Some of my best friends are Fundamentalists.
Seriously folks, you’ve really got to get to know these people. Sure, they love the Bible and Intelligent Design, and they hate burning the flag, but I guarantee you they are Right-minded and God-fearing citizens who want the very best for both the Republic and the Bible.
But the Conservative movement has this really big problem on the front burner because the Fundamentalists have pushed the Grand Old Party so far right that you even can’t see it unless you punch that dial of political moderation. The Fundamentalists are a fringe group that is just big enough at 15-20 percent to tilt elections toward Conservatives. The Conservatives—and all Republicans are now officially Conservative—have to smooch Fundamentalists on multiple issues if they want to win. Without anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-science, anti-drug, pro-war Fundamentalists in their corner, the Republican Party itself is nothing more than another fringe group.
No wonder Rush Limbaugh’s theme song is from The Pretenders.
Maybe by now you have noticed the Fundamentalists are against many more things than they will ever be for. Like radical Fundamentalists everywhere around the planet, they are all about going back to a simpler time of virginal purity. They accept modern times only begrudgingly, because modernity means nasty things like homosexuality and actual tolerance.
Though religious in nature, Fundamentalism in the United States is their damn-Right reason to turn back the clock to those good old days that never were, to the time when their self-described “family values” held sway, before you could ever find pornography on a dial-up line. Truth be told, a big chunk of them would probably have been more than happy if the pill had never happened along to make for better sex, maybe because they have more fundamental self-restraint than the normal copulating couple.
The other thing you should know about Fundamentalists is that life is a matter of faith for them—that’s obvious—and that goes for politics too. Not just their faith is about faith. They have faith in the President and the Vice President and in the Supreme Court and the war in Iraq and the war on terror. They have ultimate faith in what they believe in based on faith. As Presidential advisor Karl Rove famously pointed out in the midst of the 2004 election, they are definitely not “fact-based.”
Fundamentalist political positions are inherently based on faith and feeling and not facts.
You smarty-pants out there might think that not caring about the facts could translate into a problem for Fundamentalists in certain situations, i.e., war and/or weapons of mass destruction. Not so. Fundamentalists like to go with their feelings, with their “gut instinct” as President George W. Bush so succinctly puts it. And there’s a reason for that: if you go with your feelings, based on faith, you can never wrong, because there’s never a rational reason for being right.
Some of my best friends are Fundamentalists, and I like them, too, as a matter of faith.
Nice leap you made there between Fundamentalist and Extremist. The two are not the same though you choose to use it as such. Fundamentalist as defined in Webster under Fundamentalism as you are using it here as “a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching.” Extremism is described as “the quality or state of being extreme; radicalism.” “Radical” interesting enough is listed as “tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions.”
Your lumping of all “Fundamentalist” as being “anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-science, anti-drug, pro-war’” would be kin to me lumping all liberals into “pro-choice, pro-criminal, anti-family, pro-socialism, anti-United States, pro-excessive taxes” group.
Your attempt to try and equate your anti-Christian prejudices into something political was evident on the Congames 7/21 show, when you attempted to equate fundamental Christian’s beliefs to Islamist Extremist beliefs. Nice try but it doesn’t fly.
A fundamental belief does not have to be an extreme belief. Your example of the veto of stem cell research as a “Perfect example” of the “Fundamentalist” takeover of the Republican Party is faulty and totally without merit. Many within the Republican Party are for stem cell research and the move by the President is not in keeping with what I would consider the majority thinking of the Conservative Republicans that I know. (Something we can debate at another time)
In listening to you and reading this article, I think I am beginning to understand what is really troubling for you. It’s the fact that you have no faith in anything, except yourself, and find it difficult to believe that someone would actually have faith in someone or something else. I can see that this would be a difficult view point as it is not totally self-serving. But when you look at it and know that being totally self-serving is in keeping with the Left’s belief system, I guess it does make sense after all.
I always find it interesting that those that scream the most for tolerance of others beliefs are usually the ones that are least tolerant of them all.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
- Voltaire, French philosopher, 1694-1778
Nice leap you made there between Fundamentalist and Extremist. The two are not the same though you choose to use it as such. Fundamentalist as defined in Webster under Fundamentalism as you are using it here as “a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching.” Extremism is described as “the quality or state of being extreme; radicalism.” “Radical” interesting enough is listed as “tending or disposed to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions.”
Your lumping of all “Fundamentalist” as being “anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-science, anti-drug, pro-war’” would be kin to me lumping all liberals into “pro-choice, pro-criminal, anti-family, pro-socialism, anti-United States, pro-excessive taxes” group.
Your attempt to try and equate your anti-Christian prejudices into something political was evident on the Congames 7/21 show, when you attempted to equate fundamental Christian’s beliefs to Islamist Extremist beliefs. Nice try but it doesn’t fly.
A fundamental belief does not have to be an extreme belief. Your example of the veto of stem cell research as a “Perfect example” of the “Fundamentalist” takeover of the Republican Party is faulty and totally without merit. Many within the Republican Party are for stem cell research and the move by the President is not in keeping with what I would consider the majority thinking of the Conservative Republicans that I know. (Something we can debate at another time)
In listening to you and reading this article, I think I am beginning to understand what is really troubling for you. It’s the fact that you have no faith in anything, except yourself, and find it difficult to believe that someone would actually have faith in someone or something else. I can see that this would be a difficult view point as it is not totally self-serving. But when you look at it and know that being totally self-serving is in keeping with the Left’s belief system, I guess it does make sense after all.
I always find it interesting that those that scream the most for tolerance of others beliefs are usually the ones that are least tolerant of them all.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
- Voltaire, French philosopher, 1694-1778