Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (36 page)

On the basis of the
Times’s
classification system, about the only Republicans who are not religious fanatics are a handful of Northeastern turncoats like Christie Todd Whitman (known as “moderate Republicans”). Probably 90 percent of all registered Republicans are with Ashcroft on those three issues. The
Times
had methodically assembled a bullet-proof case that Ashcroft was a Republican.

But the Newspaper of Record breathlessly reported that if confirmed, “Mr. Ashcroft would reach the highest office ever attained by a leading figure of the Christian right.”
¹¹⁶
It was almost as if there were a real identifiable entity known as the “Christian right” replete with officers, membership lists, and ID cards. This was a scoop bigger than the Pentagon Papers. The
New York Times
had somehow obtained the membership list of an organization that doesn’t exist! And Ashcroft was on track to get the most plum government job out of the whole lot of them.

Not to be a stickler, but doesn’t the guy who appoints the attorney general hold a higher office than the attorney general? President Bush had repeatedly described the transforming effect that Christianity had had on his life. He goes to church. He even supports gun rights—which, according to the
New York Times,
is an important indicium of membership in the “religious right.” In a widely publicized remark during the primary debates, Bush said the most important philosopher to him was Jesus Christ. The
Times
ought to have remembered that. An article in the
Times Magazine
section said Bush’s Jesus comment marked “the time in American politics when the wall separating church and state began to collapse.”
¹¹⁷
Times columnist Maureen Dowd had sneered that Bush’s Jesus answer was evidence of either “cynicism or exhibitionism.”
¹¹⁸

So how did Ashcroft get to be the guy in “the highest office ever attained by a leading figure of the Christian right”? Was President Bush behind in his membership dues to “Christian Right, Inc.” or something?

Further evidence that Ashcroft was the “favorite son” of the “Christian political movement” was that he had received “generous financial backing from its members.” (There are no “members.”) Indeed, the paper reported, Ashcroft “received more political money from religious groups and clergymen than any other Senate candidate.” That news flash warranted above-the-fold, front-page coverage in the
New York Times.
You had to persevere to the flip-page to find out that the torrent of “Christian right” money being funneled to Ashcroft consisted of Pat Robertson and two other guys contributing money to a Political Action Committee founded by Ashcroft. In all, the crack investigative reporters determined that out of $8.6 million in campaign contributions to Ashcroft in the 2000 election cycle, a whopping S23,577 came from “religious groups.” The largest contribution came from a personal friend of Ashcroft’s and was made posthumously by the man’s daughter. The
Times
actually tracked down the daughter to delve deeper into the motive behind the donation. On rigorous cross-examination by the
Times
reporters, the daughter admitted she “knew of her father’s support for Mr. Ashcroft on a range of issues, among them taxes and education.”

The country had just been through an administration in which the Chinese could give a campaign contribution to the president and end up with a naval base in Long Beach, California, and the
New York Times
was hyperventilating about a perfectly legal political donation from someone who agreed with Ashcroft on “taxes and education.”

Also remarkably detached from recent American history, the
Times
found it newsworthy that, as governor of Missouri, Ashcroft had “pointedly” asked his prospective judicial nominees if they had been faithful to their wives. The country could have been spared a lot of trouble if the press bothered to ask that question a little more “pointedly” of a certain presidential candidate back in 1992.

But more to the point, what is the dark underbelly of such a question? Even a governor who supported the agenda of the Atheist Left might prefer judges who would not be instantly engulfed in an ugly personal scandal. Maybe the
Times
was just mad about Ashcroft’s presumption that men would have wives. It’s always hard to tell with that paper.

One of Ashcroft’s candidates for the state bench told the
Times
that Governor Ashcroft had asked him “if he was prepared to enforce the abortion laws.” As the poor sap noted blandly, it was a “fair question” and “one that you could simply answer yes to if you were pro-choice or pro-life.” Still, the word “abortion” on the lips of a “member” of the Christian right sent the
Times
into an anxious reverie of speculative interpretation: “[I]t was not clear whether the question constituted what has come to be called a litmus test.”

Not only that, but “[a]t the time the question was asked, Missouri had enacted some of the most restrictive laws in the nation for women seeking to have an abortion.” It being a constitutional right to abort well into the third trimester, it’s hard to imagine how “draconian” those laws could have been.

Several paragraphs later the article totally lost the thread of indignation about asking public officials whether they would enforce abortion laws and—with no sense of irony—began raising questions about “whether Ashcroft would enforce abortions laws. A few paragraphs back, that was known as a “litmus test.” You could get dizzy trying to follow the left’s bizarre accusatory logic. Only through a process of mind-numbing repetition does it almost start to resemble rational thought.

Ashcroft was confirmed, but there will be future mobilizations over other nominees. The media will continue gently and subtly directing mob hatred toward conservative Christians. After relentless propaganda, the mob’s instinctive rage can be “switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
¹¹⁹

The fact that liberal propaganda succeeds is not surprising. What is fairly stunning is that the left’s carefully nurtured devil term—their Emmanuel Goldstein, capable of producing hate on cue—essentially comes down to accusing someone of being a Christian.

Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can’t stand the competition. There’s a reason the left’s rhetoric bears such a striking resemblance to some of the nuttier religions: Abhorring real religions, liberals refuse to condemn what societies have condemned for thousands of years—e.g., promiscuity, divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality. Consequently, the normal human instinct to condemn something bubbles up against a legion of quite modern vices, such as smoking, fur, red meat, excessive consumption, and land development.

Loathing of the religious right becomes an end in itself, a consuming passion. Liberals denounce Christian conservatives for being moralistic, for imposing their morality on others, for not separating morality from politics, and for bringing religious zeal to public life—and then work themselves into a frothing frenzy of righteous, moralistic zeal over their own moral excellence for being so rational, calm, and detached. One is reminded of the sadistic moralists from Dickens novels, who latch on to the idea that whipping is good for the child, so they can beat the hell out of him and feel good about themselves while doing it.

