The evangelical outpost asks the following concerning the recent behavior of Garrison Keillor:
As an example of his dementia, look at his remarks for the opening of the new University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital:
Not one to shy away from speaking his mind, Keillor proposed a solution to what he deemed a fundamental problem with U.S. elections. “I’m trying to organize support for a constitutional amendment to deny voting rights to born-again Christians,” Keillor smirked. “I feel if your citizenship is in Heaven—like a born again Christian’s is—you should give up your citizenship. Sorry, but this is my new cause. If born again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”
He’s only kidding (I think) but it surprises me to find that a man who has spent his life around Lutherans can be so Biblically illiterate. Perhaps he didn’t get the memo, but one of the main reasons the phrase “born-again Christian” faded out of use is because it is redundant. A person can’t be, as Jesus himself pointed out, a “citizen of Heaven” unless he is “born again.” While I had always assumed that Keillor was a Christian I take it from his comment that he leaves such superstition to the Red Staters. That’s unfortunate. For as the Good Book says, “What does it profit a man to gain an NPR audience and lose his soul?”
Where does this hostility to born again Christians and Republicans come from? The answer to the question can be found from Garrison's brother, Thomas. Thomas is an Evangelical Christian and a historian with Iowa State University. He said the following in a recent St. Paul Pioneer Press op-ed piece:
Sure enough, as the campaign intensified, I got an e-mail passing along my brother Garrison's vituperative attack on the Republicans posted on the Web magazine, "In These Times" (archived now), as excerpted from "Homegrown Democrat."
In the Web's hyperventilating hyperbole, this excerpt is not typical of the book, which contains interesting reminiscences and a passionate plea for the old, democratic, equal-opportunity society.
Still, the book describes Republicans as "fundamentalist bullies … misanthropic frat boys … hacks, fakers, aggressive dorks … little honkers."
GOP leaders are "Newt's evil spawn," Bush "their Etch-A-Sketch president … whose philosophy is a mumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk."
We don't talk like this up in Pine County. Nor are we nonfiction writers allowed to get away with such stuff without an editor asking for our sources.
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Garrison now apparently rejects 1960s radicalism and applauds 1950s common sense, but does not admit that radicalism had consequences — like provoking conservatives into hardball tactics. They saw it as a breach of the social contract for judges to find words and concepts in the Constitution that no one imagined were there before.
The '60s radicalism he and other liberals embraced was a total repudiation of the views of the 19th-century Plymouth Brethren whom he nostalgically describes. Yet "Vote Kerry" buttons are, in effect, pinned to their lapels with no sense of incongruity.
The low-cost '60s state university is praised, and yet plenty of evidence is given that shows it had negative, corrupting influences on students as well as good ones. Usually in politics, the wisest course is to admit, "We were wrong," and move on.
In this book, Democratic misdeeds have no consequences and Republican ones no causes. Here is a video clip of a boxing match; the Democratic boxer's edited out and replaced with Grandma Dora Keillor knitting socks for the poor, while the Republican boxer menacingly punches towards her.
In Minnesotans' family political discussions this fall, we will all get along better if we acknowledge long-term causes of disagreements — if we don't act like hockey referees who only see the retaliation.
The book makes a commendable moral case for caring for the poor and helpless, but moral standards must rest on something more solid than the DFL platform. Here the Keillor aunts provide it. Yet, can their caring be neatly separated from their menfolk's Biblical literalism? Isn't caring literally commanded? If literalism goes, won't that command go, too?
Both parties confront us with false dichotomies: Should kids get school lunches or the CIA get Osama bin Laden? A Christianity preaching charity or sexual morality? We might choose both. In 2002, we had several choices — I tried to help as an independent evangelical running for the state Senate. We're back to bipolar hostility.
I've invited Garrison up to Chris Thorvig's supermarket in Sandstone, where the coffee's free, the owner generous to community groups, Republicans friendly, Democrats likewise, and the opportunity society partly survives. You can sit in the booth for hours, and no opposition campaign strategist overhears us when we admit, "We were wrong."
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