Fiat Lux

I don't know how long this URL is going to work, but here's a link to the "Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union" report mentioned in this and other news articles.

The bottom line is that attacks on Jews and Jewish property, religions institutions, and symbols in Europe reached alarming heights in 2002. The report seeks to look at what happened and try to assign some causal factors to the upswing. One of the hot button parts of the report follows:

Physical attacks on Jews and the desecration and destruction of synagogues were acts mainly committed by young Muslim perpetrators mostly of an Arab descent in the monitoring period. Many of these attacks occurred during or after pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which were also used by radical Islamists for hurling verbal abuse. In addition, Islamic circles were responsible for placing anti-Semitic propaganda in the Internet and in Arab-language media.

It's been suggested in some circles that the report was suppressed because the EU is unwilling to deal with the underlying issues the report details. Whether that's true, I don't know. As my sister once told me, Americans generally don't have a good grasp of EU attitudes and beliefs, and she, having lived in Europe, is generally right about that sort of thing. I try to keep that in mind as I try to keep up with what's going on in Europe.

That said, I'm saddened but not surprised by either the report or the fact that it hasn't been published yet. Anti-semetism is nowhere near as bad as it used to be (for which I devoutly thank God) but it's still out there and should not be ignored becasue it's politically inconvenient to deal with it.

I'm tired and have been fighing off a cold these past few days. Been tough to get the energy together to post. But Nicholas Kristof has a good column in the NY Times today and I wanted to call a bit of attention to it.

America is riven today by a "God gulf" of distrust, dividing churchgoing Republicans from relatively secular Democrats. A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution. All this is good news for Bush Republicans, who are in tune with heartland religious values, and bad news for Dean Democrats who don't know John from Job.

It's hard not to see that as a boast that the U.S. has become the global superpower because God is on our side.

Indeed. And highly troubling to this non-Christian.

Kristof has a column today worth reading in its entirety. He's talking about "Glorious Appearing," the latest work in the "Left Behind" series. If you've had your head under a rock, these books are best-selling novels, widely available - I even saw the most recent one for sale in the downtown SF Costco. In "Glorious Appearing" Jesus finally does return, and not only does he send nonbelievers into a chasm with a wave of his hand, but also the bodies of others are ripped apart and left strewn around the Earth, presumably as a warning to the remaining believers what could happen to them if their faith wavers.

Kristof:

It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture.

I'm with Kristof 100% on this. Why do Christians get a pass for this kind of language when Muslims don't?

Here in America, we're free to believe what we want and to read what we want. I completely support the right of evangelical Christians to read "Glorious Appearing" and believe that God will cast their friends, neighbors, and even their relatives into a pit of fire (not to mention billions of Hindus, Muslims, Jews and even Mormons). But that doesn't mean that other people shouldn't ask hard questions about what kinds of paths those beliefs can take a believer down, and whether actions generated by those beliefs are truly right.

It's also well-known that the current Presidential administration is a deeply Christian one. We need to ask whether this attitude of "they're all going to Hell anyway" (aka the James Baker 'Fuck The Jews' point of view) has had a real impact on their foreign and domestic policies. This President, after all, has not been shy about saying Jesus is his favorite philosopher and a more important guide to him than his own father.

Kristof also says:

As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.

It leaves me uncomfortably wondering where Jews fit into the picture.

Going off on a quick tangent - I sometimes wonder - how, if you're a deeply devout evangelical, do you live with the sincere belief that most of your fellows on this planet are going to burn in hell? Do you worry about it, pray for them, and hope they see the light? Or do you just pretend to be nice to them and in the privacy of your home, laugh at them all for being doomed to Hell?

I doubt many Christians of that persuasion read this blog, but I would really like to know.

I'm in a pretty foul mood from trying to get my system rebuilt (have just a handful of programs reinstalled so far) and then I find this in my Gmail in-box: Hate Crime in SF

Swastikas were scrawled over as many as 50 campaign signs in a hate crime against an Israeli-American Richmond District businessman seeking election to the Board of Supervisors.

