| | Mr. Knapp, editor of the posts on the libertarian news site Freedom News Daily, has chewed up many electrons here disputing the negative opinions some of us have about anarcho-libertarians. And yet he keeps providing us with more footnotes, such as posting this outrageous "moral equivalency" quotation.
I am an atheist. I know the dangers of blind faith. But I am also fair and honest enough to discriminate between individuals who mistakenly ground their otherwise decent lives by reference to religious concepts, and individuals who appropriate religious concepts as excuses for sociopathic butchery.
Many, many millions of religious people don't believe it is moral to deliberately target innocent civilians for mass murder. They don't believe in commandeering civilian airliners, slashing the throats of flight attendants, then flying them into civilian office buildings -- or cheering those who do. They don't believe in planting bombs in cars and setting them off in civilian marketplaces, hoping to maximize casualties among innocent shoppers and their children. They don't believe in deliberately targeting Olympic athletes, kids dancing in discos, cruise ship passengers, school buses loaded with children or liberated people in Baghdad lining up to vote for the first time. They don't believe in kidnapping civilians, forcing them to read extorted videotaped "confessions," then sawing off their heads with butcher knives. They don't believe in conducting a global war of extermination, which they call jihad, against all competing religious groups.
Millions of religious people don't find any of this sort of thing to be either rational or moral. In fact, they are morally outraged by it, and are willing to use force -- including joining the military, and risking their own necks -- to stop the butchers.
President Bush is among them.
But apparently Mr. Knapp and some of his anarcho-ilk find such differences between the supporters of President Bush and Osama bin Laden to be intellectually petty and morally irrelevant.
It is equally apparent that it is Bush and American people, not Osama and his terrorists, who are the target of Knapp's unconscionable smear.
Ask yourself who is truly farthest removed from reality and morality: the vast majority of decent and reasonable people, like President Bush, who also happen to be religious -- or Mr. Knapp, whose anarcho-epistemology can't help him distinguish between a church-goer and a car bomber.
P. S. [added as an edit]: It just occurred to me that Mr. Knapp may reply that he is just innocently putting up this quotation without comment, for our consideration, and not necessarily endorsing its content. Let me pre-emptively deal with that possibility by inviting you to click here, and draw your own conclusions.
(Edited by Robert Bidinotto on 5/01, 6:50am)
|
|