SBC's Richard Land is retiring, next October

Next October? Seriously, and having lost his radio show over racially charged remarks and plagiarism, the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty head Richard Land says that retirement will free him to consider other options.

He has experience Nazi-baiting Democratic officials, offering apologies and unapologies and then reneging on his promise to stop making such comparisons.

He has been ardent in his support for the Defense of Marriage Act, which is apparently unconstitutional.

Remember his doubletalk about sexual predators?

And he was closely identified with the 2010 Lie of the Year:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen "government takeover of health care" as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections.

Land's resume for political perspicacity includes pushing the disastrous Sarah Palin toward the thereafter doomed John McCain presidential campaign.

It goes on and on. As it will apparently continue to.

Death panels lie of the year award recipients (Sarah Palin, Richard Land, ... )

Many are owed honorable mention below Sarah Palin on the PolitiFact Lie of the Year award trophy for elevating fictitious "death panels" to a topic of frenzied national debate.

Prominent among them is Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty chief Richard Land, who urged the self-destructive selection by the McCain presidential campaign of Ms. Palin as the vice presidential running mate.

Having helped give Ms. Palin prominence, Land promoted both the falsehood that health reform involves eugenics programs like those instituted in Nazi Germany and the "death panels" myth which is part of those claims.

After a Sept. 26 gathering of the Christian Coalition of Florida, at which he applied Nazi/Holocaust characterizations to Democratic leaders' health care reform efforts, Land issued a pseudoapology. In an Oct. 14 letter to Anti-Defamation League (ADL) President Abraham H. Foxman, Land wrote:

It was never my intention to equate the Obama administration’s healthcare reform proposals with anything related to the Holocaust.

. . .

I deeply regret the reference to Dr. Josef Mengele. I was using hyperbole for effect and never intended to actually equate anyone in the Obama administration with Dr. Mengele. I will certainly refrain from making such references in the future. I apologize to everyone who found such references hurtful. Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the healthcare debate.

Yet Land subsequently claimed in a broadly counterfactual Oct. 6 speech that the "Senate bill authored by Max Baucus, D.-Mont., reinstates the so-called 'death panels,'"

Thus Land promoted "death panels" as a fact when a simple reference or two to PolitiFact.com would have permitted him to consign "death panels" to oblivion and with them his parade of other libels attributing to Democrats a move toward implementation of Nazi-like eugenics theories.

Straightforward self-correction appears to have escaped him and could be redemptive, without removing his name from any historian's list of award recipients.

'Stop with Holocaust Comparisons'

One horrific detail at a time, North Carolina Biblical Recorder Editor Norman Jameson shows that Southern Baptist Convention ethics chief Richard Land was wrong to apply holocaust metaphors to the health care debate.

For example, Jameson writes:

I refer to the holocaust, the one in which German Nazis created and documented the stone cold slaughter of 11 million to 17 million people, including six million Jews. Inured to their victims’ pain or their own emotions they experimented on people, including children and especially twins as if they were lab rats. They tested the rate of death under an assortment of circumstances; the ability to survive poisonous chemicals smeared into wounds; whether it was possible to change eye color with injections into the eyeball.

. . .


It was explained to me in the somber halls of Yad Vashem, the premier memorial in the world to the Shoah, that “holocaust” is too broadly and casually utilized to any longer reflect the singular horror of the Nazi actions.

After Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, compared aspects of nascent health care reform bills to the holocaust, other religious leaders said, “enough.”

Land's disingenuous failure to acknowledge real error in his apology is overlooked. Similarly, Jameson is focused on Land's abuse of the facts and Nazi imagery in a Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in Florida, and overlooks the October barrage of counterfactual claims which attended Land's Louisiana references to Nazi practices.

Fair to a fault, Jameson gives Land credit for having said health care reform is needed, and for supporting the state of Israel before concluding that "the holocaust are so unimaginably horrible, it is not appropriate to compare them with anything since." And for that he draws immediate dissent a pro-life commenters who suggests that it is appropriate to compare abortion to the Nazi industrialized program of eradication of entire cultures.

Land and his peers are resistant to logical/historical persuasion such as Jameson offers, possibility because their goals are not logical. They may seek to reignite the culture-war hysteria whose fade toward calm has drained away much of their political power.

Landing in mea culpa with both Southern Baptist feet

We recommend Mark Silk's "Mea culpa" takedown of Southern Baptist Convention ethics czar Richard Land's pseudo-apology.

Tomás de Torquemada indeed!

