cognitive dissident

Byron William’s piece “What this Government needs is a few Good Liberals” at HuffPo notes that “one of the great victories of the post-conservative movement” has been “pushing the term ‘liberal’ into the outer fringes of political discourse.” He also observes that, “if history is any indicator, this country has changed for the better when led by liberal/progressive forces:”

Conservatives have the dubious historical distinction of being wrong on slavery, women's suffrage, this country's entrance into World War II and the Civil Rights Movement.

It was a conservative, strict constructionist Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott decision in 1856 that stated because Scott was black he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The decision also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which restricted slavery in certain territories, unconstitutional.

Fifty years later, the same conservative notion held true in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established the precedent for "separate" facilities for blacks and whites that ultimately provided the legal legs on which the Jim Crow laws allegedly stood. It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court, engaging in "judicial activism," overturned Plessy.

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Check out this exchange between Bush and Senator-elect Jim Webb:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t.

Glenn Greenwald observes that:

It is difficult to fathom the hubris and self-indulgence required for someone to ask a parent of a soldier in Iraq how their son is doing only to then snidely tell the parent that the answer isn't what he wanted to hear.

Greenwald also lambastes Prager for his anti-Muslim bigotry and ignorance of the Constitution.

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Dennis Prager wrote the following immensely inaccurate tripe at TownHall today about an impending swearing-in ceremony in Washington DC:

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

[…]

Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.

A tip of the hat to both Andrew Sullivan and to one of his readers, who pointed out that:

…there has never been, and is no, requirement that a member of Congress put his hand on anything when taking the oath of office. There is nothing in the law requiring a member to do anything in particular with his hands. A member is free to put his hand on a Bible, on any other book or for that matter, to keep his hands at his sides or in his pockets or to make bunny shadows with them during the taking of the oath.

Prager tries to portray himself as a thoughtful and reasonable commentator, but instances like this one reveal the theocratic fangs beneath his avuncular façade. He illustrated in this piece two of the primary flaws with the Right: its desire to conflate staged religious photo-ops with secular reality, and its efforts to mandate piety while claiming pluralism.

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Kos takes Bill O’Reilly down a few pegs for his nonsensical slandering of “San Francisco values.” After lambasting BOR’s boycott mentality, Kos lists the Bay Area’s values (tolerance, entrepreneurship, and creativity) and its triumphs—everything from Intuit and the iPod to Pixar and the Palm—and then continues firing:

Yeah, those "San Francisco values" sure are dragging the region down. Making it weak as it falls behind the rest of the country -- the parts that don't share "San Francisco values" -- economically and socially.

Or, maybe -- just maybe -- it's made the region a magnet for the world's smartest, most innovative, most entrepreneurial individuals and an incubator of the world's most dramatic technological advances.

Also, Keith Olbermann disproved BOR’s claim to have coined the term “San Francisco values,” as MediaMatters showed.

Bravo to all!

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This New York Daily News piece on Bush’s Presidential Library shows its orientation toward the future:

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. […]

The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.

Shelly Lewis comments at HuffPo:

Of course there will be a "think tank." Maybe that's where all the bitter neocons from the Project for a New American Century will go to write papers about how Bush screwed up their war and crushed their dreams.

I'm going to suggest the Karl Rove Center for the Study of Free and Fair Elections, and of course, there's got to be The Dick Cheney Institute for Constitutional Rights. And a Donald Rumsfeld "Known Unknown" research library. (Do you think it will be under-staffed and under-supplied?)

Maybe there'll be room on the public grounds for the Iraq Adventure Garden, a pool made of quicksand, oil and blood.

And how about a cakewalk in the museum cafeteria? No pretzels, though; they're a choke hazard.

I could go on and on (and you're welcome to if you like) but if I think about this much more I'll start to remember how much body armor a half billion dollars could have bought, or how many breakfasts for Head Start kids.

I like the sound of “legacy-polishing,” but gold-leafing Bush’s miserable failure of a presidency won’t be easy.

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AfterDowningStreet.org is celebrating “Impeachment Day” on 10 December, which is also “Human Rights Day.”

