Is Coulter’s Enemy “Liberalism” or “Secularism”?

Excellent analysis from tothesource

Some excerpts:

Coulter’s premise in Godless, the Church of Liberalism, is pretty straight forward. She thinks that liberalism is America’s established religion, with its own doctrines, dogma, cosmology, gods and clergy. Liberals reject God but have they embraced atheism religiously? Coulter equates liberalism with religious atheism…

Coulter is wrong to confuse liberalism, which is a political philosophy, with sectarian Secularism that is Godless by definition. There are many liberals who are devout Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Coulter knows this. She twisted her premise to politicize it so she would sell more books and buttress up the Republican Christian base…

Classical liberalism holds that an individual’s liberty is the primary political value. This liberty must be protected from the tendency of power to accumulate around heads of state, hereditary status, and established religion…

Coulter's real target is Secularism whose advocates are a vocal minority within this liberal tradition. Their goal is to radicalize classical liberalism…

Secularism is liberalism’s prodigal son. It rejects its sacred roots for placing too many demands on the individual. Often they pit the individual’s desire for autonomy against these traditional sources of faith and family…

Coulter’s substitution of liberalism for Secularism is intentional. She shows her hand by using “secular” a handful of times in the book, including the second to the last sentence, when her commitment to truth outweighs her political ambition. Most of the book is a defense of her politics more than a reasoned defense of her faith…

Godless is pretty Godless. There are entire chapters with no reference to God whatsoever. There is an edit feature in Microsoft’s Word. Coulter simply needed to click Find from the Edit drop menu. In the field next to Find she should have typed liberalism. In the field next to Replace she should have typed Secularism. Within seconds the fix would have been in. Coulter knows if she would have replaced Secularism for liberalism she would have sold a fraction of the books she is selling now.

Most of her book is concise, well written and a fearless defense of traditional Christian morality. Her chapter on abortion alone is worth the price of the book. However, the logic of her attack on liberalism leads the reader to conclude that only conservatism is theistic, and that God is a Republican. This outrageous assertion borders on blasphemy.

Read the entire article at tothesource


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