Land pseudo-apologizes to ADL for Holocaust references [Addenda I & II]

The president's healthcare advisor Ezekiel Emanuel was given the "Josef Mengele Award" by Land. (photo courtesy Center for American Progress)

In a chummy, self-aggrandizing letter to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Richard Land expressed some regret for accusing the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders of attempting to do with health-care reform "precisely what the Nazis did."

In the paragraph devoted to apology, Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission czar Land wrote:

. . . I deeply regret the reference to Dr. Josef Mengele. I was using hyperbole for effect and never intended to actually equate anyone in the Obama administration with Dr. Mengele. I will certainly refrain from making such references in the future. I apologize to everyone who found such references hurtful. Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the healthcare debate.

Thus Land disingenuously fails to acknowledge real error, instead offering bloodless amends for hurt feelings.

We dealt yesterday with the barrage of other counterfactual claims which attended Land's Louisiana misuse of Holocaust images and references to Nazi practices. That piece was a followup to a review of Land's abuse of the facts and Nazi imagery in a Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in Florida.

Land's disregard for the facts and use of Nazi imagery are of one piece. His summary intentions were well-explained by professor of history emeritus at Indiana State University Richard V. Pierard, who wrote in response:

To evoke images of Hitler or the Holocaust to thwart health-care reform is a brutal insult both to the victims and survivors of that Holocaust. We must proclaim as widely as possible that the term 'Nazism' and images of the swastika have nothing to do with the issues at hand. Any such comparisons are false and are intended only to frighten and confuse people.

Pierard's warning is as important as Land's pseudo-apology is vacant.

Addendum: Land's just another echo

As a member in good standing of the Religious Right, Land is just another echo of the Religious Right Party Line.

For another party-line variation on Land's Obama = "end of Christian civilization" line to the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Founders' Day audience, watch Pat Robertson and Bill Donohue discuss how liberals are trying to "tear down society:"

Addendum II

Kudos to the Associated Baptist Press for unflinching coverage of the pseudo-apology. Although the ABP story may owe more than it acknowledges to Sam Stein's blog at Huffington Post.

SBC ethics czar R. Land still counterfactual

Sad to see a prolific author fall on such hard intellectual times. Wednesday, Oxford-educated Richard Land oversimplified C.S. Lewis and misappropriating Reinhold Niebuhr on his way to telling a New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary audience a series of falsehoods about well-known Americans, health reform legislation and the British medical system.

Speaking during the Founder’s Day celebration at his seminary alma mater, the busy Southern Baptist Convention ethics czar could have avoided embarrassing himself merely by doing a little research. According to Paul F. South of Baptist Press:

After age 59 and a half, Land said, British [National Health Service] patients can't get dialysis or open-heart surgery, because they are not deemed cost-effective within that nation's health care system.

British Guardian journalists Denis Campbell and Girish Gupta researched that issue and a long list of other assertions by Republicans and "rightwing commentators in the U.S."

On Land's points, they wrote:

Untrue, says the Department of Health. "There is no ban on anyone of any age receiving any treatment, " said a spokesman. "Whether to prescribe drugs or recommend surgery is rightly a clinical decision taken on a case by case basis."
...
Growing numbers of patients over 65 with heart conditions are having surgery, including valve repairs and heart bypass surgery, says Professor Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation's (BHF) medical director. For example, the average age at which people have a bypass operation has risen from 58 in 1991 to 66 in 2008.
...
"The claim that 40% of cancer patients are never able to see an oncologist comes from a 15-year-old study which is completely out of date. Since then we have had the Nice Improving Outcomes Guidance series and the NHS Cancer Plan for England, which has increased the number of cancer consultants and established specialist multidisciplinary teams," said Duleep Allirajah of Macmillan Cancer Support. However, "some people with serious kidney failure are unable to obtain dialysis on the NHS and die", said Tim Statham, chief executive of the National Kidney Federation. "Some parts of the NHS can't cope, because patient numbers are increasing by 6% a year, which is a huge burden. Of about 100 renal units in the UK, probably 20% are working at 100% capacity or above," he added. The claim about open heart surgery is not true, said the BHF's Weissberg. "There's no explicit rationing. Some people don't get treatment, but those decisions are made solely on the basis of clinical criteria and their risk of dying. We only operate on people who are likely to benefit and not die." The three main political parties agree that Britain provides good quality end-of-life care but that access to it can be patchy, depending on location and the patient's condition. The government is working to improve the situation.

