talkpolitics | The Losing Game

When 9-11 when down my first analysis of the affair was to compare Christian fundamentalism with Muslim fundamentalism. Kamikaze Muslim fundamentalists were clearly willing to die for the freedom of their own people. What about Christian fundamentalists? They seem to only be willing for others to die for the freedom of fundamentalist action. As we can see by the recent deaths of the hit men who carried out the assassination of bin Laden, the whole affair is a lose-lose situation for both sides. Let's face it: fundamentalism is for losers.

William Casey saw warfare in economic terms. In his time the bigger economy prevailed. Perhaps he would seek out the bigger economy that was propping up the Taliban and al-Qaeda. He would trace their funding through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to find that his own policies have pitted the US against the US. Two factions of religious bigotry supplied by petro-dollars butt heads with each other in a race to the bottom. Which will be the biggest loser?

(BTW, my observations on Christian fundamentalist cowardice predated my learning about Air Force policies of promoting dominionism and protecting their pilots from enemy capture.)

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Well, the Southern Baptist Convention was founded to defend the idea that civilization's "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal."

It was a Southern Baptist minister who converted Hong Xiuquan, China's Charlemagne, who attempted to spread the Gospel by the dim and flaring lamps and burnished rows of steel.

By this logic we should outlaw the Southern Baptist Convention as a hate group and a potential danger to the entire human race.

(I'm nominally Southern Baptist and saying this, and I'd be lumped as one by any such standard as this).

Okay, that was very interesting - really.

But what does it have to do with jihad, 9/11, and fundamentalism? (Yes it is an example of fundamentalism, at least maybe, but what I was talking about was fighting for one's freedom.)

Basically that if the Islamists are the entirety of Islam that the SBC, having triggered a war that caused 40 million people to die and served as the unofficial religion of the Confederacy has more than qualified to be subjected to a Kulturkampf.

Islamists are not the entirety of Islam. You don't really mean that, right?

No. My point is that a lot of people do conflate the two, which if they are Southern Baptists opens a major problem for them in so doing.

The Losing Game

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