Liberal Fanaticism

Every now and then the secular blogs like to pick up a generic story highlighting the evils of religious fundamentalism and open the chat threads for a bit of religion bashing. Kiwiblog has one going at the moment (Religious Fanaticism), and the Standard kicked one off recently that kind of backfired: Peter Jackson - Satan's Little Helper. By pointing out how some presumably extremist religious group had identified Sir Peter Jackson's upcoming Hobbit movie as a sell out to the deep and distinctly Christian themes running through the original Tolkien LOTR books, it should have been fair game. But being a left wing blog, Christian bashing had to take a back seat to Jackson's supposed capitalist, anti-union, commercial sell-out motivations.

Kiwiblog, on the other hand, has used a story of ultra orthodox Jews acting like the Taleban with regard to the treatment of an 8 year old girl for dressing "immodestly". This has provided an entree for atheists to declare how equal all religions are, how bad the one in question is, and then by a process of deduction, how they are therefore all equally bad.  Whilst there is a little bit of Jew bashing on the side, for the most part they stay on topic.

It's tempting therefore to wonder if our own society, increasingly secular and increasingly atheist, bears some responsibility for the increase in sexual violence from youth.  In a kind of reverse Taleban, is Liberal Fanaticism an equal kind of danger? Perhaps the steady diet of soft porn on TV, the easy access to hard core porn via the internet and the general objectification of women through advertising, the destruction of the family and general liberalization is generating a new form of Liberal Fanaticism that requires everything else to be blamed, but itself? Is it Fanatical Liberalism that is pushing resolutely onwards for greater freedom with less responsibility?

No such introspection allowed on that kind of thread though.  When I pushed the point:

So is your theory that the Turangi Terror is a fundamental orthodox Jew then? This response:

More likely a half baked christian of some description who hasn’t quite shaken off the heathen savagery of pagan Pasifika, inclusive of Maori, beliefs.

I guess many in NZ are looking to understand the reasons behind the attack on the 5 year old girl in Turangi.  Some expect there is an understandable explanation - like the person themselves were abused.  Some assume drugs and alcohol were to blame.   What I worry about is that there is no clear reason, and that it really is a natural byproduct of our increasingly amoral and immoral society.  Western societies do not want the kind of quasi-religious/authoritarian fanaticism displayed by Taleban-like fundamentalists, but they also don't appear to understand that the pendulum swings both ways.  The Turangi case may simply be an aberration, rather than a litmus test.  Time will tell.