Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Larison on Cantor, the "Judea-Christian tradition" and other silliness

Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans that our policies be firmly grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded. ~Eric Cantor

So Cantor means that he will offer support to opposition Maronites in Lebanon and work to realign U.S. policies in the Near East to favor Armenia, right? No, I guess that wasn’t quite it. When he says that policy should be “grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” maybe he means that we should repudiate aggressive warfare, collective punishment and indiscriminate bombing, especially when those methods also adversely affect local Christian populations. Oh, that’s not it, either? Of course, it means exactly what you would think that it does, which is that we must support Israel to the hilt with support defined as the embrace of the most hawkish, counterproductive policies possible.

As is usually the case, Dr. Larison calls it just exactly right. Read the rest of the post, here.

1 comment:

Milton T. Burton said...

Then there is that crackpot preacher, John Hagee, down in San Antonio who tells his congregation (though "coven" might be a better word for his followers) that if we don't nuke Iran we will get on God's short list for destruction. Things like this remind me of Sameul Johnson's assessmenmt of the plot of "Cymbeline": "It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility."