UPDATED: OCT 3, 2007

“UNDERSTANDING ANN COULTER” 

On Sept. 6, 2007 the Republican shock jock Ann coulter gave an invited (!) speech at Xavier University in Cincinnati.  (One wonders what St. Francis Xavier, after whom the University is named, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus --- the Jesuits --- would have thought of her, but we will leave that one for another day.)   Among other things. (courtesy of People for the American Way, Sept. 11, 2007) Ann had this to say (http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070911/COL05/709110333/1009/EDIT
 http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS01/709070366
 http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS01/709070412/-1/CINCI):

1. "Liberals don't recognize the existence of evil, the closest thing to it in their vocabulary is Wal-Mart."
2. "The fact that liberals are godless is not even a controversial point anymore."
3. Democrats, she said, "believe public restrooms are only for snorting coke."
4. Terrorists, Coulter said, "are Democrats with more gumption."

Now Ann often complains that she is misunderstood, she is only kidding, she is exaggerating to make a point, she is not really mean, nasty, demonizing, a pro-creator of a future hate-based American fascism designed to maintain the Republican Party in permanent power.  Reading the above, many people simply say “Tsk, tsk, how could she do such a thing?”   But so many who say that are just reading Ann quickly and jumping to conclusions, namely that she is a far-right wing hateful, rage-filled provocateur who revels in her tasks. 

Let’s for once carefully consider what Ann is saying before condemning her.  Let’s try to really understand what she is saying.  For example, from the above list let’s consider carefully her comparisons between “terrorists” and a particular political party.  Is it fair to do that?  Does it help move the political process forward?  One’s first impulse is to answer both questions “no.”  But perhaps that is unfair.  Perhaps making such a comparison does move the political process forward.  Just consider the following.

1.         On foreign policy, Democrats advocate multi-lateralism and talking first, and even second, shooting only as a last resort.  Terrorists, to the extent that we see them in action, shoot first and never talk.

2.          Democrats are concerned about environmental sustainability and reversing global warming and detrimental climate change.  Terrorists couldn’t care less about such issues.

3.         Democrats are concerned about the preservation of individual liberties and personal freedoms, which, citing the US Declaration of Independence, they regard as natural rights.  For terrorists, nothing like those concerns stand in the way of their drive to achieve their stated goals.

4.         Democrats advocate adherence to the Rule of Law.  Terrorists don’t, arguing that the achievement of their stated goals overrides any such commitments, because they are RIGHT.

5.         The current brand of Islamic terrorists advocates the imposition of Koranic Sharia Law on everyone.  It, for example, criminalizes all beliefs about when life begins other than the one that holds that it begins at the moment of conception.  This category of terrorists holds that the church IS the state, like, for example, Christian Dominionists and the Texas Republican Party.  Democrats advocate maintaining the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

6.         Democrats are supporters of guaranteeing due process of law to all persons within      the ambit of the US government.  Terrorists couldn’t care less about due process.

7.         Democrats (at least some of them) advocate gun control.  Terrorists don’t.

8.         Democrats advocate dealing with terrorism by developing policies and programs that actually focus on the problem, not engaging in actions that promote terrorism and create more terrorists.  Obviously, terrorists hate the first set of polices and programs and love the second.

And so, let’s see where Ann Coulter’s process of comparing a US political party to terrorists has taken us.  Let’s see if her exercise is merely hate-promoting or perhaps contains the seeds of a useful exercise.  Now, by a careful review of Democratic policies and those of the current common garden variety terrorists, we can see that they actually have nothing in common.  In fact, they are totally opposed to each other.  On the other hand, there is much in common between the terrorists’ actual policies and programs and a different American political party.  Thus we discover that the analysis Ann made is a most valuable one.  There are many fits between the policies and programs of the major contemporary terrorist groups and one of the two major American political parties.  Instead of condemning her and her brand of vitriol out-of-hand, we must thank Ann Coulter for making us think carefully about what she said.  After all, all she got wrong was the name of the Party that fits her definition of “terrorists with less gumption.”

Of course, while this is funny (I hope) and at least making fun of Ann, she herself ain’t funny at all.  She is in fact very dangerous in that she represents the coming face of the Republican Party.  Consider her recent book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (reflected in the quote above).  In typical Coulter style, it is filled with rage.  In fact a discussion of Ann Coulter's rage became all the rage on the Left when the book came out. Even Hillary Clinton (hardly on the Left of anything) went after her for the remarks she made about those 9/11 widows who have become strong critics of the Georgites on a variety of fronts.  But those remarks, intentionally in my view, distract from the book's central message: “Liberals” (undefined) are not like US, they are demons, they are untermenschen (sound familiar), they are, as Mark Levin a New York Right-Wing ABC Screamer who often sounds as if he were doing a self-parody, cockroaches who need to be squashed underfoot. 

In a previous book Coulter defined “liberals” as traitors.  In our country, the penalty for treason is death.  Coulter is wildly popular in the Republican Party.  Perhaps the worst thing about her remark some months ago at a Republican gathering in South Carolina that John Edwards is gay is that it was greeted with thunderous applause and gales of laughter from the assembled throng.  For the "goddish" of the Coulter variety one deals with the “godless” by force. If Coulter has her way, the "traitorous" and "godless" "liberals" (whoever they are) would be going perhaps to the camps, going perhaps before the firing squads, perhaps becoming the targets of Death Squads (as advocated by the video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” developed from Tim LaHaye’s best-selling “Left Behind” series, that came to a store near you last October just in time for Christmas), perhaps burning to death at the stake, which is what militant Christian Churches of a variety of stripes did to such persons who didn’t express their “goddishness” in quite the right way over a period of hundreds of years into the 17th century.

As she has said, "Although my Christianity is somewhat more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write." Whatever else it is or is not, Coulter's version of Christianity is surely militant and doesn’t seem to have too much Christ in it. As for foreign policy, remember when about the Muslim world she said: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" (although given her version of Christianity one wonders why anyone would want to convert)?  As for domestic policy and how her version of "Christianity" informs it, just consider the following quote: "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view." 

This column is based in part on a Commentary, “Ann Coulter: The New Face of the Republican Party,” that appeared on BuzzFlash on June 19, 2006, http://www.buzzflash.com/jonas/06/06/jon06008.htm.

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