapture, and the imminent mass conversion of the Jews (hence fundagelist-Zionism).
The White House has recently been accused of inveighing (via Nasa) against the movie The Day After Tomorrow (out on May 28) because it narrates the wrong apocalypse. One caused by man-made global warming, that is, rather than God's white-hot rage against sinners. The apocalypse depicted in Tim LaHaye's Left Behind books is, we assume, the US government-approved version.
Fundagelism presents problems for the Democratic party as it girds itself for the coming campaign. John Kerry is a Catholic. A former altar boy, he is (to the irritation of Catholic bishops) in favour of women's reproductive rights. Last week Naral Pro-Choice America, the country's leading lobby for legal abortion, endorsed Kerry's candidacy.
Kerry so-called. Until a couple of years ago, the Democratic front-runner was assumed to be as Boston Irish as his namesake county. Newspaper sleuthing discovered that his paternal grandfather was, in fact, a Czech, Fritz Kohn, who changed his name. Kerry lost relatives in the Holocaust. Race-hate websites nowadays routinely abuse him as "Kerry (Kohn aka Cohen)". Famously, Kerry is a decorated Vietnam war hero who, like Siegfried Sassoon, threw his medals away in disgust at what he came to see as a futile colonial war.
Was ever a candidate for the presidency more triangulated? Pro-choice Catholic, Shamrock-Jewish, warrior-pacifist? In any rational contest, to be all things to all voters should be an advantage. But with fundagelism riding high, Kerry looks 110% flip-flop.
Last Thursday, the American PBS network ran a programme The Jesus Factor. It made (for Democrats and, dare one say it, democrats) depressing viewing. America, it suggested, is aching for certainty. Any certainty. Fundagelism supplies it. God help America is all I can say.
He'll help us to be less like you. :)
MING!
After Laroquette makes an especially cynical and raunchy comment, another character says to him, "Y'know, they have something nowadays for your condition. It's called 'Church'."
Any system of belief that keeps one from voting for a RAT has got to have some good in it.
SOMEbody's sure been nipping out of Mo Dowd's private hootch stock lately, haven't they...? :)
That, or they aren't getting any, either.
The breast-in-question was her right one. Which raises an interesting point. If the author was not interested enough in the wardrobe malfunction and its aftermath to recall which breast was involved, what does that say about him?
"The breast-in-question was her right one. Which raises an interesting point. If the author was not interested enough in the wardrobe malfunction and its aftermath to recall which breast was involved, what does that say about him?"
Well, maybe because the breast was on his left as he looked at the exposure? He's a liberal, for crying out loud! Their reality is much different than the real thing.
"God help America is all I can say." You don't get it. we the unwashed have been helped by God and we Americans give more of our help to the poor in other parts of the world than all of Europe and ASIA combined.
I think he is English and do'nt they drive on the left?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.