Non-Christian journo: Liberals hate USA and GWB because they support Christian values

[Socrates]

An evil hatred
By Andrew Bolt [not a Christian himself—:soc:]
Herald Sun, 27 Feb 2004 (Australia)
http://heraldsun.news.com.au/printpa...805741,00.html

Those who loathe the US don't just hate their foreign policy, they hate the Christian values that civilise us. And by rejecting good, they often embrace evil.

OUR "intellectuals" hate the United States for one dangerous reason in particular. It's Christian.

There is probably no more Christian nation than the US, where more than 60 per cent of people go to church at least once a month.

And the US is now led by a man who takes his Christianity more seriously than any president since Jimmy Carter. And this scares the hell out of so many of our cultural elite.

For instance, infamous "journalist" John Pilger damns the administration of President George Bush as an "unelected Christian fundamentalist regime".

Sydney broadcaster Mike Carlton denounces it as a "fearsome" regime "hell-bent on a Manichean crusade to remake an evil world in its own Christian image".

Malcolm Fraser, the former prime minister, simply calls the US Government "fundamentalist", but Age cartoonist Michael Leunig draws it as a murderous caveman, with a club in one hand and Bible in the other.

Professor Brian Costar accuses the US Government of being "infected by far-right Christian fundamentalists whose ideology is closer to that of the Taliban than mainstream American liberalism".

And Richard Neville, New Age guru and former publisher, in December raged: "Kill, torture, rip off, humiliate – this is one of the themes of Christianity 2003, as the three leading liars of the Coalition, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, sink into the delusional torpor of their fundamentalist Christmas pud."

Last year, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman grilled British Prime Minister Tony Blair over Iraq, and I heard this telling exchange:

Paxman: Does the fact that George Bush and you are both Christians make it easier for you to view these conflicts in terms of good and evil?

Blair: I don't think so, no. I think that whether you're a Christian or you're not a Christian, you can try to perceive what is good and what is, uh, is evil.

Paxman: You don't pray together, for example?

Blair: No, we don't pray together, Jeremy, no.

The sneering Paxman clearly wanted to make Bush and Blair seem like men in the grip of a murderous religious mania, but he'd actually stumbled on to a great truth.

Yes, being a Christian does indeed probably make it easier to perceive real evil, and particularly evil in a totalitarian form – and this is precisely why Christianity has been the enemy of every totalitarian movement since the French Revolution.

What's more, this is the truth about Christianity that many intellectuals – largely secular and so more likely to worship totalitarian gods – cannot forgive.

Check the history. The Jacobins in the French Revolution banned the Catholic Church and slaughtered priests and nuns.

Communist regimes have done much the same in Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam and China, where even today the Catholic church is banned and its leading Chinese bishops jailed.

And the Nazis also waged war on Christianity, as Maurice Samuel shows in his book The Great Hatred, published in 1940.

What the Nazis hated in Christianity is what all who worship totalitarian ideologies, like today's Islamists, hate, too.

The Nazis didn't dare name Christianity as their true enemy. Instead, they hoped to strip Christianity of what they condemned as its "Jewish" influence, and so turn it into a Nazi cult.

As Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg put it, Germany's youth had "no other wish than to contemplate the great personality of the founder of Christianity in his real greatness, without the falsifying addition of Jewish fanatics like Matthew, or materialistic Rabbis like Paul, or African jurists like Tertullian, or spineless mongrels like Augustine . . ."

Hitler also condemned the Jewish influence on Marxism and Christianity, and wrote:

"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle in nature; and replaces the eternal privilege of force and strength with the mass of numbers and their dead weight . . . By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."

And so, as Samuel says, the Nazis' hatred of Jews was actually a rejection of the most important Judeo-Christian message – that no person is too humble to be precious to God, and that all of us are called to the brotherly love of even strangers.

It was a rejection of the Judeo-Christian claim that the political machine exists for people, not people for the machine.

Christianity was the enemy of totalitarians then, and is so still. Ask the Islamists. Ask the Greens. Ask our university Marxists and the International Socialists; and isn't it natural that such folk also hate Israel?

I should qualify that.

Of course, Christianity, left to its doubting, hesitating, brawling and pagan-flirting bishops is a menace to no one other than its own flock.

Take Pat Power, the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra. Last October, he had a choice – would he protest against the visiting Christian president of a largely Christian democracy that upholds religious freedom and has even liberated the Muslims of Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia?

Or would he protest against the visiting atheist president of a communist dictatorship that bans his own church, locks up his fellow bishops, jails Buddhist lamas, tortures Falun Gong worshippers, orders forced abortions and occupied Tibet?

No contest. Power demonstrated against the Christian president, not the anti-Christian despot.

As I say, such a church worries no one but Christians. But a country soaked in Christianity and equipped with the strongest army, the biggest chequebook and most vigorous culture – now that is a threat to totalitarians everywhere.

And so it has long been. The US was the lethal enemy of Communist regimes and the Nazis last century, and is the prime enemy of the Islamists, greenshirts and neo-Marxists now.

