Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (33 page)

Though recovering liberal Andrew Sullivan says Attorney General John Ashcroft “makes Pat Robertson look like a bleeding-heart liberal,” that’s not much of a standard. William Howard Taft makes Pat Robertson look like a bleeding-heart liberal.

Demonstrating the mythological nature of the “religious right,” even after Robertson publicly opposed Clinton’s impeachment, the “religious right” was still being blamed for its “public and personal vindictiveness toward [Clinton] and in its unrelenting insistence that he pay for his sins with his office.”
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If liberals can invent a terrifying organization called the “religious right,” they can surely invent its positions, too.

At the time of Robertson’s anti-impeachment crusade, the
New York Times
predicted that Robertson’s “stunning reversal” on impeachment would “carry great weight”—coming as it did from “one of the most popular and influential Christian conservatives.”
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In fact, it would be hard to argue that Robertson’s instructions to his flock influenced a single human, much less a single vote in Congress. Thus, for example, Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican, was merely bemused by Robertson’s “move on” advice. If there were a “religious right,” Utah would be its headquarters. But Cannon dryly responded, “This is not a P.R. war—this is a matter of law.”
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Not so “easily led” after all, those Christians.

The only politicians who seemed to respond with Manchurian candidate-like obedience to Pat Robertson’s call to drop the impeachment business were Democrats and the
New York Times’s
favorite Republicans— Senators John Chafee (R.L), Susan Collins (Me.), Slade Gorton (Wash.), Jim Jeffords (Vt.), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Olympia Snowe (Me.), Ted Stevens (Alaska), Fred Thompson (Tenn.), and John Warner (Va.).

For purposes of comparison only, how did Democrats respond to their instructions on impeachment imparted by the liberal church circular? Not one Democratic senator disobeyed the
New York Times’s
command to acquit Clinton. Atheist liberals, it seems, are “easily led.” The vast influence of Pat Robertson, the lone representative of the pernicious “religious right,” is strictly limited to the fervid imaginations of the nation’s editorial page writers.

Considering the invective constantly being heaped on the “religious right,” it is probably not surprising that few people identify themselves as members. “Religious right” is always something somebody else is, like a “son of a bitch.” A LexisNexis search of the phrase “religious right” mostly turns up lots of people denying that they belong to it. This could be because there’s no such thing as the “religious right.”

A Virginia state senator championed a bill requiring a minute of silence in public schools by stressing that he was not from the “religious-right wing of the party.”
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A leading opponent of legalized gambling in Missouri defended his cause by saying: “This is not the religious right. These are some of the most liberal churches in the nation.”
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After Louisiana ranked near the top in the nation in rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, the governor instituted an abstinence program. The state coordinator for the program quickly explained to the media, “We’re not religious-right types. We just want to give the facts.”
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In debate on a Fox News program about whether the characters portrayed on HBO’s
Sex and the City
are sluts, the panelist staking out the slut position made a point of saying that he was citing not “the religious right” but “New York TV critics.”
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The general manager of a Massachusetts radio station with predominently Christian broadcasting
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told a local newspaper, “This station does not represent the religious right.”
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One erstwhile employee of the station responded to a
Boston Globe
expose revealing that she “did in fact work for a Christian station” by insisting she was “an enemy of the ‘radical right.’

Even among Evangelicals, only 39 percent claim to agree with the “religious right”
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—a polite Southern way of saying “screw you” to Northeastern liberals. Indeed, publicly proclaiming membership in the “religious right” is generally intended only to frighten liberals. (And it
always
works.; During the 2000 presidential campaign, a cheeky nineteen-year-old Bush campaign staffer described herself on NPR as “a religious right member or the conspiracy.”
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While conservatives deny being part of the “religious right” to the point of neurosis, liberals express affection for conservatives they like by warmly excluding them from the “religious right.” Thus, an article praising William F. Buckley for supporting national education tests—a policy favored by liberals—pointedly noted that Buckley was “not religious-right.”
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And, of course, CNBC’s Chris Matthews introduced a discussion of “the dangers of the religious right” by identifying frequent guest Peggy Noonan as “nor from the religious right.”
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All this prattle about who is and who isn’t a member of the “religious right” refers to an organization that, strictly speaking, in the technical sense. doesn’t exist.

If the “religious right” were a real organization with real power, people might not talk so tough to it. To the contrary, any mediocrity who attacks the “religious right” is guaranteed good press.

About once a year pusillanimous Republicans get spooked by the liberal obsession with the “religious right.” They convene meetings and issue press releases with vague proclamations that “they, not the religious right, are the soul of the party.”
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The Republicans’ ritual denunciation of the nonexistent “religious right” is invariably hailed as the party’s “Sister Souljah moment.” Let’s look at that.

Sister Souljah is the rap singer who expressed enthusiasm for the idea 01 blacks taking a week to “kill white people.”
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In a taped interview with the
Washington Post
she said it was “wise” for blacks rioting in Los Angeles to kill whites whom, she noted, have a “low-down dirty nature.”
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Soon after Miss Souljah praised race murder, she spoke to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. Presidential candidate Bill Clinton spoke to the Rainbow Coalition from that same stage the very next day. Clinton’s political master stroke—the act of dauntless courage about which songs will be sung for the next fifty years—consisted of his remarking that Souljah’s homicidal comments were “filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor.”

That’s the big rebuke to intolerance within the Democratic Party: A presidential candidate stands on a podium recently occupied by the black equivalent of David Duke and timorously takes exception to the earlier speaker’s enthusiasm for mob murder. An oblique statement of opposition to racial killings is “reaching out to the middle” for a Democrat. Naturally, Jackson demanded an apology from Clinton, saying he had shown “very bad judgment” in expressing his reservations about race murder.

