Wednesday, February 06, 2013

MARTYR COMPLEX.

Letting gays get married and making insurers pay for contraceptives means we're oppressing Christians. Get a load of R.R. Reno at First Things, who finds these portents that "we’re heading into dhimmitude of sorts":
We’re up against powerful cultural trends that threaten religious liberty. In the recent election Obama won a “values” campaign that felt it could ignore or even attack religious voters (“war on women”).
Offered a choice between Pope Ratzinger and the womenfolk, the whoremongering American electorate chose the latter. But the next part is even better:
In our favor is a parallel trend toward libertarianism and the general view that we ought to let people do pretty much what they want. This is the “don’t tread on me” sentiment that tends to be solicitous toward claims of conscience and against political correctness. This is a dangerous ally, however, since it’s the “different strokes for different folks” sentiment that also supports gay marriage and sexual liberation in general. This libertarian sensibility may support tolerance, but it won’t encourage support for religion. On the contrary, the moralism one finds in all forms of traditional religion will be seen as a threat to our culture of expansive personal freedom.
So the more freedom people have, they less likely they are to choose R.R. and his crew. A weaker vessel would have shrugged, "They no longer cower at the cross and mitre, but sneer and do anal; the jig's up, time to get a job." But not Reno, and not Rod Dreher, here to (as usual) make everything worse; Reno's essay has him predicting that "Christians will have to accept second-class status in the way Christians living in many Muslim countries do, under Islamic law and culture," at which fate Dreher shakes his tiny lambskin fist:
...it’s better to go down fighting than to meekly nod and conform, though it should also be said that only a fool would take every opportunity to be a martyr. These are going to be interesting times, ones that call for more wisdom than passion. It will be a time of testing, and of winnowing. This is not the first time this has happened in the history of the Church, nor will it be the last.
Oh, keep your top on, Mary, you want to say, your Catherine Wheel's a pyrotechnic at Burning Man. But we should encourage Dreher, as his paranoia may turn out to be productive:
You know what book we need? One titled: American Dhimmitude: A Handbook For Resistance. It would be a sober, plainspoken analysis of the cultural conditions of our time, with respect to orthodox Christianity and its decline in postmodernity. It would also offer intelligent, historically well informed commentary about how great Christians of ages past responded to challenges in their own time, when they were the minority culture, and discern lessons for ourselves from their experience.
Think of it -- an new illustrated book of martyrs, only instead of being stoned or broken on the wheel as in olden days, the new saints will have to change sinecures every so often. Can't wait to read the Kathryn J. Lopez chapter -- she served our Lord, and for that she was scourged with the wit of Alex Pareene!

UPDATE. In Dreher's comments, Erin Manning, whom Dreher sometimes employs to add extra crazy to his site, counsels American Christians to make common cause with another oppressed minority:
Right now in the public sphere people who own or use guns or are facing a culture that is increasingly hostile not only to gun ownership and use but to the very idea of weapons, such that some pretty extreme things have happened... 
I bring this up to show how this kind of thing will play out in public schools when it is Christian thought, not gun ownership and/or approval of weapons, that has become doubleplus ungood expression.
Armed Jesus freaks with a persecution complex -- sounds like a recipe for another Waco wienie roast.

158 comments:

  1. XeckyGilchrist10:55 PM

    it should also be said that only a fool would take every opportunity to be a martyr.


    If you need more than one, you're doing it wrong.

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  2. No wonder religion is on it's way out, the true believers keep defining martyrdom down like this, they'll soon be claiming their paper cuts as stigmata.

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  3. "It would be a sober, plainspoken analysis of the cultural conditions of our time, with respect to orthodox Christianity and its decline in postmodernity. It would also offer intelligent, historically well informed commentary about how great Christians of ages past responded to challenges in their own time, when they were the minority culture, and discern lessons for ourselves from their experience."



    Yeah, that will just fly off the shelves.

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  5. AGoodQuestion11:33 PM

    Oh gee! Couldn't help but notice Reno saying this:

    Thus we’re seeing sustained efforts to redefine and narrow the meaning of religious liberty.

    But if religious liberty is being redefined, the questions of "from what?" and "to what?" would seem to be relevant. And yet, and yet, Reno makes absolutely no clarification on this issue. The reader is just supposed to take it as a given that whatever religious freedom we have tomorrow is less than what we had yesterday.

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  6. BigHank5311:33 PM

    If you do the way Brother Rod does it, you can martyr yourself three or four times a day.

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  7. PersonaAuGratin11:45 PM

    Damned amateurs. They don't make martyrs like they used to.

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  8. wileywitch11:55 PM

    If I were young and mobile, I'd encourage flash-mobs of women showing up at the offices of wing-nuts and churches to yell "Stay out of my vagina you sniveling piece of shit."

