And now a new addition to the PC list: be careful how you use the words “jihad” and “theocracy” because Evangelicals don’t like it.
We’re sure some readers will look at TMV’s name “Gandelman” and ask, “Well, what does that old Jew know about this issue?” — and that’s just our Jewish readers — but Washington Post columnist John McCandlish Phillips raises a valid issue in his column “When Columnists Cry ‘Jihad’…. except in doing so he uses the same exaggeration that he attributes to those with whom he disagrees.
At issue is the bad coverage that Evangelicals received in some parts of the press (and on blogs) due to some recent issues that impact them and that they are pressing. He starts out this way:
I have been looking at myself, and millions of my brethren, fellow evangelicals along with traditional Catholics, in a ghastly arcade mirror lately — courtesy of this newspaper and the New York Times. Readers have been assured, among other dreadful things, that we are living in “a theocracy” and that this theocratic federal state has reached the dire level of — hold your breath — a “jihad.”
In more than 50 years of direct engagement in and observation of the major news media I have never encountered anything remotely like the fear and loathing lavished on us by opinion mongers in these world-class newspapers in the past 40 days. If I had a $5 bill for every time the word “frightening” and its close lexicographical kin have appeared in the Times and The Post, with an accusatory finger pointed at the Christian right, I could take my stack to the stock market.
Fair enough: he has never found anything like the “fear and loathing” being heaped on Evangelicals. And, indeed, as polls on the Terri Shiavo affair show (one polls shows that Evangelicals had wished Congress and President Bush had stayed out of it), Evangelicals are not necessarily a open-and-closed-case monolithic group.
But he ignores putting high up in his thought provoking piece the fact that there has been TRIGGER for these events over the past few weeks which has led to some folks expressing fears of a trend towards theocracy:
- The role of Evangelicals in pressing the move to get a ban on gay marriage. The clamor on that hasn’t come from libertarian Republicans.
- The GOP’s move to solidify this loyal and energetic constituency as one of the pillars of the party.
- The Terri Shiavo case.
- The clamor by the Evangelical part of the GOP for judges that rule their way on issues, coupled by the Republicans starting to talk about going for the “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster to get more socially conservative judges (the judges the Democrats seek to hold up are not generally considered moderates).
- Majority Leader Bill Frist appearing before a group that suggested opponents were “faithless” who opposed Bush’s judicial nominees.
- The recent comments (condemned by a healthy number of thoughtful Republicans by the way) of Pat Robertson suggesting some present judges are a greater threat to the country than Osama bin Laden.
The bottom line is that columnists did not just START writing about this. There was a trigger — and it was the Evangelicals’ political stances and pressures on GOPers to get their agenda passed on several fronts. There is nothing wrong or illegal about that — but it is a fact that this was the context.
McClandish seems truly upset about columns by some New York Times columnists. WHY? They are just opinion columns. But the fact is: many Americans who are moderates, libertarian Republicans and centrist Democrats are as aghast at the influence of this constituency on today’s GOP and Washington decisionmakers as McClandish is at the verbal excesses of Maureen Dowd (who no one has ever accused of being a dispassionate writer by the way..she WRITES OPINIONS) or Paul Krugman.
But he’s on target here:
In the long journey from the matchless moment when I became “born again” and encountered the risen and living Christ, I have met hundreds of evangelicals and a good many practicing Catholics and have found them to be of reasonable temperament, often enough of impressive accomplishment, certainly not a menace to the republic, unless, of course, the very fact of faith seriously held is thought to make them just that.
Yes. There are many reasonable ones. And then there is Randall Terry and Pat Robertson. THEY are the ones who get the sound bytes.
And then he says this:
Evangelicals are concerned about the frequently advanced and historically untenable secularists’ view of the intent of our non-establishment/free exercise of religion clause: that everything that has its origin in religion must be swept out of federal, and even civil, domains.
WHO EVER SAID THAT? The debate is not over “everything” being swept out of federal and civil, domains. The debate is over religious agendas being ADDED ON to some areas where they traditionally have not been the determining factor.
In the past you could say a candidate was a liar, a communist, a fascist, a fiance of a sheep in the rockies or someone who didn’t wear underwear. But you did NOT accuse them of being “faithless” if they disagreed with you. Towards the end there’s this:
The fact is that our founders did not give us a nation frightened by the apparition of the Deity lurking about in our most central places. On Sept. 25, 1789, the text of what was later adopted as the First Amendment was passed by both houses of Congress, and subsequently sent to the states for ratification. On that same day , the gentlemen in the House who had acted to give us that invaluable text took another action: They passed a resolution asking President George Washington to declare a national day of thanksgiving to no less a perceived eminence than almighty God.
Very nice sounding.
But it’s a red herring (or red turkey). No one has ever suggested getting rid of Thanksgiving. The bottom line is that many American not seen such an attempt during our lifetimes to inject the equivilent of a religious loyalty test into our politics. This isn’t politics determined so much by debate or facts or even just political bias but by a spiritual certainty that it is right.
So McCandlish makes some good points about exaggerations; but he indulges in a few of his own. And he completely ignores a political context that is unprecedented in American history. This ain’t a debate about Thanksgiving, my friend…
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds aka InstaPundit makes this point:”Yeah. I disagree with the Christian Right on most of the hot-button issues, but I don’t think that they’re indistinguishable from the Taliban, though one hears such overheated rhetoric all the time. I can’t help but think that the mainstream press would be far more sensitive to avoid stereotyping blacks, Muslims, or gays.”
IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS: This blog here says the above post “smears pretty much all Christians as anti-Semites on his way to getting the past and present entirely wrong. All in the service of redefining marriage. It’s really a sight to behold.” Except for our typical wisecrack (which we do in many of our posts) we can’t see it. Another satisfied reader! (PS: Do you think that blog will exchange links?)
AND NOW THIS: Well, Junkyardblog did blogroll TMV…so TMV (which as you can tell has a diverse blogroll which he actually USES for his roundups and web visits) will now add him. There’s hope for Bill Frist and Harry Reid yet..(but not for Dennis Kucinich and Alan Keyes who live here…)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.