The target of the anti-Semitic vandalism spree was David Heller, president of the Geary Boulevard Merchant Association and first-time candidate for supervisor in District 1.

Upon arriving to work Monday morning, Heller was inundated with messages from business owners whose windows had been defaced with swastikas over the weekend. In each reported incident, the campaign sign, which features Heller's picture, was taped to the inside of the store window and the vandal used a black marker to superimpose a swastika and a Star of David symbol in front of Heller's face on the outside of the glass.

I lived the the Richmond district for 2 and a half years. It's a great place to live and is arguably the most overtly Jewish section of the city; there's three synagogues and one of the city's two kosher butchers in the area where this hate crime happened. Anti-semitism is always upsetting but when it hits close to home like this it's also scary.

What also concerns me is that a number of the businesses who were displaying signs for Hiller have now pulled then out of their windows becasue they're concerned about the potential for further vandalism - which hurts his campaign. Now I don't know anything about Hiller as a condidate but when people can be scared into not supporting a candidate for fear of violence there is something very wrong going on.

Bleh.

Back to rebuilding my system.

The New York Times has a long, interesting analysis of President Bush today. Not that it's going to change anyone's minds, but I think it's pretty well-done.

The Decembrist more or less says what I was going to say, except that I felt from very early on this was all about religion and belief. I think being on the outside of the religious mainstream in the US helps sharpen your instincts on this point, but for all I know the Decembrist is Jewish, so maybe not.

I've felt for a while that September 11th took some otherwise normal people and turned them into rabid "get the Arabs" Bush supporters, but not many people have looked at what it did to Bush himself. This article doesn't make the point directly, but I think that change that Suskind points to, that of going from "a self-help Methodist" to "an American Calvinist" was very much a reaction to 9/11.

And then there's the people around Bush. This section pretty much sums it up:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Religious fervor, total arrogance, and dead-wrong political instincts. It would be hard to find a worse trifecta for the people running this country.

I just hope we start to find our way back to normalcy on Election Day.

I ran across a well-written piece over at a blog I would not normally visit today. It's nice to see that at least a few people on the other side of the blogosphere grok why many Jews do not feel comfortable voting Republican.

In brief:

The first is that Jews tend to be very intimidated by evangelical Christians. Jews as a whole don't really try to convert people and evangelicals are all about evangelizing and converting. Big culture clash there.

[snip]

The second is that Jews are a minority culture. When Christians start talking about faith-based initiatives, Jews realize that anything they do is going to be overwhelmed by the vastly Christian majority.

Indeed. These are not the only reasons, of course, but they are very pertinent ones. (Yglesias offers a few more).

It would be nice if more folks in Red-State Blogville "got it". Volokh twice suggests that Jews have some racial or genetic predisposition to be liberals, a suggestion I find offensive and even potentially frightening. But expecting rationality from far-right wingnuts like him is probably too much to ask.

Given the increased prominence religion has had in America over the last several years, I suppose this is not so surprising, but it's not good news at all -- a big article in the NY Times about the Christianization of the workplace.

On the face of it, it's a nice idea:

One of the movement's objectives is to give Christians an opportunity to "out" themselves on the job, to let them express who they are, freely and without feeling persecuted. Few would argue with such a goal: it suits an open society. And if it increases productivity and keeps C.E.O.'s from turning into reptiles, all the better.

Even government agencies are getting in on the game:

In 2001, Angie Tracey, an employee at the Centers for Disease Control, organized what she calls a "comprehensive workplace ministry," among the first officially sanctioned employee religious groups within the federal government. She says that many colleagues have been "saved" at her group's Bible studies and other gatherings on government property, and she describes the federal agency's not-yet-saved employees as "fertile ground." Her program has spread rapidly within the C.D.C., and employees at other divisions of the federal government -- the Census Bureau, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management -- have contacted her about bringing the Word into their workplaces, too.