Did you note, incidentally, the European countries that were America's firmest allies in the war in Iraq? Strongly Catholic Spain, Italy and Poland. Its worst critic was France, where secularism is the state cult.

It may seem odd that secular intellectuals, who dream of an Eden without soldiers or priests, end up effectively siding with Islamic bombers and the genocidal dictators in their war with the Christian West.

But too many intellectuals still see Christianity as a bigger threat to their dreams – and to their wilder liberties and vices – than they do Islamic terrorism and the extremist preaching that feeds it.

Last December, for instance, the chairman of Britain's Broadcasting Standards Commission, Lord Dubs, noted that Islam was given far more respect on television and radio than other religions.

Dubs, a Labour peer, added: "In portraying Muslims, they have held back, they have censored themselves, they are timid. (But) I have seen them pour scorn on Christianity more than other religions. Christianity is an easier and more acceptable target, followed, to a lesser extent, by Jews and Hindus." Same story here.

And what a frightening hierarchy of hate-objects.

With Christianity despised by so many intellectuals, it's no wonder that the successes of the US – and the assertion of its Judeo-Christian values – inspire more hatred than do its failures.

Your enemy's failings are never frightening, and so the Left doesn't hate the US for its disaster in Vietnam. It actually rather enjoyed it.

But Leftist activists everywhere loathe the US for its success in Iraq, and to point out Iraq may now one day even become democratic just makes the insult worse.

To call this kind of sick reaction anti-American is true, but not enough.

We must recognise that it is really a hatred of the values that America best represents. We must recognise it is a hatred, above all, of the Judeo-Christian tradition that has so far been our best defence against totalitarian threats.

And that makes anti-Americanism an attack not just on America, or on the Christianity that animates it – but an attack on civilisation itself.

*This is an edited extract of a speech last night to a Quadrant dinner.

[Chuck Lee]

Socrates, the leftist activists cited in the article do not equate to all liberals.

I know of liberals who are both Christian and not anti-American. Such people are actually rather common in American society.

[Socrates]

Socrates, the leftist activists cited in the article do not equate to all liberals.

They seem rather typical of the liberal "intelligentsia" in both our countries.

I know of liberals who are both Christian and not anti-American. Such people are actually rather common in American society.

Depends what you mean by "liberal". In Australia, the Liberal Party is teh rough equivalent of UK's Conservative party!

[geochron]

Did you note, incidentally, the European countries that were America's firmest allies in the war in Iraq? Strongly Catholic Spain, Italy and Poland.

And the UK, among the most secular nations in Europe apparently.

[Chuck Lee]

Depends what you mean by "liberal". In Australia, the Liberal Party is teh rough equivalent of UK's Conservative party!

It's a pretty broad term in the US, encompassing people who put an emphasis social programs and civil liberties. That makes up probably the bulk of the Democratic party (besides moderates, fiscal conservatives and maybe some others), the Green Party, all those leftist activists you're concerned about, and others.

[Eyeheart Pumpkin]

Mr. Bolt (and, by default, his puppet Socrates) makes a couple critical errors. First, he incorrectly assumes that there is a standard definition for "liberal" vs. "conservative", for "left" vs. "right," and forgets that those terms are generally defined within a socio-political context, meaning that an American liberal may bear little or no ideological resemblance to, say, an Aussie liberal, a German liberal, etc. Of course, Mr. Bolt (and his puppet Socrates) hopes that people will read his tripe and believe that when he describes certain Aussie and European leftists, he is describing leftists in general, regardless of the socio-political environment in which they live, think and operate. Secondly, and I suppose this error is actually Soc's not Bolt's, is that Socrates assumes the fact (assuming his assertion that Bolt isn't a Christian is accurate) that Bolt is not a Christian actually means something. I guess Soc doesn't realize that ultraconservative boobs come in all shapes, sizes and creeds.

[AtheistArchon]

- Oh waaahhhhh. More poor persecuted Christian poppycock. "Intellectuals HATE us and HATE America and HATE Christians and wah, won't some brown-shirt please just institute blatant theocracy and squelch all dissent so we can have our sky-wizard and stomp people who look funny without those pesky HATERS?"

- I swear, Bob Boudelang could not make up better stuff: http://www.democraticunderground.com/bob/index.html

- It's just impossible to satirize. The fact that people actually believe it (and then go on to repeat it) just makes me sad.

[Tfbandie]

- Oh waaahhhhh. More poor persecuted Christian poppycock. "Intellectuals HATE us and HATE America and HATE Christians and wah, won't some brown-shirt please just institute blatant theocracy and squelch all dissent so we can have our sky-wizard and stomp people who look funny without those pesky HATERS?"

- I swear, Bob Boudelang could not make up better stuff: http://www.democraticunderground.com/bob/index.html

- It's just impossible to satirize. The fact that people actually believe it (and then go on to repeat it) just makes me sad.