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  9. wileywitch11:56 PM

    Well, I've always said that if you're enamored with the sound of your cross grating across the ground, then you should put it down, because you ain't no martyr.

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  10. bulletsarepeopletoo12:00 AM

    "whatever religious freedom we have tomorrow is less than what we had yesterday"

    This is true: they are not as free to sexually assault kids as they once did and they are not as free to oppress women as they did in the past. No more inquisitions or witch hunts either (as far as I know).

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  11. marindenver12:01 AM

    Dhimmitude? Not being allowed to force your employees to subscribe to your religious beliefs with respect to control over ladies' lady parts constitutes dhimmitude? I think these guys are getting it wrong. Can Pareene or someone mail them a dictionary?

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  12. the Kathryn J. Lopez chapter -- she served our Lord, and for that

    ...we should never forget.
    ~

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  13. Leeds man12:37 AM

    "we’re heading into dhimmitude of sorts"

    Funny, as a long-time atheist, I feel we're heading out of it, although the USA still has a long way to go.

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  15. You're absolutely right, but he's preaching to the converted and assumes the faithful know what he means – and they mostly do.

    As to what he really means: Most of the time, when conservatives say "freedom," they really mean "privilege."

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  16. smut clyde3:44 AM

    I would like to give this comment a little suitcase trundle wheel to make it easier to drag along.

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  17. smut clyde3:51 AM

    I am no longer allowed to make other people follow my cargo cult!

    Come and see the dhimmitude inherent in the system!!

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  18. fraser3:51 AM

    No, it's worse than that. Righteous believers are no longer allowed to confiscate birth control and throw it on the Bonfire of the Vanities. They can't grab up a woman who looks to slutty and put her in the stocks for a nice whipping. They can't send the Inquisition against all those nasty reporters who mention priestly pedorasts. See the repression inherent in the system!

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  19. Tudor Jennings4:05 AM

    Screw the gun nuts, if they really want to defend their religion they should look know further than their fellow travellers over at the "church' of Scientology.
    Those guys have made a pretty decent fist of "protecting" their messiah's gospel over the past twenty years or so.

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  20. MikeJ5:16 AM

    You don't need mobs. You need a steady trickle Rather than 50 at once, have 50 spread over a few days. Once an hour during business hours for an entire week. the beauty is they'll start locking the door, inconveniencing their own people, cutting themselves off from the community.



    Congressional offices exist to be visited.

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  21. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:11 AM

    Oh they still try to hold them, but none of the victims show up.

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  22. That, of course, is the crux of the matter. No power to force others into their stone-age, patriarchal, authoritarian system = religious oppression.

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  23. Exactly. A "mob" will only give them fuel for their persecution complex; especially a "flash mob," which they have trained the media to equate with rampaging youngsters who symbolize the breakdown of polite, predictable society. Large groups of people will also give them cover to involve hippie-stomping riot police.

    They need to be stood up to by individual members of the "weaker sex" to show the cowards and bullies that they are powerless and irrelevant in the vast majority of people's lives.

    Social irrelevance is what they fear most, not their god.

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  24. Jeffrey_Kramer7:03 AM

    We’re up against powerful cultural trends that threaten religious
    liberty.


    "Powerful cultural trends" are beginning to create the perception that homosexuality and birth control are mostly OK. This deprives employers of their religious liberty to keep their employees from using part of their employment compansenation (insurance) for birth control, and the rights of apartment owners or adoption agencies to tell homosexuals to go away. Similarly, when "powerful cultural trends" began to create the perception that the
    Negro was mostly an equal human being, it deprived employers and
    apartment owners of their religious liberty to keep the races separate
    as God intended.

    In other words, "religious liberty" is defined by these people exclusively as the liberty to kick down, and "libertarians" are often useful allies in this cause.

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  25. Jeffrey_Kramer7:04 AM

    "Munchausen martyrdom," as Fred Clark of Slacktivist puts it.

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  26. Jeffrey_Kramer7:11 AM

    "It would be a sober, plainspoken analysis of the cultural conditions of
    our time with respect to orthodox Christianity and its decline in
    postmodernity...."


    I'm thinking Rick Santorum and Ted Nugent as co-authors.

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  27. Jeffrey_Kramer7:14 AM

    "Stay out of my vagina you sniveling piece of shit."


    That's trochaic trimeter, a very effective chanting rhythm.

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  28. Derelict7:22 AM

    I often wonder what these clodpates would do if they ever had to deal with real, actual, round-'em-up-and-shoot-'em religious oppression. I'd bet that people like Reno and Dreher would be the first ones to convert to whatever the official sanctioned religion might be.

