By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – October 03, 2007
On Sept. 6, 2007 the Republican shock jock Ann coulter gave
an invited (!) speech at Xavier University in Cincinnati. (One wonders
what St. Francis Xavier, after whom the University is named, one of the
founders of the Society of Jesus --- the Jesuits --- would have thought of her,
but we will leave that one for another day.) Among other things.
(courtesy of People for the American Way, Sept. 11, 2007) Ann had this to say
(http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070911/COL05/709110333/1009/EDIT
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS01/709070366
http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS01/709070412/-1/CINCI):
"Liberals don't recognize the existence of evil, the
closest thing to it in their vocabulary is Wal-Mart."
"The fact that liberals are godless is not even a
controversial point anymore."
Democrats, she said, "believe public restrooms are only
for snorting coke."
Terrorists, Coulter said, "are Democrats with more
gumption."
Now Ann often complains that she is misunderstood, she is
only kidding, she is exaggerating to make a point, she is not really mean,
nasty, demonizing, a pro-creator of a future hate-based American fascism
designed to maintain the Republican Party in permanent power. Reading the
above, many people simply say “Tsk, tsk, how could she do such a
thing?” But so many who say that are just reading Ann quickly and
jumping to conclusions, namely that she is a far-right wing hateful,
rage-filled provocateur who revels in her tasks.
Let’s for once carefully consider what Ann is saying before
condemning her. Let’s try to really understand what she is saying.
For example, from the above list let’s consider carefully her comparisons
between “terrorists” and a particular political party. Is it fair to do
that? Does it help move the political process forward? One’s first
impulse is to answer both questions “no.” But perhaps that is
unfair. Perhaps making such a comparison does move the political process
forward. Just consider the following.
1. On
foreign policy, Democrats advocate multi-lateralism and talking first, and even
second, shooting only as a last resort. Terrorists, to the extent that we
see them in action, shoot first and never talk.
2. Democrats
are concerned about environmental sustainability and reversing global warming
and detrimental climate change. Terrorists couldn’t care less about such
issues.
3. Democrats
are concerned about the preservation of individual liberties and personal
freedoms, which, citing the US Declaration of Independence, they regard as
natural rights. For terrorists, nothing like those concerns stand in the
way of their drive to achieve their stated goals.
4. Democrats
advocate adherence to the Rule of Law. Terrorists don’t, arguing that the
achievement of their stated goals overrides any such commitments, because they
are RIGHT.
5. The
current brand of Islamic terrorists advocates the imposition of Koranic Sharia
Law on everyone. It, for example, criminalizes all beliefs about when
life begins other than the one that holds that it begins at the moment of
conception. This category of terrorists holds that the church IS the
state, like, for example, Christian Dominionists and the Texas Republican
Party. Democrats advocate maintaining the Constitutionally mandated
separation of church and state.
6. Democrats
are supporters of guaranteeing due process of law to all persons
within the ambit of the US government.
Terrorists couldn’t care less about due process.
7. Democrats
(at least some of them) advocate gun control. Terrorists don’t.
8. Democrats
advocate dealing with terrorism by developing policies and programs that
actually focus on the problem, not engaging in actions that promote terrorism
and create more terrorists. Obviously, terrorists hate the first set of
polices and programs and love the second.
And so, let’s see where Ann Coulter’s process of comparing a
US political party to terrorists has taken us. Let’s see if her exercise
is merely hate-promoting or perhaps contains the seeds of a useful
exercise. Now, by a careful review of Democratic policies and those of
the current common garden variety terrorists, we can see that they actually
have nothing in common. In fact, they are totally opposed to each
other. On the other hand, there is much in common between the terrorists’
actual policies and programs and a different American political party.
Thus we discover that the analysis Ann made is a most valuable one. There
are many fits between the policies and programs of the major contemporary
terrorist groups and one of the two major American political parties.
Instead of condemning her and her brand of vitriol out-of-hand, we must thank
Ann Coulter for making us think carefully about what she said. After all,
all she got wrong was the name of the Party that fits her definition of
“terrorists with less gumption.”
Of course, while this is funny (I hope) and at least making
fun of Ann, she herself ain’t funny at all. She is in fact very dangerous
in that she represents the coming face of the Republican Party. Consider
her recent book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (reflected in the quote
above). In typical Coulter style, it is filled with rage. In fact a
discussion of Ann Coulter's rage became all the rage on the Left when the book
came out. Even Hillary Clinton (hardly on the Left of anything) went after her
for the remarks she made about those 9/11 widows who have become strong critics
of the Georgites on a variety of fronts. But those remarks, intentionally
in my view, distract from the book's central message: “Liberals” (undefined)
are not like US, they are demons, they are untermenschen (sound familiar), they
are, as Mark Levin a New York Right-Wing ABC Screamer who often sounds as if he
were doing a self-parody, cockroaches who need to be squashed underfoot.
In a previous book Coulter defined “liberals” as
traitors. In our country, the penalty for treason is death. Coulter
is wildly popular in the Republican Party. Perhaps the worst thing about
her remark some months ago at a Republican gathering in South Carolina that
John Edwards is gay is that it was greeted with thunderous applause and gales
of laughter from the assembled throng. For the "goddish" of the
Coulter variety one deals with the “godless” by force. If Coulter has her way,
the "traitorous" and "godless" "liberals"
(whoever they are) would be going perhaps to the camps, going perhaps before
the firing squads, perhaps becoming the targets of Death Squads (as advocated
by the video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” developed from Tim LaHaye’s
best-selling “Left Behind” series, that came to a store near you last October
just in time for Christmas), perhaps burning to death at the stake, which is
what militant Christian Churches of a variety of stripes did to such persons
who didn’t express their “goddishness” in quite the right way over a period of
hundreds of years into the 17th century.
As she has said, "Although my Christianity is somewhat
more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write."
Whatever else it is or is not, Coulter's version of Christianity is surely
militant and doesn’t seem to have too much Christ in it. As for foreign policy,
remember when about the Muslim world she said: "We should invade their
countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" (although
given her version of Christianity one wonders why anyone would want to
convert)? As for domestic policy and how her version of
"Christianity" informs it, just consider the following quote:
"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion
over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth,
be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job:
drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big
gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the
Biblical view."
The face of Ann Coulter is not funny. In no more than a few
years, even perhaps by 2008 at the rate Giuliani is going, all of the
Republican veneer will be gone, with Coulterian rage, total intolerance of
difference, rampant corporatism at center stage, and demonization of any
opposition at the center of the message. The message will clearly be backed up
by policy. And force, it is clear, is to be used against any and all
opposition. At least the target for those of us Americans who believe in
Constitutional Democracy will be clear and clearly out in the open. It remains
to be seen whether the leadership of the Democratic Party will be able to bring
themselves to fire at it.
This column is based in part on a Commentary, “Ann Coulter:
The New Face of the Republican Party,” that appeared on BuzzFlash on June 19,
2006, http://www.buzzflash.com/jonas/06/06/jon06008.htm.