Jerry Falwell's dead
May. 15th, 2007 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI was going to go for the snarky, something like "I was taught that one shouldn't speak ill of the dead," and leave it at that.
Because I've disliked Falwell's brand of public piety, and Mrs. Grundyish intrusion to the lives of others since I was in my early teens.
However it was percolating in my mind, as I watered the plants (long beans are sprouting, melons are growing, the peppers have set fruit, as have the grapes begun, the tomatoes are in blossom and last years carrots are preparing to set seed, etc., etc. Spring, in other words, is in full bloom), and I realised that there are... gasp, inconsitencies in things he (or at least those who followed him) believed.
Part of what I dilsiked about the man was his apparent reasonableness. This comes as no surprise, really, the fire and brimstone sort of preacher isn't the best for television. That does best when the group dynamic reinforces emotion, and presses thought to the back of the mind.
No, television preaching is usually some brand of folksy. Falwell was good at folksy.
So he would go on the air, to things like Politically Incorrect, and seem a fair, and reasonable opponent, even when he said the most outrageous of things
One of the most egregious of his pronouncements was that God had used the attacks on Sept. 11th, to punish the United States for falling away from it's role as a light to the nations (we are, after all, the New Jerusalem, and if God could see fit to punish them, merely for falling away; before salvation, how much more might we deserve it?).
Throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
And it occured to me, anyone who buys into that, can't support attacks on Al Qaeda. They were acting as a Sampson. A champion of God, who works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
If God is Just, then His punishments are just as well. If He saw fit to use those people to manifest his displeasure, then what punishment should the Righteous deliver, for they were acting as God's right hand?
Part of why I bring this up is that I've had the Alabama terrorists on my mind. They, after all, were pretty much ignored. Why? My cynical self says it's because they were white, and wanted to shoot brown people.
My slightly less cynical self says it's because they are "good christian types", who went a little overboard.
Like Eric Rudolph, who is managing to send threatening letters to his victims. Like the couple in Texas who were arrested for trying to sell cyanide bombs.
We don't hear about them.
Instead we hear about six guys who wanted to drive onto Fort Dix and shoot people (and if they weren't entrapped, they were still planning retail. This wasn't bombs in crowded parks. Rudolph practiced wholesale [and had lots of people who were overtly sympathetic to him], the couple in Texas was planning wholesale).
What's the difference? The Fort Dix plotters were Muslim. We can't say it's skin color, because they are from the Balkans (Albania).
So the rule seems to be, christians can't be terrorists, muslims must prove they aren't. Men like Falwell, with their fantasies of being persecuted because they can't impose their religious rules (can we say sharia? I knew we could) on the rest of us, have helped to foster that sort of incivility.
So, while what I had to say wasn't pleasant, I can, I think, fairly say, I have not spoken ill, since the truth is an absolute defense against libel, and the truth, it has been said, shall make you free.
Because I've disliked Falwell's brand of public piety, and Mrs. Grundyish intrusion to the lives of others since I was in my early teens.
However it was percolating in my mind, as I watered the plants (long beans are sprouting, melons are growing, the peppers have set fruit, as have the grapes begun, the tomatoes are in blossom and last years carrots are preparing to set seed, etc., etc. Spring, in other words, is in full bloom), and I realised that there are... gasp, inconsitencies in things he (or at least those who followed him) believed.
Part of what I dilsiked about the man was his apparent reasonableness. This comes as no surprise, really, the fire and brimstone sort of preacher isn't the best for television. That does best when the group dynamic reinforces emotion, and presses thought to the back of the mind.
No, television preaching is usually some brand of folksy. Falwell was good at folksy.
So he would go on the air, to things like Politically Incorrect, and seem a fair, and reasonable opponent, even when he said the most outrageous of things
One of the most egregious of his pronouncements was that God had used the attacks on Sept. 11th, to punish the United States for falling away from it's role as a light to the nations (we are, after all, the New Jerusalem, and if God could see fit to punish them, merely for falling away; before salvation, how much more might we deserve it?).
Throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
And it occured to me, anyone who buys into that, can't support attacks on Al Qaeda. They were acting as a Sampson. A champion of God, who works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.
If God is Just, then His punishments are just as well. If He saw fit to use those people to manifest his displeasure, then what punishment should the Righteous deliver, for they were acting as God's right hand?
Part of why I bring this up is that I've had the Alabama terrorists on my mind. They, after all, were pretty much ignored. Why? My cynical self says it's because they were white, and wanted to shoot brown people.
My slightly less cynical self says it's because they are "good christian types", who went a little overboard.
Like Eric Rudolph, who is managing to send threatening letters to his victims. Like the couple in Texas who were arrested for trying to sell cyanide bombs.
We don't hear about them.
Instead we hear about six guys who wanted to drive onto Fort Dix and shoot people (and if they weren't entrapped, they were still planning retail. This wasn't bombs in crowded parks. Rudolph practiced wholesale [and had lots of people who were overtly sympathetic to him], the couple in Texas was planning wholesale).
What's the difference? The Fort Dix plotters were Muslim. We can't say it's skin color, because they are from the Balkans (Albania).
So the rule seems to be, christians can't be terrorists, muslims must prove they aren't. Men like Falwell, with their fantasies of being persecuted because they can't impose their religious rules (can we say sharia? I knew we could) on the rest of us, have helped to foster that sort of incivility.
So, while what I had to say wasn't pleasant, I can, I think, fairly say, I have not spoken ill, since the truth is an absolute defense against libel, and the truth, it has been said, shall make you free.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-15 11:32 pm (UTC)What seems to be the case is the principle of "It's OK If You Are A Republican" embraces, "Extremism in defense of "the right values" is no vice."
Which is a pernicious, and evil, idea. Passion is a virtue (and misguided passion can be praisworthy) so long as it doesn't lead one to swing one's fist all the way onto my nose.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 08:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 09:58 pm (UTC)TK