RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: You earlier said today on the show that you hadn’t had anybody in a while to say something, you hadn’t talked about. Well, I think I have something, in light of what you’re talking about yesterday about The Passion, the movie The Passion.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Can you explain, especially in the political realm, why people don’t like the Christian viewpoint or Christians in general. I just don’t understand, you know, they accept Buddhists, they accept Muslims but they don’t accept Christians. And I don’t get it.
RUSH: Have you thought about it?
CALLER: Yes, I have.
RUSH: What have you come up with as your own answer? Because it’s right out there in front of your nose.
CALLER: I think it’s spiritual.
RUSH: Well, it eventually gets to spiritual, but there are two things, just for the sake of your call, I will accept the premise. Some people, what do you mean, hate Christians? I think in terms of Catholicism, Christianity, it’s the one religion and it’s perfectly fashionable to bash, personally fashionable to criticize, and to even discriminate against, laugh at, to impugn and make fun of. There’s no question about it.
I think there are two reasons, and the first one is abortion. Actually abortion is just the biggest symptom. I guess the big reason, the umbrella under which all of the other things like abortion would come under, is moral absolutes. These are people who have a definite idea of what’s right and wrong, what is sinful and virtuous and they’re not afraid of saying so, and at the same time they are viewed to be people who condemn others for their moral failures and others do not wish to be judged in that way, and they don’t think some people have a right to judge them morally or whatever. They look at them as unbending, unyielding, and snobbish even to a certain extent, while at the same time trying to portray Christians as a bunch of hayseed southerner hicks. The real reason is that they’re afraid of them. The real reason is that people are afraid of Christians, just as people are afraid of anybody who is firm in their belief on anything.
You can look around the world and around the country, and the people that are considered the elites, the people who are considered to have the greatest minds, are those who don’t really stand for anything – at least publicly. Privately they have all kinds of beliefs but they wouldn’t dare announce them. They see a lot of gray; they have the intellectual capability to see the nuances of every situation and, as such, they are just too wise and too smart to fall into the trap of assuming that something so simply said to be right or so simply and obviously said to be wrong. Many of these people are engaging in the kind of behavior that others say is wrong and they just don’t want to be though of as doing that so they condemn the people saying it. I think it really is no more complicated than that.
Now, the spirituality side, sure you’re going to have people that have theological differences who are going to have, you know, some animus from the different religions, but that’s not what you’re really talking about. The criticism of Christians and the effort to get rid of all Christian symbols such as the nativity scene and Christmas trees or these sorts of things, anything associated with the tradition and traditions of the religion is brought about because of a fear, I think, of Christians culturally. This is why it’s perfectly okay for certain religious people to run for office and to get elected and to even utilize their religious beliefs, but it is not okay to, say, Pat Robertson or anybody else who happens to be Christian, to want to serve in public office because it is feared they will take their religious beliefs and then here comes this misnomer of separation of church and state as a reason to disqualify them which is also something that’s been bastardized and undefined as well as mis-defined over the years. I think it’s really no more complicated than that, and it, by the way, doesn’t just extend to Christians. It will extend to anybody who is firm in their beliefs.
One of the things I’ve found just over the course of my little life interacting with people is that it’s said that I am controversial, it’s said that I am ridged and intolerant and so forth, that people who don’t even know me issue these blanket accusations, and I have discovered it’s simply because I’m confident of what I believe, and a lot of people aren’t, and a lot of people are intimidated by somebody or other people who are confident, is confident what he or she believes. That’s just foreign to them.
You have to understand, in our culture today, the emphasis is on not taking a stand. I mean there is genuine fear in this country over taking a stand on things, there’s a genuine fear of offending somebody, there’s a genuine fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, at the wrong place, somebody might hear it, and you might get criticized or you might offend somebody or you might get into some sort of trouble, so that the societal pressure is all about neutering people’s decisiveness, neutering people’s firm stand on things, issues and ideas, and this is now considered enlightened; it is considered educated; it’s considered almost intellectual to have an open mind and not have firm ideas on things. The way you rationalize it, well, I wait to hear all of the information, all three sides or both sides of the issue, before I make up my mind. I do not have a closed mind.
So, you see, someone with definite opinions on things is also said to be closed-minded. And a lot of people just don’t want to go through life being accused of that, so they don’t tell people what they really think. Well, Christians do. Christians are very blunt and very open about what they believe, and what they think is right and wrong. And I’m telling you, people just don’t want to be confronted with it, and so the people who engage in that sort of belief system and behavior are always going to be the ones who have rocks thrown at them. It’s always been that way, and it always will be.