Apparently it is completely legal to do this at a government agency, although frankly it boggles my mind that that is so.

But even if workplace evangelism is legal, it's still got a big problem; that being the fact that part and parcel of the evangelical Christain faith is to prostletize. It sets up a dynamic tension between people who approve of that activity, and those who either have a secular orientation or who belong to faiths which do not have a tradition of evangelism.

On a small scale, who cares? If it makes for successful businesses and happy employees, why should anyone be concerned? Becasue these people have big plans. Some of them want to have not only Christian businesses, but all-Christian towns, and even an all-Christian America:

Later I met several of the men for lunch at the Olde Main Eatery downtown. One owns the local fitness center; another runs a heating-oil business. As they talked, their ideas and objectives expanded. It turned out that their group -- Pray Elk River -- is part of a network of municipal officials, ministers and small-business owners across the country that has the goal of winning whole towns over to Christ. [snip] Rick Heeren -- a businessman and the author of "Thank God It's Monday!" -- is the Midwest representative for the national umbrella organization, which is called Harvest Evangelism. He told me that Harvest Evangelism had chosen Elk River as a "detonator city" through which, ultimately, the nation will be turned to Jesus Christ. (Other detonator cities include Honolulu and San Jose.)

Frankly reading this kind of thing turns my stomach in a mix of revulsion and fear. The America these people envision is an America that this Jew has literally no place in. And there are a hell of a lot more of them than there are of people like me. Although the author takes great pains to detail how kind, how nice, and how loving the evangelicals he meets generally are, the important question is never asked: what happens when you expand out of your all-white, all-Christian suburbs and meet people not willing to live within your vision?

The closest they get is when the author asks one of the subjects of the article, bank owner Chuck Ripka, the following:

When I asked Ripka if a Jew or Muslim had ever applied for a job at the bank, his choice of language was a bit odd: "We don't really have that in our community at this point."

The bank is located in a more or less all-white suburb in Minnesota, so no surprise there. But it is a critical point the author never quite addresses. This phenomenon is here and is is growing. It's even fully legal. But what happens when the inevitable culture clash begins?

I often think that when America finally fails, it will be this schism -- the religious versus the secular -- that brings it down. If these differences calcify for a few more decades, it's not such a stretch to see the day come when the Christian heartland decides it does not want or need those ungodly people on the coasts who refuse to conform to their vision of an all-Christian America and seriously tries to form an America of its own.

And in my heart of hearts I have to say, maybe that's the right solution. It would certainly be better than the nightmare vision of a civil war over the future of America, or even worse, the repressions, deportations, or even executions that might emerge out of one America dominated by the theocratic mindset.

Ran across a blogad for something truly different this morning and I had to give them some props. An extremely smart musician in Chicago has come up with the idea of remaking classic Xmas carols as Klezmer tunes. The result is hysterical:

Oy To The World.

Go listen to a few of their samples or download the free complete version of "Oy To The World". You'll either kvetch or kvell.

Why is it that the airwaves, even in prime time, can be filled with smirky commercials for male sexual enhancement drugs, but advertising for a church is too controversial? UPN, CBS and NBC are being buttheads.

The commercial in question:

The debut 30-second commercial features two muscle-bound "bouncers" standing guard outside a symbolic, picturesque church and selecting which persons are permitted to attend Sunday services. Written text interrupts the scene, announcing, "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we." A narrator then proclaims the United Church of Christ's commitment to Jesus' extravagant welcome: "No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here."

Doesn't sound that objectionable to me, although I'm not exactly their target market. But no.

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial."

"It's ironic that after a political season awash in commercials based on fear and deception by both parties seen on all the major networks, an ad with a message of welcome and inclusion would be deemed too controversial," says the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president. "What's going on here?"

The ad has been accepted and will air on a number of networks, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History, Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land, among others.

