'76 Blog

(CCU Faculty) In their recent New York Times op-ed, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason,” Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens, former and current professors at Eastern Nazarene College, apologize to the Times’ readers for their Evangelical brethren.  Their premise is that all thoughtful people believe in global warming and Darwinian evolution.  Giberson and Stephens allege to Times readers that these Evangelicals: • Reject science • Are “textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance” • Fit the definition of “simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism” • Are not “intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking” • But instead are “literalistic, overconfident and reactionary” • Are in “denial” about cultural change, and have been • “Scarred” by the secular onslaught • Believe homosexuality is a “choice” • Believe in “spanking children” • Reject knowledge and are, thus, “an intellectual disaster” • “Embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas” This is considerable calumny in a 900-word op-ed.  So, Drs. Giberson and Stephens, let me humbly offer the following: • It’s possible for people to disagree with you without being idiots. • Granted, the New York Times won’t have much use for us but we still might be right. • Even though our Bible does not lead us to completely capitulate to the Liberal elite we might still be reading it correctly. • I know we are your embarrassing crazy cousins and you hate to admit your relationship with us in polite company, but is it possible that we better reflect the God of the universe better than you do?  Or, at least as well as you do?  • May I disagree with you without your trashing me in the elite media? • Do you allow any of these bumpkins to teach at Eastern Nazarene?  Probably not, but if you do have you run any of this by them?  Or, your fellow Nazarene, James Dobson? • Do I have to agree with the New York Times on economic policy in order to be considered a scientific thinker?  Foreign policy?  The handling of OWS protestors? I like Dennis Prager’s response to your column:  “This Jew will take the evangelicals' values and the evangelicals' America over those of left-wing intellectuals' any day of the year.”  (In fact, if it were not for Prager, I wouldn’t know you guys exist.) One more thing.  Please, the next time you write a screed like this please title it correctly:  “The Evangelical Rejection of Leftist Orthodoxy.”  

It is in times like these that I wish I were a great mind, well versed in psychological theory.  But then again, I feel Freud himself would struggle to rationalize the behavior of most Occupy Wall Street members.  On a recent Saturday, eight CCU students went down to the State Capitol to volunteer for an event hosted by the Colorado Prayer Caucus.  Heading into Denver, we discussed the possibility of a few “Occupy” protestors – when we arrived we discovered a much larger and louder crowd than expected.  Following are a few phrases that were held up on the signs of protestors at the Denver Civic Center Park, directly across from the Capitol.  “Eat the Rich!” “The Order of the People” “Bankers killed more lives than the terrorists could ever dream” “Give me a job” The tone of this movement is bizarre.  I had heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement prior to my first hand experience of the Occupy Denver protestors, but I don’t think I had taken seriously how dysfunctional this movement is.  The campaign can not offer one unified goal or plan that they are advocating, yet all members ban together so closely – those sporting peace and yin-yang signs mingle joyfully with those carrying violent words such as, “eat the rich!” Equally odd is the fact that this extreme, rhetorically violent and vulgar movement is gaining support from established voices in politics.  Obama has showed warm feelings to the movement, Nancy Pelosi has conveyed support and, of course, Yoko Ono is a huge fan of these unhappy dissenters.  As off-putting it is to think that the best response to hardship these people can think of is to demand their debts be paid and time filled with unwarranted employment, it is even stranger to think that they, in large part, accept the support of these people; Obama who receives huge donations from Wall St., Pelosi, who carries her $35 million of wealth from her success as an investment banker, and Ono with her $500 million and family of bankers.   The hypocrisy and irrationality that abounds at these gatherings is astounding, and the thought these occupiers are already being vindicated by celebrities, politicians and media is truly maddening.  I only hope that those willing to embrace such a menacing movement will not be tethered to the abyss of falseness, envy and blame which seems to be their unifying force.

