Nuke &#8216;em for Christ
<p>Pat Robertson, the same paragon of Christian virtue who has opined<br />
in the past that Wiccans like me should be burned alive the way they<br />
used to in the good old days, just created an interesting dilemma for<br />
me by suggesting that the <a href='http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&#038;cid=1521&#038;u=/afp/20031009/pl_afp/us_diplomacy_threat_031009192152&#038;printer=1'>State<br />
Department should be nuked</a>.</p>
<p>As a pagan anarchist, I&#8217;m completely uninterested in being<br />
considered a paragon of Christian virtue.  So I can admit to feeling a<br />
sneaking sympathy with Robertson&#8217;s modest proposal.  I mean, it<br />
wouldn&#8217;t just be nuking the government, it would be nuking one of the<br />
more repulsive parts of same.  The BATF and DEA are certainly a<br />
greater threat to liberty and happiness, but watching the Foggy Bottom<br />
crowd compete to see who can pander most abjectly to &#8220;international<br />
opinion&#8221; and a succession of enemies from the old Soviet Union to the<br />
France of today has been pretty nauseating.</p>
<p>But no.  I have my own standards of virtue, and they don&#8217;t quite<br />
stretch to vaporizing Foggy Bottom.  Innocents (that is, persons who<br />
are not causally implicated in the government&#8217;s normal practices of<br />
coercion and fraud) could be harmed.  Cleaning staff, visiting<br />
children, that sort of thing.  Shocking bad form to whack them, don&#8217;t<br />
you know.</p>
<p>Now.  Seriously.  I&#8217;ve taken some flak in the past for implying that<br />
Christianity is just as vile and violence-prone a religion as Islam.<br />
Pat Robertson has made this point for me before and doubtless will again.<br />
Because, like Osama bin Laden, he <em>really believes</em>.  He pays<br />
attention to all the bits of the Bible and doctrine and history that<br />
most so-called &lsquo;Christians&rsquo; edit out &mdash; a maneuver that<br />
makes them better human beings, but worse Christians.</p>
<p>Christianity is sold as a &#8220;religion of love&#8221; but that is just as<br />
bogus as calling Islam a &#8220;religion of peace&#8221;.  What is far more<br />
important and fundamental to both is eschatological dualism, which<br />
Islam inherited through Mohammed&#8217;s roots in Monophysite Christianity.<br />
(What?  You didn&#8217;t know that Islam started life as a mildly schismatic<br />
Christian sect?  Yes, it&#8217;s true.)</p>
<p>&#8220;Eschatological dualism&#8221; is fancy theologist-speak for the belief<br />
that history consists of a titanic struggle between God and the Devil,<br />
which will culminate at the end of time with a great sorting out &mdash; godly<br />
obedient people to Heaven, sinners to Hell.  Eschatological dualism<br />
is the root of the &#8220;Kill them all, God will know his own&#8221; attitude that<br />
has always been rather more characteristic of both religions than &#8220;peace&#8221;<br />
or &#8220;love&#8221;.  Pat and Osama, brothers under the skin, are squarely in that<br />
grand old tradition.</p>
<p>Christianity, fortunately for all of us, has become quite decadent<br />
and weak these last 400 years or so &mdash; Robertson merely dreams of<br />
smiting the Devil&#8217;s minions with Godly fire, rather than actually<br />
incinerating 3000 people on a fine autumn morning.  But it may take<br />
another 400 before Christianity withers away sufficiently that my<br />
descendants need not fear being burned at the stake by a charismatic<br />
looney-tune like Robertson.  Islam, 600 years younger, will probably<br />
remain deadly for rather longer.</p>
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