“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)
In February, the National Interest published an article by Ian Kershaw called “The Ghosts of Fascists Past“:
A prominent British government minister, Baroness Warsi, herself a Muslim, claimed just recently that Islamophobia has “passed the dinner-table test” in Britain and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial. She warned of growing intolerance, prejudice and bigotry toward the Muslim faith and its adherents. . . .
If we add to the mix the anti-immigrant feeling that is widespread in many parts of the Continent, then racism, it has to be admitted, is far from eradicated. How dangerous is it, given these countries’ baleful histories of racism and fascism in the not-too-distant past? Not surprisingly, some have asked whether Europe is moving toward political extremes. Do the signs point that way? Is Europe indeed on the road to new racial intolerance that could give succor to the extremist Right and even offer it new, promising prospects? . . .
Perhaps some would point toward last month’s Oslo massacre as evidence of such a trend, but I think that’s misleading. Anders Breivik was a lone wolf, a one-off like Timothy McVeigh. Recall that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was at the time heralded as a symbol of an alleged menace — right-wing militias — that never really developed into anything. And likewise we have no evidence that Breivik’s murder spree was the leading edge of a mass movement.
This is not to minimize the extent or significance of Breivik’s (or McVeigh’s) association with the Right, but rather to illustrate that even the most extreme elements of the Right seldom resort to terrorist violence, and such violence never serves to advance the cause on behalf of which its perpetrators purport to act. In democratic societies, political violence tends to be self-defeating, discrediting those who employ it. Yet there is an industry devoted to conjuring fear of right-wing extremism. The Southern Poverty Law Center (with a tax-free bank account of $175 million) routinely floods the mailboxes of elderly rich liberals with scary solicitations conveying the impression that, unless they send a generous check to fund the SPLC’s efforts, the brownshirts will be goose-stepping down Main Street next week.
My point is that this fear is misplaced and irrational, and yet the Department of Homeland Security’s infamous “right-wing extremism” report of 2009 shows how such foolishness is taken seriously in high places. If the DHS report was directed at the Tea Party movement (as most believe), what are they afraid of? People holding rallies to protest against deficit spending? Mass opposition to a government takeover of the health-care system? A Republican electoral landslide?
Unjustified fear of “right-wing extremism” is fomented simply as a way of demonizing Republicans who, the liberals would have us believe, are on the one hand beholden to dangerous crackpots while, on the other hand, are also tacitly encouraging violent extremists. So if some nut commits a heinous crime and is then alleged to have been a Rush Limbaugh listener — vote Democrat!
Because if you don’t vote Democrat, the Republicans will take charge and then the brownshirts will be goose-stepping down Main Street next week.
It sounds silly when put in such simple terms, of course, but what exactly do the fearmongers want their audiences to fear?
If the danger is psychos with explosives, OK — let the FBI investigate and arrest them. But the fearmongers would have us believe that there is a Continuum of Hate, an uninterrupted chain of causality by which the Hutaree Militia is ultimately connected to the Republican National Committee. And it just ain’t so.
Beyond such transparent guilt-by-association smears, however, we see that the fearmongers benefit from the nebulousness of the threats with which they excite the phobias of their audience. They rely on the “ghosts of fascists past” that haunt the liberal imagination, so that a rally of people waving Gadsden flags and grumbling about taxes can easily be made to conjure up nightmares of Nuremberg in 1934.
It does little good, in protesting against such distortions, to point out the blindingly obvious fact: The dreams of the Tea Partiers — fiscal responsibility, limited government, the rule of law — are the antithesis of Nazi dreams of an all-powerful totalitarian super-state. Nor does it do much good to point out what Jonah Goldberg has explained at length, that modern liberalism owes a tremendous debt of fascism.
The Bolshevik Menace and ‘McCarthyism’
The problem is that many Americans have been emotionally conditioned — indoctrinated, in the manner Buckley described — to dread Republicans as agents of a fascist resurgence. You can trace this theme back at least to the late 1940s, when former State Department official Alger Hiss was exposed as a Communist spy. To conservatives, this revelation confirmed their suspicion that liberals were sympathetic to, if not actively in league with, Bolshevism. But liberals, believing Hiss innocent, reached a quite opposite conclusion: This was a witch-hunt pursued with the secret aim of bringing about an American fascism. From this divergence of belief stemmed the latter-day liberal view of America in the 1950s as gripped by dangerous “McCarthyism,” a misperception that Ann Coulter has mocked as the “Dark Night of Fascism” motif. (See Stan Evans’s masterful Blacklisted by History as a corrective to the smears of Joe McCarthy.)
Liberals refused to confront the reality of Soviet-sponsored subversion and therefore attributed malign motives to anti-Communists, most especially such Republicans as McCarthy and Richard Nixon. The true extent of Soviet efforts to influence U.S. policy was not known for decades; only with the post-Cold War release of the Venona Papers and other documents was conclusive evidence obtained, and few historians have re-examined the record in light of such revelations. (See In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage by John Earl Haynes for a discussion of academia’s failure in that regard.) Thus the mythic terror of “McCarthyism” took root and grew in the liberal imagination, fostered with the aid of cultural Marxists like Theodor Adorno, such of Adorno’s liberal disciples as Richard Hofstadter, and the young leftists who took up the “Long March Through the Institutions” in the 1960s to become a dominant force in contemporary academia.
This history largely explains how, in the past half-century, the alleged witch-hunt hysteria of 1950s anti-Communism has been supplanted by a mirror-reverse of “McCarthyism”: It is now right-wingers who are to be exposed and denounced as dangers to the common good, subjected to all manner of defamation. (See, for example, how leftist Carl Salonen has mounted a smear campaign against Professor Donald Douglas.) And the ubiquitous liberal perception of right-wing menace is why a publication like the National Interest commissions Ian Kershaw, a historian of Nazi Germany, to examine the possibility of a neo-fascist resurgence.
Fearmongers therefore exploit not merely a false conception of present-day dangers — whereby law-abiding citizens who vote Republican are ludicrously portrayed as threats to public safety — but also exploit politicized misconceptions of the historic past. Liberal propagandists furthermore routinely conflate the past and present in ways calculated to demonize the Right so that, for example, anyone who advocates enforcement of U.S. immigration law can expect to be hit with a plethora of tendentiously pejorative historic comparisons: The Klan, the Know-Nothings, Japanese internment, etc.
Whatever the issue, and whatever the specifics of the accusation, the underlying message is always the same: Beware the Danger of the Right!
Marcuse at the Multiplex
What academia teaches, Hollywood preaches, and the emotional power of the fearmongers’ messages find emotional resonance with those raised in the cinematic congregation and in the living-room pews that surround the TV altar. Moralistic themes of heroic resistance to right-wing oppression pervade the output of the entertainment industry. Occasionally the message is specific and explicit (e.g., Good Night and Good Luck) but more often it is contextual and nearly subliminal. Consider, for example, the 1999 Oscar-winner American Beauty, which depicts the middle-class family as a cauldron of harmful repression and suburbia as a place where homophobic conflict incites a Marine colonel to murder. It’s a wonder that the estates of Adorno and Herbert Marcuse didn’t sue the studio for copyright infringement.
Or consider another example: Tom Clancy’s 1991 novel The Sum of All Fears was a Cold War thriller in which German communists conspired with Palestinian radicals to commit thermonuclear terrorism. As imaginatively dramatic as the plot was, Clancy’s story was rooted in a couple of basic realities: First, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), a German Marxist terror group; and second, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-wing PLO faction that drew inspiration from Che Guevara.
One could plausibly imagine a basis of collaboration between Baader-Meinhof and the PFLP, and if the collapse of the Soviet Union and the passage of more than a decade required some updating of Clancy’s plot for a 2002 movie, nothing could justify what the producers actually did in the cinematic adaptation: Creating from whole cloth a new villain, “an evil billionaire neo-Nazi mastermind intent on leading the Fourth Reich to world conquest,” to borrow Steve Sailer’s description. That this bizarre distortion of Clancy’s plot was reportedly made under pressure from Muslim activists (specifically CAIR) was widely noted, but why on earth make the fictive villain a neo-Nazi and not, for example, some sort of rogue communist from North Korea or China or even from the erstwhile Soviet empire?
The most obvious answer to that question is that Hollywood liberals instinctively expect to find villains on the Right, not the Left. Just as the killer in American Beauty must be a homophobic Marine — and not creepy teen-obsessed Lester Burnham — then quite obviously the villain of a terrorism thriller must be a Nazi, not a Communist.
So deeply embedded is this worldview in the liberal mind, and so widespread is the influence of liberalism, that many of its manifestations go unnoticed. It is usually only when this Dark Night of Fascism theme spills over into the daily political headlines that anyone bothers to examine it, as for example when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse invoked Richard Hofstadter during the health-care debate (see “Political Psychosis,” The American Spectator, Dec. 21, 2009). Likewise we notice when Bill Keller, whose newspaper has never shown much interest in probing President Obama’s associations with Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers, demands that Republican presidential candidates be interrogated about their religious faith.
It is those on the Right whose secret beliefs must be exposed, you see, because the Right is automatically presumed to be dangerous.
The 20th Brumaire of Modern Liberalism
What is shocking, however, is to see how this liberal worldview has suffused its way even into the minds of Republicans. Pete Da Tech Guy was surprised when one of his friends “declared he was afraid of Rick Perry because of his fundamentalist belief in the Bible (specifically on evolution). He argued that if he doesn’t believe in Evolution what OTHER science does he not believe in?” To which Pete responded: “Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is in the tank and you’re worried about a candidate’s position on how old the planet is?”
You really must read the whole thing — it’s one of Pete’s best-ever posts — but you see how this incident exemplifies the success of liberal fear-mongering: Millions of Americans, including Pete’s Republican friend, have become convinced that a skeptical stance toward Darwinism is a bellwether indicator of . . . well, what exactly?
Though tempted to leave that question dangling, to demand that liberals explain why belief in evolution should be a sine qua non of participation in American political life, I will endeavor to provide an answer.
Ever since the French Revolution, the Left has presented itself as the political expression of Scientific Progress. One may trace a straight line from La Fête de la Raison of the 20th Brumaire to the “scientific socialism” of Marx, through the pragmatist philosophy of the Progressives, right on down to the present-day global warming “consensus” and those who insist that skepticism toward Darwinism must be strenuously prohibited in public schools.
If science and progress are good things — who can believe otherwise? — and liberals cast themselves as proponents of these good things, does it not logically follow that those who oppose liberalism might do so because of some hidden animosity toward science and progress? And how better to expose the secret motives of conservatives than to demonstrate that the GOP presidential candidates are Bible-thumping fundamentalist holy rollers who harbor heretical disbelief toward the Gospel of Darwin?
Having already passed the 2,000-word mark, I will spare the reader my explanation of why liberals are so fanatically devoted to the promulgation of evolutionary theory. As interesting as that discussion would be in terms of understanding the liberal worldview, I will content myself to repeat Chesterton’s droll aphorism: “My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.”
What is at issue in our contemporary political debate, as Pete told his friend, is not the age of dinosaur bones or the truth of Genesis, but rather whether liberal policies are effective and beneficial. And if you oppose liberal policies, then what you ask of a Republican presidential candidate is simple: Do you oppose liberalism and can you beat Obama?
The fact that Bill Keller wants to ask other questions — with the transparent intent of embarrassing and discrediting Republicans — tells us only one thing: Bill Keller is a liberal.
But you didn’t need a 2,000-word essay to tell you that, did you? And now, for your enjoyment, the New York Times Correction of the Day:
Correction: August 27, 2011
Because of an editing error, an essay on Page 11 this weekend, about the religious beliefs of Republican presidential candidates, misstates the proportion of Americans who believe that extraterrestrials live among us. It is about a third, not a majority. The essay also erroneously includes Rick Santorum among politicians affiliated with evangelical Christianity. Mr. Santorum is Catholic.
Liberals: Their facts may be wrong, but you can’t dispute their beliefs.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
Leftists are complete hypocrites who must spend most of their time within their enclaves so as not to be exposed to anything resembling truth, which burns them like acid.
When they get onto any of these wild fascism riffs, I like to remind them that Bobby Kennedy was McCarthy’s chief counsel for a while, and made his reputation investigating union corruption.
[Remember to wear a plastic raincoat when doing this, as their heads tend to explode].
Liberals aren’t opposed to violence, just violence against them.
Countering Godwin’s Law, Progressive messaging reminds me of the speeches and actions of Slobodan Miloševi?, Biljana Plavši?, and Radovan Karadži?. They continually developed and grew the fears of the Serbs against other ethnicities in order to grow their own power.
Once the shooting started, they had no way to reign it in (and by that time they believed their own words). Every time Obama incites a crowd against whatever group is hated-du-jour, he uses the words of Miloševi?, Plavši?, and Karadži?.
As for SEIU, their tactics in suburbia against their opponents differs little from Ratko Mladic’s work in Srebrenica.
The Red Army organizations (brigades in Italy, faction in Germany) regularly worked with PLO and its off-shoots. Same goes for the IRA. You’re not the first, in this essay, to posit a working relationship between the organizations as fiction, when it is fact. The two links were the Stasi, and rich western communists.
