Reply #2: Pontious Hitchens

[orwell]

Yet two things are obvious. The first is that many conservatives appreciate the value of a secular republic, and do not make the idiotic confusion between "secular" and "atheist" that is so common nowadays. The second is that no "Moral Majority" type has yet proposed that the most important commandment, the one underlined by Jesus himself, be displayed in courtrooms or schoolrooms. It turns out that the Eleventh Commandment is not "Thou shalt speak no ill of fellow Republicans," but is, rather, a demand for the most extreme kind of leveling and redistribution.

This is not "obvious at all Hitch. The Cons are in lockstep as the real fealty is not to principle, as you opine, but rather to the corporate elite overlords who "allowed" them power in the first place.

Religion was always a "cover story", urged by NeoCon/Repug strategists. These radical converted foot soldiers, some fresh from the disgruntled, discredited so called "left" utilized religious fundamentalism to bring the "great unwashed" into the fold. Who cares about personal economic persecution when fabricated religious persecution is such an easy sell.

I have never understood why conservative entrepreneurs are so all-fired pious and Bible-thumping, let alone why so many of them claim Jesus as their best friend and personal savior.

It is not understandable by true Cons like Goldwater. That is because it is not a core belief, but rather a recruiting technique. How else do you bring a bourgeoisie political philosophy of low wage "free markets" to the slipping middle and lower class?

The Old Testament is bad enough: The commandments forbid us even to envy or covet our neighbor's goods, and thus condemn the very spirit of emulation and ambition that makes enterprise possible. But the New Testament is worse: It tells us to forget thrift and saving, to take no thought for the morrow, and to throw away our hard-earned wealth on the shiftless and the losers.

Ah...we finally get to the heartfelt besotted words of the true defender of the capital class that you have become. Anyone who does not participate in the worship of the golden calf is "shiftless" or a "loser". Tell that to the guy who grows the rye for your 12 year old scotch.

Tell me Hitch. Was Einstein a loser? Why did he do theoretical work? Was it emulation and ambition?

(snip)

Then again, hundreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Am I starting to sense buyer's remorse here?

Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state?

Casus Belli? What do you mean "our cause". It is your cause. Your's and the rest of the anti-liberty, anti-free market, fascist national "security" state, under it's most recent incarnation...Pax Americana.

How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home?

It's all according to plan Hitch. Didn't you get the memo?

It's hardly too much to say that the servicemen and -women, of all faiths and of none, who fight so bravely against jihad, are being stabbed in the back by the sunshine soldiers of the "crusading" right.

Nice of you to include women. Was it an afterthought? Didn't you hear. It is a holy war. We are after the ragheads. The brown people. The Muslims. Don't you read the papers. Watch TV. Get with the program. This is as much your holy war as theirs Hitch. But it is clear that your God is mammon. Is that more defensible?

What is one to feel but rage and contempt when one reads of Arabic-language translators, and even Purple Heart-winning frontline fighters, being dismissed from the service because their homosexuality is accounted a sin?

Ah, the inevitable self loathing begins. The great hero Bush was elected in large part because of gay-baiting. How could you think it any different? You supported these madmen. They are in your bed. Now sleep with them.

And please spare me the pontification.

By the way, we told you so...