John Cole has graciously, but a bit disingenuously, responded to my earlier post on his new acceptance of the term “American Taliban”. Here, in part, is what he had to say.
And this is the kind of dishonest crap that gives these lunatics the cover they need to operate. Jimmie at the Sundries Shack now wants to pretend I am somehow smearing all religious people- I am not. I am merely reacting to the responses of these members of the lunatic fringe.
My father is one of the most deeply religious people I know, born a Southern Baptist, practicing his entire life, and dedicating thousands of hours to the local church. I would never think he or those like him, or my deeply religious friends at Red State, are members of the “American Taliban.” But these lunatics, in particular the ones who have been waging jihad against homosexuals and who would even THINK to firebomb someone’s house because a gay actor appeared in a movie, are precisely as they have been labeled.
Part of my problem is that Cole references the “lunatics” in the plural. Go back and read the article. There’s exactly one person quoted there that says anything that a reasonable person would consider “lunatic” and I addressed that single quote.
Here are the other quotes from those Cole apparently considers “lunatics”.
“Does anyone really believe that Chad Allen was the best possible actor for Nate Saint?” Mr. Janz asked in his Jan. 12 Web log entry, referring to one of the characters in the movie. “That would be like Madonna playing the Virgin Mary.”
…
But Mr. Janz, who said he rarely weighed in on the culture wars, stood by his previous statement that “we must realize that the Christian message and the messenger are intricately related.”
He wrote that Mr. Allen’s homosexuality was not so much the problem as was his open activism for gay causes, and that if a drunk who “promoted drunkenness” had acted in the movie, “I’d be just as mad.”
…
Many evangelicals are concerned that young people inspired by the movie will look up Mr. Allen on the Web and “get exposed to his views on homosexuality, and that would cause some of them to question Biblical views of homosexuality and every other sin,” said Will Hall, executive director of BPNews.net, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has published articles critical of Every Tribe’s decisions.
That’s it. Where, exactly, are the lunatics to which Cole refers? I have to assume that he means that everyone mentioned in the article, including the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, “ave ben waging jihad against homosexuals”. I do hope his father, who seems by Cole’s description, to be a righteous man, doesn’t attend a Southern Baptist church. Otherwise, Cole should probably check the closets for Molotov Cocktail fixins.
I don’t believe that any reasonable person would read those quotes and go into a quivering rage. In fact, I’ll bet that most folks would read those and think that their opinion isn’t at all unreasonable for a person whose religion teaches that homosexual acts are sinful. You don’t have to agree with their beliefs to decide that their beliefs aren’t unreasonable.
My main contention, though, is that Cole is doing exactly what he says he is not. He claims that he is not tarring every Christian with the “American Taliban” brush and I can’t argue with that. I never claimed that he was. The closest thing I came to that is saying that by his using that term, he insults “…millions of Americans who not only profess to be Christians, but who live their religions in a real way every single day…”. That, by the way, is not all Christians.
The fact is that he unhesitatingly accepted the left’s definition of “American Taliban”which, as we all know pretty darned well, includes every Christian who as much as makes a public profession of their faith, or attempts to use their faith to help determine their political judgements, or so much as says out loud that it might not be the smartest idea to cast a public gay activist in an overtly Christian movie. The term itself is a wild exaggeration and not even close to reality, no matter how many people write blog entries that obliquely suggest that firebombing someone’s house wouldn’t be entirely bad. I’d say that he’s the one being dishonest here and it’s a shame, because obviously he knows better. He can hide his rhetoric behind the excuse of “Oh, I only meant those maniacs over there”, but it doesn’t disguise his wildly reactionary and dishonest characterization of evangelical Christians.
Talk about being disingenious. That statement above is absolutely ridiculous. You should note that it isn’t only the “left” who uses the term “American Taliban”, it is used by libertarians, such as myself, too.
You want other examples of the America Taliban?