Adding to Clinton’s heroism, many in the mainstream media were torn by Clinton’s gentle reproach, questioning whether he had gone overboard.
New York Times
columnist Anthony Lewis tentatively admitted that his initial reaction was that Clinton “had done the right thing”—but Lewis then spent the rest of his column arguing Jackson’s side.
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The most Clinton had been able to muster in response to a rap singer’s endorsement of racist murder was to say that such sentiments were “filled with a kind of hatred”—and that left Anthony Lewis on the fence.

Law professor and former Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich heaped praise on Clinton, saying he had “rebuffed Sister Souljah, refused to make deals with Jesse Jackson and reached out to the middle.” By contrast, she said, the Republican had “reached out instead to the religious right.”
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Even taking the most menacing image of the “religious right” haunting liberal nightmares—little old ladies saying the rosary beads outside abortion clinics—the “religious right” is arguably less extreme than a rap singer’s endorsement of the random slaughter of white people. But Clinton’s tepid rebuke of a specific racist statement by an actual person is constantly cited to prod Republican candidates into denouncing Christian conservatives simply for being Christian conservatives.

In the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, Senator John McCain was fulsomely praised by the media for his own “Sister Souljah moment.” McCain had viciously attacked the “religious right” with a ferocity normally reserved for terrorists. He called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of

intolerance” and “forces of evil.” No one ever pinpointed exactly what Falwell and Robertson had done that was so justly deserving of McCain’s wrath. Their only manifest offense was to believe in a Being even higher than the
New York Times.
But the establishment lemmings were in a swoon.

Politicians may have few discernible real-world skills, but one talent they have in spades is the ability to ascertain who has power. So it’s interesting that while seeking the presidential nomination from the Republican Party, McCain decided it would be a good strategy to attack Christian conservatives. This would have been an extremely bizarre tactic if McCain really believed there was such a thing as the “religious right” exercising vast influence over the party—as opposed to an atheist, left-wing media that really does exercise vast influence over everything. In point of fact, so powerful were Robertson and Falwell that almost no one defended them. In a show of strength among Christian conservatives, Gary Bauer stood by McCain.

The Evil ones themselves did not join in McCain’s one-sided catfight. Agent of Intolerance Robertson never responded at all. Force of Evil Falwell said nothing at first, but soon was gushing with Christian charity for McCain. “I personally think that the senator in a moment of frustration said things that he normally would not say. And it’s out of character for him to be that way.” For his restraint,
Time
magazine sneered that it was “the first time in the history of Christian Fundamentalism that Jerry Falwell has said ‘No comment’ two days running.”
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Later that year, liberal Bill Press said on CNN, “I want to tell you, I thought that the treatment that John McCain received from Pat Robertson and those others, members of the religious right, was not only un-Christian, I thought it was un-American.” CNN’s conservative counterpart, Tucker Carlson, rejoined: “Bill, see, now you’re making it less fun for me, because you’re agreeing with me. See, you’re hurting my feelings.”
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It’s not surprising that most politicians would prefer knocking over lemonade stands to standing up to real bullies. But must the media keep marveling at their bravery?

For an insidious organization with unimaginable power, no one seems to hesitate before attacking and insulting the “religious right.” It’s no wonder liberals think conservatives are religious nuts: Only some sort of supernatural power would seem capable of allowing a person to resist the left’s incessant abuse.

Postulating the existence of the ghosts of liberal imaginations and pursuing the logic of their paranoia, what is the threat posed by the “religious right” precisely? Is the nation in imminent danger of having its coarseness removed? When anal sex, oral sex, premarital sex are all gleefully laughed about on prime-time TV, the peril of religious values infecting the culture would seem to be somewhat overrated.

Liberal dogma instructs that public displays of religion are inimical to democracy, a threat to freedom as we know it. They believe religious people are self-evidently fanatical. Religious values are hateful, homophobic, sexist, racist, and the rest of the liberal catechism—unless they are kept in the closet.

It is, of course, preposterous to say religious people can’t let their religion inform their views on public policy. That is more hateful and intolerant than any views attributed to the apocryphal “religious right.” But that’s what liberals believe, and one could have a more thoughtful debate with snake-handlers about the wisdom of fondling poisonous snakes than with liberals about the “religious right.”

In a 1999 public appearance,
Today
show host Katie Couric attributed the vicious slayings of gay student Matthew Shephard in Wyoming and of James Byrd, a black man, in Texas to a climate created by “religious zealots or Christian conservatives.”
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The affable Eva Braun of morning TV authoritatively informed President George Bush (41) that the Republican National Convention had “relinquished too much time to what some term the radical religious right.”
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On
The Early Show
during the Democratic National Convention, Bryant Gumbel interviewed
Playboy
magnate Hugh Hefner. In all seriousness, Gumbel asked Hefner, “In a macropolitical sense, do you think the Gore preoccupation with morality is a frightening turn for the party?”
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Eternal vigilance must be maintained against the specter of morality! A guy who puts out a skin magazine is being interviewed on network television as if he were a head of state, and liberals are worried that excessive morality is wrecking the country.

A PBS radio news host stated that the image of the Republican Party as “pro-woman, pro-minorities, and pro-tolerance” was in “sharp contrast to the delegates on the floor, 60 percent of whom self-identified as conservative Christians.”
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If the reverse statement had been made—that the author of that remark is a liberal Jew and thus full of vehement angry loathing of religious Christians—you wouldn’t have to wait for a book to read about it.