Home » God's Own Party? » Guest Post: Choice Is Not Hate ~ It is Freedom by Hrafnkell

Guest Post: Choice Is Not Hate ~ It is Freedom by Hrafnkell

Posted by Leah on Jan 25, 2010 in God's Own Party? | 277418 comments2010-01-25+19%3A32%3A11Leah

Another thought provoking and important guest article by Hraf…

UPDATE by Leah: These are the ambassadors of Christianity that really touch my heart!

Subject: Trijicon
From: “Bear”

Date: Mon, January 25, 2010 6:26 pm

To: leah@militaryreligiousfreedom.org

Dear dipshits:

Just looked at your fancy website and have come to the conclusion that your mama’s must have bottle fed the lot of you and you missed the warm feeling of breast feeding. What a bunch of morons on the Trijicon non-problem. It is my hope you all get a case of the galloping trots and hemorrhoids to go with them. I don’t care how many islamic jihadists our troops send to allah and it’s obvious you are more supportive of the rag heads than our troops. Do us all a favor…take a long walk in the desert with no water and food, find a quiet place and lay down and die quietly. And rest assure NO ONE will say a prayer for you sorry self serving assholes.

As for me, I will buy several Trijicon sights and send them to the boys in the sandbox to make good terrorists out of live ones.

T.H.E. Bear

American Veteran

Okay…now back to this most excellent post by Hraf!

Imagine a world in which there is no neutral position. There is only FOR and AGAINST. Imagine that FOR and AGAINST mean GOOD and EVIL. If you’re not with me, you’re against me. If you’re not my friend, you are my enemy. This is a world without compromise, because compromise is surrender. And the Truth must win out. Clearly, in such a world, there can be no room for pluralism or diversity – or tolerance.

In a pluralistic society there will necessarily be many points of view, many perspectives. Compromise and a live-and-let-live attitude will be commonplace. Opposing voices will be tolerated. Debate will be possible. The right to disagree will be essential.

You can readily see that these two worlds cannot coexist.

Associated with the Columbine Massacre

That is the situation in which we find ourselves today. We live in a world where embracing plurality and diversity and tolerance are seen as attacks on the “Truth” and that freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of choice, are heresy. For heresy, in case you don’t know, means “to choose.” Can you imagine a society which enshrines as a central tenet the evil nature of having the right to choose?

Read the Old Testament, and you will see one. Go to Church on Sunday and you will see this society extolled and praised.

Look around you, and you will find those who wish to return to that society, to impose it upon American liberal democracy.

There is often a vast gulf between rhetoric and fact. We have been introduced to the term “talking point” but talking points have always existed in fact if not in name. According to my Oxford American Dictionary, a talking point is “a topic that causes discussion or argument.” But that’s not what talking points are really used for in public discourse – in fact, they are not used for discourse at all.

Talking points are used to propagandize; they are the embrace of argumentum ad nauseam, i.e. continuous repetition of factoids (usually not factual at all) until they are accepted as fact. It’s an appeal to an old tactic: tell a lie often enough and it will become believed.

We live in an ironic (and terrible) world where in the Crusade on behalf of Truth, lies masquerade as truth.

The means, then, are justified by the ends.

Surely this is not news to you.

We all know what the end striven for is: the “Old Testament” myth of a world of uniform religious belief – where choice is met with rocks. And we all know what gives way first, don’t we? Rocks crack skulls; choice perishes.

Unanimity through blunt force trauma.

Again, not a pretty picture.

We are all of us used to arguments that there is a war on Christianity or more specifically, a war on Christmas. We have all been exposed to the myth of Christianity as a persecuted religion. And I say myth because since the fourth century – that’s seventeen centuries by my count (the year 2024 will be precisely 1700 years since Constantine’s accession opened the war against choice) – Christianity has been not the persecuted, but the persecutor. It has ruthlessly exterminated (or done its best to do so) every alternative to itself for seventeen hundred years.

The people who subscribe to this point of view see freedom of religion, freedom of choice, as a stand against Christianity. What these people want is not freedom of religion. What they want is the privileging of the Christian message at the expense of all others. Any attempt to stand up for freedom of choice is interpreted as a “stand against God.”

And if not stones, it is the threat of hellfire we are bombarded with now. Sowing fear is a terror tactic, and that is precisely what these people are doing. They are called the “American Taliban” for good reason. An example is a letter of protest against MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org’s stand on the issue of biblical scripture on military scope sights:

“…if you force by coercion and terrorization and threats of retaliation the removal of the Scriptures from ‘anything’ you’re fighting against God and you’ll pay the price later if you don’t repent and trust in Jesus now.”

Choice is bad. Choice is the stick with which we are beaten again and again. It was choice, remember, that got us into trouble in the Garden of Eden, or so we are told. It is choice that is heresy. It is choice that automatically places you on the side of “relativism” against “Truth” and against God.

And in this case, we again see the either/or paradigm that was so prevalent under the crusader mentality of the Bush Administration: If you’re not with the conservative Christian viewpoint you are with the Islamic terrorists against America.

And ironically, speaking out against the conservative Christian viewpoint is not allowed. If you do, you attack freedom of speech. Yet conservative pundits on FOX have the right to speak out against anything they wish:

‘Since rachel maddow is bent out of shape about fox and friends news anchor comments, possibly she should move to saudi arabia too. i guess she doesn’t want him to exercise his freedom of speech.”

Again, it is not freedom of speech that is the issue for these people – it is freedom for conservative Christians to trumpet their bigoted and narrow-minded views without having to endure a dissenting voice or an inconvenient and unwelcome fact.

Their message is loud and clear: We can say whatever we want and hate whoever we want but if you take exception to our opinion you are showing yourself to be hateful and intolerant and an opponent of free speech.

Don’t even try to make sense of this. You won’t be able to. Smarter fellows than I have tried. The third century Pagan scholar Porphyry said of the Christian extremists of his own day that “it is easier to write words on water than try to use argument on a Christian.”

And contrary to their wishful thinking, the wall of separation is very real, whenever and however the words were used. If James Madison, who actually wrote the Constitution, had had his way, it would have been higher and more impenetrable yet and we might not have to deal with this nonsense today.

Not only is religion to be protected from government, but the government is to be protected from religion. The goal was that never should the twain meet. The Evangelicals of the 18^th century understood this fact, and they supported Madison’s efforts – and yes, Madison was himself a Christian.

The people who speak out against the wall now are a perfect example of what Madison feared; they are the enemy the wall of separation was directed against.

Choice is not hate, my friends. It is freedom. When we started this great nation, our choice was that the government did not get to choose in matters of religion. When the government does choose, we lose that right ourselves.

Including the myopic bigots who can’t see that it is just as likely that when the government makes that choice it will make it on behalf of Christianity not to their liking. The Evangelicals of the 18^th century could see it; why cannot the Evangelicals of the 21^st?

But you might as well go write your objections on the surface of the nearest pond, because they’re not listening. They’re charging headlong into that very hell they’re threatening us with.