The right-wing freakshow that is Ann Coulter is back in the news today for offensive remarks about . . . oh, lots of things, including Jews. What no one seems to have noticed is that, this time, Coulter didn’t make up her latest outrage - she was just saying in public what right-wing evangelicals have been saying among themselves, quite explicitly, for decades.

On the CNBC talkshow “The Big Idea”, last Monday, she was asked “what this country would look like” if her “dream” came true. Her answer:

It would look like New York City during the Republican National Convention. In fact, that’s what I think heaven is going to look like. . . .

People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America . . . .

Apparently heaven is comprised of happy, joyful, lily-white Republicans crammed nervously into a single building surrounded by cops, while George Bush screeches about gays and stem cells and the citizens are herded into holding pens and arrested without grounds. I can see why she’d like that, but her Jewish interviewer seemed to think it was odd that she specified they’d all have to be Christian as well. (He didn’t challenge any other part of her statement.)

Coulter went on to helpfully explain that, in her “dream” world, there would be no Jews, because they’d all have been converted to Christianity, and that in fact Christianity itself really is Judaism, just “perfected”.

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny? . . .

DEUTSCH: [Y]ou said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it’s a lot easier. It’s kind of a fast track.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey. . . .

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners –

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued — when you say something absurd like that, there’s no –

COULTER: What’s absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I’m going to go off and try to perfect myself –

COULTER: Well, that’s what the New Testament says.

DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I’m offended by that personally. And we’ll have more Big Idea when we come back.

[BREAK]

DEUTSCH: Welcome back to The Big Idea. During the break, Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment. So I’m going to give her a chance. So you don’t think that was offensive?

COULTER: No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic –

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected [Jew] is not offensive at all.

So, OK . . . weird, stupid, arrogant, offensive, and incomprehensible (”Federal Express”?). You expected anything else?

It’s been getting a lot of commentary on liberal blogs; the right wing, of course, found nothing to remark on. But the tone of the comments I’ve read is that this is shocking, out of line, and another example of Coulter’s deliberately offensive insanity.

In fact, in this case Coulter’s just stating a position that is perfectly mainstream on the religious right. Seeing Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, evangelical Christians often claim that Christianity is the follow-on to Judaism that Jews have in fact been waiting for for over 6,000 years, and the Jews just don’t realize it. (This is the rationale behind both “Jews for Jesus” - Jewish converts to Christianity, one of whose ad slogans is “Be more Jewish - believe in Jesus”, and the “Messianic Jew” movement, made up of right-wing Christians who expropriate Jewish dress and symbolism, including the use of Torah scrolls and other sacred objects, for use in Christian rituals.) Jews who realize the truth about Jesus as the Messiah will become “perfected” by becoming Christians. During the Apocalypse of the Armageddon of the Final Days of the Last Judgment™, those Jews who haven’t “perfected” themselves will, depending on which evangelical peyote-trip you’re on, either be killed violently and condemned to eternal torment, or just converted to Christianity against their will.

This is all standard stuff - and, as has been widely remarked, the source of evangelical support for Israel, which they defend partly because they believe God commands it, but also because doing so, in their minds, fulfills some sort of prophecy that will hasten the Apocalypse and the final destruction of Judaism and all other non-Christian religions. Again, this is standard among “millenialist” (apocalyptic) evangelicals, who - contrary to popular belief - are only a minority of Christians, but a large one.

Critics also seemed to believe that Coulter’s claim about “perfected Jews” was some sort of implication that real Jews were imperfect. It is, of course, but it’s not a claim she invented. “Perfected Judaism” is a term of art among evangelicals; Coulter was saying nothing new in using it.

The bottom line is that Coulter’s condescending and offensive remarks about Judaism - which she blandly states are “not offensive”, as if the fact that she is comfortable with her own anti-Semitism means it’s OK - are in this case not a product of her own diseased and vicious mind, but are merely ordinary mainstream right-wing Christian theology. The real story is not that Ann Coulter is nasty and crazy - that’s old news. The story is that the religion practiced by George W. Bush and his entire right-wing “base” is just as nasty and crazy as Ann Coulter - which in turn is the reason the right wing is not trying to distance itself from Coulter this time. They can’t. They are her.

UPDATE: Some of the right-wing blogs now are getting into the game, but with predictably self-righteous obliviousness.

Debbie Schlussel not only endorses Coulter’s assessment of Schussel’s own religion, but goes one further to assert that Jews feel just the same about everyone else, too:

[I]t’s abundantly clear what she was talking about. To wit: That we, as Jews, don’t accept the full Christian Bible, and therefore, it’s the Christian belief that we need to be fully accepting of that.

. . . To you far-left Jews and other uber-liberals who want to rush off and call Ann an anti-Semite, that means that we as Jews believe Christians and Hindus (and definitely, Muslims) are not Chosen. Does that make me a religious bigot? Nope. It just means I actually believe in my religion.

