And yes, by teabaggers I mean Tea Party members. I think I rather have my Atheist Barbie Photoshopped with a pair of balls in her mouth* then be awfully transformed like she was:
Aaauuuuuugghhh nooooooooooooo! God, it’s not even a good Photoshopping job. At least I put forth some effort. He couldn’t even find his own Barbie to Photoshop, he had to go and add on top of mine! And then not credit me for it! …Well, I guess it’s good that he deleted the link to my blog, since I don’t want to be associated with Tea Party bullshit. At least someone else has already gone ahead and fixed it (and pointed out Atheist Barbie was originally from here):
Thank you, Sadly, No!, for pointing out that creativity and good work ethic are not traits of teabaggers.
Speaking of creativity and working hard, back to writing my thesis (almost done!).
*Though that does not mean you have to go do it. Seriously. Please don’t.
Wow, your works are getting out there, aren’t they?Next thing you know, you’ll be getting quote-mined by some Creotard or the next incarnation of T.Estes or something. Waydago!
Well the real one showed up on a Scottish Christian blog a few days ago so Jen has gone international.
But isn’t sharing pictures such as this socialism? Shouldn’t the free market decide what pictures we see? Seriously though, I hate to see that your idea was hijacked by populist rage
Well, obviously the sign is out of place as it looks as though written by someone literate.So is the constitution – a Tea Partier would never READ the constitution, since he has a perfect working knowledge of everything in it that he needs to know about. (And he would sum it up as “Capitalism good, Socialism bad. ‘No law establishing a religion?’ HAHA, that was a good one!”)
What’s that smell? Oh, right, hypocrisy.
Your point being?
Let’s look at the REAL story of this tea thing. His Britannic Majesty is kind enough to abolish the taxes on tea, thus destroying the livelihood of the smugglers of Boston, who demonstrate by dressing up all funny and dumping the legal product into the harbour so that they can move their illegal product. Yup, good role models. And such good continuity with the present age of war on drugs, with NRA types arming the Mexican narco-barons.
As always, Sadly No! is full of mittens and WIN!
Jen, congratulations on spreading your Marxist Feminist Dialect. Obviously, you pinko commie, your Atheist Barbie was so socialist and fascist at the same time that the Teabaggers couldn’t leave it alone. They had to take the work you had done according to your abilities and rework it according to their means.Also, Hitler.
My point being that the author extols herself for being civil, unlike anybody that disagrees with her. And yet, here she is engaging in another round of mudslinging and ad-hom attacks.Pretty self-absorbed, if you ask me.
The ad hominem card is only applicable when insults are used instead of arguments. In this case, everything Jen said – and there was quite little of it – is true. Her work was basically ripped off and pathetically transformed without any recognition or talent by someone following an ideology of complete nonsense.So, I think “bullshit” is the very least that applies, here.
They only like their imaginary constitution; the real one is a godless document laying the foundation of a secular democratic republic (yah, guys, all three words go together!)
Cool story bro.
“Glasses shows she reads” >:( I really hate the ‘durr hurr glasses = smart’ way of thinking!
“Also, Hitler.”We have a new winner for the ultimate closing argument for everything! :-D
That’s how the Tea Party does it. With a smug look of satisfaction that covers up the simple fact they have no sweet fucking clue what they’re talking about.
DEATH PANELS! DEATH PANELS!
Sarah Palin only likes death panels when they’re Canadian.
Veritas, you made me laugh with that. All my American friends are progressives, by definition, but I’m lumbered with a sort-of-colleague for whom Palin is a candidate made to order. Smug is indeed the word; self-admiring because she comes from a small town where everyone allegedly looks out for their neighbours while not, of course, limiting their Freeee-dom, and doesn’t know a damn thing about the world outside said white-picket-fence bubble, which ignorance is called “a moral compass”, because knowing stuff = moral turpitude. Oh, and did I mention smug?
No doubt. It must be nice to be insulated by a shell of ignorance.
Oh Science the irony is killing me.
derp.
For what it may be worth, not all people who are concerned that this country is sliding toward socialism and that the Constitution is being ignored are religious zealots. Some of us are actually intelligent, individual-rights-supporting atheists (whose diet may, or may not, contain babies). Nice work on the atheist Barbie.
