I am willing to believe that Newt Gingrich really is a pretty intelligent fellow. I disagree with his political philosophy, not to mention his personal ethics, but all told he strikes me as a man with a certain measure of smarts.
Which is why, when he says something like this, it isn’t just a Michelle Bachmann moment. Newt is smart enough to know this for the idiocy that it is.
“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”
How can a “secular atheist country” also be a country “dominated by radical Islamists”?
The rhetorical bankruptcy of the Right is such that they’re just stringing buzz words together, regardless of whether they make any sense. To the base (taught well and hard by the Right’s leadership, yet seemingly out of their control), “secular” = “atheist” … but somehow both are also = “radical Islamist.”
Never mind that atheists disdain Islam as much as Christianity — or that Islamist regimes persecute atheists (as well as secularists) as much as any other group, if not more. Never mind that one can be a secularist (pressing for a government that is not dominated by religious factions) without being an atheist.
No, all that’s important is stringing together a bunch of dog whistle words so as to either whip up the base into a voting frenzy (“Secularists! Islamists! Atheists! Radicals!”) or else establish bona fides with the folks most likely to vote in a primary or turn out for a caucus.
From someone whose only claim to fame is stridency — a Bachmann or a Palin — I might expect it. From someone who actually claims to be (and has some credit for being) someone with an IQ out of double-digits, it’s disappointing, disgusting, and alarming.
As The Simpson’s Ranier Wolfcastle said; “Mayday! I’m being chased by Commie Nazis!” Somehow the base has come to accept that there’s really only one “Them”.
Frightening? Speaking as one of the “Them”, oh, my yes…
Yup. We have met the enemy and They are THEM!