MURDER IN CHURCH - TILLER
With some important exception, the Taliban are just James Dobson, et. al., with guns, yes? Such a realization always renders perplexing those who shout, "Why aren't the Pakistanis doing more?". What would we do?
There are people hoping that maybe some introspection or change will come out of Tiller's death.
And, even while the Evangelical movement has tried mightily to come out from its disfiguring Reagan-era co-opting, there is still too much power and money at stake to suspect that these psychically charged issues will dissolve into neat compromises. Heck, we have one of the founders of the movement, or close to it, repudiating his own work, laying bare the manipulative aspects of it. We have Ralph Reed, during the Abramhoff period, speaking as frankly about his money grubbing disdain for his clientele as an Enron trader. Yet, the misled movement and indoctrination of the children to sing-out "Righteous Judges!" appears to have taken on its own life.
What's more, "abortion", like sexual ethics, is just too good an issue for 'fundamentalists', for vexious - venal? - pie-throwers like O'Reilly. Why? Because there are no self-evident proofs, little utility to inform policy, so it can be milked ad infinitum, for that and for the reason that it is costless - taking a stand on the issue means no sacrifice of your own, really, no hard work, nothing so demanding as helping the poor, the needy, the sick, or tending to the ravages on the environment.
So, now we have murder. In church.
The question may well not be whether this is a one-off lunatic; but whether it is, indeed, too late for America ...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Is it too late for America, yet?
