Comments on: Religion and Intolerance in Contemporary American Politics

By: Anonymous User

Anonymous User — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:18:07 +0000

A good and timely article. We Americans should be concerned if intolerance masks as religious thinking. Tolerance is the fruit of freedom and we’d do well to protect it.

By: Robert Hamburger

Robert Hamburger — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:51:30 +0000

This article is superficial at best and highly biased throughout. Firstly it is largely based upon the results of a single survey conducted by automated phone call and commissioned by the author himself. Furthermore, Mr. Gibson at no point indicates exactly how many respondants were used to gather his data. And even more unsettling is the fact that Mr. Gibson chooses to group people into various “highly religious” and “non-religious” categories using his own personal litmus test. Furthermore the “disliked groups” which survey takers where questioned about were a very strange, cherry-picked list containing mostly Leftist groups. Finally, his “study” seems to question only Judeo-Christian religions and does not bother questioning militant atheists or environmentalists whose ideological devotion is of arguably similar religious zeal. His paper, bogus survey and entire article are designed to raise the looming specter of “those crazies on the religious right.” Mr. Gibson is clearly afraid of those “intolerant religious types” (as his other papers on his website clearly illustrate) and this article and the accompanying “study” are just reflections of his own ideological views couched in vague statistics and academic prose. He even goes on to say “…the intolerance of religionists might be neutralized by building institutional barriers to their participation in politics…” What more evidence do I need to present? Mr. Gibson is clearly not interested in lucid discussion, but in fear-mongering under the guise of the “enlightened” academic.This sort of sloppy data-gathering, slip-shod statistical analysis, arbitrary balkanization of survey respondants and omission of groups which Mr. Gibson favors will result in only one outcome: the reflection of Mr. Gibson’s own ideological views.

By: Monk Minda

Monk Minda — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:04:13 +0000

what Gibson describes is not the US. it is every Islamic nation where everything is about the religion and nothing else, and the tiny pockets of hindus, buddhists, etc are barely tolerated and expected to stay in their place.I am sure Gibson thinks that is right and good and that muslims have a right to live according to their culture and religion. They certainly do. But here is the problem. Why is then wrong for christians to be christian. In fact, why would it be wrong for christians to do as muslims do? We are not doing that, but why would it be wrong, if it is okay for others? I am sure Gibson approves that it is now illegal to critisize islam in western nations. How does that comport with his demand for “tolerance” from those who are not muslim? For some reason, people like Gibson are hostile to judeo christianity. It is bizarre to hate your own culture and religion and heritage. No other humans are like that outside of the west. The reason Gibson would give for this is our “intolerance.” But others are more intolerant than we have been for centuries. And Gibson’s cure for this intolerance is tyranny. Gibson is not really a liberal. He is just anti-western and uses every weapon, including supposed liberal arguments, to wipe out the west.

By: Robert Mitchell

Robert Mitchell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:41:08 +0000

I read Gibson’s article to the very end and concluded that he is an intellectually fearful person in a cold world of his making, proven by his absurdity of demanding the influence of 70% of the American people be “neutralized and constrained” in the name of intolerance. He demands an anti-democratic democracy through intolerant tolerance.