It’s here that I want to introduce the part of the Devil’s Advocate script I referred to. In the movie, Al Pacino is the devil, incarnate as John Milton lecturing to attorney Kevin Lomax, Keanu Reeves: “Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do; I swear for His own amusement, His own private, cosmic gag reel? He sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste, don’t swallow. Aha-ha! And while you’re jumpin’ from one foot to the next, what is He doing? He’s laughin’ His sick, fuckin’ ass off! He’s a tight-ass! He’s a Sadist! He’s an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!"
Lomax responds: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, is that it?”
Milton: “Why not? I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.”
The crux here is that no one — the Devil, Evil, temptation, call it what you will — ever forced anyone to succumb to any temptation whatsoever. Neither you nor I were ever a victim. Whatever may have been put before us, whatever we took that we should not have, we did freely. And Evil had no role in the choice(s) we may have made.
The Lord’s Prayer — Matthew 6:9 – 13 and Luke 11: 2 – 4 — contains an inherent incongruity relative to the idea of free will. “Lead us not into temptation . . .” If man lacks free will, man is guilty of nothing he does. If there is a defect, it is in the manufacture. If it is in the manufacture, the sin is not in the product but in the manufacturer. But if man has free will, the only source of dignity, he has the free choice to resist temptation and begging not to be led to it suggests that he hasn’t the ability to resist; a circular conundrum.
Again, none of us are victims! We do not, and must never have, if we’re to claim a thread of dignity, protection from that which would tempt us to partake that which we know is wrong. Indeed, rather than howl at Hollywood for its supposed evil, the truly righteous man or woman would say, “Bring it on!”
That anyone excoriates the source of temptation only serves to prove how phony he or she is. It’s saying “I’m a victim, I can’t resist.” And that is just not so. It’s being a crybaby looking for some dishonorable excuse to shed responsibility. Furthermore, and along the conservative shock-talk line, it’s claiming victimhood: “I’m a good person, and the only reason I’m suffering some difficulty is not because of some deficiency in my efforts or my abilities or my judgment . . . it’s all because of _(Fill in the blank)_.” And conservative shock-talk radio, and the excuse Baldwin and the minister claimed, and which the congregation cheered their agreement of . . . Liberals, God-hating liberals.
Tune in to the right side of the dial. It’s excrement on the airwaves; Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Boortz, Rush Limbaugh; hate, and exceedingly, unapologetic, intentional, dangerous hate at that. Skip over what you will, but I’m providing direct quotes as example that none of these are innocent entertainment. They speak to the very darkest parts of our souls, all buttressed on the premise that you are a hapless, innocent victim, and to alleviate the assault you are suffering, eliminate that which is assaulting you. With absolute fidelity, it is a replay of Germany in the 1930’s, and it resulted in the most ghastly crime in all history. Ready for the conservatives on-air delights?
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/transcript1.html (both the transcript and the recordings)
Michael Savage: “Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus, and it weakens the defense cells of a nation. What are the defense cells of a nation? Well, the church. They’ve attacked particularly the Catholic Church for 30 straight years. The police, the military . . . attacked for the last 50 years by the Barbara Boxer viruses on our planet.
To a gay caller: “Oh, you’re one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis.”
Glenn Beck: “I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out of him. Is this wrong?”
Michael Reagan (son of the late president) on liberals: “Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullet.”
Neal Boortz on those in New Orleans, after Katrina: “That wasn’t the downtrodden. That’s the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.”
Boortz on Muslims: “Muslims don’t eat during the day during Ramadan. They fast during the day and eat at night. Sorta like cockroaches.”
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