Those Radical Christians

I was about to select among "Are they worth it?--CEO salaries vs. worker salaries," "Political Correctness--the numbing of America," and "Is torture prohibited by international law?," for my next topic.

Then I heard a sound clip from The View, in which Rosie O'Donnell said words to the effect that "...radical Christians are as bad or worse than radical Muslims...," and people in the audience actually applauded.

That quickly derailed my other topic selections.

Now, according to my blog description I am agnostic, which does not put me in the category of Christians, at least not very deeply. And our constitution does guarantee us freedom of speech. But what will protect us from celebrities whose mouths are bigger than their brains?

Rosie did not bother to check the facts, so we have to: In the last five years (or the last 105 years for that matter), how many radical Christians have captured, tortured, and beheaded people? How many radical Christians have hijacked airplanes and crashed them into skyscrapers, killing thousands? A few radical Christians did try recently to bomb a couple of abortion clinics, but the scale and scope of those acts are considerably smaller than the recent radical Muslim atrocities. Rosie's statement may have had some validity during the Crusades of the middle ages, but the facts show that the radical Christians have mellowed a lot in the last 800 years or so. The facts also show that the radical Muslims have not.

So there is no evidence to support Rosie's absurd statement. Yet, because she is a celebrity, she is heard by thousands, and applauded by many. Meanwhile, the opinions of more informed and more analytic private individuals go unheard.

It's a gross abuse of free speech for any celebrity to make such idiotic statements. A person who is a good comedienne, or a good TV show host, or any other type of entertainer, is not necessarily qualified to impose his uninformed opinions on the public. We know that many other famous entertainers are spreading their ill-formed views of world affairs on the public. They should know better.

I welcome the informed and carefully thought-out opinions of prominent people, but not their emotional biases.

This week, the Pope, who knows a great deal more about both Christianity and Islam than Rosie does, has taken more guff for his public statement about Islam than Rosie did for hers about Christianity. He was asked to apologise, and he did so; but Rosie was not, and did not.

That's a measure of how many folks in our country are as mindless as Rosie is when it comes to religion and world affairs. How can some people be so oblivious of what the facts show about where the real evil in the world is? It would not be so bad, but those people vote with the same lack of informed analysis.

Our politicians know it too. That's why we seldom hear specific plans or solutions in their speeches. Whether it's Republicans demeaning Hillary Clinton or Democrats demeaning George Bush, they know they get more votes that way. After all, facts are both boring and confusing to the empty-headed ones, and specific plans are so easy for intelligent people to criticize.