No silence for the late Jerry Falwell

[Zenlitened]

A letter to the Boston Globe that makes very important points, IMO.

No silence for the late Jerry Falwell

May 24, 2007

IN HIS defense of the late Reverend Jerry Falwell (Letters, May 21), Richard Smith makes two statements that must not go unchallenged.

First, he attributes to "liberals" (of which he counts himself as one) the sentiment that "we respect all points of view." To "respect" the bigotry and ignorance that Falwell promoted as points of view is to abdicate judgment and morality.

Second, Smith writes, "To demean a man for his religious beliefs is reprehensible." Do otherwise idiotic and anti-human ideas command respect because their origin is religious? The religious sincerity of suicide bombers who murder the innocent in expectation of a heavenly reward seems beyond question. Are we forbidden to demean such so-called martyrs by denouncing the madness of their beliefs?

The First Amendment protects even dangerous nonsense because no one, particularly not the state, may be trusted to censor what the rest of us may hear. Once ideas are expressed, however, it is the duty of each of us, liberal or otherwise, to speak out against those that are the most toxic and irrational. If doing so involves speaking ill of the dead or criticizing religion, these are minor breaches of etiquette compared to the immorality of keeping silent.

JOEL Z. EIGERMAN
Cambridge

Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2007/05/24/no_silence_for_the_late_jerry_falwell/

[William769]

1. I'll make one very important point

The prick is still dead, and America is still better off because of his death.

[uberllama42]

2. I'm one of the frustrated atheists

still trying to figure out why religion gets a free pass. People can say anything they want, no matter how bigoted, ignorant, or intentionally false as long as they couch it in religious language. In the majority of cases, no one questions it out of respect for religious diversity.

What if Hitler had used God as an excuse to commit the Holocaust? "God told me to execute 12 million people" is no more unbelievable than "God says you can't have romantic feelings for members of your sex" or "God told me Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark." Some supposed reference in arcane scripture or some dubious meeting with a sky-being is no justification for anything. I think rational adults have a responsibility to call "bullshit" when people start trotting out this kind of rhetoric.

[camero]

3. Actually, I think he did

He used god and terrorism in alot of his speeches. I agree that rational people should call BS to this kind of rhetoric.

[uberllama42]

4. You're right

I should have said that Hitler could have been a lot louder about it. Every once in a while the Nazi government threw in some religious terminology to support themselves. More often their justifications were constructed on lies about the nature of genetics and bad ethics read into the writings of Charles Darwin. There's another important lesson there- if you really want to, you can take anything out of context and misconstrue its meaning.

Take Nietzsche, for example. The Nazis pulled aphorisms about der ubermensh the reversal of slave ethics from his writings and used it to prop up their hate-speech. They completely ignored everything he wrote about the virtue and intelligence of the Jews, the stupidity and servility of nationalism, and the baseness and degenerate nature of his fellow Germans.

[shenmue]

5. Hooray Joel!

Good for you, sir! :applause:

:patriot: