DOES BILL KRISTOL LIKE THE TALIBAN?

It’s not unusual for the Weekly Standard to find all sorts of reasons to consider certain ideas and arguments beyond the pale of civilized discourse, so it’s interesting to note what that magazine considers to be well within the pale. In the current issue, there is a warm and respectful tribute to R.J. Rushdoony, the philosopher behind Christian Reconstructionism, who died in February. (Sorry, it’s not on the web.) Rushdoony supported the abolition of the American Constitution in favor of a political order drawn directly from Biblical, Mosaic law. Thus in his view, adultery should not merely be a criminal offense. It should be punished with death. For Rushdoony, the ex-gay movement was way too tolerant: “Not arrested development or immaturity but deliberate and mature warfare against God marks the homosexual. God’s penalty is death, and a godly order will enforce it.” He approved of stoning of adulterers as one option, and execution of children who slander their parents. I think it’s fair to describe his views as theo-fascist, and him as a would-be American Ayatollah. A more forgiving judgment is that he was just a crackpot. (The best summary of what Rushdoony stood for I know of is Walter Olson’s definitive essay, “An Invitation To A Stoning.”) Yet the Standard writes of him thus: “Rushdoony may end up having as great an impact on American life as other, better known American theologians of the past century.” He was, to be sure, “too controversial for many [on the Christian Right] to embrace openly.” (That “openly” is priceless.) But he was also “an eccentric and a genius, a man of follies and a man with some genuine greatness in him. An American original, if ever there was one.” (The author hails from Moscow, Idaho, a hotbed of Christian Reconstructionism.) Beneath Rushdoony’s wish to trash the Constitution and execute countless citizens for religious sin, he was a great soul: “A son of immigrants, Rushdoony proved a thoroughly American intellectual – in the old-fashioned sense: an independent-minded autodidact and polymath, who approached even the most esoteric matters with an earthy practicality.” I guess the editors of the Standard believe public stonings of recalcitrant offspring is evidence of “earthy practicality.” I beg to differ. If anyone needs evidence of the Standard’s capitulation to theocratic extremism, and its apparent fondness for a man who found American liberal institutions contemptible, they should read this article. It’s the most chilling piece to appear in a mainstream publication in years.