The Sullivan-Hewitt Death Match

We go to Round 3 today. Yesterday, Hugh responded to Sullivan's accusations with this:

Mostly, though, Sullivan's invention and use of the bigoted term was intended as shorthand for those who think George Bush a very good man and a very good president. I am a defender of the president, though not when I think he or his Administration makes an error like the ports deal or the briefs in the Michigan affirmative action cases. Sullivan's frenzied, sometimes even hysterical attacks on pundits and analysts who admire the president and his team are the means to understanding Sullivan. He is consumed by Bush hatred. So much so, in fact, that he has branched out into hating those who not only don't hate Bush, but admire him.

I do believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Gonzales and Ashcroft have run the global war on terror about as well as it could have been run, and their commitment to its prosecution has been unyielding. I admire their courage and their consistency. This presidency is already among the most significant of our nation's history, and like Reagan's, will be admired for generations long after the Bush haters have been forgotten.

Andrew responds today with this, which seems just more of the same to these eyes:

Hewitt needs to issue a factual correction. He won't, I'll wager (and I'll link if he does). Like most fanatics, if the truth contradicts him, he simply reasserts more forcefully his own dogma. Like George "we do not torture" Bush, Dick "last throes" Cheney and Don "stuff happens" Rumsfeld on Iraq. But saying something does not make it so, as any sane person must now concede. A lie is a lie is a lie.

I should add that Hewitt still refuses to acknowledge or account for his own role in credentializing, supporting and using for political purposes the work of fanatical anti-Semite Mel Gibson. Again, his inability to cop to even basic moral and intellectual responsibility is a feature of the very Christianism I have tried to sketch. He still insists that "The Passion" is not an anti-Semitic movie, but does not make an actual argument against the many Christian and Jewish scholars who see in it deep tropes of medieval Jew-hatred, perhaps invisible to a contemporary Christian. Hewitt backed the movie for political reasons. If abetting anti-Semitism (or homophobia, for that matter) can achieve the party's aims, then so be it. As he once used as the very slogan of his site "The Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed." It's the one coherent thread in everything he writes. It is his true faith.

Hugh's response is here: But there is the matter of the definition. Sullivan calls me a fanatic, suggests I am not sane, and brands my assertion of his slur as lacking a definition a lie.

Sullivan today insists that he has indeed defined his slur, and points to and quotes from a Time Magazine column, and three other posts. But he doesn't quote the definition, because there isn't a definition. A definition of a "Christianist" would allow you to identify a "Christianist" based upon a set of specific attributes, which anyone could apply and which would lead everyone to the same conlcusion. A "definition" isn't personal, it is neutral. For example, an Islamist is a Muslim who is willing to use or applaud the use of violence, including terrorism against civilians, to either advance the faith or destroy non-Muslims.

Most of the definitions of "definition" include the idea of precision and specificity. In a political context, especially, identifiers require their applicability by neutral parties. People unfairly branded "communists" at least could argue that they'd never been to a Party meeting.

A quick confession: I read the response prior to reading Sullivan's post. I wondered if--as some of the commenters at his blog insist--Hugh had perhaps not told the entire story, but I must say I find Andrew's explanation lacking.

Hugh's parallel definition of an Islamist details precisely how; it's all about the specificity or in this case, the lack there-of.

Andrew's attempt is simply too general: 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.

What are the parallels to the Islamist? Where the "Islamist uses or applauds the use of force," the Christianist does...what exactly?

As an aside--and an example of me "not getting" Sullivan, I paused in reading his close where he said that "He still insists that "The Passion" is not an anti-Semitic movie, but does not make an actual argument against the many Christian and Jewish scholars who see in it deep tropes of medieval Jew-hatred, perhaps invisible to a contemporary Christian. Hewitt backed the movie for political reasons."

For the life of me, I have no concept what political benefit came to anyone from supporting Gibson's Passion.