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  29. Where's Nero when they really need him?

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  30. drkrick8:16 AM

    They seem to be under the impression that no longer being the dominant culture and able to impose their preferred behavior on others is the same thing as being persecuted. Perhaps a brief vocabulary refresher will help.

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  31. commentary about how great Christians of ages past responded to challenges in their own time

    I'm not sure genocide, perversion, corruption, and a protection racket so large that it would make Vito Corleone blush, would really make the case he is trying to make.

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  32. Or, maybe it would.

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  33. They're little martyrdoms, similar to la petite mort.

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  34. Fats Durston8:44 AM

    It would also offer intelligent, historically well informed commentary
    about how great Christians of ages past responded to challenges in their
    own time, when they were the minority culture, and discern lessons for
    ourselves from their experience.


    Christian minorities, responding to challenges from their own times?

    Saxony, ca. 780

    8. If any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them
    shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to
    come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be
    punished by death.

    10. If any one shall have formed a conspiracy with the pagans against
    the Christians, or shall have wished to join with them in opposition to
    the Christians, let him be punished by death.

    Jerusalem, 1099

    Some Saracens, Arabs, and Ethiopians took refuge in the tower of David, others fled to the temples of the Lord and of Solomon. A great fight took place in the court and porch of the temples, where they were unable to escape from our gladiators. Many fled to the roof of the temple of Solomon, and were shot with arrows, so that they fell to the ground dead. In this temple almost ten thousand were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet colored to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared. ...Our squires and poorer footmen discovered a trick of the Saracens, for they learned that they could find byzants in the stomachs and intestines of the dead Saracens, who had swallowed them. Thus, after several days they burned a great heap of dead bodies, that they might more easily get the precious metal from the ashes.

    Tenochtitlan, 1520

    The Spaniards attacked the musicians first, slashing at their hands and faces until they had killed all of them. The singers-and even the spectators- were also killed. This slaughter in the Sacred Patio went on for three hours. Then the Spaniards burst into the rooms of the temple to kill the others: those who were carrying water, or bringing fodder for the horses, or grinding meal, or
    sweeping, or standing watch over this work.

    The king Motecuhzoma, who was accompanied by Itzcohuatzin and by those who had brought food for the Spaniards, protested: "Our lords, that is enough! What are you doing? These people are not carrying shields or macanas. Our lords, they are completely unarmed!"

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  35. catbutler9:03 AM

    "whatever religious freedom we have tomorrow is less than what we had yesterday"



    This is true, at least if you define religious freedom as "the ability to control what other people are doing."

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  36. D. Sidhe9:24 AM

    I doubt it would help them, but it might be a worthwhile effort to point up the differences for those who consider themselves religious, but are slightly confused about what "religious freedom" means. Can't see it helping the leaning-toward-anti-abortion types, though. They mostly have already convinced themselves that their emotional revulsion to the concept is about whether it would be okay to kill a two year old.

    Still, we might stand a chance on the gay marriage and even more the conscience clause issues. The emotional revulsion is probably still there, but the rationalizations are flimsier. ("Marriage is about children!" "It's wrong to make a pharmacist fill a prescription for birth control, even if the woman is using it for irregular periods!")

    The would-you-kill-your-toddler comparison is still horribly facile and specious, but it strikes more people as a less absurd argument than, you know, it actually is.

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  37. There's an alternative definition?
    ~

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  38. montag29:35 AM

    Hmm. Seems that they're still on this "religious freedom = the right to tyrannize the secular public with religious beliefs enforced by secular law" routine.


    I'd ordinarily say they're unclear on the concept, but, then, they have a very long history of religious torture behind them for support. Maybe there will have to be a counter-book: Victims of the Inquisition: A Compendium of the Sexual Crimes of American Christian Clergy.

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  39. MikeJ9:46 AM

    I think they already did.

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  40. it should also be said that only a fool would take every opportunity to be a martyr.

    If I continue using my penis exactly the way I want to use it I guess I get to be a Roman centurion.

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  41. Ballad meter, that is, seven iambs (in the ballads they break the line after the fourth foot so you get that alternating 4-3 4-3 pattern) with an inverted first foot. As in "Shoot if you must this old grey head but spare your country's flag." Good for chanting, though, yeah.

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  42. Halloween_Jack9:55 AM

    Let's not forget that all-time classic, "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."

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  43. Halloween_Jack10:02 AM

    Like this guy! I swear, that looks like a set-up either for a parade or for about the wackiest foot-race ever.

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  44. zencomix10:03 AM

    I believe the technical term for that is "Stigmaturbation".

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  45. I often wonder what these clodpates would do if they ever had to deal
    with real, actual, round-'em-up-and-shoot-'em religious oppression.



