Words of wisdom

Fewer open threads and more of this would make it clear why Atrios is popular.

I started this blog and adopted this style in part because I thought it was important to introduce a more combative and caustic discourse on our side. I’d be quite happy and comfortable in a world where politics more closely resembled an academic seminar – that is where I come from, after all – but we don’t live in that world and it’s a tragic mistake to pretend we do.

It’s a tragic mistake to think most creationists will be won over by kind and supportive conversation over a cup of coffee, too, or by any kind of smokescreen argument presented because we think it’s what they want to hear.

Ken Lay Resurrection Watch

In light of this startling comparison at the Ken Lay funeral, we’re going to have to keep on eye on the urn containing his cremated ashes.

The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared.

I don’t think there’s much risk that he’ll rise again. Can you imagine Satan showing him all the kingdoms of the world, saying “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” and Kenny Boy failing to rush to his knees and sing hosannas on the spot?

Lighting a fire under the president

George W Bush hasn’t vetoed a single bill in all these long, long years of his presidency. Guess what issue might finally convince him to move?

He’s willing to veto any expansion of stem cell research.

That’s our George. Science isn’t part of his base, so he’ll willingly throw that away to make the church-based ignoramuses happy. Zygotes must be spared! It’s the ones that have been born that can be used as cannon fodder.

Preach it, brother

Billmon reviews An Inconvenient Truth, and its more of a lament for the fact that science and reason seem to have little compelling power to a nation raised on ranting idiots and authoritarian dogma.

In my darker moments, it sometimes seems as if the entire world is in the middle of a fierce backlash against the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution and the ideological challenges they posed to the old belief systems. The forces of fundamentalism and obscurantism appear to be on the march everywhere—even as the moral and technological challenges posed by a global industrial civilization grow steadily more complex.

I think a lot of us have that feeling nowadays.

Dire warnings

Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can’t help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all.

  • Jon Voisey is praising a director of the Oklahoma ACLU, Joanne Bell. You’re in Kansas, Jon. It’s not that far from Oklahoma. What happened to Bell could happen to you.
  • Ophelia Benson is saying harsh words about Mother Theresa. An uppity woman criticizing an icon of Christian charity? Someday, you could be in a hospital with a hatchet-faced nun looming over you, contemplating how best to chastise your body before your immortal soul meets the god who will fling you into the flames of Hell.
  • General JC Christian dares to mock those who would sic Jew-haters on the home of the Dobrich family. You’re anonymous, old boy—wouldn’t it be a fine coup for some winger somewhere to publish your home address and phone number? Let’s see how funny you are when a manly Christian fellow shows up at your door with a demand to give your inner Frenchman a workout.
  • Cream Pickle Pups? Oh, no—it’s fair time in the Midwest, when the most obscene foods appear in greasy carts on dirt paths in places that reek of farm animals. We’re all gonna die.

Despite the horrible possibilities, though, I can’t help but hope that everyone keeps it up. Well, except for Diablo Cody—no one really needs to OD on fried fats in grease, do they?

True patriots are apostate and infidel!

Since it is the Fourth of July, it seems only right to post something from the Revolution. Our reading for the day is the Age of Reason, by that fierce freethinking firebrand, Thomas Paine.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

Of course, Paine died abandoned and spurned by the Republic he had inspired for these views…if deists could have a martyr, here he is.

The Nine Defining Characteristics of the Christian Conservative

Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it’s useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob Hood in the Conservative Voice. He is a very silly man, but that online rag has him up there on the front page with Robert Novak and…and…well, a lot of ranting nobodies. This is a distinguished host in Wingnuttia, though!

As a matter of fact if you like Ann Coulter and want to make some liberals’ blood pressure to rise, all you have to do is tell them nine key things that conservatives and Christians believe and they will lose their mind:

Ready? We’re going to lose our minds!

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