Let me take you back in time for some of the events that occured because of the Schiavo case:
Those people are the type of people John is describing as the American Taliban, and rightly so.
Ah…so those are the ones he’s talking about? I guess he should have been a whole bucketload more precise than to tar everyone in the article with that prase then.
Even so, it’s inaccurate. Do you even know who the Taliban are or what they did while they ran Afghanistan? I doubt that you do or you’d see how ridiculous the comparison really is.
But hey, anything to keep your precious epithet.
Yeah, a bunch of unconnected idiots going about doing idiotic things who happen to share a religion are equivalent to an organized institution who successfully subjucated an entire country. Sounds reasonable to me. /sarcasm.
Of course if someone took stories of blacks doing stupid stuff for racial reasons and used that to smear “those lunatics” it would make them a racist.
If someone took stories of women doing stupid stuff for gender reasons and used them to smear “those lunatics” it would make them a sexist.
If someone took stories of gays doing stupid stuff for gay rights reasons and used them to smear “those lunatics” it would make them a homophobe.
But doing it to Christians just makes them accurate.
Joy
Jimmie-
These people clearly refers to insane jackasses like the one who made the firebombing remark.
If your entire premise is that I am smearing you and all Christians because I used the phrase ‘these people’ to clearly refer to insane lunatics like Bauder, your two posts on this subject are even lamer than I first thought.
Additionally, by pretending that you and other decent Christians are being attacked, you are providing Bauder and people who have clearly earned the name the “American Taliban” with the cover to continue their disgusting ways.
Ah, Jimmie, now it’s hyper-technical parsing of exactly what John wrote. It’s a good attempt at rhetorical bait-and-switch – as if we don’t know of other professed “Christians” (please note that I include the quotes to try and differentiate between those who profess to be Christians but whose actions betray the claim, and those who really are) who have actively engaged in agitation to violence or even carried it out. Hmmm…what about Eric Rudoph, for instance? I think anything but a myopically buttheaded reading of what John wrote would make this clear.
I actually agree with you in that Christians have the right to protest the casting of a gay activist (assuming he is in fact such) in such a movie. And furthermore, to boycott the sucker. But you keep on blithely ignoring the line that was stepped over – i.e., Mr. Bouder’s implying that it just might be OK to firebomb the homes of innocents if the circumstances were just a bit more extenuating.
That is the statment of an immoral thug. And you do a dis-service to your faith by not condemning such statements with the strongest possible rhetoric.
As a side note, I’d been interested to follow up if you could provide a link to that “Left’s definition” of the ‘American Taliban’”, which you reference “we” all knowing toward the end of your response. Now it obviously goes without saying that we on the Left are all of exactly identical mindset and beliefs, but for some reason I wasn’t in the loop for that one. Even so, I’d really like to know if my definition is congruent with what it really is…
Oops, I meant Bauder
But doing it to Christians just makes them accurate.
Joy
Oh yes, please. Bring out the “Christians are so persecuted in this Country” schtick. It only makes you look like the American Taliban sympathizers that you obviously are.
…and you wonder why we object to hyperbolic name calling?
Suddenly thinking someone is ‘only’ an unconscienable asshole lunatic makes me a Taliban sympathizer. Thank you for making my point.
Look, there’s a difference between saying despicable and immoral action X is probably too far and despicable and immoral action X plus even more despicable action Y is the absolute minimum required by Allah. If this lunatic were the ‘American Taliban’ he would have pronounced that his home and work should be firebombed, his family beheaded at the 50 yard line at the SuperBowl along with the entire cast and crew.
There’s just a tiny little difference in scale. The real Taliban laughs at this guys feeble declarations.
But I guess that Bush really is Hitler despite the lack of 11 million of his own citizens killed because Sheehan (along with a pro-troop spouse) got escorted out of the SOTU address. They’re both “stifling dissent”.
The Taliban start much further down the road than this moron lunatic.
