THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

HINT 1: WHAT THE MEDIA CALL "RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS" ARE AMERICA'S HISTORIC ALLIES | 2001-09-27

To liberals, the term "freedom of religion" means that one does not take religion seriously. If a Baptist says something bad about Catholics or vice versa, a liberal says he is against religious freedom.

In actual fact there is no religious freedom if you are prevented from making a PURELY RELIGIOUS STATEMENT, no matter how extreme it may be.

Americas' religious freedom is important precisely because we take our religion so seriously. It is the right of a Bob Jones to say all Catholics are going to Hell. It is the right of an American Catholic to say that there is no salvation outside his One True Church. See September 9, 2000 - THE UN DECIDES TO "USE" RELIGION.

For generations, the most steadfast allies America has had, both at home and abroad, have been the very people our media call "religious extremists." Almost the only people who denounced Joseph Stalin in the 1940s were Protestant fundamentalists and conservative Catholics.

This is also true of non-Christian resistance to our enemies.

After fifty years of armed victory, Soviet armies were finally stopped and almost destroyed in Afghanistan -- by religious extremists. Osama Bin Ladin gave up life as a billionaire businessman in Saudi Arabia. He went to Afghanistan and put his life on the line against those who were invading Moslem territory, which he looked upon as blasphemous. In that country all of the real anti-Communist fighters were "religious extremists."

The Buddhist Dali Lama is the symbol of resistance to Communism in Tibet.

As more than one conservative Jewish writer has pointed out, the media culture takes it for granted that the words "liberal" and "Jewish" are interchangeable. But even among Jews the group which is most deadly serious about its faith, the Hassidim, votes solidly conservative.

So now the line is that Bin Laden and his Islamic fundamentalist followers have no goal but the destruction of America. According to today's media line they want to come over here and destroy us because we are "free and rich and good."

Does that really make sense to anybody?