(h/t: ima_sinnic at DU)

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Richard Shweder complains in the New York Times about all the best-selling books written by atheists, and supposes that “the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society.” He even quotes the old line from the otherwise-brilliant John Locke supporting intolerance toward atheists (ironically enough, from his “Letter Concerning Toleration”):

…those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.

This imputation of immorality and untrustworthiness was used to justify discrimination against atheists until 1961’s Torcaso v. Watkins decision. Amanda Marcotte responds to Shweder at Pandagon:

…my question to Shweder and all others who think that it’s only fair of atheists to shut up and go away is this: Why are you so threatened? If your argument can’t win out in a free public discourse, that doesn’t speak much for it, does it?

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This article in the New Haven Advocate asks “Are George W. Bush Supporters Certifiable?” and talks about a 2004 study of psychiatric outpatients. According to the study, “Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry,” and “[t]he more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.”

No surprise there…

(h/t: Tom Tomorrow)

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There is an eight-part email debate (here or here) between Sam Harris and Dennis Prager (h/t: Shirley Setterbo at Atheist Exposed). The standard “angry atheists” snipe (here and here) is taken up by Harris in his opening salvo:

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population. The plain truth is this: There is no good reason to believe in a personal God; there is no good reason to believe that the Bible, the Koran, or any other book was dictated by an omniscient being; we do not, in any important sense, get our morality from religion; the Bible and the Koran are not, even remotely, the best sources of guidance we have for living in the 21st century; and the belief in God and in the divine provenance of scripture is getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily.

Against these plain truths religious people have erected a grotesque edifice of myths, obfuscations, half-truths, and wishful thinking.

Prager opines that “we believers look at the evidence and believe that there is a God. In that sense, the atheist has considerably less intellectual honesty than the sophisticated believer. The atheist says he knows, despite the fact that what he ‘knows’ is unprovable. The believer believes because he knows that what he believes is ultimately unprovable.” He then slams Harris for “ignorance of intellectually sophisticated God-belief,” as if positing an unprovable deity to compensate for every lack of knowledge is somehow an intellectually sophisticated position. Harris parries this attack thusly:

Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the extraordinary ironies of religious discourse can be seen in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other nonbelievers for their intellectual arrogance.

He later asks Prager to explain “why it is more reasonable to believe in Yahweh than in Zeus:”

Your job is to either produce a rational argument for the unique legitimacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition (one that reveals why one billion Hindus are utterly in error about the nature of the cosmos), or to admit that you cannot do this. I am willing to bet the farm that you cannot.

After praising the “courage among the religious,” Prager admits that “Nothing can prove God’s existence.” His next assertion is a non sequitur: “If society cannot survive without x, there is a good chance x exists.” He is implying that his Judeo-Christian deity is x, but his argument is reducible via Occam’s Razor to belief in a deity being x. Harris responds:

…please keep your x’s straight. If humanity can’t survive without a belief in God, this would only mean that a belief in God exists. It wouldn’t, even remotely, suggest that God exists.

Prager asks in response, “Can you name one thing that does not exist but is essential to human survival?” Since Prager had the last word, Harris did not have the opportunity to point out that this question completely sidesteps the point Harris made regarding Prager’s unwarranted conclusion.

It’s nice to see the two of them discuss issues in greater depth than in the only previous debate I’d seen, from Prager’s radio show in August 2004. I would like to see them on a stage together sometime, because the immediacy of the exchange could be quite intriguing.

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Here are two views of the Bushite misadventures in Iraq: Mark Danner elucidates the near past (through a review of Woodward’s State of Denial, Suskind’s One Percent Doctrine, and Risen’s State of War) and the immediate past is covered by Glenn Greenwald. Danner writes of the ideological isolation of the Bush administration and the overwhelming desire to ignore inconvenient facts, which he calls the War of Imagination:

Anyone seeking to understand what has become the central conundrum of the Iraq war—how it is that so many highly accomplished, experienced, and intelligent officials came together to make such monumental, consequential, and, above all, obvious mistakes, mistakes that much of the government knew very well at the time were mistakes—must see beyond what seems to be a simple rhetoric of self-justification and follow it where it leads: toward the War of Imagination that senior officials decided to fight in the spring and summer of 2002 and to whose image they clung long after reality had taken a sharply separate turn. In that War of Imagination victory was to be decisive, overwhelming, evincing a terrible power—enough to wipe out the disgrace of September 11 and remake the threatening world.

