Of course, if you’re in the Matrix, nothing is really happening.

That makes pornography the direct counterpart of the 19th century minstrel show. Both pornography and minstrelsy depict an idealized world that doesn’t really exist. And both involve the exploitation of the people they are supposed to be depicting.

Minstrel shows portrayed African-Americans as comic, dim-witted buffoons. But their white audiences believed that they were accurate examples of African-American culture. “Negroes like that kind of music,” they claimed. “That’s the way they really dance, don’t you know.”

Pornography portrays women as exploitable, demeanable, and rapeable. Do its viewers believe that pornography provides accurate examples of what all women are like? Maybe not, but the defenders of pornography claim that some women – the actresses – don’t object. “She’s just expressing her sexuality in that video,” they claim. “She’s just proud of her body.”

No, maybe she’s just trying to make a living. If women could earn as much as men, as easily, things might be different. At least men can stand on the corner waiting to be hired for honorable manual labor. When women stand on the corner, they have fewer options.

And if she’s an amateur, the point is not that she’s proud of her body. The point is that she isn’t proud of much of anything else. She doesn’t expose herself because she’s free. She exposes herself because she’s enslaved. And the men who watch her are taking advantage of her bondage, just as surely as the white people who watched minstrel shows were taking advantage of African-American powerlessness.

Note: many minstrel performers were white people in blackface, which contradicts my analogy. But there is no similar term for authentic 19th century African-American performances, which tends to prove my point, don’t you think?

Feel free to have an opinion, even a strong opinion, about immigration and illegal aliens. But don’t call your opinion Christian if it’s not in the Bible. Leviticus, in fact, talks quite a bit about aliens. You could look there.

Don’t call your opinion about war Christian if it’s not in the Bible. Yes, many people in the past have called their war Christian, most famously the Crusaders. The Crusaders don’t count. They weren’t prophets or apostles. They weren’t inspired.

Some people believe the Kingdom of God can be advanced by killing Muslims. Some people believe it can’t. Accept it as a difference of opinion. Accept it as a difference in strategy.

The saying used to be, “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” The saying among many conservatives is now, “What’s good for America is good for Jesus.”

And how about intellectuals Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, or talk show host Laura Schlessinger, or journalist Charles Krauthammer? Other influential heroes of the Christian Right are Jewish converts: former abortionist and now pro-life advocate Bernard Nathanson and World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky.

And there’s another category of Jewish leaders that the Christian Right has been willing to follow: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Lewis Libby, and Elliott Abrams. Several of them have not been convicted of any crimes, something which cannot be said for certain Christian ministers.

The moral is that right doesn’t always mean Christian. And perhaps, that Right doesn’t always mean right.

No, I wasn’t saying that all Christians and Muslims have destructive beliefs and attitudes in common. Just many of them. More about that tomorrow.

• Believers should care more about the natural world than unbelievers do, because we know the one who made it
• We should care about the natural world, not because it’s purer and superior to us, but because it’s fallen like us.

1. They believe that God approves of waging war to defend their beliefs.
2. Though their faith has spread throughout the world, they believe that one culture is divinely inspired.
3. They see God’s will as unalterably predestined.
4. They oppose theological interpretations that disagree with the established commentaries.

And so do many Muslims.

Some say that sex drives the Internet, while others say it drives them away. True, sex sells. Nations have based their entire economies on what sells. One nation that comes to mind is Nauru. Which begs the question, Bob: what will you have left to sell when you have finished selling out?

The 19th century suffragettes and feminists such as Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Gage, Mary Wollstonecraft, even Emma Goldman, asserted that the prevalence of abortion was a symptom of the general exploitation of women.

What is the main result of the call for “abortion rights”? A boyfriend doesn’t want to pay child support. Poof! The baby vanishes! An employer doesn’t want to offer job-sharing, flex-time or telecommuting. Poof! “Freedom of choice” in abortion allows him to reduce the career choices of his female employees.

The pro-abortion movement is a relic of the discredited “old feminist” movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the goal was for women to do everything that men do. The question today is “Why would women even want to do everything that men do, considering how men have messed things up?” For example, why would women want to serve in combat? Combat is the ultimate guy thing. Don’t women have better ways to solve problems? I think so. Today’s feminists want to be women, not men.

Abortion lets women submit to the restrictions of a man’s world, that’s all. It allows career women to discard their children, just like career men do. Some improvement.