American Thinker: Why the Left Hated Jerry Falwell So Much

The American Thinker ran a good piece yesterday titled Why the Left Hated Jerry Falwell So Much. The displays of hate are so very telling of the intolerant left. They simply cannot abide anybody who disagrees with them.

They held him to be a Bible thumper, bookburner, Nazi in a pricey suit, the Elmer Gantry of the postmodern epoch -- all in all, the prototype of the left's image of a Southern preacher. Under the circumstances, the mask of judicious tolerance could be tossed aside just this once.

But explaining the depth and viciousness of that hatred - that's something else again. As in many such cases (W being another), there's a serious disconnect between the reality and the reactions evoked. Yes, Falwell had flaws, hard though that may be to accept in a society with so many flawless individuals striding around. There was that remark after the 9/11 attack, which he repented quickly enough. His involvement in the Bakker scandal, however well intended, looked horrible and accomplished nothing. There was the problem with the smirk, which appears never to have gotten adequate attention.

But none of that seems like enough. Nor does the incident mentioned in all the media commentaries involving the Teletubbies, which, apart from being utterly bogus (Falwell had nothing to do with the article at the center of the uproar), also lacks requisite heft. Obnoxious as outing a cartoon puppet may be, it falls a little short of placing the perpetrator on quite the same level as history's great criminals.

But of course, none of that is what it's really about. Falwell was despised and loathed for a very simple reason: he defied the leftist consensus, and he won. He made them back down. He frightened them terribly, by confronting them with clear evidence that the country was not what they insisted it was, and that their utopian dreams would never come to pass. That was his crime, one for which he could never be forgiven.