As conservatives, we feel that we are right. We feel as though the leftist agendas have been practiced to failure, exhaustion, and are not even viable solutions. However, many conservatives lack the ability to communicate with those of opposing viewpoints. I have been to countless conservative speaking-engagements, summits, think tanks, classes, et cetera, but these venues shed a “preach to the choir” ambience. What about those who are different, who vehemently disagree with conservative policies, and/or who label us evil, bigots, fear-mongers, callous, immoral, and barrages of other words? If conservatives’ pervasive trait of “realism” is to be tapped, we must realize these are the real people who need to be reached—and the way we communicate with them is crucial. Now, in the wake of a climacteric political race, conservatives need these skills more than ever. I write this not to accuse conservatives, because all of us are different in many ways, but merely bring some thoughts to attention that may help augment our platform. First, know that tone and listening are two invaluable communication tools. I once had someone tell me, “You have two ears and one mouth. Do the math.” Listening twice as much as you speak and keeping your tone to an acceptable, “non-threatening”, and un-condescending volume is a great way to carry yourself throughout a dialogue with a Leftist. Just as the left seems to enjoy discerning faults in the world, they also will find fault in your communication if done improperly or “threateningly”. Second, understand what differentiates Left from Right. Conservatives believe in less government whereas the left believes in more. This is simple but must always be consciously remembered. Third, be ready for an isolated example. Leftists consistently highlight the unfortunate scenario of a small number. For example, people in favor of Obama-Care, socialization of healthcare, and/or other variances of healthcare entitlement programs often use the “cancer-ridden homeless man” story. Essentially, there is a homeless gentleman who is diagnosed with cancer and goes to emergency rooms (since he cannot be turned away) regularly for some sort of panacea because he cannot afford an oncologist (which is what he needs). Two things are routinely pulled from this story by the left: (1) thousands of dollars are being spent treating the wrong problem and (2) this is an atrocity no one should have to go through. The conservative generally responds in a manner viewed as callus and insensitive in the leftist’s eyes—therefore, how can we, as conservatives, avoid less of these unsuccessful conversations? The answer is simple: articulation, tone, and engagement. Thomas Lock’s “Second Treatise on Government” suggests that no civilization will ever be perfect as a result of the fall of man—sin. Sin corrupts all humanity. Therefore, if two humans cannot exist in a perfect Utopian society, how can 320 million? Bring something like this to the Leftist’s attention using tone and calmness and ask, “What do you think about this?” Leftists will generally respond uniquely, since, let us be honest and genuine, every person has a slightly different worldview, another detail that must be kept in mind. All differences accounted for leftists will generally not find it moral to allow the “atrocity”. Maybe then suggest what NGO’s can do for these people and why pry at why this has to be the government. From here, use discernment and follow similar principles. Not using leading questions only, per se, but helping the leftist see how many of these Utopian dreams are merely unfeasible and that conservatism seeks to implement what works best as nothing will ever be “perfect”. Fourth, strive to instill a sense of trust of humanity as opposed to the government. For absolute power corrupts absolutely. Always keep an understanding that leftists are going to consistently be compassionate, Band-Aids to the broken, and speaker forthe unspoken-for. Leftists may have a stronger desire to be humanistic, humanitarian, and philanthropic than many conservatives. Although this is not true in most cases, it helps going into a dialogue with a leftist assuming that is their perception; helping the Left understand that conservatives consistently fund non-profits but merely prefer the right to choose where their money goes if the next step.  Leftists routinely argue that “corporate greed” will prevent money from being distributed and that humanity’s proclivity to sin inhibits our giving, hence why the government is needed. Here, I suggest the theories of expectancy and dependency. For example, a teacher wrote into the O’Reilly Factor saying (paraphrased), “I had a student today respond to what he wants to be when he grows up with, ‘live on welfare and get free healthcare’”. Unfortunately, the “hard-worker” who receives entitlements becomes lost amidst those who treat it as free-money, entitlement, and eventual dependency. Perhaps continue this conservative-leftist dialogue by catechizing a leading question such as, “Obviously this is not right, yes? What would work better?” Last, as a conservative, you already feel as though self-responsibility is becoming a disappearing attribute of the common man and is being juxtaposed with a nurtured sense of entitlement and being “owed something”. Face it! We are owed NOTHING except life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness. Entitlement comes with an innate sense of “owed”, and entitlements breed dependency more often than not. The government of the United States of America was not established with the mission statement of granting happiness to all. Fellow conservatives, when you return to your lives, embark with a sense of understanding toward the Left. Understand they want to help, fix, provide, and save but many their ideas are simply unrealistic. Telling them they are unfeasible is impractical and ineffective—as is throwing accusatory statements or putting them on the defensive. When Pilate accused Jesus, Jesus did not respond with the ferocity of the common-Roman-man’s perception of Him. I rest my case in that it is not what you say, it is how you articulate, engage, word, and say it.

