Vox Blogoli: Jonathan Rausch Compares Religious Conservatives to Bombers in the Atlantic Monthly.
HughHewitt in his Vox Blogoli forum has invited bloggers to weigh in on Jonathan Rausch's Atlantic Monthly article in which Rausch seems to imply that religious conservatives are just a political loss away from bomb throwing. Hewitt took Rausch to task in an article about the impact of new media, specifically blogs, on mainstream media in his article in the Weekly Standard, Big Media's 40 Days and 40 Nights. As Hewitt says, Rausch subsequently "pleads hasty writing and objects that the focus [Hewitt] put on [the few offensive sentances] is unfair to the intent of his piece."
The full text of Rausch article is now posted on Hewitt's blog. And to be fair to Rausch, his point is that "red" staters and "blue" staters are not as bitterly divided as has been reported (as an aside, shouldn't the left really be red...its traditional color).
The offending language in Rausch's article reads in part as follows:
polarized activists have been taken over by the mainstream parties. The Republican Party has acquired its distinctively tart right-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with the religious right. As Hanna Rosin reports elsewhere in this package, religious conservatives are becoming more uniformly Republican even as their faiths and backgrounds grow more diverse. On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics.
Rausch then goes to make the inapt comparison of the "religious right" to Michael Moore. Where Hewitt is right on target is in pointing out the offensiveness and the inaccuracy of suggesting that the religious right is a political platform plank away from becoming killers. But even had Rausch omitted that reference, he would still be inaccurate and offensive. Moore is in fact a "polarized activist". Religiously traditional Americans are not. It was the failure of the Democrats to understand this that lost them the last election. Indeed, prior to the McGovernization of the democratic party, the values of religiously traditional people were the mainstream in both parties. As difficult as it is for the effete denizens of Manhattan, San Francisco and West L.A. to understand, traditionally religious Americans still are the mainstream in America, not to mention the GOP.
Rausch responded to Hewitt that he just as easily could have suggested that "left-wing environmentalists" were a Democratic Party platform plank away from becoming killers. But he didn't. And he would not have done so, because mainstream media portrays the religious as extremists, not their own fellow travelers. You constantly see religious folks being characterized in the major media as extremists, but when was the last time you saw in the mainstream media the characterization of the radical secularist? You know, the folks who want God off our currency, out of the pledge and banished in every single vestige from the public sphere...like the school district which sanctioned a teacher for assigning the reading of the Declaration of Independence because it mentioned the Creator. Now these people are radicals, resembling more Stalin or Robespierre than any American political model. But are they characterized as such by big media? Never.
Politics
Religion
The full text of Rausch article is now posted on Hewitt's blog. And to be fair to Rausch, his point is that "red" staters and "blue" staters are not as bitterly divided as has been reported (as an aside, shouldn't the left really be red...its traditional color).
The offending language in Rausch's article reads in part as follows:
polarized activists have been taken over by the mainstream parties. The Republican Party has acquired its distinctively tart right-wing flavor largely because it has absorbed in fact, to a significant extent has organizationally merged with the religious right. As Hanna Rosin reports elsewhere in this package, religious conservatives are becoming more uniformly Republican even as their faiths and backgrounds grow more diverse. On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics.
Rausch then goes to make the inapt comparison of the "religious right" to Michael Moore. Where Hewitt is right on target is in pointing out the offensiveness and the inaccuracy of suggesting that the religious right is a political platform plank away from becoming killers. But even had Rausch omitted that reference, he would still be inaccurate and offensive. Moore is in fact a "polarized activist". Religiously traditional Americans are not. It was the failure of the Democrats to understand this that lost them the last election. Indeed, prior to the McGovernization of the democratic party, the values of religiously traditional people were the mainstream in both parties. As difficult as it is for the effete denizens of Manhattan, San Francisco and West L.A. to understand, traditionally religious Americans still are the mainstream in America, not to mention the GOP.
Rausch responded to Hewitt that he just as easily could have suggested that "left-wing environmentalists" were a Democratic Party platform plank away from becoming killers. But he didn't. And he would not have done so, because mainstream media portrays the religious as extremists, not their own fellow travelers. You constantly see religious folks being characterized in the major media as extremists, but when was the last time you saw in the mainstream media the characterization of the radical secularist? You know, the folks who want God off our currency, out of the pledge and banished in every single vestige from the public sphere...like the school district which sanctioned a teacher for assigning the reading of the Declaration of Independence because it mentioned the Creator. Now these people are radicals, resembling more Stalin or Robespierre than any American political model. But are they characterized as such by big media? Never.
Politics
Religion
posted by BarbariansAtBay at
5:07 PM