Fun link, I like how the tactics "bob" uses are same as some posters here, with the broad sweeping derogatory terms like "democrap" and "LIEberal"

[AtheistArchon]

- I always did like "democrap".

[BeHereNow]

For instance, infamous "journalist" John Pilger damns the administration of President George Bush as an "unelected Christian fundamentalist regime".

Sydney broadcaster Mike Carlton denounces it as a "fearsome" regime "hell-bent on a Manichean crusade to remake an evil world in its own Christian image".

Malcolm Fraser, the former prime minister, simply calls the US Government "fundamentalist", but Age cartoonist Michael Leunig draws it as a murderous caveman, with a club in one hand and Bible in the other.

Professor Brian Costar accuses the US Government of being "infected by far-right Christian fundamentalists whose ideology is closer to that of the Taliban than mainstream American liberalism".

And Richard Neville, New Age guru and former publisher, in December raged: "Kill, torture, rip off, humiliate – this is one of the themes of Christianity 2003, as the three leading liars of the Coalition, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, sink into the delusional torpor of their fundamentalist Christmas pud."

Rather than refute these claims and argue that they are unfounded, Mr. Bolt (himself a non-Christian), has instead opted to characterize them as paranoid, imposter "intellectuals" (cute) who not only hate America, but also Christianity, and, oh yes, wish to wage an "attack not just on America, or on the Christianity that animates it – but an attack on civilisation itself."

He has proven nothing here, except that AtheistArchon is right - this guy is his own parody.

I especially love the way liberals are all lumped together, as if that word even has meaning any more. As Chuck Lee rightly noted, the term "liberal" does not consider that one may be a fiscal conservative. But who cares? Isn't the purpose of life to find an enemy and demonize them without regard to accuracy? Seems to be Socrates' goal in life.

[Socrates]

- Oh waaahhhhh. More poor persecuted Christian poppycock. "Intellectuals HATE us and HATE America and HATE Christians and wah, won't some brown-shirt please just institute blatant theocracy and squelch all dissent so we can have our sky-wizard and stomp people who look funny without those pesky HATERS?"

Yeah, lots of people actually share AA's hatred of Christianity, and say so publicly, e.g. Dawkins. But imagine the outcry if these attacks were against Jews or Muslims, or even atheists!

No one has actually refuted any of the claims, as opposed to quibbling about what "liberal" means.

[geochron]

Yeah, lots of people actually share AA's hatred of Christianity, and say so publicly, e.g. Dawkins. But imagine the outcry if these attacks were against Jews or Muslims, or even atheists!

No one has actually refuted any of the claims, as opposed to quibbling about what "liberal" means.

What claims? It just seemed to be a rant to me - you could almost see the speckles of froth at his lips.

But Leftist activists everywhere loathe the US for its success in Iraq, and to point out Iraq may now one day even become democratic just makes the insult worse.

I'm a leftist activist, I am somewhere, I like the US, I supported the Iraq war and I hope we can make Iraq democratic. Does that count as a refutation?

[Socrates]

What claims? It just seemed to be a rant to me - you could almost see the speckles of froth at his lips.

They were clear as day.

I'm a leftist activist, I am somewhere, I like the US, I supported the Iraq war and I hope we can make Iraq democratic. Does that count as a refutation?

no, because Mr Bolt was clearly talking about the reasons many liberals wanted to appease Saddam.

[geochron]

They were clear as day.

Would you care to propose a couple and we can see if we disagree?

no, because Mr Bolt was clearly talking about the reasons many liberals wanted to appease Saddam.

Quoi? It seemed a fairly simple assertion that he made.

It's interesting that he singles out the French Revolution as a boundary point. Doesn't the previous history compared to the subsequent history demonstrate one of the great things about the Judeo/Christian tradition - it's malleability and its comparative openness to tolerance in recent times?

[Vorkosigan]

Andrew Bolt is a right-wing Australian tabloid journalist. As MediaWatch in Australia put it:

"Every Bolt column (and he appears in the Herald Sun twice a week) seems to be an attack on someone or other -- and the attack is always on someone who is humanitarian or liberal-minded or articulate or educated."

There's nothing to respond to here, Socrates, except to note that Bolt is a fruitcake. You only have to see claims like this:

"...and this is precisely why Christianity has been the enemy of every totalitarian movement since the French Revolution."

...to know you are dealing with a man who knows nothing about history. But just to drive the point home, the Catholic Church made deals with Hitler, Chiang Kai-shek (and continues to support the authoritarian parties in Taiwan), Franco, Mussolini...even provided a cleric, Tiso, to be dictator of Slovakia and another to run a concentration camp in Yugoslavia. I'd go into the cooperation of the Lutheran church with the Nazis (the vast majority of Lutheran pastors went over to the new regime quite early) but that would take longer.

Soc, why do you waste your mind on drivel like this? You're obviously not stupid enough to believe that he is really saying something worth hearing--there are plenty of thoughtful conservative writers, like Paul Johnson, for example. So what's the point?

Vorkosigan