SECULAR MSM WAR AGAINST CHRISTIANITY CONTINUES

James Taranto, himself of Jewish descent, takes on the anti-Christian Boston Globe in his Online column last night.

Actually, as my Feb 3rd Dave's World blog makes clear, I agree with the Globe in the following editorial as far as it goes:

Freedom of expression is not the only value at issue in the conflict provoked by a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons satirizing Islam's founding prophet, Mohammed. . . .
The original decision of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, to solicit and publish a dozen cartoons of the Muslim prophet was less a blow against censorship than what The Economist called a schoolboy prank. . . .
Publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet. Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance.

But I also believe strongly that the Globe cuts slack for Muslims while holding Christianity to higher standards. Taranto continues:

Blogger Eugene Volokh wondered if the Globe was equally solicitous of the feelings of Christians offended by various government-sponsored artworks in the U.S. It would appear not. Volokh digs up an editorial from 1999 praising a judge who ordered New York City not to withhold funding for a museum that displayed "a painting of a black Virgin Mary spotted with elephant dung," as well as two editorials from 1990 denouncing then-Sen. Jesse Helms and others who had criticized the National Endowment for the Arts over artworks including Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ."
These earlier editorials, Volokh writes, make "eminently plausible arguments." What they do not do is acknowledge that Christians have any reason to find the depictions of Jesus and Mary "hurtful."
A similar double standard is on display at the Washington Post. Agence France-Presse quotes Fred Hiatt, editor of the Post's editorial page, as saying: "If I were faced with something that I know is gonna be offensive to many of our readers, I would think twice about whether the benefit of publication outweighed the offense it might give."
But here is Hiatt, quoted a day earlier in his own paper about his own cartoon kerfuffle:

Fred Hiatt, The Post's editorial page editor, said he doesn't "censor Tom" and that "a cartoonist works best if he or she doesn't feel there's someone breathing over their shoulder. He's an independent actor, like our columnists." Hiatt said he makes comments on drafts of cartoons but that Toles is free to ignore them.
Asked about Sunday's cartoon, Hiatt said, "While I certainly can understand the strong feelings, I took it to be a cartoon about the state of the Army and not one intended to demean wounded soldiers."

Taranto asks:

What accounts for the difference? A combination of fear and ideology. Muslim fundamentalists, or at least some of them, express offense by torching embassies and threatening terrorist attacks. By contrast, U.S. military leaders write firm but polite letters to the editor, and Christian fundamentalists ask their elected representatives to stop spending tax money on offensive stuff. (Never believe a liberal when he professes to find Christian fundamentalists "scary.") There is no need to appease an opponent who respects rules of civilized behavior.

The hypocritical WaPo has double-standards, and will trash a turn-the-other-cheek Christianity as willingly as offend the polite and well-behaved US military. But like the rest of the moral cowards on the left, the Post is afraid of offending Muslims, as you never know when they’ll blow up or torch your property or kill your reporters. AS I SAID IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG, COMMON COURTESY IS DEAD AND COMMON SENSE IS ON LIFE SUPPORT, but let Taranto continue as he explains why CRIME DOES PAY if you are a "victim" who commits a crime:

There is also an ideological component, which goes back to the essay we noted last week on "folk Marxism," or liberal multiculturalism. This ideology sees the world as a series of class struggles--not between economic classes, as in proper Marxism, but between racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or other identity groups, which are defined as either "oppressors" or "victims."
Generally speaking, multiculturalists consider Christians to be an oppressor class, while Muslims are a victim class. A victim class's grievances must be taken seriously and can even trump free expression, while the same is never true of an oppressor class's. (The multicultural worldview sees Jews as an intermediate class--victims of Christians, oppressors of Muslims--which is why liberals can be outraged by anti-Semitic imagery in "The Passion of the Christ" but unperturbed by terrorism against Israelis.)
In this regard, Hiatt's staunch defense of the Toles cartoon, which offended members of the military, is particularly telling. As we've noted, those on the antiwar left often talk of soldiers as if they were a victim class. We haven't heard any of them, however, side with the soldiers who find the Toles cartoon offensive. This suggests that the soldiers-as-victims trope is purely cynical.

No kidding! Hypocrisy on the left? And cynicism! Alert the media! Oops, the left basically IS the media.

But more seriously, the American media does not cover Muslims persecuting Christians in South Sudan or East Timor, where hundreds of thousands of Christians are victims, or even Christians on the West Bank who are Palestinians [an unknown fact is that there might be up to a 25% Christian minority among the Palestinians derives from the fact that this has never been reported by the American MSM, except perhaps the Christian Science Monitor].

A major problem lies in the long-time Christian ascendancy in this country. But self-despising Christian clerics like John Danforth have ceded all the moral high ground to sandwich-board "victims" while building their estates in Palm Springs, CA.

As Schumpeter predicted with capitalism and its contradictions, Christianity has lost its own work ethic/missionary impulse and spirituality by bathing in material success in the US. And in a contest between God and Mammon, Mammon has the 800-pound secular MSM gorilla on its side.

Christianity is hemorrhaging as high-church Protestants and suburban Catholics defect in the millions over to a secular life-style just a step away from surrender to a completely secular godless materialism. Post-Modern seems a synonym for "Post-Christian."