Shut Up and Sing!

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Since the Dixie Chicks were blacklisted and we have no freedom of speech in King George BusHitler's America, how come they are still mouthing off, bad mouthing their former fans and most of the rest of America, starring in a new documentary, getting articles written about them, having videos in number one rotation on VH1 for weeks, and on the cover of magazines? And how come they are still way richer than me?

Being blacklisted and having no freedom of speech must mean something very different from what I always thought it meant.

Obviously, as a conservative, I'm going to tend to think that more people on the right just "get it" about more things than folks on the left.

That's part and parcel of aligning yourself ideologically with other people. You aren't going to align yourself with people you consider amoral morons, and you aren't going to align yourself in opposition to people you consider smart, thoughtful, moral folks.

But, no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, some things just seem so obvious and so "common-sensical" that you believe that acceptance of these ideas should simply transcend political boundaries.

Whether or not you are my sworn enemy in almost every area, we should be able to agree on, say, the general color of the sky, the current temperature, the existence of gravity, or our mutual need for oxygen.

Yet, on political issues that would seem to the partisan idealogue to be such transcendent, "common sense" matters, there are fundamental disagreements. On the left, such an issue might be global warming. Many on the left consider global warming a rigorously proven fact, and the "fact" that man is the cause of it so obvious as to be beyond questioning or review. Yet many on the right consider global warming to be unproven, that man's impact on the environment could cause such change extremely questionable, and the advocates of global warming remarkably similar to all doomsayers of all previous ages. Whose predictions of incipient destruction also failed to materialize.

Another more contemporary issue might be the one of "torture". To many on the left, anything remotely harsh in dealing with prisoners should be considered, common-sensically, to be torture. Additionally, it's simply self-evident to many of those folks that torture is immoral, and should never be used under any circumstances, no matter who was being tortured and how many lives might be saved by the revelation of valuable information. Another self-evident truth in that mix is that "torture doesn't work", because people will say anything to make the torture stop.

The conservative might argue that this would logically include disclosing any actual information they might have that would save lives, because if they would say anything, that would include verifiable data that would stop the current torture and carry with it promises of future protection--and a future resumption of "torture", should his information turn out to be false. Additionally, the conservative might argue that rough and psychologically manipulative techniques are not torture in the same way that cutting off fingers or wiring up car batteries to nipples are torture, and to equate them is both irrational and irresponsible. But these arguments don't make a great deal of headway against the wide-eyed disbelief that these extra-chromosome right-wing simians are actually defending torture! My God, they're worse than we thought!

Which brings me to the main subject of the article, which is the Dixie Chicks. As a conservative, it is just common sense to most of us that freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from criticism for what you say. It just "makes sense" that if you make public statements about controversial subjects, some folks might decide not to do business with you for that reason, and they have every right to decide to do business with (or buy the albums of) whoever they choose. Businesses, including radio stations, have the right to play whatever music they want to. If you say things in public that make those businesses uncomfortable about doing business with you, don't be surprised if that business dries up.

Do I really care what the Dixie Chicks think about anything? No. Why should I? It's clear they have zero influence in changing the political views of their fans and former fans. Do I think they should have been boycotted or--for pete's sake--had their albums burned? No. All I have to say to people who burn anything as a form of political statement, whether it's record albums or flags or conservative college newspapers is: grow up. Have something intelligent to say about the issue you are so inflamed about, and communicate it. Join some grass-roots organization to effect change. Any moron can set something on fire (or run over it with a bulldozer) and, when it comes to political statements, people who burn things to make a point are, in my mind, uniformly morons.

And if I found out a company I did business with was burning a bunch of Dixie Chick's albums, and I could get what they supplied somewhere else, I'd go somewhere else. Because that's my right, and the First Amendment does not prevent me from deciding not to do business with, or buy the product of, people who demonstrate to me in a public manner that they are, in fact, twits.

So why do so many on the left consider the guarantee of free speech to be a guarantee of a captive audience? Why do they believe that freedom of speech should prevent negative reaction to and criticism of that speech? Another question might be why most folks on the left applauded McCain-Fiengold, which was actually the government passing laws to regulate political speech, which is an actual abridgement of our First Amendment rights by the entity--the government--that the First Amendment was specifically designed to protect our free speech rights from. It can't be because it was a strictly Democrat initiative--John McCain authored it with Democrat Russ Fiengold, and the evil George Dubya Bush signed that piece of crap into law. But that digresses into another "common sense" issue that really isn't (that abridgement of political speech by any individual or group, for any reason, no matter how noble, is unconstitutional and, in the long run, a negative). And I should probably just stick to the main issue. And that's mouthy southern women.

So. Let's play a game. Can you guess what the editorial slant of Shut up and Sing, which cribs its name from a superior book by Laura Ingraham of the same name, a movie tracing the history of the Dixie Chick controversy, from singing the national anthem of the fallout from Natalie Maines' comments about president Bush? Liberal or conservative? Left or right? Come on. Guess. It'll be fun.

I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen the trailer for the movie. And from the silly tagline on the poster ("Freedom of speech is fine, as long as you don't do it in public.") to implication that the nutjobs sending death threats to the Dixie Chick's are somehow typically conservative (or, let's be honest, typically American) or are unique to any one side of the political spectrum (try and find a prominent conservative who has not received death threats specifically for what they believe and what they speak publically about), I think the editorial slant is pretty clear.

