Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Today is, of course, the 5th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centers. While we are remembering how that day made us feel - and it's a day etched in my memory in extraordinary detail - let us also keep in mind that some of the most influential religious right leaders immediately tried to put the blame on everyone they hate. Here's Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club speaking to Pat Robertson on September 13th:
And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
5 years later, I still get mad as hell at the thought of that self-righteous son of a bitch shoveling out that irrational drivel to his ignorant followers. And it makes me equally angry to see Pat Robertson's response:
Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
Apparently it never occured to these two breathless demagogues that the people who bombed those towers are on their side in their hatred of homosexuals and feminists and pagans.
Comments
So Robertson and Falwell are Muslims in disguise trying to infiltrate within? Sorry, couldn't resist. Hope they read this though ;)
Posted by: llDayo | September 11, 2006 3:56 PM
I love how conservatives scream to the heavens that views like this aren't representative... and then Dinesh D'Souza's comes out with a new book that basically restates it at length and to a far more serious degree.
Posted by: plunge | September 11, 2006 3:57 PM
Mantra: The only thing I ask of the religious is that they consider the depths to which religion has sunk man.
Posted by: Dave | September 11, 2006 4:13 PM
I'm a Christian and Robertson / Fallwell made me mad as hell.
At a moment like that, just what we did not need was these guys claiming to represent Christianity and giving people permission to hate.
Grrrrrr.
Posted by: Jim Ramsey | September 11, 2006 6:21 PM
Jesus, himself, pretty much summed up these kind of people...It's a real shame they can't recognize themselves in thier own Bibles.
"You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" Mathew 15:7-9
Or
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Matthew 23:27-28
Posted by: celcus | September 11, 2006 7:09 PM
The Pentagon too...
Posted by: Todd Sayre | September 11, 2006 7:12 PM
Did they think this out? How does the mechanics of this work? God somehow willed a few muslim extremists, who don't even believe in him (christian god) to come up with an elaborate plan, which they worked on for over a decade, to take down the towers... to punish America for tolerating homos and not having mandatory prayer in school? To push America to stop tolerating homos and to have mandatory prayer in school? How's that plan working out for you, capital g God?
On the list of "shit that definitely didn't happen" that one has got to fall somewhere between "the gummit did it" and "the UFOs did it".
Posted by: Matthew | September 11, 2006 7:31 PM
Then again, two days after that the (Manchester) Guardian published Richard Dawkins "Religion's misguided missiles", blameing religion in general (not just Islam) as the "dangerous nonsense that death is not the end". But I guess few americans know that article.
Posted by: ospalh | September 12, 2006 4:21 AM
You're correct, ospath, that Islam is the religion responsible for 9/11. Now, which religion is responsible for the Thirty Years war?
Posted by: Russell | September 12, 2006 8:11 AM
Matthew, I always thought that the Jews, Christians and Mulims all worshiped the same God, the God of Abraham. Is this wrong? I being a godless heathen may be mistaken on this.
Posted by: Tulle | September 12, 2006 9:32 AM
Well, that depends on who's perspective you are coming from. From the Islamic perspective they are the same god. From some christian denominations they are the same god. From Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's point of view they are not; anyone not worshipping the christian god is worshipping a false god. They are being deceived by satan, and such.
Posted by: Matthew | September 12, 2006 12:01 PM
The Old Testament has a running theme to the effect that God will lift away His protection from His favored people/country when they do not show Him proper respect. Falwell and Robertson may not have thought through the mechanics, but they were sounding a familiar note.
Posted by: Sastra
| September 12, 2006 12:59 PM
We keep getting told that it's "the liberals" or "the Left" that said America had it coming on 9/11, but I cannot think of one left-of-center person of national reknown who made a statement equivalent to that of Falwell and Robertson. Yes, some nuanced musings by public intellectuals were oversimplified and bashed by the squawking heads, but those two frauds are the only ones who flew the "it's all our fault" flag.
Posted by: Pieter B | September 12, 2006 11:37 PM