    I'm not oppressing them RIGHT NOW? And what are you wearing?

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  46. zencomix10:16 AM

    How did I manage to miss out on all that fun at Sadly, No? Thanks for sharing!

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  47. Halloween_Jack10:16 AM

    As with the masks coming off WRT their racism and misogyny, these guys are finally revealing what's bothering them: it's not the real prospect of dhimmi in America (any more than sharia law needs to be banned), it's that their version of dhimmi, where other people are free to practice their religions as long as it doesn't challenge their flavor of Christianity in any way (and particularly the enshrinement of said flavor in law, such as blue laws, anti-contraception and anti-abortion laws, etc.), is possibly no longer operational, or at least to the extent that it had been.



    And, so, they're realizing that they don't have that much in common with real libertarians, as opposed to the Ron Paul type ( that are perfectly down with governmental oppression, as long as it's done on a local basis), and Rod fantasizes about his "resistance" book, which I would love to read for the schadenfreudaliciousness. It's the cheap holiday in other people's misery that I can be guilt-free about!

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  48. I'm sorry (read: I'm not sorry), but does Brother Rod ever write *anything* that isn't drenched in self-pity? Or is that the whole point of his ultra-drippy kind of Christianity? "Jeebus suffered at the hands of the wicked, and now I'M suffering--coincidence?"

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  49. BigHank5310:25 AM

    From your lips to....oh, ick.

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  50. chuckling10:42 AM

    As you illustrate, history demonstrates again and again that religions are effective organizations for carrying out violence and oppression. But getting rid of religions would probably do nothing to solve the problems of violence and oppression. These are the works of humans and as the twentieth century so brutally demonstrated, particularly in Germany and Russia, atheists are more than capable of inflicting holocausts on the masses. Humans that are inclined to violence and oppression can flourish in political parties as well as any cult of an invisible super being. Political movements, like religions, can ignore the pretty words in their charter, or use them as an excuse for violence, or a hiding place for sexual abuse, just like any religion. Strip away the veneer or belief or ideology and they're all just groups of humans acting human.


    So while it's a good thing to take away the freedom of religions to oppress others, and any special privileges such as tax breaks; if we want to tackle the problems of violence and oppression, we have to identify the types of humans who are prone to inflict those ills on others and find away to ensure that they cannot flourish in popular organizations. That's pretty much the raison d'etre for constitutionally shackled democracy. And oppostionally, the raison d'etre for the kind of institutional libertarianism for churches and corporations advocated by such diverse lights as Dreher and Scalia. The cult of the superman will always find another belief system or ideology in which to hide.

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  51. D. Sidhe11:12 AM

    The thing that gets me most about My God Money Is Funding Slutty Sex arguments is the breathtaking gall tax-exempt religions have in basing their argument on fungibility. Yes, indeed, all money is fungible, turtles all the way down and such, and money you pay into insurance may go to pay for happy healthy babies born in traditional man-and-woman households or it may go to pay for abortions for women having unauthorized sex. For that matter, tax exempt money may go to soup kitchens or it may go to making poor kids in foreign countries memorize the Bible.

    You can't actually argue one without admitting to the other. The fact that they're willing to try, I suppose, is testament (see what I did there?) to their long practice of being illogical in the service of their Some Version Of My Book Says God Hates It So It Must Be Wrong theology.

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  52. XeckyGilchrist11:12 AM

    The entire point of "freedom" - religious or otherwise - as a political football is to exploit the emotions the word raises without ever actually defining it.

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  53. Haystack11:17 AM

    "You see, in this country we have this thing called separation of church and st..."


    "OMG!! YOU'RE OPPRESSING ME!!"

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  54. coozledad11:20 AM

    "Alright,what's in the cooler, buddy?" Allegations of doping emerge in Dodecathalon.

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  55. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard11:30 AM

    More like a Popecathalon, maybe a Dodecatholicsim.

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  56. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard11:32 AM

    So... their inability to impose their doctrines on nonbelievers is somehow equivalent to "dhimmitude"? Sounds like someone is afflicted by dhummitude.

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  57. montag211:33 AM

    "It would be a sober, plainspoken analysis...."


    Yeah, right.

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  58. Ayn Marx 666`11:37 AM

    They say they want 'equal rights', but they really want special rights.


    They can't reproduce---there's no certainty that your children will be Saved---so they continually recruit.


    Their sexual inclinations can be dangerous: complete chastity is physically bad for men, and probably for women...and abstinence historically has had a terrible failure rate when judged in actual use (which would be the apples-to-apples comparison with respect to condoms and other birth control methods).


