Our First Weekly Jackass Update: Checkin' In On Babs

It stands to reason, doesn't it, that just because our honorees have reached the pinnacle and been proclaimed 'Weekly Jackasses', they don't just stop being jackasses, right? One of our early honorees, Babs Streisand, has broken her long silence, and let us know once again...well, I'm getting ahead of the story. Let's listen in on dear Barbra, shall we?

America was profoundly changed after the September 11 attacks. We went from a country motivated by hope to a country controlled by fear. For the last several years, feeling neither safe nor secure, Americans have lived in extreme anxiety of another impending terrorist attack. I think that as a result, most Americans sought out their faith and reaffirmed their conviction in God.

In all honesty, do you live in fear? Do you know anyone who does? Do you think that it was extreme anxiety that drove Americans to be more open about faith, or was it, perhaps, the cesspool of a culture created by hacks like Babs and her Hollywood buddies, and the moral relativism of the 'progressive' Left?

President Bush and the Religious Right's greatest political weapon has been perpetuating fear. Because of the heightened climate of anxiety coupled with religious fervor, they have been successful in stripping Americans of their personal freedoms, suppressing dissent and winning elections based on moral values. I also think the unfathomable fear of being a victim of another terrorist attack has allowed for the crumbling of the wall between church and state, which is a vital part of our historical, legal and political heritage.

Let me play dumb again, because that's the best way to reason with a mental titan like this. Have you been stripped of your personal freedoms? Is dissent being supressed in a world where tens of thousands of whacked-out Kossacks can discuss the First Lady in crude sexual situations? Do you know a single, A SINGLE, person in America who has been jailed because of opposition to the Bush Administration? Now watch this next sentence closely, 'cause it's a doozy:

By allowing personal religious beliefs to infiltrate our political framework, we have enabled this administration to wage a war on women's reproductive rights, squelch scientific advancement, take away our freedom of speech and fill important positions within government and possibly the nation's highest courts with religious extremists.

Oooohhh, I'm sorry, Barbra, you just flunked American History 101. Notice the choice of words: 'by allowing personal religious beliefs to infiltrate our political framework'. People, that's not what separation of church and state is about, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Clearly, no matter how many revisionist historians we have around today, America was not founded on the principle that religion should play no part in civic life. Rather, the principle being affirmed was that no particular religion should be favored by the state, nor freedom of worship (including the choice not to) infringed upon.

Would Barbra be upset if I were to cry out against 'allowing personal moral beliefs' on, say, the matter of allowing a woman 'the right to choose' to 'infiltrate our political framework'? How about slavery? Was the War Between the States purely a 'political' affair? Civil rights? No, Barbra, and this is why you are and will remain a jackass, that's not the problem. Indeed, it would be a sad state of affairs if people DID NOT allow their moral, and yes, religious beliefs to infiltrate our political framework.

There's much more (including the insinuation that Bush voters were 'manipulated' into voting for him, and the obligatory Nazi reference), but I don't have the stomach to continue to tear apart arguments so ill-considered. Read Barbra's statement one more time, and you will understand everything there is to know about the Left's real problem with religion. It isn't that we're close to a theocracy; it's that people are arguing that there are moral absolutes, there is good and evil, and while we can argue and disagree about where the lines are, to argue that there are no lines is to become....well, Europe.