Though John Kasich looked like a promising candidate early in the campaign, his latest proposal — a propaganda department devoted to spreading Judeo-Christian values — looks like a belated appeal to the loony base and ought to disqualify him from any further serious consideration.
During a speech Tuesday at the National Press Club, Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich offered a litany of ideas meant to broaden the influence of the United States and combat the rise of the Islamic State. Among them was one that, on its face, seemed to contradict the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
“We must be more forceful in the battle of ideas,” Kasich said. “U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents’ propaganda and disinformation. I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share: the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.” The areas he would target: the Middle East, China, Iran and Russia.
WHAT!?
For starters, Jews reject outright the idea that there is a Judeo-Christian tradition; by their lights, there was Judaism, and then Christians came along and screwed it all up. One might as well speak of the Christian-Mormon tradition.
Second, the Old Testament Jews were indistinguishable from today’s ISIS; if Christians actually read their beloved Inerrant Bible, they’d know all about it. You may be sure the Arabs know. Quick! Who conducted the Canaanite genocide? The Midianite genocide? The Amalekite genocide? The … you get the idea.
Third, Christians killed heretics, blasphemers, everybody who was out-of-step, right-up till the day that the secular movement spawned by the Enlightenment stopped them. Many Christians want to return to those halcyon days, too. This time last week, for instance, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz made an appearance at a conference sponsored by Reconstructionist pastor Kevin Swanson, who thinks gays, adulterers, on and on, ought to be executed.
It was the Enlightenment that ended Christianity’s indecencies — not Christian love-love-love.