Well, I'm Christian and I felt comfortable with what you said. It doesn't bother me that people think my beliefs are irrational. Well, maybe it bothers me a little, but too bad for me. What really bothers me is when someone comes up to me at a party (this happened a few months ago) and uses the Dawkins argument that moderate Christians like me provide cover for the religious fanatics (after all, we're endorsing faith and look where that leads), which is just as logical as saying that lefties who have some respect for Marx provide cover for Stalinists.

The "ravages of poverty in the world's richest nation" are equally unimportant to the non-believing Jewish lawyer reading the NYT on the Upper East Side as to the "believing" Christian businessman leaving Church in Iowa City at the same moment today.
Since you brought in Goethe and Schiller (what, no Lessing?), here's another German: "The last Christian died on the Cross."
Religion is as much show business as is politics .
Gangs get rich from both, the exploited and gullible drink religious and idelogical snake oil by the bucket,"leaders" in both areas sell themselves as saviors and then sell out their followers again and again.
Responsibility to "the people" works among small, more often than not homogeneous groups--Scandinavian countries, for example.
The rest: bullshit and blood. We pay for the former by gushing the latter. But oh boy, there's big bucks in it. In America, bullshit has been brilliantly converted into business, and none do it better than Oprah or PEOPLE or the phony preachers from our two--ho, ho, ho--political parties.
Years ago, German savings banks advertised: "Hast du was, bist du was." As they did, Nietzsche reportedly rolled over in his grave.

I have no idea where you're coming from with this: "But what are we supposed to make of the countless liberals who get all worked up about Moore while signing on for more war, leaving New Orleans to sink, and never once mentioning the ravages of poverty in the world's richest nation?" Really? Liberals are silent on issues of inequality or the ravages of Katrina? And which liberals have signed on to war? And who the hell is Roy Moore?

As for this part: "Didn't the Schiavo circus prove the danger of religious extremism?" I don't understand how you're using "religious extremism" here to make a point undermining liberals disdain for religious extremism. All the Schiavo affair did was expose some Christian (republican) politicians as shameless opportunistic exploiters. How did this affair teach you something about liberal intolerance?

I think this is just another inverse High Broderism moment: it's imperative we show liberals as intolerant as Christian fundamentalists, based on Hitchens and Terry Schiavo and Mike Huckabee.

What you're completely wrong about, Bernard, is that Roy Moore's "antics" -- i.e. the establishment of religious fuffery in government buildings (A) --are what leads to public officials justifying the deaths of millions of people in the name of Christ (B). It's a continuum.

Damn. I wish I had time to craft a really thoughtful rebuttal. But, for now, this is all I can muster.

but Roy Moore's cloying antics worry me far less than the assurances I get from my Commander-in-Chief that Jesus advises him on war strategy

I'm surprised you don't see the connection.

There exists a continuum along which extremism is cultivated.

The escalating prominence of religion in electoral politics is extremely disturbing. That separation of church & state is, and has been for some time, a matter of contentious debate (although not public debate among the politicians with the biggest appetites, or any appetite, for public office), is what makes it possible for George W. Bush to claim he's got God on speed dial. Whether he believes it or not is largely irrelevant so long as millions of Americans find it believable.

The Roy Moore's of the country, whether they're successful or not in their immediate objectives, are instantly successful in the larger one (do you really believe there isn't a larger objective?) because media knows where its allies are, its allies being whoever happens to be the most receptive to its agenda. This is not to say that liberals are immune to manipulation. Far from it. But neoconservatism openly thrives on corporate consolidation and war economy. Stealth is hard work, as any drunken millionaire democrat faux liberal would confide.

Theocracy and Christian eliminationism are not inventions spawned by the fevered brains of a histrionic liberals. In fact, it could be argued that the rise of the Christian Right in the late 20th Century was made possible by a larger society which laughed off its lunacy, or ignored it altogether, instead of dissecting its manifestations and confronting it directly. Simply put, a lot of people didn't see it as a threat. And it is a threat, much more so now than thirty years ago. That didn't happen overnight.

Between Roy Moore and George W. Bush is an Air Force Academy where proselytizing - once strictly forbidden - has become disturbingly commonplace for years now despite rules against it (rules which are clearly intended to placate a somewhat worried segment of the public).

This could be apocryphal but I've heard that Huckabee asked the hundreds of prisoners that he pardoned to accept Jesus as their savior. That makes him a very silly man, not a dangerous, let alone evil, man.

I'm very surprised you think it's silly. If it's true, Huckabee, with all the power in the world over the prisoners, had no right whatsoever to make religious demands (and because of the power dynamic between pardoner and prisoner - a very unilateral one - that's what they are: demands) of prisoners. This would be true even if the pardon was expressly conditional on the conversion. This constitutes a form of psychological rape. I'll have to go with evil on this one.

Pointing out the dangers of an increasingly cozy church & state, and agitating against them, does not constitute a defense of the secular delusions which encourage liberals turn their pretty little heads away from other atrocities.

Religious extremism in matters of The State may or may not be considered proximate cause of its latest and greatest atrocity, actual or planned, but, at the very least, religious sentiment can easily be exploited as an exacerbating factor. A very strong one.

P.S. No. 1: While reviewing this post, I see that darrellplant beat me to continuum point. What say you about that, Bernard?

P.S. No. 2: Damn. This post was supposed to be, like, two paragraphs. I've got work to do, damn it!

CORRECTION: "This would be true even if the pardon was expressly conditional on the conversion."

I meant to write "This would be true even if the pardon was not expressly conditional on the conversion."

Maybe Huckabee would be on the right track-- if he were willing to concede that the Israelis and the Palistinians had roughly equal claim to the land, and were willing to, maybe, have a diaspora lottery.

The Israelis and the Palistinians could both have equal stakes in one group staying and the other moving to Idaho.

Think about it: Saudi Arabia and Egypt are both very dry and hot and not particularly amenable to human settlement in most areas. Idaho is similarly sparse in population, in fact more so, and the country is NOT hot and arid-- in fact it's really beautiful.

Whoever got to go to Idaho would suddenly outnumber the white separatists, who would undoubtedly be annoyed to no end by this. And I'm guessing Idaho would still be less densely populated than your average midwestern state.

Jonathan, check a map: Idaho is hot and arid.

I've long said, the real Jewish and Palestinian homelands are both in Brooklyn. This is true literally -- biggest populations -- and figuratively -- it's the place with the most opportunity for life success, as opposed to the paranoid dirtpile called the holy land.