All silly hyperbole aside, I believe the references to the Taliban are merely a way of demonstrating the danger any society faces if it abandons a political system based on reason, substituting one based on quite literal readings of ancient religous texts. Of course if all you look at is the reprehensible manifestations of the Taliban after they had taken power, there is absolutely no comparison to this statements of this particular moron. But the Taliban didn’t start in power; they began as religous “students” who advocated a civil society in which all of the rules were based upon their reading of the Koran. There are elements in our society who advocate essentially the same in their advocacy (i.e, society based on their particular religous book). It is really not that far of a stretch to envision that in such a society, based on a literal reading of the Bible, might feature, for example, stonings of blasphemers and non-believers or children being forced into slavery as payment of a parent’s debt, this kind of thing. Let’s not forget that in Medieval Spain, when the church had a lot more governmental power, the results weren’t very pretty.
The key here is Bauder, a professed Christian, and head of a seminary school walked right up to the line of saying that under certain circumstances it might be OK to firebomb someone’s home all for the blasphemy of casting a gay actor in the lead role of a Christian movie. This advocacy of violence is what gives rise to references to the Taliban and is certainly very much contrary to the teachings of Christ I that I learned as part of growing up Southern and in the Christian church.
No it was this post:
of yours that makes you a American Taliban sympathizer. They weren’t unconnected idiots, they were down Florida en masse. To deny that is to deny their existance.
Gotta love it when you put words in my mouth that I never said. People who call Bush, Hitler, are morons or extremists, with that said if Sheehan and the Congressman’s wife were arrested and the the CP didn’t apologize then that would indict that we live in a pretty authoritarian state.
*indicate
John – My problem is that you’re making these statements prompted by the quotes of one man and a pretty damned obscure one at that.
You clain there are lunatics out there who are advotacing the firebombing of gay people’s houses, or the houses of those who sympathize with them. Then show me how they’ve formed anyhtig approximating a coherent organization capable of coming anywhere near carrying out any sort of threat and I’ll go ahead and grant that they could in a few years, grow to the size of the Taliban.
worn – You’re the one being hyperbolic here, not I. What you call “parsing” I call being accurate. If John wants to sling around the Taliban analogy, he’s going to have to bring more than a “well, you know there are others out there *wink wink*” to the table. If he says “they”, he’s going to have to demonstrate that there’s a “they” there. I don’t believe he has even come close to that. The burden of proof in comparing some wacked-out Christian writing on a blog to a group of people who ran a government and actually killed hundreds or thousands of gay people, is on him. It’s not on me to bring the chapter and verse to refute it. Otherwise all he’s doing is being shrill and ridiculous, just like the lunatic left that he has so openly embraced (and yes, I use that word on purpose).
DV – Who were these people in Florida plotting the deaths of gays? If you’re referring to the Terri Schaivo groups, you have a long way to go to get from Schaivo to killing gay people.
My point stands. It’s a long, long way from a single blog post to the actual running of a nation and the institutionalized, legal killing of gay people. No one has ever suggested that. No one has ever come close to suggesting that. To draw that particular line to say that they have diminishes the blatant evil of the Taliban and insults Christians you might later decide do fall under your hazy classification of “they”.
So you’re only part of the American Taliban if you support killing gays? What about all the nutters that were calling for the deaths of judges and politicians involved with Schiavo? What about pretending to put a bomb on the courthouse steps?
Those seem like some pretty extreme things to me.
I dunno Jimmi, and I’m not saying there is a bunch of this type of guy out there but ever heard of Fred Phelps?
And I understand your points that they aren’t exactly like the Afghanistan Taliban, but that is because they can’t get away with that type of shit here–not that they would even get that far. However, they are the “Americanize” version of Afghanistans Taliban.
Would calling them the Americanized version of the Taliban suit better with you?
TDV, yes they were all in the same city on the same issue from the same religion. But they most certainly were not a cohesive group collaberating together. I seriously doubt if any of the people named had any knowledge of any of the others. There was no leader handing out orders for one person to go steal a gun, one to print “wanted” posters and another to threaten with a bomb.
