Burn out!

I need a break.

Some readers have wondered how I am able to wade through all of the hate-filled, small minded material I wade through in order to write this blog. Good question. And answer is that there is a limit to what one person can endure, and for me my limit - at least for now - has been reached.

Imagine no arguments over God

Dennis Prager has a new column that "makes the case for the necessity, not the existence, of God." I'm not sure I understand the difference. If God is necessary, as Prager argues, and yet doesn't actually exist, in what sense could it be said that he is necessary? Anyway, he gives a fourteen item list of "problems" he imagines exist If there is no God.

If there is one thing that vexes me most about the modern conservative mind it is their claim to having the moral authority for their positions based on "thus saith the Lord." Usually when I debate with a right-winger and attack what little logic that actually employ, almost inevitably it ends on their part with "well, I'm right ... sorry you can't see that." God, as you might imagine, is always their final appeal. They are "right" because they represent God's position.

That is where Prager heads in his first problem:

Without God, there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil" ... unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

For my part, I simply refuse to argue about the existence of God. That question has vexed my mind ever since the day in my early teen age years when I first matured enough to question an assumption I had been taught from my earliest days. I have probably read more about that one subject than any other. The problem is, we simply have no way of having certain knowledge to answer it. All the philosophical "proofs" for God's existence fall short of being proof. (Which isn't to say that individuals do not find some persuasive enough to take Pascal's wager; but as far as being absolute proof, they all fail.). Therefore, I am an agnostic. I just don't know for a certainty whether or not God exists. Also, I have no desire to proselytize. Everyone should believe as their reason leads them. I just argue for civility in the matter.

Now to be sure I have certain notions I feel could not possibly be true about God if God exists. I don't believe a God with intelligence enough to create a wonderful cosmos such as there is could be so petty and twisted as to create us humans with the intent of damning most of us. Calvin's God seems like an evil tyrant to my way of thinking.

I can't fathom a God who instituted human slavery as many have believed down through the centuries, even in our country where statesmen like Confederate President Jefferson Davis argued passionately for the "divine institution" of slavery.

I can't believe God created the diversity we see around us and yet believes in absolute conformity (read: orthodoxy and its child bigotry).

Of course I realize many simply disagree about these things and others I haven't gone into. And therein lies the rub. Postulating the existence of God doesn't answer for us the thorny questions of what is right and what is wrong.

I've said before on my blog that I am a humanist and that my ethics are humanist. I don't know for certain that God exists, but I do know that we humans exist. We could debate endlessly over what some esoterical God believes is right or wrong, but we stand a better chance of arriving at a reasonable consensus among humans. The agnostic Robert Ingersoll once commented that murder is universally understood to be wrong and against the law because (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the time to locate his actual quote) people everywhere object to being murdered. I should add also that I believe humanism can be either religious or non-religious.

So I simply believe Prager's first problem is much ado about nothing and that the study of ethics actually would be much improved if separated from theology.

I've always worried about people who need an alleged holy book to tell them right from wrong. If God created us humans, was our brain not part of the creation? Is the brain not "designed" for thinking? We deny our humanity by refusing to use our reason and substituting someone's else's ideas for our own.

Is the argument that right and wrong is simply whatever God declares it to be? I think many believe that. Which is why so many swear that God prefers certain of his creatures over others and they feel justified in their racism. It is why so many have no problem condemning and harassing those of a different sexual orientation. "God hates fags," as one religious group bluntly puts it (others do so less bluntly) and so do they. Some actually believe God thinks it is okay to have sex with children, despite the fact that human reason believes it would be wrong to take advantage of another human in such a way. If right and wrong depends on God's caprice, in what sense can one argue that God is just, righteous, or holy?

Prager's problem number four is:

Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane.

Unfortunately for Prager, his analogy is making my point. Airplanes of course are an invention of humans. And the instruction manual (actually manuals, to be accurate) is conceived and written by humans using human reason. And no sane person would argue that any one manual is the absolute truth above all others, or that nothing further could be added to the manual even after human knowledge has increased.

I firmly believe arguments about God are fruitless enterprises. Discuss and explore the question of God, sure. But just remember: we all do not see or understand things in the same way. And that is okay. But the freedom to agree or disagree does not seem to be a part of revealed religion.

Old Thomas Paine said it best, I believe, in his immortal Age of Reason:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

I recommend that book to everyone.

Other of Prager's problems are worth a look, but I haven't the time now. Maybe I will explore more of them later.

Homosexuality is contagious

At least according to the warped thinking of Fr. Jeremy Davies of Westminster, UK. Here is a story detailing his ridiculous thinking on the subject.

Around a month ago I posted about a father who had tried to beat the "demon of homosexuality" out of his teenaged son. Now Fr. Davies, a priest from "the leading diocese of the Catholic Church of England and Wales," has said: "Among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor."

Now this is the type of religious thinking that turns reasonable people away.

The above story about Davies also states:

He also said that Satan is responsible for having blinded most secular humanists to the "dehumanising effects of contraception and abortion and IVF, of homosexual 'marriages', of human cloning and the vivisection of human embryos in scientific research." Extreme secular humanism, "atheist scientism", is comparable to "rational satanism" and these are leading Europe into a dangerous state of apostasy. "Only by a genuine personal decision for Christ and the Church can someone separate himself from it."

Give me a break! What century is this anyway?

Will people never outgrow the urge to use religion as an excuse to hate others?

McCain gets the message

The GOP, the party of narrow-mindedness and regress, evidently is now attempting to ease the worried minds of hard-core conservatives who were sent into a frenzy over the suggestion that McCain was thinking about choosing a pro-choice running mate.

According to Christianity Today:

Republican National Committee officials told Fox today that McCain is no longer considering Ridge, who supports abortion rights. McCain has announced that he will announce his running mate Aug. 26, the day after the Democratic National Convention ends.

Fox reports that senior McCain advisers and aides have told RNC officials that McCain “got the message” last week that choosing a running mate who supports abortion rights would not be helpful.

I never doubted that in the end he would "get the message."

His aide Rick Davis actually had the nerve to say:

I think one of the things that is important, especially for John McCain, as unique a politician as he is, is to demonstrate the diversity and differences of ideology I would say of our party ... I think one of the things that people forget about is we are not a very monolithic as a party. We really want to show some of that.

The GOP is not diverse. It nowadays seems mostly to consist of extreme right-wingers: Christian supremacists, "culture warriors", bigots, and assorted nutjobs.

Democrats unable to "stand up and say no to a black guy"

That is what Rush Limbaugh, "THE voice of conservatives" (I'm not being snide, that is what his peers recently said about him), is saying. "Talent on loan from God" he claims, unfortunately it obviously has been perverted by the Devil himself!

Anyway, Limbaugh assessed the situation this way:

He's -- it's -- to me, it is striking how unqualified Obama is and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy. They just -- they were -- liberal policies are always going to end up strangling liberals, too.

And I think, I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It's the reverse of it. They've, they've ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who's not qualified, who has not earned it.

More details can be found here.

The debate over his qualifications is just a sham. According to our Constitution he meets all the qualifications. There are no other tests a candidate must meet. And each individual voter is allowed to decide the matter on what is important to them.

Oh, before I forget: right-wingers say it is Obama who is playing the race card!

McCain advised to avoid Nazis in VP choice

Well, that seems to me to be what Paul Ibrahim is hinting at in his column John McCain Needs a Conservative Choice for Vice President.

After quoting McCain's statement that "Americans want us to work together" when he floated the prospect of choosing Tom Ridge, a pro-choice politician, as his running mate, Ibrahim makes this sly comparison:

First of all, and this goes in parentheses, even though reaching across the aisle can be good when appropriate, there is nothing inherently good about "working together." Neville Chamberlain "worked together" with the Germans, and that didn´t turn out so hot.

Hmmmmm ... those who believe in a woman's right of choice on the matter of abortion are Nazis?

Mike Huckabee calls for revival

According to Kevin Mooney of CNSNews.com:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and a group of evangelical leaders called for a new “Great Awakening” spiritual revival of the American people Friday, at a press conference in Washington ... Huckabee, a former Republican contender for the presidential nomination, said the “Great Awakening” is needed to help revitalize the nation’s founding principles and cultural standing so that innocent life can be spared.


Specifically, the innocent life Huck is speaking of is that of the unborn. He says that the "success or failure of the pro-life cause is directly tied to the spiritual health and well-being of American civilization."

Lost on Huckabee and evangelical and fundamentalist Christians is the possibility that one can be a spiritual and/or religious person and still believe that abortion is an acceptable alternative. I did a post on this back in March titled A religious defense for a woman's right to abortion, which I hope is helpful in this connection.

Therefore, instead of a revival, I think an new Age of Enlightenment is needed.

Huckabee also wants to bring the Founding Fathers into the matter. This would be a good place to point to the extremely valuable blog American Creation, which deals in detail about the religious history of nation's founding. I recently added this blog to my blogroll and want to strongly urge everyone to go enjoy the helpful info found there.

Mooney's article goes on to state:

The separation that exists now between contemporary Americans and the Founding Fathers can be traced in large part to judicial activism and historical revision, Huckabee said in response to a question from CNSNews.com.

Huckabee should speak of historical revision when in the next paragraph we find him suggesting that

Out of the 56 signers to the Declaration of Independence, 26 had biblical or seminary degrees, Huckabee pointed out. This simple fact is routinely overlooked in educational institutions, he lamented.

I firmly believe this is either an outright lie on Huckabee's part or at the very least an example of ignorance. There is a helpful little site that gives information about all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

All I could gather from my own examination is that John Witherspoon was indeed a Presbyterian Minister with four years of divinity school under his belt and a later award of a Doctor's Degree of Divinity. Robert Treat Paine was said to have begun the study of theology, but no mention was made of any degrees. William Williams evidently studied theology with his Pastor father. So at best, Huckabee's claim is greatly inflated.

No doubt the absolute biggest misrepresentation of the Religious Right on this subject is the idea that the Founders of our country were religious in the same manner that they are. It just wasn't so.

The facts are that slightly over ninety percent of Americans today believe in God and at the same time a majority believe that women should have the right to an abortion. Thus, the Religious Right are not wanting a "revival" so much as a mass conversion to their way of thinking.

They would love to use the power of our government in order to make that happen by force.

Doug Giles promotes lie that "most liberals are atheists or agnostics"

With polls consistently showing that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God it seems moronic that anyone would say "that most liberals are atheists or agnostics who pride themselves on being skeptics." But that is what conservative thinker Doug Giles does in ridiculous piece, The New Jesus: Obama Be Thy Name.

Giles' article is filled with nonsense like "Barack, in reality, is much different from the fabricated Jesus image the Dim-o-crats would have us worship." The conservatives should speak of a fabricated Jesus when theirs is a warring, gay hating, abortion obsessed preacher. Not a picture the Bible gives the least evidence for painting.

In trying to pass off the enthusiasm Obama has generated among many Americans as fanatical hysteria, Giles spouts off

For God’s sake, Obama-ites, God can barely live up to the hype you guys are giving the young Hussein. You’re tripping way too hard over the grossly inexperienced junior state senator spawned from the scheming netherworld of Chicago based politics.

Why should that suggestion not be considered blasphemous by religious believers?

He adds, "To his followers, he’s Jesus (pronounced “Hey-Soos,” as Barack would have us say)." Hey-Soos? What do you suppose he means by that? Not very Christ-like, if I do say so myself. But besides the slur, just who are these people who supposedly believe Obama is Jesus?

How much sense does it make to start off saying that most liberals are atheists and agnostics and then go on to paint them as religious fanatics who believe that Obama is a Jesus-like savior?

Neither accusation is true.

I suppose Townhall.com considers this lying editorial a serious analysis.

I consider it just another piece of right-wing idiocy. So much hate, so little sense.

Conservative Republicans: A laxative for America?

One conservative pundit believes

The United States of America is suffering from a severe case of social and political constipation. Liberals, such as Barack Obama and so many of the democrats who are in control of Congress are addicted to invasive remedies.

In other words, America is full of sh*t according to Phil Harris.

We must remember that when a conservative criticizes America, it is merely constructive criticsm. When liberals look at the situation and suggest it can be improved, they are traitors and America haters, part of the Blame America First Crowd.

Anyway, here is Harris' prescription:

America will have her moment come November of this year. Conservative Republicans are the closest thing to a natural, steady remedy for what ails this nation. Handing the Congress over to the democrats was an experimental treatment that many demanded. We need to correct that mistake, because it has proven to be costly, counter productive, and painful in the end.

