The Christian Taliban

Neocon. That’s what they call me now. It’s a real ideology that really has run the country for the last six years, but it’s always meant as an insult. It’s an odd insult when pointed at me. I always considered myself a liberal. Being pro choice and pro gay marriage were once the litmus tests for deserving the liberal stamp. But now, those are no longer adequate qualifications. My views have not changed,  America thinks her views have not changed, but they have. Because now they call me a ‘neocon’ for being what I always was.

The issues that alienate me from my liberal brethren come from my stance on religion, multi-culturalism and “tolerance”. I have no religion, but I do not believe in lies. Religion has not been the greatest cause of violence in the world. Secular dictatorships of the 20^th century were by far responsible for the most torture, genocide and democide ever seen. Marxists have killed more than any religion. Those are facts. Religion is no more responsible for evil than greed, political infighting, tribalism, secular totalitarianism and any number of other sources of political corruption. I do believe that all religions are lies. But I also believe that not all lies are equally pernicious.

It is strange for the leftists in this country to be so exceptionally paranoid about Christianity that they think civil liberties are being eroded beyond recognition if one state introduces a twenty second pause for prayer in school, if another state allows intelligent design to be taught side by side evolution and most egregiously or if a woman might have to drive to the CVS down the block because her morning after pill prescription was refused.

Nevertheless, because of these measures, the Christian right has been demonized as some sort of Christian Taliban that wants a theocracy, wants to destroy gay people, shackle women to the role of a breeding machine and destroy science. Now, the real Taliban, the Islamic Taliban, actually accomplished all such goals. They enforced their theocracy with an iron fist, collapsed stone walls onto homosexuals, denied women all education and job opportunities, even chopped their fingers off for wearing nail polish and banned intellectual endeavors as benign as chess. According to the leftists in this country, the Christians are just as backward in their goals and would do all of these things if they had a theocracy. Somehow, if the Christian right with the support of the national society of pharmacists allow pharmacists the choice to opt out of filling a morning after prescription, they deserve the label of “Taliban” because they are equivalent in their mentality to the Islamists that made all birth control illegal, guaranteed death for rape victims who were not married and forbade women to speak to men outside their families. 

The truth is there is no Christian Taliban. There is no “if this was a theocracy like Iran” because if the 30% of society that can be called Christian fundamentalists had equivalent mindsets with the Islamic fundamentalists then they would not at all cooperate with a secular democratic system. Instead, they would overthrow all “man made” laws and declare a theocracy. The last six years demonstrated the absolute height of power that conservative Christians could achieve in this country and frankly, a reasonable person could see that their effect on domestic social policy was not unbearable.

Yes, I admitted it. I uttered the ultimate blasphemy that negates all my liberal qualifications. I defended the Christian fundamentalists. See, a liberal can defend nearly anyone. For example, they handle dictators that murder millions of civilians with white kid gloves. In fact most leftists are quietly praised for touting the accomplishments of Fidel Castro and Mao. One can defend Osama Bin Ladin and still retain the liberal label as does Ward Churchill. One can defend Palestinian suicide bombers that are motivated by anti Semitism that only SS officers could rival and be praised with applause and accolades in a leftist activist rally. Yet, a person cannot say a single word in defense or even tolerance of the vilest of the vile- the American Christian fundamentalist- without turning leftists against him.

To add insult to the injury, most leftists make sure to somehow either equate Islamic fundamentalists with Christian ones or denigrate the Christians to an even more base moral status. Should someone argue that Jews and Christians were accorded greater tolerance in the Medieval Islamic world than Muslims and Jews were given in the Medieval Christian world, then the leftists will not utter a word in the defense of Christendom. Of course, if one would dare mention that Christian fundamentalists only want gays not to marry, to be barred from the military and be discriminated against in the adoption procedure while Islamic fundamentalists want gays to be stoned to death under Shariah law then leftists will cringe at the thought and search for every possible retaliation about how the Christian right is at least equally bad and probably even worse. It takes extreme effort to convince the leftists that the Islamic fundamentalists would be “just as bad” as the American Taliban. Oh really? Just as bad? And how big of a threat has this American Taliban been to the rule of law? If I recall, they seem to do rather well with working within the boundaries of democratic elections and grassroots support. Shall I count how many have demanded separate laws for Christians based on the Bible, rioted, blown up train stations, machine gunned judges or killed civilians in recent history? Shall I remind people that Islamic fundamentalists do these things on a very frequent basis in the western world and on a daily basis in the Islamic world?

