The Founders Respond:
I've been questioning our Founders on their religious beliefs and they've responded. (Richard Brookhiser, I think, is responding.) I'm not going to keep this up for much longer. I don't want to be a troll on Mr. Brookhiser's site. I have way too much respect for him to do that.
3 comments:
So, when you present evidence that Adams' views were not as he claims, he responds that views aren't everything? Huh. Winning the argument by losing is a strategy I suppose.
In fairness to Brookhiser, he's not, I do believe one of those, "John Adams was an orthodox Christian" guys.
Brookhiser is usually on the mark with respect to properly understanding our Founders.
Let's ignore the 15 Freemasons, the indefinite Deists, theists, and pantheists, a couple of atheists, etc. that signed the Declaration.
Let's overlook "Christianists" (in Andrew Sullivan's appellation of the heretics) that assume a literal reading of any book is normative, and just observe that "their" Christianity is decidedly American, decidedly 19th C., and decidedly ahistorical (all antitheses of original Christianity) is somehow normative.
Against the flow of history, against the facts of America's secularist foundations, against the entire Enlightenment, against Christian orthodoxy, why DO they? That's the question!
Like any cultist orientation that thrives on the dependency of others, America's biblical fundamentalism is at best an effort to deny the horrors of reality. Without a God, without the Ten Commandments, without normative heterosexual marriage, etc., one has to face the terrible fact that life can be shit. The problem is that life as such cannot survive, so a whole counter-intuitive, counter-rationalistic, counter-experiential "metaphysic" must be superimposed in order to just survive, and then give hope for some transendental hope to materialize. Marxists aren't much different, which is why Liberation Theologians married Marx with Christianity in a protein-boost.
Nevermind that "they" don't live by the hype they superimpose, it's enough that they believe it. Utopians always do this, rather than face life as it is. Likewise, "they" hope for an America that has never existed, one that will be ready when their Ubermench returns and, like Marx, puts the disposed like themselves into power. Or, if they are already hold power, into even more power. It's the perennial "class struggle," only metaphysically elevated onto some supermystical hope that alone can redeem misery from the inevitably of history.
Perversions work this way. I just wish they'd keep it to themselves. But human angst won't allow them to. They must not only redeem their own miserable lives, but obtain satisfaction in making others miserable. Misery loves company. Sadly, the rest of us must endure their hopeless tirades, their illusions of grandeur, and their promise of the Promised Land. Despite their ignorance and dereliction, it's what happens "next" that really freightens me. But hey, I'll be checking out soon, so what do I care?
Post a Comment