In the trailer, there is a quote from Bush on the Dixieflap that is exactly right: "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt because some people don't want to buy their records." Natalie Maines was offended and indignant, but Bush was dead on. The anti-Bush comment was one of many Natalie Maines has directed at the many folks in redstate America that she clearly has such distaste for, and when you offend your primary audience, and clearly don't care if you offend your primary audience ("Not Ready to Make Nice"), and then move on to become even more offensive, don't be surprised that people don't buy (or sometimes even stock) your albums, and don't be surprised that the radio doesn't want to play you. And don't expect a lot of sympathy. There are thousands of talented country acts out there, and most of them don't get airplay and most of them can't get stocked at Wal-Mart, and most of them have never had the kind of money that Natalie Maines used to have to spend on her shoes.

Of course, most of those acts never said some other things either. Like:

I don't want to be played on those [Country radio] stations. And when I watched people smashing our CDs I just thought, Good. Smash 'em. Please don't listen to me. I had no idea you thought I was one of you, because I'm not.

Which is not only calculated to offend her main audience, but is clearly an endorsement of exactly what they were doing. She didn't want the dumb redstate hicks that had been making her rich to buy her music. She only wants smart liberals and urban elites to buy her music, or she doesn't want anybody to buy it. She's getting exactly what she wants. Really, it couldn't have turned out better for her.

Wait, though. She's not done.

And I don't want to go to any [country music] award shows. And if we did win, what would I get up there and say? I have nothing to say to these people.

And by "these people", she means the people who used to buy her music, before they found out she hated them and thought they were idiots.

And, while she wouldn't take back what she said about Bush, or the hicks that bought her music against her will, she would take back her already back-handed apology:

It was all mine--nobody made me apologize and nobody wrote it for me--but when I look back and read it, I don't stand behind what I said. That will make people extra-mad, because some were like, "Well, at least she apologized."

Martie Maguire, one of the other Chicks, said:

We don't feel a part of the country scene any longer, it can't be our home anymore.

Maguire also had this excellent thing to say with her free speech:

I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do.

Again, making the point that they don't want any of the folks who were buying their music to have bought it in the first place, and that they are now in a much better situation since they have freed themselves from the redneck menace. Good for them.

In June 2006 Emily Robison made this comment to the Telegraph in the UK about country music videos that showed soldiers and American flags (eww!):

A lot of pandering started going on, and you'd see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism.

In same interview, Natalie Maines said:

The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country ... I don't see why people care about patriotism.

In 2003, the American Red Cross refused a million dollar "donation" from the Dixie Chicks, something that is apparently made issue of in the movie, because it's in the trailer. And it's implied that refusal was because there were Bush administration people on the board, and that it was a string-free donation. The reality is a little more complicatecd.

According to National Red Cross spokesperson Julie Thermond Whitmer, the band would make the donation "only if the American Red Cross would embrace the band's summer tour". That summer tour being the one where Natalie Maines had recently revealed her penchant for controversial political statements. Julie Thermond Whitmer explained:

The Dixie Chicks controversy made it impossible for the American Red Cross to associate itself with the band because such association would have violated two of the founding principles of the organization: impartiality and neutrality... Should the Dixie Chicks like to make an unconditional financial donation to the American Red Cross, we will gladly accept it.

Interestingly, not only do the Dixie Chicks, despite being so terribly oppressed (although they like that better because it was actually more oppressive when all those backwards rednecks were buying their records), still have a wide audience, are still richer than you or me, still get to say whatever they want to all sorts of people, and still get their words (many of them critical not just of Bush but of redstate America and America generally) in national and international publications.

But apparently, if you piss people off with what you say--even if you also say that you wanted to piss those kinds of people off and didn't want them listening to you in the first place--your free speech rights have been abridged or taken away from you. I think that's one of those things where I'm going to have to say, from my point of view, most of the folks on the left just don't "get it".

And they aren't going to. Just last month, an ad for Shut up and Sing was turned down by NBC (part of a publically held media company that has always reserved the right to turn down in advertising they deemed inappropriate). The smaller CW--which needs money--also rejected the ads. Oppression! Discrimination! But, local affiliate stations of all five major broadcasters, including NBC and the CW, ran ads for the film in Los Angeles and New York, the only two cities the film actually opened in on the day of the ads. Nevertheless, Harvey Weinstein complained in a press release:

It's a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America.

Wow. The Dixie Chicks get on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and Time, get interviewed by The Telegraph and Dier Speigel and a dozen other national and international magazines, get their latest video on the top spot on VH1 for two weeks, are still selling plenty if not going platinum and having more trouble with the tours, but are still richer than any of us are ever likely to be while getting to freely insult the people (and their beliefs and lifestyles) that helped make them so rich in the first place . . . well, hell's bells, I want to be blacklisted like that, too!

You want to talk blacklisted? Talk to M.C. Hammer. Talk to Vanilla Ice. Talk to C&C Music Factory. Talk to Donny Osmond. That list goes on and on and on. And I don't see them on the cover of time, or with a million in pocket change to bribe the Red Cross with.

Politicizing 9/11

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Bush makes a speech that is about the War on Terror, and he's accused of politicizing 9/11. And the Democrats proceed with a organized, talking-points filled campaign to gain political advantage from Bush's speech.