Sorry, you lost me with the notion that religious nuts in charge of the nation's science curriculum is "rich kid's entertainment".

Then: Between a Pastafarian governor who would condition her pardons on genuflecting to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and one who'd never pardon anyone under any circumstances, I'd take the former any time.

But what are we supposed to make of the countless liberals who get all worked up about Moore while signing on for more war, leaving New Orleans to sink, and never once mentioning the ravages of poverty in the world's richest nation?

You can't seem to make up your mind whether you want to make a serious counter-intuitive argument or just toss off a bunch of glib remarks towards some vague strawmen. If only the choice were starkly between a Pastafarian and a punitive hardass! And who are these liberals? Surely, being "countless", it would be easy to name a few of them so we can get down to specifics.

I guess this was the hinted-at post that was supposed to shake things up, but it seems too scattershot to me.

However, there was one good point: Maybe one can "fight" for both at once. Good idea.

Well, yes. I really get tired of this type of lament, which pops up in comment sections everywhere - "How dare you spend time worrying about this WHEN X ISSUE IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW?!?!" Apparently, the logic is that we're not supposed to do a damn thing else until Darfur is taken care of, every child on earth has a full belly, and humanity's cogenital drive towards warmaking has been eradicated, etc. I mean, I understand how this can make one feel self-righteously proud, to be the only one with the guts to take on the SERIOUS issues while everyone else fritters away their time on trivia, but I really hope it's self-evident how absurd that position is.

Let me play wet blanket.
What have progressive forces achieved in this country since Reagan took office? Victories on the local level here and there, in a small town in southern Virginia or one in Vermont. Despite what the administrations, the corporations and the megachurch and evangelical leaders and follower have done to inflict the business mentality with its greed and cruelty wrapped both in flag and Jesus on a mostly eager or passive population, only Bush's warlust has brought small crowds out into the streets once in a while.
Neither "good" Christians nor "good" progressives
have used Christian thought or socio/political philosophy to tear apart the mindset that reduces American "thinking" to expertise or guru blather, masquerading as knowledge or spirituality. A few writers do; they do not even reach our so-called "best and brightest."
Where is anyone shouting, as they did in 1969, to their profs as they marched "We are only doing what you taught us?"
Where are good Christians and good progressives getting together to close down the Goldman Sachs Temple of our society? We are not doing it, are we? We'd be crucified--marginalized, jailed, beaten up, fired. Risk that to change our society?
Or, as Engels wrote, "Nett sein ist noch kein Programm."
So, we strive to be "nett" to each other. I'm guilty too. But it doesn't do diddlyshit.

The notion that argument against established religion is argument against "the irrational" is stupid and, in fact, a straw man. To argue against religion is not to argue against music or art or love, or to diminish their importance. To make such a claim of equivalency is itself either stupid or consciously mendacious.

Religion is enforced stupidity, in the sense that it solicits acceptance of an unsupported and apparently imaginary cartoon explanation for the almost limitless supply of what is unknown about reality. But nobody as far as I can tell argues against your right to be stupid in this or any other fashion if it doesn't hurt anybody else.

It's certain that we all turn a blind eye to one thing or another, and few would criticize a "religious" turning if we were simply talking about how each of us gets by in the world. But we're not. We're talking about how people and groups obtain and use power against others.

On a personal level, acceptance of the fact that the entirety of our experience is made up of the subjective and the unknown, which to all intents and purposes makes it "irrational," is simple realism. On a social level, this realization is what things like rationalism, empiricism, and the scientific method exist to emeliorate. They let us establish facts, precise shared experience that is rigorously validated, out of which we can build a better life for all.

Rationalism and empiricism are methods, not ideologies. They do not deny subjective experience or "faith," they compensate for it so we can live in complex social arrangements with one another and pursue agreed-upon goals in common.

(Sadly for your point of view, these methods do tend to make ideologies and "beliefs" irrelevant at best and, more likely, harmful on a social level. But pointing out the harm faith does to people on a massive scale is not an assault on the very stupid things people have faith in.)

The problem smart unbelievers have with religion is not the peace or pleasure or inspiration some faith imparts to an individual. It is the use made of religion, the immunity from criticism claimed by religion, the force exerted by religion upon others.

There is no important and large scale social instance today of religion being used for anything but an avenue (as aggressor or victim) of violence and repression. The fact that other similarly fallacious distinctions -- ethnicity, culture, economic status -- are also so used hardly lets religion off the hook. In fact, the fact further condemns religion: You can't change your race but you can change your religion; you don't have to argue hate in religious terms, but many do. You don't have to divide me from you on the basis of supernatural and mythological beliefs, but you do.

I don't care what anybody believes. I care what they do. Religion happens to provide an astoundingly efficient means of helping people do an insane level of evil to themselves and others. The fact that it is not the only such mechanism is no argument in its favor -- and it may be a powerful argument against accepting dogmatism and ideology as valid persuasive forces and rationales for action. But honestly, religion is the dumbest of all such ideologies.

The idea that you equate the human spirit and mystery and "the irrational" with religion says more about you than it does about reality. And the fact that this is the way you swing is not in itself a bad thing. It's just a bad thing to let those who leverage religion to do evil off the hook, just as it is bad to let off those who leverage wealth and force to do so. Religion is different, true, in that it is more powerful even than money. But if you think religion is somehow exempt or deserves a break, you need to reread your Gibbon.

By and large I think I agree with you, Bernard, but as a homosexual atheist I'm having some selfish difficulty making that agreement wholehearted.

Thank you all!

I couldn't have hoped for a better sample of everything that's wrong with liberals.

Beginning with the defensiveness.

But let's go to the heart of the matter.
There is no empirical evidence for the claim of a "continuum" between Roy Moore and Shock-and-Awe.
Before Karl Rove brought the evangelicals onboard, the US had no problem whatsoever bombing countries. America's crimes abroad can be entirely attributed to its insatiable appetite for hegemony. The likes of Hagee act as enablers and, as such, they must be fought. But these are supporting actors at best.

Now my favorite: what do you mean liberals signed on for the war and don't fight for the poor?

An ABC/WaPo poll showed that 78% of Americans supported the war in '03. How many "liberals" does that leave out? Katrina and the poor?
How many liberals have clamored for a tax increase: say back to the 70% range for the top bracket of the... Nixon years. The current liberal agenda is somewhere to the right of Nixon.
Where is the liberal wave of support for cutting DoD in half and pay for the reconstruction of New Orleans. Liberals, in fact, have spent much more time whining about Scooter Libby (a man who, in my book, deserves a medal -- as anyone who blows the cover of a CIA agent rightly deserves) than
coming up with a real plan for New Orleans or for the poor. Yes, somewhere in the netroots someone has... no doubt.

