Wednesday, February 08, 2012

"Neither a Man nor a Crowd nor a Nation Can Be Trusted to Act Humanely or to Think Sanely under the Influence of a Great Fear"

"Like Father Coughlin, Billie James Hargis, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and so many other right wing media crusaders before them, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham understand that for many religious Americans, 'evil' is not just an adjective but also a noun. When the Puritans first arrived in New England, they believed they were reclaiming a wilderness from Satan. Many traditionalists on the right, whether Christian Millennialists or not, feel much the same way.
"To them, Godless Communism or Secular Humanism isn't the absence of a religious orientation so much as they are Satanic religions in and of themselves, whose acolytes glorify evil, promote the slaughter of innocent, unborn babies, and persecute believing Christians. Blue State America is Rome in the time of Christ. Whether its depravity is manifested in the form of sexual libertinage, income redistribution, spiritual or economic incontinence, blasphemy, women's and gay rights, or the threat of 'race mixing,' anathema and even violence are completely appropriate responses to it."

The Atlantic runs an excerpt of Arthur Goldwag's The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right.

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