(Centennial Fellow) David Mamet, a novelist, screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, has come out of the closet as a conservative, and in his milieu of Hollywood's unrelenting liberalism, this is so astonishing a development that both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Magazine have interviewed him on the revelation. My thanks go to both newspapers. To Mamet, I'd like to say it was amusing to read your thoughts, not least when you talked in the Journal about liberals always finding something "bad, bad, bad" -- trans-fats, maybe, or global warming or hydrogenated vegetable oil -- and then making their nonnegotiable demand: "And something must be done!" They mean it must be done by the government, federal, state or local, though the federal coercers are preferable to them because they can have at everyone of us and are oh, so much smarter than you and me, not least of all the bureaucrats who are always jamming up the traffic in Washington and something else in the nation. These supposed giants among Lilliputians are jamming up normal lives with abnormal infringements, and they are getting so thorough at it that we may each eventually have a federal guardian following us, instructing us, fining us, sometimes arresting us if need be. Before that happens, we have the likes of Michelle Obama telling restaurants they must start serving smaller portions to her fellow Americans. Funny, but I always thought that matter was between customers and the restaurant, not some distant third party, and while I get it that the First Lady is dreadfully concerned about people like me getting obese, my scales and I have achieved a mutually appreciative relationship, thank you. If I ever do want to eat like a horse, I still want Michelle Obama to stay out of it, though I am pretty much a doggie-bag kind of guy. What does she want as her legacy -- an end of doggie bags as a source of tomorrow's lunch? Maybe, you say, this White House occupant is non-governmental, but if she did not have the political heft of a husband who is president, you think the National Restaurant Association would have met with her advisers? I doubt that group would meet with my wife's advisers, even if she had advisers, or that she could get the attention of some in Congress and several federal agencies. Something else in the news lately -- the misuse of Title IX to say that if college women do not want to enter sports in the same numbers as men students, that's too bad for the men at those schools. It's got to be equal. Some schools, in order to accommodate the more eager fellows, have lied about the number of women participating, and The New York Times, which broke the story, is in an editorial snit, saying this may be illegal. The law was instead written to deny federal funding to schools that didn't afford women desired opportunities in sports because too much of the available resources were being spent on the men. Most schools had already begun altering old practices because our culture was changing., and the law’s goal was not meant to be close to strict sameness in numbers until the bureaucrats began throwing their weight around. Interpreted their way -- cut off heads to make everyone the same height -- it's a bad law that breeds disobedience, and while I do not intend to go on the record in favor of lying, I can promise you that I have talked to business operators who have told me there is a sure way to go broke. Heed all the stupid regulations. I'd like to cite more examples, but I would need something like 450,000 pages to be exhaustive, because, as Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute has observed, that's the probable size of the 2012 U.S. Code when published. Obviously, some of these laws are needed, but as Tucker notes, this is "as elaborate and detailed as any set of laws that have ever governed any society in the history of the world." As Mamet said, liberals keep finding things that are bad, bad, bad, and as I would add, our lawmakers keep making them worse, worse, worse.

