The Right’s Anti-Koh Letter
I’d long wondered what, exactly, the “Center for Ethics and Public Policy” is. After reading the letter Dave Weigel found “that John Fonte of the Ethics and Public Policy Center is passing around conservative circles, collecting signatures to oppose the nomination of Harold Koh” I suppose we can see at least part of the answer, namely that they’re applying “ethics” to “public policy” through the advocacy of torture, aggressive war, and impeding efforts to bring war criminals to justice.
The official purpose of the CEPP, though, is to “clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues.” Obviously, this is a broader issue than Koh or John Fonte, but as a secular person who thinks there’s a lot of wisdom in traditional Christian ethical thought it always strikes me as very odd that modern-day manifestations of Christian political activism in the United States so often take the form of advocacy for violence, cruelty, and revenge.
21 Responses to “The Right’s Anti-Koh Letter”
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April 9th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “as a secular person who thinks there’s a lot of wisdom in traditional Christian ethical thought it always strikes me as very odd that modern-day manifestations of Christian political activism in the United States so often take the form of advocacy for violence, cruelty, and revenge.”
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Well, that’s why secular humanists like you will scream in Hell for all eternity, Matthew — You don’t believe in a Loving God.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Plus there’s the Christ-killer thing. That too.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Oh — and worshipping the Sun God. Even if it’s only once every 28 years.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
So the CEPP, a group of people who openly want to subordinate the principles and policy aims of the U.S. to their god and messiah, is opposing the nomination of a supremely qualified legal mind because he supposedly wants to subordinate the principles and policy aims of the U.S.?
Hrmmm…
April 9th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Yeah, as an actual Christian I can’t help but agree with Matt’s sentiment here. I suspect it’s more a cultural thing–the South has long been “Christian” in an obvious and self-conscious way, but it’s also long been tolerant of a great deal of inhumanity and cruelty to poorer and darker people. I liken it to the state of Muslim culture these days, where the guiding ideals of the faith are actually quite high-minded and noble, but the cultures in which it is prominent are often really, really repressive.
That no doubt says something about us–that we recreate God in our own image, and ignore the more difficult parts of our traditions in order to do what we were going to do before, only with added authority. This sort of Christianity is nothing of the sort: it’s the sign of a long-festering decay of the Christian faith in America, which has been immeasurably helped along by the faith’s alliance between the political right. The only hope for Christianity at this point is creative destruction: for the nastier elements to scare off so many people that the remnants disown them and try to rediscover some sort of truth there.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Time to re-read Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality. . .
April 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
MattY – five-time recipient of the Amanda Terkel Award for Excelllence in Thinking and three-time recipient of The Journ-o-List Fuschia Sash – does it again with another brilliant post that does not in any way simply engage in childish smears and fallacious reasoning. Bravo!
Say, I don’t know whether it made it into the Fonte letter, but Harold Koh supports illegal activity and either can’t figure out what he’s supporting or was trying to mislead people.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Yup, this kind of hypocrisy is a large part of why I went from Lutheran to agonstic to atheist as a young adult. If members of the evangelical movement, and for that matter the main stream Christianity that most Americans subsrcibe to, really want to understand why people are abandoning their faith; then facing this issue is a great place to start. Christianity in America has become a lazy, self-serving institution, one that is incapable of asking tough questions of its members and unwilling to inspire them to genuine sacrifice on behalf of others. Complacency has replaced calls to action, and people have lost interest.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
There’s no great mystery here.
There is a very long tradition of spreading “the Judeo-Christian moral tradition” by the sword. Especially among the Musselmen.
Don’t think “Christianity.” Think “Christendom.”
All dressed up in fancy language for the 21st century.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Stuff like this puts me in mind of something I once overheard one of my sons’ friends say:
April 9th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
What’s so odd about a religion that gained its vaulted position through violence, cruelty and revenge now supporting violence, cruelty and revenge?
Seems like a logical progression to me, given Christianity’s history.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Perhaps someone could ask Lonewacko some tough questions about how he finances his 24/7/365 hate campaign, and upload the responses to YouTube?
He doesn’t seem to want to answer, which suggests that he is a CorruptServant of PowerfulInterests.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Now topping the billing at the CEPP site, Rick Santorum, singing this same song.
(I would be happy to ask Lonewacko any questions you might suggest, but only if there is a way to do it without clicking on any of his links.)
