Unflinching Against Evil

I don't advocate the state-sponsored assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I do, however, believe that the U.S. government has a responsibilty to defend the nation against the abundantly-manifest evil that exists in the world. The Nazis were evil, Soviet totalitarianism was evil, Saddam Hussein was evil, and the Mumbai terrorists were evil. We defeated the former three in two hot wars and a cold one, and I hope that this nation will rise to confront the latest demonstration of evil we saw in the terrorists who massacred the innocents in India.

There is evil in the world, and the United States has historically been the world's greatest bulwark against it. When we flinch, civilizations teeter on the brink. America has always been the last best hope of mankind. It's who we are, and what we do. There's no need to apologize for it, and it's criminal negligence to repudiate it.

The issue arises with reference to the apparent comments Pastor Rick Warren made on Sean Hannity's show. Here's Steve Benen's recap:

Pastor Rick Warren has a reputation for being far more stable and grounded than religious right leaders and TV preachers like Pat Robertson, but it's worth remembering that he's not exactly a moderate.

Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to "take out" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, "Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?" Warren responded, "Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped .... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."

Read the rest of Benen's post, here (there's a discussion of those who have combed scripture for the biblical authority for Warren's exhortation).

My interest is the response to this on the nihilist left, among people who have been building up preemptive arguments against any forceful action in South Asia to eradicate the terror sanctuaries from which last week's killings were launched.

For example, here's Andrew Sullivan's response to Warren:

Some insist that Warren is a centrist, moderate type. He is, in fact, a very hard-core Christianist integrated firmly into the GOP. As such, he sees government as a divine institution authorized to punish evil and promote good - as fundamentalist Christians view those things.

Here's Melissa McEwan:

Even if the Bible does justify such a thing, which is dubious (see further discussion at the link), the Bible is not the handbook of the Department of Defense—a sentence I can't believe I even have to write, but there you go.

Matt Duss draws out an analogy:

In any case, if this were a conversation between an Iranian TV host and an ayatollah in which they discussed scriptural justifications for “taking out” high ranking members of the U.S. government, you’d probably see Sean Hannity running the clip on his show — while slowly shaking his head in pious disapproval — as evidence of what crazy extremists those Iranians are. As it is, they’ll probably be running this on Iranian TV as evidence of what crazy extremists those Americans are.

Spencer Ackerman, however, hits a moral-relativist home run:

Let's say a preacher appeared on a massively popular TV show and offered scriptural justification for an unprovoked attack on a foreign country. What would you say? "Oh, there goes Yusuf Qaradawi again"? Or maybe, "I truly hope these people turn away from bin Laden like some of their colleagues have"? Or perhaps, "How is it these fanatics can't understand that they, in fact, are the evil people they seek to rid the world of"?

Ah, but you'd be neglecting the cancer of religious extremism right here at home. Matt Duss at the Center for American Progress takes note of pastor Rick Warren, who appeared on Sean Hannity's scummy little Fox News show to say that the U.S. has a divine obligation to attack Iran ....

Am I drawing an equivalence between Rick Warren and Islamic extremists? Why, yes, yes I am. That's because his statements are identical to those of the demagogic, fanatical preachers who motivate perplexed children into fighting religious wars....

Andrew Sullivan claims his anti-Christianist project is rooted in his faith, but that faith cannot be Christian, for Sullivan and the others here - in their response to Hannity and Warren - represent the powerful oppositional culture of radical secularism that has taken over public intellectualism on the American left.

These folks will tell you otherwise, of course, but their ideological program is of a piece: the repudiation of objective good and absolute truth in favor of a relativist epistemology; a rejection of Thomistic doctrines of rational faith in favor of scientist ontology; welfare state expansion as the solution to social problems, such as poverty; the repudiation of patriotism as anachronistic, in favor of a global loyalty - "imagine there's no countries"; and, most of all, the refusal of God's goodness as the precursor of universal right, a rejection of the divine moral code.

This oppositional secularism - despite attempts to seek the cover of ad hoc spiritual coating - refuses the moral guideposts that allows us not only to distinguish good from evil, but for us to always choose the good.

Rick Warren is not a Iranian mullah sanctioning the stoning of women and the execution of homosexuals. He is a man of deep spiritural learning, values, and wisdom, a man who knows that Americans have a manifest charge to resist the evil darkening the world. He is not a "Christianist" who gives a "religious blessing" to murder.

And Warren is not a "demagogic, fanatical preacher" who is no better than some damned Ahmad attempting to smuggle some lethal C-4 on a civilian transcontinental jetliner.

There are distinctions to be made in this world, and when there is evil, it's to be confronted, not enabled.

When I speak of the forces arrayed against traditional culture, the folks cited above are at the top of the masthead. Their time is now, with "The One" in power. But I believe their recent electoral victory is Pyrrhic, and that eternal right - as articulated in Pastor Warren's moral clarity - will again prevail against the creepy cultural totalitarianism we're witnessing today.