DoD
2008-04-17 16:42:33 UTC
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Earl Tilford, professor of history
at Grove City College. He spent 22 years as an Air Force intelligence
officer and then served as the civilian Director of Research at the U.S.
Army's Strategic Studies Institute for nine years before joining the faculty
at Grove City in July 2001. While in the Air Force, Dr. Tilford was an
intelligence officer in Southeast Asia, a nuclear targeting officer at
Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, and served on the faculties at the Air
Force Academy and U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College. He is the
author of three books on the air war in Vietnam and co-editor of Eagle in
the Desert: A Look Back at the Persian Gulf War. He can be contacted at
***@gcc.edu.
FP: Dr. Earl Tilford, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Tilford: It is a pleasure to be with you.
FP: I would like to discuss the Religious Left’s disposition toward the War
on Terror with you today. But first let’s begin with the origins of the
modern-day Religious Left. What are they?
Tilford: The "Neo-Religious Left" has its origins in the 1950s with the
"Beat" generation turned off by the consumerism and materialism of the
1950s. The idealism of John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" and the vision of
Camelot nurtured the New Left in its infancy. Many of the grey-beards on the
Neo-Religious Left "cut their teeth" on the Civil Rights Movement both
literally and figuratively. But it was during the Vietnam anti-War movement
that the current movement blossomed, spreading with some toking into the
counter-culture.
After the draft went away in the early 1970s the student movement shrank and
the students also grew up -- but the Neo-Religious Left was established,
especially in our mainline Protestant denominations, groups like the United
Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church,
U.S.A., the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church
in America.
During the Reagan administration they railed against Ronald Reagan dubbing
the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire" and lambasted America's initiatives to
thwart a communist takeover in El Salvador. The Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI), derisively called "Star Wars," was a favorite topic. They also
opposed the largest peace-time military build-up in American history. In
sum, the "Neo-Religious Left", through a numerous organizations like
Presbyterians Peacemaking, the Witherspoon Society and Christian Peacemaker
Teams, articulated and matriculated an obstructionist neo-Marxist agenda.
FP: What is the Religious Left's relationship to the modern academic Left?
Tilford: During the 1960s, as the US role in Southeast Asia escalated, the
country found itself fighting the Vietnam War with an inadequate and
antiquated draft law, the Conscription Act of 1948 which provided a plethora
of exemptions. Most precious among those exemptions, other than the IV-F,
which meant one was mentally or physically unfit for military service, were
the II-S deferment for college and university students and the IV-D for
seminary students.
Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson was nothing if he was not the original "education
president." The Federal Government provided ample funds for low-interest
loans under the National Defense Education Act, so going on to higher
education was not problematic for vast numbers of reasonably intelligent
young men.
Additionally, the Government provided funds which colleges and universities
used to expand; something they needed to do given the influx of baby boomers
which began entering the halls of academe in 1964. With the threat of the
draft hanging over the heads of hundreds of thousands of young men, interest
in staying in school soared. When male students ran through their four years
of undergraduate work, then the next step was on to graduate school or
seminary -- both of which provided additional years of protection from the
draft. Furthermore, colleges and universities had added facilities and hired
additional faculty to handle this unexpected rise in student populations so
they needed to fill those seats.
Many faculty also were inclined to oppose the war and sympathized with
letting as many applicants into graduate programs as possible. Requirements
for the MA and PhD were lowered and new graduate programs introduced. What
resulted was a generation of academics not as well-prepared as earlier
generations and more politically-inclined as well. The same thing held in
many seminaries. The hard stuff of theology was dropped in favor of courses
related to "social justice". Greek and Hebrew went by the wayside in some
cases.
Over the years, these new secular and theological scholars rose through the
ranks of academe and their respective churches, replicating themselves as
they went. Today, having attained the "commanding heights" of the academy as
well as our mainline denominations, they set the agenda; one focused on
multi-culturalism, diversity, gender and class victimization, etc. All the
stuff of "political correctness."