(Centennial Fellow) Give at least this much credit to the liberals "progressives" (LPs) in the Democratic Party:  they don't let little things like losing 63 seats in Congress discourage them. For LPs, a Robin Hood tax policy – one that extracts higher taxes from the successful and industrious and spends it on expensive social welfare programs for the slothful and underachieving – is an article of faith that cannot be compromised. (No one in the political mainstream disputes the need for a "safety net" to help those who are disabled and truly in need, but for LPs, turning the safety net into a hammock is political strategy, not an economic one.  If more people depend on government, then more people will vote for the party of dependency.) Showing for the first time a Clintonesque inclination to put his desire for re-election ahead of his desire to transform America into just another declining economy run aground by bloated social welfare programs, President Obama recently agreed to forestall for two years a return to Clinton-era tax rates.  The LPs came completely unhinged. OK, even more completely unhinged. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, the goofiest man in America with a microphone, sanctimoniously blathered to his infinitesimal audience of economic illiterates that the erstwhile messiah is not simply wrong but "g**-d***** wrong." Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said, Obama "has shown a complete refusal to fight Republicans throughout his presidency . . . and millions of his former supporters are now growing disappointed and infuriated by this refusal to fight." Refusal to fight?  Perhaps Obama doesn't fight well or doesn't fight smart, but from the perspective of anyone to the right of Howard Dean, Obama certainly doesn't appear to pull many punches. He ignored public opinion to ram ObamaCare down our throats.  Before the election, he told Hispanic voters, in unpresidential fashion, to "punish their enemies" (read: vote against Republicans).  Even after reaching agreement to extend the current tax rates, he referred to Republicans in Congress as "hostage-takers." Now the LP faction that propelled him into office muses about a primary challenge in 2012.  This is all just so much talk.  Democrats will oust the first black President about the same time the Nobel Committee honors Sarah Palin. Obama, they say, is "demobilizing the troops and demoralizing the public" – still ignoring that "the public" isn't whacko liberal – because he's finally recognized that he'd better knock off the bigger government, higher taxing, more intrusive, debt-exploding poppycock if he has any desire to salvage a second term. It's hard to say who is more devastated: the Left, by Obama's compromise with political reality, or Obama, by the realization that even he can't sell the Left's socialist agenda to mainstream Americans. For the Left, class warfare is a rare battle worth fighting.  The evil rich – job creators, entrepreneurs, investors – must be punished by higher tax rates that take money away from job creation and innovation and give it instead to government bureaucrats. So many liberal progressives make a career working for government or for nonprofits that rely on government, they fail to grasp that the middle class cannot prosper without someone creating middle class jobs – not on yet another extension of unemployment benefits. They ignorantly seem to believe that the evil rich stash their cash under a mattress.  Any other investment – whether in a bank account, the stock market or back into their business – generates more jobs and, hence, more tax revenue. If growing government truly bolstered the economy, then our economic engines would be roaring after the trillion-dollar stimulus enacted by Obama and the Democrats in February 2009.  Instead, job creation is stagnant as employers cautiously weigh impending tax increases, direct and indirect costs of ObamaCare, and uncertain implications of the Federal Reserve's Monopoly money policy. As Ronald Reagan said, "The problem with our liberal friends . . . is that they know so much that isn't so."  Fortunately, the rest of us still have a vote. Centennial Institute Fellow Mark Hillman served as Colorado senate majority leader and state treasurer.  To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.

Markos Moulitsas, influential founder of the Daily Kos leftist website, takes moral equivalency to new and sickening depths in his new book, American Taliban: How Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists to the Radical Right. According to a synopsis of the book that he wrote for the Huffington Post, Markos has decided that conservatives are not significantly different from the murderous gangsters who terrorize Afghanistan.  Following are some of his elaborations on that equivalence, with clarifying questions I'd like to ask him: Theocracy: Opposition to the Ground Zero mosque is apparently equivalent to a nation that has 48,000 mosques and zero churches.  But Markos, New York City alone has a hundred mosques and the United States has 2,000 of them for its small Muslim minority.  But you can’t tell the difference between 2,000 and zero?  You need to work on Obama’s new debt commission. Violence:  Conservatives use violent rhetoric, wear intimidating T-shirts, and oppose illegal immigration.  That’s equivalent to an American Muslim who guns down thirteen of his colleagues at Fort Hood?  Without mentioning the ten Western missionaries systematically executed by the real Taliban for helping impoverished Afghanis with eye care?  Without mentioning the tens of thousands around the world who have been murdered by the real Taliban?  Here’s an experiment you can run, Markos, to test your thesis:  For your next book, instead of trashing your right-wing countrymen, trash Islam.  Run pictures lampooning the prophet.  Cite sneeringly from the Koran.  See if you notice any subsequent differences in the behavior of Jihadists and the American right who are supposedly just like them. Sex and Women:  Conservative Christians favor sexual chastity and oppose gay rights.  The real Taliban share those views and add to them “arranged marriages, spousal abuse, subjugation of women by force, denial of education to females, and female genital mutilation.”  (Source)  See any difference here, Markos? Truth: People who believe in Intelligent Design and deny Global Warming are as oppressive as the real Taliban who teach nothing but the Koran in tens of thousands of madrasas.  Of course, the people who control higher education in America and deny access to those who disagree with them are Markos and his buddies. As usual, the Left is far more guilty of the sins it finds in others.  Markos is no exception.  He can write this screed because he lives in a Western, Christian culture.  If we were really like the Taliban Markos would have been a pile of warm ashes a long time ago.  As it is, we grant him his right to speak because he has inalienable rights endowed by his Creator.  And as a member of the American Taliban I will fight for his right to be wrong.   