Fascism is a leftist philosophy. Period. McVeigh was not right wing any more than the Norwegian moron was right wing. Only true anarchists have engaged in political violence, and I have as yet to see one in my lifetime.
The real danger is from the left, who are more than willing to engage in political violence since they have the philosophy that the ends justify the means, there fore BAMN is quite justified to reach their goals.
Are you really asking why are they targeting the Republicans, when we all know that it’s really the Muslims that are coming for us all?
Bravo! Another RSMasterpiece of Right Reason.
Some small points…
-Perry’s response to the proxy child in NH was: It’s a theory that’s out there. It’s got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution, because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one’s right. There’s a reason it’s called ‘The Theory of Evolution’. That it is still just a theory is proven by the fact that scientists keep amending and revising it. Creationism is a theory. Neither has been proven to the extent that you can say either one is settled fact.
Considering that Human Beings are not perfect [a settled fact], how can one say that such kinds of all-encompassing theories will ever be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt?
-The labeling of Nazis and their descendants as Right Wingers is one of the most successful deception campaigns ever perpetrated by the Left. Embarrassed by their loving embrace of the Nazis and Fascists in the 1920’s and throughout most of the 1930’s, the Left had to think quick when the former regime lost favor in the eyes of the Elites and really had to kick into high gear when the Holocaust came to light. So, through repeated assertions, following the protocols of The Big Lie, they shoved the Nazi’s and Fascists into the Right Wing, until the lie took hold [helped along by the March Through The Institutions].
-The Big Lie was also employed, as Stacy shows, regarding the Communist infiltration of Hollywood through the use of bald-faced lies and diversionary tactics.
-The Left has also been quite successful in slandering and smearing Evangelicals using the same methods found in the Leftist Playbook. But, the Evangelicals have not helped themselves with their continued use of what I call ‘Holy Roller Behavior’. Just as the members of the Federation must, the Evangelicals need to speak Standard, need to make their case without the fervid embellishments and language and gesture. Save it for Sunday services. It’s as annoying when Obama ‘goes gospel’ or ‘talks street’.
If you want to see direct links between a political party and muderous political extremists, you have to look at the current White House…
“…as their heads tend to explode]. ”
When that happens it tends to rip ’em a bigger one. Oh yeah, they usually lose a thumb too.
[…] THE POLITICS of fear. […]
Fundamental truth: When someone commits violence in the name of conservatism, conservatives put him to death. When someone commits violence in the name of the left, they give him prestigious chairs at a university, invite him to speak at graduations, and make his life comfortable and full of applause.
Holy Roller Behavior? Like Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Wright?
That… was excellent!
Arrrrggg. A theory (an idea) and a scientific theory (a hypothesis supported by facts to the point where it recognized as the proper explanation of a phenomena until proven otherwise) are two different things. Two different things. Look it up in the dictionary. They are two different things. Creationism is dogma and not even a generic theory. Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory as it has no facts – only negations. This is why it shouldn’t be taught as science or along side side science. That’s it. That is the entire explanation. We don’t need tortured reasoning like presented in the above essay. What we need is people to understand is that “theory” has two definitions that can not be used interchangably.
Exactly. Do you really want to convey that kind of crap as representative of the general right? Sharpton and Jackson and Wright don’t have to sweat it because they’re Dems…the media will never amplify the more embarrassing parts of their behavior. Conservative evangelicals will get proctological exams from the media. I know. I am one.
I arrived at my dislike for socons honestly. By direct experience.
http://classicalvalues.com/2011/08/christophobia/
The pertinent graph:
It was caused by me being FORCED in public school to attend
Christian assemblies. In public schools that were at least half Jewish.
We never had a Jewish assembly.
So Christian outreach reached me. The results could have been predicted although they may not have been desired.
==
and then there is the Drug Prohibition thingy.
From the comments:
http://classicalvalues.com/2011/08/throwing-the-election/#comments
Could you please tell me what is Christian about punishing people in
pain for their unauthorized use of pain relievers? A little Real Christianity™
on the subject would be welcome. All I see mooted from the Socon Right
is: the punishments are insufficient. OK. Maybe crucifixion is in order.
That will put and end to the practice. For sure.
And this from the post:
If only the Republicans would stick to Fiscal Responsibility,
Constitutionally limited government and Free Markets. Speaking of the
Constitution, did anyone notice a Drug Prohibition Amendment?
