More on the Mule-Lovin' Horsley

The Green Knight, in addition to a lovely singing voice, has a great insight into the Dominionist mind that hinges on an excerpt from the now-infamous Alan Colmes-Neal Horsley interview that wasn’t part of the original partial transcript that circulated around the blogosphere:

A person who's depraved and has no absolutes -- nothing but their own sexual desires to guide them -- they'll do anything and you know it.

The Green Knight’s analysis is excellent:

With that one sentence, the rest of Horsley's statements about his ribald past snap right into focus. The implication is that this depravity is in contrast to his position now, as a fundamentalist Christian and anti-abortion activist. Now, he's got absolutes. Then, he didn't have absolutes and was depraved…

The modern right believes that if something is allowed, then everything is allowed, and that if everything is allowed to happen, then everything will happen. Change one thing, and society will fall apart like a house of cards. This is what the Spanish cardinal meant, for example, when he said that supporting gay marriage leads to the gas chambers.

The fact that societies have always changed over time -- that change is normal, and can be a healthy part of growing up -- does not register. The idea that most people, on the whole, might have something on the inside that regulates their behavior -- an actual internal conscience, or set of standards, or just inherent decency -- is not part of the right's worldview. They believe that human beings are inherently depraved, vile, and evil, and that only a strong set of unchanging, external rules will prevent everything from going to hell.

I highly encourage you to read the whole thing.

Two little thoughts of my own about that quote:

1) It does definitively prove that Horsley was, indeed, not joking about being a former bestialist, which is highly disturbing in its own rite.

2) It suggests, as the Green Knight indicates, that Horsley (and people like him) genuinely believe that everyone is a potential bestialist, or, I suspect, a drug abuser, philanderer, even murderer—that only with the carrot on a stick that is the promise of eternal salvation, and a fixed set of stringent rules to guide you toward that reward, can anyone manage to get through life without succumbing to the basest of human instincts. The notions of self-discipline, self-control, altruism, goodness and kindness as their own reward are nonexistent in the minds and hearts of the Dominionists. And, I fear, it is not simply the notions that are lacking, but the very concepts. They witness about their saved souls, but in the end, it seems to me they’re quite a soulless lot.