    The Calvinists, at least, claim that they were born that way, but I can't help but think that some adult got to them early and made them that way.

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  59. I'm just going to go Full Metal Godwin and point out that a so-called 'atheist' (which is far from clear in this particular case) ideology like National Socialism was perfectly happy to include religion as another weapon in their arsenal of social control. Besides the oft-referenced Wermacht issue belt buckles stamped with 'Gott Mit Uns', one of Himmler's side projects was the development of a syncretic creed suitable for the future citizens of a 1000 Year Reich.

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  60. Ayn Marx 666`11:44 AM

    Remember, they've always got their bases covered: if they succeed, it is because they are fighting for the LORD in a world that belongs to HIM; if they fail, it is because they are righteously not in conformance with this world, whose god is Satan.


    (Jewish version: we succeed because we are fighting on G-d's side; we fail because we have strayed too far from the true path [and don't have Kvisatz ha-Derech to shorten it] and He is chastising us...similarly pat, but not quite as hebephrenically Manichean. Muslim version: the Jewish version, universalised. Buddhist version: we succeed but reap only dokkha, we fail and there's dokkha again.)

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  61. KatWillow11:54 AM

    It could be posted on a supermarket bulletin board, right under the blurry photo of "Nickels" the missing dog-or-cat, but above the person selling the "barely used" treadmill. Hey! THERES an idea, carrying a cross while walking on a treadmill. Loose weight FAST!

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  62. KatWillow11:55 AM

    Back in the days when Christians were persecuted, they HID IN SEWERS and underground burial chambers. They should do that now.

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  63. KatWillow11:59 AM

    "Stay out of my WOMB-" That would really peeve 'em. "Vagina" is a dirty word, but Mary had a Womb, you know.

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  64. KatWillow12:03 PM

    Better than (ug!) hiding in sewers. Especially in NYC: I mean: Alligators!

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  65. KatWillow12:09 PM

    "Big $$$$$$ for nothing, and kids for Free."

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  66. Halloween_Jack12:13 PM

    You jest, but I've read (maybe in Holy Blood, Holy Grail?) that one of the bits in the Gospels that's a potential clue for the Jesus-didn't-die-on-the-cross theorists is the sponge dipped in "sour wine"; the theory is that it was actually laudanum, and that Jesus just sort of nodded off so that they could take him down.

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  67. ' R.R. Reno...finds these portents that "we’re heading into dhimmitude of sorts" '

    These people are only capable of conceptualizing these relationships as being between the oppressors and the oppressed. Thus, if they are no longer in a position of cultural hegemony, that means that somebody else must be, and now they will be treated like they have treated others in the past. They have heard that the people who have unseated them claim to be interested in equality rather than superiority, but they don't think anyone could really believe in that. Clearly it must be some sort of subterfuge to allow them to grab power and favor their own group above all others. That's what THEY would do, after all.

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  68. TomParmenter12:49 PM

    Just slipping in here to note that while "R.R.Reno" is lots of fun to say, "Rod Dreher" is weak and anti-climactic. That is all.

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  69. whetstone12:53 PM

    Wow, that Erin Manning comment is a fucking Santa Ana gale of crazy.

    "And these are the children who will be labeled as “at risk” of fostering hate by the bureaucrats in charge:

    "-children from intact, married, opposite-sex parent families
    
-children with more than one sibling"

    Yes, if there's one thing that America is bad about, it's incentivizing marriage and children. Perhaps we should consider revising the tax code to ease the burden on straight couples with children while making it more unfriendly to same-sex couples.

    It will be a massive political risk, but the Divining Rod and his co-blogger can make it part of their effort be more "confident, even aggressive." After they get around to that Barth book that's been sitting on the coffee table.

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  70. Yep, you hit it on the head: it's always projection with these people.

    And a healthy dose of level confusion: they'd actually feed us to lions if they could but mandating health insurance to cover birth control is exactly like being fed to lions to them.

    When you possess neither empathy nor self-awareness your ability to compare and contrast moral situations or even just create reasonable similes is fucked.

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  71. whetstone1:04 PM

    Ooh, I have an idea: maybe they could encourage "parent families" with more than one child with universal pre- and post-natal care, free daycare, and generous maternity and paternity leave. They could ask their libertarian friends for help with that.

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  72. More properly, a trochee substituted in for the first foot.

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  73. TomParmenter1:10 PM

    Actually, they treat religious belief as fungible as well. I have a lot of fun imagining an Episcopal priest teaching a class of Primitive Baptists, or vice versa if you like your vices reversed.


    And then, there's the yearning for a Christian jihad.

