Mark Steyn; In praise of ‘Jesusland’

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 12/18/04 | Mark Steyn

[wildbill]

There is something...obscene...about those cards.

[Rummyfan]

Thanks Pokey! So much in there I think excerpting would be wasted.

He's Back!

A Mark Steyn Bump-to-the-Top!!!!

[Jack Black]

I bet a lot of abortion supporters would say "Yes". Sad, but I think a lot of it is self hate.

[valkyrieanne]

Mark Steyn is half-right and half-wrong. He's right to point out that Mary would have been sanctioned for bearing *someone else's child* other than Joseph's. Too many people turn this aspect of the Gospel into a sermon about unwed mothers, which Mary definitely was *not.*

However, the Jews under Roman occupation weren't stoning anyone, as the Romans forbade them to capitally punish anyone on their own. Capital offenses had to go through the Roman courts, and it's doubtful that the Romans would have recognized Jewish adultery as a crime. (There were two kinds of marriages in imperial Rome - those sealed by the Roman courts, and common law marriages, i.e. everything else. Jews didn't go before the Roman courts to marry.)

Had Joseph exercised his rights under Jewish custom, Mary would have indeed had a terrible life - banished from her family and community; probably forced into a life of prostitution or worse. But not put to death by stoning.

[valkyrieanne]

Steyn:And, while the thought of joining their own shrivelled redoubts in a grand union with the biggest ‘blue state’ of all evidently cheers them up, they may be overestimating the blueness of the Great White North: large chunks of Alberta and the British Columbia hinterland would be happy to sign up with the Bible-thumpers, if only for the non-confiscatory tax rates. So Jesusland could well be even larger than its disparagers suggest.

Can we have them as states? Can we? Can we? Especially the parts with the sand tar oil pits? We could also use four more Republican senators and 4-6 more Republican Congressmen.

[Max Combined]

Great column. Thanks for the ping, Pokey.

[TexasCowboy]

"I love Mark, even though he abandoned our cause up here."

There is a highway running south.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[VadeRetro]

I here these overtures from the evolutionists on this forum.

Let us hope you hear them as well as here them. Creationists are an embarrassment to conservatism precisely because they are evidence that the knuckle-draggin' gap-toothed slope-browed mean and dumb stereotypes are true. Worse, creationism seeks to hijack conservatism into an absolutely unwinnable war against the universe, its workings and history, and all the vast evidence related thereto. Sane conservatives must not allow this to happen.

I never cringe more than when Steyn rails at evolutionist and militant atheist Dawkins. I'm embarrassed for both of them. Steyn tends to be right on the money in matters of culture and politics but apparently, from a few things he's said, has been misled on science. Dawkins is his perfect inverse, a fine grasp of science but out of his depth in a mud puddle at much of anything else. Each should stick to his area of competence, but free speech means freedom to be not only wrong but loudly wrong.

[Diamond]

However, the Jews under Roman occupation weren't stoning anyone, as the Romans forbade them to capitally punish anyone on their own

Yet there are instances in the Gospels where they indeed take up stones to kill. I recall one instance, against Jesus Himself, and another against the woman caught in adultery. You're right that it was not officially sanctioned, but I doubt whether the Romans really cared very much if a Jewish person happened to be unoffically offed in such a way.

Cordially,

[Ashamed Canadian]

One day, maybe I'll be heading down on it to escape this lunacy.

[Gritty]

The incomparible Steyn. So many quotable lines, so little time!

[Diamond]

Creationists are an embarrassment to conservatism precisely because they are evidence that the knuckle-draggin' gap-toothed slope-browed mean and dumb stereotypes are true.

I beg your pardon(?)

Cordially,

[aculeus]

Pace Timothy Garton Ash, you can’t defend the Enlightenment if you’re too enlightened to breed.

[xzins]

This is almost a review of western civilization at the beginning of the 21st century.

It is insightful, brilliant, helpful. It might be Steyn's best ever, and he's had some really good ones in the past.

[Tares]

Europeans need to ally with blue staters and Canadians and so forth and draw a cordon bleu, as John Kerry would say,...

What a wordsmith!

Thanks for the ping Pokey.

[VadeRetro]

I beg your pardon(?)

There is no argument for creationism (excluding theistic evolution) which does not reflect badly upon the person making it by implying ignorance, stupidity, dishonesty, insanity, or some combination of the preceding. Then there's the way the same militant posters show up trolling for suckers with those same bad pennies upon thread after thread, feigning amnesia and forcing people to drag them kicking and screaming through the refutations to their arguments again and again and again and again and again.

Within the delusional system of the creationist, all this is OK. It's a Holy War. One is allowed to act badly in a war. It's very liberating, saving the world from the evil dumb people. The delusional system itself is bullet-proof. All the evidence against it is enemy action of some sort. There's no reason ever not to soldier on.

From outside, though, for those who have not drunk the Kook-Aid, it looks bad. The country will never go along with this. The Holy Warriors attempting one school board takeover after another around the country threaten to become the shackle that grinds conservatism to a halt by forcing everyone who doesn't think Duane Gish is a scientist to relabel himself as a "progressive."

[Prysson]

Steyn is by far my favorite columnist...cant wait until he picks back up his spt on the Hugh Hewitt show..

[Catholic and Conservative]

Excellent essay, but I have one quibble: in the 70's environmentalists were warning about global cooling, not global warning.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/661876/posts

[alwaysconservative]

But, if the world’s media want to conjure visions of stump-toothed backwoods knuckle-draggers stomping out of the Jesusland multiplex firing off verses from Leviticus as they demand a full refund, why get in the way of their illusions?

Oh, I adore this man! What richness of thought and imagery! And thank you so much for the ping, Pokey! Not only is Steyn a political genius, he is pretty darned clear-eyed on the issue of faith in this country.