News Brief

By Greg Pierce

Copyright © 2002 News World Com-munications, Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of The Washington Times

Demonizing Christians

Democrats, in the name of tolerance, plan to demonize conservative Christians as being like the Taliban, according to an article in Newsweek.

Democrats "are planning a daring assault on the most critical turf in politics: the cultural mainstream," political correspondent Howard Fineman writes.

"The theory goes like this. Our enemy in Afghanistan is religious extremism and intolerance. It's therefore more important than ever to honor the ideals of tolerance - religious, sexual, racial, reproductive - at home. The GOP is out of the mainstream, some Democrats will argue [this] year, because it's too dependent upon an intolerant 'religious right,'" Mr. Fineman said. "This is an incendiary battle plan - essentially comparing the GOP right with the Taliban - designed to draw an outraged response from the president. Then Democrats would have Bush just where they wanted him: in a firefight at home."

The 'religious right'

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but the New York Times appears to be working off the same page as the Democratic Party. In a front-page story Thursday, the newspaper referred to Islamic radicals as "the religious right."

Foreign correspondent Douglas Jehl, in an article on how the Saudi royal family has dealt with radical Islam, said: "Choosing accommodation over confrontation, the government shied away from a crackdown on militant clerics or their followers, a move that would have inflamed the religious right, the disaffected returnees from other wars [besides the one in Afghanistan] and a growing number of the unemployed.