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  74. Himmler's manufactured religion was, if I remember correctly, the object of considerable scorn and ridicule from other senior leaders of the Reich. Identifying a consistent and unifying religious vision for the Nazis is kind of a dicey proposition - there were Catholic Nazis, Protestant Nazis, atheist Nazis, and "pagan" Nazis.

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  75. bekabot1:35 PM

    Either that guy is whistling "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", or we've finally got proof that there is no God.

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  76. Buddhist version: we succeed but reap only dokkha, we fail and there's dokkha again.

    That resembles the American progressive version. Especially if we loosely translate dukkha as "shit."

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  77. And dispense ponies.


    Well, something associated with ponies, anyway.

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  78. aimai1:54 PM

    I was just re-reading Rick Perlstein's article on the Long Con in Conservatvism and I was struck by this one point. Really early on in the movement to rip Conservative rubes of their hard earned shekels Richard Vigeurie et al freaked out at the thought that people donating to political campaigns or to charities might want to know how their money gets spent. A democratic congressman had tried to introduce a bill making it necessary for money collectors to demonstrate how much they kept as overhead and how much they actually forwarded to "the cause."


    The first line of offense for Vigeurie et al was to go def con christianist and begin shrieking that Christians were being oppressed! opressed! and that charitable giving by christians to christians would be harmed by letting people know who was giving what and how it was being spent. Even Christian speech would, somehow, be harmed. I was kind of amazed by how far back this line went. The 1970's, when the bane of atheists, jews, and muslims was just a twinkle in Obama's eye.

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  79. aimai1:54 PM

    I'd like to bare my breast and go all st. agnes on this comment.

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  80. aimai1:56 PM

    I think they already do. You are very late to the auto da fe.

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  81. smut clyde1:57 PM

    14 stations of the cross, so a Tetradecatholon.

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  82. wileywitch1:57 PM

    I saw a man with a cross bigger than that (it's like he was competing with Jesus) on his on back. He was carrying it down a highway in Houston, in the summer. That was the most bombastic display of piety I've ever witnessed.

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  83. smut clyde1:58 PM

    Bleeding there is not one of the standard stigmata.

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  84. aimai1:58 PM

    He's got you on Pol Pot, though, you have to admit. Also: no true scotsman etc..etc...etc...

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  85. aimai2:02 PM

    Maybe they can sell it to the speciality market by wrapping the book in plain brown sackcloth and ashes and selling it with a cilice and an instruction manual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilice

    ReplyDelete
  86. aimai2:03 PM

    No, he's cornered the market on self pity. And if you try to take over his spot in Whiner's Corner he cries.

    ReplyDelete
  87. wileywitch2:03 PM

    I didn't say anything about chanting, but that is a smart analysis.

    ReplyDelete
  88. gocartmozart2:03 PM

    This needs to be a real word and pick up your internet also.

    ReplyDelete
  89. aimai2:04 PM

    Talk about doing it wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  90. smut clyde2:06 PM

    I thought it was a North African dipping spice. I had hoped for pink Himalayan salt.

    ReplyDelete
  91. montag22:11 PM

    Fambly Research Council qualifies as a sewer, and bomb shelters and survivalist caves will pass for modern-day burial chambers, so, all good.

    ReplyDelete
  92. gocart mozart2:12 PM

    This is true, also, why was it so important for Mary to prevent the Roman Centurian from breaking Jesus' legs aftyer taking him down off the cross as was the custom.

    ReplyDelete
  93. BigHank532:15 PM

    And if you ever meet him in person, don't ever accept his challenge to a hand-wringing contest. Or pearl-clutching, for that matter.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Origami_Isopod2:16 PM

    You sure it's not in the apocryphal gospels?

    ReplyDelete
  95. wileywitch2:16 PM

    Children don't usually have an income either, so they have to recruit to sweeten the pot. If anyone knows of a religion that doesn't rely on donations and does proselytize, let me know. I'm genuinely curious.

    ReplyDelete
  96. gocart mozart2:16 PM

    That aint an auto da fe, it's a clown car da fe.

    ReplyDelete
  97. The Dark Avenger2:17 PM

    The belt buckles date from before the Nazi era, there were used in WWI as well.

    ReplyDelete
  98. Origami_Isopod2:17 PM

    Well, plainspoken, anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  99. XeckyGilchrist2:18 PM

    It's in the Fapocrypha.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Origami_Isopod2:18 PM

    Hm. BDSM market crossover appeal?

    ReplyDelete
  101. Origami_Isopod2:20 PM

    I wish Sara Robinson would get around someday to writing about the Borderer culture described in Albion's Seed. According to David Hackett Fischer, they defined "freedom" as "freedom to do things our way." Reading that bit was one of those "click" moments when it comes to U.S. history.

