James Lileks has some suitably arch commentary about the moral obtuseness of certain Presbyterian church leaders:

The Presbyterian church - not the members, but the learned elders - has announced it will use the church’s stock holdings to target Israel for being mean to the Palestinians. But they’re not anti-Semites. Heavens, nay. Don’t you dare question their philosemitism! No, they looked at the entire world, including countries that lop off your skull if you convert to Presbyterianism, and what did they chose as the object of their ire? A country the size of a potato chip hanging on the edge of a region noted for despotism and barbarity. By some peculiar coincidence, it just happens to be full of Jews.

The right and the left take turns deciding who’s going to be anti-semitic this century. For some time now the hard left in the West has led the charge against the Jews – or, as the sleight-of-hand term has it, the Zionists. The adolescent spirits of the left love nothing more than a revolution, a story of a scrappy underdog rising up against a colonizing power, and the Palestinians, with their romantically-masked fighters and thrilling weapon-brandishing, fit the bill. Plus, there’s something so deliciously naughty and transgressive about calling Jews the new Nazis – if it feels that good, it must be right.

And speaking of the idiocies of the left and right converging, here's a provocative post by Harry Hatchett on that subject.

I have always belived that at the end of the far right and the far left is the same dark place. It's where all the really bad ideas have come from.

I don't get how the leadership of the Presebyterian Church is "right wing". Is it because they are a church, and "everyone knows" all those church-going people voted for Bush? Well, except some minority church goers. Sorry, but I don't buy that.

This isn't a case of "right wing" anti-semitism. This is another case of left wing anti-semitism. That is if you define left wing as being for a pro-interventionist government and right wing as being for a "hands off" government. The Presbyterian Church leadership is "old school" women's-temperence-union-meddling-busybody left.

They support strong gun control: http://www.pcusa.org/criminaljustice/issues/guncontrol/violence.htm

They support gov't run social programs and oppose both privatization and Bush's tax cuts:
http://www.pcusa.org/washington/030211-hhn-q1.htm
http://www.pcusa.org/criminaljustice/issues/privatization/prison.htm
http://www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet/crrl-030520-ncpe.pdf
And also,
They oppose increases in military spending and the "occupation" of both Iraq and Afghanistan, while suggesting inexpensive ways to protect ourselves like 'partnering with the UN':
http://www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet/gs-031003.htm

They even oppose growth in energy production!
http://www.pcusa.org/research/panel/summaries/0804summaries.pdf

If you look at almost any issue from the medical care to the death penalty, these guys are left wing, green, internationalist socia1ist Democrats. The fact that they also oppose gambling and promiscious sex doesn't make them right wing, conservative, or even Republican.

http://www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet.htm

I'll be there are a lot of Kerry '04 bumper stickers at the PCUSA HQ.

I don't get how the leadership of the Presebyterian Church is "right wing".

Well, I guess we're even, because I don't get how you think that I said it was.

There is a great war within the Presebyterian Church between the mainstream and the leadership. My best frined is a Presebyterian Minister and he constantantly rails abut the leftist leadership. They sound like a bunch of Berkley leftist liberation theologists to me the way he describes them to me.

"Well, I guess we're even, because I don't get how you think that I said it was."

I didn't mean to imply you said that. Lileks seems to suggest it with his "The right and the left take turns deciding who’s going to be anti-semitic" statement and then the previous commentor "JJS" emphasized it further.

BTW, your comments system here doesn't seem to like the word s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t. Strange.

I didn't read Lileks as suggesting it either.

The problem with soc1alist is that it contains the word c1alis.

I don't understand the confusion among you posters about how a Protestant church could be liberal. There is actually a long tradition of some mainstream American Protestant churches being quite liberal, at least on foreign policy issues. Look at the United Church of Christ or the Lutheran Church in the US. They were anti-war during Vietnam, embraced the nuclear freeze movement during the 1980s, and were pro-Sandinista (at least some of them were). They're generally not radical left. They're not bomb-throwers or even pacifists. They're just squishy.

I agree that there exists bipartisan stupidity. However, if the Presbyterian Church represents the "hard left in the West" (I think J Random makes a good case that they do), what exactly represents the "Right" in either James Lilek's column or your post, Rand?

The only other organizations left listed are the Nazis and Palestinians.

As I always understood it, the "Presbyterian Church (in the) USA" was predominantly liberal-leaning, both socially and theologically, and the "Presbyterian Church in America" (PCA, a separate denomination) was more conservative in both areas. But I could be wrong.

Obi-Wan,

You're pretty close. I would say that the PCUSA is pretty far to the left. The PCA is a mixture of left- and right- leaning congregations, so that one church may be very conservative, and the next, perhaps in a different part of the country, may be very liberal. Then there is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which true to its name is fairly uniformly conservative. And there are other smaller conservative denominations like Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.

The last time I went to a PCUSA church, they sang a hymn entitled "Peace with Justice," to the tune of "Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven." It was sickening.

Hmmm, it does seem that there is inconsistency here, for example, between their stance on Iraq and Israel.

But it does appear that the Church has issued sanctions against other countries (see paragraph five) including China, Myanmar (the government of Burma), and the Sudan. So it seems that they are making an effort.

It is common for many of the conservative PCUSA churches in the South - and there are many - to have as little as possible to do with the denominational leadership.

Presbyterianism is far from dead in the US. The conservative PCA starts dozens of new churches each year.

I have always belived that at the end of the far right and the far left is the same dark place. It's where all the really bad ideas have come from. -JJS

The whole political structure of this fine country is a moebius strip. The ancient legend of the snake that swallows its own tail. Far left and far right probably meet quite regularly and plot together on how to move the margins.