Posted on 11/09/2004 12:22:42 PM PST by oldtimer2
Christopher Hitchens is definately an atheist, but makes the case for the Religious Right. Don't make up your mind until you read the whole article.
Bush's Secularist Triumph
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada.
Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.
Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule.
As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
I'm an agnostic who has always argued with my fellow non-believers that their hatred of religion makes as much sense as being against morality or ethics. Religion is a framework for morality. The Left disdains such "chidlish" notions.
Hope you enjoy being on the outside looking in, Dems!
The left did all in their power to removed the Tablets from the public square but they're here in our hearts, alive and well.
The Ten Commandments, if followed, would eliminate the need for courts, jails, and lawyers. What a beautiful world it would be.
I'm a believer and I respect your agnosticism. I had my favorite brainy priest tell me that there are a number of doubters in the clergy. Not shocking to me (it was a private conversation) but if one is sequestered in a monostary one has a great deal of time to dwell on the subject.
George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he—and the U.S. armed forces—have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. [i]But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?[/i]
thanks for the article.
Hitchens is saying this is about a Christianity that has made an uneasy-but-workable peace with secularism and pluralism, and an Islam which is committed to a rigid, intolerant theocracy, murderous of anyone who disageees. Hitchens admits that he does and will continue to disagree with conservative christians on a host of social issues, but that there is a difference of night-and-day between conservative Christians and the Islamists, both in their goals and in their methods. And Hitchens points out that the liberal hatred of Christianity is so undisciplined and silly that it makes them side with the immeasurably worse forces of radical Islam.
It's a wonderful article... Thank you for posting it...
ROFL! This guy is hysterical!
Turn us into the Soviet Union, heaven forbid.
The seclarists will have fun with the nukewlars. :>)
Great stuff from Hitchens. Bump!
Hitchens seems to feed on the controversy he stirs. That's fine with me. As an evangelical Christian, one of my main reasons for voting for Bush was the "values thing," but my biggest reason was the war on terror. Trying times requires strange alliances, but I'm glad to be able to consider Hitchens an ally on the biggest issue of the day.
I'm with Hitch on this. The left is divorced from reality because their whole moral philosophy is based on collectivism.
Moral collectivism is very alluring to some, but it fails utterly here in the real world. Eventually if you're a moral collectivist, you have to come to terms with that. At this point some people give up their collectivist ideology. But others choose to chuck the notion of objective truth itself so that they can hold on to their collectivist beliefs. And that's the left today.
The important thing is that they want to believe and are on a journey toward belief. Nobody's perfect, but as long as they keep at it.
Of course! I was quite pleased with his honesty about how we all doubt. I haven't been to church in years and intend to keep it that way. That's not a virtue, of course, but I can't take the hypocrisy of the flock anymore.
Faith may be real, but it's not deep unless it's been tested. No believer should be afraid to doubt. It's when doubt becomes a chronic intellectual play thing that it become corrosive.
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