Digby points the way to an amazing article by Davidson Loehr which looks at fundamentalism and draws some fascinating conclusions.

From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.

They identified five characteristics shared by virtually all fundamentalisms.

Paraphrased from the original, these characteristics are:

1) Rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God—and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right—must become the law of the land.

2) Men are in charge and get to make the rules. They also rule the women, and they define them through specific support roles (mother, wife, homemaker).

3) Since there is only one right picture of the world and one right set of roles for men, women, and children, it is imperative that this be communicated precisely to the next generation. Hence, tight control over schools and curriculums is a must.

4) Fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. (See Orcinus for a lot about this issue as well)

5) Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic way." Fundamentalists know as well or better than anybody that culture shapes everything it touches: The times we live in color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. What they don't want to see is the way culture colored the era when their scriptures were created.

All very interesting, but hardly new ground. Here's the part that made me sit up and take notice:

The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we've all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group's territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.

It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.

In other words, it's a biological impulse dating from our evolutionary past (although of course the fundies deny that evolution exists either).

Both Digby and Loehr have a lot more to say on the subject, and I strongly urge you to read one or both pieces. It's truly thought-provoking material that might eventually help us find a way out of the quagmire we're stuck in.

UPDATE 3/3/07: I am thoroughly tired of people coming to this page via Google searches on the phrase "evil jews" or variations thereof. If you're coming here because you think this page gives you some reason to support your hatred of Jews, you've come to the wrong place. Kindly piss off and go back under the hate-filled rock you crawled out from.

ORIGINAL POST

Heard on Scarborough Country:

WILLIAM DONAHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: We've already won.

Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie [Gibson's The Passion]. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah.

Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost.

You have got secular Jews. You have got embittered ex-Catholics, including a lot of ex-Catholic priests who hate the Catholic Church, wacko Protestants in the same group, and these people are in the margins.

Anti-Semetism in prime time. No other way to describe it.

The "about the author" bit at the end of this column describes Burt Prelutsky as a humorist, so it's possible this is intended to be funny. Frankly, it left me feeling more than a little queasy:

Although it seems a long time ago, it really wasn't, that people who came here from other places made every attempt to fit in. [snip]

That has changed, you may have noticed. And I blame my fellow Jews. When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists, and the American Civil Liberties Union, at the forefront.

My queasiness is not eased by the fact that the man writing this identifies as a Jew. As the old saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Hat tip - No More Mr Nice Blog for the link.

Per Yahoo News:

A group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called Monday for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and saying they provoke anti-Semitism.

In a letter dated Jan. 13, about 20 members of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."

Just because a handful of legislators proposes something doesn't mean it's going to happen, of course, but still, quite disturbing to see.

The CS Monitor has a piece out today about the role of religion in Europe vis a vis its role in America. Most of what's said isn't really news if you've been paying attention, but it's still worth a read. Here's a tidbit:

Luis Lopez Guerra, the Spanish government's point man in its campaign to wrest from Catholic influence social legislation on questions such as abortion, divorce, and gay marriage, sees things differently.

He wonders why, in a country where less than half the population ever goes to church, he should have found a Bible and a crucifix on his desk, along with the Constitution, when he was sworn in as undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice a year ago.

The Spanish government's plans to legalize gay marriage this spring, to liberalize divorce and abortion laws, and to permit stem-cell research, do not represent an attempt to impose an atheist state religion, he insists. Rather, he says, they "extend civil rights and make the law independent of Catholic dogma."

*sigh* I really wish I had been more interested in learning to speak, rather than to sing, a second language when I was younger. Europe's looking better and better as the years go by.

Orcinus has an update on the ongoing mess that C-SPAN is making out of trying to cover Deborah Lipstadt's book "History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving". he also points to an article at Salon (sorry, registration and/or watching a commercial required) whith this nice graf:

Sooner or later, every Jew who perceives anti-Semitism as an encroaching danger gets described as hysterical or paranoid. The flattering self-deception at the root of that reaction is a way of consigning anti-Semitism to the past, of saying, "Surely we've become more civilized than that." "History on Trial" makes the case, as did "Lying About Hitler," that we have not become so civilized we are above tolerating David Irving.