But it's not going to work. I'm sure, for the true believers, this is what they want to hear. Or maybe not even angry and whacky enough.

But what fence-sitter out there is going to say, "Well, I was going to vote for Republicans come November until Bush mentioned the war in Iraq and the War on Terror in regards to 9/11, which Bush has always said he sees as being all part of the same thing. Now I'm definitely voting for Democrats only. Definitely Democrats.

What voter unsure about the Republicans is going to be moved by the hissy fit Democrats are throwing about Bush asking for unity and support in regards to the War on Terror, and the war in Iraq on 9/11, when he's clearly seen them as being all part of the same thing?

And he does. Mentioning the War in Iraq and the War on Terror in a speech about 9/11 isn't a cynical political move, insofar as Bush has always seen them (as having many conservatives) as being all part of the same battle. Bush might be wrong about that, certainly Democrats and liberals man disagree with his belief, but the accusation of politicization--and the coordinated, talking-pointed manner in which it is being protested--seems to be the real politicization, to me.

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BTW, I know I haven't blogged a lot recently. Just busy. Have some books I want to review, and can't seem to get finished with them! And always working on other projects. So, time gets consumed. But I haven't abandoned the blog.

Have a great day!

Israel, Mel Gibson, and a Subtle Oak Flavor

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Israel is under attack with rockets by a group of terrorists whose avowed agenda is the complete anhilation of the Jewish race and the media is pointing out the vile anti-Semitism of . . . Mel Gibson?

A friend of mine blogs here, at Subtle Oak Flavor; Pleasing Finish. Her August 1st, 2006 post is on Mel Gibson's recent mea culpa for his anti-Jewish comments. Which of course led to comments about the current conflict in the Middle East and, in the comments, Walker notes that she is not as pro-Israel as most conservatives. Which inspired the following comments (expanded for my blog) on being pro-Israel. As I am a conservative, generally vote Republican, and am pretty firmly in the pro-Israel camp.

Though I am pro-Israel, I am not, frankly, pro-putting-Israel-in-the-Middle-East. Of course, Israel was intitially a left-wing experiment in introducing socialism to the Middle East, not the war-mongering, pro-democracy capitalist state they ended up being. But either way, putting the Jewish homeland where they did, no matter what historical claim the Jews had, was probably not the best way to nurture regional peace.

Anyone who has ever watched the process of corporations getting states to bid for the new headquarters or plant, or cities to bid for movies to be made in their town, could see how the Jewish state should have been handled. They should have done a big slide show with all the projected tax revenue that being the location of the Jewish State would bring the parent country (or state--Israel would fit in Texas about three-hundred times over) based on the Jewish People's previous earnings capacity.

On the other hand, other than a general sympathy for humanity (I don't want anybody getting blown up, period), I have no real sympathy for any middle-eastern dictatorships or, these days, even the Islamofascist democracies (although, the long run potential with even a theocratic democracy is much better than a strict totalitarian society).

More to the point, I agree with the sometimes brilliant, sometimes insane and/or willfully ignorant New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, who recently said on NPR that, essentially, Israel is inventing new microchips and curing diseases while the folks trying to wipe them out can't manufacture a light bulb or build a hospital that isn't on top of a rocket launcher or missile silo. I'm paraphrasing, but the innovation and invention that comes from that postage stamp of desert that is Israel is truly remarkable, especially considering that fifty times the people with a hundred times the natural resources around them contribute nothing to humanity but explosions, hate and death.

I could go on. Frankly, I'm neither a military man (and neither are most politicians or media pundits, as Thomas Sowell points out here) or an expert on the middle east, so I don't know if the Israeli strategy regarding the current conflict will work (or, for that matter, if Iraq will turn out well or not). But I think it's obvious that previous diplomacy and cease fires have failed, and, come on, conservative and pro-Israel punditry does have a point when it complains that you can't have a truce or a negotiated settlement with a group whose sole, sworn objective is the obliteration of you and everybody like you. I just hope for the best outcome, in the long run. I expect the only real option is for Israel to keep going, and keep turning on the heat. They've withdrawn, given up land, traded both land and hostages for "peace", and the results have been more attacks and terrorism against Israel. I can certainly see why Israel sees going on offense as their only option.

Then there's the Mel Gibson controversy. I find it interesting that the often Christian-hating (and, let's be fair, Orthodox Jew hating, too) Bill Maher is actually on Israel's side. But then he goes on to say Mel's problem is not alcoholism, but religion, so Mahr still hates religious folks. So I'm comforted.

As far as the media tarring and feathering Mel, and using him as a "wedge" against conservatives--they've already done it, they'd do it anyway, they won't get any mileage out of it because they already drove that car 'til the wheels fell off about ten years ago. Just like Pat Robertson's heretical nonsense is cited by the media (and, in the case of my link, Positive Atheism) as evidence of the intolerance and messianic insanity of all Christians, the attempt to equate Mel to all Catholics, Christians, or Conservatives has zero political or ideological value to them. Although they think it has plenty. Hey, let 'em spin their wheels.

It may help maintain the lefties with the red meat they need to keep their hatin' muscles good and strong, but the implied "you don't want to be like Mel Gibson or Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter so be a lefty" argument is way past it's prime.

Belief in God is Bad for Society

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And they can prove it, using the magic of statistical analysis. And I do mean magic. I review Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies, and find it lacking.