[…]

…the War of Imagination draped all the complications and contradictions of the history and politics of a war-torn, brutalized society in an ideologically driven vision of a perfect future. Small wonder that its creators, faced with grim reality, have been so loathe to part with it. Since the first thrilling night of shock and awe, reported with breathless enthusiasm by the American television networks, the Iraq war has had at least two histories, that of the war itself and that of the American perception of it. As the months passed and the number of attacks in Iraq grew, the gap between those two histories opened wider and wider.[7] And finally, for most Americans, the War of Imagination—built of nationalistic excitement and ideological hubris and administration pronouncements about "spreading democracy" and "greetings with sweets and flowers," and then about "dead-enders" and "turning points," and finally about "staying the course" and refusing "to cut and run"—began, under the pressure of nearly three thousand American dead and perhaps a hundred thousand or more dead Iraqis, to give way to grim reality.

The idiocies of disbanding the army and de-Baathifying the government are in full view, but our inevitable exit from Iraq—amid the violent insurgency we helped to create—remains lost in the fog. (By the way, we have now been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II.)

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Glenn Greenwald writes about the inability of some right-wing commentators to handle religious criticism directed at themselves (Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse, in this instance) and their compatriots. Reynolds whines about the use of the word Christianist, but, as Greenwald observes, "routinely -- meaning on a weekly basis, at least -- refers to whole groups of people as ‘Islamists’ and ‘Islamofascists.’” Greenwald goes on to note that:

People like Althouse and Reynolds love to complain about the supposed religious hostility which exists towards Christians -- a whine triggered so easily that the mere use of the word "Christianist" is sufficient for us to be subjected to it -- because feeling persecuted is an insatiable need they have.

And their "evidence" for anti-Christian "bigotry" consists of nothing more than statements and sentiments that are indescribably benign and innocuous, especially compared to the hostility and scorn that spews forth from them towards "Islamists," "Islamofascists," and similar terms. In their world, referring to people who believe that the law should comport to their Christian religious beliefs as "Christianists" is "sanctimonious," "snide" and "hostile" "bigotry" -- even though they are people who use exactly the same terms, and (in Reynolds' case) much worse, to refer to Muslims.

We are now headed into the season where this type of petulant hypocrisy flows abundantly -- it is, after all, the Season of the War on Christmas -- and it's good to see these two nonpartisan, above-it-all, "swing-voter"/professors are getting such an early start on the persecution festivities. [emphasis added]

update (11/26 @ 9:27am):
Greenwald has updated the original post five separate times, both to demolish several responses to his piece and to briefly discuss the history of the word Christianism.

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Richard Dawkins has posted a piece called “I’m an atheist, but…” on his site. He answers the criticism of “intemperately strong language” this way:

…if you look at the language we employ, it is no more strong or intemperate than anybody would use if criticizing a political or economic point of view: no stronger or more intemperate than any theatre critic, art critic or book critic when writing a negative review. Our language sounds strong and intemperate only because of the same weird convention I have already mentioned, that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism. […]

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and earn delighted praise for the trenchant wit of their review. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a critic of religion employ a fraction of the same direct forthrightness, and polite society will purse its lips and shake its head…

h/t: God Is for Suckers!

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Austin Bramwell's piece in American Conservative, "Good-Bye to All That," is a long and deeply felt eulogy for conservatism:

Whatever its past accomplishments, the conservative movement no longer kindles any "ironic points of light." It has produced fewer outstanding books even as it has taken over more of the intellectual and political landscape. This trend will only continue. Worse, no reckoning will be made: they hope in vain who expect conservatives to take responsibility for the actual consequences of their actions. Conservatives have no use for the ethic of responsibility; they seek only to "see to it that the flame of pure intention is not quelched." The movement remains a fine place to make a career, but for wisdom one must look elsewhere.

