Pat Robertson weighs in on the reasons why Haiti is being "punished" with an earthquake:
Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, Napoleon III or whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you get us free from the French. True story. So the devil said okay it's a deal, so the Hatians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since then they have been cursed by one thing after another. Desperately poor, the island of Hispanola is one side, on the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts et cetera, Haiti is in desperate poverty. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, and out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come, but right now we're helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable.
In other words, the people who live in Haiti today are being punished by G-d with an earthquake for their ancestors having had the audacity to rebel against the benevolent white man and throw of the shackles of slavery, a task for which these savage wretches must have had supernatural assistance from the devil. I suppose it doesn't occur to Robertson that it might have been the French on the wrong side, because nothing says "Satan" like a black person not confined to chattel slavery. Robertson knows all this this is a "true story" because of his unrivaled knowledge of Haitian history, just like he knows it was "Napoleon III or whatever" they were fighting. (Sorry, Pat -- it was Napoleon Bonaparte. Toussaint Louverture was a badass.)
Times like this I'm reminded of this Frederick Douglass quote:
Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.He must have done a deal with the devil to write like that.
-- A. Serwer
