The late Dr Falwell

Good-night doctor.
Falwell did some good things, and he did some dubious ones, but both came from the same conviction: he was doing it for God. His God.

He was a devoted evangelical, fundamentalist minister.
He opened up homes for unwed mothers, alcoholics, and drug addicts.
He opened up an AIDS hospice.
He got the Christian right politically involved (even if I disagree with their perspective, it's better to have greater than fewer points of view under discussion--especially in politics.My only wish is that more would base their choices on reason than Christian principles. The two can--and do--go together, but many on the extreme right abjure the former).

But he also helped kickstart the Great Polarization of the 20th century's closing years, the cultural binary that has turned "red" and "blue," "right" and "left" into warring factions, both of which prefer irrational arguments steeped in derision and hatemongering over debate.

He argued against individual rights--prioritizing "family" and "community" values over the personal choices of gay men and women.
He opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa
He funded and distributed "The Clinton Chronicles," which accused the Clintons of everything from drug smuggling to murder. He later claimed that he wasn't sure about the work's accuracy (but he funded and distributed it).
He said the Antichrist is probably here, and he must be Jewish.
He supported segregation in the USA.
He argued against unions (moreover, his idea that those who read their Bibles became better workers and, therefore, earned higher wages, speaks of the bourgeois heresy).
He saw homosexual conspiracies in children's programming.
He called global warming "a hoax"
After September 11, 2001, he said: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

He wanted, in other words, a return to a past that never existed--the golden age where premarital sex never happened, men never found other men attractive, women never desired anything more than motherhood or volunteering in her community as a hobby, and, most chilling of all, he desire for a country controlled by a religious force implies a desire to return to the nineteenth--or eighteenth--century (after all, isn't this when "secularization" began?). Was this "God's" word, or the wish of a man who watched his country undergoing social changes ?

No, I didn't very much like Dr. Falwell (sometimes he said some ridiculous things--Tinky Winky ?--and sometimes he said some hateful things--9/11?), but he was a force in our country, and it will be intriguing to watch how his passing plays out politically. He was a massively galvanizing force. Now that Falwell is gone, will the bloc disintegrate into various sects, or will someone just as powerful emerge to fill the preacher's boots?