It’s not only not bad to say the things Coulter says, it’s good to say them about even more people! If you actually believe in your religion then of course its teachings can’t be bigoted. (With typical tact, she then goes on to assert that Deutsch, of CNBC, was “lying” in claiming to be a “true” Jew himself, and that liberalism is the “real religion” of “Jewish libs”. Ohhhkayyyy . . .)

Charles Johnson, at his “Little Green Footballs” vomitorium (no link, thanks), observes, correctly, that: “From my reading, Coulter was simply stating standard Christian doctrine . . . .” - but he says almost nothing more than this. For him, that in itself is proof that Coulter is being unfairly criticized.

Omri Ceren, at “Mere Rhetoric”, regards the reactions to Coulter as the real story:

Liberals take their own fashionable, spineless disattachment from the world - “believing too much in something is so unsophisticated.” They follow it to its logical conclusion of vapid multiculturalism, where asserting passionate belief is an attack on some incredibly fragile Other - “believing too much in something is intolerant.” And then when they have to deal with a normal, healthy person of faith, their self-righteous myopia triggers everything from shocked offense to a mindboggling inability to even understand what’s at stake. . . .

[Coulter has] got a genuine point. And that’s the intuitive observation that, rather than being in tension with one another, genuine religious tolerance actually requires strong belief. This is certainly where some of the best Jewish theologians have been ending up. It also has the benefit of making sense - if someone’s confident in their beliefs, they don’t take it as an attack when someone else is also confident in their own beliefs. Disagreement is not tantamount to aggression and insult. . . .

Coulter is stating that part of being a Christian is believing that Christianity is true, which has the fortunate side effect of also implying that Jews are saved for believing that Judaism is true. What a bigot!

So, for him, “we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or – . . . Yeah”, and “we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say . . . That is what Christianity is” is merely “asserting passionate belief” on the part of a “normal, healthy person of faith” who just happens to want another entire religion to disappear in favor of her own. Not only is ”disagreement” not “tantamount to aggression and insult”, but neither is saying an entire religious group should be “perfected” by conversion and cease to exist!

“The Anchoress” is distressed that Coulter has set the right-wing cause back by treading clumsily, but, apparently, for no other reason:

This is going to be the caricature of Christians and conservatives for the next 18 months, (and beyond) and it’s going to stick because people want it to stick and because it’s EASIER to let it stick than to find out what this woman - who is really out of her depths here - was trying to say. . . .

If you don’t like the way Christians are stereotyped these days, well, thank Mrs. Coulter for just making things that much more difficult! . . .

[T]his seems like a pretty dumb, clumsy and inarticulate interview and more importantly, it is a pointless exercise that makes Coulter (and Christians) sound like judgmental automatons who want to walk over you or convert you. This is going to be added to the ever-growing moral equivalence narrative that says “Christians are just like Islamic Fundamentalists!”

The Anchoress doesn’t point out, but does seem to realize, that the things Coulter says that make Christians seem like judgmental automatons who want to walk over or convert you are the things Christians actually believe, expressed in the language Christians actually use.

And that really sums up the right-wing reaction. It is acknowledged that this offensiveness is mainstream Christian dogma - traceable back to the Bible itself (whence the term “perfected”, in this context, originally appears) but largely the meat and potatoes of the evangelical right today. (The Catholic church formally renounced conversion of the Jews under John Paul II, though the current Pope is flirting with it again.) But it is taken for granted by these commentators that pointing out the mainstream acceptance of these beliefs absolves Coulter of offense in stating them. Not one defender questions whether that belief - that there is not only a distinction between Jewish and Christian beliefs, but that Jews ought to or have to abandon their version - is one decent Christians ought to hold; all assume that because this dismissive and offensive position regarding Judaism is one many Christians hold, it is OK to hold it.

But the problem is not, as The Anchoress seems to think, that Coulter didn’t express herself with sufficient gravitas. Though she is, as usual, gleefully indulgent in her offensiveness, the real issue is what she said, not how she said it. (This is often the issue for Coulter, and it often goes overlooked. She is deliberately provocative and also a horrible person, but the former often gets the attention at the expense of the latter. And since she is simply devoid of any concern for other people’s feelings, or normal standards of decency, she is more than happy to let people remark on her offensive manner, while they let her substantive content go unchallenged.) The ideas she espouses are no more congenial for being common, mainstream, or integral with Christianity. And the fact that so many less-crazy Christians hold those ideas is the real story - not that Coulter stripped the veneer of respectability off of them.

The blogger at “Isreallycool” seems to get it, sort of:

Coulter degraded my religion, and this is offensive to me. Does it offend me that most Christians believe what she said? No, because they don’t rub my face in it, like Coulter did.

I am not offended by Coulter because of her Christian beliefs. I am offended because she showed a complete disregard for the feelings of others, those others beings practioners of other religions.

(As he notes, the issue is that her beliefs are offensive - not merely that she stated them offensively. But I can’t help wondering why you wouldn’t be offended by knowing that most religious believers hold offensive opinions about you, as long as they don’t say it out loud. Possibly his point is that Coulter gave offense by openly insulting people, whereas unstated bigoted beliefs are offensive but do not cause distress by direct imposition. But that makes the holders only marginally better people.)