The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 2 of 12)

br> -- Richard Donley br> New Lyme, Ohio /p> p> strong> Patrick O'Hannigan replies: br> I would like to assure Mr. Richard Donley that the essay was not "a patch job of multiple rants." I'm pleased to say that no less an authority that Robert Spencer thinks well of it ( here ). /strong> /p>

Moreover, Donley's reference to assassin as being derived from "hashish" is correct, but incomplete. Hashish was the drug of choice associated with a secret Islamic order of killers that originated in the 11th century. If Mr. Donley thinks I inserted an oblique anti-drug message into an anti-Muslim pastiche, then he missed not just one point, but two-- and for that I am sorry.

Mr. Patrick O'Hannigan nails the problem in our national "forecasting" about the inter-civilizational war radical Mohammedans have once again launched against us. The forecasters have cast their own religious preferences into their interpretive template. When one commences one's reasoning upon faulty premises, rest assured that faulty conclusions result. "Garbage in, garbage out."

The social elites who dominate our government bureaus all share the secularist false 'religion' (first widely exported by Revolutionary France and cursing the world ever since). The "progressivist" secular, humanist "religion" produces: "positive" thinking, naturalism, materialism, scientism, and usually also socialism; and it further assumes that all human change necessarily produces advancement. Secular elites also assure themselves that they in their human rationality stand personally superior to any and every advocate of any supernatural religion. They claim most particular superiority over those who confess that the LORD is God, and Jesus Christ as Lord. The secularist (correctly) views Christianity as even more dangerous to secular religiosity than the manifestly murderous Mohammedans.

topics:
Taxes, Education, Health Care, John McCain, Social Security, Religion, Islam, Hollywood, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, NATO, North Korea, Socialism, Oil, Unions