The thing is, it's easy to fight Scooter Libby and it's easy to fight Roy Moore and it's easy to agonize over science curricula -- all of these nice liberal bourgeois "issues" and it's easy to agitate again imaginary rising theocracies.

But where is the public outcry against Schumer's pimping for hedge fund managers?

Liberals probably think Roy Moore is more dangerous than Schumer...

The comment about "not doing anything until every child on earth has a full belly" is plain weird.

Let me say it slowly so there's no misunderstanding. I am NOT asking you to feed every child on earth. I am NOT asking you to save Darfur. I am only asking you to stop using your own hard earned money to build bombs that fall on children's heads!

But maybe you don't see the difference because it's one big continuum. I have a better word for continuum: jello. Liberal thinking is one giant pile of jello where courthouse furniture and heads blown off by daisy cutters are just part of the jello continuum.

The Christinianization of the Air Force?
Yes, that's a real problem. I am also very concerned about CIA torturers. Waterboarding is fine, but just don't say Jesus!

hilarie: only in your creative mind has the suggestion been made that religion defenders
criticize nonbelievers for equating attacks on religion with attacks on art. Bravo for your straw man's straw man.

But seriously, why is Christianity in 2008 causing "insane level of evil"? And since you seem so attached to "methods" I expect you'll show us why the absence of Christianity would make things better.

Ethan is the only person here who has made a convincing argument against religion. And that took him only 1 line! I am not here to defend religion and I completely reject the anti-gay position of many Christian churches. Not sure I would call it "insane level of evil" though.

Once again, it seems that nuance is not a liberal's forte.

My, we are hard on liberals today.
How you gonna get all those bucks from hedge funds and keep them protected from taxes and still do something, sometime, somewhere for the unwashed out there, for those poor folks who live, somehow, without a tax attorney of their own.
You still want to "make a difference." (Disgusting phrase.) So, maybe, soon, you'll take two Afro-American girls to the MOMA once a month on Sunday afternoon.
You expected what from liberals? Self-sacrifice?
I'd get more of that from a nurse in Scranton, who scrapes by and never says she "wants to make a difference." She knows better.

Bernard: Not to squander what good will I gained with my, if I don't say so myself, shockingly brilliant one liner up there, I do think you're being a bit too dismissive of the importance of science education. If it were decent, it would probably be at least a little bit harder for the ones on top to convince the rest of us that global warming is just a bunch of nonsense. Or, for that matter, that the deaths of 3000 people and the destruction of a few buildings constitutes an existential threat to all of us.

But my general agreement still stands, so please don't pooh-pooh me too hard.

The MOMA trip will do, but once a month? Isn't that a bit excessive. Except for that, you nailed it!

Bernard. In your very lede you defended religion from your own straw man interpretation of Christopher Hitchens as follows:

--
I am in awe of the art it has inspired and I am moved by Christianity's emphasis on the weak and the poor (even if only theoretical): a point of focus that, in the secular realm, only Marxism has ever come close to matching. The irrationality doesn't bother me either. I embrace the irrational: my passion for Charlie Parker's "Embraceable You," Bach's Chaconne, Beethoven's 7th, the people I love. Why is that any less irrational than "feeling the spirit of Jesus"?
--

It's you who defended religion by pointing out its dependence on the irrational and then correlated that with art. You did it explicitly. That's a dishonest straw man argument. Religion is no more essential, causal, or related to love, art, music, and expression than psychosis is.

Which brings me to your disingenuous objection to the idea of Christianity causing "an insane level of evil." Not to even bother with Christianity's explicit and decisive role in preventing medical advances and enforcing objective ignorance, what could be more insane than constantly deferring to concrete social arguments that harm people simply because their backers cite belief in Jesus?

I'll withdraw the term "insane," though, since it troubles you. It correctly and economically expresses exactly what I meant: Enforcing harmful and murderous social policies and laws by invoking the authority of crazy fantasy stories. Let me spell it out instead: Christianity is used effectively and decisively to implement policies that hurt large numbers of people. The specific and correct term is psychosis.

they use to have one thursday evening a month at MOMA pay as you go . i did for about 2 yrs after dropping a penny and getting dirty looks :)
the fundamental problem with liberals is they have fully signed on project imperialism / empire . say word chomsky at some of these dem blogs and you have cardiac events . all they can do really is nit-pick .
a side note . about islam ( my guess it is some thing about monotheistic belief system ) there is history of it sharp blade and koran going in hand and glove ( similarly colonial project was gun and bible ) . lots of blood shed . almost all march eastward to India was on blood rivers . how much it was religion how much feudal set up or some thing else only a serous analysis can show . and then it was in PAST . i doubt ( but have not carefully looked at studies ) it is a serious issue now ( in present ) that all the unbelievers who do not convert need to die .

Ethan: As you know, my post was not about religion. It was about priority. Anyone trying to convince me that religion causes bad things to happen is wasting their time: I agree!
When the word religion pops up in the conversation I pull out my bullshit shield.

I do think it's beyond ridiculous we should be discussing why ID and creationism as science is harmful to young, innocent minds. Of course it is. And yes idiocy has consequences. Bad heart surgeons kill and teachers teaching crap have consequences. I agree with all of that.

What baffles is people's inability to prioritize.
Before it became a non-issue, Chris Hedges declared that if we attacked Iran he would stop paying taxes. Something he might go to jail for.

So you have that on one side, and on the other side you have the liberal crusaders who will spend all nighters putting together the legal argument why Huckabee broke the law by conditioning a prisoner's release on Jesus. And they will think of themselves as every bit as good a liberal as Hedges.

And no doubt they'll tell me that raising the minimum wage by 0.00000001 percent was a hell of a heroic progressive step.

Hell, no.

oy

hilarie:
>> your own straw man interpretation of Christopher Hitchens

What? Where in the world do I interpret the great Hitch? I never do. I don't even hint at an interpretation. "Unlike him, I consider this my problem" is an obvious reference to the danger he attributes to religion. Nothing to do with irrationality whatsoever.

Similarly, you misunderstood my reference to music and poetry. It was not a defense of anything. It was like saying: I see 3 drawers; I like what I see in the first 2. But the 3rd is locked. So I'll assume by induction that what's in it is not necessarily bad. No causality, no correlation. Simple inductive inference.