FP: You mentioned the Religious Left’s stance on America and the Evil Empire
during the Cold War. Expand for us a bit.
Tilford: The Religious Left does not believe in evil. Rather, being
semi-Pelagian, they believe in the essential goodness of humanity.
Therefore, the Soviet Union was, in their minds, just a more advanced form
of progressive socialism while the United States and the rest of the Free
World were stuck in exploitative capitalism. The Soviet Union was no more to
blame for the Cold War than the United States. They compared our efforts in
Vietnam with the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe; that sort of thing.
The Religious Left constantly harped on themes related to disarmament, even
unilateral disarmament. They tended to see no distinctions between what the
United States stood for and did in the world, i.e. attempt to defend South
Vietnam from communist subversion and aggression, and what the Soviets were
doing in Eastern Europe, Africa, Southeast and Southwest Asia and the Middle
East. Generally, the Religious Left deplores the use or even the threat of
violence. They believe that mankind, being essentially good, would prefer to
work out its problems peacefully. Violence--even in self-defense--is
anathema to many on the Religious Left.
FP: Well, not the violence engaged in by communists, radical Muslims and
other violence perpetrated by enemies of America and the West that’s for
sure.
Tilford: You are absolutely right about the hypocrisy of the Religious Left.
To be sure, before launching into some unwarranted criticism of Israel, a
Religious Left spokesman may say something about all terrorism being wrong.
For the most part, however, in their view, violence perpetrated by America's
enemies results not from evil on the part of our enemies but is a warranted
response to US policy or their perceptions of America as a "racist" or
exploitative capitalist-imperialist behemoth.
FP: So what has the Religious Left been up to since the end of the Cold War?
With the Soviet Union, it definitely must have lost a cause and inspiration.
Tilford: In the 1990s, many Neo-Religious Left groups turned to "social
justice" issues. Gay rights issues were high on their list of priorities.
Bringing practicing homosexuals, bisexuals, and trans-gendered individuals
into "full communion" in various denominations was part of that focus. This,
of course, meant setting aside more than age-old prejudices; it mean
ignoring vast portions of the Old and New Testaments which definitively
proscribe homosexual acts calling them "abominations", ranking them with
bestiality and incest. Women's rights issues, like keeping abortion legal,
was high on their agenda. Additionally, the Neo-Religious Left stayed with
their anti-military stance, advocating for decreased military spending by
attempting to make the point that money spent on the military could better
be spent on social programs. Closing the "School of the Americas" at Fort
Benning Georgia has also been one of their consistent advocacy initiatives.
The Religious Left is quintessentially Marxist in its thinking.
FP: Ok, let’s talk about the Religious Left’s position in the War on Terror.
Tilford: Early on, after the horror of 9/11, many on the religious left
opposed taking military action in Afghanistan, preferring to turn the
problem of al Qaeda's presence in that Taliban-run country to the United
Nations. Thankfully, the Bush Administration ignored them. Naturally, the
Religious left opposed going into Iraq, dubbing it a "war of aggression" and
beyond the scope of "Just War Doctrine" which generally (but not totally)
forbids wars of aggression.
After the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Neo-Religious Left
began to harp on the "occupation" of Iraq and focus on the "outrages of Abu
Ghraib." Groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams--a Mennonite Group which
epitomizes the term "useful idiots"--deployed to Iraq with the stated
purpose of acts of violence carried out by US troops on innocent Iraqis. In
some ways their stances are predictable. The publication of David Ray
Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Question abut the Bush
Administration and 9/11 in 2003 was greeted with rave reviews by people
posting to the Witherspoon Society's website.
Griffin, a "progress theologian," which means he believes God's nature is
ever evolving so religion must also evolve, knows very little about any of
the subjects related to the events of 9/11. His conspiracy theories, many
based on work done originally by French communist Thierry Meyssan, were
easily countered. For instance, early in his "expose," Griffin muses that
F-15 fighters have a top speed of over 1,800 miles per hour. Therefore,
since they were flying towards New York and Washington at speeds just over
600 miles-per-hour they must have flying at such comparatively low speed
because the "plot" called for the planes to hit the Twin Towers and Pentagon
just so Bush and Israel and Halliburton and who knows who else could get the
war they all wanted.