These were all lunatic individuals acting on their own.
Saying that they were not organized is not the same as saying they don’t exist.
The Taliban were not a bunch of individuals acting on their own imposing their will, en masse. They were a coordinated organization much larger than even that obscene Phelps moron in Kansas.
Again, this lunatic deserves a great heaping of scorn and should be mocked and shunned by all Christian every chance possible. Until he has a real change of heart. He is a cancer to Christianity, but we should not be resorting to hyperbole to make our point.
We can not take the moral high ground against Bush=Hitler over the Patriot Act (or whatever the cause of the minute is) and then engage in it ourselves with cries of American Taliban when a lunatic makes a fool of himself and others.
Hyperbole for me, but not for thee, I guess.
And from the previous thread:
The real Taliban wouldn’t have said firebombing the guys house was “probably too far”. They would have said firebomging the guys house, his work, beheading his family and the families of all the cast and crew would have been “a good start”.
DV – It was Cole’s charactreization, not mine. If he’s talking about some ginormous supergroup of Christians who want to turn America into the Talibanized Afghanistan, then he ought to have the guts to say so and, most importantly, bring some actual evidence that they wish to do so.
My point, which I’ll make again, is that there is no valid comparison between the Taliban and the fringe people, whoever they are, that you and Cole vilify on a regular basis. I believe, based on my experience, that you both happily drop evangelical Christians into the Taliban bucket, just to plump up your point. It’s disingenuous and laughable.
Sure, I’ve heard of Fred Phelps. Did you know that he’s a Democrat who approaches his politics from the left side of the political aisle? There’s no way in hell that he and the lone nut from Minnesota, or wherever he was from, would find enough common ground ot have coffee, much less run a repressive government. You want to claim there’s some sort of organization out there, at least on the grass roots level, but there isn’t and it’s fantasy to claim otherwise.
Here’s the thing, DV. These people – the Schaivo protestors, and Fred Phelps, and Mr. Bauder – are nothing like the Taliban. Yes, they say some batshit crazy things, and they put fake bombs on courthouse steps. That is a long, long way from rounding up gays and crushing them to death or forcing women to wear head to toe covering under penalty of gang rape or any of the thousands of oter atrocities the Taliban committed while they ran Afghanistan. You say it’s an apt comparison. I say that your sense of scale is horribly wrong. I say that you’re blinded by hysteria.
Evangelicals are fine. It’s the fundamentalists who are the problem.
Your point? I’m not a democrat, and I know John’s not either, and I would throw Phelps in as a member of the American Taliban as well. Party affliation doesn’t matter when it comes to being a religious wacko.
Well this is where we will have to agree to disagree. I think they are a lot like the Taliban, and I think they are organized. And you know what else, I think they would try to round up gays and throw them in jail if they could get away with it. Thankfully, a majority of the population isn’t insane and thus the nutters are kept at bay.
Most evangelicals are fundamentalists. I think one of your problems is that you don’t know what the heck either of those terms mean when it comes to religions.
Well, wow, you stepped right over my point on Phelps. I’ll give it to you again. His other political beliefs are such that he and Bauder would find no basis on which to organize. “We don’t like/hate gay people” doesn’t hold together an organization if you have fundamental disagreements on other key points. Same with some of the others you tossed into that group.
No, this is not where we “agree to disagree”, it is where you prove yourself objectively wrong. Even if, and this is a stretch, “they” would throw gay people in jail, “they” are still nothing like the Taliban. See, the Taliban didn’t much throw gay people into jail. They threw walls on top of them. They threw them into graves. That’s a big difference and I’m not nearly as willing as you to say it isn’t. Then again, I’d imagine that, based on your knowledge of evangelicals and fundamentalists, I’m one of the “they” you’re so eager to equate to a murderous national government.