No, the U. S. has been suffering for the better part of eight years with pain in the rear end. I refer to the hemorrhoids currently occupying the White House. And what is needed is a complete hemorrhoidectomy, not a laxative.

Conservatives show no remorse over their culture of hate

I do not for one minute want to suggest that the actions of mentally deranged persons such as Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church shooter Jim Adkisson are the direct responsibility of right-wing hate merchants like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savange, and Sean Hannity (to name just a few).

But my feelings are that folks like them, and the parrots who listen and obviously are unwilling or unable to use their own gray matter to sift the tiny fragments of truth from the copious amounts of grandstanding, are responsible for creating a battlefield of political and cultural warfare that continually divides us and breeds extreme mistrust and even hate among us.

Therefore, I find disgusting all the defenses offered on behalf of the hate-merchants. And I also find the ridiculous minimizing of the situation from right-wingers insulting and repugnant.

A case in point is Brian Maloney's blog post Blame Game Returns.

He begins with a snide introduction, "Between blogs, talk radio and Republicans, it's getting hard to keep up with all of the global mayhem they're causing these days," proceeds to give several examples with hyperlinks, and then goes on to downplay and make light of the seriousness of the matter by writing:

What's next? Is Rush to blame for your burnt toast in the morning? Is that unusually weak cup of coffee from Starbucks the result of Bill O'Reilly distracting the baristas? Is Mark Levin causing traffic congestion in New Jersey?

The silliness never ends.

No, it doesn't and evidently neither does the incivility.

Hate mongering right and left

I was reading an article about the connection between right-wing hate mongering and the recent Knoxville church shooting. Actually, the article pretty much was an attempt by Warner Todd Huston to defend the indefensible.

One paragraph I found especially obnoxious:

First of all, calling O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity "right-wing Shock jocks" is absurd. The woman's obscene rhetoric is itself beginning to make the lie to her claim of being an objective commentator on the subject. Worse, it seems to me this sort of loose theorizing is as much an example of hate as what she claims comes from her targets on talk radio.

Yeah, sure.

But one thing Huston brought up did trouble me greatly:

Recently, for instance, Cafe Press had to cancel a T-Shirt offering that featured the map of Red/Blue America on it with the words "Kill Republicans" emblazoned over it. (Cafe Press is an on-line company where users can sign up to sell their own T-Shirt designs) Early in August of 2005, Michelle Malkin reported on graffiti in New York City that proclaimed "I kill Republicans."

Anyone partaking of that type of rhetoric is a betrayer of the liberal position. Perhaps this represents a tit-for-tat type of mentality held by newbies to the debate. Perhaps some people are so repulsed by the right-wing extremism that is so rampant in our country today that they feel they have to take a stand and lash back.

Wrong stand.

One thing I strongly feel about the conservative versus liberal debate is that we on the left, those of us who truly believe in liberal principles, must never allow ourselves to be dragged down into the gutter by the right-wing extremists. A slogan such as "Save America, Kill Republicans" is extreme right-wing philosophy lifted and modified to represent anti-conservative - not liberal - sentiments.

I spend a lot of time examining right-wing dumbth, but there is too much dumbth emanating from the political left nowadays. We lose ground when we follow the lead of the conservatives and partake of their philosophy of hate and intolerance. Some of the comments I see from lefties on liberal blogs cause me to fear that emotions are starting to get the better of reason among too many of us. That is straight out of the right-wing playbook. These things hurt our cause and destroys the foundation on which our philosophy stands.

Is John McCain losing his mind?

What is McCain thinking? Knowing the support of the Religious Right and social conservatives - in other words, the Republican base - is crucial to his chances for winning in November, McCain is floating the possibility he might choose a "pro-choice" candidate to be his running mate:

"And also I feel that — and I'm not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together," McCain added. "You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don't think that that would necessarily would rule Tom Ridge out."

Sure, Americans want to see bipartisanship, and most do approve of abortion rights. But McCain truly is getting senile if he is serious about this. Conservatives simply won't stand for it. That's the problem with conservatives: no tolerance.

I've never been able to understand why the GOP is going to nominate John McCain as its candidate and I'm continually amused by his inept campaign.

The truth told about modern conservatives

Here are two absolute must reads for anyone interested in the liberal versus conservative debate.

First, reading Jim David's entertaining The Conservatives Made Me Do It would be time well spent. David accurately notes concerning modern conservatives that

They use violent rhetoric against liberals, earn millions, and call it "entertainment." In one of her speeches at a conservative conference, Ann Coulter said, "We need to execute people like [American Taliban] John Walker [Lindh] in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too." She also "joked" that the best way to talk to liberals would be with baseball bats. Michael Savage told a caller to his former MSNBC television show, "Get AIDS and die, you pig." Commentator Dick Morris, on a break from sucking prostitutes' toes, wrote a book that labeled liberals as "traitors" who should be decapitated. When the public cries foul, they backtrack with "Just kidding."

Next, I highly recommend Scott Cawelti's Why are conservatives so angry?

Cawelti begins with this observation:

One trait seems to mark most die-hard conservatives: anger. They're furious fit-pitchers. And they seem to have come out of the chute that way, not starting life as good-natured, easygoing types who saw the light, but as rhetorical flame-throwers from diaperhood. Was Ann Coulter ever good-natured?

But what makes this editorial gold is the three reasons Cawelti advances for explaining conservative anger. Sure makes a lot of sense to me.

I hope everyone follows the links above and enjoys these bits.

Liberals are "mean-spirited, greedy, selfish malcontents with authoritarian tendencies"?

Seems so according to Peter Schweizer, author of "Makers and Takers," in this Daily Policy Digest:

Using the latest data and research, Schweizer shows that the claims that conservatives are mean-spirited, greedy, selfish malcontents with authoritarian tendencies are a myth. Instead, he finds that many of these claims actually apply more to liberals than to conservatives.

Some 71 percent of conservatives say you have an obligation to care for a seriously injured spouse or parent versus less than half (46 percent) of liberals.

Conservatives have a better work ethic and are much less likely to call in sick than their liberal counterparts.

Liberals are two and a half times more likely to be resentful of others' success and 50 percent more likely to be jealous of other people's good luck.

Liberals are two times more likely to say it is okay to cheat the government out of welfare money you don't deserve.