Indeed. I also note the following news item today:

A professor who taught history this semester at Fairleigh Dickinson University made disparaging remarks about blacks and Jews on an Internet broadcast and is an active member of a group that calls itself "America's Nazi Party."

The university last week relieved Jacques Pluss of his classroom duties, but not because of his white supremacist views. Officials at the Teaneck campus said he missed too many classes.

Pluss said his membership in the National Socialist Movement, the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country, did not color his teaching. The derogatory remarks were made during a Web cast he hosts called "White Viewpoint" on the organization's site.

On the one hand, I recognize that is it somewhat suspect to fire a professor for holding unpopular views. That's an approach too easily abused. But still, the fact the that University had to fire the guy for missing too many classes instead of because he's a racist, anti-semitic bigot is just a little nuts.

By way of a dKos diary, I found this lovely story today about a North Carolina church that told its Democrat members to repent or leave. Some were kicked out. More resigned in protest over the minister's actions (and kudos to them for doing so).

Religion and Politics Clash Religion and politics clash over a local church's declaration that Democrats are not welcome.

East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13.

On the one hand, it's just a small Baptist congregation in the middle of the woods. On the other hand, the church's actions have threatening implications. Memes have a tendency to spread, and the "kick out the democrats" theme has been floated in other forums as well -- notably conservative columnist Larry Elder yesterday suggesting that it's unhealthy for corporations to hire Democrats.

This Us versus Them stuff is getting stronger and stronger. I don't like it.

I'm not 100% sure about the ultimate provenance of these statistics, but if true, they're pretty interesting:

* About 92 percent of American own at least one copy of the Bible. * The average household has 3 copies. * About 67 percent of Americans say that the Bible holds the answers to the basic questions of life. * The Bible is the world's all-time best seller. * At least 20 million copies are sold each year. * Gideon International annually distributes more than 45 million copies.

Biblical knowledge (Biblical illiteracy is rampant):

* Perhaps 15 percent of Americans participate in Bible studies.
* The number of people who read the Bible, at least occasionally is 59 percent.
* Less than 50 percent of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis).
* Only 1/3 of Americans know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (more people identified Billy Graham than Jesus).
* Twenty-five percent of Americans don't know what is celebrated on Easter (the Resurrection of Christ).
* Twelve percent of Christians think that Noah's wife is Joan of Arc.
* Eighty percent of born-again Christians (including George W. Bush) think it is the Bible that says "God helps them that help themselves." (Actually it was said by Benjamin Franklin.)

They have some other funny fish plaques as well. I'm really tempted by this one

Order them here. No, I do not get a commission on the sale.

Israeli paper cups in a Saudi hospital! Cue the outrage - It must be a Mossad plot!

Riyadh, 22 August (AKI) - Paper cups made in Israel have caused a storm of protest in a Saudi hospital, the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports. Officials at the King Khaled National Guard Hospital says they are investigating after the catering subcontractors for the coffee shops in the hospital ran out and began using Israeli paper cups with Hebrew writing on them, sparking outrage among the customers.

What's sad is that someone, somewhere, probably does think that my opening joke is for real.

Pat Robertson seems to have hurt nobody but his own evangelical bretheren by his recent call for the asassination of President Chavez:

Venezuela's government has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries after a U.S. televangelist said Washington should assassinate President Hugo Chavez.

The policy announcement came four days after conservative evangelist Pat Robertson said Washington should execute Chavez, a former soldier who often accuses the United States of plotting to kill him.

The chief of the Justice Ministry's religious affairs unit, Carlos Gonzalez, said Friday authorization of permits for missionaries would be curbed while the government tightened regulations on preachers inside Venezuela.

