For instance, in an article at the Christian Post, Blankley explains the relationship between the Ten Commandments and Constitutional and human rights, saying for instance of the various commandments that [beyond messing up the numbering]:
- “Religious freedom and self-governance are defined in the First Commandment”. Well, that strict ban on having other gods is what fundies mean by religious freedom is rather explanatory.
- “family governance in the Second”. Just think about it. Blankley obviously didn’t (if she did, she’d be even more insane than we make her out to be).
- “private property rights in the Fifth”. One would think a ban on theft hardly defines private property rights but presupposes it, but to think that distinction makes sense to someone like Blankley would be almost as silly as conflating that distinction.
Most of the ten Commandments are of course unconstitutional to enforce in the US. To someone like Blankley, who understands neither the Commandments nor the Constitution (nor history, nor thinking), “the founding fathers knew” in their hearts the Biblical commands and shaped the US in their image rather than the opposite. For more of her deep, deep confusions, see this.
Blankley was also a champion of Donald Trump (“a Cyrus or a Paul”) due to his Christian virtues, as opposed to e.g. Hillary Clinton (“a worse successor of America’s current nemesis, Ahab: an evil queen Jezebel”). For comparison, even Bryan Fischer recognized Trump’s meanness and lack of virtue (though he voted for him anyways … or perhaps rather precisely for that reason). In 2015, Blankley published a list of 46 senators who “should be tried for treason” because they disagree with her (and by extension: God) on politics.
Blankley is not fond of gay marriage, either. You can read about her distaste for rainbow doritos here. We feel no particular inclination to repost it, but it tells you quite a bit about what Blankley is thinking about and how.
More recently, her columns have tended to focus on raging against COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates because health freedom, as well as against measures to combat climate change.
Diagnosis: There are so many of these, and Bethany Blankley is overall relatively undistinguished. Still.
It's amazing how only the Christians (with a bunch of help from the Jewish Old Testament) are the only ones who believed in democracy (except for the Greeks, and ignoring the Catholic church's parallel ruling of Europe for 1,000 years) and personal property rights (except for the Egyptians...and the Greeks) and all that other stuff.
ReplyDeleteI.E. Just b/c one religious tradition has a feature (more or less, depending on the age), does not mean it is the *only* one that has that feature. It's a classic whole to part and part to whole fallacy.