(h/t Heather)

Paul Krugman recently wrote that he thought that Republicans and Democrats no longer occupy the same universe with one another. Certainly, my understanding of Christianity isn't the same as Glenn Beck's, when he advised his listeners to leave their churches if those churches focus on social justice:

Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice. "I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Now, I'm going to set aside the troubling implicit admission of the selfishness of the Mormon Church by this LDS convert for the moment. I just have to ask if Beck has read the same Bible as the rest of us:

"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me." "Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?" "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:34-40)

Now that seems pretty clear to me that Jesus said that you need to do good works with those less fortunate than you and that he felt it was critical that you show his devotion to Him by doing so. But maybe Beck missed that sermon.

He then went on to conflate communism and Nazism, saying they both were the ultimate expression of the (you guessed it) left, by saying they both focused on the dreaded "social justice".

Man, teh stoopid, it hurts. I wish there was a way to just stop this stupid "Nazis were leftists" meme (Erick Erickson was tweeting that this morning too--citing Jonah Goldberg as an expert--bwahahaha!). But since one must shut down one's brain to believe that, I think it's a lost cause.