INTOLERABLE TOLERANCE

Have you witnessed the fallout from the latest election -- how it has affected Liberals? It has unmasked them entirely.



They think religious people are stupid. Not just stupid, dangerous.



Make that Christians.  More specifically, make that Evangelicals.



The Left, the base of the Democratic Party, hail the virtues of tolerance and consider themselves to be THE tolerant citizens of America. In their touting of tolerance they express their obvious disdain for those whose views run contrary to that of enlightened Liberalism.



Dare to make a statement of conviction of any kind, and one of these Leftists will set down his cheese and wine, pause his lecture on the virtues of plurality and the absurdity of the belief in absolute Truth, and tell you your convictions -- everything you believe and hold dear -- are absolutely wrong. Where does he get his understanding that what you claim is "right" is actually not? Against what standard is this wrongness measured? He can't say. All he knows is that you're a bigot, you're intolerant, you're not worthy of being an American. In fact, you're not smart enough to understand what it means to be an American.



And not only are you dumb, you're dangerous. Fanatics like you don't belong in a "tolerant" culture like ours. You and your beliefs and the people who share them should not be allowed in our civilized society . . . or, at the very least, you should be denied the right to vote. Because when you vote, when you're politically active, you screw everything up.



People like you foist upon the world monsters like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Antonin Scalia.



People like you are the most likely to attack America: you're no different than the Islamists who fly planes into buildings, suicide-bomb pizzerias, detonate car bombs in the middle of busy streets, and blow up buses. At least those Islamic terrorists had a reason: America, pushed by people like you, has oppressed the Arab world. Yes, you are the reason 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11.



Nowhere has your un-Americanism been more poignantly explained and demonstrated than on the New York Times opinion pages over the last two days. Need evidence? Here are portions of five opinion pieces that made it into the ever-so-prestigious (and self-righteous) newspaper of record.



#1 -- From "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out" by Garry Wills:



"The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.



"Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.



"It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.



" The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment."



#2 -- From "The Red Zone" by Maureen Dowd:



"The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.



"W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage."



#3 -- From "Two Nations Under God" by Thomas Friedman:



"Why didn't I feel totally depressed after George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, or even when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore? Why did I wake up feeling deeply troubled yesterday?



" hat troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.



" At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level, without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake, and partly because Mr. Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out.



" My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends."



#4 -- From "O.K., Folks: Back to Work" by Bob Herbert:



"Mr. Bush's victory on Tuesday was not based on his demonstrated competence in office or on a litany of perceived successes. For all the talk about values that we're hearing, the president ran a campaign that appealed above all to voters' fears and prejudices. He didn't say he'd made life better for the average American over the past four years. He didn't say he had transformed the schools, or made college more affordable, or brought jobs to the unemployed or health care to the sick and vulnerable.



"He said, essentially, be very afraid. Be frightened of terrorism, and of those dangerous gay marriages, and of those in this pluralistic society who may have thoughts and beliefs and values that differ from your own.



"As usual, he turned reality upside down. A quintessential American value is tolerance for ideas other than one's own. Tuesday's election was a dismaying sprint toward intolerance, sparked by a smiling president who is a master at appealing to the baser aspects of our natures."



#5 -- From "No Surrender" by Paul Krugman:



"President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda.



" Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.



" Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it."



Don't you get it, you rubes? You and your God and your morality are destroying America.



Hattip to HumanEventsOnline.com