hypocrisy rampant

[realthog]

 
Over at pds_lit there's a merry rant about the religious right's "backlash", even before the movie's release, against The Golden Compass; you can find it at http://pds-lit.livejournal.com/10105.html. (Declaration of interest: pds_lit is my wife and babe.)

The flap about The Golden Compass couldn't have come at a more apposite time, really, what with Mitt Romney's speech a day or two ago basically saying that people who didn't worship the Judeo-Christian god had no moral values and must be regarded as ineligible for public office; he further asserted that freedom and institutionalized religious belief have always gone hand in hand, a statement that is near dumbfounding in its disregard for many centuries of history -- centuries stretching back to long before there was such a thing as Christianity, indeed, and continuing to this day, as exemplified in the discrimination by Romney's own church against blacks until the mid-1970s. A society that discriminates against some of its members is not a free one. The nations where freedom can be said to have established itself and begun to flourish are precisely those in which religion has been tolerated and indeed widely practised by those in power but where the barrier between church and state has been rigorously maintained.

Take a look, for an example of the perils of mixing church and state, at what happened during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I of England. Under the elder half-sister there was the vilest persecution of Protestants. When Bloody Mary died and "Good" Queen Bess took over, the air over England grew thick with the greasy smoke of another crop of religious believers being burned: the Catholics. The irrationality of involving religious belief in the running of nations could hardly be more horrifically demonstrated: no rational argument can be conceived whereby it can be OK to exalt Catholics and burn Protestants one day and do exactly the opposite the next. Another jolly product of institutionalized religion was, of course, the Spanish Inquisition . . . and we haven't yet got to the rather different but nonetheless directly pertinent case of the Holocaust.

I said above: "A society that discriminates against some of its members is not a free one." This is not a proposition with which, evidently, Romney agrees. He's not just laissez faire about the discrimination against agnostics and atheists in American public life, he's all gung-ho for it -- the more such discrimination the better, he told his audience . . . and almost in those words. He seems to be advocating a sort of religious apartheid as the ideal state for America. That's as disgusting a prospect as the race-based society created by the practitioners of the original apartheid.

The other lunatic-fringe holy roller among the Republican candidates is of course Mike Huckabee, that puckish nutcase who, stretching credulity well beyond its elastic limit, is so antagonistic towards the proven theory of evolution by natural selection that he claims the world and its creatures were created a few thousand years ago, just like it says in Genesis . . . assuming this is indeed what it says in Genesis, which most theologians don't.

This sort of thing is part and parcel of Huckabee's behaviour: while Governor of Arkansas he so detested a predecessor, Bill Clinton, that he claimed a convicted Arkansas serial rapist was rotting in prison solely because Clinton had corruptly put him there, the man's accuser being a relative of Clinton's. In fact, as Huckabee must have well known because it's right there in the Arkansas records, as soon as Clinton discovered he was related to one of the rapist's victims, he recused himself from having anything further to do with the case, which was the right and honourable thing for him to do. I do not regard Bill Clinton as the most honourable of men; it's very apparent, though, that in this instance he was significantly more honourable than the supposedly Good Book-obeying Governor Huckabee.

More truthful, too. Against much resistance, Huckabee got the rapist released. The rapist went on to rape and murder at least two more women before being caught. (He died in prison a few years ago.) Those women died horrifically because Huckabee either (a) wanted to score a cheap political point against Clinton or (b) possessed judgement so impaired that his detestation for Clinton blinded him to the reality staring him straight in the face. Even worse, perhaps: now that details are becoming widely public of his involvement and behaviour in this fiasco, he has taken to lying through his teeth about it. He's been lying through his teeth, too, as conversations have increased concerning his ethically questionable (ah, so genteelly do I euphemize for "corrupt") acceptance of countless financial goodies during his gubernatorial reign.

I do not remember the commandment that says: Thou shalt lie for the sake of political expediency -- to cover your ass. Cheating those who elected you to public office by making yourself available to the highest bidder is another Christian no-no, or so I've always thought. There most certainly was nothing to encourage it in the Sermon on the Mount. I do recall, however, that there's quite a lot in the Bible about God wanting you to tell the truth and be honest in your dealings with others.

Oddly enough, that's what rationalists believe, too. Perhaps this is why Romney and Huckabee think rationalists are unfit for public office -- who knows?

There's a good article by Joe Canason about Romney's bizarre speech on the Salon site: http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/12/07/religion_presidency/. (Thanks to Tim Sullivan for alerting me to it.)

Comments

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Mr Huckabee also has some rather outre views on the treatment of AIDS patients.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

There was a horrific moment a few weeks ago when, at a campaign event, Romney was approached by a young, wheelchair-bound guy who said that, essentially, all his doctors agreed he wouldn't be alive to speak to the candidate were it not for the benefits of marijuana as a therapeutic drug. Before he'd even finished speaking, Romney told him that "I don't approve of marijuana as a medicinal drug" and moved on to press the flesh of more acceptable others.

Tell me, pray, what kind of monster would consider it valid to condemn innocent individuals to death on scientifically spurious ideological grounds?

