HUGH HEWITT: debunking the religiophobic Left

HUGH FROM TODAY'S WEEKLY STANDARD:

THE TERRI SCHIAVO TRAGEDY has been seized on by long-time critics of the "religious right" to launch attack after attack on the legitimacy of political action on the basis of religious belief. This attack has ignored the inconvenient participation in the debate--on the side of resuming water and nutrition for Terri Schiavo--of the spectacularly not-the-religious-rightness of Tom Harkin, Nat Hentoff, Jesse Jackson, and a coalition of disability advocacy groups.

The attack has also been hysterical. After Congress acted--ineffectively, it turned out--Maureen Dowd proclaimed that "theocracy" had arrived in the land. Paul Krugman warned that assassination of liberals by extremists was not far off. And the Internet frenzy on the left was even more extreme.

HUGH FROM TODAY'S POSTING AT HUGH HEWITT.COM:

Tina Brown can always be counted on to try and catch up to the real opinion-leaders of the left by filing a cheap imitation, as she does today with "America's Endless News Loop." Here's her embedded slam at the praying folk:

"The current mania for any story with a religious angle is just the latest index of the post-election angst in executive suites about the terror of being out of touch with suburban mega-churches and other manifestations of the supposed Real America. God forbid, so to speak, that anyone should stand up and suggest that Mozart might be as worthwhile as NASCAR, or that it might be as important for the soul to read Philip Roth as the hokey bromides of 'The Purpose Driven Life.'"

I suppose if Ashley Smith had read Tina Brown to Brian Nichols, he might have turned his gun on himself. Tina's suggestion that those praying people head straight from church to the NASCAR race and never have heard of Mozart tells us that she hasn't been inside a church in a long long time, and her suggestion that Philip Roth is [a] way to earthly happiness and eternal salvation, well, that's one for the ages: "The Philip Roth-Driven Life." (Perhaps some music and worship pastors might send Ms. Brown their liturgies/orders of worship from this past weekend to educate her on how Mozart and his colleagues and Christian worship aren't exactly strangers.)

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RELIAPUNDIT ADDS: The Left thinks that if you believe in God you are (a) an irrational stupid wacko nut-job, and (b) that for all intents and purposes Jihadoterrorists and Evangelicals and Hasidim and devout Catholics (for example) are equal, and equally dangerous.

I ask you: IS THAT A RATIONAL BELIEF? IS IT ACCURATE OR TRUE? OR IS IT A FALSE BELIEF BASED ON A LOGICAL FALLACY ?

Of course, it is an irrational and illogical and false belief; it's clearly an example of CONFLATION.

HERE ARE THREE EXAMPLES OF FALSE ARGUMENTS OF THE LEFT (in which Hugh Hewitt shall subsitute for the rieligous right): (I) "Binladen is religious; Hugh Hewitt is religious; therefore Hugh Hewitt and Binladen are equivalent." (II) "Binladen is dangerous and religious; Hugh Hewitt is religious; therefore Hugh Hewitt is dangerous." (III) Binladen is a religious fanatic; religious fanatics are fundamentalists; fundamentalists are part of the religious right; Hugh Hewitt is part of the religious right; therefore Hugh Hewitt is a dangerous fanatic." The conclusions of each of these three arguments are ILLOGICAL and FALSE. Yet the Left believes and promulgates them all.

I have suggested in numerous postings that the Left commits this fallacy because (1) Leftism is foundationally and FUNDAMENTALLY "anti-traditional Western religion" in nature; and (2) because since the collapse of the USSR and "RED" China, the Left has been mired in the hateful throes of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Lashing out at the foundational beliefs of the winning side - THE RIGHT - is nothing more than the reflexive action of this cognitive dissonance. The people WHO REMAIN ON THE LEFT, (a strange breed), find it easier to be irrationally hateful toward the victorious Right, than to admit they were TOTALLY wrong about politics and economics. Most of these folks who remain on the Left will go to their graves believing that Reagan and George W Bush were evil men.