Guess Who Caused the Crisis? Godless People Did!

The editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page have made a shocking discovery: The economic crisis was caused by atheists, agnostics, the political left, and other purported enemies of Christmas. Writes deputy editor Daniel Henninger:

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions. The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines.

It seems that we heathens — pardon me: "dereligioners" — are rarely useful, unless and until our legendary wickedness can be invoked to explain 9/11 and other assorted cataclysms.

I subscribe to the Journal and doff my turban to its excellent news desk. But the mostly witless op-ed section, long an unappealing part of the WSJ persona, is putting an ever-bigger damper on my professional admiration for the paper. Henninger's department has gradually morphed from, let's say, a charming-if-unduly-cranky uncle in the attic, into a spiteful, screeching mental patient.

I mean, what the fuck? Religion keeps people inside the chalk lines? Which religion? This one? That other one? Or this one, perhaps? In whose universe do people of faith piously respect the bounds of morality, civility, and kindness, while supposedly barbarous hordes of secularists (the word is just christianist code for Beelzebub worshippers, natch) plunder Main Street of its savings?

Is it even possible to deny that the neocon cabal of Christian and Jewish "thinkers" in Washington DC has brought our country almost to its knees by creating one political and financial catastrophe after another for almost eight years straight? It seems so. And could Henninger really not know that China, perhaps the most secular nation on earth, seems set to weather the current economic storm just fine, since its leaders' only real dilemma is deciding whether to call in the mountainous debts of the prayerful, God-fearing 'Mericans today or in ten years?

The GOP got brutally bitchslapped on November 4 for a reason. Voters might have actually embraced core conservative values if it hadn't been for for the christianist bluenoses to whom the Republican Party has been sidling up for decades. The WSJ editorial section, hardly an example of great political relevance in the best of times, seems poised to continue the treacherous path down to the area where Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson reside. Of course, this will make Henninger and his colleagues look increasingly goofy and out of it these coming years. Quoth he:

A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.

Wow. As descents into institutional lunacy go, that one's a beaut.

[hat tip: Wonkette]

Comments

[Phelps]

Really?

Really?