You say:

>> Enforcing harmful and murderous social policies and laws by invoking the authority of crazy fantasy stories.

Talking about abortion, I guess? If so, your argument is logically indefensible. I am personally pro-choice but my rationale is no less based on "crazy fantasy stories" than Christians.
Is yours? Then I'd love to hear it.
My belief is that a fetus is not a human being.
Christians believe it is. Point 1. If they are right, then their policy is not murderous: just the opposite; Point 2. No one -- repeat -- no one can make a rational argument why Christians are wrong in their belief. It does not matter what fantasy story it's based on. Pro-life and pro-choice arguments are both equally based on faith. One is religious; the other is (in my case) faith that humanity starts at birth.

This is the kind of illusion that secularists have that somehow on issues of life and death rationality is on their side.
Philosophically, this is pleasing but untenable.

OK, Bernard. First, you misinterpret Hitchens in the process of claiming your neurotic high ground ("I catch myself wishing I believed in God"), which attributes music and poetry with "spirituality ... which moves me like nothing else."

Hitchens' entire book is about why failing to believe in a "Celestial Dictator" *is*, in fact, a concrete and objective problem for everybody: Because believers make it so. Your self-involved effort to shift the grounds of his argument to the benefit of your own muddled, sentimental thinking is the interpretation I was referring to.

What you call your "induction" is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an induction, it's an invention. You made it up. You decided to link the personal neurological, biochemical, and transcendent effects of the arts with the social depredations of organized religion and call it "spirituality."

All you're saying here is that you accept the fundamental premises religionists who dominate social discourse rely on. You're not arguing with me, you're demolishing the possibility of common ground between us by insisting on your characterization of human experience as "spiritual" and linking it to religion.

As for the rest: I wasn't thinking about abortion, but the fact that you reduce religion's social role to that issue says something about the way you think about organized religion's role in human affairs. As does the fact that you think a zygote's humanity is simply a question of belief. And not belief based on evidence: Religious belief.

It's OK with me if you have a need to interpret the unexplained, troubling, ecstatic, or ambiguous in spiritual terms. It's OK with me if you eventually decide that only certain Iron Age stories bring peace to your heart. Do you see the difference between you having a particular "spiritual" or "poetic" approach to life and the effect of organized religion on society and politics?

Dear Hilarie: This is going nowhere so let's put it to rest. Anyway, I want to say I sincerely appreciate your spending time here writing comments.
We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Although one has to be careful there. There is a famous theorem in game theory by Aumann that says that agreeing to disagree is not stable: it invariably converges to people changing their opinions and agreeing to agree. You stand warned.

I appreciate that you cut off a discussion civilly. That's real nice of you. But if you think a debate over the effect American-style religion has on policy "is going nowhere," you represent one more broken pixel in the wide screen. I don't "agree to disagree" with you on this subject. I agree to defeat your point of view. It's anti-factual and, when it attains the currency that it has today, it's unconstitutional.

Same old bait and switch. CORRUPTION born of a LIE and nurtured at the breast of APATHY is why WE build bombs and burn nations. WE, ourselves, have the 1st Admendment if YOU cannot enforce it within YOURSELF then YOU will not enforce it upon YOUR neighbor.

This is one of those attrition threads, so - please, no tears - I'll drop this last comment and move on because life is so goddamn short and my posts are so goddamn long.

I fully expected you to reject the suggestion of a continuum. That much was crystal clear in your original post. Considering I'm one study short of empirical evidence of its existence, nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise. I'm just not that good.

My understanding is that per capita fluctuations in the number of Americans who self-identify as fundamentalists (sorry, I don't have the empirical data at my fingertips) are statistically insignificant. So I'm not that concerned with Christian fundamentalists multiplying. But I'm very concerned about their disproportionate influence on politics, and the growing emphasis on apocalyptic wishful thinking among the faithful. My hunch is that End of Days and Foreign Policy makes a nasty martini.

The Bush-loving, kill-the-heathen Christian fundamentalists - the ones quaking in their boots over "Islamofascism" and who believe they're sending their kids to kill & die to save us all from it (I know people like this) - well, they certainly appear to have had some success cultivating political influence. Maybe that perception, to you, is as gelatinous as believing in a continuum. I'll brace myself for suggesting the Christian Right is a political movement, and that every movement has a zenith and we haven't seen this one's yet, but, man, do I ever hope I'm wrong.

Just to be clear, I never once asserted blood lust and nationalism were products of religion, nor did I intend to suggest shock & awe was a manifestation of it (although I'll concede both shock & awe and The Air Force Academy feature airplanes and mortality).

I didn't mention proselytizing at The Air Force Academy to illustrate the moral superiority of secular officers compared to their religious counterparts. (I'm bright enough to figure out the person getting blown to bits by a bomb isn't likely to care about the belief system of the person dropping it.) It was a reference - one you obviously don't accept - to how, in part, because of the The Roy Moore's of the country and the media's willingness to heighten his and similar crusades to blur the lines between religion and public policy, institutions can be and are affected. (This is the part where you say Balderdash! and cite Hiroshima as empirical evidence of my flawed assertion. "The Air Force kills people!" Poor choice of institutional examples on my part, but it was low-hanging fruit, though not very satisfying. However, your critics pointing to the official suppression of science hit the jackpot.) Were I to use any hypothetical, I'm sure you would laugh at the absurdity and/or use the versatile escape hatch of priority. And I'm not about to be hitch a ride to the fatal gotcha of a "ticking bomb" scenario. So I'll refrain from a further waste of time on that juncture and keep walkin'. But I'm starting to think you'd rather take a bullet than deviate from intransigence.

Considering the rank partisanship of millions of Christian fundamentalists (selective though they are; most of the ones I know appreciate, as do I, a well-cooked pork chop) who believe biblical laws of their choosing supercede Constitutional law, how does that not represent a threat? Maybe the ones in your life - neighbors, family, professional associates and the like - aren't the least bit threatening. The ones in mine aren't so innocuous. They may or may not ever become snipers pulling the trigger on doctors who perform abortions, or bombers who blow up clinics; but they would have few, if any, reservations about helping the sniper or bomber - or lots of 'em, for that matter - evade justice. Half of 'em would put me on the train to the re-education camp and throw a party afterward.

