{"id":12,"date":"2003-10-08T18:18:49","date_gmt":"2003-10-08T23:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=12"},"modified":"2003-10-08T18:18:49","modified_gmt":"2003-10-08T23:18:49","slug":"nuke-em-for-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Nuke &#8217;em for Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pat Robertson, the same paragon of Christian virtue who has opined<br \/>\nin the past that Wiccans like me should be burned alive the way they<br \/>\nused to in the good old days, just created an interesting dilemma for<br \/>\nme by suggesting that the <a href='http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story2&#038;cid=1521&#038;u=\/afp\/20031009\/pl_afp\/us_diplomacy_threat_031009192152&#038;printer=1'>State<br \/>\nDepartment should be nuked<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As a pagan anarchist, I&#8217;m completely uninterested in being<br \/>\nconsidered a paragon of Christian virtue.  So I can admit to feeling a<br \/>\nsneaking sympathy with Robertson&#8217;s modest proposal.  I mean, it<br \/>\nwouldn&#8217;t just be nuking the government, it would be nuking one of the<br \/>\nmore repulsive parts of same.  The BATF and DEA are certainly a<br \/>\ngreater threat to liberty and happiness, but watching the Foggy Bottom<br \/>\ncrowd compete to see who can pander most abjectly to &#8220;international<br \/>\nopinion&#8221; and a succession of enemies from the old Soviet Union to the<br \/>\nFrance of today has been pretty nauseating.<\/p>\n<p>But no.  I have my own standards of virtue, and they don&#8217;t quite<br \/>\nstretch to vaporizing Foggy Bottom.  Innocents (that is, persons who<br \/>\nare not causally implicated in the government&#8217;s normal practices of<br \/>\ncoercion and fraud) could be harmed.  Cleaning staff, visiting<br \/>\nchildren, that sort of thing.  Shocking bad form to whack them, don&#8217;t<br \/>\nyou know.<\/p>\n<p>Now.  Seriously.  I&#8217;ve taken some flak in the past for implying that<br \/>\nChristianity is just as vile and violence-prone a religion as Islam.<br \/>\nPat Robertson has made this point for me before and doubtless will again.<br \/>\nBecause, like Osama bin Laden, he <em>really believes<\/em>.  He pays<br \/>\nattention to all the bits of the Bible and doctrine and history that<br \/>\nmost so-called &lsquo;Christians&rsquo; edit out &mdash; a maneuver that<br \/>\nmakes them better human beings, but worse Christians.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity is sold as a &#8220;religion of love&#8221; but that is just as<br \/>\nbogus as calling Islam a &#8220;religion of peace&#8221;.  What is far more<br \/>\nimportant and fundamental to both is eschatological dualism, which<br \/>\nIslam inherited through Mohammed&#8217;s roots in Monophysite Christianity.<br \/>\n(What?  You didn&#8217;t know that Islam started life as a mildly schismatic<br \/>\nChristian sect?  Yes, it&#8217;s true.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Eschatological dualism&#8221; is fancy theologist-speak for the belief<br \/>\nthat history consists of a titanic struggle between God and the Devil,<br \/>\nwhich will culminate at the end of time with a great sorting out &mdash; godly<br \/>\nobedient people to Heaven, sinners to Hell.  Eschatological dualism<br \/>\nis the root of the &#8220;Kill them all, God will know his own&#8221; attitude that<br \/>\nhas always been rather more characteristic of both religions than &#8220;peace&#8221;<br \/>\nor &#8220;love&#8221;.  Pat and Osama, brothers under the skin, are squarely in that<br \/>\ngrand old tradition.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity, fortunately for all of us, has become quite decadent<br \/>\nand weak these last 400 years or so &mdash; Robertson merely dreams of<br \/>\nsmiting the Devil&#8217;s minions with Godly fire, rather than actually<br \/>\nincinerating 3000 people on a fine autumn morning.  But it may take<br \/>\nanother 400 before Christianity withers away sufficiently that my<br \/>\ndescendants need not fear being burned at the stake by a charismatic<br \/>\nlooney-tune like Robertson.  Islam, 600 years younger, will probably<br \/>\nremain deadly for rather longer.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=106582824060943272\">Blogspot comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pat Robertson, the same paragon of Christian virtue who has opined in the past that Wiccans like me should be burned alive the way they used to in the good old days, just created an interesting dilemma for me by suggesting that the State Department should be nuked. As a pagan anarchist, I&#8217;m completely uninterested&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=12\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Nuke &#8217;em for Christ<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}