The permits "are suspended for a short time ... while we organize a system to see what additional data we need for people coming into the country to preach," Gonzalez told Reuters.

"We were already working on this, but these declarations have made us speed things up," he said.

Heh.

Hat tip: AmericaBlog

*sigh* As the person who posted it said, it makes perfect sense if you're a certain kind of person.

Of course, being a 'heretic' Jew I'm probably wrong, but somehow I suspect Jesus wouldn't approve.

Addendum -- Just realized I was not being clear enough above. I don't think Jesus would approve of wanton warmaking, not of wishing blessings on the poor bastards who are being forced to fight it.

People For the American Way has it, by way of the ASZ:

On today’s 700 Club, Rev. Pat Robertson took the opportunity to strongly rebuke voters in Dover, PA who removed from office school board members who supported teaching faith-based "intelligent design" and instead elected Democrats who opposed bringing up the possibility of a Creator in the school system’s science curriculum.

Rev. Robertson warned the people of Dover that God might forsake the town because of the vote.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."

It seems to me that petty, vindictive, and spiteful are generally not words one would use to describe God no matter what your beliefs. Yet that's the picture Robertson is painting here. He makes God sound more like a 5 year old who's been told 'no' than the all-powerful Creator of the universe.

I think it says much more about Robertson than anything else.

.

Shir l'Shalom still makes me cry.

Currently making its way around the blogosphere:

Jews too were justifiably, though unnecessarily, persecuted for their beliefs and inability to conform to social norms. The great injustice was the persecution of the conversos in Spain, who were sincere converts to Christianity.

In other words, it's OK to perescute Jews because, silly people, they won't give up their beliefs and traditions. The only thing that might possibly have been inappropriate in terms of what the Jews got was the unpleasantness in Spain in the late 1400s, when Spanish Jews were forced on pain of death or expulsion to convert to Catholicism and then some of the converts were persecuted.

I'd like to come up with some witty but still crushing piece of repartee that simultaneously mocks and totally refutes "Brother" Judd's assertion, but his delusional self-importance is overwhelming. I'm ashamed that this ... person ... is a part of my species.

I'm also not going to link to the originating site, because the last thing he deserves is more web traffic, even the pathetic amount that this site might drive his way. Click through via Atrios or Digby if you absolutely must read the rest.

Note to Bert Prelutsky: You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Either the Jews in America are

an infinitesimal minority

Or they are so powerful that

When it comes to pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian, agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists, and the ACLU, at the forefront.

[snip]

It is the ACLU, which is overwhelmingly Jewish in terms of membership and funding, that is leading the attack against Christianity in America. It is they who have conned far too many people into believing that the phrase "separation of church and state" actually exists somewhere in the Constitution.

In other words, somehow, this tiny little insignificant slice of the American population is so powerful that we're able to virtually singlehandedly turn "Christmas" into a dirty word. How exactly is that possible? The "Vast Jewish Conspiracy" that bigots like Henry Ford wrote about? Somehow, I think not.

The utter illogic of the thing gets my blood pressure up as much as its falsity does.

Prelutsky is right about one thing though. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." One could say that turning a religious holiday into a Federal one is an example of the establishment of a religion. But since I'm Jewish, I better not say that, or I might get accused of being part of a vast conspiracy.

Echinde today:

Consider this seriously: a country where the majority of people are Christian, a country where Christmas advertizing starts right after Labor Day, a country where you cannot escape hearing "Dreaming of A White Christmas" has a war against Christmas, a war so powerful that this majority is on its knees, silenced, driven out of the public space. What utter crap. Who are these powerful enemies of Christmas, pray, tell me.

Long story short, this isn't really about Christmas. It's about insecurity and dominance, and much more the latter than the former. Some segment of the Christian population feels threatened by people who are different. Others, emboldened by asstards like Bill O'Reilly, feel entitled to be in-your-face about their dominance. They don't just want to celebrate Christmas, they want people to "just shut up," be ashamed, or even scared if they don't celebrate Christmas too.