Speaking of contraception, women who want a "morning after" pill in my county cannot count on finding a pharmacist to fill the scrip. Like Huckabee converting parolees, I'd place that firmly in the evil category. Such is the hazard of not prevailing where competing fantasies duke it out... or fail to duke it out, as the case is around here.

Considering the paucity of legal challenges, or even a public outcry, regarding the rights of a religious pharmacist taking precedence over a patient's access to legal contraception, it would appear many liberals concur with your position on priority where religion is involved. Pity, that.

I get the feeling I shouldn't be trying so hard to make myself clear since you're in lockdown mode on this subject. The odd part is, I don't completely disagree with you. I doubt all that many lefties were carping on religion while The Camden 28 were facing long prison sentences for ransacking a draft office and destroying records in 1971. But at least back then, John Birch Christians had a counterweight in the Christians actively committed to social justice. That hasn't been the case for a while now, but it's understandable (to me) that religion generally gets a black eye for it.

In any case, my problem is with The Christian Right, not religion (which I'm mostly ambivalent about); specifically its role in providing a voting bloc for the ruling class to exploit. Churches do play a role - certainly, in Texas - in keeping social issues in a rightward drift; and, in return for their services, the politicians who do the bidding of the rich folks get their rightward [corporatist] economic drift. It's a double-whammy.

Although I'm sure it appears otherwise to you, Bernard, but I'm mindful about making assumptions with regard to causation. As a former claims adjuster and legal support freelancer, after a couple of thousand depositions, it started sinking in that A + B doesn't always equal C - and, surprisingly often, the variables don't share any relationship whatsoever. Sometimes they do.

Is religion the root of all ills - or even most of 'em? No. But regardless of how many liberals see it as such, religion still doesn't get a pass for its less admirable effects on human behavior.

My beef is with human nature. Religious or not, we all have plenty of that.

"But at least back then, John Birch Christians had a counterweight in the Christians actively committed to social justice. That hasn't been the case for a while now,"

I may or may not agree with this, depending on exactly what you meant by it. What's happened is that the Christian right gets nearly all the attention. You could blame the Christian and Jewish left for not grabbing more of the media spotlight, but secular, lefty Chomsky-readers of all people should know that's easier said than done.

Though that said, there's some truth in what you say on a more substantive level. Back in the 80's the Catholic bishops often had a leftist label attached to them. They came out with a document on the US economy that was pretty progressive--I only vaguely remember this, but it happened, and I even have a book about it somewhere. More recently one associates the Catholic hierarchy with coverups of sex scandals and with coming down hard on politicians who are pro-choice. That could be my own ignorance speaking. Maybe the Catholic bishops are as progressive as ever, and since I don't follow their doings very closely and don't read "The National Catholic Reporter" anymore I get a slanted impression of them from the MSM.

I couldn't have hoped for a better sample of everything that's wrong with liberals. Beginning with the defensiveness.

Yeah, guys! Jeez! Just because you sat through a rambling, borderline incoherent post implying that you're all a bunch of shallow, bourgeois stooges who actively enable evil when you're not too busy obsessing over trivia, you don't have to get all huffy about it!

Technically, I think this blog is a bit more left-of-center than most, so maybe if you want to see some generic liberals get offended, you should stop preaching to the choir and take your "argument" to the comments at Eschaton and Kos. Yes, I said preaching to the choir - most of us here are familiar with Chomsky, and we've followed enough links to Perrin and IOZ to have heard the "liberals are the real problem" trope enough to say it in our sleep. I just got done reading thoughtful objections to what many seemed to see as facile, blithe assertions. If that's being defensive, okay, I guess...

The comment about "not doing anything until every child on earth has a full belly" is plain weird. Let me say it slowly so there's no misunderstanding. I am NOT asking you to feed every child on earth. I am NOT asking you to save Darfur. I am only asking you to stop using your own hard earned money to build bombs that fall on children's heads!

That wasn't meant literally. It's an example of the kind of mentality that wants to subordinate everything to whatever issue the person in question feels most important. The same ACLU manages to oppose both Roy Moore and the Bush administration's attempts to shred the Constitution, so I don't see why everyone else can't focus on more than one issue. But no, you didn't really ask that - if only you had been that direct! You were too busy complaining that in a zero-sum game, every second spent focusing on issues like religion is a second wasted that could have been spent (somehow) stopping Leviathan.

As for my hard-earned money being used to bomb children - well, dude, I'm a single parent with an ordinary job. If I go to jail for tax evasion, are people like you going to step in and make sure my stepson's life doesn't fall apart? Hm. Didn't think so. Maybe you should stop sneering at those bourgeois liberals with too much time on their hands and see if they'd be willing to make a symbolic statement like that, seeing as how they've probably got enough socked away to provide for their families, if their spouses couldn't do it themselves. Maybe a tour of Hollywood and academia trying to muster up opposition might be more fruitful than haranguing the readers of a blog. Just brainstorming here...

(I recall Noam himself talking once about how he and other intellectuals took out an ad in the NYT announcing their intent to stop paying taxes in protest of the Vietnam war. I'm pretty sure the war ended the next day, too.)

upside down flag: your defensiveness is amusing. There you are refusing to admit that liberalism in the last 30 years has been a huge, giant bust. But just look around you: the US is the most rightwing industrial nation by far.

you guys get defensive because you think i'm saying it's been a failure of the heart. nope, it's been a failure of the brain. American liberals are the dumbest in the world and have lost every single intellectual battle in the last decades. God, just look at the intellectual level of the comments in this thread...

Yeah, guys, what kind of morons would DISAGREE with the idea that the social consequences of religious fundamentalism are a "rich kid's game"? The only reason to disagree with that is if you're being "defensive." Nobody honestly disagrees with Bernard Chazelle. If they voice disagreement, it's just a psychological reflex, not a real opinion.

There you are refusing to admit that liberalism in the last 30 years has been a huge, giant bust.

Sure it has. You know what else has happened in the last 30 years? The rise of the religious right. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but it sure can suggest it. Americans may have bombed people without the help of Jerry Falwell in the past, but that doesn't really shed light on whether or not Jerry and his minions bear responsibility for the bombing that's happening *now.*

There is, actually, empirical evidence of a continuum between ID in schools and bombs in the Middle East. There is plenty of empirical evidence that those who support the former are more likely to support the latter. And there is certainly evidence that the *victims* of the former are completely unable to do anything about the latter, even if they should want to. For instance, women who end up single mothers thanks to lack of contraception and abortion are, actually, less likely to be able to do anything about Middle East policy than those who aren't in such a precarious position. But, wait, those women don't matter--their concerns can be brushed off by bourgeois white males as the petty obsessions of a bourgeois liberal elite.