Digby comments that "After living with 'movement conservatism' for so long it's actually a bit disorienting to see a conservative under the age of 70 or so with intellectual integrity." Harold Meyerson's "Conservatives in Denial" from the Washington Post begins by observing that "On their journey through the stages of grief, conservatives don't yet seem to have gotten past denial," and states that "one way conservatives defend the faith is to argue that the conservatism of contemporary Republicanism isn't really conservatism at all:"

Holding conservatism blameless for last week's Republican debacle may stiffen conservative spines, but the very idea is the product of mushy conservative brains unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency; that the Republican Party over the past six years moved well to the right of the American people on social, economic, and foreign policy; and that on November 7 the American people chose a more pragmatic course.

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This New York Times article on the recent "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" forum is very welcome indeed, as is the existence of the forum itself. Sam Harris was in attendance, but was eclipsed in rhetorical ferocity by Nobel laureate Dr Steven Weinberg:

“Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

On a less confrontational note, Dr Carolyn Porco made this delightful suggestion:

“Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome — and even comforting — than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.”

Bravo!

h/t: PZ Myers at Pharyngula

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Salon's list of "The GOP's dirty deeds of 2006" notes that:

while this year might not have included any repeats of Palm Beach County or Ohio, that doesn't mean the midterm elections were squeaky clean. This November there were some old-school dirty tricks that had nothing to do with voting machines or secretaries of state. An unscientific sample seems to show that most were the product of a party that was desperate for something, anything, that would help it protect its doomed congressional majorities.

You can tell that a party is desperate when it has to rely on misinformation, intimidation, push polls, and robo calls to influence elections.

h/t: Raw Story

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John Safran got fed up with Mormons "bashing on my door on Saturday morning," and decided to retaliate. After this hilarious rant, he began knocking on doors in Salt Lake City in a kind of reverse evangelism. He and his director suited up in white shirt and black tie, and went around asking for "a moment of your time to talk about atheism" and explaining Charles Darwin's "amazing message to the world."

It's five minutes well spent.

h/t: PZ Myers at Pharyngula.

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This post from Atrios is too funny. Or maybe not, considering that this sort of fear-mongering sucked us into the Iraqi quagmire.

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Everyone has no doubt read this quote, attributed to proto-conservative Edmund Burke:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

The quotation is bogus, as this essay by Martin Porter (parts one and two) shows. It’s a great read, and illustrates the primary shortcoming of the Internet as a research tool. Porter offers the following rules, which would greatly improve the situation:

I therefore formulate and offer to the world the following Principles for Quotations, two for quoters and two for readers, which, if universally followed, would make an immense improvement to the reliability of the information available on the world wide web.

Principle 1 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.

Principle 2 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.

Principle 3 (for quoters) Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.

Principle 4 (for quoters) Only quote from works that you have read.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.)

update (11/21 @8:49am):
One of Andrew Sullivan's readers pointed out that JS Mill said something quite similar:

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

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...they’re not uniformly pro-administration, as this New York Times article illustrates:

…as to the contentious issue of the reach of presidential authority, the Federalist Society membership is not united. Professor Yoo, who wrote several memorandums while in the Justice Department arguing that the president’s power is expanded during a war on terrorism, represents one wing of the conservatives, while many in the group are smaller-government libertarians.

At a spirited panel discussion Friday with Professor Yoo, one of the revered figures of the group, Prof. Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, branded as dangerous the notion of expanded powers for the executive branch because of the continuing fight against terrorism.

“This is an issue which splits this group right down the middle,” Professor Epstein said. [emphasis added]

h/t: Andrew Sullivan

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The Watcher at Fundie Watch ridicules this AFA article misrepresenting the ACLU while promoting Sam Kastensmidt’s book Indefensible. The Watcher takes the AFA’s anti-ACLU screed apart piece by piece, and states that “I'll thank you to stop telling people what I and other liberals think, because it's damned irritating, and you're wrong.”