True, the absolute top speed for an F-15 stripped of armaments and with a
small load of fuel is around 1,800 miles-per-hour. But combat planes do not
fly at those speeds. For one thing, the under wing stores would rip off. For
another, going above the speed of sound in F-15s and other fighters of that
sort requires the planes to switch to afterburners to inject raw fuel into
the exhaust. It consumes an enormous amount of fuel very quickly. Fighters
use their speed capabilities to engage and disengage, not to travel over
long distances, and they rarely exceed Mach 1.5 even in combat. Those kinds
of mistakes are fife throughout Griffin's book. Still, the Religious Left
embraces him.
FP: Can you touch on the Religious Left’s growing Jew-Hatred?
Tilford: As for Israel, the Religious Left fears religion. Religion is
repugnant to their egalitarian ideals because it is not value neutral.
Religion affirms the existence of definitive Truth (God as a sovereign and
unchanging entity) and recognizes the presence of evil as a real force in
the world. Religion demands moral righteousness in personal behavior in ways
that run counter to the hedonism attendant to homosexual or bisexual
practice. Christianity and Judaism both value life. This contrasts sharply
with the Religious Left where values are relative, evil does not exist and
as for personal behavior, if it feels right it must be right. Israel is a
state built on values inimical to the Religious Left.
Israel recognizes the evil that confronts it--terrorism--and worse, from the
perspective of the Religious Left, it takes decisive military action to
thwart that evil. In addition to religion, the Religious Left fears power
and success. Israel is both militarily powerful and economically successful.
Israeli economic prosperity, in the minds of the Religious Left, must flow
from exploitation because all economic prosperity, from their Marxist
perspective, issues from exploitation. Obviously then, the Israelis are well
off because they have exploited the Palestinians. So, the New Left has two
things they require: an oppressor and a victim. If there is evil, that
explains it. That keeps terrorists like Yassir Arafat from being simply evil
men.
It is not so much that the Religious Left is anti-Semitic as that it is
anti-Israel because Israel, not unlike the United States, stands for things
the Neo-Religious Left cannot stand: power, success and unilateral boldness.
Israel uses its military forces to strike at terrorists unabashedly and
unapologetically. That drives the wimps of the Religious Left up the
proverbial wall.
FP: Well, if the Religious Left fears religion, it would be a great critic
of Islam and it isn’t. It is a critic of religions that serve as a buffer to
Western civilization and freedom. If a religion is part of an adversarial
culture and ideology, the Religious Left has not only no problem with it,
but offers its hand of solidarity – as we witness today.
Tilford: We have to keep in mind that the Christian Religious Left fears
both Judaism and Christianity. Having abandoned any concept of "definitive"
truth and objective morality as right and wrong, abjuring any concept of
evil, Christian lefties fear anyone who puts his or her faith in a Higher
Power, especially a sovereign God. Such religious beliefs imply judgment
against things the Christian Religious Left holds precious, such as their
self-centered individualist hedonism---their "if it is right for me it must
be right" attitude towards sex. Since they believe that all religions are
more or less valid, they fear true believers be they Jews or Christians
whether Protestant of Catholic. Witness Bill Marr's recent rant against
Catholicism as an example. His demonstrated paranoia was worthy of any rant
by Adolf Hitler.
FP: Yes absolutely, but again, there is another ingredient here because the
Religious Left is completely silent about Islam in this context.
Let’s move on. Can you talk a bit about how the Religious Left has
re-invented itself since the 2004 election?
Tilford: The real re-invention began after George W. Bush was re-elected in
November 2004. In the Spring of 2005, the Rockledge Group, a
California-based "progressive" institute, held a cyber conference for
"religious progressives." The conference welcomed all religions
progressives: Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, "Christian
atheists," even Wiccans. The objective was to figure out how to "frame" the
debate so they could push their Marxist agenda across the board: keep
abortion legal, gain acceptance of gay marriage, end the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and above all gain control of both houses of Congress and put a
Democrat in the White House in 2008.
