Democracy; it’s all Greek to me!

A blogger I have complained about before now claims to have identified “the real debate”:

The real debate is between Christianity and all its values verses the secular atheist elites and their lack of same. Between their sliding scale morality, which means sodomy is OK as long as your partner is over eight years old and of the same sex and the proscription of same. The battle between Thou shalt not Kill and the seculars so-called “situational ethics”, meaning I killed him because he hurt my feelings is OK but I killed him because he broke into my house is not OK. The fight between the moral relativism of the Left and the moral clarity of the Christian; meaning to the secular and the atheist everything except smoking is OK almost always if one can prove (sort of) that he or she is a “victim” of white America against the clear prohibition of murder, adultery, and lying in Christian doctrine. The purpose of sex should not be ejaculation and orgasm, but children and family is a concept rejected and scorned.
Finally people like O’Reilley, Ingraham, Savage, and now David Limbaugh together with more than a few others are paying attention. This attack on Christianity is funded by both the Ford and the MacArthur Foundations that toss hundreds of millions of tax free dollars to the tax exempt ACLU. We cannot ignore the role the ADL and other Jewish orgs are playing in this, particularly in the attack on Gibson’s “Passion”.
Face it. Christianity has always been dangerous. So has real democracy. It is no accident that democracy has only taken hold in Christian countries. No Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist, or African Tribal society has ever wanted it. Only Christian countries wanted it and developed it in the modern world. Successful Democracy is a Christian concept. Period.

Yow!
I don’t even know where to begin with such indigestible morsels of thought. I don’t want to be too hard on this blogger, but twice now I have given him the benefit of the doubt as a satirist.
In all honesty, it’s hard to excuse this latest outburst as satire. Mr. Veit’s overall tone here strikes me as disrespectful of the American founding: unappreciative and unpatriotic.
Is Mr. Veit serious? I have asked around, and a blogger I greatly respect (who has been blogging longer than I have, and who is one of the best writers in the blogosphere) thinks that Howard Veit might be “a malicious weather vane, angry with whoever, whenever for whatever reason.” Considering that Mr. Veit is a fan of Michael Savage, whose entertainment style could be described the same way, the goal may be one of generating ratings. Michael Savage struck me as an agent provocateur type, and for all I know the same thing may be going on with Mr. Veit. It makes sense, considering the calculated and provocative anti-gay insults, mutual praise going back and forth between Veit and a well-known anti-Semitic organization, repeated attacks on leading Jewish organizations like ADL and B’nai Brith as well as comments like this one about Jews:

Jews are in the forefront of the separation of Church and State but have no problem taking money from same; makes you think it might be separation of Christian Church and state is all they are really interested in.

Well, I’ll still try to be fair, but I have to admit that I find myself more than a little annoyed.
Let me start by reminding Mr. Veit that the word “democracy” is Greek, and the concept we in the West know and love took root among the ancient Greeks, hundreds of years before there was such a thing as Christianity. When Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Franklin, et al. put their heads together over what sort of government was to replace the tyranny of European monarchy, they not only examined the early “Town Hall” style of local governments in the colonies, but they meticulously researched the pagan past (Greek democracy and Roman Republican political theory) and even looked at the societies of their pagan contemporaries (American Indian democracies). For the most part, Christian countries at the time of America’s founding had no concept of democracy in the American sense. Kings ruled by divine right, and that was seen as the Christian way. Our founding was a clear break with the past, and a restoration of two lost Classical Values: democracy and republicanism. (I am sure Mr. Veit understands the difference between a democracy and a republic, and that he knows our founders intended to create a republic; to avoid semantical bitchiness I will use the word “democracy” in the general sense as Mr. Veit obviously did.)
It would, however, be unfair to assert that there were no true European democracies between ancient times and the American Revolution. The oldest democracy which can truly be said to be Western is the Icelandic Althing, which was established in 930 AD. (I can understand why Mr. Veit would fail to cite the Althing, because when he did his research he probably noticed that the Vikings had not yet been “Christianized” — which would render his thesis suspect….)
In addition to Greece and the Rome, there have been numerous other ancient non-Christian democracies and Republics — even in Asia! There are a number of successful democracies in Asia today which are by no means Christian. While there are not many democracies in Muslim countries, Turkey is a genuine success story, and Malaysia is working on it. (Maybe even Iraq….)
Despite all of the above, Veit solemnly proclaims that

“democracy has only taken hold in Christian countries.”

Hey! I almost forgot Israel! It is not mentioned at all.
There is, of course, a well-organized movement which maintains Israel is not a democracy. Might the following statement offer a clue as to whether its author shares such sympathies?

We cannot ignore the role the ADL and other Jewish orgs are playing in this, particularly in the attack on Gibson’s “Passion”.

I had planned to write about the attacks on the “Passion,” actually, because while I would defend its production as one Biblical depiction of events, the uproar over it has taken on a distinctly anti-Semitic flavor — and I think the above remark is a pretty good example.
Finally, while I don’t think it’s necessary, I should add a word about Veit’s division of the world into the “Christians and all its values” and “secular atheist elites,” the latter of whom share the following “sliding scale morality”:

sodomy is OK as long as your partner is over eight years old and of the same sex and the proscription of same.

“situational ethics”, meaning I killed him because he hurt my feelings is OK but I killed him because he broke into my house is not OK.

everything except smoking is OK almost always if one can prove (sort of) that he or she is a “victim” of white America against the clear prohibition of murder, adultery, and lying in Christian doctrine.

Not only do I personally disagree with every one of the “sliding scale morality” concepts Veit alleges above (and attributes to “secular atheists”), I consider them psychotic. I resent having psychotic words and ideas cavalierly put in my mouth and the mouths of other people I respect — even as a ruse for Veit to get hits and links. His insulting stereotypes ought to be offensive to all — Christian and non-Christian alike.
Such dishonesty (“lying in the Christian doctrine” — or any other doctrine) squarely puts Mr. Veit on the same moral level of those “sliding scale moralists” he condemns.
And that is not moral relativism!
UPDATE:
Here’s one last gem for all you unemployed jerkoffs who have nothing better to read:

You take their money and you do what they want. It’s called a job. Plumbers have them, machinists have them, secretaries have them; everybody has them but the unemployed jerkoffs on the web.

Who said that! Bill O’Reilly? No; that was Howard Veit, whose weathervane is now angry at Daniel Weintraub (see discussion here) and the Blogosphere:

None of the people pissing and moaning on the so-called blogoshpere earn their living writing for a daily newspaper. Weintraub, like the millionaire “artists” in Hollywood, wants to say what he wants on somebody else’s dime, and then get paid for it. Fuck him. That’s life 101, something these pampered writers want nothing to do with.

More pissing and moaning tomorrow — if I can shumhow schlep my way back to the sho-called BLOGOSHPERE!