These people seriously need to get over themselves.

I've seen them, courtesy of Wikipedia and Flickr. They're not flattering, but they're not in Der Stürmer territory either. The Danish government is completely correct when it insists it has nothing to apologize for.

I'd say more but I have to run off to work. Neil Shakespeare found some good stuff on the subject in a Flickr comment thread.

And while we're on the subject of "stupid things people do because of religion", Shakes had a good one yesterday about a small-town teacher who tried to introduce opera to her students by showing a video about the opera "Faust," and ran afoul of the local parents. It's hard to excerpt, but here's a bit of it. Go read the rest:

How pathetic is this? A children’s introduction to opera video has provoked parents to go on some sort of obnoxious rampage. And for what reason? Because they didn’t think the video was appropriate for children. Apparently, however, it is appropriate for children to be exposed to their parents calling their teacher a Satan worshipper.

Seriously, I know opera is seen by most as old-fashioned and not really useful in today's world, but the Faust legend is a literature classic, opera or no. Not wanting kids to know about Faust because the Devil is involved is flat-out ignorant.

We're heading home for Passover very early tomorrow morning and I need to pack, but I wanted to note a little something in the Bible that seems very appropriate both for the time of year and current events -- Leviticus 19:33-34 (NASB translation):

When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.

Hat tip: dKos.

Is it the gently wafting odor of hypocrisy?

“I want my finances in order, my kids trained, and my wife to love life. I want good friends who are a delight and who provide protection for my family and me should life become difficult someday . . . I don't want surprises, scandals, or secrets . . .

-- Rev. Ted Haggard, Senior Pastor of New Life Church, as reported in Harpers Magazine.

The president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals, who has had regular talks with the White House and vocally opposes gay marriage, resigned on Thursday after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a male escort.

Ted Haggard, who denied the accusation, also temporarily stepped down as senior pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the church said in a statement.

-- Yahoo! News.

Echinde isn't wrong when she suggests that it might not be the right thing to be calling out this man's private imperfections. We're none of us free from flaws, myself least of all.

But I do think that when you have someone who is such a significant part of the moralizing Christianist forces that want to reshape the world in their image, and that person that turns out to be secretly fond of those 'sins' (their words, not mine) he castigates in public, he deserves to be called on it.

UPDATE 11/6: Tristero weighs in:

To defend hypocrisy of the sort that Ted Haggard practiced, where he went out of his way to preach that perfectly normal behavior is a deep sin while repeatedly, and in secret, enjoying the behavior himself, is to advocate precisely the kind of moral relativism the right accuses liberals of practicing (but we don't). There is nothing shameful about same-sex attraction and there is nothing morally wrong with two consenting adults doing whatever intimate acts they both enjoy. Haggard's hypocrisy was not that he hid an immoral act. It is that he enjoyed his perfectly normal desires while enthusiastically preaching the lie that they are abnormal

Click through to Flickr for the full-sized screenshot.

I was poking through my Sitemeter results tonight and came across yet another person who found my blog via a Google keyword search that included the words "evil" and "Jews". As I've mentioned before, this happens with depressing frequency; several times a week is the normal rate.

What was a little unusual tonight is that the person who did the search was doing it from the domain allentowndiocese.org, which just happens to belong to the Catholic diocese of Allentown, PA.

Nice.

A long time ago, when Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority were first making news, I went to the local variety store around the corner and had them make me a t-shirt that said 'Immoral Minority'. I thought it was funny as hell, but my mother asked me to not wear it. Being a good daughter, I didn't, but I still thought it was funny.

And now, long years later, Falwell has finally passed on. His star was eclipsed in later years by other players on the right-wing stage, but the virulent damage his brand of Christianity has done to the fabric of American society will take a long time to wash away.

I know it's not "nice" but I can't find it in me to be the tiniest bit sorry that he's gone.