roachboy

"the amoral left" ...interesting...i wonder where you got that particular parody of an understanding of those who oppose fundamentalist/evangelical protestant ideology **as a political force** (not as a belief system that anyone might, for whatever reason, choose to adopt).....

because you do, in fact, in your world, have a monopoly on what morality is, alansmithee?

if you do not believe that you, and only you (or those who believe in the same way you do) control the absolute definition of morality, then your claims make no sense.

in my youth, i had a pentacostalist period--during it i learned many things--lilke that in many of these types of churches there is no distinction between political and religious arguments, that group leaders and pastors sometimes abuse their positions of authority in this regard--but what is most relevant here is that the group i was part of was into its members making a show of their beliefs by wearing crosses and that kind of thing--the idea seemed to be to draw attention to oneself as believer--and to also draw rejection from others, which served as a kind of inverted confirmation of one's beliefs.
i dont see much of anything different going on here, with the hallucination of the "amoral left"--it may be a hallucination, but it is a structurally necessary one the existence of which operates to provide evangelicals/pentecostalists confirmation of their status precisely because through the workings of this hallucinated entity, these soldiers of chirst can draw a line that seperates the "good" themselves) from the "instruments of satan" (everyone else).

if any number of evangelicals/pentecostalist protestants (for the most part) choose as groups to beleive that everyone and everything that opposes them is inspired by some devil, then fine: you translate this into politics and it is a logic of extermination of those who oppose you.
if you want examples from the past, you have any number of brutal wars, from the crusades through the wars of religion, that might be instructive to think on.

it is because of the political correlates of these positions that i think most people oppose the contemporary american right, and particularly the religious component of it.

of course, pointing out the problem with translating this religious ideology into mass politics positions me as one of the "amoral left" in the simpleminded grid of the political landscape that alansmithee seems to imagine he is arguing for by repeating it many times....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite