"Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong -- indeed, deeply un-American -- about fearing people simply because they believe," writes Charles Krauthammer in Time mag re the latest intellectual fashion among the cognoscenti:
Doubt is in. Certainty is out.
It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.
These folk are living in a fear society of their own making, projecting their own hysteria onto the rest of us. Krauthammer continues:
Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? Just days after 9/11, on this very page, Lance Morrow wrote a brilliant, searing affirmation of right against wrong, good against evil.
A few years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics.
We remember reading -- with disbelief -- the obscenely anti-American rantings of the Susan Sontags (RIP) and Noam Chomskys of this world in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 -- Why do they hate us? -- feeling confident their delusions were isolated mind droppings destined for the dustbin of history. But no. As we ALWAYS say, the forces of darkness -- of whatever feather -- are forever lurking just beyond the campfire. These people and their disciples are not going to go quietly into that dark night. We can never let down our guard.
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