In similar fashion, PZ Myers shreds Pastor Hellman’s whiny and wrong-headed op-ed response to Richard Dawkins, noting that it is “typical creationist dreck.” Hellman’s piece contains the standard creationist fabrications that evolution is mere randomness, that atheism is a religion (the absence of religion is closer to the truth), that communism was “based on” evolution (at least in the Soviet Union, it championed Lysenkoism) and that Hitler was an atheist (he was Catholic). Myers concludes:

I'm sorry, but seeing a pastor, one who doesn't understand science and has read nothing in the literature of biology, tell me that I need to read the Bible is unconvincing. I've read the gospels. I was brought up a Lutheran, just like Pastor Hellmann. I rejected the masturbatory cycle of reading the dogma of theologians because I opened my eyes and looked at the real world, and the rocks and trees and the milling multitudes of nature all cry out that the books of the religious are impoverished shadows of reality. Why sip from the recycled piss of Christianity when I can drink deep from the Pierian Spring? [emphasis added]

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…this might be the result.

(Thanks to PZ Myers at Pharyngula for the tip.)

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Glenn Greenwald dissects Dick Cheney’s speech to the Federalist Society last night. After a sarcasm-heavy analysis, Greenwald concludes:

It is worth reminding ourselves -- as the Vice President just made quite clear again-- that the pathological individuals who occupy the White House do not recognize the power of the law or the power of the courts to limit what they can do. Therefore, the fact that Democrats now control the Congress will be of little concern to them, because the most the Democrats can do is enact little laws or issue cute, little Subpoenas --- but, as the Vice President just said, they think that nothing can "tie the hands of the President of the United States in the conduct of a war." And he means that.

I hope Democrats in Congress recognize that and are prepared to do something about it. This constitutional crisis will exist until it's confronted. [emphases added]

Impeachment may not be a politically expedient move for the incoming 110th Congress, but it is certainly warranted by the (soon-to-be) outgoing administration.

update (11/19 @ 7:33am):
Anonymous Liberal has posted his analysis of Cheney’s “deeply pathological” speech. It’s also worth reading, especially for this gem:

I know that Cheney (and Addington and Yoo) have a deep desire for the law to be something other than what it actually is, but I don't see what is to be gained by simply asserting, and with unmistakable condescension, that up is down.

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Islamica Magazine’s interview with civil libertarian David Cole (230KB PDF here) has this nice exchange:

Islamica: You brought up the issue of domestic spying. What concerns you more about this practice: the actual substantive measure of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens on American soil or the aggrandizement of power by the executive branch?

Cole: I think it’s definitely the latter. We don’t know enough about the program to know how concerned we ought to be about invasions of privacy that are illegitimate. We don’t know how many taps there have been nor how widespread the program really is. At some point we may learn that and there may be serious concerns. But what we do know is what the Bush administration has put forth as its defense of the program, and they should give everybody pause. Because the argument is essentially that the president as commander-in-chief has the unilateral, “uncheckable” authority to select the “means and methods of engaging the enemy,” which is a quote from the Justice Department’s memo defending the program. And their claim is that when you’re talking about the means and methods of engaging the enemy, it is impermissible for either of the other branches of government, Congress or the courts, to restrict the president in any way, shape, or form. So that means that the president can spy on Americans in the face of any criminal statute that specifically prohibits it. […] So this is a view of unfettered executive power that I think all Americans ought to be concerned about.

Cole’s next book, Less Safe, Less Free: Why We Are Losing the War on Terror, is scheduled for release next May.

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Atheist Exposed mentioned a piece titled “The Truth about Atheism Exposed” (part one and part two) by Sam Johnston at Shelley the Republican. It’s so inane that it must be a parody of ignorant Christianist wingnuts, right?

I hope so.