Some 55 percent of conservatives say they get satisfaction from putting someone else's happiness ahead of their own, versus only 20 percent of liberals.

Those who are "very liberal" are three times more likely than conservatives to throw things when they get angry.

I haven't read this book, but I simply can't buy that Schweizer has data that proves all this. It's too fanciful. These data must be cooked.

Now I don't propose that we get on our ethical high horses and try to make out that liberals are the moral superiors of conservatives. Humans are too faulty and plagued by too many internal inconsistencies to suggest that. As great as most of us are at preaching, we mostly are inferior at consistently practicing what we preach.

But if anyone takes the trouble to strip away the overblown and incendiary rhetoric used against liberalism by conservatives and just look at the facts, there should be no disputing that liberalism is more altruistic than conservatism, at least in theory. If this is not true, where did the criticism of our being "bleeding heart liberals" come from? Call us misguided, well intentioned but foolish, but don't try to palm off the above characteristics as being typical of liberals. It just won't do.

Update on McCain's alleged plagiarism post

Yesterday I posted on the fact that McCain apparently borrowed without attribution from Wikipedia when he spoke about the situation in Georgia.

As I made clear, this isn't that big a deal and I don't believe it should cause earth-shaking fallout. My interest is in how the media and right-wing bloggers will deal with it. Had this been Obama, I've no doubt it would be the subject of great scrutiny.

In doing a Google search today, I find, just as I suspected, that little was made of the matter.

Now if there really was a liberal media, rather than the corporate media we do have, wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity to embarrass McCain? But what do we find? A MSM as silent as the tomb on this matter.

Checking the blogosphere I found a couple of items so far.

Paul at Power Line wrote:

CQ's suggestion of wrongdoing by McCain strikes me as ridiculous. The information that the McCain campaign apparently obtained from Wikipedia is simple factual background material. Would it be improper for a candidate to say, based on research in an encyclopedia, that "XXXXX is a land of approximately __ million people and has been at peace with its neighbors since the YYYY war of 18__? That's essentially all McCain was doing here. The idea that he should have cited Wikipedia as his source for basic factual information about Georgia is absurd. In almost 50 years of listening to political candidates, I've never heard one cite a source for this sort of background information...This story, then, looks like much ado about nothing, and I'm surprised that CQ decided to run it.

Okay, fair enough, although I still think the honest thing to do would be to cite Wikipedia. No doubt, this was a staffer's shortcoming, but it isn't too late for McCain to set this straight.

However, the real significance of this matter is touched on by Jonathan Singer, who wrote:

But taking a step back, it's always interesting to think about these stories from the perspective of the shoe being on the other foot -- what would the reaction have been had this story come out in relation to the other candidate. In this case, what would have happened had Barack Obama, not John McCain, been caught cheating on the 3 AM test by appropriating from Wikipedia? Heck, what would have happened if a college student, or even a sixth grader, had been exposed for such actions?

Again, I do see this as a tempest in a teapot. My point is: how often have we had to endure nit-picking screeds on Obama tempests such as his middle name, his skinniness, his flag pin, his faux presidential seal, his pledge protocol, whether he knows how many states are in the union, blah, blah, blah...

Republicans are still the party of Big Business

If you go to John McCain's website you can find his theory of taxation for Corporations:

Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent: A lower corporate tax rate is essential to keeping good jobs in the United States. America was once a low-tax business environment, but as our trade partners lowered their rates, America failed to keep pace. We now have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, making America a less attractive place for companies to do business. American workers deserve the chance to make fine products here and sell them around the globe.

Back in the real world Reuters has released this story:

Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.

During that time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion, according to Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who requested the GAO study.

This troubles me. It reminds me of Leona Helmsley's alleged statement, "We don't pay taxes ... Only the little people pay taxes ..."

Now to be fair, Reuters reports that

The GAO said corporations escaped paying federal income taxes for a variety of reasons including operating losses, tax credits and an ability to use transactions within the company to shift income to low tax countries.

But even with this in mind it is true also that as Dorgan said, it is "a shocking indictment of the current tax system." And this would only get worse under a McCain administration.

How is it so many people do not see through this Republican charade?

What will MSM and right-wing bloggers say about McCain's alleged plagiarism?

Political Insider's Taegan Goddard reports:

A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.

Check out the link I provided for the particular instances.

Now I wonder what would happen if Barack Obama were found to have heavily borrowed speech material from another source without attribution?

Well, in fact he was accused of plagiarism by the Clinton campaign for borrowing a portion of a speech by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. And what happened? At one point Plagiarism Today reported:

The story has grown to incredible proportions. Google News is reporting over 900 news references for “Obama Plagiarism”, including over 150 unique stories....

In his defense Obama said the portion of the speech he borrowed was used on suggestion by the author, Patrick. But he apologized for not giving proper credit.

Evidently Wikipedia did not suggest McCain use their material without crediting the source.

And speaking of Wikipedia, they have a good List of plagiarism controversies that is interesting. I noticed under the Politics section that it noted the case of Joseph Biden who was "forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic US Presidential nominations when it was alleged that he had failed a 1965 introductory law school course on legal methodology due to plagiarism."

Now I'm not looking for or desiring anything like that for the McCain case. I just want to see how the alleged liberal media handle it. So far I haven't seen anything on the television about it. And I want to see how many right-wing bloggers will show their hypocrisy by defending McCain or sweeping this under rug.

A more legitimate concern, at least in my opinion, is the way McCain constantly misspeaks and too often just get facts wrong. It leaves me wondering if he is just intellectually lazy or beginning to get senile.

President Bush's key to failure

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting cover story for the latest issue of Newsweek: What Bush Got Right. I found it very thought-provoking indeed.

My personal assessment of President Bush is that he simply is the wrong man for the job. He lacks in huge measures the intelligence, judgement, and character necessary for the job.

He replaced a very competent administrator - though admittedly one who suffered from character deficits of his own - who was very popular with the American people. In fact, I believe it is clear that the only reason President Clinton was able to survive the Lewinsky scandal was because he had been recognized by the people as an able Chief Executive.

But Zakaria correctly notes that Bush

...now enters his 23rd consecutive month with an approval rating under 40 percent. (It currently stands at 32 percent.) No matter what he does, or what happens in the world, the public seems to have decided that Bush has been a failure.

