Demagogue

Townhall.com airs an array of opinions with which I disagree, but the quality of those opinion columns is very uneven. Whether you love him or despise him, George Will is quite capable of being eloquent. It's kind of insulting to Will and other more thoughtful conservative writers to be tossed into the same pile with the likes of Doug Giles.

Giles' most recent column is tired and sophomoric:

Can a Christian be a liberal? Short answer: no. There is no way a Christian can buy into neo-liberal ideology and be faithful to the bigger-than-Dallas teachings of the scripture ...

The Christian skipping around the maypole wearing his rose-colored glasses who has a bent to the liberal left needs to understand something: if it were left up to the modern, secularized liberal establishment, he would be more restricted than Bill when Hillary's in town.

If the Christophobic thugs had it their way, Christians would be relegated to a marginalized spiritual ghetto on the sidelines of life.

The rest of Giles' column is equally hysterical. He complains about "rabid, vapid secularism," warns that public schools want to turn every kid into "a Rocky Horror super freak," and fears that in the near future public officials will "be pressured to hide their faith in the closet ..."

Dream on. A candidate can't run for public office without talking about his religious faith.

Since America hasn't (yet) written all of their backward views into law, conservative Christians have convinced themselves that the reason must be that everyone — especially the media — hates Christians.

When you stop to think about it, it's a bit strange that the media and entertainment world are the constant target of the Christian Right's temper tantrums.

Didn't I notice from the TV schedule this weekend that the dreadfully long Cecil B. DeMille film "The Ten Commandments" was once again airing to pay homage to the Christian holiday of Easter? Doesn't ABC know it's supposed to hate Christians?

The Washington Post and virtually all other daily newspapers in America publish a weekly religion or "faith" page. Didn't they get the "we're anti-Christian" memo?

The number of Christian-oriented rock and religious stations has steadily grown in the past decade. And cable TV offers the public a wide assortment of preachers and faith-healers. I guess the cable programmers didn't get that memo either.