Land also falsely argued, according to South, that the Senate health reform bill authored by Max Baucus, D.-Mont., reinstates the so-called "death panels." South fails to note that the "death panels" were never there, and so could be reinstated.

A simple reference or two to PolitiFact.com would have clarified the "death panels" issue, but South was transcribing Land's claims, not reporting the facts.

Land's arguments were consistently buttressed with similarly false claims.

Thus he rose on feet of clay to proclaim that "The survival of civilization hangs in the balance."

Nobel disappointments

Hillary Rodham Clinton must be silently disappointed at being only the third woman secretary of state not to receive a Nobel Peace Prize during her first year of service.

Joe Biden has to be silently grieving his fate as "the first beardless Democratic vice president of this century to not win the Nobel Peace Prize."

Richard Land pitched a fit, however. The head of the Southern Baptist Convention's SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said Oct. 10 on his radio program, "I think the Nobel Prize committee is trying to lobby this president to pull him in an even more left-wing direction by giving him the Nobel Peace Prize."

Was Land disappointed that the Nobel Committee passed on an opportunity to give the award to a third Southern Baptist? (Counting Jimmy Carter, who when named still hadn't split with the SBC.) Or disoriented from his Florida venture into reality denial? Certainly not speaking ex cathedra as he did in 2006 when declaring Southern Baptist support for then-President G.W. Bush.

Fact-free Land

Richard Land's Sept. 26 speech to the Christian Coalition of Fla. was distinguished by its disregard for the truth. Ignoring nonpartisan fact checking (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and history itself, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission head Land said of health insurance reform efforts:

I want to put it to you bluntly. What they are attempting to do in healthcare, particularly in treating the elderly, is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did.
...
There is loose within the liberal culture which dominates the Democratic Party and dominates our government at present, a biological bigotry that is feeding a euthanasia mentality.
...
The Nazis said people should be euthanized when they had lives unworthy of life. … Well, at the very least Dr. Emanuel, [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, [Sen.] Max Baucus and President Obama are saying that some people have lives less worthy of life. And the older you are, the sicker you are, the less valuable your life is and the more likely they want to terminate your care.

Florida Baptist Witness Executive Editor James A. Smith Jr.'s decision to report Land's barrage of false claims with no attention to the well-established facts was a failure of journalistic integrity. But the principal failure was still Land's.

Professor of history emeritus at Indiana State University Richard V. Pierard wrote in response:

His action goes beyond the unprincipled behavior of such foul mouthpieces of the right as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. We know that they are ideologues who make big money by spewing their poison over the airwaves and in books consumed by their disciples. Land calls himself a Christian, a Baptist and a historian. I too accept all of these labels and feel he has disgraced them.

Land has distinguished himself in recent years by name-calling and falsehood. In constrast with his triumphant claims to have successfully promoted Sarah Palin as a vice presidential nominee, his latest efforts reek of desperation.

SBC's Richard Land to help present anti-health reform petitions [with addendum]

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Conventions' Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has announced plans to meet with other Salem Radio Network hosts tomorrow to deliver anti-health reform petitions to Congress on behalf of the National Center for Policy Analysis and SRN.

The National Center for Policy Analysis is a conservative think tank which is financed in part by the insurance industry and which had such close ties to the Bush administration that it fired staff member Bruce Bartlett upon publication of his book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Regan Legacy.

Similarly conservative and sometimes controversial, SRN, syndicates Janet Parshall, Land and Hugh Hewitt, among others, and is owned by Salem Corporation.

Land said:

This petition is indicative of a spontaneous grass roots eruption of protest against a government takeover of the American health care system. Anyone who doubts the strength and vitality of this movement needs only have attended one of the thousands of town hall meetings to know that this is real.

Characterizing professionally-promoted petitions which are "signed" online by clicking an eagle icon and filling out an online form as "a spontaneous grass roots eruption of protest" should strain even Land's credulity.

Similarly spontaneous, delivery of the dubious petitions to Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) is take place a few hours before President Obama’s health care address to a joint session of Congress.

Addendum:

Dan Gilgoff writing for USNews somehow finds in this stunt with delivery via gurneys and ambulances what he calls "a clear indication that the sore feelings between the GOP and its Christian Right base that were in evidence in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2008 presidential election are fading." Because Republican Senate heavyweights who were just involved in the desperate, failed attack on Obama's school speech have involved themselves.

In August, 2008, Gilgoff applauded Richard Land's anointment of Sarah Palin as the Christian Right's and allegedly the Southern Baptist Convention's Republican vice presidential selection. Also a stunt, which may not have turned out so well for John McCain.