Christian Spirit, Sharon & Robertson, and Knowing Nothing About History

This happened some time ago, but it’s taken me a while to “process” it and come up with a cogent observation.  Sometimes, certain things are just too unbelievable to take.  But this is by no means the first, nor shall it be the last, time someone from the frothing-at-the-mouth christian right has said something which leaves most reasonable (and reasoning) people flatfooted.

Partly, this is about not knowing history, which is something all of us could do with a little more intimate acquaintance. 

The right Reverand Pat Robertson, who spews forth on the 700 Club–a televised ministry previously notable for bad hair, excessive eye makeup, and monetary and sexual hypocrisy that ran off the scales–let the public know what he thought was behind Ariel Sharon’s massive cerebral hemhorrage. Seems God did it.

If there is a more ideologically corrupt pundit currently mouthing off, I am unaware of him or her. Mona Charen might qualify, except her observations are so fecklessly ill-formed that she poses no serious challenge to reason, and Ann Coulter seems to have turned purely to a Limbaugh-esque “don’t confuse me with the facts, my numbers are more important than truth” kind of screeding moronity.

According to Robertson, God struck Sharon down because he was about to give God’s land to the Palestinians. He said:

“God considers this land to be his…You read the Bible and he says, ‘This is my land,’ and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up …

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Marriage As A “Social” Issue

One wonders why all this nonsense now over Gay marriage.  Bush wants the states to do what they wish, while putting in place a Constitutional Amendment which would be used successfully by anti-gay groups in the same courts Bush is condemning as Activist to shoot down any state-allowed same-sex marriage…

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Political Coincidence

Apalling.  Bush, that is.  He choose this week to come out in support of--fulfilling a campaign promise made back in 'o4--an amendment to the Constitution banning same sex marriage.  The timing could not be crueler.  Twenty-five years ago this week AIDS began to appear in this country. The religious right…

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Cultural Tolerance and the War on Terror

We define terror narrowly, and one of the components seems to be that it is aimed at A People, rather than individuals.  Given the overwhelming cost of dealing with it, perhaps such definitional parameters are necessary.  Certain things ought to be "merely" police problems, while "terrorism" is a larger, necessarily…

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