I believe Zakaria also has a point when he writes:

There was a U.S. president who came into office convinced that everything his predecessor had done was feckless, stupid, ill-informed and venal. He rejected and tried to reverse everything that he could, almost as an article of faith. Before he had even examined the policies carefully, he knew that they had to be changed. The base of his party was delighted by his clarity and fighting spirit.

That president, of course, was George W. Bush. His decision to blindly repudiate anything associated with Bill Clinton is what got us into this mess in the first place.

No doubt this was a key factor in Bush's failure. The story goes into detail about changes in direction that the administration has taken, but it is obviously too little to late to be much help to either our country or to Bush's legacy.

Gay marriage and drunk driving

Get a load of what one letter to the editor writer seems to foolishly suggest:

...I strongly disagree with the assertion that what other people do has no effect on me.

What other people do DOES affect me. Let’s suppose I am a very cautious driver and am always doing all I can to obey traffic rules and avoid an accident. As I am driving down a two-way highway where the speed limit is 65 miles per hour, I see another car coming the opposite direction. The driver is drunk. Seconds before we cross paths, the driver — void of good judgment because of alcohol — swerves and kills me in a head-on collision.

In this example my life was extinguished because of the choice of that drunk person. There are countless other ways that the choices of others affect us. The choice of others to be married to another of the same gender affects me greatly.

Well, that's extremely dramatic, to be sure. But what connection it has with reality is left unsaid by the writer. Which is just as well, because there is none. (And this is nit-picking I suppose, but what difference does the speed limit make in this little tale?)

I have always wondered why so many conservatives concern themselves with the private business of others.

Supporting the right of gay couples to wed endangers no one, not even the busybodies who want to dictate to everyone else how they should live.

On Obama's alleged creation of a "pandering oxymoron"

One John W. Lillpop writes:

Most regrettably, Barack Obama has decided that trolling for votes through traitorous pandering is more important than precise speech.

Thus, his recent pledge of amnesty for "law-abiding illegal aliens."

Regardless of one's feelings about illegal aliens, the simple fact is that their presence alone disqualifies each and every one from being "law abiding."

At a minimum, all illegal aliens have violated immigration laws and US borders. Many have engaged in other criminal acts, including consumption of public services to which they are not entitled.

To leave open the possibility that any illegal alien can be logically seen as "law abiding" is about as absurd as describing Islam as a "Religion of Peace."

If you are like me you are probably wondering why if this is so, Lillpop didn't present proof of his allegation through quotation.

The answer, of course, is that like so many of the things right-wingers have attempted to attribute to Obama, the proof doesn't exist to substantiate the charge.

In other words, Lillpop's accusation, picked up and spread throughout the right-wing blogosphere like some insidious virous, is just a falsehood.

Obama's position on the issue of immigration reform is well know and easily obtainable.

He has never implied that illegal aliens are "law-abiding citizens." Here, for example, is a small portion of his floor statement on immigration reform, from 2006:

Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans.

But I fully appreciate that we cannot create a new guestworker program without making it as close to impossible as we can for illegal workers to find employment. We do not need new guestworkers plus future undocumented immigrants. We need guestworkers instead of undocumented immigrants.

Lillpop's piece is a stench in the nostrils of any honest person.

Those cursing liberals!

NewsBusters editor Matthew Sheffield has been busying himself with a calculus to determine who cusses the most online, liberals or conservatives.

He has determined in his article Liberals and Profanity, a Perfect Match that liberals were the bigger offenders.

He did this using a Google search and Carlin's "seven dirty words." How ingenious ... and unscientific.

You can check out his piece and see how by checking the top conservative and liberal web communities for obscenities and dividing "the number of instances of profanity by the number of pages of the sites on which they appear, then multiplying the result by 100 yields" and finally subtracting the length of his big toe, I believe it was, he arrived at "what might be called a 'profanity quotient.'"

He has established a liberal "profanity quotient" of 14.6 versus a conservative "profanity quotient" of 1.17.

Well I'll be damned!

Then he crows: "That's quite a disparity. Liberals are more than 12 times likely to use profanity than conservatives on the web"

But what takes the cake for me is his reasonings for the disparity:

Some on the right may take this as a sign of their superior intelligence. Others may theorize that it's simply because liberals are angry at President Bush.

More than likely, it is a reflection of how things are offline. Conservatives, especially those who are more religious, are less likely to use profanity in their daily conversation. Don't ask me why the h*ll that is.

Yeah, right ... conservatives swear less because they are more intelligent!

Okay, Bush Derangement Syndrome has seized our minds and turned us into an angry brood who curse like sailors.

Since we know (because conservatives have said so!) that liberals are vehemently anti-God and anti-religion and that the conservatives mostly make up the GOP (God's Own Party), it only stands to reason that our language would be more salty.

These guys never let up with their air of superiority, do they? Dealing with their kind tends to drive me to profanity, I admit.

For my part, I just think foul deeds are far worse than foul words, if you catch my drift.

Twisting Barack's words ... as usual

The WorldNetDaily is featuring this story: Obama tells 7-year-old America not so great.

That is a paraphrase of what Obama really said, of course, and a devious one at that.

The story exposes its own lying headline:

Appearing before a packed high school gym in Elkhart, Ind., the young girl asked Obama why he is running for the White House.

"America is, is no longer, uh, what it could be, what it, it once was," Obama said haltingly. "And I say to myself, I don't want that future for my children."

Talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh, who featured the clip on his show today, marveled that Obama didn't immediately speak of running because he loves America.

"You're running for president of the U.S., and you run down the country to a 7-year-old?" said an incredulous Limbaugh.

With all the conservative hoopla celebrating Rush Limbaugh's twenty years of sputtering vile and offensive verbal garbage into the airwaves, it easy to see the true values of modern conservatives. And his twisting of Obama's words here is a perfect example. Only a people without a devotion to truth can buy into what Limbaugh is selling.

The stuff of which conservative nightmares are made

At least according to Curt Levey it is the idea that Barack Obama would be elected and have a chance to reshape the Supreme Court. Levey is ruminating on a Stuart Taylor article featured in National Journal on the subject.

Levey says that

1) by the end of an 8-year Obama presidency, Justices Scalia and Kennedy would be 80 years old, an age most men never reach, and
2) given the damage the Supreme Court has done to the rule of law since 1969, imagine what the Court would do if it regained a “solid liberal majority.”

