Review - Godless: The Church of Liberalism

In the past four years of my life, I have developed a significant animosity towards popular conservative commentator Ann Coulter. The mere sight of that blonde shock jock sent my eyes into a world of pain, similar to envisioning the apocalypse… children all hooting and hollering, fighting for survival… streets full of blinding conflagration, skies constantly filled with deafening thunder, retirement facilities and adoption centers just going up in flames right before your very eyes… don’t forget about the Animal Shelter for Lost Beagle Puppies with Big Ol’ Ears and Even Bigger Eyes… gone, obliterated, nonexistent... of course this must be taken with a grain of salt and an imaginative mind.
In the past year, I began noticing Coulter for who she actually is: a human being, deprived of a soul no less, who is craving just as much attention as Paris Hilton; yet, instead of offering harmless, next-to-best advice like, “Believe in yourself and… everybody’s hot,” Coulter decides to make friends by saying the most disgusting, disrespectable, outright bull shit in, at and on every public forum in America. Were it not for the requirements of this assignment, I would never, in my entire life, waste one god-given minute reading her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.
Despite my utter abhorrer of the book, Godless offers an interesting argument concerning the relationship between modern religion and liberalism. A key concept of liberalism is the idea of a neutral government free from theological practice or religion. Coulter notes that this in itself is contradictory as all the elements of religion are present in liberalism. To understand such a bold accusation, one must understand the definition of religion… but no one can! Religion, as a topic of discussion or definition, is about as stable as Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Plainly said, religion is organized faith, but apparently, there are requirements written by God himself: creation mythology, ancient texts, clergy, churches, higher powers… the list could go on and on.
Coulter actually takes some of these homemade requirements and applies them to the idea of liberalism. She calls constitutions and various doctrines of individual rights their Bible; she compares schoolteachers and professors to priests and clergymen. She even portrays classrooms and public schools as churches. This does not seem too preposterous; however, by her interpretation, anything could be considered religion. Capitalism by this standard is religion. How many people in America today instill their devout faith in American economics? With credit becoming the stylish way to pay (as seen in Visa commercials where they lynch the guy in line who whips out his checkbook), it seems more and more Americans on a daily basis are assuming that the banking systems of America will not fail. What are they basing this on… statistics? The general decency of mankind? Faith? The answer is up in the air, just like organized religion we all know and love.
Much of the book focuses on the debate between intelligent design and evolution theory. Coulter, a devout Christian, follows the former. Discussing the internal mechanisms of a human cell, Coulter reflected, “(the cell) wasn’t created by natural selection-- that required high-tech engineering.” She even went as far as to say that “the evolution cult members” are practicing “bogus science”. How can one make that assumption when one believes in an equally “bogus” explanation for the world around them? Evidently, her arguments are completely biased and hypocritical. Then again, she is a self-described “polemicist” who does not believe in being “impartial or balanced” even in the world of political commentary. I am wasting my time.
The thing I do not understand is her intent of writing this book. She is purposely pointing out the “hypocrisy” behind atheist liberals all while outright ASSUMING that all liberals are atheists! To me, it seems she wrote this book out of anger, out of her strong distaste for the left side of the political spectrum. To her, the audiences are not Southern-bred WASPs, Catholic priests, what have you… She is just trying to piss off the left, saying whatever racist, derogatory, outrageous comment she can to sell her books. After all, five of her six books were on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and why wouldn’t they be with titles like High Crimes & Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton and If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans. A search of Ann Coulter on YouTube would result in several intriguing video clip titles of her at various public interactions: “Keith Olbermann slams Ann Coulter,” “Ann Coulter insults Judaism,” “Adam Corolla hangs up on Ann Coulter,” and my personal favorite, “Ann Coulter is a fucking moron.” Go back to the Third Reich and take your book with you.