('76 Contributor) Next time you read a news story about racism at Tea Parties from some dishonest source like the NYT's Bob Herbert, bear in mind this Crash the Tea Party website. Here are some people openly recruiting infiltrators to pose as Tea Partiers and behave in ways intended to reflect badly on the Tea Parties, so as to damage the public perception of the movement.  Since the claims that Herbert made have failed to be corroborated in the multiple videos of the events in question, that pre-established narrative must  now be bolstered by whatever means necessary. Of course, there almost certainly are some racists and other disagreeable people at many Tea Parties (which of course has NEVER been the case at a union rally or an anti-globalism rally or some other such leftist thing)--there are bound to be some unsavory individuals at the margins of ANY gathering of substantial size for whatever cause--but the organized effort to smear the entire movement based on some individuals' unrepresentative behavior is truly disgraceful.  It's McCarthyism. It's difficult for me to understand how anybody could, in good conscience, attack people whose central message is that the founding principles of American government should be adhered to.  No matter how awkward or embarrassing somebody's effort to stand up and proclaim that message, how can you not be ashamed to do anything other than applaud him for it?  And the idea that it's a generally awkward or embarrassing movement is just propaganda, from what I've seen--certainly some of the individual efforts have been awkward, but so what?  I've met very admirable and impressive folks involved with the movement. What is wrong with people who are trying to marginalize ideas like limited, responsive government, government of, by, and for the people?  That such efforts are widespread in THIS country really sickens me. Then again, maybe there's something even more insidious going on than an infiltration agitprop effort by Tea Party opponents.  Maybe it's one layer deeper--this recruitment effort is organized by the Tea Party itself, to create the impression that its opponents are unscrupulous enough to resort to such infiltration tactics.  Or maybe it's even deeper than that:  Maybe the Tea Party opponents want to create the impression that the Tea Party would resort to creating a false recruiting effort attributed to Tea Party opponents.  Or maybe it's an even deeper layer of insidiousness than that...  [Or maybe someone needs to call the fantasy conspiracy helpline for counseling - Editor]  

Editor's Note: The annual Conference on World Affairs, hosted by CU-Boulder each spring since 1949, wrapped up last week with at least one conservative undergrad having a sour taste in her mouth from the liberal intolerance, intellectual bullying, and groupthink she encountered in place of the "civil discourse" CWA is supposed to foster.  Erin Flynn filed the following report with one of her professors, Vincent McGuire (who is also a Centennial Fellow). I've attended three CWA panels over the past two days and at the 2nd and 3rd I got to ask questions. So I'm at the third panel "Progressives Getting Their Groove Back" which I find to be very interesting since I think progressives are ruining America (that's just me though). But to the point, I get to ask the first question, and this is what I say  (directed to the proud card-carrying socialist speaker): "How can you defend and rationalize socialist government when our forefathers fought a bloody war to protect us from government and wrote a great document known as the Constitution of the United States to prevent socialism and progressivism?" Though my wording was aggressive, my delivery was quite nervous-sounding, since I was in front of a couple hundred people in the Glenn Miller Ballroom. But before I could get any sort of answer, another speaker on that panel says "Wait, just wait a minute, are you some sort of plant? You keep coming to these and asking conservative questions so what's the deal?" What followed was the panelists, moderator, and crowd ganging up on me. People in the crowd were yelling at me to "sit down" and "shut up" and the panel continued to insult my intelligence while simultaneously cutting me off. The socialist-loving speaker didn't even answer my question (and in his response decided to say that totalitarian governments haven't existed since Stalin fell. Apparently China and Cuba don't count). I was really upset, but sat through the rest of it and listened to the all of the other questions. As soon as I got back to my computer, I sent Glenn Beck an email but I know that  was just a whim.  So what should I do, Professor? The CWA program states "it's conversation, where CWA promotes civil discourse, debate, disagreement, depth, discernment, and delight". I can easily disprove all of this alliteration. But I feel like even if I write to the CWA leader or some dean they'll just ignore me because really they don't care about me having any sort of voice, since I'm sure I would disagree with them politically too. All of the panels are recorded, so maybe that's a start. It's so frustrating, and I'm sick of people hiding by saying they are about something reasonable when they are actually the opposite. Do you know of anyone reasonable I could talk to as a start? Or maybe 9News would care about intolerance on the Boulder campus? By the way, the panelist who called me a conservative "plant" happens to be a student government officer who is paid in part by MY fees. I will definitely be going to all future panels featuring that individual. Maybe with a video camera too.   The author can be reached at Erin.Flynn@Colorado.EDU

