This country is ripe for a good old fashioned religious war, and thanks to the GOP, which has spent the last few years demanding that political candidates wear their religious beliefs on their sleeve, we may yet get it. What a wonderful Christmas present.
"Live by Anne Coulter, die by Anne Coulter," that's what I say.
The first volley might have been fired on the New York subway the other day when a man was physically attacked for replying "Happy Hanukkah" when someone else wished him "Merry Christmas."
Happy Hanukkah?
Those are fighting words!
Or at least they are if you are an idiot, and get all your news from Bill O'Reilly.
And so the nice Christian Boys threw down and started beating up the Jew until a Muslim fellow from Bangladesh stepped in to come to the Jewish fellow's rescue!
A Muslim guy stepped in to end the fight? Unbelievable sounding, but true.
In this twisted world, the ultimate irony is that the only "good Christian" left on a New York City train was a Muslim.
Go figure.
Meanwhile Mike Huckabee is standing firm in his disbelief in evolution.
Science? Science is for the Godless heathens -- you know, those damn foreigners who make all that stuff we like to buy at WalMart.
And never forget, says Huckabee, that life starts at conception.
Does that mean he's opposed to birth control? That's the rumor. But who knows?
Just imagine a tidal wave of Jamie Lynn Spears' trying to home-school their kids based on a fundamentalist educational doctrine that says evolution does not occur. Woooeee. I see no problems for the nation there!
And maybe that will not happen under Huckabee. He seems more rational than that. More to be revealed, no doubt.
Not crazy to be concerned, though, is it?
And then you have Mitt Romney, who took to the airwaves to pay homage to the "faith of his father," which resulted in the over-caffeinated and under-medicated Lawrence O'Donnell (one of the star's of HBO's TV series Big Love) ripping a hole in the studied civility (cough, cough) of The McLaughlin Group.
My favorite part is when the slightly-dim Eleanor Clift tries to smooth things over by noting that the long history of Mormon biggotry is no big deal.
Never mind, suggests Eleanor through omission, that we would never even consider a candidate that was a member of a country club that excluded blacks and women. A church is (somehow) different.
So what if Romney is a card-carrying member of a religion that kept out blacks until Romney himself was well past the age of 30?
The always-liberal Eleanor Clift is so terrified of calling a spade a spade that she tries to rationalize away true racism in the Mormon church for fear of offending anyone, noting that "every religion has had its scandals."
To which the former Catholic priest John McLaughlin asks "is that a crack about the Inquisition?" To which Eleanor Clift notes that the Catholic Church has had more recent scandals than that (i.e. a reference to pedophile priests).
Whoooeee. You cannot make this kind of stuff up.
Fight, fight, fight!
Of course, no one is even mentioning the abortion-defending, wife-cheating philanderer Rudy Giuiliani.
There's no question he's Godless enough for the most die-hard lefty Granola-eating-pagan-dope-smoker. And he's a gun-grabber too, God bless him. Perfect!
Then to take it across the aisle, you have Hillary Clinton, a Methodist who seems to carry a pair of heavy hands with her in the political ring, and who is only too happy to have surrogates (including husband Bill) run down the opposition, especially Barrack Obama.
And don't think folks haven't noticed.
Yesterday, nationally acclaimed documentary film maker Ken Burns (of The Civil War fame) endorsed Barack Obama for President after watching Hillary in action.
Ken, who had planned to stay neutral in the race, said that the Clinton campaign's attacks on Barack Obama prompted him to declare his support for Obama.
Ken says he thinks Barack is the only candidate in the race who can put an end to the "slash-and-burn character attacks" that have prevented progress on the challenges we face as a nation.
Noting Obama's judgment and courage, Burns said we need "a leader who calls upon each and every one of us to heed the 'better angels of our nature' and not our basest fears. Barack Obama will be that kind of president. It is time for a real change."
So there it is. Ken Burns thinks Obama is the only real Christian running. And I'm not saying he's wrong, either.
Ken may very well be right.
After all, Obama is not just a regular church-goer, he's also living the word. As the conservative blogger Mark Finkelstein notes:
"When David Gregory grilled Hillary Clinton on Today on December 17th, the challenges to her came from his own mouth. Not once was a statement by Barack Obama used to confront Clinton.
But when Barack Obama made back-to-back appearances this morning on Today and Morning Joe, again and again tough questions were posed not in the first person but as coming from Hillary Clinton or her surrogates."
In short, there is little or no video of Obama talking evil about others, and no shortage of those clips coming from Hillary.
Bottom line: Pay attention, and people will tell you who they are.
Pay attention to what people do, and you will know a great deal about them.
By watching, you can sometimes learn more than by listening.
Or, as Thomas Jefferson of Virginia so eloquently put it:
“Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”
Bingo.
Let us put our faith in that.
Let us watch how people have acted in their life.
Let us judge their faith on action, because faith without action is no faith at all. It is merely rhetoric.
And God knows, we have had our fill of that!.
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