Friday, May 06, 2005
Rhetoric Heats Up
Remember when you would have a small cut when you were a kid, and your mom would put merthiolate on it? You'd scream and carry on, often louder and more vigorously than you did when you were actually hurt.
I am beginning to get that feeling about people objecting to the insertion of religion into America's political conversation. You'd think we were threatening, to continue the analogy, to amputate their hand instead of just apply a little sterilizing agent.
Cheat Seeking Missles has a post about a way too vehement discussion on a neighborhood discussion room.
Yesterday's WSJ did a bit of point/counterpoint between, from the right, James Taranto and, from the left, Christopher Hitchens. What is truly fascinating is to compare the rhetoric of the two pieces. Here's Taranto's concluding paragraph:
I think Dadmanly really says it right when he looks at John McCandlish Phillips piece from Wednesday's WaPo.
I am beginning to get that feeling about people objecting to the insertion of religion into America's political conversation. You'd think we were threatening, to continue the analogy, to amputate their hand instead of just apply a little sterilizing agent.
Cheat Seeking Missles has a post about a way too vehement discussion on a neighborhood discussion room.
Yesterday's WSJ did a bit of point/counterpoint between, from the right, James Taranto and, from the left, Christopher Hitchens. What is truly fascinating is to compare the rhetoric of the two pieces. Here's Taranto's concluding paragraph:
And the religious right includes not only Christians of various stripes but also Orthodox Jews and even conservative Muslims. Far from the sectarian movement its foes portray, it is in truth a manifestation of the religious pluralism that makes America great. Therein lies its strength.Well said, and calmly stated. Now check out how Hitchens ends his piece, I've added some emphasis
Thus far, the clericalist bigots have been probing and finding only mush. A large tranche of the once-secular liberal left has disqualified itself by making excuses for jihad and treating Osama bin Laden as if he were advocating liberation theology. The need of the hour is for some senior members of the party of Lincoln to disown and condemn the creeping and creepy movement to impose orthodoxy on a free and pluralist and secular Republic.Apparently, the less of a point you have, the more over-the-top and superlative your language will become.
I think Dadmanly really says it right when he looks at John McCandlish Phillips piece from Wednesday's WaPo.
Phillips corrects the grossly stereotyped presentation of Evangelical Christians as wanting to force all of America into church, or persecute those who deny Christian faith. Rather than an offensive war, Phillips describes this as a defensive struggle, one for the very right to worship as we see fit.It really is a defensive struggle, and we have allowed ourselves to be put in this defensive position because for a very long time now we confused retreat with compromise. We're winning, or else the rhetoric would not be getting so heated. When the battle is done, let's not get so flush with our victory that we become what they are accusing us of being.
