Watch vs. Warning

In meteorology-speak, a "watch" is when conditions exist that make some event of severe weather possible (e.g., "There's a flood watch in effect due to heavy rains"). A "warning" is when that event actually exists and is headed your way ("Seek higher ground; flood warning in effect").

Every so often, Andrew Sullivan posts something with the headline "Christianism Watch." It's his way of pointing to something written or said by a prominent figure on the Christianist right. (Just in case you don't know it, "Christianism" is a term coined by Andrew Sullivan in 2003, later expanded upon in 2006 in a Time magazine article:

The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque.... I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

In a post today, Sullivan posts the words of American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer. After reading these words in the first sentence -- "Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero." -- this was, at least for me, not a Christianism Watch, but a Christianism warning. As Andrew writes, "The base of the GOP - aided and abetted by what's left of their elites - want a religious war abroad and at home not on Jihadism, but on Islam itself." This is a very fundamental truth that, so far, no one has really had the guts to speak aloud or publicly state, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So, pivoting off of Andrew's words, I want to state publicly that the Republican Party of the United States will not admit it, but they want to wage war against not just Al Qaeda, or Iran, but all of Islam itself. By opposing the expression of religious freedom by Muslims in the United States they have fully embraced their roles as the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, where all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.