They also think that “Creator” and “certain inalienable rights” are to be found in the preamble to the Constitution. Along with people like the Republican Boehner and Rush Limbaugh. It drives me INSANE that these people can’t distinguish between our two most famous political documents.
I’m one of those overeducated Canadian pinkos with great healthcare and clean safe ghettoes to live in. Those right wing American fools are always trying to make us over in their image too. Then comes more 54/40 bullshit and threats of nukes and all the other boring old rhetoric. I’ll believe it when they can prove they’ve grasped the difference between socialist and Keynesian policies. Hell, I’d settle for proof that any one of them grasps the difference between disposable income and discretionary income. Proof that they can spell discretionary? Proof that these little Napoleons know why it’s a bad idea to fart on somebody that shares your bedcovers?LOVED the original Atheist Barbie. I’ve bookmarked her. My sympathies for the revision.
On her “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirt, you comment that the message isn’t racist enough. Honestly, I’m rather perplexed.At the recent Tea Party rally in Washington D.C. which I attended, there were two folks off on the side, holding a banner that I’d estimate was roughly six-by-three feet in size, being held on each side by a person each. I don’t remember the exact phraseology of the banner, but it was something along the lines that criticism of Obama was tantamount to white supremacy. Again, I don’t remember precisely what the banner said, but I’m pretty sure it was equating criticism – disagreement!! – with Obama with white supremacy. No, it wasn’t comparing libertarianism or Tea Party-ism with white supremacy, which would be bad enough. No, it was comparing mere disagreement with him as such.So I asked the woman on the one side to please explain how mere criticism of Obama’s policies was white supremacy. She didn’t even open her mouth. I reiterated my question, to no avail. I said to her, “Look, I couldn’t care less whether Obama is black, white, or purple. I just dislike his policies, period. It appears to me that the people who notice he’s black are the racists, if anyone is, because the people who are opposed to him tend to be opposed to his policies alone, and I haven’t heard them mention his skin color. It’s only the people who are in favor of him who seem to notice his skin color. I would please just like to hear your views, so I can understand your beliefs and understand where you’re coming from.”To put my view in perspective, see what I write here. My point there is that if someone writes a book titled The Women’s Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions, then there is a serious problem. As long as someone notices that the author is a woman and not simply a human being, then we haven’t yet accomplished our task. Sexism will be defeated when we cannot even care less whether an accomplished person is a man or woman, and similarly, racism will not be obliterated until we cannot care less what someone’s color is. Martin Luther King, Jr. said he dream of a day when his children would be “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, but I’d go further and say that I dream of a day when we don’t even notice the color of their skin to begin with. So anyway, I said to this woman holding the banner that I didn’t see any white supremacy at the rally, at that if anything, no one at the rally cared that Obama is black, except for these two counter-protesters. I didn’t see a single banner making note of the color of his skin. Sure, there were the one or two banners arguing about his citizenship, but for a protest of several ten-thousand individuals, for me to see only one or two irrational and idiotic banners isn’t bad.But the woman refused to even acknowledge my presence. I wasn’t even yelling at her; I was calmly talking to her, asking her to please explain to me her position, so that I would know what her position was. As Rabbi Professor Saul Lieberman once said at JTS, “Qabala is nonsense, but the study of nonsense? – that is scholarship!”. I wanted to know this woman’s position just to slake my curiosity, just so I’d know what my opponents think. But she refused to say anything at all. She wouldn’t even look at me in the eyes.So I moved to the other side, to the guy holding the other end of the banner. I asked him to please explain his position, and while he – like his partner – refused to tell me, he had least responded and said something. He basically told me that his position was self-explanatory and didn’t need explanation. I said to him, “Look, you read people’s banners, and they mostly quote Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. These people were almost all abolitionists. No one here at this rally is quoting any pro-slavery individuals. In fact, Thomas Paine wrote one of the most outspoken abolitionist essays (a African Slavery In America), and Henry David Thoreau, the father of modern civil disobedience and a staunch libertarian, practiced his disobedience precisely in opposition to the north’s complicity in slavery via the Fugitive Slave Law.” The woman finally pipes up and says, “Oh, so the blacks should be thanking these white men?”