Lots of pontificating about the "righteousness" of sodomy and abortion
aside, at the end of the day to properly "frame" the debate meant they would
have to lie about who they were and what they were trying to achieve.
Therefore, they would not push issues like gay marriage based on any
Biblical or religious grounds -- because there are none -- but "frame" the
issue as one demanding "justice." (Notice how often the word "justice" is
thrown around by the Religious Left). Who could be against "justice"? Also,
they abandoned the label "liberal" for "progressive" knowing that people
generally don't want to be thought of as "retrogressive" or "unprogressive."
So, gay marriage is not a matter of morality, (which is grounded in Biblical
virtue) but a matter of "justice" or "social justice."
That's what we face. People of faith, people who really do "cling" to their
faith in times of trouble, face a basically dishonest attack from groups
rooted in Marxism, meant to destabilize traditional society. If they
succeed, America and the Judeo-Christian West will be left naked to face the
evil that is inherent in Islamist Jihadists. Al Qaeda, associated groups
like Hezbollah, and other Islamist terrorist groups and their supporters in
Syria, Iran and among the Wahabbist in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, mean to
change the world. If they succeed, all of us, including the "useful idiots"
of the Neo-Religious Left, will be condemned to slavery or slated for
extinction. That's the world we face and the Religious Left isn't helping.
FP: No, it’s not helping, because it’s rooting for the other side.
Tilford: You bet. These people detest the Judeo-Christian West with its
values rooted in Jewish and Christian faith. They have been rooting for the
other side from the beginning.
FP: Dr. Earl Tilford, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Tilford: Thank you very much for letting me spend some time with you. God
bless you and keep up the good work.
FP: As mentioned in the introduction, anyone wishing to contact Dr. Tilford
can do so by emailing him at ***@gcc.edu.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=23E79FA8-2A51-4917-A7A3-F1C01F1417E9
at Grove City College. He spent 22 years as an Air Force intelligence
officer and then served as the civilian Director of Research at the U.S.
Army's Strategic Studies Institute for nine years before joining the faculty
at Grove City in July 2001. While in the Air Force, Dr. Tilford was an
intelligence officer in Southeast Asia, a nuclear targeting officer at
Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, and served on the faculties at the Air
Force Academy and U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College. He is the
author of three books on the air war in Vietnam and co-editor of Eagle in
the Desert: A Look Back at the Persian Gulf War. He can be contacted at
***@gcc.edu.
FP: Dr. Earl Tilford, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Tilford: It is a pleasure to be with you.
FP: I would like to discuss the Religious Left’s disposition toward the War
on Terror with you today. But first let’s begin with the origins of the
modern-day Religious Left. What are they?
Tilford: The "Neo-Religious Left" has its origins in the 1950s with the
"Beat" generation turned off by the consumerism and materialism of the
1950s. The idealism of John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" and the vision of
Camelot nurtured the New Left in its infancy. Many of the grey-beards on the
Neo-Religious Left "cut their teeth" on the Civil Rights Movement both
literally and figuratively. But it was during the Vietnam anti-War movement
that the current movement blossomed, spreading with some toking into the
counter-culture.
After the draft went away in the early 1970s the student movement shrank and
the students also grew up -- but the Neo-Religious Left was established,
especially in our mainline Protestant denominations, groups like the United
Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church,
U.S.A., the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church
in America.
During the Reagan administration they railed against Ronald Reagan dubbing
the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire" and lambasted America's initiatives to
thwart a communist takeover in El Salvador. The Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI), derisively called "Star Wars," was a favorite topic. They also
opposed the largest peace-time military build-up in American history. In
sum, the "Neo-Religious Left", through a numerous organizations like
Presbyterians Peacemaking, the Witherspoon Society and Christian Peacemaker
Teams, articulated and matriculated an obstructionist neo-Marxist agenda.
