A Catalogue of Commentators - Issue 5. Cal Thomas

Bonjour Mes Amis!

I am stranded in Romania and bored, so I found an Internet Cafe and checked in to see if there was any thing I could do. Apparently Durango is a bit out of it this week due to an altercation / sing along with a TrashCo Waste Disposal Unit, so I have volunteered to take his place. Durango has a fine voice, incidentally, I am thinking of writing a song we can duet on for a future album.

This weeks selection is M. Cal Thomas. M. Thomas does not like people who follow the faith of Islam. He really doesn't like them.

Here's what Blair should say to the Muslim leaders: "The onus is on you guys. You find and shut down the terrorists and their network. You turn those who incite, plan and encourage violence over to the authorities. If you don't act, we will by closing and bulldozing the mosques and schools that incubate and instruct the killers, prosecuting the terrorists we find and deporting them and their clerics, and closing our borders to anyone from countries that harbor and teach terrorists. Those who are British citizens will be stripped of their citizenship."

Quelle racisme. M. Thomas apparently feels that the Muslim community in Britain could simply destroy all terrorists should they choose to. This may not be true. As I should know from my troubles with the Hoary Cultists of Abeg-Nero, the Dark Lord of a Thousand Tentacles, many times people are completely unaware of the evils that lurk in their communities. Tarring all Muslims with the same brush (the "terrorist" brush) is both evil and stupid. Evil because it hurts innocents. Stupid because it pushes potential allies away.

But M. Thomas believes that all potential allies have already declared their allegience to the right side (by choosing to be Christians and Western).

There will be no detente, entente or peace treaty between the forces of darkness and those of light. As much as Western politicians may wish to avoid the true root cause of this war, they do so at the peril of their citizens. This is a religious war. The terrorists understand it as such. Too many in the secular and wimpishly religious West do not.

M. Thomas actually admires the Muslim extremists willingness to see this as a war of extermination; a war to eliminate the other side. He wishes we saw Muslims through a mask of hatred as they see us. This also explains his wish that American Troops would adopt the bloodthirsty methods of the Islamic Terrorists; rather than worrying about torture.

Thomas's position on the place of Christianity in America does seem more nuanced than some of his colleagues. Just this morning Bryant quoted an article decrying the war on Christmas, and in 2004 he berated Pat Robertson for mixing politics and religion.

The idea that God would reach down and prophesy an election outcome to one man, who then says President Bush could even do wrong and God would keep him in office, offers joke material to Leno and Letterman and brings the Christian Gospel into further disrepute before unbelievers.

On the other hand in dealing with Harriet Miers he criticized the idea that her religion should help her get confirmed while being irrelevant on the bench. So his position seems a bit nuanced, to say the least.

Apparently Cal Thomas has been a reporter for nearly 40 years and is the most widely syndicated columnist in America. I suspect that many columnists would make that latter claim.

Here's what Bryant has to say about Cal Thomas.

Rereading Thomas's words on Islam always gets my blood boiling. He commits us and our children and our children's children to war with neither mercy nor end. Just more blood forever and ever. Or until we kill them all or they kill us all. It doesn't appeal to me. But then I step back, think for a moment, and realize that Thomas is full of crap, and we aren't doomed to follow his genocidal path.

Here are a few favorite posts about Cal Thomas.

On October 30, 2003, Bryant responded to M. Thomas's suggestion that higher taxes made people into tax evaders by comparing to the conservative ridicule of the theory that poverty and desperate circumstances might push a person to committing crime.

On August 24, 2004, Bryant responded to complaints that the budget had too much money for museums by pointing out what percentage of the budget such items covered.

On August 23, 2005, Cheery took on Thomas's suggestion that Muslims are basically the same as Crocodiles in a James Bond Movie.

Anyway that's all for M. Thomas. Hope you enjoyed this, but I must fly. It's started to rain outside and I am worried that Melishiak the Watery Bull will find me if I am on the streets too long. Farewell, mes amis!