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“Here’s a bold prediction: Evangelicals will present few if any obstacles for the Democrats in next year’s presidential race, but may prove problematic for the Republican nominee.”

“Lately it has come to my attention that I have been swiftboated by a gang of lowly sinners who march under the banner of the Christian Right. They have obfuscated my teachings and associated my name with the terrible sins of war profiteering, torture, and the dropping of bombs on innocents and children.”

Melanie alerts me to DOD transcript Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz remarks at Georgetown University (October 30, 2003) —

Q: Hi, Mr. Wolfowitz. My name is Ruthy Coffman. I think I speak for many of us here when I say that your policies are deplorable. They’re responsible for the deaths of innocents and the disintegration of American civil liberties.

We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us. We are simply tired of your policies. We hate them, and we will never stop opposing them. We will never tire or falter in our search for justice. And in the name of this ideal and the ideal of freedom, we assembled a message for you that was taken away from us and that message says that the killing of innocents is not the solution, but rather the problem. Thank you. [Applause and jeers]

I’m with you, Ruthy. A compassionate, courageous, and reasonable message — one I note is entirely consonant with Jesus’ teaching, which can hardly be said for the Christian Right’s pro-war cheerleading — forcibly told to Mr. Wolfowitz. To which he immediately replies:

Wolfowitz: I have to infer from that that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power. [Applause] …

What an unfounded inference that is. I therefore have to infer that Mr. Wolfowitz is a sinister abuser of logic. (I can logically insert the adjective sinister because Wolfowitz’ neoconservative logic has led directly to thousands upon thousands of deaths.)

The magic continues —

Q: I’d just like to say that people like Ruthy and myself have always opposed Saddam Hussein, especially when Saddam Hussein was being funded by the United States throughout the ’80s. And after the killings of the Kurds when the United States increased aid to Iraq. We were there opposing him as well. People like us were there. We are for democracy. …

Wolfowitz: I don’t know if it was just Freudian or you intended to say it that way, but you said you opposed Saddam Hussein especially when the United States supported him.

It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies.

Of course, to any thinking person the “north star of the comment” is specifically and only that the questioners dislike this country’s policies — that’s what they said. There is no basis for Wolfowitz to insert “that you dislike this country”; he’s being belligerent and intellectually dishonest.

Noteworthy Kos commentary that speaks for me:

[Proposed question: Mr. Wolfowitz,] how can you be so despicable to say that I would be “happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power” simply because I oppose your disastrous pre-emptive war which has made the world so much more dangerous for us all? (Major6th)

I’ve rarely seen so many logical fallacies rolled into two comments. Let’s see: straw man, ad hominem, non-sequitur … (Jonathan)

The widespread use of fallacious reasoning by individuals in the administration (such as Wolfowitz) … points to an alarming trend. It is almost as if these individuals, who are probably bright and certainly have mastered principles of rhetoric — including use of common fallacies — have decided that the public will swallow any sequence of statements which sounds like an argument. (CSTAR)

“Then you would be happier with Saddam” is … an appeal to the pre-analytical, the stupid, the emotional, the fearful. It is emblematic of this administration’s systematic impoverishment of political discourse. (C S McCrum)

Yes, this administration’s systematic impoverishment of political discourse is something I will never tolerate and cannot forgive. If we accept this low level of discourse in which coherent thinking is displaced by black-and-white, reactionary nonsense, then why do we bother educating ourselves to think at all? PhD, my ass.

2003-11-05 update: On a related note — that is, on the conservative right-wing tendency to use fallacious reasoning — Atrios skillfully and amusingly pinpoints “four tools in the arsenal of wingnut arguing” [via Body and Soul].

I’ve mentioned my fondness for the progressive Christian writings of Rev. Allen Brill at The Right Christians, The Preacher at Real Live Preacher, and Fr. Bojangles at Le Prêtre Noir.

Now a new delight beckons: Melanie is now writing at Daily Kos, starting with today’s Liberalism and Religion (wherein, BTW, she references each of the above writers) —

Secular liberals, you need to get a clue: there are lots of deeply religious people out here who reliably pull the lever in the voting booth for the straight D[emocratic] ticket. We are Christian evangelicals and Main Line Protestants and Catholics like me, from the Dorothy Day-Peter Maurin-Oscar Romero wing of the Church. We are Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Jains, pagans, Hindus and, yes, by God, there are even Zoroastrian Democrats in this country. When you make light of religion, you wound a part of us which is very important to us. …

Fundamentalism, be it Christian or Islamic, is only one faction of these faiths, which are not monoliths. Every one of the world’s great faith traditions is an umbrella which covers wide and various theologies and practices. … It is too easy to tar all of Christianity with the broad brush of condemnation of the George Bushes, the Pat Robertsons, the William Boykins. Yes, they own one piece of the large tent which is Christianity, they are not one that I can justify in any way.

Like Melanie, I am also a layperson with a master’s degree in Christian theology. And I have in the past dreamed of being “a spiritual director, retreat director and writer.” But I am still too bogged down in disappointment and anger to write well — or at all.

Melanie causes me to remember that what I’m doing is letting the Christian Right’s fundamentalism (and its embrace of a corrupt U.S. administration) cast a shadow of darkness over my whole experience of the faith. Which isn’t even slightly reasonable.

I hope to be better one day. I expect that my renewed attention to reading these folks will hasten that day for me. Check them out. Thanks, Melanie.

(I also recommend Kynn’s Shock & Awe; I often agree and I always appreciate his style. And I can hardly get enough of Jeanne at Body and Soul. My not-quite-up-to-date blogroll contains dozens of others on my Top 5 list. :-) )

2003-12-05 update:
Melanie now has her own blog, Just a Bump in the Beltway.

Lovely paragraph from Allen at The Right Christians (“It is time for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians”), drawn from an entry in which he muses — with compassion — on the plight of Christian hawk bloggers as they deal with uncertainty and disillusionment in the face of George W. Bush’s claim that he’d “restore honor, dignity and integrity to the White House”:

The Plame Affair reveals the very heart of this administration. While they have claimed to put the security of the nation above all else, even to the point of dragging us into a war with little international support, it is now becoming clearer day by day that the national security is far less important to them than their own political power. Honor, dignity and integrity have vanished like so much mist. Some of us knew it was a mirage all along.

For a brief time many months ago I was sensitive to the eventual, inevitable disillusionment that would befall my pro-Bush-pro-war-at-any-cost friends and acquaintances — especially the ones who are Christian — and I felt compassion for them. Falling headlong into betrayal and disillusionment brings pain I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But gradually my compassion all leaked away and I was swept into my own quagmire of anger, disappointment, and disengagement.

Lesson for me: Don’t underestimate the power of darkness. It can take us directly, as in leading us to believe things that aren’t true, as thoughtful ones in the Christian Right are discovering about this administration. And it can take us indirectly, as in causing us to give up altogether on those taken directly and to drop out entirely. Either approach severely inhibits us from our goal of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I hope I’m learning and growing from this. Actually I hope a lot of us are. What if Bush really does unite us in the end? (That is, unite us in a great revulsion that motivates us, together, to stop his team’s destruction of our country.) I’d call that plot twist a miraculous, supernatural redeeming, a true deliverance.

Meanwhile, though, I admit that my patience with — and forgiveness toward — people still in denial still leaves a hell of a lot to be desired.

Thanks, Allen.