Gracious!

Jonathan Liu reviews here Chris Hedges' new book, "American Fascists:  The Christian Right and the War on America."  Here is a bit:

Mr. Hedges gives the lie to the idea that religious moderates can fight back by simply providing an inclusive alternative to the literalists. He calls on them to denounce the very legitimacy of texts like Leviticus and especially the Book of Revelation, which anticipates a “dark conclusion to life … whether it is tucked into the back pew rack of a liberal Unitarian church in Boston or a megachurch in Florida.” Does Mr. Hedges believe that Revelation should be deleted from the New Testament altogether? If so, he has enough sense not to say so outright. Still, the criticism of “mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches, declining in numbers and influence,” anchors a book whose most pointed critiques are reserved not for the power-hungry preachers and Congressmen so much as the guardians—political, cultural and intellectual, as well as religious—of a civil society complicit in its own ongoing decimation.

“Most liberals,” Mr. Hedges warns, “will stand complacently to be sheared like sheep, attempting to open dialogues and reaching out to those who spit venom in their faces.” They succumb to “the pleasant fiction that [Christian] radicals are fundamentally decent, that they do not mean what they say …. Such passivity only accelerates the probability of evil.”