THE BIGOTRY THAT DARE SPEAK ITS NAME : HATRED OF THE RELIGIOUS :

A Talk with John Ashcroft (Paul Greenburg, April 3, 2002, townhall.com)

I have my own theory about why John Ashcroft inspires such enmity. I think a good part of it is religious prejudice. The man is likely to break out in a hymn in the middle of a speech, he doesn't hide his convictions, he presides over morning prayers in his office (they're strictly voluntary), and he's one of those people who's likely to make a biblical reference right in the middle of a conversation. His critics can never know when he's going to have the bad taste to mention God, and the suspense puts them on edge.

His religiosity upsets John Ashcroft's critics. You can tell by the way they use the term Religious Right. They pronounce it like an anathema, the way an anti-Semite would say Jew.

There's something else his critics can't stand about John Ashcroft. He's smart. And he's a good lawyer. Nothing angers those accustomed to thinking of their politics as the only intelligent kind like finding an antagonist who thinks. They'd rather dismiss John Ashcroft as some kind of country bumpkin from Missouri (like Harry Truman?) rather than actually wrestle with his ideas. It's so much easier to condescend to him, to make up stories about his Puritanism, his felinophobia, his general scariness.

Recent events certainly indicate that he understood the World better than his critics when he said : "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you." Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2002 6:56 PM