. I yelled, “NO! I’m not saying anyone should be thanking anyone! I’m just saying that no one here at this rally is quoting anyone who was pro-slavery. They’re all quoting Thomas Paine and the like, all of whom were quite adamantly opposed to slavery. I’m not saying the blacks should be thanking anyone, but I’m saying you cannot accuse the people at this rally of white supremacy.”Finally, I pulled off my cabbie-cap to show my kippah underneath, and I said, “Look, a white supremacist would put a knife through my back just as surely as through Obama’s. I assure you, I’m not associating with any white supremacists.” I’d reckon that a quite goodly number of people at that rally were Evangelical Christians and the like, and while you can say many things about them, white supremacy isn’t generally one of them. (Obviously, there are Evangelical Christians who are members of the KKK, but I don’t think you can characterize a group by its fringe elements. Similarly, I’m not going to characterize vegetarians by PETA, who compared animal consumption to the Holocaust. I don’t think most vegetarians are quite so inhumane, and I’m not going to characterize them based on the heartless irrationality of PETA.)Long story short, I’m almost more perplexed and stymied by accusations of racism than I am offended. I’m honestly at a loss; what is so racist about the Tea Party-ers?Oh, and as an aside, the “Boobquake” plan is poetic genius. Kol ha-kavod, for I must tip my hat.
Actually, most of the Tea Party-types are going to make a different argument, viz. that the original American political culture was actually quite religious.The First Amendment, regarding religion, only applied to the Federal Government, but the states were free to do as they wished. Massachusetts, for example, legally required that Protestant churches be established, and that every citizen attend a suitable worship-service. I haven’t studied the legal history for what provisions were made for Jews and Catholics, but in any case, one would be hard-pressed to depict Massachusetts as being secular.The Calvinists had a sophisticated conception of the role of government in matters of religion. Just a few days ago, I was studying the sermons of Heinrich Bullinger, a 16th-century Calvinist preacher in Switzerland, and already in his sermons, I saw a concept which would later wield great influence in America even into the 19th-century. According to this notion, the government is to enforce matters of religion not for the sake of the individual’s going to heaven, but rather, for the sake of the health of society. According to Bullinger, we may not punish a heretic for sinful thoughts. Read carefully; he didn’t say that we cannot, but that we may not. According to Bullinger, a sinner’s sinful thoughts are beyond the reach of the government not because the government is unable to read his thoughts, but rather, because they are beyond the government’s very jurisdiction. As Deuteronomy says, “The secret things are for G-d, but the revealed things are for us, to keep this Torah.” Furthermore, said Bullinger, the government is to condemn sinful speech and behavior not so that the sinner goes to heaven, but rather, to protect his neighbors and his society. If you wish to sin on your own property, in the privacy of your home, then that is your prerogative, according to Bullinger, but as soon as you carry yourself into the public, then any sins by you constitute disturbing the peace. In 19th-century America, there were cases of Sunday blue laws being either upheld or struck down as unconstitutional depending on whether the phraseology of the law indicated that its purpose was to protect neighbors and society, or whether it was to save the soul of the sinner himself. The very phraseology of the law, irrespective of the practical ramifications of the law, determined whether the law was constitutional or not. This is 19th-century America we are speaking of, following the words of a 16th-century Swiss Reformed minister.As an aside, Bullinger’s teachings, I think, could very well be a excellent way to reconcile the coercive desires of the religious with the desires for freedom of expression on the parts of the non-religious. According to Bullinger, one may punish sinners not for the sinner’s own sake, but only for the sake of his neighbors. Now, this assumes a certain social environment. If the society as a whole is religious, then for a sinner to publicly sin constitutes disturbing the peace. Imagine a man walked into the middle of an Amish town and started playing his Game Boy. In such a society, public flouting of religious laws is an affront to the basic social environment. But in a modern pluralistic society, one cannot argue that to violate Shabbat publicly is tantamount to disturbing the peace. To punish a sinner requires that religious observance in his locality be axiomatic to the public, so that his behaviors are basically an act of disturbing the basic understood norms of society. Furthermore, Bullinger