Saturday, June 24, 2006

Sullivan Wittily Fisked

Good piece.

Sample:

Frankly, the tone of political discourse distresses the self-described "gay, Catholic conservative" commentator. He finds it beyond the pale that Ann Coulter calls liberals "godless." "The point," he proclaims urbi et orbi in the Daily Encyclical, er, Dish, "is to portray your political opponents as part of a Manichean struggle against existential evil. And so 'liberalism' is literally demonized."

I must have missed something. Is Christianist, then, a term of endearment? Of all people, Sullivan has to be beyond waging Manichean struggles against existential evil. Marcionite struggles maybe, Arian even, but never Manichean.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Is Christianist, then, a term of endearment?"

No, but neither is it necessarily an attack, either. Neither is Islamist - for a long time, that term has been generally neutral.

Moreover, "Christist" is much narrower than "liberals." it applies to a far smaller number of people. Criticism of Christianists, even if incorrect, is by far not the same as the demonization of all liberals as "godless," a claim which is manifestly and unambiguously false.

A person who says that liberals are all godless is someone who simply doesn't care about the truth anymore; all Coulter cares about is how to come up with something to say that's more outrageous than the last thing she said.