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Hahaha! You think Bill Maher and Michelle Goldberg are experts on religion.
Priceless.
You really should be careful about that laugh, since it signals to everyone else that you are about to botch up yet again. In this case, for instance, you can laugh at your straw man all you want, but—
Hahaha! So Coulter thinking everyone, including Jews, should be Christian is somehow anti-Semitic?
You don't seem to understand religion.
—it doesn't change what people are telling you.
Sure, Goldberg gets some credit, having, y'know, written an acclaimed book on the subject. But Maher? That's the thing; Goldberg was hardly first to the point. Nor Maher; by the time he got around to his wisecracks in 2003, it wasn't exactly a new point.
Frederick Clarkson↱ has been working the Dominionism beat for decades:
It is important to underscore that dominionism, even as it evolves, is not a passing fashion but an historic trend. This trend featured fierce theological battles in the 1980s that pitted the largely apolitical pre-millennial dispensationalism that characterized most of 20th century evangelicalism against a politicized, dominion-oriented postmillennialism.
The turning point in this theological struggle was the 1973 publication of Rushdoony's 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law, which offered what he believed was a "foundation" for a future biblically based society, and his vision of generations of "dominion men" advancing the "dominion mandate" described in the biblical book of Genesis. The Institutes sought to describe what a biblically-based Christian society would look like. It included a legal code based on the Ten Commandments, and the laws of Old Testament Israel. This included a long list of capital offences—mostly religious or sexual crimes. But Rushdoony and other leading Reconstructionists did not believe that "Biblical Law" could be imposed in a top down fashion by a national theocracy. They thought the biblical kingdom would emerge from the gradual conversion of people who would embrace what they consider to be the whole word of God, and that this could take hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Rushdoony and many Reconstructionists also believed strongly in a vastly decentralized form of government. Theorist Gary North writes, for example, that, "It isn't possible to ramrod God's blessings from the top down, unless you're God. Only humanists think that man is God."
Nevertheless, Reconstructionist thinkers could not prevent others from feeling a greater sense of urgency about moving up the time-table, or from taking dramatic political action, or in the case of anti-abortion activists, even committing vigilante violence. Indeed, the Institutes and the Reconstructionist works that followed provided a justification for political action that pulled many evangelicals from the political sidelines and into the fray. They also provided an optimistic theology of inevitable victory, suggesting therefore that political action was not only possible but necessary. In the longer term, it also established the often unacknowledged ideological framing for the Christian Right....
The 2016 advocacy paper, published in
The Public Eye, focuses largely on Sen. Ted Cruz. Roy Moore? David Barton? These are people who are Americans known to publicly pledge allegiance to another flag.
We come back to,
Michelle Goldberg↱, including notes from Clarkson:
Every year, for the past twelve years, D. James Kennedy has hosted the Reclaiming America for Christ conference, usually at his Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. The event brings together hundreds of committed Christian nationalists for two days of lectures, seminars, and devotions that, as the 2001 conference website puts it, "chart the path for believers to take back the land in America". Speakers have included Roy Moore, David Barton, and Rick Scarborough, as well as the occasional GOP operative like Clinton prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Former Vice-President Dan Quayle delivered a speech in the first Reclaiming America for Christ Conference in 1994. In his book, Eternal Hostility, Frederick Clarkson described the scene:
Quayle's speech was unremarkable, except for his presence during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance—to the Christian flag—which preceded his remarks. The Christian flag, white with a gold cross on a blue field in the upper-left corner, flies outside Kennedy headquarters. The assemblage recited together: I pledge allegiance to the Christian Flag and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty for all who believe.
For all who believe. Reclaiming America for Christ is a place where the Christian nationalist movement drops its democratic pretenses and indulges its theocratic dreams.
Don't get me wrong; it's not a thrilling prospect to sit around and listen through a presentation like that, especially if one is sympathetic to these conservative identity politics, but, yeah, making the point of laughing off Goldberg in order to grind a fallacy for satisfaction probably wasn't the best idea.
You botched up again, Vociferous: The point, as
PJdude↑ explained: Dominionism and premillennial dispensationalism are not obscure, new ideas. The terminology is often esoteric, but that has to do with customs of discourse, and, furthermore, we see these people operating throughout American politics; they are integral to social conservative politics, domestic and international. The question of how you are ignorant of these issues fits right alongside a curious, growing body of evidence, like your
perpetual inability↑ to properly invoke fallacy, or general unfamiliarity with American history and culture. Nobody is quite certain what to do with it, but constant floundering botchery is not conducive to rational discourse.
And, seriously: Truculent laughter and self-denigration can certainly make an endearing trait for a supporting character in a sitcom, but after a few seasons sympathetic audience members start to realize they feel insulted. This isn't a sitcom, and the audience, generally speaking, is well past questions of sympathy.
And, yes, for the record, erasure of Hebrew culture by subsumption into post-Christian identity politics is demonstrably anti-Semitic.
Look, we get that it feels good to go around throwing phrases at people as if imitating what you've seen others use in the past, but when you do so in this extraordinarily naïve manner, the primary result is self-denigration. I mean, sure, you annoy people and all, by it, but the main effect is to embarrass yourself. If, for instance, you're going to say, "You don't seem to understand religion," then it might behoove you to have a clue, and the laughing on the frontside of grinding some weird fallacy about Coulter—and, yes, cultural erasure of the Hebrews is demonstratively anti-Semitic—just isn't a good idea when seeking satisfaction according to fallacious invincible ignorance°.
Furthermore, one of the reasons people are only affording the slightest effort attending your pretense of ignorance is that they have no real reason to give it any more. When all you have to show is ignorance and petulant truculence, what will they expect?
I mean, seriously, Ta-Nehisi Coates scares you
that badly?
You can't even cope with what people put in front of you. The only merit to your arguments is defined by your own satisfaction:
To most Christians, anyone not a Christian is not going to heaven. Does that mean they are inferior? No, not at all. It just means that Christians wish they would convert. I can't help it if your ignorant of these simple facts. And I really can't help it if that makes you think all Christians, the most vocal supporters of Israel, are all anti-Semites.
Making up fallacies like that—
"And I really can't help it if that makes you think all Christians ..."—is precisely unacceptable.
____________________
Notes:
° The fallacy of invincible ignorance should not be confused with the Catholic ethical teaching appropriated with the name. While invincble ignorance in the Catholic context is generally framed as eliminating culpability, the fallacy of invincible ignorance starts to sound like determined and calculated vincible ignorance, as one postures invincible ignorance as license to continued fallacious behavior. What distinguishes the ignorance postured in this fallacious behavior from nescience is the insistence on pretending some manner of knowledge about what one clearly doesn't know. If one poses as sufficient authority to dismiss others as not understanding a subject, or missing a mark, then it eventually becomes somewhat obligatory for that one to have a clue what they are on about.
Clarkson, Frederick. "Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight". Political Research Associates. 18 August 2016. PoliticalResearch.org. 14 May 2018. http://bit.ly/2IzTEWn
KUOW. "Michelle Goldberg: The Rise of Christian Nationalism". 13 April 2007. Speakers Forum. 18 October 2007. KUOW.org. 14 May 2018. http://bit.ly/1GO3Luv
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