    ReplyDelete
  102. XeckyGilchrist2:21 PM

    Clearly cribbing from this again: http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0094/0094_01.asp

    ReplyDelete
  103. wileywitch2:23 PM

    Would a shirt with an itchy tag do?

    ReplyDelete
  104. Origami_Isopod2:25 PM

    Reading Dreher certainly does put a damper on things climactic, one might say.

    ReplyDelete
  105. smut clyde2:32 PM

    I suppose Dick and stigmata do go together.

    ReplyDelete
  106. redoubt2:32 PM

    "Religious liberty" to these people always means "my religion down your throat, and my liberty to seize your money"

    ReplyDelete
  107. wileywitch2:35 PM

    That was unbelievable.

    ReplyDelete
  108. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard2:43 PM

    Gotta love those microchips! Is there anything they can't do?

    ReplyDelete
  109. montag22:47 PM

    Yeah, that article was quite illuminating. Add up all the money grifted by right-wing direct mail operations and teevee evangelical preachers and it would probably exceed the $25 trillion defense budget since WWII....

    ReplyDelete
  110. Halloween_Jack3:01 PM

    Bulletman was a famous New Age Healer? Who knew?

    I also love that there's a little girl in with the other clip-art people in the "Everyone loves Chick tracts!" banner. I'm pretty sure that picking up one of these come-to-Jesus-or-else-you're-going-to-H-E-double-hockey-sticks comics as a pre-teen is responsible for the majority of Wiccans in the U.S.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard3:08 PM

    Nah, he's just heading over to the Skafish concert.

    ReplyDelete
  112. tigrismus3:09 PM

    If it smarts maybe you should stop. Or use a numbing cream.

    ReplyDelete
  113. They customarily broke the legs while the victim was still on the cross, to expedite their suffocation so everyone could go home. As part of the Resistance's clever ploy, Mary talked the guards out of it; whereupon one of them poked a spear into Jesus' chest cavity instead. "Uuurk---Thanks, Mom!" Ah, laudanum ... Is there anything it can't do?

    ReplyDelete
  114. Given the calibration of these guys' persecution meters, it would have to be only slightly itchy.

    ReplyDelete
  115. smut clyde3:28 PM

    "It would be a sober, plainspoken analysis...."
    ... that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Yup. After all, didn't a bunch of atheists just blow a huge sum of money on a paean to farmers? And don't get me started on how much Western atheists tend to despise intellectuals.

    ReplyDelete
  117. smut clyde3:31 PM

    And these are the children who will be labeled as “at risk” of fostering hate by the bureaucrats in charge:


    It is axiomatic that white christian parents never abuse their children so any removal of children from their care is PERSECUTION.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard3:36 PM

    If the dick is circumcised, it cuts down on the smegmata.

    ReplyDelete
  119. wileywitch4:02 PM

    When I hear about things like a Christian extremist killing a one year-old for not saying "amen" at the dinner table, I do so want to see a cross shoved up their ass. It's bad enough that they tell children that they're evil.

    ReplyDelete
  120. You win. I LOL'd and had to explain it to my wife. Kudos.

    ReplyDelete
  121. Ah, good ol' Jack Chick. My older sister was pals with someone whose family kept his tracts around and a couple of them ended up at our house. The ones showing God as this huge hulking robed figure on a throne with a featureless glowing head shaped like a Contac cold capsule freaked me right the fuck out and, I'm sure, helped push an already indifferently-Catholic eleven year old into complete atheism.

    ReplyDelete
  122. smut clyde5:38 PM

    Erin Manning deserves some special award for passive-voice responsibility-shifting in the defense of mass murder:
    people who own or use guns or are facing a culture that is increasingly hostile not only to gun ownership and use but to the very idea of
    weapons, such that some pretty extreme things have happened.
    Those dead school-kids? All the fault of the culture's hostility to weapons.

    ReplyDelete
  123. slavdude5:44 PM

    I ignored a man named Reno just to watch him cry.

    ReplyDelete
  124. Shorter every one of these Christianist poltroons: "The Taliban had the right idea, just the wrong imaginary friend!"



    Regarding R.R. Reno, all I can say is - BRING IT ON. The megachurchers and the beanie brigade have been *begging* to have their tax exemptions pulled for turning their "churches" into criminal organizations / RW lobbying machines, and adding insurrection to the mix just makes it easier.

    ReplyDelete
  125. D. Sidhe6:23 PM

    I'm *still* gonna be laughing at that next week.

    ReplyDelete
  126. aimai6:35 PM

    Its more effective if old broads like me do it, though. Freak them the fuck out when grannys do it.

    ReplyDelete
  127. aimai6:36 PM

    Valorous her vag, who victory viewed.