"All Muslims are not Terrorists", say the Muslims and the left. It is the perfect red herring to play into the leftist hatred of the caricatured FOX watching dolt that bought into the story of WMDs and more importantly hates gays and pro choice women. In reality, almost no one believes that “All Muslims are terrorists”. Even people that make a career out of denouncing Islamic fanaticism such as Daniel Pipes claim that only 10-15% of Muslims are fundamentalists. Of course the simple statement that “all Muslims are not terrorists” is enough to evangelize the leftists into an argument against their hated enemy, the Christian fundamentalists that stole their elections. The leftists will go on a diatribe about the fascist dictatorial powers of Bush against the civil liberties of all Muslims and how the right wing is naturally racist against Muslims. The right wing is racist against all dark people, but mostly against the imaginary race of Muslims.

It’s a bit curious that it’s the Christian fundamentalists and right wingers that feel no qualms with completely denouncing Islamic fundamentalists, the Taliban and the terrorists. That in itself proves that they are indeed no were near as reactionary as Islamists in their aims. It’s not exactly a tough call to denounce someone that wants to behead people for insulting a prophet, but of course leftists somehow cannot bear the idea that anyone in the world could be more backward than the Bible thumping rapture awaiting follower of Jesus H Christ. The leftists cling to their invented false holier than thou concept that only they are tolerant towards Muslims, only they know Muslims and that only they have a complex understanding of the problem while the right winger is racist against Muslims, doesn’t know any Muslims or anything about Muslims other than what goes on in FOX news and has a completely two dimensional understanding of terrorism. Now, this isn’t entirely their fault since the Islamists are manipulating them with the ploy of screaming “All Muslims are not terrorists” as if someone is telling them they are.

The crucial difference between the Christian fundamentalists and the Islamic fundamentalists is that the mainstream Christian variety believes in operating within the law and believes in democracy and freedom. They really do believe this; hence they are appalled by people who don’t believe this such as the Islamic fundamentalists. Islamic fundamentalists believe in this only as long as their law states that no law will contradict the Quran or Allah. Leftists would of course have you believe that only a tiny minority of Muslims harbor such extremist sympathies, when that is not the case for Muslims in the west and even less true for Muslims in the  Middle East. Large scale surveys over the past few years have revealed that 40-60% of Muslims in some countries in Europe want Shariah law. This means, 40-60% of Muslims believe that women should be stoned for adultery, that blasphemy should be a severe crime and that a woman’s testimony should be half a man’s in court. Most importantly, they believe in following something other than the democratic law for themselves. This number of Shariah law supporters is far lower in the US, fortunately for us.

Truth be told, the US is the most Christian conservative country in the protestant world, but even here half of Christians could not be considered fundamentalists. Of those Christian fundamentalists, only small fractions are the true equivalents to the Islamic fundamentalists and they are the Dominionists. Dominionists ultimately aim to create a theocracy based on the laws of the Old Testament. Their perspective on Christianity is one that has never been a mainstream reality even in the height of Catholic Church power in the middle ages. The Dominionists are estimated to comprise at most 3 million people in the US at most and even most of them aim to operate completely within the law in order to achieve their goals of “reclaiming Americafor Christ”. What leftists refuse to understand is that the vast majority of Biblical literalists and Christian fundamentalists are not Dominionists and even those who are mostly pose less danger than Islamic fundamentalists. The left is possessed by such a paranoid hatred of the Bible that they seem to link all actions of Christian fundamentalists with Dominionist goals. They really think the Lacy Peterson law is the slippery slope to illegalizing birth control pills. 20 seconds of silent prayer in school is the slippery slope to making Christianity the nation’s official religion. An amendment against gay marriage, the most right wing conservative action this administration has attempted, is pure hatred and bigotry against gays. Again, I don’t approve of any of these things, but an amendment that forbids gays to marry, but says nothing about civil unions, military participation or adoption is not the end of the world for gays. So, what is the end of the world for gays? Try Iran, where 4000 gays and lesbians have been executed since the Iranian revolution. They get a choice of four different methods of death: stoning, being dropped from a cliff, halved by a sword or hung. I’m going to say it. I’m going to utter another blasphemy against the left. Bush is not that bigoted. I really believe from the bottom of his heart, Bush does not want to see gay people executed or even assaulted. He did sign in a law that forbade protests at military funerals by right wing Christians that are angry about the gays in the military. Wait! Isn’t Bush the bigot that is representing those people?! No. They may have voted for him, but he is not them.