Last May, I wrote in regards to an email I received about an earlier article (You Christians are Stupid and We Hate You), in which the assertion was made by the writer that in addition to being anti-scientific and backwards, Christianity and religiosity caused all manner of social ills. For evidence, the writer cited the following:

In response to certain claims that you make in your article, I submit the following study, which finds correlations between religiosity and various types of social dysfunction, such as child mortality, homicide, abortions, STDs, low life expectancy, etc. All of the aforementioned social ills seem to increase as the percentage of the population that believes in God increases:

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.html

Which, in my humble opinion, began inauspiciously by with an immediate attempt to create false academic legitimacy, and perhaps obfuscate the agenda, with its title: Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies. A more direct and honest title might have been: Religion Bad, Secularism Good.

As I noted earlier, my immediate problem, and the most intractable, is that the attempt to demonstrate a correlation between religiosity and social ills casts such a statistically broad net as to be of no objective value, at least in terms of providing meaningful data about a demonstrable relationship. A satistical demonstration that two or more factors can be related on a graph is almost certain to be a demonstration of coincidence, if not selective data mining. And this can be done, and has been, on every issue from crime in the African American community (although certainly most legitimate statisticians would not argue that skin color or ethnicity itself causes crime) to arrests during full moons. Paul Broca is famous for his statistical proofs that brain size was indicative of brain power, and that white, European males all had the biggest brains, and women and non-Europeans were inherently mentally inferior and were always going to be. While his method of gather statistics and analyzing them has now been fully debunked, most of that happened in the harsh light of history. Despite all of Broca's statistical analysis, very little he maintained was true: white European males do not consistently have larger brains, physically, than other races. Women generally have smaller brains due to their smaller size physically, but numerous different tests of scholastic aptitude have shown that this does not make men any smarter than women. Indeed, modern indications (if we viewed them in a vacuum) would be that women are smarter than men.

So one should always regard any statistical analysis that assigns moral and intellectual superiority to one group or another, based on any over-riding characteristic of that group, with deep skepticism. Replace the examples of religiosity correlating with social ills in the study with examples of ethnicity correlating with social ills, or gender correlating with social ills, and see how it sounds. Or political affiliation, and put your personal political affiliation in just to get an idea of how problematic such "analysis" really is.

Interestingly, early on the authors essentially say that their study, which implies a causal relationship between religiosity and social ills, cannot demonstrate it, so they don't try (yet). This is also their explanation for not performing regression analyses, which might well contradict the fundamental implication of the study: that lots of people believing in God is bad for society.

Regression analyses were not executed because of the high variability of degree of correlation, because potential causal factors for rates of societal function are complex, and because it is not the purpose of this initial study to definitively demonstrate a causal link between religion and social conditions.

While I think some of the conclusions are generally accurate, for example:

Correlations between popular acceptance of human evolution and belief in and worship of a creator and Bible literalism are negative (Figure 1). The least religious nation, Japan, exhibits the highest agreement with the scientific theory, the lowest level of acceptance is found in the most religious developed democracy, the U.S.

... I don't think they tell the whole story. By popular acceptance of evolution, do they mean that in regards to where or not evolution occurs at all, or speciation via evolution, or that man evolved from lower life-forms? Those are all, believe it or not, different things, and many Christians accept that evolution happens, but they don't accept that man evolved from lower animals, although the evolve sufficiently for race variation and homogenization, increases or decreases in height and size, etc. And some accept that evolution happens, that man evolved from lower life forms, but believe that God's hand guided the process from beginning to end. And this is also just one example where the language bugs me, and ought to bug anyone looking for an objective scientific analysis: "Correlations between popular acceptance of human evolution and belief in and worship of a creator and Bible literalism are negative" . . . belief in a creator is not the same as worship of a creator, and neither is the same as Bible literalism and, indeed, Bible literalism means that they aren't talking about belief in or worship of a creator, or even Old Testament-consistent belief systems like Judaism or Islam, but of Christianity specifically. Although it's not entirely clear that's what they mean.

It doesn't take them long to go from confusing to deeply flawed:

A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies. In all secular developed democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows.

Any attempt to equate the drop of homocides over centuries to a decrease in religiosity over the same period is simply non-scientific. How many other things happen culturally over a period of 100 years? From advances in education, social spending, prison-building, law-writing, greater enforcement, economic opportunity, etc. There are hundreds if not thousands of significant societal changes that went on, many of which one would rationally assume had a much more significant effect on the rate of violent crime, than a reduction in the levels of religiosity in a given country.

The especially low rates in the more Catholic European states are statistical noise due to yearly fluctuations incidental to this sample, and are not consistently present in other similar tabulations.

Translation: where the data disagrees with our pre-determined conclusions, we blame the data. However, where it agrees with our conclusions, the data is fine. A clear indication that the yard stick for the accuracy of the data is how neatly it agrees with the authors conclusions (that they admit they can't actually demonstrate a causal relationship for!).

Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s, the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard.

Which might be affected by things like a gun-culture and hip-hop culture that have a limited relationship to religiosity (or even a negative correlation which is, no doubt, why that aspect is not explored in the study).

Something else striking in it's absence, given the first assertion about murder rates hundreds of years ago versus now, the change in the homocide rate, per capita, in America from 1800 to 2000, is not touched on. Likely, this is because, thanks to urbanization and increased law enforcement and increase prosperity, the homicide rate went down even as religiosity did not.

Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developed democracies combined.

What the hell is that? And why doesn't it mention that, when known, some of the most notable school shootings (ala Columbine) were performed by irreligious kids in families that did not attend, or attended very little church. Are we to understand that it was the fact that lots of other kids attended church that made the Columbine students kill so many of their classmates? Oh, probably not, because, as the authors admit at the outset, they don't actually mean to say there is a causal relationship between societal dysfunction and religiosity. They just want to cherry-pick examples to sure make it feel like there is.

Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in non-lethal violent crime, and are often lower in this regard. The

This is another semantic issue for me again, one that you might miss if you blinked. But there is no where in the study where that kind of language is used in reverse--that is, nothing that says, in effect, "The US does not exceed other prosperous democracies in regards to societal dysfunction X, and is often lower in this regard." Yet here a statistic that would tend to indicate that even violent crime is often higher in secular democracies (ones that, presumably, might have much stricter gun laws and a much lesser gun culture, just to examine to factors that might impact lethality of violent crimes), and they pish-posh it away with "often lower in other places". What this means, translated, is that for crime, overall, there is no demonstrable relationship, causal or others, to even their limited definitions of religiosity, and that it goes up and down without respect to the religiosity of a given country.

Although the late twentieth century STD epidemic has been curtailed in all prosperous democracies, rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developed democracies.

Which is to say, it has gone down significantly in the US, despite the increasing levels of religiosity over the same time period, just not nearly as much in Europe. There are almost certainly dozens of factors involved in the disparity, of which religiosity is just one. And there are almost certainly reasons why the religious beliefs of the socially dysfunctional groups are not reported on. The first is, no doubt, the lack of availability of data. But the second is likely that the data would show no correspondence, or negative correspondence, as religious kids in religious families do tend to have sex later, have fewer partners, and, believe are not, are often very careful in regards to contraception--as they would rather die that have their parents find out their sinning in the backseat on Saturday night.

At all ages levels are higher in the U.S., albeit by less dramatic amounts. The U.S. also suffers from uniquely high adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, which are starting to rise again as the microbe’s resistance increases. The two main curable STDs have been nearly eliminated in strongly secular Scandinavia.

So one is left to conclude that church-going, God-believing religious folks are swimming with syphyllis? Or that all these churches make secualr folks more likely to engage in unprotected sex? Or the aura of Christianity in a country makes the syphyllis microbe more robust. And while there are reasons they don't even attempt to study how many religious folks suffer these social dysfunctions in America versus the non-religious folks who do, there are also reasons they aren't breaking them down by race, income, military service and immigrant status. There are lots of other correlations, in regards to STDs, that exist. And it's not mostly white, upper-income church goers who suffer from syphyllis.

Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S.

So, if fewer Americans believed in God, presumably abortion rates would go down. A skeptic might be forgiven for asking: how, exactly, does that work? Why does believing in God make people want to have unprotected sex and get abortions? Because Christians hide info about contraception? Well, there are more gas stations that churches in America, and I can buy condoms in the the bathrooms of almost all of them. Without shame! Because religious belief makes us feel guilty and so I plan not to have sex until the last minute and then I just can't stop myself and I have to have sex and can't get to a gas station because of the Christians and . . . well, I'm just not sure there is an adequate explanation for any presumed causal correlation between such factors.

Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developed democracies, but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest.

And in almost all of those populations, the overall corresponding birth rate has gone down, too. And, again, there's a reason they don't break this down by race, or by individual on public assistance: a large number of adolescent pregnancies and births happen to kids from single-parent homes, almost always single-mother homes, where the family has been on public assistance for a significant portion of the teen-mother's life. The number of teen pregancies to children attending public schools versus those attending private religious schools is significantly higher (feel free to research the data yourself) by any yardstick . . . again, that's why the analysis is limited to very broad strokes regarding very limited sets of data. Because there are much more obvious and consistent relationships to things like public assistance, public school attendance, and single-parenthood and societal dysfunction than there are to religiosity.

Broad correlations between decreasing theism and increasing pregnancy and birth are present, with Austria and especially Ireland being partial exceptions. Darroch et al. found that age of first intercourse, number of sexual partners and similar issues among teens do not exhibit wide disparity or a consistent pattern among the prosperous democracies they sampled, including the U.S.

Why, how can this be? With all the religious oppression that happens in America? Perhaps because religiosity is not a significant factor in regards to teens and sex?

Now, remember earlier in the study, with the authors said this: "...potential causal factors for rates of societal function are complex, and because it is not the purpose of this initial study to definitively demonstrate a causal link between religion and social conditions [emphasis added]."Now, you tell me, how do you reconcile that statement (unless it is simply there to avoid any accountability for their inflammatory assertions) with the following:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies ... The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a 'shining city on the hill' to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

Just the fact there are no other factors considered except religiosity (not GDP, not race or ethnicity, not cultural diversity, not tax burdens or public assistance or marriage rates or public education or social spending or single-payer healthcare or anything else) is a huge flaw, in regards to attempting any kind of meanginful study, in my opinion. That so many other potential ills are left out--specific rates for rape and child abuse or abandonment, let's say, or adult suicide for those not terminally ill, rates of cancer and heart disease, longevity and so on, is telling. That potential positive correlations are also completely left out of a discussion of factors that might correspond to religiosity, such as public charities, religious hospitals, scientific innovation, the size of the middle-class, etc, also point to more agenda than science being at work in this study.

