Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Hitchens:

So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban
represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).

Hitchens makes a good point here though he's quick to avoid the nuances of the counterargument as usual. The fact is that the Constitution, for example, doesn't explicitly cover the right of a woman to have an abortion (remember Blackmun's penumbras decision) or the right to marry whomever you want. And many of his mild-mannered deer-hunting Kentuckians are trying to codify laws to restrict or prohibit these.

1 comments :

  1. Anonymous said...

    Upon a quick revisit to this page, I noticed that the name is really more appropriate than I would have considered in the beginning. Perhaps, that was your intention, but it just struck me now. After posting the presidential election play by plays, which read more like the rundown at Gulfstream, the illusion was that there were perhaps more critical thinkers in the world than propaganda parasites. The Hitchens' quotes also paint an illusion. Then again, politics is nothing but a large show anyway; a illusion of morality, decency, public power. So I now see, albeit super late, the reason for this site's moniker and I applaud it. Wow, that sounded pretentious. In other words, perfect.*applause* :)