Fair Game

It's very fashionable to claim that ideology can be separated from people, and that attacking one doesn't mean attacking the other. This is not only wrong, but a fatally flawed method of thinking.

There is an insidious capitulation occurring among unbelievers who lack the capacity for critical thinking that seeks to soothe the hurt feelings of theocratic zealots, a pitiful and feeble attempt to distance the claimant from the reactions that occur when religion and its practitioners are rightly brought under scrutiny. “Ideology is separate from people,” the claim goes, “and we don't attack all Christians when we attack Christianity.” What off-brand excuse for simple-minded casuistry is this?

This argument, always presented in pictorial meme form because its proponents still aren't capable of holding up their end of an argument without one finger firmly on the caps lock, makes the following (paraphrased) proposition: attacking capitalism is not attacking westerners, attacking nazis is not attacking germans, and attacking religions is not attacking their adherents. To begin with, this argument completely ignores the differences between political and economic practices and religious ideology. Capitalism has no book of doctrine or spiritual figurehead, and “the west” is more than a little difficult to nail down. Do they mean the Dutch, or the kind people of Estonia (I promise, you guys, that statue was dressed like Dr. Frankenfurter when I got there)? No, they mean America, where capitalism may be the general order of the land, but it is not doctrine. No one is killed or made a pariah due to their unwillingness to value money and trade, though they may be viciously mocked as I drive past the farmer's market.

Agrarian culture does not allow for iPhone repair, just so you know.

Similarly, the eight million or so members of the Nazi party at its height in 1945 was a fraction of the roughly 65 million people composing the nation of Germany. The majority of people there saw no necessary connection between their nationality and required affiliation with a national socialist group, and rightly so. Being born in Germany doesn't make one a nazi, any more than being born in a taxi cab makes you a member of the transportation union. Choosing to join the nazi party, however, means that your nationality becomes incidental to the argument. You can be a Swede and a nazi, or an American for that matter, and many were.

You can't tell, but they're wearing Hugo Boss.

Turning to the meat of my argument, the problem that has arisen is this weak-spined, almost ecumenical position that followers of a religion are not to be attacked for their ideology because they are somehow absolved or detached from the horrific consequences visited upon us by their faith. The ideas and doctrines can be attacked, so the argument goes, but it is unfair to include the clergy in that attack because people are only people, or some such neo-hippie bullshit. This position is just a half-hearted secular redressing of the nonsensical “love the sinner, hate the sin” philosophy espoused by the more nauseating evangelists who walk among us, and not a very clever one.

Which is odd, because they usually make so much sense.

To reiterate, plenty of Germans were not affiliated with the nazis, an equally large amount of westerners do not appear to consider themselves capitalists, but no religious person considers themselves separate from their faith. One exception might be an allowance for their angst-ridden dark night of the soul, but that strikes me as the same kind of self-aggrandizing pity play seen in overly-dramatic teenagers. Belief in ideology involves you in same, because without people reading it and attempting to live their lives by the rules set out therein, the bible or Qur'an is another book gathering dust on a forgotten shelf of our collective library.

It's in there, as meaningless as the rest without a person to believe it.

To oppose comes the argument that criticism of any book, Huckleberry Finn as an example, doesn't extend to the people who enjoy reading the book or find value in it. The critique of the literary work is separated from its readers, it is argued, because arguments against the book are not arguments against the people. With the exception of the light fluff we all consume for mindless entertainment, I find two significant problems with this approach.

Aside from the selection of one of Twain's dullest works.

First, we do make judgements about people based on what they read and write. Criticism of whatever softcore porn leads the Times Bestseller list is a direct criticism of the tastes of people buying that book, in this case their literary standards and ability to walk upright without dragging their knuckles too terribly. Reading Mein Kampf doesn't make one a nazi, but if that's all one reads, your friends have the right to question your thinking process. We use literary scope as a metric to base our perception of an individual's intelligence in many cases, and rightly so. Someone who has shelves full of a broad range of titles has a different kind of mind and way of thinking than someone who has one shelf full of Danielle Steel. Pretending otherwise is an exercise in self-deception.

Secondly, the main significant difference between popular fiction and religious texts is that very rarely do people become so enamored with fiction that they endeavor to enforce the content of the text on others. One reasonable exception might be the pitiable Randians of today, who are so taken with Galt's message that their way of thinking and interacting with the world changes fundamentally instead of gradually. But even they do not come to my door in the morning to make sure I've heard the good word, they do not introduce legislation in our nation's capital in the name of Rand, and they do not say I should be killed for disagreeing with them. People who believe in religious texts do all of those things, which is why it is improper to level an equivalent accusation at common popular fiction.

Believe it or not, this has nothing to do with whitewashing fences.

But, for example, it isn't hard to imagine an economist or broker so convinced of the truth of capitalism that they would enact its principles on everyone, regardless of compassion or consequence. In that instance, is there anyone who would argue that in criticizing capitalism you are not criticizing the person carrying out the doctrine? Without people to enact these ridiculous and archaic ideas brought to us by religion, they would be harmless relics of our ancestors and soon forgotten, just like Beanie and Cecil. This is where these conciliatory apologists fail in their argument, by imagining that the holy texts have some kind of agency on their own. They think that faith in a religion doesn't mean you're affiliated with that group, or somehow that you do not share in the responsibility for the damage done to our society. Instead, argument against a faith necessarily includes arguments against the followers, and rightly so. To pretend otherwise merely extends the time the rest of us are forced to let these addle-minded fakers and the willfully ignorant dictate our lives.