Jerry Falwell is dead

I didn't care for his style and often thought his substance was problematic, even as a basically conservative Protestant evangelical type who happens to dig an Anglican's work. But it still galls me that Christopher Hitchens is doing his Hitchens thing on Slate, Slate is running the list of all the stuff Falwell said they consider stupid, racist, and whatever else; and it turns out Westboro Baptist Church ... yes THAT Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket Falwell's funeral because they say he was a liar and a false prophet.

Still ... I don't know, even if I grant that Hitchens has a great point ins aying that you can say any dumb-ass thing you want as long as you're a reverend (it's hard to avoid this point when I consider stupid things Sharpten, Jackson, and Robertson have said on different sides of the political divide) ; and even if I were to agree somehow that Westboro Baptist is right to say Falwell made prophecies that didn't come to pass; I still can't muster their enthusiasm. Hitchens is so passionately atheistic he tries doing hatchet jobs on the Salvation Army and his main complaints are that a hundred years ago there was corruption in the ranks and they were stupid-looking uniforms. He also thinks no one should use "charity" to deal with the problem of homelessness or unemployment and that society should take responsibility ... which sounds like something an English immigrant to the United States with heavy socialist leanings would say. With declining birth rates who on earth will pay the taxes needed to subsidize THAT welfare state? If we keep aborting them or forestalling their birth or saying no one should have those kids because of their net lifelong contributions to carbon emissions why not just wipe ourselves out with some genetically modified strain of polio or something? Or just put it on the open market for any freaks with a grudge?

That seems too pessimistic and absurd. How did I get to this from Falwell? Oh, right, Hitchens.
I don't get him. Considering how rabidly he opposed the FIRST Gulf War his support of the second, given that he's still more or less the atheistic liberal in many ways he was fourteen years ago, his zeal for the battle against Islamofascism given his leftist cred has puzzled me. Maybe he's just so anti-religion he's willing to abandon his leftist background so that Islamofascists can get bombed. He makes for interesting reading, though, even when he I think he's totally wrong. I don't think he's wrong about militant Islam by any stretch of the imagination but I've just seen him use some remarkably weird arguments against religion in general that I think hurt rather than help his ideas.

As for Falwell, well, I don't think people should be throwing parties because he's dead or picketing his funeral. If someone at Westboro Baptist dies I guess if everyone who has had a loved one whose funeral was picketed by WBC went and picketed that funeral of a WBC member who died ... that would be a big picket.

What happens when Westboro Baptist reaps what they've sown? It seems too nasty to contemplate, actually.