For me that is one of the most important reasons why Obama should be elected. The rightward direction the Supreme Court has been heading in since Bush must be reversed now.

What Levey and Taylor declare to be a "conservative nightmare" and "liberal dream" is summed up by him in this way:

In fact, not much imagination is necessary, because Taylor lays out the possible agenda of an Obama Supreme Court. For easy reference, we have transformed Taylor’s “conservative nightmare” scenario into a Top Ten List (while retaining his wording).

Top Ten Things to Expect from an Obama Supreme Court:
#10 expanding and perpetuating the use of racial preferences
#9 creating new constitutional rights to physician-assisted suicide and human cloning
#8 expanding judicial oversight of military detentions and CIA interrogations
#7 prohibiting tuition vouchers for religious schools
#6 banning the death penalty
#5 requiring taxpayers to fund essentially unlimited abortion rights
#4 creating new constitutional rights to massive government welfare and medical care programs
#3 stripping "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance
#2 eroding property rights
#1 ordering all 50 states to bless gay marriage

That actually seems to be a good bit of imagination. Number #3, for example, seems very farfetched to me. In fact, this just seems to me to be talking points for conservatives to go out and mindlessly parrot in an attempt to do what they do best: create and spread fear.

Is it everyone's job to pray for a United States theocracy?

That is what one reader of Mississippi's Clarion Ledger evidently believes:

God needs to be put back in the schools of America. Since we took Him out, we have done a great injustice to the school children of this country. The day we took God out of the schools is the day schools turned downward and we began to unravel. Also, our great country was founded with a basis of the Ten Commandments. Let us reinstate them in our laws to save our wonderful land. It is everybody's job to pray for this.

Of course anyone with even a smattering of knowledge concerning the history of our country knows the Ten Commandments had no basis in its founding.

I hardly believe we need to pray for the Ten Commandments to be "reinstated" into our laws.

In fact, the first commandment ("thou shalt have no other gods before me") would contradict the first amendment to our Constitution.

Nor do I believe a law against coveting our neighbor's slaves is needed and, hopefully, will never again be needed here in the United States.

And blue laws are a pain in the butt. Do we need a national law making the Sabbath (which is Saturday, by the way) a day of holiness?

Do the people who talk the way that reader does even understand the Ten Commandments?

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Pastor considers role hate books had on attacker

Jim David Adkisson, liberal hater bent on revenge, was evidently a reader of right-wing hate books by Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. The pastor of the church where Adkisson attacked a left-leaning congregation had these thought-provoking words about the incident, words I wish all would heed:

"The words you choose may be the difference between war and peace," said Buice, speaking to a belief in the power of "dehumanizing language."

"I believe in rigorous debate," he said. "But what's the difference between a political opponent and a cockroach? You stomp a cockroach. You debate a political opponent. I believe, if you truly listen to your opponent, it will make you better."

You can read this story here.

I believe Pastor Chris Buice hit the nail squarely on the head. In the minds of the Limbaughs, Coulters, Hannitys, O'Reillys, and Savages (I had to engage in a mirthless laugh on that last one), liberals are "cocakroaches." They are "the enemy." Liberals, to these people and their mindless followers, are the objects of their rage and hate. If only liberals would go away, things would return to "normal."

The biblical proverb "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he" is very true. Can one take to heart books like those found in Adkisson's home, can one absorb with pleasure hours of hate mongering right-wing talk radio and television programming and remain unaffected?

It is very sad that the modern conservatives have turned a political debate into a movement bent on demonizing and dehumanizing their opponents.

The truth about Barack Obama and those 57 Islamic states

There is no let up in the dishonest attempts to link Barack Obama with Islam as a campaign strategy among many on the right.

One of the stupidest attempts surrounds a case where Obama simply misspoke and spoke of having visited 57 states. Here is a typical right-wing spin of the incident:

Obama claims to have no active affiliations with the Nation of Islam or Muslim beliefs. And yet he was caught on camera stating he had been touring the “57 states.” Gaff or guile? Check out the info at this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_the_Islamic_Conference. Seems a bit coincidental to me and calls into question affiliation with his Muslim family (Africa) and upbringing as a child (2 yrs in a Muslim school).

For the record, here is what Obama said (view video here):

It is wonderful to be back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

Do the nutjobs like the one I quoted above really believe Obama was thinking of the 57 member states that make up the Organisation of the Islamic Conference? Are Alaska and Hawaii members of the OIC?

Seems obvious to me that Obama was simultaneously thinking of fifty (the number of states in the Union) and 47 (the number of states he had so far visited) and it came out "57 states."

But if we should just grab things out of our rear ends, the way conservatives do, how about this theory: perhaps he was just hungry and thinking of a thick, juicy steak smothered in a certain brand of steak sauce.

Nutty, right? And so are attacks like this one.

The Wal-mart Welfare Agency

Bryan McAffee has this to say about Wal-mart in his post Wal-mart Warns Employees of Democratic Win this Fall:

To be honest, I’m not really sure of the genesis of this lefitst hate of Wal-mart (except that they hate all successful capitalists). My friend who works for the DNC is constantly harping about how awful Wal-mart is, they don’t provide health insurance, over time, etc. etc. The fact is, despite what you libs want to hear, Wal-mart is probably the best welfare agency this country has. Wal-mart makes it possible for many low income/middle class folks to buy affordable groceries, clothes, electronics, etc. Why do you think it is that when times are rough, sales at Wal-mart raise drastically?

Actually what we on the left object to is when "successful capitalists" become successful by unscrupulous means.

The website for the PBS special on Wal-mart, Store Wars: When Wal-mart Comes To Town gives us this info:

Yet the employees on average take home pay of under $250 a week. The salary for full-time employees (called "associates") is $6 to $7.50 an hour for 28-40 hours a week, which is typical in the discount retail industry. This pay scale places employees with families below the poverty line, with the majority of employees' children qualifying for free lunch at school. When closely examined, this amounts to a form of corporate welfare, as the taxpayer subsidizes the low salaries. One-third are part-time employees - limited to less than 28 hours of work per week - and are not eligible for benefits.

Store Wars also takes note of Wal-Mart's high turnover rate - "70 percent of employees leave within the first year" - which "is attributed to a lack of recognition and inadequate pay, according to a survey Wal-Mart conducted."

