From: boomwrt@primenet.com (Joe Myers)
Subject: Re: Christian Coalition's 1996 Pr Ballot
Date: 15 Jan 1996 12:59:00 -0700
Message-ID: <4debm4$1af@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>

Mark Twain, I think it was, said, "God created Man in His own image, and Man returned the compliment." Twain supposed if there weren't a God, the world's peoples and tribes and ethnic groups would have gone ahead and invented one. Or a bunch. Which, of course, they did anyway. Egyptians worshipped the sun. Incans worshipped the Andes Mountains. Native Americans bestowed mystical qualities to the land and rivers which sustained their culture. It's no great revelation to note the Judeo-Christian ethic, a legacy of nomadic desert sheepherders, counts as its most beloved scripture a song of consolation that begins, "The Lord is my shepherd . . .."

Still, I think even Mark Twain would have been taken aback to learn from the Reverend Pat Robertson that God votes a straight right-wing Republican ticket.

Then again, maybe he wouldn't.

About the only difference between Holy Rollers in Sam Clemmens' era and today's Christian Coalition is the latter's media savvy and political wiles. Last century's Pat Robertson was William Jennings Bryan, also a failed presidential candidate who pandered to the prejudice and paranoia of the great unwashed. Like Robertson, Bryan championed assorted half-baked political, moral, and economic schemes. Unlike Robertson, though, Bryan didn't trot out a political boy toy like Ralph Reed, Jr. to do his bidding. Reed, so well scrubbed he makes your average Osmond Brother look positively scuzzy, halfheartedly proclaims his independence from Robertson's dictates. Careful observers note, however, that Ralphie can't say a word when Robertson is drinking water.

Holy Rollers got into politics because they failed at their real job: converting the masses. If Pat Robertson's theology provides the one true pipeline to the Almighty, you'd think he wouldn't need mere corporal government to force school children to pray to his God. Robertson shouldn't need the Internal Revenue to impress tithes and offerings from the populace to fund parochial schools; shouldn't have to rely on the criminal code to enforce his personal moral code. Theologians will someday recognize the Contract With The American Family as abject blasphemy -- Robertson's deciding God is no longer powerful enough to do His job without Newt Gingrich's help.

The contract's so-called "Ten Suggestions" may signal a decided crisis of faith. For if the Apocalypse is indeed eminent, as Robertson repeatedly asserts, what does he care if the federal budget gets balanced or not? By 2002, Pat and his flock should be floating off to Paradise leaving no one but liberals, heathens, and Democrats on earth to fend with the Antichrist (who, depending on which evangelist you listen to, is either Mohamar Quadaffi, Hillary Clinton, or the artist formerly known as Prince).

The Christian Right is so goofy, they thi . . . . . . . .

(Editor's note: Inexplicably, Joe Myers' post was terminated at this point by an anomalous bolt of lightning.)

Ha ha. I wasn't really struck by lightning. A sign, maybe, the Almighty is a lot more tolerant to lampooning the more outrageous interpretations of His will than some of His adherents. (You've gotta believe God has a great sense of humor. How else do you explain the duckbilled platypus?) And, truth be known, I'm not just a little bit uncomfortable subjecting fundamentalist politics to the same disparaging analysis they give concepts I embrace dearly, like evolution, humanism, and tolerance.

For it is lack of tolerance, Robertson's cocksuredness that his political agenda carries the weight and authority of God, that makes him dangerous. It's a concept which is anathema to the democratic process. As every schoolchild learned in civics class, dictatorships are governments in which one person gets his way. An oligarchy is a government where the elite get their way. In a democracy, nobody gets their way. Not even God's talk show host.

Democracy is the working definition of liberalism, true liberalism, small "l" liberalism. It is the curse of true liberalism to recognize another point of view may have merit, and even if it doesn't, another person's right to believe it. It is the unfair advantage of ideologues to dismiss all dissent as heresy. When Pat Robertson tells you he'll meet you halfway, you can bet he thinks he's standing on the dividing line.

God's doing just fine, thank you. Just as he was before Pat Robertson, before Mark Twain, before, even, the Constitution. And if the Christian Coalition worked a bit harder for Him instead of for the Republicans, they might create a nation in His image after all.