FP: What is the Religious Left's relationship to the modern academic Left?
Tilford: During the 1960s, as the US role in Southeast Asia escalated, the
country found itself fighting the Vietnam War with an inadequate and
antiquated draft law, the Conscription Act of 1948 which provided a plethora
of exemptions. Most precious among those exemptions, other than the IV-F,
which meant one was mentally or physically unfit for military service, were
the II-S deferment for college and university students and the IV-D for
seminary students.
Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson was nothing if he was not the original "education
president." The Federal Government provided ample funds for low-interest
loans under the National Defense Education Act, so going on to higher
education was not problematic for vast numbers of reasonably intelligent
young men.
Additionally, the Government provided funds which colleges and universities
used to expand; something they needed to do given the influx of baby boomers
which began entering the halls of academe in 1964. With the threat of the
draft hanging over the heads of hundreds of thousands of young men, interest
in staying in school soared. When male students ran through their four years
of undergraduate work, then the next step was on to graduate school or
seminary -- both of which provided additional years of protection from the
draft. Furthermore, colleges and universities had added facilities and hired
additional faculty to handle this unexpected rise in student populations so
they needed to fill those seats.
Many faculty also were inclined to oppose the war and sympathized with
letting as many applicants into graduate programs as possible. Requirements
for the MA and PhD were lowered and new graduate programs introduced. What
resulted was a generation of academics not as well-prepared as earlier
generations and more politically-inclined as well. The same thing held in
many seminaries. The hard stuff of theology was dropped in favor of courses
related to "social justice". Greek and Hebrew went by the wayside in some
cases.
Over the years, these new secular and theological scholars rose through the
ranks of academe and their respective churches, replicating themselves as
they went. Today, having attained the "commanding heights" of the academy as
well as our mainline denominations, they set the agenda; one focused on
multi-culturalism, diversity, gender and class victimization, etc. All the
stuff of "political correctness."
FP: You mentioned the Religious Left’s stance on America and the Evil Empire
during the Cold War. Expand for us a bit.
Tilford: The Religious Left does not believe in evil. Rather, being
semi-Pelagian, they believe in the essential goodness of humanity.
Therefore, the Soviet Union was, in their minds, just a more advanced form
of progressive socialism while the United States and the rest of the Free
World were stuck in exploitative capitalism. The Soviet Union was no more to
blame for the Cold War than the United States. They compared our efforts in
Vietnam with the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe; that sort of thing.
The Religious Left constantly harped on themes related to disarmament, even
unilateral disarmament. They tended to see no distinctions between what the
United States stood for and did in the world, i.e. attempt to defend South
Vietnam from communist subversion and aggression, and what the Soviets were
doing in Eastern Europe, Africa, Southeast and Southwest Asia and the Middle
East. Generally, the Religious Left deplores the use or even the threat of
violence. They believe that mankind, being essentially good, would prefer to
work out its problems peacefully. Violence--even in self-defense--is
anathema to many on the Religious Left.
FP: Well, not the violence engaged in by communists, radical Muslims and
other violence perpetrated by enemies of America and the West that’s for
sure.
Tilford: You are absolutely right about the hypocrisy of the Religious Left.
To be sure, before launching into some unwarranted criticism of Israel, a
Religious Left spokesman may say something about all terrorism being wrong.
For the most part, however, in their view, violence perpetrated by America's
enemies results not from evil on the part of our enemies but is a warranted
response to US policy or their perceptions of America as a "racist" or
exploitative capitalist-imperialist behemoth.
FP: So what has the Religious Left been up to since the end of the Cold War?
With the Soviet Union, it definitely must have lost a cause and inspiration.
Tilford: In the 1990s, many Neo-Religious Left groups turned to "social
justice" issues. Gay rights issues were high on their list of priorities.
