Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
When an earthquake devastated San Francisco in 1989, some conservatives said it was God's punishment for the city's welcoming attitude toward gays. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, some conservatives said the supposed debauchery in the French Quarter had raised God's anger.
Here in 2011, we've learned that game can cut both ways. After last week's tornadoes killed more than 300 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Louisiana, one can only conclude that God must be unhappy with the Deep South about something. The Big Guy must really be pissed at my home state of Alabama, where 236 people have been confirmed dead.
By the way, Southern conservatives aren't the only ones getting hammered by Mother Nature. Southwest Missouri, especially the country-music mecca of Branson, has been hit with major flooding. That part of the Ozarks is steadfastly GOP.
Since it's "established" that liberals can raise God's hackles with their permissive ways, we can only assume from last week's storms that God doesn't like stuffed shirts either. (Which raises the question, "Who in the heck does God like?") After all, the seven states hardest hit by the storms were staunchly conservative. Talk about an angry God.
What have conservatives done to get the Big Guy riled up? Let's consider a few possibilities:
* One of the prime tenets of modern conservatism is that tax rates must be cut for the richest Americans. The Bible, the book Southerners seem to treasure, says it's easier for "a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19: 23-24.) Have conservative Southerners been ignoring God's word? Is that why the skies darkened and the winds blew last week?
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