Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Right wing bonehead of the week

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off Camera) But, sir, you have described this in pretty, this whole battle is pretty apocalyptic terms. You've said that Liberals are engaged in an all-out assault on Christianity, that Democrats will appoint judges who don't share our Christian values and will dismantle Christian culture, and that the out-of-control judiciary, and this was in your last book "Courting Disaster" is the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al Qaeda, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War?

PAT ROBERTSON: George, I really believe that. I think they are destroying the fabric that holds our nation together. There is an assault on marriage. There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (Off Camera) But, sir, let me just stop you there. How can you say that these judges are a more serious threat than Islamic terrorists who slammed into the World Trade Center?

PAT ROBERTSON: It depends on how you look at culture. If you look over the course of a hundred years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings. I think we're going to control al Qaeda. I think we're going to get Osama bin Laden. We won in Afghanistan. We won in Iraq, and we can contain that. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.

-- ABC News Transcript of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," May 1, 2005

Good grief. As Tom Regan points out, the difference between Pat Robertson and most of the rest of us is that he doesn't ever seem to realize when he's said something profoundly stupid.

MoveOnPac is running a campaign about this particular interview, and I was ticked off enough to sign the petition.

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