The benefits at Wal-mart sucks:

Full-time employees are eligible for benefits, but the health insurance package is so expensive (employees pay 35 percent - almost double the national average) that less than half opt to buy it.

One more quote from the PBS documentary:

Despite a well-publicized "Made in the U.S.A." campaign, 85 percent of the stores' items are made overseas, often in Third World sweatshops. In fact, only after Wal-Mart's "Buy American" ad campaign was in full swing did the company become the country's largest importer of Chinese goods in any industry. By taking its orders abroad, Wal-Mart has forced many U.S. manufacturers out of business.

I don't believe that most of us lefties "hate" Wal-mart. But in light of the above (and there are more skeletons too), isn't it fair to ask what price is really being paid for these low grocery prices McAffee speaks of?

An accurate assessment of right-wing talk radio

Reg Henry, deputy editorial page editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has provided us a most excellent editorial on the fairness doctrine. I highly recommend By their Savagery ye shall know them to all my readers.

Enjoy this quote from this piece:

With the Fairness Doctrine abolished, the garden of free expression bloomed. Unfortunately several undesirable plants - the Rush dandelion, the Savage thistle, the O'Reilly ragweed - thrived in ground fertilized with manure. They spread pollen on the airwaves that to this day troubles autistic kids, gays, blacks, liberals, Mexicans, feminists - heck, anybody who dares and cares enough to think.

The entire article is pure gold!

The unpatriotism of concern for the environment

Philosopher Larrey Anderson has a little piece on Why The Left is Unpatriotic and Why the Right Should Say So.

His

...basic contention is that patriotism is now the responsibility of the right -- abandoned by the left. I will use stories and photographs from this year's Oregon Country Fair to help make the point.

But why would he do that? Is the Oregon Country Fair a patriotic celebration?

From the website of the OCF is this statement of intention:

The Oregon Country Fair creates event and experiences that nourish the spirit, explore living artfully and authentically on earth, and transform culture in magical, joyous and healthy ways.

Now I will grant that modern conservatism has little interest in this type of thing. For years they have called those who care about conservation "tree huggers." Now I've noticed that conservatives have upped it to "tree humpers." (Do conservatives never think of anything else but sex?)

But still, this fair wasn't a presentation or celebration of liberal politics.

Anyway, this caught my eye. Anderson had included a picture below the words:

America was openly mocked and criticized at the Oregon Country Fair. Posted prominently in one of the clearings is the fair's "Pledge of Allegiance."

Here is that pledge as presented in the picture:

I pledge allegiance to the earth, for she is sacred.
I pledge allegiance to the flora, fauna and human life that she supports.
One planet, indivisible, with safe air, shelter, water, love equal rights, economic justice and cooperation for all.

Well, yes, that certainly contradicts the typical right-wing view that America is a law unto itself internationally speaking, should be supremely concerned with protecting Big Business from the annoyance and expense of protecting the environment, and believes that economic justice is socialism.

And that is a view of America which should be mocked.

John Hawkins on how liberals see conservatives

I got a big chuckle out of his depiction:

Liberals tend to live in cloud-cuckoo land, where the average conservative is an evil, Nazi-loving David Duke who's hellbent on sticking them in a camp so that we can turn the US into a theocracy. Meanwhile, back in the real world, there's very, very little evidence to support these assertions.

Now how cuckoo is it to think that these guys who are always calling us traitors, saying we are guilty of treason and of giving aid and comfort to terrorists, wouldn't like to round us up and put is into camps if they could?

Theocracy? Aren't the religious conservatives constantly telling us that "separation of church and state" is a myth?

No, there is plenty of evidence that conservatives suffer from "liberal derangement syndrome."

Fishing with the conservatives

As a preamble to his 10-point summary of What Conservatives Believe, Phil Valentine - author of the book "The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z" - wrote this:

Conservatism is not only viable, it's essential for a free society. The difference between liberalism and conservatism is best summed up in the old Chinese proverb: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." Liberals have been handing out fish. Conservatives have been handing out fishing poles.

What?!!!

Conservatives have been "handing out fishing poles ...when? ... where?

No, they've been selling them. They've been developing monopolies in order to control the supply of fishing poles and drive up the prices up so they may line their own pockets with filthy lucre at the expense of the many people who have trouble affording them.

Some of the neediest people, the elderly, disabled, the mentally unwell folks, are reduced to begging for poles or stealing poles in order to fish and eat. Others buy them on credit, going deeply into debt to unscrupulous money lenders who gouge them and manipulate their credit contracts in order to exact the very last farthing from them.

Finally, it occurs to the conservative manufacturers of fishing poles that greater profits may be realized by packing up the fishing pole manufacturing businesses here at home and shipping them overseas where slave labor can produce them more cheaply. If that takes jobs and wages, the ability to purchase poles out of the hands of many here at home, well, that is just to bad ... survival of the fittest and all.

By the way, programs designed to teach people to fish - for example, guaranteed student loans and the G. I. Bill - are liberal initiatives, not conservative.

Valentine could not have chosen a worse analogy to "justify" his political philosophy.

Californians warned about "queer" quakes

Queer quakes. Try saying that five times rapidly!

Anyway, one of God's own warned Californians last week about God's anger over same sex marriage in the state:

According to local pastor Wiley Drake, the 5.4 magnitude earthquake that hit Southern California on Tuesday was not just one of those typical seismic events that take place with some regularity in these parts, but it was "[a]nother queer quake trying to get California's attention." Apparently, the Lord is mad about the legalization of gay marriage in this state. He can't be that mad, given that the quake didn't cause any death or much destruction, but Rev. Drake offers a warning: "We had better listen. 5.4 this time what is next!?"

I can't help but wonder why God doesn't try to get our attention in more compelling and unmistakable ways (maybe by appearing in the skies and speaking to us in a loud, clear voice). Maybe he could do use less destructive methods. Every time God's press corps goes about declaring this tornado or hurricane, that tsunami, yonder earthquake to be one of God's punishment on a rebellious people, scores of innocents are wiped out too. Massive "acts of God" take place throughout these United States and the world, often times destroying nursing homes, schools and even churches, while at the same time leaving casinos, strip-joints, and gay bars untouched. What gives?

When I read the above bit about Pastor Drake I immediately wondered if Massachusetts - the first state in our Union to recognize same sex marriage (starting in 2004) - had been bedeviled by these pesky queer quakes. Surely God would be angry enough to give them a message or two.

