Letters to the Editor
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Misleading Fearmongering
This article is misleading in the extreme. Lets review a few actual facts.
a] Roy Moore is trailing badly in the Republican Primary for Govenor. There are multiple polls that are public. Gov. Riley is leading Moore 2 to 1 (66% vs 30%) among likely Republican primary voters.
b] Roy Moore supporters ran for the Republican slots on the Alabama Supreme Court. All but one lost. The winner had the smallest majority of any of the candidates.
c] Roy Moore trails both Democratic Candidates in the 2006 election. This includes former Governor Siegleman who is currently involved in a trial for taking bribes and influence peddling. Several of Siegleman's appointees were convicted of crimes relating to abuse of office.
d] The "Roy Moore" rallies attract literally dozens of supporters.
e] Roy Moores "unfavorable" ratings among Alabama voters are exceptionally high. This has been the case since he spent so much taxpayer money defending his monument.
f] Moore was against changing the state constitution because of fears that it would allow the state courts to set expenditures for public schools. Given what has happened in other states, this fear is not unfounded.
The Riley - Moore primary election is in June. Unless all of the polls are wrong, then Moore will be crushed by Republican primary voters.
A few facts about Alabama. We currently have the lowest unemployment rate in decades. The state budget is doing very well. This session of the state legislature appropriated a record amount for public education. The legislature also raised the income level where state taxes are paid to the federal poverty level. (Taxation had previously started at $4,500).
I am sure that the author's fear mongering among easily alarmed liberals will help his book sales. However, even in Alabama Roy Moore lacks majority support among even Republican Primary voters.
This article is yet another example of Salon's alarmist attacks against Christians. The venom and bile of the letters concerning Christians in Salon is repulsive. I feel sorry and pray for you. However, consider just one more fact. Most of dollars spent on charity work for the poor in this country is funded by religious charities. The food banks, homeless shelters, adoption agencies, etc..... run by religious groups swamps the spending of all other private groups in the US.
I have voted for Riley many times (he is my former Congressman). I plan to vote for him again in June.
18 Years in Alabama
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try reading some real history
I've seen several people note alleged parallels to these people and the rise of Nazism in Germany. The connection is backwards. Hitler was able to exploit the German Lutheran church precisely because it had abandoned biblical truth for fashionable liberal theology in the previous century. Once you start equivocating the basic teachings of basic Christianity, you're open to anything. As G.K. Chesterton said, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they'll fall for anything."
It was Christian conservatives such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sophie Scholl (of the White Rose movement) who stood up to the Nazis--and paid with their lives.
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Secular Hysteria
I'm sorry, half of this article isn't news and the other half is ridiculous. Yes, there are right wing fundie fascists. Always have been. Are they dangerous? Sure, but by wandering around finding the most dedicated maniacs among them and quoting them is hardly responsible journalism, and doesn't inform us. If the average American Christian is like this, we are all fucked and we should just give up now. But Goldberg has no idea how many Christian nationalists there actually are. She just went and hung out with the biggest rednecks she could find and extrapolated a mass movement from them.
Is fascism or nationalism by definition driven by religious belief, particularly Christian religious belief? No. Imperial Japan, anyone? And by the way, Ms. Goldberg, what's this I'm hearing about a secular "Jewish State" which systematically abuses ethnic minorities, valorizes militarism and compels all citizens to serve in military units? A state constructed around a single ethnic identity that runs itself like a military academy? What's that remind us of?
What is particularly bizarre is Ms. Goldberg's boring reductio ad holocaust, which is simply tiresome. To say that the religious fundie right is anti-semitic is, well, odd given their incredible support for the state of Israel. Christian anti-semitism, as currently constructed, is the most benign form of racism in history, as it is composed largely of arming Jews to the teeth, which is a damned strange way to try to annihilate them. The fact is, right-wing fascists in the US like the right-wing fascists in Israel. And not-so-oddly enough, the Christian nationalists who quote the Bible generally quote the Old Testament God- the one they share with Jews and Muslims- not Jesus. Nevertheless, Fascism orbits around the Party, the Nation, and the ethnic group, not around God. This is how Hitler was able to join German Christians and atheists together in the Nazi party. His cabinet included Christians, pagan fetishists, fanatic anti-Catholic bigots like Bormann, and so on. Religion was secondary in their system to their common love of authority and kinky boots.
If I wanted to write a similar article refuting this, I could just go to some ANSWER meetings and troll the left-wing wacko sites, find those who would make the practice of religion illegal (as has been done by the authoritarian left in certain countries, let's remember), come up with some quotes, and produce a counter-article of the same validity as this one.
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Will an American Theocracy Be as Bad as Commnunist Totalitarianism?
After being succored on freedom who wants all the religious meddling of a theocracy? OK, some people do. And, there's no denying, that's a frightening proposition. But unless the entire infrastructure of America were to be replaced, a theocratic revolution would be impossible. Unless you consider a tangential bill to honor the name of God that gets buried and forgotten by most legislators a real coup.
I'm a secularist and want to keep it that way. But I must say, if I were part of the faithful I would have more to worry about than secularists do. And too often secularists don't see that because in pursuing their objectives they'd like to secularize society the way the religious right wants to convert it. In different ways, they're missionaries of a different stripe.
Sure, there were a few Crusades, and quite possibly more people died in the name of God than anyone else, but it wouldn't be easy to prove. There's an argument that more people died in the name of Marx and Lenin than God. 100 million, 200 million? Don't forget the Holocaust; without communism Hitler wouldn't have come to power.
Marx emphatically insisted, "Now, the root for mankind is man." Well, what if God has a telos for humankind? Atheists, can you prove God doesn't have a telos? Absolutely not. What if God does have a purpose and we're not realizing it? That's a valid question until it can be empirically shown to be irrelevant. And it's not irrelevant because a bunch of nuts want to change the world in God's name. The problem is that too many zealots insist they know just what God intends and want the rest of us to conform. And, of course, their interpretation of God's telos is different from another faction's interpretation. (Have you read the Iranian president's letter yet? It's scary. Check truthout for a copy.)
You can trace the roots of atheistic Marxism back to the Enlightenment - the same source for modern liberal democracies. Convinced that the ancient regime and its affiliation with the Church had exploited common citizens they hauled out the blades and chopped a lot of heads off. Then Napoleon chopped more heads off in the name of freedom. Eventually, Prussia felt obliged to retaliate. And not long after God was banished from the Western stage the world almost ended. Seeing all this madness, no wonder Islam and Christian fundamentalism grew by leaps and bounds. The wild secularist activities during most of the 20th century were Exhibit A for proving the devil was dominant.
The aim here, since the God question hasn't been and probably won't be answered successfully until proof is obtained, is for moderation. If you believe God doesn't want you to have an abortion or sodomize another human or pray 5 times a day then follow that regiment. And if you believe that these are absurd practices then by all means follow an alternative humane way of living. And let each of these factions live in peace as long as each lets the other live in peace. That's all we're asking. Like peace, give moderation a chance.
Amen.