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You Better Watch Out

Barry Dredze
4 min readAug 2, 2022

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Washington, DC, Jan. 6, 2021 (Photo by Pacific Press Media Production Corp./Alamy Live News)

I used to hear it more than I do now. “Judaism is a religion of law; Christianity is a religion of love.” After all, they have Santa Claus. Who doesn’t love Santa Claus? Especially now that Trump made it politically correct to say “Merry Christmas” again.

But seriously, in the larger historical scope of human civilization, Christian “love” has consistently been a mixed blessing; from the epiphany of Roman Emperor Constantine through Crusades and Inquisitions to the rise of twentieth century European fascism.

Following the signing of a new state law prohibiting abortions after fifteen weeks, a Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit arguing that the law violates Jewish rabbinic teachings. “As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom,” says the lawsuit. It is worth noting that a fetus is not even considered human life in the Bible. That is, if Christians still believe that the Book of Exodus is the unassailable word of God.

During the runup to the 2018 midterm elections, between October 22 and November 2, over a dozen crudely dysfunctional pipe bombs were mailed to Democratic leadership, the offices of CNN, and liberal Jewish philanthropist and the favored bogeyman of fascists, from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to virtually anyone with a show…

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Barry Dredze
Barry Dredze

Written by Barry Dredze

Just another mortal, tweaking my cognitive map on the fly.

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