Tuesday, October 28, 2003

enticing the Maximum Leader out into the open...

...by dangling a CHURCHILL QUOTE in front of him!

From Andrew Sullivan:

STALIN IN THE 1930S: No one knew what was going on? That's the New York Times' recent excuse for Western communists in the 1930s. Here's what Churchill had to say in 1924: "Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds."

On a different front-- another Sullivan quote, this time on gay marriage:

Their [i.e., the religious right's] defense of heterosexual marriage is far more connected to their loathing of homosexuality than with their concern for marriage as such. It's essentially a negative, exclusionary impulse at heart. That's why they're not proposing a Constitutional Amendment to ban divorce, or forbid civil marriage.

I'd like to hear more from Sullivan on this last point. Keep in mind that his focus here is on the religious right, not on anti-gay-marriage folks in general. The larger debate is more complex.
_

No comments: