Rabbi Tract last night lit into fundamentalists of all types.  She spoke about the groups of environmentalists who use terrorist techniques to drive home their agenda which is to save forests, animals, our air and generally to make war on innocents in order to become known – and – feared.

This last is interesting.  I would think that their cause would be better served if they made friends and got these friends to back them and create a movement to change conditions that would better the world.  Instead, groups like the Environmental Liberation Front (reminiscent of that peculiar “Symbionese Liberation Front”) who espouse terrorist activities are like puritans who want to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.  Persuasion is not their aim although violence and destruction are. They are defeating their aim of environmental protection by their decision to use weapons instead of discussion and debate.

Conservatives basically are desirous of not being moved.  They prefer things the way they are if those things are in their favor.  They can find all kinds of reasoning to show why change is not good – for it does not favor them.  Some conservatives become purists wanting to go back to some mythical past where the world was fresh and newly minted.  They want to protect that world that may have been briefly realized – something like the Athens that produced wonderful works of art as expressions of civic creativity.  Alas, Athens fell to the Romans and the Romans stole from the Greeks and briefly created a Republic that was killed when Romans chose emperors and pagan gods.  Athens never really made gods of their gods.  They made beautiful statues of them and were friendlier to the environment than the Romans who introduced roads and millionaires who wanted to further enrich themselves.

Fundamentalists are purists who want to clamp their way of thinking on everyone else.  They are affronted when someone walks into their enclaves dressed differently, espousing a freer and, well different way of living.  Fundamentalists like anti-abortionists and “let the robber barons of today get richer by raping their funds” are not friendly to the environment most of us live in.  Fundamentalists who enjoy smoking should not wish their smoke on the rest of us.  Alcoholics who are fundamentally loose cannons when behind the drivers’ wheel should not be allowed to destroy themselves and the unfortunates who get in their way.  We are trying to make our environment more important than freedoms smokers and drinkers have to do whatever they want as they destroy themselves.  In a way, you can think of them as suicide bombers who take along the rest of us down a road to destruction.

Fundamentalist Environmentalist Purists of any name who destroy are our enemies – especially when they use terrorist tactics like blowing smoke, alcoholic breath in our faces or when they choose to blow up hummers, ski resorts or flock to protect a granite “Ten Commandments” monument in an Alabama Courthouse. They are terrorists just like the ones who flew planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.  They are terrorists who ambush soldiers and kill civilians as well.  They are single-minded purists whose goal is more important than the life of anyone who gets in their way.

I like Liberals, secular humanists and rational people.  We should try to replace the others discussed above with the people I like.