And what kind of respect should we accord a religion that creates those monsters, whose sole justifaction is that "God Told Me To"?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Another thing that I discovered about Huckabee since posting my rant is that he's apparently the most prolific death-sentencer among the slate of Repugnican candidates. It seems that, as Governor of Arkansas, he and the Lord just partied all night long as they condemned folk to death and made sure the penalty was carried out. What hardons he must have had.

Although the vast majority of US journalists are too intensely stupid to realize it, this glorification of capital punishment blows yet another hole in Huckabee's supposed Christian credentials. One can argue indefinitely about the precise meaning of the Hebrew original for "Thou shalt not kill",* but Christ was pretty explicit in a later testament: only those without sin can justify practising the death penalty, which means none of us can. Mike Huckabee clearly considers he has a more direct line to God than Christ did.

There's a technical name for that particular blasphemy; offhand I can't remember it.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I think the technical term you're looking for is `bollocks.'

[realthog.livejournal.com]

That's it!

[stwish.livejournal.com]

I think it odd that the media concentrate on doctrinal differences, which they never bother to spell out, rather than the fact that Mormonism is a separate, even separatist entity within America, that has historically resorted to terrorism to maintain its identity. Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover employed lots of Mormons, because they were neat dressers, and followed orders, but neither man realized that the Mormons' first loyalty was not to the USA but to the LDS Church.

And, in your history of religious wars and oppression, if you see Bolshevism and Nazism as Christian heresies, then almost all wars have been religious in nature, or at least religious in excuses. Undoubtebly, the economic motives are paramount, but the cover stories are usually religious

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"if you see Bolshevism and Nazism as Christian heresies"

I'm not sure that I do. I'd be interested to read your argument in favour of this statement.

I included the Holocaust as a relevant example because the Nazis considered themselves good Christians while using Jewry as a good enough excuse to massacre "outsiders". I'm not sure there was a specifically Christian basis for this genocide, except at a distant remove through the Nazis' (and other similarly inclined dimwits') notion that Christianity and the Aryans were just, like, made for each other. If you can make a good case for Nazism as a Xtian offshoot cult, though, I'd love to hear it!

" think it odd that the media concentrate on doctrinal differences, which they never bother to spell out"

I think it odd that the US mainstream media assume everyone has a religion, and that this is A Good Thing. It's rather in the same way that they assume only the lunatic fringe oppose the Iraq war. There are lots of atheists/agnostics around; to get an idea of the numbers, even though many are intimidated into pretending religious belief, polls show there are about as many rationalists in the US as there are African-Americans.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

For your interest, here is Governor Huckabee on intelligent design.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

What's even more depressing are some of the comments, which show an extraordinary dearth of both education and intelligence. The commonest failing seems to be an inability to distinguish between the two relevant meanings of the word "belief", the one that refers to something faith-based and the other that concerns an empirically based conclusion. This isn't a vocabulary matter: it's a failure to be able to distinguish between two fundamentally dissimilar things because confused at some very elementary level by their having the same name. In logical terms this is an imbecility, of course.

Our schools and to a great extent our universities lack courses on what I'd suggest is the most important educational function of all: teaching young people how to think. I guess the assumption is that the ability to think is innate to human beings, even though it's patently obvious that this isn't the case. But the ancient Greeks, among others, recognized the importance of this educational discipline; why have we lost sight of it?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

I posted this over at pds_lit's end of this discussion, but I guess it holds true over here. In Ebert's review of The Golden Compass he says, The books have been attacked by American Christians over questions of religion; their popularity in the UK may represent more confident believers whose response to other beliefs is to respond, rather than suppress. And it did make me wonder whether the excesses of religion in America are actually due to a lack of confidence. I know Pullman has been attacked over here as well, but I think Ebert has a point about the differences between religion in the Old and New Worlds.
On the other hand, the row over Jerry Springer, The Opera seems to demonstrate that a similar mindset is working its way in here.

It would be tempting to say that we've lost the educational discipline you speak of because They don't want us to learn to think. But I think the more probable explanation is that it's easier not to teach it.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And here he is on the way that angels can influence hunting contests: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/12/6477_does_huckabee_b.html?src=email&link=hed_20071210_ts4_Huckabee%27s%20Weird%28est%3F%29%20Speech%20Revisited.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

There's an excellent article by columnist Gene Lyons about Huckabee's involvement with the serial rapist and murderer Wayne DuMond at http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/210393/.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Oh, and at http://www.motherjones.com:80/washington_dispatch/2007/12/huckabee-faith-baptist-pastor-sermons.html there's a fine David Corn/Jonathan Stein piece on Huckabee's gleeful mixing of faith and politics that includes this gem:

+++++

Huckabee has indeed mixed religion with policy previously. In 1997, when he was governor, he answered a question about capital punishment during a call-in show:

Interestingly enough, if there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, "This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency."

Huckabee's argument: since Jesus didn't say that, according to the New Testament, capital punishment is fine.

+++++

One weeps that such childish arguments as Huckabee's should find so many credulous adult listeners as they evidently do.