Sorry, but your post is wankery, pure and simple. It's a classic example of "OMG ur all so FRIVOLOUS because you're not talking about these DEAD PEOPLE," otherwise known as the "how dare you complain about anything when there are starving kids in Somalia" syndrome. And your response to "hilarie" up there is especially wankilicious: "I'm glad you're spending so much time commenting here!" Really. Meaning "tee hee, I don't have any response for your argument, so I'll just insinuate that your comment here means you have no life. My making this post does not, however, mean that I have no life. It just shows how well I see through your pitiful little pretensions." Grade-A wankery, ladies and gents.

I am only asking you to stop using your own hard earned money to build bombs that fall on children's heads!

Great! While I'm at it, I'll also do my best to stop using my hard-earned money to propagate worldview that justifies building bombs that fall on children's heads--a worldview where facts don't matter, where logic and compassion don't matter, where the only thing that matters is a tribal fealty to Jesus of Nazareth. Because there's no use in me opposing our foreign policy all by my lonesome when the bulk of the country doesn't agree with me, in part because they don't have enough skepticism.

Skimming over the comments and the post again, I'm struck by a few things. First:

An ABC/WaPo poll showed that 78% of Americans supported the war in '03. How many "liberals" does that leave out?

Uh, most of them. Very few Americans actually identify as "liberals."

In fact, there's zero evidence for your contention that there are significant numbers of self-identified liberals who get worked up over Roy Moore but not over Iraq or Katrina. There is precisely one person who meets that definition. His name is Christopher Hitchens.

Liberals, in fact, have spent much more time whining about Scooter Libby (a man who, in my book, deserves a medal -- as anyone who blows the cover of a CIA agent rightly deserves) than
coming up with a real plan for New Orleans or for the poor.

What kind of plan? What would constitute a "real plan"?

And the whining about Scooter Libby was overblown, but it had little to do with religion. It had much more to do with horse-race electoral politics. I'll certainly agree that this kind of politics is often useless and sucks energy away from other issues, but it's not connected to Roy Moore except in your imagination.

Upside Down Flag: YOU are absolutely correct, if YOU stop paying these people, then YOU will be ALONE. Only those who TRUELY LOVE YOU will help YOU, yet even then, not always. Welfare will grab YOUR child if he is not old enough to fend for himself and that would be a nightmare in itself. I speak from experience as I stopped 30 years ago. It cost me EVERYTHING, wife, kids, alienation from family and friends, property. The thing is, since WE MUST VOLUNTEER to pay them, in the legal sense, not paying them IS LEGAL, well, and good. In the real life sense the cost is staggering to the individual and takes years to work out how to live a life around it. (It can be done. If I can figure it out, anyone can).
YET see what paying these people has wrought and will continue to do so as long as they are paid. Know that WE all get what WE PAY FOR. It's all a matter of conscience, just how far YOU, the citizen, the individual, will stand up for what YOU believe in. MY guess is good ole NOAM STILL PAYS for bombs and BLOOD and never misses or is even late on a payment.(how am I doing so far, NOAM?)
So YOUR fears are not without foundation, and if I may but point out, 30 years later I AM STILL ALONE.

There you are refusing to admit that liberalism in the last 30 years has been a huge, giant bust.

Refusing to admit? Well, I thought it was so obvious to not really require addressing. But there you have it: liberalism in the past 30 years has been a huge bust. Thus spake Upside Down Flag.

That raises the interesting question, though, of why people like you, Perrin and IOZ spend so much time attacking something that's both useless and powerless. Unless - gasp! - it's a way of avoiding doing anything more useful while puffing yourselves up for being so much smarter than everyone else. (There's a sometimes-commenter named Alan Smithee who pops in here from time to time. I think you two might get along splendidly.)

Anyway, since you apparently couldn't address anything I've said, and are too busy preening over how brilliant and misunderstood you are by all us philistines, I'll try moving this conversation onto a different track in the hopes that someone else has something intelligent to say. (Thank you, serafina, for saving me much typing.)

I've found that even attempting to talk to people about politics is a chore that's been made immensely more difficult by the sharp move to the far right, both in government and media. The average person who doesn't pay much more than the bare minimum of attention to current events has absorbed a very Fox News view of the world, such that attempting to come at them from a genuine left viewpoint is doomed to failure, almost as if I had green skin and a spacesuit. Now, how does one go about forming any kind of mass movement, even the germ of one, when we can't even agree with friends and family on what we see in front of our eyes? Shouldn't we conclude that perhaps the work done by people like Media Matters and FAIR is important in its own right, even if, in and of itself, it isn't going to stop any bombs from falling? How do we address the fact that most people here are too overworked and busy with other things to care much about the wider world?

And thanks, Mike, for hearing what I was saying. More power to you.

I get impatient with liberal intellectuals because I blame them for destroying what might have evolved into a progressive movement in the 60s. All they were asked to do was think hard and honestly about what a progressive vision of society might be like. But instead they chose the lazy route and compiled an endless list of issues, all of them equally important, equally targeted at their middle class concerns, and equally lacking in the necessity of hard choices.

I think people had their hearts in the right place but they lacked intellectual courage. If Democrats are now to the right of Nixon on most issues, it's not because of Jerry Falwell. Sorry! It's because of them.

When they say that " There is, actually, empirical evidence of a continuum between ID in schools and bombs in the Middle East" they don't even realize that such intellectual jello is what Cheney and his ilk feast on. If that's the quality of the opposition, the empire will win every battle at home.

Also, as a general rule, self-complacency is unhealthy and liberals' allergy to criticism is troubling.

Finally I am anything but a cynic. Just the opposite in fact. I am a doer.
But I can't help point out that liberals are by and large lost at sea. If they saw the train headed to Auschwitz, they'd stop it -- just to make sure the conductor didn't have a copy of Mein Kampf in his pocket -- and then let it go thinking they did half of what had to be done.

The unsigned post a few posts up was mine--the one with the reference to the Catholic sex scandals, etc...