[...] Jimmie at the Sundries Shack may be a one trick pony, but he is rambling on with a steady gait. He continues to dishonestly pretend that I somehow smeared all Christians as members of the “American Taliban,” in not one, not two, but three posts. The lowlights, if you will, from Jimmie: [...]
*sigh*
Evagelicals follow Jesus’ message. Fundamentalists believe the entire Bible is innerrant and should be followed accordingly.
Really? I’ll bet ya they both agree on abortion…I’ll bet ya that they both believe we are a “Christian Nation”…I’ll bet ya they both agree on issues like Terri Schiavo
That’s what makes them part of the AT.
LOL. And see, this is why we will agree to disagree. Wanting to throw gays in jail and make homosexuality a crime makes them worthy of the title the American Taliban. I honestly can’t believe you would think otherwise.
Then again, it just proves John’s earlier point that it is people like you who provide a cover for these wackos to get away with the shit they get away with.
You really don’t know what they mean. I’ll give you a quick primer. Evangelicals follow Jesus’ Great Commission. Their primary job, as given by that Commission, is to “spread the Gopel unto every creature” (or, if you like, “make more Christians”). Fundamentalists believe that there are certain “fundamental” doctrines in the Bible that are non-negotiable and that if you do not believe them, you can’t actually claim to be a Christian.
Being a member of one group does not make you a member of the other.
ON your second point, thank you for being honest. It helps prove my point that you believe that the vast majority of Christians ought to be considered the equal to the Taliban. See, Christians do believe that abortion is a great wrong. They do believe that our nation was founded on bedrock Christian principles. They do believe that we ought to give life the benefit of the doubt in every possible circumstance. In those point, I’m sure that they’d find agreement with the wackos. On those points I agree with the wackos. That makes me, by your measure, American Taliban.
Look, I don’t know what gives you the idea that I’m providing cover for the wackos, simply because I won’t join you in the hysterical comparisons. I deplore the wackos that make my religion look bad. I condemn people who decide that they will be Jesus’ avenging right hand, in contravention to every possible Biblical teaching. I am amazed that people can call themselves Christian and violate such basic Biblical principles.
That doesn’t mean that I’m willing to give in to your hyperbole either.
It is very simple. The wackos you deplore are not comparable to the Taliban – Not in the scope of their power, not in their desire to rule, not in their actions against those they do not like, and not in their eventual goal.
You have not, in almost ten posts, demonstrated how they are alike enough to compare. You’ve tried. You’ve made pretty poor attempts to defend your hyperbole. But you haven’t. Your latest attempt is laughable. I will say this one more, in a different way. There is a vast difference between wanting to make homosexuality illegal in a democratic nation using the democratic process and using totalitarian means to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. I do not agree with either goal. I’m not so reactionary as to think, though, that the goals are equivalent. They are not.
I stand by my belief that your fear and ignorance prevents you from thinking rationally about this. You own the hysteria and you have too much invested in it to let it go.
Jimmie,
We can agree to disagree about the degree of hyperbole. The point I was trying to make – more cleary on another thread, is that the Taliban didn’t magically appear from thin air. They advocated certain (violent) positions from their reading of their particular holy text and over time gained the power that was needed to become a rather ugly embodiment of barbarism.
Disagreements aside, I was heartened by your posting “I deplore wackos that make my religion look bad. I condemn people who decide that they will be Jesus’ avenging right hand, in contravention to every possible Biblical teaching. I am amazed that people can call themselves Christians and violate such basic Biblical principles.”
Oh, and Fred Phelps? Well my family knows all about him, given that he and his flock showed up rather loudly and unwelcomely at my father’s house, screaming (yes, screaming) about how we were all going to hell because my father had the nuts not to give in to their demand not to pull a comic strip from his newspaper. The strip in question? Believe it or not, it was “For Better or Worse” which had a brief storyline involving a friend of one of the children coming out as gay. And yes, as soon as Phelps stepped into our yard, my father not so gently suggested he better rethink what he was doing unless he wanted his ass kicked halfway to next Sunday…