Consider the frenzy of indignation over George W. Bush speaking at Bob Jones University. For their religious convictions, which among other things dictate a belief in their own religion (exclusionary!) and an opposition to interracial dating (racist!), Bob Jones University has long provoked unbridled rage on the left. The media would have you think this serious religious college is overrun with slack-jawed hoodlums sporting swastikas and shaved heads, rather than gentle, earnest Christians.

Most shamelessly, liberals pretended to be deeply wounded by Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University—on behalf of Catholics. After twenty years of left-wing Catholic-bashing, this was a rather aggressive position to take. Just a few months earlier, for example, liberals had been indignantly defending a taxpayer-subsidized pornographic portrayal of the Virgin Mary on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. (The
New York Times
doggedly refuses to mention that the Virgin Mary artwork was decorated with close-up photos of women’s vaginas from pornographic magazines, preferring instead to refer only to the cow dung also on the Virgin Mary. Christians were crazy to be upset about something that is so repellent that the
New York Times
refuses to mention it in print.)

Writing in the
Sunday Times
(London) about the ensuing brouhaha,
New York Times
columnist Andrew Sullivan had nothing but contempt for Catholics who had taken offense at the smutty Virgin Mary. He accused them of “tone-deaf self-righteousness” and sneered that they were “lining up for victim status.” The proper response, Sullivan patiently instructed the flock, was a “laugh or groan.” So it was interesting that just a few months later, when the issue was George Bush speaking at Bob Jones University, Sullivan decided a “laugh or groan” simply would not do. This time, writing in the
New York Times,
Sullivan bitterly remonstrated against George Bush for speaking at a private Christian school, whose past president had some rather pointed condemnations of Catholicism. Working himself into a towering frenzy of self-pity about the very existence of such a place, Sullivan indulged in painful reminiscences about the anti-Papist slights he had suffered as a child “growing up as an Irish-Catholic in England.” Though he vowed never to forget that Bush had spoken at Bob Jones University, he didn’t seem to have much trouble forgetting an article he had written in the London
Times
a few months earlier.

What does Bob Jones University have over taxpayer funding for a pornographic display of the Virgin Mary? More relevant, what does Bob Jones have over the Reverend Al Sharp ton? In the 2000 presidential campaign, the entire Democratic Dream Team (Vice President Al Gore, former presidential contender Bill Bradley, as well as Senate candidate Hillary Clinton) all eagerly met with Al “These Are Not My Suits” Sharpton. There was not a peep about Democratic presidential candidates making the obligatory campaign stop with Sharpton.

Bob Jones never falsely accused decent men of raping and defiling Tawana Brawley and then refused ever to apologize. Bob Jones never incited ugly mob hatred toward Orthodox Jews culminating in the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. Bob Jones didn’t compare Israel to hell, and if he had, it would have been mentioned in more than one passing aside in
Newsweek.
In 1991 Sharpton replied to a Tel Aviv heckler yelling “Go to hell!” by saying “I am in hell already. I am in Israel.” The incident was largely ignored by the media. Instead, reporters were probably camped outside Liberty Baptist College hoping Falwell would say something about gays.

Poor Bob Jones had insulted no one beyond the manifest requirements of his faith. Supposing, hypothetically speaking, Bob Jones were correct about his religion being the one true path to God, then all other religions are false and condemn their practitioners to eternal damnation. Catholics think Protestants are barking up the wrong tree, too. That’s kind of the point of all religions. But believing Christians frighten liberals; anti-Semitic race demagogues don’t.

Americans are free to believe in Sun People and Ice People, in space aliens, or in a flat earth. But if you admit to quirky beliefs based on a real religion, liberals will ritualistically denounce you. How dare George W. Bush visit the Bob Jones campus and give a speech! He must be made to apologize for failing to chastise them. (Of course, it could have been worse: Bob Jones University could have been treated like the Branch Davidians.)

If there were a modern Spanish Inquisition in America today, it wouldn’t be Bob Jones rounding up Catholics. It would be liberals rounding up right-wingers and putting them on trial for hate crimes. The liberal Torquemadas would be smug and angry and self-righteous. And when they were done, they would proudly announce they had finally banished intolerance.

conclusion

Part of the reason liberals prefer invective to engagement is that—as Richard Nixon said of Alger Hiss—if Americans knew what they really believed, the public would boil them in oil.

Liberals have been wrong about everything in the last half-century.

They were wrong about Stalin (praised in the
New York Times
and known as “Uncle Joe” to Franklin Roosevelt). They were wrong about Reagan (won the Cold War and now polling as the greatest president of the twentieth century). They were wrong about the Soviet Union (defeated by the twentieth century’s greatest president). They were wrong even about their precious “Abraham Lincoln brigade” in the Spanish Civil War (the disgorging of Soviet archives proves that the Lincoln brigade was part of “a rigidly controlled Soviet operation”).
¹
They were wrong about Nicaragua (communist dictatorships in Latin America turned out not to be “inevitable revolutions,” after all). They were wrong about welfare (since overhauled by Republicans to notable success). They were wrong about crime (Giuliani’s achievement is evident in the number of candidates who promise to continue his policies). They were wrong about social security (now bankrupt). They were wrong about the Civil Rights Act (which was
never
going to be used as an instrument of discrimination against whites). They were wrong on the sexual revolution (witness the explosions of AIDS, herpes, chlamydia, hepatitis B, and abortion).

It is not an accident that, today, the left’s single biggest cause is “global warming.” This time, conservatives won’t be able to prove them wrong for a thousand years.