Bringing practicing homosexuals, bisexuals, and trans-gendered individuals
into "full communion" in various denominations was part of that focus. This,
of course, meant setting aside more than age-old prejudices; it mean
ignoring vast portions of the Old and New Testaments which definitively
proscribe homosexual acts calling them "abominations", ranking them with
bestiality and incest. Women's rights issues, like keeping abortion legal,
was high on their agenda. Additionally, the Neo-Religious Left stayed with
their anti-military stance, advocating for decreased military spending by
attempting to make the point that money spent on the military could better
be spent on social programs. Closing the "School of the Americas" at Fort
Benning Georgia has also been one of their consistent advocacy initiatives.
The Religious Left is quintessentially Marxist in its thinking.
FP: Ok, let’s talk about the Religious Left’s position in the War on Terror.
Tilford: Early on, after the horror of 9/11, many on the religious left
opposed taking military action in Afghanistan, preferring to turn the
problem of al Qaeda's presence in that Taliban-run country to the United
Nations. Thankfully, the Bush Administration ignored them. Naturally, the
Religious left opposed going into Iraq, dubbing it a "war of aggression" and
beyond the scope of "Just War Doctrine" which generally (but not totally)
forbids wars of aggression.
After the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Neo-Religious Left
began to harp on the "occupation" of Iraq and focus on the "outrages of Abu
Ghraib." Groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams--a Mennonite Group which
epitomizes the term "useful idiots"--deployed to Iraq with the stated
purpose of acts of violence carried out by US troops on innocent Iraqis. In
some ways their stances are predictable. The publication of David Ray
Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Question abut the Bush
Administration and 9/11 in 2003 was greeted with rave reviews by people
posting to the Witherspoon Society's website.
Griffin, a "progress theologian," which means he believes God's nature is
ever evolving so religion must also evolve, knows very little about any of
the subjects related to the events of 9/11. His conspiracy theories, many
based on work done originally by French communist Thierry Meyssan, were
easily countered. For instance, early in his "expose," Griffin muses that
F-15 fighters have a top speed of over 1,800 miles per hour. Therefore,
since they were flying towards New York and Washington at speeds just over
600 miles-per-hour they must have flying at such comparatively low speed
because the "plot" called for the planes to hit the Twin Towers and Pentagon
just so Bush and Israel and Halliburton and who knows who else could get the
war they all wanted.
True, the absolute top speed for an F-15 stripped of armaments and with a
small load of fuel is around 1,800 miles-per-hour. But combat planes do not
fly at those speeds. For one thing, the under wing stores would rip off. For
another, going above the speed of sound in F-15s and other fighters of that
sort requires the planes to switch to afterburners to inject raw fuel into
the exhaust. It consumes an enormous amount of fuel very quickly. Fighters
use their speed capabilities to engage and disengage, not to travel over
long distances, and they rarely exceed Mach 1.5 even in combat. Those kinds
of mistakes are fife throughout Griffin's book. Still, the Religious Left
embraces him.
FP: Can you touch on the Religious Left’s growing Jew-Hatred?
Tilford: As for Israel, the Religious Left fears religion. Religion is
repugnant to their egalitarian ideals because it is not value neutral.
Religion affirms the existence of definitive Truth (God as a sovereign and
unchanging entity) and recognizes the presence of evil as a real force in
the world. Religion demands moral righteousness in personal behavior in ways
that run counter to the hedonism attendant to homosexual or bisexual
practice. Christianity and Judaism both value life. This contrasts sharply
with the Religious Left where values are relative, evil does not exist and
as for personal behavior, if it feels right it must be right. Israel is a
state built on values inimical to the Religious Left.
Israel recognizes the evil that confronts it--terrorism--and worse, from the
perspective of the Religious Left, it takes decisive military action to
thwart that evil. In addition to religion, the Religious Left fears power
and success. Israel is both militarily powerful and economically successful.
Israeli economic prosperity, in the minds of the Religious Left, must flow
from exploitation because all economic prosperity, from their Marxist
perspective, issues from exploitation. Obviously then, the Israelis are well
off because they have exploited the Palestinians. So, the New Left has two
things they require: an oppressor and a victim. If there is evil, that
explains it. That keeps terrorists like Yassir Arafat from being simply evil
men.
