When I was a bit more than a lad, Ole Blue Eyes Sinatra used to croon a spectacular and special tune--- “I Fall in Love Too Easily…” Spectacular and special for me, that is, because it resonated with my most romantic, emotional, adolescent self. When I was 16, every beautiful starlet in the Saturday morning movie starred in my own fantasies as I played Gable or Robert Taylor to her inviting eyes. Or I was dumbstruck and gooey-eyed by the pretty girls at the Parish dances as they pranced around in saddle shoes to the latest Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller musical scores. Walter Mitty-like, I melted into the wall as I fell for every charming gal I met.
Perhaps, some of that adolescence has stuck to my recessed (not repressed) memory because every so often I, unbelievably, find myself enthralled with the various goddesses of my life. And I am eighty-five! They are, usually, thank heaven, unreachable lest I forget my age and become the drooling teenager I played so well. Last year, for example, as a guest on the Coast-to-Coast Television News Show, co-hosted by Ronnie Reagan Jr., (similar to his Dad, Ron, only in name) and by a gorgeous, blonde, intellectual, Monica Crowley, I forgot that I was 84. Before getting into the heavy stuff, I proposed to Monica!! On National television! I, a dinosaur, bald, Jewish-Irish Priest! I said: “Monica, if priests could get married and you were single, I’d propose to you.” Before the guffaws began, there was a wide mouthed incredulity. I could almost hear the dropping of loose dentures! Ronnie pursed his thin lips disapprovingly. But, Monica sent me a signed photograph accepting my proposal—were it possible! It hangs on my office wall where it proclaims to all visitors my sexual orientation--- were that ever to become necessary!
I have also been infatuated with Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingram and Michelle Malkin. They are all beautiful, intelligent, funny, articulate, and hold to the same values which I cherish and champion. They are, now, all officially registered in my GWW[1] which is a very select and elite society. I also notice that they all arouse a paralyzing fear in light weight talk show hosts, superficial standup comics, buffoons, pseudo-intellectuals and party hacks.
Of course, speaking of intellectual and powerfully articulate women leads me to the newest entry in GWW---- Ann Coulter! How does one describe Ann Coulter? That she is beautiful, incredibly intelligent, very funny, quick as lightening, fearless, and has marvelous eyes? Or that she has written block busting books: Treason, Slander, High Crimes and Misdemeanors and now Godless, the Church of Liberalism? Or that she is a frequent stimulating guest on TV shows around the country? Or that she has been named one of the top public intellectuals in the country?
Right now I am deeply impressed with her newest book, Godless, which says what so many of us wish we could articulate. The most important factor in human existence (in my mind and in the minds of millions of others) is the loving and concerned God Who loves us all and Who gives meaning to everything. True religion openly acknowledges the Lord and worships Him. It is not interpersonal relationships which basically constitute religion. Loving interpersonal relationships come after we have centralized the Almighty as our true focus. We love others because of God’s image in all of them. When DeTocqueville called Americans a “religious people”, his assessment was obvious (for that historical era) and roughly reflective of the above view of religion. In modern America it might be quite a different story. Religion, as described above, is under serious (if sometimes imperceptible) attack. Those who mock this fear are either in denial, or perhaps ignorant, or, worse, in complicity. The reality is as David Idler writes in the Summer edition of Crisis: “ I do not see what is controversial about Ann Coulter’s new book Godless, the Church of Liberalism for I see nothing controversial about stating the obvious.” Ann Coulter is a kind of modern Paul Revere alerting the citizens of a terrible threat: the loss of our National Soul.
Recently, I met, by chance, a verbal (and leftist) local talk show host, who upon seeing Godless under my arm almost convulsed into a panic attack. It was as if a “True Believer” had met Old Nick face to face. He writhed as he asked if I thought Jesus would write such a book as this and if I agreed with Ann’s “attack” on the “three poor women from New Jersey” who were grieving their lost husbands. I asked him had he read the book and did he (as any honest lawyer should and would) see these references within the context of the author’s overall intent, i.e. to expose the attempted takeover by quasi-religious Liberalism of the role of Religion and its unscrupulous use even of bereavement to further its cause? In response he physically backed away from me--- with a jocose (?)[2] remark that I should go to confession myself for supporting Coulter!!!! Thus, the illiberal liberal responds to a view opposing his own. His criticism of her centered on his belief that she doesn’t attend the Church in Connecticut as she claims! Therefore, by some kind of weird logic, her ideas have no merit. The old strategy surfaces: Destroy the Messenger if the Message is too difficult to demolish. There has even been a frantic attempt in a tabloid newspaper to accuse her of “plagiarism”. This is an obvious ploy to divert the public from the core point of her book—i.e. Traditional religion is under attack and is being replaced by a man-made religion called “liberalism”.
Nevertheless, despite the pious incantations from the left and despite the un-American attempt to prevent her from airing her “different” point of view at a University (to which she been legitimately invited), she does have a serious and valid point to make. She names the “High priests” of the New Religion who often claim to have been Baptized in a Christian Faith. If he is a nominal Catholic, this “cleric” often recalls that he was an altar boy thereby apparently proving something, but will substantively depart from the basics of Traditional Religion. Sometimes, these gentlemen attend services with huge Bibles in hand, provided there are sufficient Media people present to reinforce their version of Good News. However, these leaders will relentlessly repeat the dogma/slogans of their Religion, hoping that the masses, the great intellectually unwashed, will be lulled by the modern Panem et Circenses.[3]
These “nostrums” usually echo some form of the following:
Keep you hands off my body! (a thinly veiled attack on Pro-Life philosophy and The lynchpin of the New Faith since Abortion is the most sacred sacrament)
Marriage is everyone’s right--- certainly same-sex attracted people!
