Today's Quote of the Day (So Far!) comes from Ross Douthat's rejoinder to Jonathan Chait's column on "faith-based politics." Here's Douthat:
It's so kind of [Chait] to grant the civil rights movement permission to talk about Moses and the Promised Land, so gracious of him to let them appeal to their fellow Southerners' Christian principles in making the case for human equality, so considerate of him to grant a special exception to the rule of secular politics. I wonder - just how many alternative political outlets would have had to be available to the civil rights movement to render MLK's sermonizing speeches unseemly in Chait's eyes? (Quite a few did exist, after all, starting with the NAACP - and of course as Christopher Hitchens never tires of pointing [sic], there were atheists and Communists doing their part for civil rights as well.) More importantly, where does one apply for the special License to Commit Faith-Based Politics that Chait grants to King and Abernathy? Is there an Office of Causes So Desperate That It's Okay To Invoke the Supreme Being? (Maybe pro-lifers should camp out there, in the hopes that some kindly bureaucrat will smile on them one day.)
Whoa there, Ross! You can almost see the steam rising from the keyboard as he wrote this ... but I guess heated responses are what blogs are for! Read the whole essay. As for me, I'm going to head down to the OCSDTIOTISB and apply for a LCFBP.