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Ray, as you know,
I am very happy that this moron does not speak for me. He is as radical as those who called
for the fatwa. If he were speaking
as an individual, I’d been bound to defend his right to free speech. But he claims to represent a group of
people that supposedly abandoned the eye for an eye Old Testament in favor of a
new contract with God in the NT, one that imagined something better. When he speaks this way as a man of
God, he is not just a theological fraud, but shaming the people who support
him. Aside from that, these men’s provincialism
is a liability. You’d think
that Robertson’s spending habits on race horses and part ownership of a gold
mine operation with an African dictator would disturb the faithful, but
apparently not. Maybe they just
don’t know. He and Falwell
represent what those of us raised in church refer to as microphone addicts,
nothing more than entertainers wearing collars. The fact that
he and Robertson have not been “tarred and feathered” (I love old phrases) by
their supporters appalls me. If he
really did insinuate that he was speaking for Pres. Bush, he should be “taken
to the woodshed” and become an overnight persona
non grata (a really old phrase). I guess the
cynical question is whether he will be tolerated for this religious bigotry or
disavowed? If he is tolerated, it
signals imho that right now the administration prefers that we live in fear and
distrust rather than continue to find peaceful procedural solutions to serious problems.
There may not
be many real nonzero solutions to global problems, but there certainly are
other options than the unpredictability of war to solve real dangers. War is just the beginning of new
problems. Just as the Israelis and
the Palestinians. If killing
people because of words is intolerable, then Falwell is an accessory to the
crime. Cousin KWC Ray wrote: Falwell is an ass but killing people because of words is
intolerable. If he had said what Julius Streicher said about
Jews then maybe, but there is such a distinction between the meanings of words
in the world, that I don't see much hope for either of the three Middle Eastern
Family Folks. What the folks in India and Iran refuse to
look at is the context in which such "edelweiss's" (think
"sounds like") are speaking. Falwell says
such outrageous things on a daily basis and it is not blasphemous or even
outrageous in English Fundamentalist Cant. It IS
ignorant but it is not strange or outrageous. When we shine
that same light on any of the provincial chauvinisms we get the same story
no matter where we look. But if anyone comes here to practice
a Fatwa on Rushdie, Falwell or any other, then they strike at
the fundamental core of our civilization and the civilization that I
have agreed to live within. It is the basis of the Internet
as well. Frankly
I have seen Falwell's quote about the Prophet's war policies on Islamic sites
on the internet. They didn't equate it with terrorism but with
proscylitization. And history is history.
Since we don't and won't give the European speaking world
a serious rote education as is done in Islam and we will not give Islamic kids
a serious education in (what would you call it?) "thought that
doesn't give ultimate power to words from a singular source" type of
thought, then perhaps the best we can hope for is a good
fence. Funny how I arrive at that
conclusion. I just experienced a similar situation
yesterday between a Libertarian Methodist and an old time Jewish
producer. They simply didn't speak the same
English. No amount of testing or anything else would change their
disagreement either. Ultimately they just decided not to be
around one another. "Life is too short!" I've
just started reading a new book on how old this issue is and how deep in our
culture. It is called: The Limits of Multiculturalism,
Interrogating The Origins of American Anthropology by Scott Michaelsen,
Minnesota U. Press. It traces many of the attitudes of
the modern West to the Anthropologists who were theorizing about my
people. What was not mentioned at the time was that there
were fine to great Writers writing from the other side about these Western
Anthropological "Pioneers." What is not
mentioned is how deeply these violent attitudes are grounded in the religions
of the World and how much the world has paid and is paying for
them. I speak this from the position of being both
a member and clergy in one of the religions of the world.
Falwell is not going to stop being Falwell and neither will Islam give
that rock back to the Indigenous people it originally belonged
to. I think a statement from the Theater is appropriate
here. "If you can't take the heat then get off the
stage." The stage is now the
world. Defeat Falwell with ideas otherwise he was
right. Cousin REH Muslims Welcome Falwell Apology: slur of
Mohammed as ‘terrorist’ sparks deadly weekend riots @ http://www.msnbc.com/news/820495.asp Another
reason preachers should not be fraternizing with politicians, or vice
versa. Falwell apologized for his
comments from 60 Minutes 10.06.02
but admitted no wrong, only that certain people were hurt by his comments. He also attributed his thinking as
similar to Pres. Bush’s. ?!? Note
the use of the phrase “Zionized Christianity”. If
Muslims can be locked up these days for making anti-American foreign policy
remarks, then these ‘men of the cloth’ surely need at least a muzzle, if not to
be defrocked by their supporters.
Well, we know what Gen. Rove should be doing this Sunday: damage
control. - KWC |