"We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress," wrote Bob Herbert in his New York Times column the other day. A Democrat friend of mine from Rochester, NY forwarded me the Herbert piece, entitled "An Absence of Class," about the alleged ugly incidents in the aftermath of the US House's healthcare vote.  She accompanied the link with this single sentence:  "You would never ever defend this."  The following is how I responded. If you think I would defend it, then you completely missed the point I was trying to make before.  I don't defend the things Bob Herbert describes--if they really happened (I am completely open to the possibility that they didn't actually happen as described, or that they were grossly exaggerated, or that Democratic members of Congress and their lackeys would make up or even stage such incidents in order to achieve exactly what the incidents have achieved:  a smear against thousands of people). But let's assume that it all did happen exactly as reported.  I say, So what? Any time you gather thousands of people together, no matter what the cause they're gathering to demonstrate for, you can take it as virtually guaranteed that some of them aren't going to be nice or well-behaved people.  The vast majority of humans, of any political stripe, aren't exactly saints.  Obviously, in any gathering of large size, you'll have a bell-curve distribution on the civility spectrum, and at one end of the curve you'll have bad apples. This method of gathering an unruly mob to make a political point in the streets, by chanting and waving signs (as opposed to making the points on the pages of a newspaper or at the debate lectern or in some other measured and intellectual manner) has been a favored practice of the Left for decades; seeing the same tactic on the other side is a fairly novel thing. You wouldn't seriously assert that nothing vile ever took place at any of the demonstrations in support of causes dear to the Left, over all the decades?  I've seen a little bit of it myself.  For example, sometimes I'd walk out of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California by its Franklin St. gate, during the height of the Iraq War, to find an anti-war mob with signs at the bottom of the hill, and some of them would jeer at me and call me things like "Nazi"--people who didn't know anything about me except that I sported a military-looking haircut.  But you know...so what? It wasn't unusual for acts of mob violence--looting, arson, etc.--to happen where MLK made a public appearance, even though King explicitly decried any such activity.  Things got pretty ugly right there in your town, if I'm not mistaken.  Should we paint all members of the civil rights movement with the brush of a few thuggish individuals who made the event a pretext to behave in a vile manner?  Everyone who favors desegragation is is a thieving incendiary...if YOU favor desegregation then YOU're on the side of looting and arson...yeah, okay...strong argument, huh? Herbert says, "We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here."  Oh really?  We can't allow it?  How short his memory is, because he and his ilk were perfectly happy to keep quiet and allow it just a few years ago, when protesters were saying and doing things at least as vile against the previous administration.  I doubt if any president has received the amount of abuse that Bush did.  And I don't care about that.  He's a big boy and he wasn't drafted into the job of president, and having a thick skin is part of the job.  So what? Why is this Herbert article even worth serious consideration?  His chosen method of decrying a lone idiot who spat on some politician is to spit on tens of thousands of people with vile statements like these:  "For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness...."  "This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry." What is this?  Fight fire with fire?  This is Herbert's own commitment to hatred and bigotry on display. The whole article is nothing but an ad hominem.  He's not critiquing the Tea Party's central message--he's trying to turn people off to that message with guilt-by-association.  "If you are tempted to favor shockingly radical, fringy ideas like...oh, let's say, a limited government that is accountable to the people and stays within the bounds of the Constitution...then you're in the company of bigots, and therefore a bigot yourself."  That's what he's saying.  This is just the latest flavor of McCarthyism. I've been called a racist and a Nazi for criticizing Obama about issues that have nothing to do with race--those names were hurled at me based on nothing other than the ethnicity of the target of my criticism, as though the only thing that keeps me from cheering him for his policies is that he's not pure Anglo-Saxon.  Apparently nobody is allowed to criticize a public official on any grounds, if the official happens to be a minority.  That's about the level of Herbert's argument here. I don't care.  They can call me whatever they like.  All they're doing is revealing the Orwellian inversion of language that infects their thought:  If I am color-blind, applying the same standards of criticism to a black man that I would to a white man, then I'm a racist  It's no longer prejudice and racial double standard, but the absence of prejudice and racial double standard, that makes you a racist.  If I'm for limited government and against the kind of centralization of economic decision-making that Nazis and other varieties of socialists espouse, that makes me a Nazi.  Opposing socialism makes you a National Socialist.  Up is down, black is white.

