When Reasonable Pundits Sound Foolish...

Could this be another Vechman moment? "Get Thee to�a Church!" sayz Frayster Shrieking_Violet to Christopher Hitchens, courtesy of Slate

She smacks down the master GWOT apologist's curious hysteria over all things Theocentric. To start things off, she lists her Reasonable bona fides:

He is an artist with the sledgehammer, not the scalpel.

He scores a few points, too. Like most Americans who dwell outside the Realm of the Megachurch or other aggressively sectarian faiths, I find the obligatory kowtowing and pandering to people who believe literally in myth and magic to be maddening. The fact that a large percentage of Americans want to write 21st Century law based on a selectively literal interpretation of Ancient Hebrew sacred texts and some overheated rhetoric from St. Paul is a sick joke. It's not even reasonable theology, for Christ's sake, let alone reasonable politics. It's enough to make a reasonable person want to flee to Old Europe.

Having established her credentials, she then proceeds to dissect Hitchen's extremism, strand by secular strand:

Modern secular liberalism is built upon the principles of Enlightenment humanism, but it is also a rather clear, linear outgrowth from the more radical aspects of the Christian message. When Germans beat their swords into plowshares, learned to love their neighboring nations, and built social services to care for their citizens, they were led not by secular revolutionaries, but by a party known as the Christian Democrats. When Abolitionists railed against slavery, and when Civil Rights marchers challenged the hierarchy of racism, they were led by Christian ministers. The very core of modern Western Civilization is composed of a trust in reason and science, tempered by a faith in the values of peace, compassion, and brotherly love, and a humility regarding our role in the universe that precludes absolutism.

The latter half of this equation is the legacy of Christian theology. And it's the latter half that Hitchens and his Trotskyite-cum-Neocon fellow travellers so conspicuously lack…

…why does Hitchens, the enlightened prophet of secular reason, fall for this shtick like a rube at a sideshow?

So how many horseman do you see now? A Reasonable commentator defends Fools against the carpet-sliming of the Reasonable Christopher Hitchens. Man, I better get to confession, soon! Clearly, the time is short.

It's refreshing to see a committed secularists present an honest appraisal of the flaws of secularism and the triumphs of religion. More, please!