Christian Taliban
I was driving in Chester County Pennsylvania this weekend, on a wild goose chase to my friend JC’s house, thanks to the combined clusterfuck of Google maps’ bad directions and JC’s ambiguous landmarks. “Turn left at the Burger King. Or wait, is it a McDonalds? Anyway, there’s a fast food place and a strip mall, right by the Baltimore Pike.” Gee, ya don’t say? The whole area is a strip mall.
I was in Chester because JC and I were going to the 78th Annual Old Fiddlers Picnic in Coatesville PA, and while the directions were frustratingly vague, the countryside was beautiful. I passed the Franklin Mint on Route One, you know, the company that makes all those cheesy plates and figurines that “may” accrue in value but probably not.
The lone wolf: symbol of independence, the loner. The Indians called it “Sasquatch”. Now, you can own the spirit of the wolf in this delightful commemorative plate.
The building itself sits on top of a hill, across from one of Wawa’s corporate offices (which itself looks like a mansion). As you pass by the campus, the words “FRANKLIN MINT”, in the exact same font used by the the US Mint, sit along the highway embankment. Each letter has got to be as tall as I am. Route 1 winds through several Revolutionary War battlefields, including Chadd’s Ford and Brandywine.
Taking the exit for 796 (N. Jennersville Road) I passed by the remains of Sunset Park, so completely wiped out by a strip mall, that even when I was looking for the site on my way home, I passed right by without even a clue. Past the strip mall, this corner of Pennsylvania gives way to farms and rolling countryside. Twice I nearly got caught behind Amish farmers driving buggies on main roads. It was surreal.
As I passed by a shopping plaza, I found myself behind a green Subaru Outback, with a Jesus-fish on the bumper and a decal reading “Truth Not Tolerance” on the rear windshield, and I had a good chuckle.
If the reason we’re fighting a “global war on terror” against the Islamic radicals (and we are not, despite rhetoric to the contrary) is “[in] the long term, to defeat this ideology — and they’re bound by an ideology — you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom”, and your supporters are driving around with bumper stickers that espouse “Truth not Tolerance”, you have already lost.
“Truth Not Tolerance” is the same ideology that drives the Taliban and that drives the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia. “Truth Not Tolerance” says it’s OK to imprison or kill people who see things differently than you do.
A Christian and I had a discussion about this, in an email about George Clooney.
My friend wrote:
I still say that more is done through Hollywood that serves to unravel norms that prevent AIDS than all of their “talk” helps AIDS.
I responded, “What are “norms”? I think my “norm” is a lot different that your “norm”.
I am writing specifically about “tolerance” through a religious lens, excluding secular law. There is no parallel to be drawn between tolerance for others’ religious beliefs or behavior that takes place between consenting adults that harms no one(which is where so much of the right-wing religious antagonism to the concept of tolerance has its roots), and tolerance for pedophilia.
Truth not Tolerance. In Delaware, a Jewish family was driven from their home for objecting to overtly Christian prayers in the public school district.
Truth not Tolerance is the Fred Phelps brigade picketing military funerals because the US military’s “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy isn’t homophobic enough.
Truth not Tolerance is hanging gay teenagers in Iran.
Congratulations, right-wing fundamentalist Christianity: if you drove around in white Toyota pickups toting Kalashnikovs, you’d be indistinguishable from Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden, and their raggedy pals in Afghanistan.
October 17th, 2006 at 1:35 am
So Clooney is thinking about running for office? I know he’s pretty politically active, but with his party past I can’t see him going far.