A conservative fellow like myself could certainly be forgiven for seeing more anti-religious and anti-American bias than a love for the empiric pursuit of science at work in this particular analysis.

Again, I want to remind you of when the authors said the following: "it is not the purpose of this initial study to definitively demonstrate a causal link between religion and social conditions [emphasis added]." Remember that? When their conclusion says this, it makes one wonder if they remembered writing that. Just look:

The United States’ deep social problems are all the more disturbing because the nation enjoys exceptional per capita wealth among the major western nations. Spending on health care is much higher as a portion of the GDP and per capita, by a factor of a third to two or more, than in any other developed democracy.

The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health. Understanding the reasons for this failure is urgent, and doing so requires considering the degree to which cause versus effect is responsible for the observed correlations between social conditions and religiosity versus secularism.

It is therefore hoped that this initial look at a subject of pressing importance will inspire more extensive research on the subject. Pressing questions include the reasons, whether theistic or non-theistic, that the exceptionally wealthy U.S. is so inefficient that it is experiencing a much higher degree of societal distress than are less religious, less wealthy prosperous democracies.

Conversely, how do the latter achieve superior societal health while having little in the way of the religious values or institutions? There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms.

It is the responsibility of the research community to address controversial issues and provide the information that the citizens of democracies need to chart their future courses.

Got that? They apparently know that America is wealthier than any other nation in the world, but see's no correlation between that bit of American exceptionalism and religiosity--the idea doesn't even come up, which should speak volumes about the agenda of the authors.

You'll also notice that religiosity suddenly takes a back seat to the central conceit of study: that America is, one the whole, inferior to Europe and Japan in almost every respect, and that we need to get cracking and emulate Europe and Japan.

Oh, and wait, we're not done . . . the backwards rednecks of the south and mid-west (you know, Bush voters, Republicans, church-goers, and other extra-chromosome defectives) are where all the bad things and violence come from in America, as it turns out, while the superior, largely secular bastions of liberalism in the northeast approach "European norms". So, while the agenda is ostensibly anti-religious, one might also see it as a bit of anti-rural Europhilia, and certainly disdain for the red states there, too.

While the authors urge more research, presumably similarly agenda-laden, I don't think they do anybody any favors by taking the approach they have. What's the racial and ethnic makeup of the south and mid-west compared to the northeast? Heck, what are the population levels, the average age of the population, and how many people move into the state versus those moving out? What are the foreign immigrant levels? How much public assistance is doled out? What are the gun laws? What are the sentencing guidelines for judges? And so on and so forth. There are real reasons for societal dysfunction, and there is plenty of societal dysfunction everywhere, and wasting time and money attempting to enshrine religious bigotry with the trappings of legitimate science does not address them. Such studies, that don't include an analysis of race, gender, age, immigrant status, income level, levels of public assistance, and so on, are simply not serious and do absolutely nothing of value in regards to addressing the societal ills they proclaim to be so important.

It is also worth noting that the soup kitchens in this country are not staffed by academics. Charity hospitals are not run being run by researchers. There may be a First Secular Humanist Charity Hospital somewhere, but I haven't seen it. Most foodbanks are not run by dedicate atheists and the first responders, outside of the fire, police, and American military, to most natural and even man-made disasters tend to be Christian and Jewish organizations. The amount of good done by contemporary Christians could fill volumes that could then fill a library, and the record of secular humanist researches is not nearly so impressive. Although they do have an impressive ability to laud themselves and pat themselves on the back while simultaneously pointing their fingers, I'll find their arguments more credible when they start coming from the soup kitchen they've been serving homeless folks meals in for the past decade.

Other excellent commentary, supportive and critical, on the study can be found by following these links:

Evidence for the effects of religion on society (idea)

Magic Statistics: From Our Bulging How Not Do Do It File

Dogma Bites Man

Distant Correlations

IS RELIGIOSITY SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL?

Atheism or Christianity: Whose Fruit is Sweeter

To the church, he’s public enemy No. 1

Religion: Harmful for Society? New Study Says Yes, But Its Argument Shows Flaws

Experts say religion study is sound, but ...

Time to Choose: God or Country

Burn Ann Coulter (And Her Book, Too)

Read it on KevinWillis.net

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The politically correct speech Nazis are on the March against Ann Coulter, again. Oh, hey, did I mention that these particular speech Nazis are Republicans? Oh, yeah, baby. Just more evidence that conservatives are opposed to women who speak their mind.

The criticism of Ann is interesting on several levels. On one level, it makes perfect sense. She says rude and thoughtless things. She can be smart and pithy, and often uses that ability to craft the most biting, hurtful thing she could say. Often, these particular things don’t add anything of value to the debate.

It is not a criticism of using personal tragedy to advance a cause (something common to almost all the humanity, in one way or another, as a strategy to make something good and add meaning to what otherwise might appear to be a senseless tragedy) to say that the Jersey Girls were “enjoying” their husband’s deaths.