===
I must admit that the Socons are the biggest contingent of the R party. Unfortunately they are the least likely to gather the support they need (outside their home territory) to win National or even state wide elections.
====
I looked at the numbers in Obama/Keyes vs Kerry/Bush and found that Keyes lost almost 60% of the votes of his own party.
====
So what is a winner? We had a guy who became President who articulated the secret:
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” – Ronald Reagan Reason Magazine July 1975
Missing link:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/11/obamakeyes-vs-kerry-bush.html
Does that explain why we are killing so many Conservatives who are in favor of Drug Prohibition?
Or did I miss that one?
===
And the “Social Conservatives are by nature fiscal conservatives” laugher.
How about all the Baptists and Catholics in the D Party?
===
Our Sh*t inherently don’t stink is inherently a sh*tty argument. It often leads to a lack of introspection. And BIG DISASTERS. Did I mention Drug Prohibition?
Great article. One point, people like Adorno are not as far out in space / insane when they make their arguments about the far European right…. especially back in the 60s. A lot of those types were not people playing on our (US type conservative) team. Still the joke on today’s left.. who try to tie us to those Euro right winger..s is that many have moved to the left as the left absorbed their issues into their program… So; supposedly I’m the fascist when all the fascists I know are reading Chomsky and Michael Moore? Whatever….
One other thing… on the religious test; for the most part the person worried about it is the know nothing. They confuse fundamentalism with evangelicals. They don’t understand that being skeptical of the explanation of evolution (natural selection) does not have a firm link to young earth views (re: the vast majority of people who question evolution / natural selection do not also think the earth is not the same age as most scientists).
I’m skeptical of natural selection btw… and over the past 10 years I’ve seen some of my arguments validated. We keep finding that cells network, communicate, and work together in ways we didn’t realize… but; that falls right into my arguments critical of natural selection… that it just didn’t seem up to explaining the, sometimes [relatively] rapid, evolution of life. I.e.; maybe some other, completely natural / non supernatural, things go on that propel evolution.
What’s funny is that 20 years from now when it is proven that natural selection is not the only engine of evolution that the same idiots calling every critic of the existing theory idiots will just say the revised [translation: new] theory proves they were right all along…
Drug addicts suck and I hope people like you and their pushers all die of syphillis.
[…] THE OTHER McCAIN: The Politics of Fear […]
Until I turned, say, 12 and started reading the history behind the propaganda, I was there. If not ever watchful, it can still creep in. As for being an islomophobe, I consider that no more than being a NAZI or U.S.S.R. phobe. Especially with muslim leaders suggesting Jews eat muslim children and Egyptians now indicating that they are starting up the ovens (of concentration camps). You can’t be phobic of murders and those who support genocide, that’s called rational fear.
Without hearing anything vocal, in the U.S., save the apologists at CAIR, I have a zero tolerance policy and will not personally befriend a muslim, more so because I know they are supposed to lie when in the minority. Even if one of them wouldn’t blow me or mine up, would they help, hide, protect one of theirs who would? Honestly, I suspect they would. And I have no reason to believe otherwise. Until we can be sure, I believe a policy of repatriation should go forward for, essentially, the enemies of the West, freedom, and any other religion (including their other halves).
Hey, Mr McCain, you forgot to mention you’re one of those Self-Proclaimed Right Wing Extremist™ Bloggers.
http://truthbeforedishonor.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-naked-truth-about-robert-stacy-mccain/
If Governor Perry doesn’t believe in evolution, and especially if he believes in a literal interpretation of one of the creation myths in Genesis (you didn’t know there were two? Read it again!) then it does say something about how he derives his knowledge and opinions.
No-one I know of who has such beliefs has actually studied the geological, zoological, developmental-biological, genetic or archaeological evidence against a literal interpretation of Genesis. Indeed most have not studied Genesis in any depth – there is plenty of evidence in the Bible itself that Genesis is not literally the story of the start of the world. They all take their belief from a naive faith in the teaching of people, with no evidence and no strong argument, let alone any opposing view being actually considered and defeated on merits.
None of this is a good sign. I am astounded that people will actually believe any such thing.
However real people are multi-dimensional, and as has been so obvious in recent years some of the great scientists in their fields (Steve Jones and Paul Nurse spring to mind here in the UK) rely on simple faith in areas outside their specialisation (climate study), and likewise believe in assertions of people claiming expertise, and fail to consider the evidence themselves.
Even if that were not the case, I would rather see the American people elect an honest man who values freedom than the incumbent liar who hates individualism, and wants every person to be a serf to the collective. Even more I would like to see a rounded human in the WH, not a sociopath.
