Saturday, February 05, 2005

Dr. Kelly Hollowell: Unwitting pawn in a meaningless war?

After finding her remarkable credentials - which include Juris Doctorate and a Ph.D that she earned from her thesis on the genetics of cloning - I have to wonder: How can a woman so intelligent, and so gifted, and so sincere a Christian, and (if I dare say this being a married man) so beautiful, publish something that is sooooo tired and boring?

I refer to Dr. Kelly Hollowell, founder and head of Science Ministries and regular columnist for WorldNetDaily. She has a new piece today titled "The liberal elite's stranglehold on America" and... well, hate to say it but just the title was a setup for disappointment. She's written brilliant stuff before, but not today. And it needs to be said that on each of the three issues she brings up in this article, she and I do stand in agreement for the most part.

I believe that abortion is the gravest sin that our country has allowed to happen. I believe that God created the universe. I believe that the "gay rights" movement is totally wrong, because by definition it establishes the flesh as a person's identity as opposed to it deriving from the intangible soul: Hey, lots of guys including myself like having sex too, but you don't see us marching in the streets with it as an excuse for demanding money and stuff, do ya?

She could have taken any one of those and made a good argument for it. Instead Dr. Hollowell lumped them together as one en masse attack on "liberals". And you know what? She accomplishes nothing with it. Nothing will change in the slightest because of this article. There will be as many if not more "liberals" tomorrow as there were yesterday. The ranks of "conservatives" may grow but there will be no overwhelming groundswell. There will be "liberals" and "conservatives" and this conflict between them - that we are expected to believe really matters somehow - will just go on and on, war without end, hallelujah amen.

The problem is her obvious motivation in writing this: to attack "liberals". And that's all. To that end Dr. Hollowell in this piece sometimes has all the eloquence of a third-grade schoolyard bully. She's far from the only one though: it seems that when others try to destroy "the conservatives" or "the liberals", any semblance of politeness is an acceptable casualty of war.

I see no love and all too much hate coming from both sides. And neither one has any idea why it is that they should hate the other... but they've been fighting each other for so long that all they really DO know about the opposition is that they have to be destroyed. That's all they know about themselves, and to take that fight away from them is to destroy whatever identity they have established for themselves in the eyes of others. More inconceivable to them: it destroys their primary vehicle of power over others. Without a predominant struggle between "conservatism" and "liberalism" in this country, they have nothing to make them seem important. Strip that away, and Jerry Falwell and Jesse Jackson both stand naked as a bluejay.

You see, I don't think that trying to "counter liberalism" is what Dr. Hollowell intended to do with her article, not really. She may not even realize what it is she sought to accomplish with it. Because I believe that the major players on both sides - and legions of the minor ones for that matter - don't want their war to stop at all. They can't afford to NOT keep it going because it ensures that their names are always "out there" for other people to see... the people that are "too weak and stupid" to know how to exist without them, though that's never admitted aloud. The fire must be continually stoked, and all that Dr. Hollowell did was throw more wood into the stove.

Here's the part in her piece where Dr. Hollowell hits the self-destruct button:

They are the ilk of Hitler, Lenin and Jim Jones. They gain power over the nation by arousing it to emotions that overcome thought – all the while proclaiming themselves the gatekeepers of logic.
That could very much be a description of George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also. Haven't they played on people's emotions to gain a sense of power and superiority over them?

Dr. Hollowell is a scientist. Wouldn't the sound and proper thing to do as an observer be to remove herself from the system so as to study it without her presence being a bias factor that creates variance in the data? To put it in terms of a moral exercise: shouldn't she be observing herself and the things that she says and claims to believe in, with the same objective eye that she is bound to cast as a researcher on external phenomena?

I don't mean any of this as personal insult to Dr. Hollowell: have said before here that I admire her greatly (and I'd still be honored to have a great discussion over dinner with her some evening, along with our spouses). But she really should know better than to think she's meant to be a great warrior in this battle, when it has no real purpose except to distract the American people from the things that do matter while they are robbed of their freedoms and opportunities by the extremes of both sides. It's a shame that there is a dearth of those who would make them give it back

That's the only thing that impresses me, Dr. Hollowell. The only political philosophy that merits my respect: the value of the individual. Probably the most despised minority of all. People who insist on factionalism are shallow and tepid, and I'm no longer interested in anything they might present before me.

You can do better than this, Dr. Hollowell. You're letting your life and your work be used for something that has no eternal value at all. Let go of it. Let go of them. Step back and be the disattached observer. Cast that dissecting eye on yourself. God obviously intended for you to go on to better things than this. A new generation is coming of age in America, and it won't be shackled down by the tired rhetoric of this deceitful conflict.

You would be considered a guiding light of that generation, Dr. Hollowell, if you would really want it.

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