In fact, I did find this story dating from '07 (guess God was occupied with other things so that it took awhile for him to get around to business there) reporting about two queer quakes(?) in one month in Massachusetts:

The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that an earthquake measuring 2.5 on the Richter scale hit the region at about 1:30 a.m. Residents in Westford and Littleton also said that they heard rumblings at about 6:05 a.m.

Earlier this month, a quake measuring 1.8 on the Richter scale rattled homes in Amesbury and
Merrimac.

Let's see. According to the Richter scale a quake between 2.0 and 2.9 would qualify as a minor earthquake. A 1.8 is considered a microearthquake.

Perhaps God wasn't all that worked up about same-sex marriage after all.

Or maybe science is where we should look for answers about this type of thing.

McCain versus Obama: the tale of the tape

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to weigh in (sorry, I couldn't resist) on the presidential race with this:

...in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

I don't believe that's what Obama has in mind when he speaks of looking different.

On the other hand, with regard to John McCain:

Though Sen. McCain cannot lift weights due to injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he "walked the Grand Canyon rim to rim in August 2006" and hikes whenever he can find the time, according to John D. Eckstein, an internist in Scottsdale, Ariz., who treats Sen. McCain. At roughly 165 pounds, his weight is slightly above average for a 5-foot-7-inch man his age, according to nutritionists.

Why the hell are we even talking about this?

Well, this little article goes on to note:

While most voters don't base their decision on physical appearance alone, a candidate's height, weight and overall look can play a big role in what Americans perceive as "presidential," says Thomas "Mack" McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

I'm rolling my eyes and shaking my head over this one.

What does a murdering right-wing extremist read for mental nourishment?

In this story at Knoxnews we are told what books police found as part of the personal library of liberal hating church shootist Jim David Adkisson:

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

Now those are some real energy bars for any extremist's mind!

The digestion of such hate literature was the inspiration for his actions:

Adkisson targeted the church, [Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve] Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

Savage, Hannity, O'Reilly and scores of others like them are my inspirations for doing what I do on this blog. The mental disorder is hate addiction, as manifested by so many of the conservatives I feature here.

The tool of free humans

A.W.R Hawkins writes about what he calls the The Tools of Free Men:

Oil is the fuel of free nations, guns and speech the tools of free men. Thus the three have freedom in common. Ironically, oil, guns, and free speech have something else in common as well: all three are scorned by the Left. Democrats are opposed to further oil exploration, individual gun rights, and speech that is free from the constraints of political correctness.

Hawkins makes three erroneous accusations against Democrats. "Democrats are opposed": (1) "to further oil exploration." This is false. Democrats do for a fact seem to have deeper concern for conservation than those in the modern Republican Party. (How far Republicans have fallen from the days Teddy Roosevelt!) But that is not the same thing as being opposed to further oil exploration. (2) Dems are opposed to "individual gun rights." Again, totally false. Attempts to make America safer through more stringent gun control legislation is the major focus. (3) Dems are opposed to "speech that is free from the constraints of political correctness." All that is is an attempt to poison the well. What exactly is "political correctness" but an epithet? But how dare Republicans suggest Democrats are opposed to non-politically correct speech and at the same time attack them as being an extension of the individual rights organization the ACLU?

Having said all that, what I really find objectionable is that the most basic tool of free humans - the preeminent one, in my opinion - was not discussed by Hawkins. I speak of the human brain, more specifically, the intellect.

For example, when speaking of speech, Hawkins writes:

Speech is another tool the free man uses to defend his freedom. Through speech he explains the origins of freedom, the price of freedom, and the limitations that should be imposed on government rather than men. Not surprisingly, the Democrats are opponents rather than proponents of such language; tyrants of every stripe always are.

But from whence does speech originate? Supposedly from the brain, the intellect. However, and especially with reference to the material I sift through for this blog, I am reminded of what Scarecrow said in the movie The Wizard of Oz: "...But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking."

Hawkins goes into a bit of the history of the Stamp Act and its effect on our Founding Fathers. He does this because he thinks the "Democrat (sic) Party is full of a myriad of King Georges who seek the passage of their own stamp acts through legislation such as the Fairness Doctrine, academic 'speech codes,'
and various internet taxes and regulations." He writes:

The king wanted to ensure that pamphlets such as Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” could not be printed and distributed among the populace. But the pamphlet was printed in 1776, and through it Paine lit a fire in the hearts of the colonists. He urged them to give themselves wholly to the American Revolution by assuring them that “common sense” dictated they should throw off the yoke of so great a tyrant as King George.

Indeed! Common sense. Just what I'm talking about. But he doesn't elaborate. I wish Hawkins had gone into detail about what happened to Thomas Paine after he extended his common sense to organized religion. I speak of his book The Age of Reason. Let him talk about the fire that book lit. After it was published the country Paine did so much to help birth turned its back on him. To this day his reputation is ruined. Even today those who even dare to criticize organized religion, especially Christianity, find themselves being branded as "Godless liberals."

Yes, freedom of speech is a great thing, especially when it is coupled with depth of thought. Alas, it often is not. But speech should still be free. Those who believe the Democratic Party does not fully embrace the first amendment simply does not understand what it stands for. And again, more Democrats belong to the ACLU than Republicans. So when it comes to the protection of free speech, well, the pot is calling the kettle black.

Then Hawkins makes this odd statement:

We must keep our guns. And we must tell our children, our students, and those among whom we live and work that freedom comes from God, not government.

Okay. But let's refer to the same God our Founders referenced: Nature's God. Here is how the matter was put in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

Two things to note. Government is not the bugaboo conservatives make it out to be, it is the securer of our freedoms, at least in the eyes of our Founders. Of course they recognized the dangers of unjust governments. That would be those governments that - and this is the second thing to note - usurp power over the governed instead of deriving authority from the "consent of the governed."

When all is said and done and all the gibberish is dispelled, human reason is where we find our freedom. Those who do not rigorously think are not truly free. They mostly are mental slaves. I believe that is what bigotry and conservative orthodoxy does: rob people of their freedom and ability to think and act freely and independently.

Therefore, the Republican Party represents the greater threat to freedom. What's worse is that they lie about it and misrepresent their Democratic opponents. Just ask yourself: which party has the most diversity of ideas?