11/25/2004: "Hysteria rebuked"

Cathy Young of Reason magazine does a nice plague-on-both-your-houses thing in her Boston Globe column:

I share the concern about the influence of the religious right in the Republican Party, and about its leaders' determination to legislate their values�though there is little if any evidence that religious fervor significantly motivates support for the war in Iraq. But secular ideologies, too, are hardly incompatible with dangerous fanaticism or with frightening delusions. In Germany, one third of voters under 30 believe the US government may have engineered the Sept. 11 attacks.

The American left has its own secular religions, from feminism to environmentalism, that can breed their own varieties of unreason. Some of the politically correct "multiculturalist" pap the left has foisted on the public schools is about as unsound academically as the attempts to teach "creation science" alongside evolution. Feminist extremism has led to court mandates to water down physical strength requirements for firefighters so more women can be hired. In 1991, Anita Hill's charges that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had engaged in raunchy sexual banter unleashed a wave of hysteria about sexual harassment�hysteria that spilled over into the 1992 election and led to a far-reaching, remarkably successful push to legislate morality.

In Election 2004, a number of Republican voters may have been driven by the conviction that Bush is God's pick to lead America; but a number of Democratic voters were driven by an equally irrational demonization and hatred of Bush. In the post-election climate, reason needs to be defended from the right-wing "moral values" zealots; but it also needs to be defended from the left-wing fearmongers who act as if we were one executive order away from a Taliban-like theocracy.

Well done. Read it all.