Know what’s really weird?

Know what’s really weird?

Amid all of the accusations from the usual Lefty suspects about how weird Rick Santorum is to bring his dead son home, there is something weird going on. It’s not new, but it has been building. And it’s really bugging the hell out of me.

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote “What Iowa Says About the Religious Right.” What he had to say was simple and correct. I’m not sure that anyone can disagree.

When Iowa caucus participants were asked to identify the most important quality in a candidate, 31% said "Can Beat Obama," 25% said "True Conservative," and 24% said "Strong Moral Character."…

 

These polling responses clearly lay out the upcoming challenges for Messrs. Romney and Santorum. Mr. Romney needs to convince Republican primary voters that he can be trusted with crucial responsibilities such as judicial nominations. Mr. Santorum, on the other hand, needs to convince voters that he can appeal to independents and win a general election campaign against President Obama.

That's dead-on right.  With the exception of deep-dyed ideologues, mostly in the Ron Paul camp, the number one objective of everyone I know is replacing Obama, even if it means voting for Glenn Reynolds’ Zeeba The Syphilitic Camel.

What was interesting were the comments that his article received. There were over 260 responses and very many were from people who identify themselves as “fiscal conservatives and social liberals.” The very first one was by Jonathan Murray who writes:

The problem with the religious right is that it scares people away from the Republican Party who would otherwise belong there. One of the most missed stories in the media is that fiscal conservatives--particularly college educated ones and women--can't stand the sanctimoniousness of evangelicals and are, in some cases, frightened by them.

Reagan had the mix exactly right: he paid lip service to evangelicals, but spent no political capital fighting for their social issues. We are a diverse, heterogenous society. We don't always agree. But it is a legitimate conservative position--perhaps the only legitimate conservative position--that government has a limited role in our private lives.

 

Many of the people in the so-called middle aren't actually in the middle: they are more conservative than most Americans on everything except social issues. They're really closer to libertarian. These are the people who voted for Ron Paul.

Elaine Fleeman replies:

As a member of the so-called "religious right' I am sad to hear that we scare anybody.

At which point Murray comes back with:

Where evangelicals lose people is when they convert "principles to voluntarily live by" into rigid "rules for living," sit in judgement [sic] of others, and try to force others to adhere to their rules for living. This tendency towards fundamentalism is what happens in Iran and other Muslim countries and is directly contradictory to the lessons and teachings of Jesus.

So Murray compares Christians in America to Muslims in the Middle East, effectively calling Christian evangelicals un-Christian. That would be news to the apostles who were compelled by their faith to spread the “Good News” of Christ, and were martyred for their testimony. Since 9/11, the “socially liberal” members of the culture have found a new club with which to beat Christians. Realizing that the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades were getting a little long in the tooth, and Hitler’s Christian credentials were not all that compelling, 9/11 and Muslim fanaticism came as a – forgive the word – “Godsend” to people for whom genuine religious belief was weird and crazy.

If you think that Murray is alone in his attack on Christians, please read the comments.

Roy Fassel tells us that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson scared “many Americans.”

William Ledsham tells us that religion, like sex, should be committed in private.

Peter Venetoklis calls the “religious right” authoritarian. It seems to me that he has it exactly wrong; the dominant Liberal culture is attacking the people of faith who don’t see the analogy between the practice of religion and a sex act. It seems that most religious people want to be left alone to practice their faith without being told that what they do in public is obscene.

Barbara LeBey tells us that social conservatives are so scary that Democrats would vote Republican if only those social conservatives would just stop all their “religious ranting.”

Thomas Yason “I view any religious fundamentalism as a threat. Holier than thou types who are sure of divine forgiveness for any act are not to be trusted.”

Michael Closter believes that the "religious right wants to destroy the rights granted by the US Supreme Court."

Brian Jones:   "The Religious Right is politically motivated and have the opportunity, if elected in mass, to affect my individual rights. That is not a phobia but a rational fear."

Michael Alessi:

Religion poses a threat to freedom regardless of its promises to the contrary. Once in control, theocrats embrace the use of force to achieve 'divine will' on earth. Recall the Dark Age and witness Iran's descent into barbarism today.

Let us be clear, the Wall Street Journal is not some fringe website with kooks as followers. People post under their own names. This is a fairly sedate and restrained example of Christian bashing, but like anti-Semitism, it’s going mainstream in a big way. Fear of the believing Christian – or the Jew - is used as the lever to make people of faith shut up and hide their beliefs.

The irony of course is that the history of the last 100 years should have taught the lesson that Christians and Jews have more to fear from atheists than the reverse. Hitler, Stalin and Mao between them killed more Jews and Christians than all the religious bigots in history if only because technology made their murderous intent more effective.

We don’t even have to go back to the murderous reigns of these believers in the religion of man as superman. In this country we have a President who believes that people cling to religion (and their guns) "as a way to explain their frustrations."  We have schools that prohibit their valedictorians from expressing their faith and universities that find religious belief a disqualifier for professors. We have “social liberals” who characterize Christians as anti-science and all that we hear from the Christians – who in many cases are scientists and engineers – is a bleat of “What? No we’re not.” In Egypt Christian churches are being burned, believers are murdered and services are held during the day because it’s too dangerous at night. In Nigeria the story is similar with Christians bombed and shot while the “caring” international community averts its eyes. It is hard to name a country where Christians are not under either physical or legal attack – simply for being Christians: places like Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, China, Viet Nan, India and even Merry Old England.

The only thing missing from this picture to bring back the good old days of the Roman Empire is Christians being thrown to the lions or crucified. Perhaps that is due to a shortage of lions and crosses.

Christianity remains the dominant faith in America, by long shot. We have to ask ourselves what the turning point was; the pivotal moment that made it respectable to bash Christians to their faces? It was not that long ago that we saw Bill Clinton, in trouble over a dalliance with an intern, carry an oversized Bible to church. Barack Obama still insists he’s a Christian, so there must be some political benefit to the profession of faith. Maybe it’s OK with the "social liberals" for Clinton and Obama to profess their Christianity because we all know they don’t mean it.

Santorum means it and that allows the atheists and the agnostic to openly declare their fears and their hates. The fear strikes me as weird. During most of this country’s history, religion has played a much larger part in public life than today yet at no time could this country have been considered a theocracy. I’m old enough to remember a time when most stores were closed on Sunday, when liquor sales were restricted, when porn could only be bought from under the counter and abortions were rare and mostly illegal. Did those times really make America the same as Saudi Arabia or Iraq under the Mullahs?

There is no question that this country has thrown off the moral code of Christianity. Are we better people for it?    In "flyover country" lots of people still ask the question.

Mark Steyn has it right when he concludes his column The Left’s So-Called Empathy with:

Two weeks ago I wrote in this space: “A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future.” Whatever my disagreements with Santorum on his “compassionate conservatism,” he gets that. He understands that our fiscal bankruptcy is a symptom rather than the cause.

The real wickedness of Big Government is that it debauches not merely a nation’s finances but ultimately its human capital — or, as he puts it, you cannot have a strong economy without strong families.

Santorum’s respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell’s employees seemed to find anything “weird” about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking ’em home and holding a funeral, right?

Albeit less dramatically than “Doctor” Gosnell, much of the developed world has ruptured the compact between past, present, and future. A spendthrift life of self-gratification is one thing. A spendthrift life paid for by burdening insufficient numbers of children and grandchildren with crippling debt they can never pay off is utterly contemptible. And to too many of America’s politico-media establishment it’s not in the least bit “weird.”

Update:  The Santorum baby story has brought a lot of people out who are now telling their own story and are making those who criticized him even smaller in my eyes.