In and of itself, it really doesn’t advance the idea that people on the left are using the personal tragedy of themselves and others in order to shield their ideas and agendas from scrutiny or criticism. There may be something to that, as many point out, but what Ann said—and, in most cases, most of the inflammatory things she says—don’t actually do anything to make the case that the folks that are 100% in her camp say that she meant. If such popular, straight-forward punditry needs translation, then she isn’t getting the job done. Unless the job is simply to inflame passions and inspire debate and thus help market herself which—along with appearing in something skimpy, but not too skimpy, and black on every book cover—is what her inflammatory rhetoric is, most likely, all about.

One could also argue about karma and how nature abhors a vacuum and how for every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction, so, naturally, for every Al Franken or Michael Moore or Bill Mahr there must be an Ann Coulter to bring balance to the force. But perhaps that’s a discussion for another day.

Another criticism made frequently about Ann also makes sense: she does tend to make blanket statements that condemn entire groups of people, without even the qualifications of "whacko" or "extreme" that most boisterous pundits use to distinguish, say, plain vanilla environmentalists from whacko environmentalists, or liberals from extreme leftists.

Godless is just another example of this, as she makes the fairly absurd assertion that liberals are inherently atheists, when liberalism is full of Christians. They may disagree on doctrine, on how to apply the gospel to their lives, on how to best walk with God, and the sort of works we’re called to, but they believe in God. Just because there are liberal politicians who clearly don’t believe in God who claim they do so they don’t seem as God-less as Coulter accuses them of being doesn’t make that true of the rank-and-file liberal, most of whom (I believe) are honest when they claim a deep and abiding faith in God and Christ. In Ann’s excellent book, Treason, she makes the blanket statement that, essentially, there were no anti-Communist liberals, and it’s just not true. There were plenty of democratic-socialist liberals in McCarthy’s day, as well as useful idiots, who were anti-Communist, and fought Communism tooth and nail, just there were many on the left who worked in league with Russia to infiltrate and corrupt the American political process.

But if Ann sometimes seems out-of-touch with reality, so do her critics. One common refrain I’ve read recently regarding Coulter—a this is from conservative pundits—is how terrible it is that other conservatives might defend her. More specifically, how conservatives are “circling the wagons”, as it were, to defend this indefensible harlot. Yet I’ve seen no sign of conservatives circling the wagons to defend her. Indeed, the same folks (for example, here, on RedState) note that noted conservative pundits Captain Ed, Hugh Hewitt, RedState, The Anchoress, Ace of Spades, The Strata-Sphere, and others have all attacked Coulter, not defended her. And what defenses I’ve seen have been individuals expressing their dissenting opinions, rather than “conservatives circling the wagons”.

A little more on circling the wagons: The idea that people who disagree with you--especially if there's more than one person who disagress with you--rightly or wrongly, are "circling the wagons" seems, to me, to fail a basic test of logic. That is, if I agree with you, rather than the folks who are challenging you, am I not, "circling the wagons", as well? Under scrutiny, it's little different that accusing someone who disagrees with you of daring to disagree with you.

This may be a legitimate criticism of major media when it came to, say, Rather-gate, when so many in the media (including Bill O'Reilly) rallied to Dan's defense, because it was one of their own who was under attack. But most of the defense of Ann, right or wrong, seems to come from people who genuinely agree with her, or at least are not sufficiently in disagreement with what she said, or how she said it, to be as outraged as you are. Or simply don’t like the implication that speech should be non-offensive or politically correct to be permissible.

While they may indeed be wrong, and others might be right, I don't think "circling the wagons" is a valid criticism. I think it's a cop-out. If these folks are really wrong, then their arguments can be taken apart on their own merits. It's about the same as the liberal criticism that many conservative like Ann because she's blonde and wears short skirts. In fact, that criticism may actually be more valid than the empty accusation of "circling the wagons". At least, I think there's probably more truth to it. She is, after all, actually blonde. And she does wear short skirts.

In the same post on RedState.com (titled, interestingly, Boycott Ann Coulter), the author takes 7 quotes out of context and demands to know if these quotes are “true”:

•"liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots..."
•"I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning."
•"Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the President."
•"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too."
•"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
•"Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."
•"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee."

The idea being that we should all be smart and think they are obviously false. The fact is, most of them probably are true, because they are expressions of opinion or preference, presuming they weren't sarcastic and taken out of context (such as the First Amendment comment). Making exceptions for sarcasm and rhetorical devices, most of her expressions opinions would be as truthful as any other expression of opinion, assuming she's not actually lying about her opinion.

The last one, about Justice Steven’s crème brulee, was done in the context of re-stating a liberals desire that Clarence Thomas die of heart disease, asking what the reaction would be if a conservative said something like that? Well, now we know: self-professed conservatives would take it out of context and try to imply that that’s what she actually said, that we need to kill Justice Stevens!

I would argue that substituting terms in a statement to illustrate hypocrisy is a time-worn rhetorical device that is useful for informing. Taking such statements out of context as calls for murder from a raving right-wing pundit is also time worn, but perhaps less excusable. And, certainly, one would expect liberals to do it, but the number of conservatives doing it is impressive.

So, does Ann really speak truth to power? Not always. Most of Ann's untruthful statements come from blanket statements about entire groups that simply aren't, and cannot, be true, such as the suggestion that all liberals are not Christians, or are anti-Christian, and suggesting that good Christians aren't (and can't be) liberals. As with her assertion that liberals never did anything to fight communism (many did, just not the pro-Communist liberals) these are blanket statements too broad to be true, but incorrect specifically in the fact that they indict an entire group as sharing all the specific "sins" of a subgroup. Some liberals are obviously Christian, just as some are obviously anti-Christian. Saying they are all the same is just wrong.