So, what are these backward unconstitutional dictatorial aims of Christian fundies anyways? Overturn Roe vs. Wade on the basis that the constitution does not guarantee abortion rights? Force the states to decide the legality of abortion? Would the leftists like to actually look at the argument that the constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion and therefore making it illegal is not a crime? I must concede that it is possible to interpret the constitution as a document that does not support abortion rights. If this is the case, I would love to see an amendment that guarantees them, but the right wing is not unreasonable in wanting to overturn Roe based on constitutional legality. Only 4% of Christians believe that abortion should never be allowed. Most right wing Christians believe that it should remain legal for cases of rape, incest and danger to the mother’s health. In truth, this isn’t a particularly realistic or feasible position but they do not want to chain women to stoves and force them to breed like machines.

Really, if the left would like to see Christians and republicans completely out of the grips of the Dominionists then they need to stop hating them to the point of total alienation. Christian fundamentalists at least try to make arguments that do not rely on the bible for support. For example, intelligent design is at least an effort to place genesis in the context of evolution. The left owes them some credit for trying to make a hypothesis that isn’t based on the Bible. If that is really what Christian fundamentalists believe, then there is no morality in banning its discussion from classrooms where people can be given the opportunity to analyze it. In truth, most Democrat politicians do not represent this vehement aversion to devout Christianity. Most devout Catholics are still democrats, Lieberman has no crusade against faith and Al Sharpton is certainly a reverend in his orations. Still, the average leftist supporter of Kerry and Sharpton hates devout Christianity and thinks biblical literalism inevitably means witch burnings for heretics. 

The truth is that there is no Christian Taliban. And that is because Christian fundamentalists do not want a Taliban. Indeed, they were the first in line to fight to overthrow the real Taliban when the war was declared. Funny that the extreme leftists were the first in line to protest the war against the Taliban. If the left wants to see the nature of the beast of bigotry, perhaps they need not keep searching the ranks of sixty year old Midwesterners that cant understand how a man can marry a man, but rather they can search within themselves for the people that hate Christian fundamentalists and everything they represent simply because they believe in Biblical salvation. Is that a phrase that makes shivers crawl down your spine? Biblical salvation? My apologies to my leftist comrades who I commit treason against, but that is bigotry.

Comments

[pam mata]

sorry dearie, but i totally disagree. the christian totalitarian right wing in this country has an agenda of hate against us "undesirables" in society. they seek totalitarian rule and extermination of the rest of us. only the elite right will have jobs and a better life. they are ensuring their survival at the expense of the rest of us castaways. true there have been evil secular regimes but when religion as an opiate of the people comes into play you have a much more dangerous political religious beast that is nihilistic and devours all that do not adhere to its maniacal tenets. wake up dear.you are slumbering....queenofswords

[M.Ram]

I don't know, but have you seen Jesus Camp. I would still keep an eye on this so-called Christian Right just as much as I would keep an eye on Muslims who want our downfall. Even so, I do know that the Evangelical voting bloc is not as united as Muslim voting blocs in Europe. Most of them are sheep. They love this country and wouldn't want to do anything to destroy it. But people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other preachers bother me.

[thirteen28]

Good post, very well written and thought out. It took a lot of intellectual honesty to be both a left-winger and yet admit that Christians aren't trying to run the country into theocracy. The visceral reaction exhibited by the first commenter shows you hit a nerve and hit it good.

Take care,

Someone you used to know at other places around the net ;)