Besides the nastiness, how does your reply to M Simon pertain to anything he wrote? I have little sympathy for most drug addicts (some do get addicted through little fault of their own and so should be sympathized with) but what does criminalization do other than explode the prison population, expand government and turn neighborhood police into paramilitary troopers? After nearly forty years and billions of dollars wasted why can’t we admit that prohibition, just like the experience of the 1920s should have taught us, doesn’t work and in fact leads to so many detrimental effects on society.
I’ve known people from the region. Believe me, it wasn’t what Milosevic said that caused the people to hate the Albanians (which is basically what all Muslims in the Balkans are). The hate was already there festering under the surface for centuries. Milosevic and his crew only encouraged them to act on it.
A better question might be, which is the real danger, radical Muslims of progressive liberals.
And you’ll keep getting them until you get fed enough to SHOUT at them to get their fist out of your ass.
You don’t have to be a scientist to prove natural selection, you can do it in your own home. All you need is-some ants, or a few roaches. If you spray for them, you might kill 97% of them. But the 3% that survive will pass their genes on to a new generation that will be unaffected by your cheap, department store bug spray. At this point you just put up with it, buy a newer, better bug spray and repeat the process, or you hire a professional exterminator who understands the concept of adaptation an genetic mutations and uses the right mix of chemicals to wipe out the problem.
None of this stuff is rocket science, but neither is it proof for or against a creator, unless you’re one of these that have to insist the world is between six thousand and ten thousand years old. At that point, nothing is going to matter because every bit of evidence, no matter or how obvious or well explained, will probably be seen as a trick of the devil.
Being Islamophobic to me isn’t any different than being afraid of a rattlesnake, or being by yourself and finding you’re surrounded by a pack of wolves. With what we know about them it would be irrational to not have some kind of fear of them.
This is a great article. Thank you.To answer the question about why evolution gets pushed so much by liberals: If it was not evolution, it would be something else. Evolution simply provides a vehicle for enforcing uniformity of thought on something their “enemies” don’t hold in common with them. You will note that they use other issues to force a kind of uniformity in service of achieving goals, such as smoking in public buildings and extending “public” to mean whatever they want, or the AGW stuff. Datechguy has it right. Does it really matter to us in any practical way how old the Earth is? Is this something that crosses the mind of the average person from day to day? Of course not. It only matters when it can be used as a weapon. It isn’t just a substitute for religion. It’s a way of figuratively holding a gun to the head of one’s fellow man.
What the hell are you talking about? Did I strike a nerve?
Your ignorance of what others believe is astounding.
As for not wanting a sociopath in the White House — you must be immensely uncomfortable with the one we currently have.
Seriously — I don’t get your point. You’re opposed to the Drug War. Got it. What does that have to do with putting down those who think violence is the way to settle political differences?
Are you bitching because the law as it stands sometimes results in violence? Well, the laws against theft and rape also sometimes result in violence — you want to get rid of them as well?
I’ll support decriminalization and even legalization, under the right circumstances. Namely, make sure I never have to pay a penny to support some burn-out after he’s wrecked his brain, chased off his friends, and alienated his family. Think of it as evolution in action.
Yeah, I get that there are two meanings for “theory”. And I’m with you that evolution is the correct explanation of how things actually happened. But perhaps there is a larger issue here…and that is: why is it important whether one believes in evolution or creationism? Unless you are teaching a science course that involves evolution, what does it matter? Even some biologists and anthropologists are creationists. How does it even begin to affect an auto mechanic or computer programmer or salesperson or farmer?
In short, why is it even a big issue in politics? Why is it an issue AT ALL? The only relevant reason I can see is that you might object to school time being “wasted”. Well, I’m here to tell you that school time is wasted on much worse things. In high school, I had a class called “Mythology”. Hey, at least creationism is the mythology of our own culture and roots. This class taught the mythology of Norway, Greece, Rome, and China (and I think a little African as well). Other high school courses involve putting a condom on a banana, putting on makeup or simply singing.
Creationism, the believing of it and the teaching of it is a giant red herring…perhaps the biggest in history. I wish we could get on to more important things, like the real ways to rein in health care costs, how to create jobs, how to balance the budget and pay down the debt, etc.
The PFLP and the German communists (Revolutionary Cells) did work together, so Clancy’s scenario is based on fact. They hijacked the Air France plane that was rescued in the raid on Entebbe.