It is not so much that the Religious Left is anti-Semitic as that it is
anti-Israel because Israel, not unlike the United States, stands for things
the Neo-Religious Left cannot stand: power, success and unilateral boldness.
Israel uses its military forces to strike at terrorists unabashedly and
unapologetically. That drives the wimps of the Religious Left up the
proverbial wall.
FP: Well, if the Religious Left fears religion, it would be a great critic
of Islam and it isn’t. It is a critic of religions that serve as a buffer to
Western civilization and freedom. If a religion is part of an adversarial
culture and ideology, the Religious Left has not only no problem with it,
but offers its hand of solidarity – as we witness today.
Tilford: We have to keep in mind that the Christian Religious Left fears
both Judaism and Christianity. Having abandoned any concept of "definitive"
truth and objective morality as right and wrong, abjuring any concept of
evil, Christian lefties fear anyone who puts his or her faith in a Higher
Power, especially a sovereign God. Such religious beliefs imply judgment
against things the Christian Religious Left holds precious, such as their
self-centered individualist hedonism---their "if it is right for me it must
be right" attitude towards sex. Since they believe that all religions are
more or less valid, they fear true believers be they Jews or Christians
whether Protestant of Catholic. Witness Bill Marr's recent rant against
Catholicism as an example. His demonstrated paranoia was worthy of any rant
by Adolf Hitler.
FP: Yes absolutely, but again, there is another ingredient here because the
Religious Left is completely silent about Islam in this context.
Let’s move on. Can you talk a bit about how the Religious Left has
re-invented itself since the 2004 election?
Tilford: The real re-invention began after George W. Bush was re-elected in
November 2004. In the Spring of 2005, the Rockledge Group, a
California-based "progressive" institute, held a cyber conference for
"religious progressives." The conference welcomed all religions
progressives: Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, "Christian
atheists," even Wiccans. The objective was to figure out how to "frame" the
debate so they could push their Marxist agenda across the board: keep
abortion legal, gain acceptance of gay marriage, end the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and above all gain control of both houses of Congress and put a
Democrat in the White House in 2008.
Lots of pontificating about the "righteousness" of sodomy and abortion
aside, at the end of the day to properly "frame" the debate meant they would
have to lie about who they were and what they were trying to achieve.
Therefore, they would not push issues like gay marriage based on any
Biblical or religious grounds -- because there are none -- but "frame" the
issue as one demanding "justice." (Notice how often the word "justice" is
thrown around by the Religious Left). Who could be against "justice"? Also,
they abandoned the label "liberal" for "progressive" knowing that people
generally don't want to be thought of as "retrogressive" or "unprogressive."
So, gay marriage is not a matter of morality, (which is grounded in Biblical
virtue) but a matter of "justice" or "social justice."
That's what we face. People of faith, people who really do "cling" to their
faith in times of trouble, face a basically dishonest attack from groups
rooted in Marxism, meant to destabilize traditional society. If they
succeed, America and the Judeo-Christian West will be left naked to face the
evil that is inherent in Islamist Jihadists. Al Qaeda, associated groups
like Hezbollah, and other Islamist terrorist groups and their supporters in
Syria, Iran and among the Wahabbist in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, mean to
change the world. If they succeed, all of us, including the "useful idiots"
of the Neo-Religious Left, will be condemned to slavery or slated for
extinction. That's the world we face and the Religious Left isn't helping.
FP: No, it’s not helping, because it’s rooting for the other side.
Tilford: You bet. These people detest the Judeo-Christian West with its
values rooted in Jewish and Christian faith. They have been rooting for the
other side from the beginning.
FP: Dr. Earl Tilford, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
Tilford: Thank you very much for letting me spend some time with you. God
bless you and keep up the good work.
FP: As mentioned in the introduction, anyone wishing to contact Dr. Tilford
can do so by emailing him at ***@gcc.edu.
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