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!

[Read more…]

Why I will never vote for Barack Obama

I can vote for a Christian politician, no problem. I have even liked Obama’s sense of vision (although it seems he’s been a bit of a flop in execution.) His latest speech, though…

And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

If a liberal Democratic politician wants to buy into the foolish idea that Christians can’t accept evolution, that it’s a good thing that more Americans believe in this insane nonsense about angels than in science, then he has lost my vote. I won’t even get into the rest of his paean to the silly goblins of faith.

Oh, please, can we someday have a freethinking politician of presidential caliber again? It’s been a long time since Lincoln.

Look at it as another reason to encourage embryonic stem cell research

I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I’m sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.

The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that “destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion… it’s the same thing”.

“Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos,” the cardinal told Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana.

To which I can only weakly reply, “no, no, don’t drive scientists away from your religion, Catholics!” Bwahahahaha!

Anyway, do read the article. I thought that, while short, it was very informative about the political debate on stem cells in Italy, and actually summarized the situation fairly accurately and pithily.

Embryonic stem-cell research techniques involve destroying human embryos to extract their stem cells. Stem cells are ‘blank’ cells which have the ability to grow into any tissue of the body. Scientists think they could eventually be used to treat a host of ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

The stem cells of very early embryos are preferred because they can become any kind of cell whereas adult stem cells are less flexible. Despite popular support, embryonic stem cell research is opposed by pro-life groups and many conservative lawmakers because the human embryo must be destroyed before its stem cells can be removed.

I’ve gotten so used to the way American journalists so readily fall for the false claim of the anti-choicers that adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells in all ways that I was surprised to see that more accurate short description in there.

Every time they’re mentioned, an editor at Time sheds a tear

Time’s former “Blog of the Year,” the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post—I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.

I hate to do this…

…but I have to defend Rush Limbaugh. He was detained for having a bottle of Viagra at the airport? What was he going to do, threaten Palm Beach with his little gift from god?

I think Limbaugh is a lying hypocritical scumbag, but what alarms me more here is the way airport security and customs has become an arm of fascism: a way to invade the privacy of the individual, all in the name of protecting us from the faceless evil of the other. A guy, I don’t care who it is, traveling with one bottle of Viagra is not a threat, and this shouldn’t have warranted even a prim finger wagging with eyebrow raised from an inspector.

Besides, seeing this in the news everywhere and having to imagine Limbaugh with a chubby is making me feel a little bit ill.

That danged exasperating caution

I’m feeling a bit peevish about the Democrats right now. I got some email from people promoting Gary Hart, mentioning that he is berating congressional Democrats for failing to stand up against the administration.

There is integrity, there is conviction, and there is courage. History’s jury will sit in judgment today on those Democrats and will find wanting those without the conviction and courage to say “enough”.

I’m sensing a pattern here. Democrats run for president as cautious cowards who avoid standing up for progressive policies, they get mauled by the media anyway, they lose, and then afterwards they bravely lecture everyone else about integrity, conviction, and courage. And, sad to say, TBogg is seeing the same signs of timidity in Barack Obama.

I would buy Obama’s deference to leaders in the Democratic party if I felt that were any leaders in the Democratic party (Anyone? Anyone?) but he doesn’t seem to want to fill the void and so we end up with a bland parsing pol who spends all of his time trying to not leave anything distinctive on his permanent record…and we already have an Evan Bayh. Personally I’m tired of Democrats who are obsessed with process and talking about how they need to get their message out. There comes a time to decide what you stand for…and then stand for it.

Amen. And the time to decide what you stand for is not after you lose the election.