Monday, October 27, 2008

Sarah Palin must not just be defeated on November 4th - she must be permanently marginalized

Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, discusses Sarah Palin's anti-science and radical religious views, which remind me of the views of some other people I know.

He closes with this:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

I particularly like his reference to "theocratic bullies." These are people who knock on your door and try to sell you their god, or accost you on your way out of K-Mart with their propaganda. These are people who are so convinced of their own righteousness and the inerrancy of their literal interpretation of the Bible (which is the only thing they have ever studied), that they use scripture as a weapon in political arguments and want the entire nation to adhere to their fantasies of witchcraft and demons and end of days theology.

It isn't enough to defeat Sarah Palin at the polls in one week. She must be stopped from ever entering the national public arena again. She, and those like her who want to make America a theocracy, must be marginalized permanently.