makes clear that the purpose of punishing the sinner is to reform and rehabilitate him. That is, the point is to convince him to become a religious individual of his own accord. But while whipping a basically religious man may indeed bring him back to his senses, and help him return to the fold, as it were, it is obvious that whipping an atheist will do nothing to rehabilitate him. It takes no genius to realize that while whipping a sinful Christian may help him repent and become a more religious Christian, whipping an atheist will do no such thing. If punishment of a sinner is meant only to rehabilitate him, then one must objectively evaluate whether a given punishment will actually accomplish this. The goal is not to punish him simply because the Bible says so. Rather, one has a very practical goal in mind, and if the punishment will not accomplish this, then according to the dictates of religiosity, one would not desire to coerce the non-religious. The advantage of this approach is that its language is explicitly religious and relies on principles which no Evangelical Christian can easily deny, seeing as how this approach was expounded by Bullinger, one of the most influential Reformed Christians of all time. To speak to Evangelical Christians with Enlightenment principles will do no good, obviously. One must speak in their language if one is to wield influence. But I digress…The eminent John Locke, who is arguably the single most influential historical figure in American politics, he was a quite religious man, and even wrote a commentary on the Epistles of Paul. Just the other day, I read his commentary on Romans 13, where it is related how a Christian is to behave towards the civil government.There is a famous cartoon, “An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America”, where American colonists are protesting against the importation of a British Anglican bishop, saying “No Lords Spiritual or Temporal in New England” and “Liberty and Freedom of Conscience.” The colonists are holding copies of Algernon Sidney and John Locke (whom Thomas Jefferson said were the most important sources for political theory), and they are hurling a copy of John Calvin at the bishop. According to John Adams, the Calvinist preacher John Ponet said everything important on liberty, and Sidney and Locke merely elaborated on Ponet. I could go on, but I hope the gist of my position is clear. One can make a quite solid case that many of the Framers were quite religious individuals, at least by our contemporary standards.
And others of us are fundamentalist orthodox religious individuals who simply believe in classical liberalism. One could make a very strong argument that modern democracy was first exhibited inchoate in the Hebrew Bible and make explicit and articulated by the 16th-century Swiss and Scottish Calvinists.For example, my reason for opposing Obamacare is that it violates the consent of the governed under the social contract, the freedom for each individual to decide how to associate with his government and use his money, etc. Furthermore, respect for individual autonomy and personal moral free will dictates that no one should be coerced on how to assist the impoverished.Agree or disagree with me, my libertarianism is based on the religious and theistic respect for the autonomy of the morally free individual, who has a right to be protected from coercion. I should hope that leftists, even if they disagree with me, realize that my principles (theistic as they may be) are ones they should at least sympathize with.For an elaboration of my position, see here.
Believe it or not, it is possible to be an atheist, a skeptic, a secularist, an anti-Bush/anti-Palin type and at the same time completely oppose the Obama/Democratic economic policy, Obamacare, the financial regulatory laws being pushed, the government’s social policies and the general expansion of entitlement programs and the monetary policies (especially relating to publicly held debt)Oh, and a few things you might not know:Socialism is not necessarily the kind of government you see in the Soviet Union. Socialist goals can also be obtained by small steps toward greater state control of various systems and nationalization or psuedo-nationalization of industries and companies. There are many unabashedly pro-socialists in Europe and elsewhere who will tell you flat out that direct government involvement in corporate policy and provision of mandated health insurance are based on socialist philosophy.”Don’t Tread on Me” is a traditional logo that goes all the way back to the US Revolution. It’s been used as a general message of American pride and as been associated with the “peace through strength” doctorin, also known as “big stick” diplomacy.It’s not racist at all. I don’t know any Libertarians who are racists. If there are, then they suck as much as any other racist.It’s a shame that those who disagree with limited government feel the need to react with strawman arguments like “Oh well you must be a racist!”
As an atheist tea-partier myself, I have to admit I really like both Barbies!
Steve,Please don’t be an idiot.Thanks.