Do You Believe In The Devil?
I once took a class taught by a sly French-Canadian lecturer with a propensity to chuckle at his own jokes, as though they were intended primarily for his own amusement. One of my classmates, a Polish immigrant with all the correct Euro-liberal attitudes (atheist, socialist, vegetarian, etc.) liked to engage our teacher in debates about religion. One time, this student tried to short-circuit the debate with the common trick of challenging his opponent to concede belief in something so out of touch with modernity that his position would seem laughable.
“Do you really believe in the devil?” he asked incredulously. The teacher, whose English was weak, chewed over his answer just long enough to allow the student’s pride to swell, and then said: “I believe the devil is never more dangerous than when you don’t believe in him.”
The Republican Establishment’s latest attack in its war against Rick Santorum comes in the form of a banner headline on The Drudge Report announcing that in 2008, while speaking at Ave Maria University, Santorum claimed that Satan has his sights on the United States of America. Imagine that: a Catholic, speaking at a Catholic liberal arts college, used the word “Satan” to identify the source of the political and moral ills leading to his country’s decline.
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