Remember McCain’s flirtation with Hagee? His attempt to distance himself from the anti-Catholic remarks of the man whose endorsement he sought was enough to satisfy Bill Donohue, who claimed the matter closed. But McCain himself seems more equivocal:
“Well, obviously I repudiate any comments that are anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic, racist, any other… And I condemn them and I condemn those words that Pastor Hagee apparently — that Pastor Hagee wrote. I will say that he said that his words were taken out of context, he defends his position. I hope that maybe you’d give him a chance to respond….I will say, I’d like to say on his behalf, he’s been a very strong supporter of the state of Israel and when we were doing the No Surrender tour, he came and spoke on behalf of not surrendering in Iraq.”
In other words, let’s just ignore the anti-Catholic stuff, Hagee is on the right side when it comes to Israel and middle eastern wars. Remember, Hagee is the man who believes God supports the right of the secular state of Israel to occupy all of Palestine, so much so that he is willing to unleash terror on those who give support to a Palestinian state (see Henry’s post for his own words). It goes without saying that this deranged and dangerous. It scares me greatly that a presidential candidate is associating himself with such a position, however tangentially.
But McCain certainly knows how to find them. He has courted another “Christian” leader, a man called Rod Parsley, who has the following to say:
“I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.”
And here it is again– the dark side of American exceptionalism, the Calvinist-Gnostic theology that divides the world into light and darkness, with America on the right side. If Hagee scares me, this guy terrifies me. And McCain is appearing on stage with him. That is most terrifying of all.
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