Minor point, in the BOOK “The Sum of All Fears” the terrorists were Muslim extremists. I guess there was a fear of accusations of Islamophobia that caused Hollywood to change them to Nazis.
Sorry, I missed out a clause in the last sentence – I meant to say “the incumbent sociopath”, because that is exactly what I think Obama is. Narcissistic and lacking in any real empathy, but with a sheen of charisma, he is a classic case. I do not disagree that Perry might well make a fine US President, regardless of my opinion of his religious views.
However if you think I don’t understand young-Earth creationists, then I suspect you have not talked to enough. I used to chat to them way back in 1995, where as a geophysicist with no home internet I could only access geology newsgroups.
I have discussed the evidence for evolution with dozens of anti-evolutionists, even the great Kent Hovind himself (who amusingly destroyed his own claim as to the origin of the Grand Canyon, such were his wild swings at the straw man). I have known a few personally (there are not many in the UK). Not one of them actually understood anything about the science they condemned, nor did any have any idea of the extent and variety of the evidence for a multi-billion year age for the Earth or for evolution.
So no, I am not ignorant of what others believe. In fact their ignorance of what they believed was far more in evidence.
The post:
“Recall that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was at the time heralded as a symbol of an alleged menace — right-wing militias — that never really developed into anything. ”
Wrong. What developed from McVeigh is you.
Those lone-wolf events mean nothing, even when they come in bunches. Those right-wing militias are only stockpiling ammunition and practicing maneuvers to protect themselves from grossly unfair charges that they are planning to do what they have threatened to do. If they come and kill you, you are an unlucky fool for provoking the lone wolf who strikes without provocation. If you open your big fat mouth to complain about these lone-wolf packs, don’t be surprised if they use the Freedom of Speech to punish you–because the Constitution is sacred, you know. If they fly their airplane into your IRS office you are the victim of an act completely unforeseen and unheralded and unconnected and uninspired, especially by the evidence-grade novelist Tom Clancy, a favorite of Dick Cheney, who ended “Debt of Honor” with a lone wolf protagonist flying a 747 into the US capitol. In 1994. So such heralding obviously is unfair and mean, as has been proved by the principal of repetition among the heraldees. In fact, argue the heraldees very convincingly, such heralding means the heralds themselves are the real Nazis, evidence that easily overpowers all the real evidence that the real Nazis are the ones with the guns and the short haircuts and the swastikas, those guys who are saying things about Obama and Hollywood adaptations of Tom Clancy novels that are, come to think of it, pretty much the same things you are saying. So it’s clear. Heralding of nonexisting conspiracies is a conspiracy. Concern over violence is itself violence. Stop oppressing the majority! Stop suppressing the dominant religion!
Read any one of the daily thousands of posts and comments that minimize, ignore, or even applaud McVeigh and his ancestors, and his hundreds of deranged, vicious offspring. The most culpable and heinous are those who work hardest to isolate each new massacre into its own cubbyhole of lone-wolf meaninglessness. Find those who say “not that I approve, but” on a regular basis. Find those who discover no pattern over and over again. Find those who feed the majority on claims of victimhood. Find those who argue for moderation in the most aggressive and threatening way. Consider those whose claims that there is no connection rest on complex connections among their enemies, visible only to the trained eye. Look to those who use evidence of broad conspiracies in their enemies to prove that there is no conspiracy at all.
You. You, you, you.
That media and “entertainment” bias exists is no longer debatable, or surprising, unless one just dropped in from another planet. But I’d like to mention a particular subset of leftist-based conditioning that has been coming out of Hollywood and New York for at least 40 years. It began in the sixties on the big screen and is now ubiquitous on it and the small one. And it contributed significantly, I believe, to the election of Barack Obama.
The phenomenon is easily remembered as BMIC, or Black Man in Charge. It manifests as a role, or roles, in US-produced movies and programs in which a black man is portrayed as the CEO, or President, or doctor, or scientist, or tech genius, or in some manner as the smartest, bravest, most articulate, capable, take-charge person in the room. It’s an odd kind of ongoing racial (and gender) quota system that also plays out with WIC, or Woman in Charge (similar presentation), and obviously with BWIC. But the scripted superior black character commonly and widely portrayed is in reality quite rare.
This contrived situation is so ubiquitous, and has persisted for so long, I doubt many people notice. In other words, we have all been subjected to endless scenarios in which movie and programming “normal” is anything but, yet through repetitious conditioning is now unthinkingly accepted. So, when the “clean, articulate” but largely unknown leftist presidential candidate walked onto the stage, he represented just another example of BMIC, for which the masses had been thoroughly prepared via exposure to a never-ending stream of fictional archetypes – thus no further thought was required. Of course he was a viable candidate. Millions just “knew” this beyond question.
