Hang down your head Mark Tooley ...

This little item should give us all an idea of just how far off track the "Christian" right has moved. And quite apart from fretting about gays, stem cell research, condoms, evolution, the Ten Commandments in front of the Supreme Court and any number of other idiot distractions leaders of the Christian right enjoin their legions of cretins to admonish, the director of the United Methodist Committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), Mark Tooley, recently found himself awfully upset by fellow Christians -- evangilicals even -- and their National Religious Campaign Against Torture. According to Tooley, fellow evangelical Christians opposing torture are simply making a political statement against George Bush, a supposed "Christian" who apparently thinks that torture is a necessary part of his job. Tooley worries these misguided evangelicals are more concerned with the actions of their own government than those of Saudi Arabia, China and North Korea. And, well, that's just wrong.

That's right. Christian Mark Tooley feels that this is a "double standard" and that the United States should not -- cannot -- be judged on a higher moral plain than any other abuser of human rights. I, myself, wouldn't disagree with that because there is nothing about the behaviour of the White House that has delivered any message of the Christian ideal.

If this group were genuinely interested in torture, of course they would be addressing those regimes that actively and deliberately do practice torture rather than focusing exclusively on the United States.

Now, I must say, this is an interesting position for a Christian or, well, any American, though we have had abundant example of it since Abu Graib wound its mirthless way into the modern lexicon of Bush's "foreign" policy. The Bush administration has risen well above the standard of "regimes that actively and deliberately do practice torture." I'd like to know where Mr. Tooley has been for the last few years that makes him unaware of the active and deliberate practices of the Bush administration.

But this is quite beside the point. Tooley displays an amazing incoherence as regards the Christian faith and this is especially true for someone who probaby also claims America to be a "Christian nation." Well, which is it, Tooley? Is the United States a "Christian nation," or is it on par with the fuckers in China? According to Tooley, there's really no differance. Perhaps this is real message Tooley is unwittingly telling his brethren: the actions of the White House are not Christian by any metric of the faith and we really are to be measured by the standards applied to North Korea; why don't we just cut out the bullshit? Though I doubt this has occured to this dour Christianist, I wonder if his fellow evangelicals are getting that message through their addle-pated, Sunday morning heads. Then again, it may not bother them. Maybe they look back on days of yore and the Spanish Inquisition with a kind of moist-eyed reverence. Maybe they even see Bush as this century's Torquemada and see that as a good thing (Bush is doing the lord's work, as we've oft been told). I profess, trying to understand a modern Christian leader's mind is a perplexing endevour.

As much as the Americans would like to believe that they are of a strong moral fibre, the constant and unmitigated denial they engage, which informs them with the baseless opinion that the government of George Bush is one of Christ, is truly a breathtaking act of delusion. I expect that such people who claim to be Christian and who have no qualms about fellow so-called Christians practicing torture are in for a rude awakening should they ever happen to meet the maker of their faith, a faith which they have so egregiously taken in vain.