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Jay Tolson’s article “The New Unbelievers” at USN&WR (Thanks to The Revealer for the tip.)
notes that “Books on atheism are hot” and asks, “But do they have anything fresh to say?” The answer to the question is yes, but one has to look beyond Tolson’s “extremist atheist” angle to see it. For example, these two posts (here and here) at God Is for Suckers! mention interesting tidbits from a book not mentioned by Tolson, the Cambridge Companion to Atheism. The book describes the typical atheist as:

“less authoritarian and suggestible, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, more tolerant of others, law-abiding, compassionate, conscientious, and well educated. They are of high intelligence, and many are committed to the intellectual and scholarly life. In short, they are good to have as neighbors.”

Moving from individual to societal analyses, we see that: “High levels of organic atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low poverty rates and strong gender equality.”

I’m fond of AC Grayling’s piece “Faith’s Last Gasp” in Prospect magazine. Grayling writes that “today’s ‘religious upsurge’ …is a reaction to defeat.”

What we are witnessing is not the resurgence of religion, but its death throes. Two considerations support this claim. One is that there are close and instructive historical precedents for what is happening now. The second comes from an analysis of the nature of contemporary religious politics.

[…]

Millions died [in the Counter-Reformation], and Catholicism won some battles even as it lost the war. We are witnessing a repeat today, this time with Islamism resisting the encroachment of a way of life that threatens it, and as other religious groups join them in a (strictly temporary, given the exclusivity of faith) alliance for the cause of religion in general.

As before, the grinding of historical tectonic plates will be painful and protracted. But the outcome is not in doubt. As private observance, religion will of course survive among minorities; as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its last—characteristically bloody—fling. [emphasis added]

Steve Cornell writes “It’s not easy to be an atheist,” but it’s a wingnut piece of pro-religious propaganda rather than a serious effort. Cornell relies on the standard slurs that atheists are purposeless, illogical, immoral, and arrogant. PZ Myers declined to blog about Cornell’s attack, but Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon and Southern Fried Skeptic do quite an admirable job. On the charge of atheist immorality, Marcotte observes that Cornell is “so lacking in empathy and common decency that he can’t understand why murder is wrong without a fictional being telling his so,” and writes that she:

“can’t help but point out that it’s really rich of a person who dismisses mountains and mountains of evidence about evolutionary theory to accuse others of being willfully ignorant. What is increasingly apparent is this guy is utterly unaware of the existence of thousands of years of philosophy.”

Ignorance of history and science are also central to Cornell’s screed, which is similar to the “Christian nation” crowd’s plans to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement next spring. Joseph Conn at American United deplores their poor understanding of American history and exposes their shallow comprehension of pre-Constitutional religious establishment:

…Robertson and the other non-Anglican “dissenters” are, in fact, getting ready to celebrate a centuries-old religious establishment that would have fined, whipped, imprisoned or banished them – or maybe put them to death. Individuals of their religious stripe were persecuted minorities then; today they are politically powerful and they seek to persecute others who fail their religious test.

Peter Nuhn at NoGodBlog also has some great commentary:

If we are to truly celebrate the religious significance of the 400th Anniversary of Jamestown, I say we take all non-Anglicans, such as, Catholics, Baptists, etc. and have them thrown in jail without charges, tortured for their heresy of not being a member of the Church of England and maybe release them next year after the anniversary is over and see if they maybe can't learn a little humility, a little human understanding, and just a little toleration for their fellow humans.

The Christianists are once again conflating the settlement of the colonies with the founding of our nation, and ignoring the wisdom of the Founders in the process. Shame on them.

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Yesterday, there was another response (of sorts) to my most recent published letter:

Liberals talk of tolerance but still disregard religion

A recent letter writer who was an American Civil Liberties Union member, a liberal and atheist, implied that religion was perfectly fine on public property as long as Christians went into a closet and shut the door before praying.

No God-fearing person of any religion should be placed out of sight just because a non-believer or those of other faiths may be offended by their exercising their religious rights.

Liberals talk of acceptance, equality, tolerance and protection of civil liberties. Their actions and words tell the true intent and mind-set of persons with obvious low regard for true civil liberties.

[name and address redacted]

This illustrates the problems engendered by the heavy editing that goes into the op-ed pages of many publications: in many cases, he was upset by things I did not say, did not mean, or had clarified in the follow-up posts on the newspaper’s website. Accordingly, I went easy on his potentially unintentional misinterpretations:

I made no implications about secret and closeted prayer except by quoting the words of Jesus from Matthew 6:5, which commanded such a practice. I would not wish to restrict individual or group worship, in either private or public; I wholeheartedly support our secular nation’s religiously pluralistic character, and its Constitutional protections. People are free—as they should be—to evangelize on streetcorners, gather around flagpoles, and even pray without ceasing if they wish. I would just like to know how Christians square such public prayer with Jesus’ straightforward injunction against it.

Public piety can often turn into a particularly ugly form of coercive indoctrination when the power of the state is co-opted to support religious opinion, as the practice of mandated prayer in public schools illustrated. Is the faith of some really so insecure that it requires constant affirmation by others, even when such affirmation must be coerced?

The caricature of liberalism that the writer puts forth is an inaccurate as the “War on Xmas” perennially hyped by Faux News. Liberals not only “talk of acceptance, equality, tolerance and protection of civil liberties,” we actually work for it through the lives we live and the organizations—such as the ACLU—that we support. “True civil liberties” may sometimes require state protection, but they should never lead to activities mandated and coerced by the state.

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In explaining Ann Coulter’s potential voting fraud this past February, this Palm Beach Post article notes that Coulter registered with the Address Confidentiality Program. It then observes that:

The Address Confidentiality Program, passed by the legislature last year, is designed to keep private the addresses of FBI agents, police officers, correction workers and victims of domestic violence. Several people said Monday that Coulter claims to be in that last category, but her paperwork is not public record.

Developing…

(Thanks to El Fuego at DU for the tip.)

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As one who tends to be exacting in responding to criticism, I cannot help but admire the lengths to which Andrew Sullivan went to defend his book The Conservative Soul from this review/attack by National Review’s Jonah Goldberg. Here is the money quote:

This is not a review of the book; it's a diagnosis of the closed mind of many movement conservatives. Notice how it conforms to an ideological mindset: dissecting the world into the outer heretics, the lesser heretics, the faithful and the heroes. It actually confirms my diagnosis that conservatives have stopped thinking and fallen into the trap of policing their own fixed ideology. That's their problem, and Goldberg is part of it. But I hope they recover. We need a thinking conservatism, not this brittle ideology. [emphasis added]

(For anyone unfamiliar with the verb “fisk,” Wikipedia has a definition here.)

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Does everyone remember the triumphalist red-state maps that clogged the Internet after the 2004 election, claiming a mandate for Bush and the GOP? MyDD has some maps supporting the Democratic mandate (by a ten-point margin, remember!) from last week’s House midterms. Here is my favorite, showing the progress of Progressivism:

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Time magazine’s latest cover story is a seemingly innocuous picture of the purple “center” that the midterm results supposedly indicate. MediaMatters compares the current tepid Democratic cover with the dramatic Republican cover from 1994.

Media bias, anyone?

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Glenn Greenwald writes in “George Bush and GOP House Leaders: Conservatism Defined” about the meme claiming that the failure of the Bush administration’s failure is not a failure of conservatism:

It is the responsibility of journalists and, really, everyone, to preserve the basic truth that our country has been run exclusively by conservatives for virtually all of the last six years. It is true, as many (including myself, repeatedly) have noted, the Bush movement discarded "conservative principles" as they exist in text books. But it is equally true -- and far more important -- that all that has been done to this country has been done under the banner of "conservatism" and has been done by self-proclaimed "conservatives." There should be no debate about that because it is simply fact.

[…]

Semantic disputes over "real conservatism" are meaningless. In the only way that matters, "conservatives" are those who are responsible for the Bush presidency and everything it brought.

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An anti-science kook emailed PZ Myers, and Myers let him have it with both barrels.

