Letters to the Editor
-
Guessing we won't see much of this in the future
Any letter request based on "who saw a show on PBS" will bring low numbers. That's the sad thing about the wright interview, hardly anyone will see it. It's like printing a retraction on page 17.
-
As opposed to whom, exactly?
For all their handwringing and demanding that the middle class sacrifice for the poor, what exactly have the Dems done about poverty? Exactly what have they accomplished. Health care? Prescription drugs? Social services? Better schools? Tax reform? More sane/humane law enforcement?
You need to disabuse yourselves of brand names.
-
Wright
Wright came across as refreshingly sane. I didn't agree with some of what he said -- especially praising Farrakhan -- but he isn't the rabid dog that the right makes him out to be. He is articulating the outrage of his constituency.
Hagee, OTOH, is indeed a rabid dog and McCain had better turn him and Parseley loose fast. The idea that a Chrsitian Zionist is a close ally of a potential POTUS is scary. Hagee wants to destroy the Palestianians, make Israel the location of the ingathering of the Jewish people and then to have them all slaughtered Hitler style by the resurrected Jesus. Do we need someone like that near the Oval Office. The fact that he and his fellow travelers have already encouraged the most anti-Arab parts of the Israeli right is bad enough -- the Israelis will purge him out of their system when a Democrat takes office and makes it clear that it won't work -- is bad enough. Lieberman is licking his ankles and hugging McCain. Shudder.
You have to pin McCain to Hagee and Lieberman to Hagee so that the country doesn't concentrate on Jeremiah Wright.
-
@weeping
turnip was engaging in hyperbole, but if he had used the word "any other religion" rather than "any other institution" he would have been correct (the "institution" could be none other than the nazi party) admittedly i don't know the history, but carroll seems to (sword of constantine) which you might read.
I'll have to ask Joan but i had really missed the reference in Hagee's, "the great whore" quote. just seemed puzzling, but then i remembered my european history - papal indulgences and simony (whatever they are). is he complaining about luther's 95 theses? Gosh! and i thought Jews had long memories! Theological Issues of the Sixteenth Century! -
@ mountain girl, @ cumulus
The consistently cogent letters by these clear-thinking individuals reflect the kind of thinking this country needs more of. [Mountain girl--Unprogressive SO? I'd like to apply if the SO position ever becomes vacant]
-
A symptom of a larger problem
If taken on its own the Hagee connection isn't a huge deal. McCain could distance himself from it and that, as they say, would be that. Unfortunately, it isn't on its own, and I find it very disturbing insofar as it is a symptom of hypocrisy on a larger scale.
-
@ David
Thanks, David.
Hyperbole's fine, to be sure, and has its place. I guess what I object to most of all is that the lines between hyperbole and solid argument have become so blurred that it's often unclear to discern if someone is just speaking colloquially, out of general frustration, or whether they're really trying to offer hard analysis.
Turnip seemed to be doing both, which I think can be dangerous in that it distorts reality or at least threatens to, to the point where we all inhabit a world of images, stereotypes and prejudices rather than one grounded in reality. I just think the lines between argument and polemic need to be kept clear.
Arguments can and should be tested. Polemic is in a different category, and some slack can be permitted if we're all clear that polemic is not the same as argument.
As to the "whore" image, yes, it does come from Luther, and is meant to symbolize what he criticised as being the reprehensible worldliness of the church.
My basic point, I guess, is that I object a little to people practicing history without a license.
In this case, invoking the Catholic church's perennial anti-semitism as a way of substantiating Hagee's claim that it's a whore is just half-baked polemic masquerading as argument.
It's important to me that the rules of argumentation be respected, at least by liberals, because, as I say, commitment "science and reason" against "superstition and prejudice" and "common knowledge" are bedrock liberal values.
They need to be sacrosanct if liberalism is to mean anything.
-
Rev. Wright & Bill Moyers
I watched the interview and I applaud Bill Moyers for refusing to demonize Rev. Wright and letting him tell his side of the story.
That said, I was a softball interview and I think Rev. Wright is in over his head. He had no idea when he said Goddamn America and that 9/11 was one of our chickens coming home to roost that he would become achieve national notoriety because of it.
Listening closely to his Goddamn America tirade, I heard a context, and the context was that God would damn any nation, including the Biblical Israelites, for acting contrary to God's strictures and Wright then went on to list our (America's)sins. It was in the context of these sins, and our refusal to acknowledge they are wrong, let alone cease committing them, that Wright said Goddamn America. Given that context, I don't think the statement is as extreme as is it is made out to be in the media.
The chickens coming home to roost statement is political kryptonite. But if we can put our hyper-self righteousness aside for a moment, there's some truth to it. Not that it justifies the act.
-
@ David
One more point:
"turnip was engaging in hyperbole, but if he had used the word "any other religion" rather than "any other institution" he would have been correct"
I'm not even sure this is true, or how one might substantiate this claim. In order to test it, we'd have to look at the histories of Calvinism, Lutheranism, etc., and see what their relationship to Jews has been.
Luther, as I understand it, was no friend to Jews, nor was Calvin.
Hyperbole can be dangerous because it makes assertions about reality premised on a kernel of truth. But in this case, even that kernel of truth (i.e., that the Catholic church, as opposed to Protestant churches) is somehow more implicated in the anti-semitism that in part caused the holocaust has not been established--the author, as far as I can see, is appealing to common knowledge rather than hard facts and argument.