Simon_Templar of Christian Forums and The Fellowship of St. Michael's, makes a few good points.
His Blog is here. After living in the culture of America today I've become some what innocuated to the various view points that we would generally refer to as "liberal". I see them so often that they, through being common place, have lost any sense of extraordinariness, or unusualness.
However, there are moments when I read something, or here someone talking and it suddenly strikes me that what they are saying.. and the thought process behind it are truly extraordinary in both the realm of 'common sense' and in the realm of history.
This is particularly true when it comes to discussions on the ongoing issues of conflict with Islam. We are in a situation in which a group of people have violently attacked us and our allies. Although 9/11 sticks out as the pivotal moment to us, the truth is that muslim terrorists have been perpetrating such attacks for decades.
The response of many people in our society to this is to go out of their way to sanitize and protect Islam. Has there ever been any time in history, in any culture, when such a thing has happened?
When faced with an enemy intent on your destruction and death, people respond by doing everything in their power to ignore the aggressive actions of the enemy and instead demand that their enemy be viewed as peaceful and tolerant.
It is truly incredible in the purest sense of the word... it would not be believable if it were not happening right in front of my eyes.
There is a universal truth that no person or group of people is so totally and completely evil as to have no human or 'good' qualities.. and likewise true that no person and especially no group so good that they have no vices or sins.
I remember one day when I was watching the history channel and they were airing one of their many specials on hitler and the nazi's. In one section they showed home video of hitler at his mountain retreat. He was affectionate with Eva Braun, and playing with his dogs... if you saw only that, for all the world, you would have thought he was a nice, likeable fellow.
This truth is in some ways a great benefit because it can allow us to look with christian charity upon the worst of men... but it can also be a curse because it often causes us to call evil good, because we can't abide that someone we find likeable could be evil.
So when I see, in conversation, Christians who demand that Islam is peaceful, and tolerant, while at the same time decrying Christianity for its abuses in medieval spain, I know how they can accomplish such a total reversal. If it were merely propaganda by someone who knows better, that would be one thing, but what I can not understand is how they can be so blind as to actually believe it.
Sure, the church had its abuses, the inquisition most readily comes to mind.. but for more than a thousand years the church actively taught against violence, and actively sought to end war and violence in europe using the full weight of their power to restrain the warlike nature of men not long removed from their barbarian ancestry.
Yes Islam has had teachers who were non violent, and one sect that was devoted to peace, but for more than a thousand years the religion as a whole has taught advancement through war. So completely dominant was this philosophy, and such and integral part of the religion was war with infidels that for most of Islam's history it was considered a SIN to make peace with an infidel unless advantage required it, and every peace made with infidels was by definition considered a temporary truce until war became advantagous again.
Yet today CHRISTIANS will ignore the 1500 years of antiwar/non violence teaching and work done by the church and focus only on the failures of the inquisition
AND at the same time, ignore the 1000 year's of war and violence by Islam and focus only on the few token statements about peace that Islam can offer
This is the kind of thing I expect from anti-christian bigots and those who are actively out to destroy christianity.. but christians?? How can they possibly be so blind?
Christians today will ignore the fact that Muslims the world over are KILLING with joy and pleasure our christian brothers.... and march in solidarity with muslims to protest the insensitivity of a cartoon.
This is insane. To my knowledge an occurance like this, on this scale, is unique in history.
I know that one of the major causes of this is the fact that people have been indoctrinated with an anti-western (and thus anti-christian since the west was founded upon christianity) view point. The contradictions present in the liberal view point on these issues are so huge as to be laughable... if the consequences weren't so dire.
The liberals, champions of freedom and tolerance, champions of women's rights because they have been indoctrinated to hate the truths of christianity (even when they are christians) will go out of their way to support religions that denegrate women, and cultures that deprive women of even their most basic human rights, but they turn on christianity, the one religion that gave women freedom and equal value as antiquated and anti-woman.
They stand up for religions that are founded on social castes(hinduism) and on the most extreme form of religious intolerance, outlawing conversion and even going so far as to execute people for it (Islam, and hinduism). Yet they attack christianity because it is so intolerant as to think that some beliefs and practices are wrong, and that people sin.
They are champions of 'the people' yet they support cultures and religions that are totaly autocratic (virtually every muslim country is a despotism). Again, they attack christianity, the one religion that gave birth to the concept and the realization of a free society.
The great irony of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" rest in the fact that they are entirely relative to the cultural context. Liberal favors change of the cultural norms "freedom" from the cultural values.. while conservatism strives to preserve the cultural norms and values.
Consider then what liberal really means in the context of a free, good, society. A society founded upon the idea that everyone has the right to live their own life and believe what they want so long as they don't infringe on others.
Our cultural values and norms are freedom, individual rights, the rule of law, logical and reasonable thought. So by deffinition, liberals in our society are people who want to be free from freedom, individual rights, the rule of law, and logical and reasonable thought.
They are succeeding