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My previous post—which I had expected to be the last one in the thread—now has a reply of sorts. This was posted earlier today:

I don't recall insulting you...but if you say I did...my apologies. I hereby withdraw from any further discussion...on this particular letter to the editor. My point was that you lecture us. You talk down to us. You patronize and you condescend. You truly must step back and look at yourself. Every time I see your name on the Op-Ed page, my first reaction is to cringe, because you seem so angry and impatient with those of us who don't "deserve" your approval.

I tried to let “goldenrule” have the last word, but I just couldn't resist:

I find it interesting that you don’t consider “arrogant,” “self-important,” and “proselytizing” to be insults. (Or, apparently, “lecture,” “patronize,”, and “condescend.”) I suppose stating that you know of better uses for my time was meant constructively? Were the “learned credentials,” “cretins,” and “deserving approval” cracks not meant to impute a sense of superiority to me? If you say that none of these remarks was meant to be insulting, however, then I will apologize to you.

Perhaps you should step back and take a look at the emotional overreaction you have to my letters. I am at a loss about this, and about the emotions you project onto me and my motivation. I simply endeavor to make a contribution to the public discussion that exists on the letters page; an impatient person would surely have already given up both on that discussion and on this one.

In the spirit of discussion, I take issue with your opinions that I "talk down" and "condescend" in my writing. If anything, the opposite is true. I assume that others are literate, cognitively capable, and possessed of an appropriate vocabulary and an adequate sense of history. I am surprised to see that, throughout all your verbiage, you have studiously avoided addressing the content of my letter.

Were you so busy cringing at the sight of my name that you neglected to read what I wrote? (Since names are published at the end of letters, I'm curious about the timing of your cringes. Do you read the letter first and then cringe after seeing my name, or do you read my name first and cringe before reading what I have written? Neither scenario paints a very flattering portrait.)

update: A follow-up post is here.

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This piece on “Forthcoming books for the soul-searching Republican” at TNR is funny for everyone who’s read too many political books over the past few years. My favorite is this slap at yellin’ Zell Miller:

A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Liberal Republican

The 2006 elections proved one thing definitively: Today's Republican Party can no longer compete in all 50 states. Republicans were wiped out across the former slaveless states of the North, including once-solid parts of Ohio, upstate New York, and New Hampshire. In this rueful memoir, a folksy Yankee Republican tells of how he no longer feels at home in his own party--and offers advice for what the GOP must do to rebuild its presence across the nation.

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I had thought this thread would be old news, but “goldenrule” responded:

"...but remember that it’s far easier to complain about a writer’s tone than to address his argument..."

"We’re far too individualistic for that, as the word “freethinkers” implies."

Again, your arrogance and self-importance rear their ugly heads. You could easily make your point in half the time and 25% of the verbiage you seem to love to share with all of us. We are not impressed. You would better use your time helping others instead of proselytizing. It must be so difficult for someone of your learned credentials to be surrounded by such cretins. How DO you manage?

I believe everyone has the right to pray in silence. Who cares?

As for the pledge of allegiance, your hard-earned money and their linking with "God"...can you really waste your valuable time on this earth worrying about such minutiae? History tells us that this nation was founded by people who came here to escape religious persecution. Have a blessed day.

My response:

You’re right: I could use significantly fewer words, particularly if I didn’t “waste my valuable time” responding to baseless attacks. Eliminating minutiae such as supporting evidence for my arguments would also help achieve the brevity you claim to value so highly. If I simply spit out ad hominem insults rather than contributing to the discussion, my comments could be even more succinct.

Thank you for the advice.

update: A follow-up is here.

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Richard Dawkins defuses a common attack in “Why I Am Hostile Toward Religion:”

I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice toward religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement. But my interlocutor usually doesn’t leave it at that. He may go on to say something like this: "Doesn’t your hostility mark you out as a fundamentalist atheist, just as fundamentalist in your own way as the wingnuts of the Bible Belt in theirs?" I need to dispose of this accusation of fundamentalism, for it is distressingly common.

[…]

I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.

He reiterates his passion for scientific learning, and explains how fundamentalism threatens the capacity for critical thought:

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.

[…]

Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, "sensible" religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue.

(Thanks to NoGodBlog for the tip.)

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