Sorry, but I just can't say I hated Jerry Falwell.

[tjwash]

I’ve thought about Falwell for 24 hours now without comment.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I didn’t hate him. I know. That’s not very progressive or liberal of me to not respond to an “enemy” that just died with all the seething hatred and vitriol that I can possibly muster. Besides; the truth of the matter, is that I just did not know enough about him as a person to be able to pass a judgment like that on him.

There is always the question of why SHOULDN’T I hate Jerry Falwell? I mean, if you were to go by what he said over his lifetime, it’s very clear that he hated a lot of people. He was for apartheid in South Africa. He publicly stated that people with AIDS deserved what they got and brought in on themselves. He blamed one of the worst attacks on U.S. soil on people that he didn’t agree with.

Just a small sampling of what he said during his lifetime speaks volumes:

"We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself." -- Jerry Falwell

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters." -- Jerry Falwell

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc." -- Jerry Falwell

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." -- Jerry Falwell

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being-- Jerry Falwell."

“It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”-- Jerry Falwell

“There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.” -- Jerry Falwell

“The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.” -- Jerry Falwell

To me these are the delusional rantings of a sad, sorry, bitter person. The type of person you see standing alone on the street shouting angry slogans to passing cars with a bullhorn that no one listens to or takes seriously. However, he had the money and the backing to get his message out, and that’s why his death is such an issue.

One down, 41,230,258 to go.

You see, it’s not Falwell that I hated. It’s what he stood for that disgusted me to no end. Jerry Falwell stood for the complete bastardization of the message that Christ conveyed two thousand years ago.

Falwell managed to completely and successfully twist Jesus’ message of love over hate; peace over war, and tolerance over hatred. He sold people a bill of goods that Jesus and his true followers want to have us in a never ending war, think Napalm and Cluster bombs are in the bible, and want to take away a woman’s right to over their own bodies. He conned people into thinking that Jesus wants forced prayer in school, intelligent design taught over science, and that torturing people inquisition style is what every good Christian should strive for.

But…if you think this is something new that just came about recently in our country through Jerry Falwell, you have not been reading your history books. Jerry Falwell is dead, but that hatred; that intolerance…lives on. It was alive and healthy long before he was born. It brought us the crusades, the inquisition, the roasting alive of witches in Salem, and the torture of human beings at Abu-Ghraib. It will be alive and healthy long after the Robertsons, the Coulters, or any of the other endless supply of hate merchants that our country produces have long since passed from this earth.

The mark of true civilization is a continual desire to improve and advance. A civilization can't innovate and progress for a few hundred years and then stop and ride those successes for the rest of eternity. Jerry Falwell’s inevitable passing just brings to the forefront how far we as a people really have yet to go. It makes us all think just how very few strides we as a society, a culture, and a people really have made. It lays our own hatred of those that we disagree with right in front of us, and sometimes we just can’t stand that.

So that’s why I can’t say that I hated Jerry Falwell.

And that’s all I really have to say on the matter.

[William769]

1. The end justifies the means.

[BurtWorm]

2. Sorry's not good enough.

:crazy:

[A-Schwarzenegger]

3. Shame on you.

Stop making sense.

[sutz12]

4. Sorry, but I just can't say I hated Jerry Falwell.......enough. nt

[Breeze54]

5. lol!

;)

[Az]

6. You did not know Jerry Falwell

You never met the man. Even those words you read are not truly the man. Those are just part of what his representation in the media covered. And that is not truly knowing a man.

To hate a man you have to really get to know him. And none of us here knew him.

But we did know the things that were championed about him by others. We are very aware of the differences his words have made and the power he seemed to hold. And it is those things that we hate. It is those things that we know.

We hate the effect they had on our society. We hate the effect it had on individuals. We hate the suffering such ideas caused.

We also hate our own weakness. We hate that ideas Falwell aligned himself with could reach so many people while we have to struggle to reach so few. We hate that money seems to be able to win minds and hearts where impassioned reasoning fails. We hate our own limits as they are reflected in the success of those we oppose.

None of us can truly say we hated Jerry Falwell for none of us truly knew the man. I will be glad that the influence associated with his ideas will begin to fade. But for the man I hold no umbrage as I never met the man.

I never met a man I didn't like. - Will Rogers

[Breeze54]

8. Speak for yourself. I hate his guts.

He was a pig of major proportions! (No pun intended but I'll take it!) ;)

[sutz12]

9. You're right...I never 'knew' him...but I never know Hitler either, or Attila the Hun.

Never wanted to. From his public persona, I had absolutely (and I mean absolutely) no desire to meet him, or 'get to know' him, or anything of the sort. I don't want to have a beer with him, or a cup of coffee with him, or whatever. I don't want to walk in the garden with him. My life is and will be just fine for my having never been in the same room with that person.

When someone spouts that much hate for that long, yeah, I hate him.

[enki23]

11. that's silly, az

i have no problem hating the bastard. to say you hate someone carries the inescapable assumption that you hate what you know of them. that does not, in any way, mean we aren't perfectly able, and justified, to hate him. it is reasonable to believe there could not be sufficient information about him that would redeem him in my eyes, given the magnitude of the wrongs i know he has committed. if you want to be anal about it, you could instead say the probably of sufficient redeeming information would be very, very low. he probably didn't kick his dog. so what?

then again, maybe he did.

[FiveGoodMen]

7. Don't worry. I hate him enough for both of us.

[MadHound]

10. If Falwell had confined his hate and evilness to the realm of religion

I would be a lot less celebratory about his death. However he didn't, he forced his brand of hatred and evil into the political realm, and brought his deluded followers with him.

Falwell and his followers were the deciding factor in bringing Reagan into power and keeping him there. He was important in both the victory and defeat of Bush the elder. And again, Falwell and his much expanded following of RW fundies were the determinant force in putting Bushboy into power and retaining him there.

We have all suffered from this toxic mixture of politics and rabid fundementalist religion. It has harmed our society to such an extent that we may never recover. We are well on the way to a theocracy, all thanks to Falwell. The man was the antithesis of Christianity, he was filled with nothing but hatred and evil. And much like my parents celebrated the passing of those other people, Hitler and Mussolini, who were filled with hatred and evil, I will celebrate the passing of Falwell.

The world is a better place today than it was last week, for a great evil has passed from this world. Let us rejoice in this passing.:toast:

[Balbus]

12. Freeper! Troll! Fundie!

I hate you!