This thread has been a train wreck, but not for the reasons I expected. I expected that people like me (and Bernard, if I understand him correctly) would be standing up for left-leaning religious believers (not that Bernard is one) and that we'd be opposed to hardline atheists who lumped all religious believers into one undifferentiated mass of psychotics, some worse than others, but all fundamentally crazy. Then I'd point out that there's been thousands of years of argument about whether it is logical to believe in God (or not to believe in God) and that sane people should want to leave those sorts of arguments out of politics and concentrate their fire on crazed religious people who use their belief in skygods to justify evil policies. I'd also point out that there are atheists like Hitchens who have their own version of the jihadist mentality. Some of these New Atheist types are Islamophobes of the worst sort.

But it hasn't gone that way at all. I'm a little surprised, because I thought most of us around here were Chomskyite in orientation and would agree that mainstream liberals have helped make a mess of things. I'm not sure if there's a direct connection between ID and Iraq invasions. I'm against ID, but some of my Christian friends are sympathetic and yet opposed to the Iraq invasion. (Others favor it, but my point is that the two aren't necessarily correlated.)

Not that I'm entirely on Bernard's side. There's no reason I know of that one can't be opposed to the dumbing down of high school biology classes and the war in Iraq, and in real life we generally don't devote so much time to political activism that it has to be a zero sum game, where you can only oppose one or the other.

donescobar complained of the lack of mention of Lessing, when Goethe and Schiller had been cited, so I wish to remedy this - consider "The Three-Ring Parable", as abstracted from Nathan der Weise, to be incorporated into this comment by reference:

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0972.html#lessing

It is, in fact, extremely relevant.

And so can the study of other writings by dead white men be, despite what Goethe said when he was not dead yet. Among the other courses I took in my undergrad days at MIT, in addition to "Intellectuals and Social Change" from the even-then world-famous Noam Chomsky, was the "Western Civ"-equivalent required of all freshmen. It had a name, but I don't remember it, because we all called it by its number, 21.01. One of the books we read was Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (in translation). This was the autumn of 1965.

It struck me immediately that the corrosive effect of war and preparation for war on society and politics, as described in 5th-century BCE Athens, was directly paralleled by what was going on in the US with regard to Vietnam (injection of large numbers of ground forces had begun in by sending 3,500 Marines in March of 1965, and by December there were 200,000 American troops in Vietnam - so says Wikipedia). I wrote a paper for the class saying so, full of apposite quotations, and received a low grade because I did not put enough of my own blahblahblah in between the quotations. So it goes.

So yeah, everything old is new again - or at least, if history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. U.S. Constitution was written by men acquainted with what destroyed the Roman Republic. Why weren't the feedback loops they put in sufficient to preserve it? I have my theories, and as you can imagine, they involve (in part) the role of the military industrial congressional financial corporate media complex.

More later.

Mistah Charley
Great--at least one American is aware of Germany's #1 writer of the Enlightenment, even if their version of it was a Reader's Digest one.

Bernard

Re: train to Auschwitz. As AJP Taylor cracked, German resistance (to Nazism) is largely a "myth."
A few individuals guided by Kant or conscience aside, it was the Commies/labor that resisted early on and paid the price.
The kids who occupied buildings around 1969-72 paid a price too, but since then only small groups, mostly (it seems to me) in the Northwest, try to "stop the train."

In case anyone is still reading this... I actively oppose the teaching of ID. I've helped draft letters to deans to have them rescind invitations to Dembski (not at Princeton... they know better) but at colleges that shall remain unnamed. This is a fight AGAINST idiocy, not FOR progressive thinking.

TO me this has nothing to do with progressives. Just like 2+2=4 has nothing to do with it.

About Donald Johnson's point, I am probably among the oldest people around here and I am quite sure I detest the pope as much as anyone. But let me say something. Throughout my life, the people I've met who've been the most committed to justice and caring for the poor have been Catholics and Marxist Jews.

I may detest the pope and Lenin, but do I want to find out what Catholics and Marxists have to tell
me about humanity? Hell, yes!

" There is, actually, empirical evidence of a continuum between ID in schools and bombs in the Middle East" they don't even realize that such intellectual jello is what Cheney and his ilk feast on.

Right! Because calling something "intellectual jello" is, like, TOTALLY an argument!

Donald, I'm sure there are some Christian ID supporters who are also anti-war. I'm not claiming a 100% correlation. That would indeed be stupid. But it's equally stupid to deny that there is *some* correlation. If you listen to the religious right talk--not just the leaders, but also the rank and file--you'll find that *they* certainly see a correlation, only they think it's a good thing.

And I'm all for liberal self-criticism. Hell, I'm not even a liberal, so I don't care what you say about them. I do care when people try and make religious nuttery seem harmless because it gives them a masturbatory glow of superiority to the liberal blogosphere.

To take a gentler tone: Donald, I fully agree with you when you say that

I'd point out that there's been thousands of years of argument about whether it is logical to believe in God (or not to believe in God) and that sane people should want to leave those sorts of arguments out of politics and concentrate their fire on crazed religious people who use their belief in skygods to justify evil policies.

Yes. With the caveat that leaving these arguments out of politics shouldn't mean being silent about them. I'm fine with antiwar types who are also New Atheists blasting religion as much as they want, so long as they don't let those concerns prevent them from finding common ground with peaceful religious folk.

serafina:
>> a continuum between ID in schools and bombs in the Middle East

There is no need for an "argument" to destroy that sentence because it is utterly meaningless. What in the world is a continuum? And whatever definition you wish to give it, how will I know it does not allow one to argue there's a continuum between a minimum wage law and the Gulag?

I am objecting to the fact that you guys use English sentences that have no meaning and don't even seem to realize it.

Excellent Post!

And I also really liked Donald Johnson's
point that: "uses the Dawkins argument that
moderate Christians like me provide cover
for the religious fanatics, which is just
as logical as saying that lefties who have
some respect for Marx provide cover for
Stalinists."

I'm an atheist, but I do believe that
religion does get a bum rap. Although
religion has been behind a huge amount
of bloodshed throughout history, it has
been political ideologies (not religions)
that have taken killing to a truly grand scale
(Nazism, Maoism & Stalinism).

Jessica Mitford had been a staunch Communist,
and also very active in the civil-rights
movement. She and numerous others traveled
to the southern states to register black voters.
This was quite dangerous work, even for the
white volunteers. She points out that it was
mostly Christians and Communists who were
willing to risk their lives by doing so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Mitford

Oh, and she did quit the Communist Party
once it became clear that the "Stalinist
Purges" were more than just American propaganda.

Although
religion has been behind a huge amount
of bloodshed throughout history, it has
been political ideologies (not religions)
that have taken killing to a truly grand scale
(Nazism, Maoism & Stalinism).

Oh come on, not this one again. If Christians through the ages had had access to the same technology that Hitler, Stalin and Mao did, you'd have seen just as much bloodshed.

It' ain't yer religion that gets you into a war, it's what ya own. (or in the case of the aggressor, that which YOU desire and do NOT own, as in OUR case ---OIL)

I actually agree with the anonymous poster at 7:44, though otherwise I appreciate what Terry said.

Though the real problem standing in the way of medieval megadeaths was more organizational than technological. The Mongols are supposed to have stacked up a pretty high bodycount--I don't think European Christians were able to match them, though incidents like the Albigensian Crusade show that the spirit was willing, unfortunately.

" it has been political ideologies (not religions)
that have taken killing to a truly grand scale
(Nazism, Maoism & Stalinism).'

Well, one other thing. You should add western imperialism to that list, if we're talking about modern ideologies with millions of deaths to their "credit". Leopold II in the Congo comes to mind, and the British caused famine deaths on a Stalin/Mao level in India, and then you can get into US foreign policy post WWII, which is directly or indirectly responsible for millions of deaths.

Here's a long article pointing out that secular ideologues are often just as crazed as religious ones. And anti-religious secular ideologues are often the worst.

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin_mag/articles/35-23_cavanaugh.html

All fairly obvious, but my favorite part is near the end, where Sam Harris is quoted giving an argument in favor of a genocidal nuclear first strike against any country controlled by Islamists that has nuclear weapons.

So, in other words, some people just like to kill lots of people and find a reason for it afterwards. One god, many gods, no gods, all that matters is somebody's gotta die! The rational fig leaves used to cover the rampaging lizard brain are endless, and only limited by your imagination.

Bernard is right.

Race is bigger than religion in the U.S.

It's okay to do it if it's done to brown people.

People raced off to war with Afghanistan and Iraq because the Other there was brown. Religion didn't motivate these wars. Religion is a strawman, a means to an ends, and one favored by one of our parties and not another.

The idea that religion is the motivation for our politics is overwhelmingly loaded with bullshit. Religion is the excuse used after some asshole has decided to do wrong. What scriptures aren't straight-up rewritten in the face of moral culpability are simply ignored. The "religious right" didn't laugh as blacks drowned in Katrina. The "religious right" didn't defend rapists in U.S. uniforms in Iraq. The "religious right" aren't getting chubbies as corporations grow in power, media consolidation accelerates crushing all regional newspapers and fascism -- true fascim, that is, the wedding of the corporation and the state -- becomes the norm. The right wing did these things.

Obession with religion outside of the right wing is stupidity at best. Once it blossoms into bigotry, it becomes immoral -- way to take a page from your opponents. Bush, Cheney et. al. couldn't give a flying fuck in a windstorm about Christ. God is just another of their bitches, the Celestial Rubber Stamp that gets his jollies whenever his Chosen People (rich white insecure asswipes) get their rocks off.

Do you all point to a time where Church and State were more separate and claim we were less imperial? What kind of shit is this? Was there ever a time we weren't murdering and oppressing people in Haiti? Was there ever a time we weren't sponsoring dictators and mosters in Central America? Religion in our corrupt elites is a way to cover our worst impulses, nothing more.

The Ten Commandments? Prayer in schools? Before they are religious battlegrounds, they are cultural tools. The right want to win these fights because they increase the reach of their propaganda. Their God worships them. They worship power.

To fail to see this is a pathetic mistake. Athiest in the right wing abound, and they will happily take advantage of your stupidity.

Glad I stopped by. No I know that I shouldn't question a spurious belief system that wields influence over virtually every aspect of man's existence, not until I personally rebuild some houses in the 9th Ward and clock some hours as a human shield in Iran.

Also news to me: people would be equally loathesome as political/warmaking animals without religion, but we wouldn't be as inspired to create art.

Yeah, pretty reductionist, but since you've responded to people far smarter than me upthread with the kind of high-handed dismissiveness usually reserved for sitcom heavies, I figured it wasn't worth the effort to get all substancey.

NoW I know, rather. There're zillions of typos that won't interfere with the meaning, but I always seem to make the other kind.

Obession with religion outside of the right wing is stupidity at best. Once it blossoms into bigotry, it becomes immoral -- way to take a page from your opponents.

I really don't see why this is so unbelievably hard to understand: you can devote energy to more than one cause at a time. Really, it's true! You can address the effects of allowing religious nuts to control science education, deny people medicine at a pharmacy, etc., and still have time to fight the good fight against imperialism.

And for the last fucking time: religion is a freely chosen belief. Mocking or insulting people for refusing to factor in contrary evidence is not even remotely the same thing as attacking them for being gay or black, since they are not born religious. Sort of like how I'm not bigoted for calling you an idiot for not being able to figure this stuff out yourself. I'm just sick of having to explain the patently obvious to willfully dense people.

I really don't see why this is so unbelievably hard to understand: you can devote energy to more than one cause at a time.

I really don't see why it's so hard for you to understand: some causes are more important than others. Not all concepts are equal.

You can address the effects of allowing religious nuts to control science education, deny people medicine at a pharmacy, etc., and still have time to fight the good fight against imperialism.

But only a dumbass would say that the attempt to control science education is not imperialism.

The issue isn't the worth of religion because religion isn't always the cause. There are fucking athiests against the teaching of evolution, even though they know it's true. They want CONTROL, and this is one way to get it.

And for the last fucking time: religion is a freely chosen belief.

And for the last fucking time: Who fucking cares?

People being attacked because they are gay or black are being attacked because of the power gained by the attackers. I have been attacked because of my race by people who are not bigots. My attackers had NO emotional investment in a racist system; they had a FINANCIAL investment.

You offer salvation like many religions do -- freedom from one misconception or another. Much more sanely, I don't give a shit about the doctrines espoused by one clique or another. I care about what they _do_, and that's especially important when -- I'm going to use small words here so there's no confusion -- people do not follow their own codes of honor save for when it benefits themselves.

White supremacists are white supremacists whether or not they use religion as an excuse.

Neocons are neocons whether or not they use religion as an excuse.

The idiocy on the left here is an excellent tool of the right. Hell, it helps them with their patheic little games. They know race is a bigger issue than religion. Thus, when white liberals happily claim they're not bigots even though their concern for brown people is far less than their anger at bullshit religious rhetoric, rightwingers score easy victories.

MLK pointed out these liberals were worse than useless in the civil rights movement, and they're worse than useless now.