(CCU Faculty) Mike Lux, blogging in the Huffington Post, announces he has found the “Ultimate Contradiction-in-Terms:  Right-Wing Christians.”  Lux shakes his head and condemns those of us who claim to follow Jesus Christ and still vote for an occasional Republican.  Here's the oracle in full.  Lux begins this attack on people like myself by relating a debate between Glenn Beck and leftist-evangelical Jim Wallis.  Wallis won the debate of course because he “actually knows something about the Bible.”  Beck and his hero, Ayn Rand, enthrone “selfishness as the ultimate virtue.”  (Lots of “ultimates” in Mike’s Luxicon.) But it gets worse.  Conservative Christians manage to “ignore the literally many hundreds of Biblical quotes about social justice.”  And still worse, we turn Christianity into “a religion solely focused on one very selfish goal: whether they get into heaven or not. That's it, that is the entire goal and purpose and meaning of their faith.” Where to begin?  For starters, Mike, citing Glenn Beck and Ayn Rand as holding the flag for conservative Christians is like using Rosie O’Donnell to shill your diet plan.  Beck is a recent convert to Mormonism and before that a lapsed Catholic.  Rand is a militant atheist.  Try taking on real conservative Christians instead of your men and women of straw. Next, since I “actually know something about the Bible” I have read the verses on social justice.  And the Left is the greatest enemy of social justice in the history of the world.  Left-wing governments have murdered more of their own citizens as a matter of state policy then all other governments in the history of the world combined.  (You would claim no connection to the genocidal Stalin or Mao but I can connect you to them a lot easier than you can connect me to Ayn Rand.) As for hypocrisy I claim no ability whatsoever to be able to compete with the Left.  You sit comfortably in the richest nation in the history of the world and hold in contempt the economic conservatives who created it.  You freely write your ad hominem screeds and hold in contempt the political conservatives who created that freedom.  And you condescend to us religious conservatives who proclaim the eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ who made Christian culture possible. Since I am one of those cretins who “refuse to help the oppressed” let me tell you what my house is like.  It is a place where the third-world poor and the oppressed in America, eat my food, sleep in my beds, drive my cars, and weep on my shoulder, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE. Multiply my story by thirty million and you get some idea what the “religious right” is all about.   I would appreciate not being trashed by people whose idea of compassion is to vote to take my money away and give it to politicians they like.  When it comes to giving one’s own money to help the “poor and oppressed” we troglodyte conservative Christians outgive you “compassionate” Leftists by more than three to one.  (That's from Who Really Cares by AEI scholar Arthur Brooks, featured speaker at a Centennial Institute forum in Denver just this morning, as it happens.) “Getting to heaven” is not the only goal of my life.  But Jesus said, (I know this because I actually read my Bible) “What does it profit a man if gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Matthew 16:25)  So apparently He is quite concerned about whether or not we go to heaven and you should be, too. And I would like to ask one final question.  You talk about people who really read the Bible and who “take the Bible seriously.”  Why is it that more than 75% of the people who do so vote like I do?  We read the Bible differently from you, Mike.  Is it possible we read it better?  (Or actually read it at all?) So I will continue to live in the “ultimate contradiction” of being a Christian conservative until you can come up with something more than left-wing sloganeering.  And in the meantime, if you want to know more about me you will have to go to someone besides Glenn Beck or Ayn Rand.