Unfortunately, “Obama” is just another fictional character, played by a limited black actor elevated far beyond his capabilities and now stuck in a critical role for four years. He is incapable of being the President; he can only play the President, with dire consequences in reality. The country could just as easily have elected James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman – and we might actually have been better served.
[…] Update 4: Stacy McCain treats me very kind in his own Magnum Opus […]
I see what you did there.
Mr. Bokonon, “That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection. ”
However, with no facts or examples to back up your rebuttal, it is a retort that doesn’t “hold water”; especially when compared to the overwhelming evidence within the original post. In fact, your entire argument is a foma that proves the intent of the post.
“Overruled.”
Your meds, let me show you them.
Dear Sir:
With all due respect, the Southern Poverty Law Center does NOT have $175 million in cash on hand. As of October 31. 2010, that figure actually exceeded $216 million, though much of it was in off-shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
This staggering figure doesn’t even touch the $86,400 a day the SPLC conned out of its mostly elderly donor base, for a total of more than $31 MILLION tax-free donor-dollars.
http://wp.me/sCLYZ-657
The only “poverty” at the Southern “Poverty” Law Center is on its letterhead.
Consider that when you spray the ants and kill 97% it doesn’t matter to evolution unless you kill the queen ant, which is the only ant that would pass genes onto the next generation, along with
whatever male drone ants mated with her. I’m just saying that this evolution question is way more complicated than most idiots assume and to be skeptical when *scientists* proclaim to have it all figured out is the most sensible approach. To just swallow what scientist say is just plain stupid.
Evolution is a scientific theory, and a very, very bad one. Its more credible than the Flat Earth Theory, or the Four Elements of the Universe Theory, or Ptolemy’s Crystal Spheres Theory, but less credible than the Parapschyology Theory or the UFO Aliens Theory.
Now, there are other more solid theories such String Theory which are highly unsupported and probably bogus, and then there are theories like Chaos Theory which is a bit more solid, and Information Theory more solid still, and then toward the end of the gold standard of credibility we have such theories as Thermodynamics, and Gravity, and Optics.
As to ‘tortured reasoning’, hmmmh? Isn’t it completely obvious that Lefties are very frequently fascists? And is it not obvious that one can disbelieve in a largely discredited theory of no great importance that has no direct bearing on how one performs a job,a nd still do an adequate job?
You seem to be torturing reason there, sir, if you claim otherwise.
As to your claim that ID has no positive claims that is doubtful, indeed. Evolutionists would and did speak of ‘vestigial organs’. An IDer would take that idea as suggesting that we once had use of such an organ, and some sort of damage made them useless, if the IDer even chose to entertain the notion of useless organs.
That would lead one to research in the direction of finding ways to repair the damage, or find the actual uses of said ‘vestigial organs’. And I think Real Science as opposed to the Gospel of St. Darwin is starting to say there are no vestigial organs.
It is a circular argument. The existence of natural selection proves natural selection (ergo existing evolution theory). I’m not saying natural selection does not exist. I’m saying it does not account for complex changes that exist in various life.
Linking young earth theory to evolution skepticism is deceitful / propaganda. The vast majority of Christians who have doubts about evolution also believe the age of the earth is what scientists say it is. Leftists intentionally muddy the waters here and I see as of now your buying into it…
Maybe I shouldn’t, since you’re going to need some heavy duty drugs to cope with the pain of Crawford using you as a pinata, but…
Morally liberal policies lead to fiscally liberal policies as Crawford alludes too. You have to have the gov’t to pick up the mess, and that costs Big $$.
Of course, we could just let the drug addicted die in the streets, and while thats a good libertarian viewpoint, I don’t see it as happening any time soon. So back in the Real World of actually possible policies…druggies means gov’t cash expenditure.
While there are always the illogical, the nature of soconism leads to fisconism. The nature of pure fisconism leads to fislliberalism.
WHAP!!
Look, there is all these gummi bears in his head!
I apologize for letting primo threadjacker M. Simon to distract me from the issues at hand.
No. We don’t want to talk about the Drug War again for the nth time, and how if the socons would just shut up all would be well.
We are here to talk about if Rick Perry believes in Creationism if that is disqualifying him from the Presidency (among reasonable folk, the answer is ‘NO!’).