Response to "Party of Rapist Proud to be Godless"
Coulter's column for this week (June 14, 2006) is, again, basically a shameless plug for Godless. She explains the thesis for the book, which is that liberalism (can't forget the -ism) is a religion. Not just any religion, of course, but a godless one. How that works and what that means, exactly, she doesn't explain.
From what she seems to be saying, it is pretty easy to dismiss pretty much anything by calling it a "religion." The one thing that sets religions apart from other beliefs is that they make claims about the supernatural: spirits; the afterlife; miracles; and so forth. Liberalism does none of these things, so it is trivial to show Coulter's claim is simply nonsensical. If liberalism is a religion, then one could say the same about mathematics, Sherlock Holmes novels, and The OC.
What Coulter is trying to do here is confuse the issue by just stating that "liberal equal atheist," without any evidence or support. An overwhelming majority — upwards of eighty percent [1] — of Americans are Christians of one denomination or another. About 40% of mainstream Protestants and Catholics are Democrats. But she doesn't acknowledge these figures, and simply pretends that these Christians don't exist. Or worse, here she is implicitly claiming that they are not really Christians at all or, perhaps, heretics. For some unspecified reason, she simply ignores them and continues with her claims of wicked godlessness.
From this week's column,
…let's pause for a moment to observe that two facts are now universally accepted: Liberals are godless and Hillary's husband is a rapist.
"Universally accepted?" I don't think that means what Coulter thinks it means. If Bill Clinton is "universally accepted" as a rapist, why hasn't he been arrested, charged, or prosecuted? One thing that the late Nineties showed us was that a Republican-controlled Congress was more than willing to bring a Democratic President to trial. Now that Bill is out of office, he would be even easier to prosecute.
Coulter is speaking of Juanita Broaddrick's claim that she was raped by Bill Clinton in 1978. A claim that Broaddrick denied, under oath, in an affidavit in 1997. She has now recanted the claim she made in the affidavit recanting her claim that she was raped, and now says it did, in fact, really happen. Understandably, her credibility is a bit shaky. Saying that her claims are "universally accepted" is laughable.
No, Coulter's point is more insidious than that. Note that she does not say that Bill Clinton is a rapist, but rather that Hillary's husband is a rapist. The emphasis is on Hillary rather than Bill, which makes sense from a political attack point of view. Bill is no longer active in politics, but his reputation can be used to smear his wife, whose political career is still going strong. It is guilt by association. Should she make a run for the Presidency, we at CCO predict that there will be many more smears-by-association like this one.
This is not an uncommon theme in Coulter's writings. She never seems to go very long before making a cheap shot referencing the Clenis.
Sources:
June 15th, 2006
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Eric |
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