"The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender's emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize. You don't change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioning. The aim is to get them out of prison."--Child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman, speaking about B4U-ACT, a group which wants pedophilia removed as a mental illness from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
I suspect many readers will be wondering why I grouped the above quotes together. The answer is simple: it's only a short hop from the elitist, pseudo-intellectual snobbery which holds religion in contempt, to the utterly bankrupt pronouncements of a profession which far too often offers itself as a viable substitute for the morality that religions espouse.
No doubt Mr. Keller considers himself "more highly evolved" than people who participate in such "mundane" expressions of faith as the Christian ritual known as Holy Communion. Yet isn't it curious where the "evolution" beyond the moral restraints of religion leads? Such evolution is precisely why a group like B4U-ACT can walk into a psychiatric conference in Baltimore claiming to represent--brace yourself--"minor attracted persons," and not get laughed out of the room.
Or in a better world, run out of town on a rail.
It bears repeating, as I often do, that America is in the midst of an existential crisis. It is one that transcends all of our other crises, in that all of the others can be traced either directly, or indirectly, back to the idea that a country of 300 million people with no over-arching sense of morality is, in fact, no real country at all.
Bill Keller's statement is the beginning of an all-purpose leftist propaganda campaign. I use the term all-purpose because, as Americans will see in the coming months, it won't matter which particular individual wins the Republican nomination for president. Whoever it is will be depicted as, if you'll excuse the obvious paraphrase, a "religion-attracted person," ranging from "weird," if Mormon Mitt Romney gets the nod, to "fanatically" Christian, should Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, or Sarah Palin emerge as the candidate.
Yet what promise does the Secular Humanism, again to use a loaded word, "worshipped" by the American progressive movement hold? Maybe I'm as caught up in the hyper-sensitivity of which I accuse my progressive counterparts, but I find the idea of de-stigmatizing (with the ultimate aim of decriminalizing), a 40-year-old having sex with an 11-year-old, e.g., repellant.
Perhaps I, too am a religious fanatic after all.
None of the moral bankruptcy that has bought us to the point where pedophiles now have their champions happened overnight. Nor is it likely we can squeeze the toothpaste back in the tube anytime soon. It gets even more difficult when the editor of a major newspaper equates religious faith with a belief in space aliens, or a bloc of mental health professionals, using a despicable term like "intergenerational intimacy," attempts to normalize a contemptible compulsion.
It has taken over a half century for progressives to condition a substantial number of Americans to the idea that faith and fanaticism are interchangeable terms
It has taken over a half century for progressives to condition a substantial number of Americans to the idea that faith and fanaticism are interchangeable terms. In the political arena, it has been a half century spent convincing Americans that anything less than one hundred percent adherence to their "anything goes" brand of amorality, constitutes an attempt to establish a religious theocracy within American government.
Personally, I'll take the "bitter clingers" as our illustrious president once referred to ordinary Americans with an affinity for faith and firearms, over an imperious snob like Bill Keller, or that portion of the therapeutic community who would paper over the buggering of babies with a patina of legitimacy.
Are there overly-religious people? You betcha. But in terms of numbers and influence, whom are we kidding? The unmistakable trend in America has been away from morality, not towards it. And we have, to use a religious expression, reaped the whirlwind. There are legions of Americans completely disconnected from the notion of right and wrong, people who can rationalize virtually anything--including, apparently, "intergenerational intimacy."
Faith equals space aliens and pedophilia should be normalized.
Tell me again: who are the real American fanatics?
