I know, I know. I'm terribly unreasonable. It's time for Andreas or Michael to jump in and tell me I only read right-wing Neocon books. This "Right-Wing Neocon" in question is named Bruce Bawer. He is a gay Liberal who moved to Europe to get away from Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists. He was told by European friends that there was no Right-Wing-Religious problem in Europe. He discovered that wasn't true: Now he has something to rant about. [Page 33] "The main reason I'd been glad to leave America was Protestant fundamentalism. But Europe, I eventually saw, was falling prey to an even more alarming fundamentalism whose leaders made their American Protestant counterparts look like amateurs. Falwell was an unsavory creep, but he didn't issue fatwas. James Dobson's parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn't telling people to murder their daughters. American liberals had been fighting the Religious Right for decades; Western Europeans had yet to even acknowledge that they had a Religious Right. How could they ignore it? Certainly as a gay man, I couldn't' close my eyes to this grim reality. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me. I wasn't fond of the hypocritical conservative-Christian line about hating the sin and loving the sinner, but it was preferable to the forthright fundamentalist Muslim view that homosexuals merited death." Lawrence _____ From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Ward Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 10:33 AM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Dutch support killer of van Gogh "How delightful to have two people so quickly jump to the defense of the Islamists bent upon taking over Europe. Perhaps Allah is behind them after all." Actually, my concern was defending the British Welfare State rather than Islamists since, as it seemed to me, it was the system that Bawer was attacking. As for Allah - well I've just taken a look over my shoulder and all I can see is the silhouette of a oak tree against a topaz sky. Rant coming.... The problem Lawrence is that you are labelling anyone who disagrees with you (or the authors you quote) as closet Islamists. You have no conception that there has been any wrongdoing by the forces you support. If I rail against Bush, then I must be an Islamist - or at a push a raving Leftist. There's no middle ground is there? Yet the vast majority of people in the world just want to live their lives. Whatever religion, whatever creed, they just want to live their lives. But people like you and Bush won't let them because you, and he, demand that they take sides. Still. One day soon I'm going analyse the dates of each Bin Laden Broadcast. Simon