    ReplyDelete
  128. aimai6:37 PM

    This makes him sound like one of those "haints" or ghosts who have their appointed rounds, weeping and wailing their regrets.

    ReplyDelete
  129. satch6:37 PM

    "Of sorts"???



    Hmm... I think I'd like to play this game:


    "R.R. Reno wants to take us all into Talibangelicalism of sorts."


    "Rod Dreher wants us all to live in a 14th century Orthodox dictatorship of sorts."


    "KLo wants to see women as fourth class servants in a patriarchal society of sorts."


    "Second Amendment gun nut absolutists want us all to live in an armed, unregulated agrarian society of sorts."


    Dude, this is really fun! Thanks, R.R.!

    ReplyDelete
  130. aimai6:38 PM

    Well, the shakers died out because of their inability to reproduce. They accepted donations of children when children were in a surplus but when there werent' enough abandoned kids they went, as it were, belly up.

    ReplyDelete
  131. TGuerrant6:45 PM

    In these gunsy days, I find I miss Kim du Toit, Just a little. The right seems so pussified without him.

    ReplyDelete
  132. satch6:48 PM

    I always felt a little thought experiment might be useful:

    A fire has broken out in an IVF lab. On a table are ten vials of frozen embryos, and across the room is a baby. You can either save the vials or the baby, but not both. Which do you choose? Have at it, Russell Ronald.

    ReplyDelete
  133. TGuerrant6:50 PM

    OT and yet presciently relevant: Soon, Fallon will be singing to us on Late Night about Jimmitude. Soon.

    ReplyDelete
  134. tigrismus6:56 PM

    This is such a great point, especially considering they argued the exact opposite when they were shooting for government funding of their "faith-based" initiatives.

    ReplyDelete
  135. smut clyde7:30 PM

    Sadly, the experiment is not limited to thought.
    A woman is pregnant but the fetus has an infection. Both will die unless the fetus is removed. You can sign off on an abortion, or let the woman die...
    It is not wise to unleash the Reductio ad Absurdum in the neighbourhood of catholicism.

    ReplyDelete
  136. smut clyde7:39 PM

    From a cabochon I carve a compliment to this comment.

    ReplyDelete
  137. wileywitch7:59 PM

    I'm old enough, and am having the hot flashes to prove it. If I could give those to others, these controlling men vagina obsessed would be spending their nights sweating profusely and feeling that they were burning up from the inside out. They deserve it a hell of a lot more than I do.

    ReplyDelete
  138. XeckyGilchrist8:33 PM

    I've been by the site: http://www.microchip.com/



    I can't find the pain-increasing ones. I'm betting that's an unsupported hack.

    ReplyDelete
  139. redoubt8:51 PM

    Or as usual, what Mencken said.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Budbear9:45 PM

    Oooh! It's one of those parties.

    ReplyDelete
  141. smut clyde9:53 PM

    As a long-term fan of the Uncle books, I am now imagining Rod Dreher as Hootman (one of the Badfort crowd... a ghost of such depressing and unseemly character as to be rejected from the company of other ghosts).
    Hootman or Jellytussle.

    ReplyDelete
  142. Jeffrey_Kramer11:37 PM

    I was trying to force the opening syllables into a stressed ellision: STAYOUT of / MY va / GI na //... because "trochaic trimeter" sounds so cool. But you're right, it's more naturally scanned as iambic. I'd still say trimeter though, rather than 4-3 ballad meter.

    It could be sung to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas," but then it would need additional lyrics, like maybe "Go take a rusty hacksaw, and slide it where you sit."

    ReplyDelete
  143. DocAmazing1:04 AM

    "Dookie" is the word you're looking for, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  144. DocAmazing1:07 AM

    "'Freedom' is a word used to recruit soldiers by those who have no gold to pay."
    --Conan the Cimmerian

    ReplyDelete
  145. DocAmazing1:11 AM

    The Nazis were smart enough to get on the good side of both the Catholic and Lutheran churches early on. Google "Lateran treaty" for details.

    ReplyDelete
  146. This comment is best in life.

    ReplyDelete
  147. whetstone11:21 AM

    You can find Jack Chick tracts in my heathen city, but only at the extra-heathen alt-comics store.

    ReplyDelete
  148. aimai3:36 PM

    Yes, one hundred percent yes.

    ReplyDelete
  149. XeckyGilchrist5:56 PM

    Or in the modern U.S.' case, who have shitloads of gold but are too stingy to pay.

    ReplyDelete
  150. realist7:31 PM

    hahah, u think magic exists . what a primitive.....

    ReplyDelete
  151. TheSailor3:17 PM

    "Auto-de-fe? What's an Auto-de-fe?"

    "It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway."

    ReplyDelete
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