Guns kill. (Second Amendment under attack)
The earth is being destroyed by oil “barons”
Bush is another Hitler
Protect the rights of criminals, especially terrorists
Save the whales
We need to raise taxes
Government needs more control
Keep Traditional religion out of the Public Square. Keep on stressing Separation of Church and State. Never allow them to quote the Founders who believed in the integration of Religion with government. Make them think Religion itself is banned.
Anti-Semitism is a No-No. As is anti-gay and anti –black. Anti-Catholicism is OK[4].
Darwin, Marx, Freud and Dewey are canonized saints in this “Church” and must be regarded with reverence and awe. Ignore the many refutations modern critical analysis offers.
Cut and run----right now or reasonable facsimile thereof.
Do not think for yourself and, if possible, suppress your sense of humor.
Never question these “thoughts” but accept them on Faith. The Leaders say so—hence it must be true.
These are required dogmas for the new faithful. Any deviation from the party line will be swiftly punished by casting the offending unbeliever into the outer darkness of the political world. Should he differ from the illuminations of the saintly ones like portly Michael Moore, pathetic Cindy Sheehan and potty Barbara Streisand, he will be forced to function without the support of this “Church”. Should he disagree politically with the hierarchy of his “Church” he might have to run as an Independent even if he is Jewish. These are the new Infallibility and Excommunication powers of the Liberal Church. And they are being widely accepted by the good hearted and sometimes naïve American people.
Her chapter on Abortion, the Holiest Sacrament, is priceless. For example, a famous TV interviewer assures viewers that the “non-existent partial birth abortion occurs only about 600-1,000 times per year…” But, Coulter presents the statistic on ONE abortion clinic in New Jersey which performs (ca) 1,500 partial birth abortions every year on babies 20-24 weeks old. It sounds like the interviewer was either lying or ignorant. She notes the off-the-cuff observation of the mother of the Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito—“Of course he’s against abortion…” which created a wild furor which, in turn, focused on the NARAL and Washington Post stance that “No one is for abortion.” If every one is against abortion, why the furor that Alito is against abortion? The answer is that abortion is central to the New Religion. It must be preserved at all costs. If necessary, use double talk or issue fogging.
Clearly, Abortion is the Sacrament. Roe v. Wade is the Holy Writ. It sounds like somebody is pulling a fast one here! Which is it? Are we for or against abortion? If someone won’t or can’t answer this question which basically involves brutal violence, there is only one way out: lying! A. Solzhenitsyn summed it up nicely: “Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.” Is this why I am so troubled that a certain Father of Lies might be in back of all of this?
I am also troubled that all Americans are not allowed to vote on this matter of suctioning the brains out of half-born children. I am troubled at the Liberalism church taking control of children’s lives (and souls) in the desired (almost de facto) monopoly of public education. I am troubled that children in the First grade are being taught that same-sex “marriages” are natural and right! Is my discomfort mere fantasy? Or Paranoia? Yet, Coulter quotes from The American Prospect [5] thusly: “This country cannot have a woman on any federal court if she interpreted a law that says a parent has to be notified of a minor child’s abortion to mean that a parent has to be notified of a minor child’s abortion. That’s like the Nazis!” I can hardly believe this is in print, yet such dogma is essential to this Liberalism which, to my ears, is sounding more and more truly totalitarian.
I am amused at the almost paralytic terror I sense in some cookie cut inadequate males who try to take her on. When they unleash a furious all out attack/attempt to invalidate her thesis, a psychologist sees the lights go on and the bells peal. We may well have an unresolved oedipal conflict here! These chaps are so basically insecure in their masculinity that they see her as a threat who might psychically castrate them as they feared their own Mommies might have done!!!! Their quite puny “tries” remind me of the old vaudeville gag about the height of presumption. The gnat crawling up the trunk of the elephant with ideas of fornication!!! The gifted Coulter swats these guys away as if they were tiny mosquitoes.
So, is there a Church of Liberalism?
To sum up, Ann tersely replies: “Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as religion.”
No wonder the seculars are up in arms and ready for war!
Oh, about the Jersey girls. Within context, even granting Coulter’s “barbed wire” language instead of sweet sugarcoat, the point simply is that these women used their bereavement for political purposes. No decent human being (including Ann C.) begrudges the terrible sorrow one feels at the loss of a loved one, particularly under such barbaric circumstances as 9/11. Many informed Americans feel that these women (unlike so many other widows from that disaster) were plainly trying to convert their personal tragedy into attempts to control national policy. Ann Coulter puts it more directly: “(they) wanted George Bush to apologize for not being Bill Clinton.” They have a legitimate right to mourn. They do not have the right to turn that mourning into a tool for the Liberal “Church.”
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[1] Great Women of the World
[2] Freud opined that often behind “humor”, in spite of its apparent jollity and laughter, lies a font of aggression and enmity. This might explain the mysterious discomfort sometimes felt when one is the butt of public jokes or “satire.” This is beyond being “thin skinned.”
[3] The variation of the old Roman trick of giving loads of free bread and spectaculars to keep the troops happy. Or Marie Antoinette’s gig of “let them eat cake…”
[4] See Philip Jenkins on “The New Anti-Catholicism—the last acceptable prejudice” Oxford Univ. Press.
[5] Page 89 Godless