April 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Against my better judgment, I clicked on Lonewacko’s link on the (admittedly infinitesimal) chance that the “illegal activity” that Koh allegedly supports had anything at all to do with the issues he would be dealing with at the State Department. What I found, while predictable, was still disappointing.
So, once again: Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko. Also, kindly fuck off and die. Thanks, and God bless.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Chris D, I couldn’t have put it better myself!
April 9th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Apocalyptic religions flourish in times of social and economic instability.
We have had social instability (in terms of changing mores) since the mid 1960s and economic instability off and on, now very on. No surprise that those with little tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty are coming unhinged and clinging ever more desperately to whatever they think gives them an edge, be it racially, genderwise, orientationwise, political or whatever.
Rapid change has led to much the same in the Muslim world, and in Israel as well. Read Karen Anderson’s “The Battle for God.” Unbelievably timely, given that it came out before 9/11.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Pardon me. It’s Karen Armstrong’s book.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Christianity gained it’s position through violence, cruelty, and revenge? Really?
That’s a remarkably close minded view of Christianity, and ignores most of Christian history. For one, Christianity was pacifistic almost to a fault for the first hundred-two hundred years. The discipline and self control of early Christians was one of the traits that so enthralled many Romans.
And of course you’d be overlooking most of the following thousand years, getting really mad about the crusades, then ignoring another couple hundred years, then getting worked up over the inquisition, then ignoring another few hundred years…
I’m not a Christian, but I feel the need to defend the faith a little here. To claim that the history of Christianity is one filled with some extraordinary amount of violence is pretty ignorant. The reality is that the guys Matt is talking about are a bunch of low life’s, and will do what they can to oppress those who make them feel a little uncomfortable. But for every one of them there are 3,4,5, 10 christians who are good, gentile people who at the very least indifferent to many of these issues that might have made Jesus pretty outraged (ex. dropping bombs on people)
April 9th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
NM,
Your view of Christian history is so ridiculous it’s really impossible to respond adequately beyond saying you haven’t the faintest clue what you are talking about.
Sure, the first few generations of people abouot 2,000 years ago who called themselves “Christian” were generally pacifist in their public actions. So what? They lived in the Roman Empire, whose rulers took a dim view of their subjects acting otherwise unless they were actively serving in the legions. They were a powerless, persecuted minority until Constantine’s “conversion” (but we all know this).
From that time till now, the history of Christianity has been largely the history of the European peoples, and those histories became essentially coterminous even long before the last of the conversion “holdouts” (Lithuania, in the 14th century — at the point of the Teutonic Order “sword”, by the way).
I’m proud of the accomplishments of Western civilization, but it’s undeniable that European/Christian history, along with all it’s good and wonderful aspects, has also been horrifically cruel and violent. And there were certainly no long breaks in that bloody brutality, as you absurdly claim.
As for contemporary, American-style rightwing Christianity, it has been properly called “toxic” because that’s what is. Being ideologically and politically conservative (in the modern “movement conservatism” sense) it is primarily an excuse for selfishness, hatred, and bigotry.
Whoever this Jesus person was (the Sermon on the Mount Jesus) he would recognize American rightwing Christianity as today’s Church of the Pharisees.
April 9th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
… as a secular person who thinks there’s a lot of wisdom in traditional Christian ethical thought it always strikes me as very odd that modern-day manifestations of Christian political activism in the United States so often take the form of advocacy for violence, cruelty, and revenge.
Yeah, if I didn’t know about Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Prejean, and so many more, I would have a very low opinion of Christianity. The way it’s presented, for the most part, in the U.S. today, it really is as if “Christian” political activists are determined to associate their religion with violence, cruelty, and revenge. It takes a real effort to remember that there is a whole other tradition in Christianity that is the polar opposite of that.
Sure, the first few generations of people abouot 2,000 years ago who called themselves “Christian” were generally pacifist in their public actions. So what? They lived in the Roman Empire, whose rulers took a dim view of their subjects acting otherwise unless they were actively serving in the legions. They were a powerless, persecuted minority until Constantine’s “conversion” (but we all know this).
Plus, they were Jews.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Not to mention that the abolitionist movement was centered around the Methodist church in much of the north, the woman’s rights movement was also organized through liberal protestant churches, and given strength by the temperance movement (which was religiously motivated).
The point here isn’t to say christianity makes people act like saints (hah), it’s that at the very worst it doesn’t make people act better. Christians have been responsible for most of the evil in the western world (except for the whole Nazi, Soviet thing) as well as most of the good, and that has less to do with the fact that they are christians and much more to do with the fact that MOST westerners are christians.