12 May 2005 Blog Home : May 2005 : Permalink
Police fired on the protesters, many of them students, trying to stifle the biggest display of anti-liberal anger since the ouster of the ruling Clinton regime 4 1/2 years ago. There were no reports of liberal casualties, but the violence left four dead and 71 injured in Kansas City, a city on the border of two states Kansas and Misouri.
Mobs smashed car and shop windows and attacked government offices, the Mexican consulate and the offices of the Democratic party. Smoke billowed from the consulate and the party HQ. More than 50 democratic party workers were reportedly evacuated.
The protests may expand into neighboring Indiana, where a coalition of hard-line Christian parties said it would hold statewide demonstrations Friday over the alleged desecration of the Bible....
In other news:
The brief, tragic life of a young Texan girl was brought to a close yesterday with the execution of Alice Twoomey despite pleas for clemency from international bodies, NGOs and feminist organizations. A brief chronology of her life follows:
OK actually both of those stories are made up. The former is based on this news item, and the latter is based on this blog entry. If it were really true that these things were happening in America the condemnation and outrage spread across CNN, the New York Times etc. would be astounding. Since they are the result not of Christian fundamentalists but those of the "religion of peace" the latter recives 8 hits at news.google.com and the former has coverage that indicates that the fault lies with those who allegedly desecratred the Quran. Anyone who thinks that a collection of sheets of paper with markings on them is worth more than a human life is suffering from a major problem in perspective. The fact that similar issues caused the death of Theo van Gogh, the persecution of Salman Rushdie and so on indicates that this is not an isolated problem. When Hollywood produces a movie such as The Last Temptation of Christ its stars and production team are not forced into government protection or murdered in the streets, when someone dares to criticise Islam they are. Despite all the brouhaha about Terri Schiavo, her husband has not in fact been attacked on his way to work and when fanatical anti-abortionists kill doctors or bomb clinics they are tried for murder without the court or the media showing sympathy to a claim that abortion is against their beliefs.
Yet somehow the NY Times et al. seem to think that the USA is under threat from an Evangelical Christian Jihad. One of my blogroll and a person who shares certain interests in common with me is the JunkYardBlogger. Where we part company though is on the question of religious faith since he is a devout Christian, in fact, I believe, he is a member of some sort of Evangelical church, whereas I am somone who thinks that pace Heinlein that "Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help". Yet despite my view of religion I would vastly prefer to spend time with people such as the JYBer (or any of the other devout Christian ladies and gentlemen on my blogroll - La Shawn Barber, Baldilocks, Michelle Malkin ...) than most of their "liberal" critics. Indeed, except on a couple of fronts I arrive at the same position as they do on most issues, despite coming at it from a different direction. The point here is that while I am not a Christian, I think that Christianity is nothing to be ashamed of and that Christianity is generally speaking a force for good. I am far less concerned about being stoned to death for visiting a gay bar in Utah than one in Pakistan despite the fact that Mormonism is pretty homophobic and forbids alcohol. Yet if you read the press, as this WaPo article points out, the mainstream media aren't exactly friends of devout Christians (and in this case I count Mormons as Christian though I admit it isn't quite the same).
The problem, it seems to me, is that the MSM and the liberal elites mostly throw out the baby with the bathwater when they reject religion - they reject, as I do, some of the more pointless strictures that religions impose on their believers and as a result dismiss the whole system without looking to see whether the rest of it is any good. The result is that, rather than seeking a rational human society, they have effectively established their morally nonjudgemental multiculti liberal atheism as a religion itself with its own dogmas and holy mysteries and the same penalties meted out to perceived unbelievers and heretics as the religions they complain about. Heinlein wrote:
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
When you look at the overwhelmingly "liberal" bias of universities and of journalists today, Heinlein's statement surely rings true. But the religious are fighting back, in America at least, and this is a good thing. Of course the incumbent religion is feeling threatened, especially since it is intolerant to its foes and fears that it may face similar treatment in revenge. Hence the smearing of devout Christians with labels like "fundamentalist" and, as far as I can tell, the massive publicity given to the more, ahhh, wacko faces of Christianity at the expense of those who are less controversial. Curiously it is only the Christian "wackos" who get the publicity, when Sheik al-somebody or Environmentalist High Priest Dr someone goes raving about how the world would be better if women were chastised daily or that all humans over the age of 60 should be euthanised (examples made up) then these messages tend to not get reported. On the other hand when someone, not unreasonably, says that he thinks that age 6 is a bit young to explain human sexuality he is immediately compared to some kind of dark age priest ridden savage.