uld be complaining if we did? Everybody who complained about the U.S. going into Iraq, http://www.buytomsonlinecheap.com - youth toms for cheap !— Bridget Johnson is a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at GOP Vixen.[标签:标题] Hedges Drops the F-Bomb Pulitzer talent takes on the Right -- and comes up short. As a novice back in the 1960s, a professor I know made the rookie mistake of holding open a door for a female student. Seeing his attempt at chivalry, she froze with indignation — face reddening, fists clenching — and shrieked: “Fascist!” Then she wheeled around on her heel and stomped away.The reality behind this vignette persists even today: the shrill, quixotic paranoia of the activist in search of a grievance. It is evoked anew by the latest literary venture of Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and leftist provocateur. His new book is called American Fascists — The Christian Right and The War on America, and, as the title suggests, subtlety is not its strong suit. The front cover bears an image of Jesus holding the American flag. The back cover launches straight into the Nazi comparison: It announces that the legions of “the Christian Right” — the “ideological inheritors” of the Third Reich — have “found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the Bible.” Inside, Hedges holds the line: Fanatical evangelicals are on the verge of seizing control of the U.S. government, http://www.buytomsonlinecheap.com - cheap toms shoes for sale , dismantling our liberal democracy, and imposing a regime of theocratic fascism. This thesis is kept up for over 200 pages of hysteria that masquerades as a noble, sophisticated, principled defense of American liberty. Advertisement The obvious hurdle for Hedges to clear is the breathtaking outlandishness of his central claim. As he spouts one frantic line after another, the troublesome question leaps to mind: Is there really such a large and influential bloc of Americans who want to impose a political order that substantially resembles Nazism, or even some less murderous form of fascism? Is America’s liberal democracy really under such serious attack from within? Or is Hedges really as crazy as he sounds?In an attempt to deflect this question, Hedges begins by defining the doctrine of “Dominionism” — a radical form of fundamentalism that contrasts sharply with his own, more enlightened, brand of Christianity. (He informs us at the outset that his own background is far from godless: His father was a Presbyterian minister, http://www.buytomsonlinecheap.com - new toms shoes , and he himself attended Harvard Divinity School — which, he fails to mention, has become the nation’s premier seminary for liberals who want to credential themselves as religious believers before heaping scorn on religion.) “Dominionism,” says Hedges, “preaches that Jesus has called on Christians to build the kingdom of God in the here and now, whereas previously it was thought that we would have to wait for it.” And this drags its adherents inexorably toward theocracy.Getting down to political substance, Hedges declares that the dominionist movement “is openly hostile to democratic pluralism, and it champions totalitarian policies, such as denying homosexuals the same rights as other Americans and amending the Constitution to make America a ‘Christian nation.’” (Is he really suggesting that opposing gay marriage is a totalitarian position?) He also warns that, if the dominionists have their way, “Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. . . . The only legitimate voices in this state will be Christian. All others will be silenced.”Hedges ventures that “traditional evangelicals” — “true dominionists” of the totalitarian stripe — probably account for between 7 and 12.6 percent of the American population. He reminds us, of course, that “only a tiny minority” of Christians support “this darker vision of an intolerant, theocratic America.” But when he wants to sound dire about the scope of the threat, he puffs up the rhetoric: “A group of religious utopians, with the sympa
Related articles:
- http://bbs.mtweb.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=124889 - http://bbs.mtweb.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=124889
- http://www.ycsheji.net/home.php?mod=space&uid=33511 - http://www.ycsheji.net/home.php?mod=space&uid=33511
- http://www.sgcin.gov.cn/Review.asp?NewsID=3438 - http://www.sgcin.gov.cn/Review.asp?NewsID=3438
|