Damn near every time he opens his mouth...

Some time ago, I trolled into a discussion on another site where the bloggers were decrying Muslims for not condemning terrorists...enough. I tried to make the point that the West and Christians are not exactly innocent in these matters, having a long and checkered history of Crusades, Imperialism, and genocide.

But the argument devolved into 'that was then, this is now', claiming that Christians would never do such things NOW, that the issue was the inflammatory things that some Muslims were saying and doing, and that ALL members of the muslim faith needed to repudiate terrorist activity, or be... what? what would the consequences of letting it go without saying that terrorist actions are reprehensible?

My point, of course, was that there didn't seem to be a need to have every Christian sign a non-aggression oath after McVeigh bombed a Federal building. By quoting, in effect, 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone,' I was then scolded for 'moral relativism'.

Which of course, it was. The idea that differing social systems may arrive at roughly similar moral codes is not anathema, in fact is part of the idea, behind the Establishment clause; that Muslims abhor the actions of a few, just as Christians abhorred the actions of McVeigh, seems to be a reasonable proposition. What seemed to bother the head-shakers is that once you've established that roughly similar moral codes have no objective superiority, you can no longer claim primary nobility for your own. And what's the purpose of Religion if you can't feel morally superior to the next guy?

Unless , of course, the next guy is Pat Robertson. It seems a bit like piling on at this point, but hey! Would that stop Pat?

Of course, It shouldn't surprise anyone that this kind of swill oozes from Robertson's scabby orifice. (or that he immediately tries backtracking and parsing his original statement). Norbizness has an excellent tracking of Robertson's past atrocities here. So God's Buddy Pat isn't really breaking much new ground with this.

But the thing about this is that here's a perfectly atrocious example of inflammatory imperialist rhetoric being given a pass, much the same way my conservative friends above claimed that Muslims were being soft on Al-Qaeda. Oh, sure, several sources have distanced themselves, notably ABC Family which broadcasts Robertson's sweaty presentations. But by the yardstick that was being used to paint all Muslims as terrorist friendly, the lack of outrage from fundamentalist Christians indicates collusion, if not outright support, of a religious figure calling for an illegal overthrow of a democratically elected sovereign leader. And far beyond moral relativism, this is full goose bozo situational ethics.

And where the shit really sticks to the wall here, is the inability of our Friendly Christian Corporate Administration to distance themselves, censure, or even ask for an apology, from this sack of offal. Not that this is surprising, because RoveCo is aware of the debt owed to fundamentalist Christians to even get the elections close enough to steal; there's no way he's going to endanger the rickety coalition of fundies and 'me first gimme gimme's' tax shelter cronies that form their base by criticizing one of the foremost mouthpieces of the fundies.