April 19, 2011
In last week’s letter, I was also told how I would eventually “have to stand before our Almighty God and Savior” and answer for my thought crimes. Apparently Christ was not only Jewish in his earthly existence but also a neocon. I suppose that if the Gospels were properly interpreted, perhaps on FOX or in The Weekly Standard, it would be clear that the Christian savior was some kind of proto-Trotskyist or perhaps a precursor of George W. Bush’s liberal internationalism. Jesus was also in favor of American exceptionalism and would have supported gay marriage and eradicating legally recognized gender differences so long as we Americans embraced these reforms. It took a couple thousand years to figure this out, but it was there all along waiting to be discovered.
I think my correspondent is an important indicator of where the GOP and the “conservative movement” with which she identifies are going. She is in her own way a devout Christian who sincerely loves her country. Without naming names, she mentions that she used to “teach” at great academic institutions, but my impression is that she’s poorly educated. Her narrow picture of reality is drawn from a few neoconservative sources. She carefully duplicates her politically predictable clippings and then sends them out to her friends and enemies. One doesn”t have to reach very far to figure out that this lady is a very typical Republican: white, Protestant, and churched. She imagines her reading matter is Christian and patriotic because it is always advocating wars if not for God then at least for country, and she happily “supports our troops” wherever they are sent to bring the gift of “human rights” to someone.
This woman is not socially or politically marginal. She fully represents the Protestant Republican voters I meet every day and is in sync with the only “conservative movement” she’s ever known. We are nowhere on her radar screen because we don”t have the necessary resources to be there, and from her garbled neoconservative-Protestant perspective, my columns seem to come from the far left.
What should we do about people like her after we”ve laughed over their muddled accusations and boundless gullibility? They used to be the base of a real American right. Now they treat us as enemies. She is one of tens of millions that our side will have to win over if we wish to have a voice on the national scene. Our task is tremendous but hopefully not impossible.