But, assuming that Ann was factually accurate on every issue (as she does a good job of documenting and footnoting, even if she does, on occasion, seem to leave some important parts out), does that justify advocating nuclear war? Suggesting that the Jersey Girls enjoyed their husband's death?

And turning that around: does the fact that Ann is inflammatory and (presumably) self-aggrandizing and cynically manipulative of the media disqualify her research into topics like the McCarthy-era, where it would seem that liberal spin has become a form of religious canon that most conservatives were too timid to touch?

Not trying to be difficult--or, God forbid, circle the wagons, because the last thing a conservative or a Republican should ever do is defend one of their own, or even risk appearing to do so--but it seems to me that the Ann Coulter issue is a little more complicated than: "She's bad, she lies, she's not a conservative, boycott the book!"

For full disclosure, I don't have much sympathy for boycotts, be it Ann Coulter or the Dixie Chicks. Individuals should, of course, make their own decisions about such purchases, but those who agitate for the boycotting of books cast doubt on the strength of their ideas (or, at the very least, their rhetoric) by comparison. Dismissing the folks who support her, or at least want to give her rudeness the benefit of the doubt, or a plausible excuse, as "circling the wagons" also doesn't strike me as a particularly effective argument against their support. Presumably, everybody who supports somebody who says things you don't like is then "circling the wagons". While not as mean as many of Coulter's comments, such criticisms are equally empty and do nothing to convince the folks who think that Ann is the cat's pajamas that they are wrong.

There’s also a school of thought that says because Ann says outlandish and offensive things, nothing she has said can be treated seriously, or that, essentially, if you agree with her that McCarthy was rail-roaded you agree with her on everything she’s ever said, ever. One would think this sort of argument would be self-evidently wrong, but apparently not. Or that, if Ann speaks on issues and calls herself a conservative and says mean things, then it means that all conservatives are mean and wrong, unless she’s excommunicated or killed. That’s just nuts.

In keeping with that logic, should we treat Al Gore's appearance on SNL with the same seriousness we might treat An Inconvenient Truth? Or is An Inconvenient Truth actually just a silly joke, like the SNL skit of him being president in a alternative reality? How much political commentary is lightened with levity? Should we dismiss the commentary because the commentator makes a joke? Or because of the substance of the commentary?

Reductum ad absurdum: if I state nine facts and one lie, do the nine facts make the one lie true? Or does the one lie make the nine facts false?

Or have I instead presented nine facts and one lie, and the facts should be preserved and acknowledged as true while the lie should be refuted and dismissed as false?

The idea that it's "all or nothing" is foolish (although consistent with Thomas Sowell's analysis of liberalism being an ideology of categorical solutions, where trade-offs, or having to take the bad with the good, is unacceptable, thus the baby must always be thrown out with the bathwater, or one "perfect" solution is worth the sacrifice of everything else).

Disagreeing with her is perfectly legitimate. Calls to boycott her are, in my opinion, ill-considered.

Unfortunately, it seems that the conservative "big tent" can accomodate folks who are pro-drug legalization, pro-gay marriage, pro-amnesty-for-illegals and pro-nation building, but can't accomodate someone who says nasty, mean-spirited things about liberals, including these sins: "saying something that is true, or at least very plausible, about liberals, in a way that is overly-harsh and mean" and "making blanket hyperbolic statements about whole groups of people that are, in fact, only true of some of the people in that group".

While, frankly, I think Ann takes it too far, both in blanket statements and generally nastiness, the idea that she needs to be ostracized or excommunicated for that is just nuts. And it's not an issue of "turning on our own", but of turning on speech that we disagree with or we don't like (bad enough), but with the qualifier that such things are worse if said by ostensible conservatives about ostensible liberals or ostensible Islamfascists.

Sheesh. Perhaps all us conservatives should get together and draft some speech codes? So at least conservative commentators will know when speaking their mind will get them evicted from the conservative movement?

Because I'd hate for the liberals to think one conservative in a hundred might be full of piss and vinegar and occasionally talk out of his-or-her ass now and again.

Some Dreams are More Common Than Others

Read it on KevinWillis.net

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Evoking the images of our Orwellian present, Jay Bookman sees us surrending our liberty for a fictional security. All I can say is: Dude, come on.


I noted in my last post that I was going to discuss "National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies"--the report that "proves" social dysfunction and religiosity go hand-in-hand next, and I'm still planning to, but I want to give that an appropriate level of attention, and I just wanted to quickly deal with Sacrifice Liberty For Security? Not Without a Fight by Jay Bookman.

His main point is summed up thusly:

Admittedly, there is a reason for that willingness to let governmentvastly expand its oversight of our lives, and that reason is fear ofterrorism.

So why'd we go along with it when most of the programs in question, like Echelon, were created, pre 9/11 and pre-Dubya? And while the Republicans and conservatives like to yell "Clinton! Echelon!" it hardly starts and stops there.

And what amazes me about the phone number database . . . what did people think the DHS was talking about they made the alert level mauve-with-gold-trim because "chatter" was up? They would be talking about data mining.

And Jay Bookman is going along with it? I just find it odd when a writer's core point is that we're all doing something (that the writer is too noble and thoughtful to do) for these particular reasons (that, as it turns out, aren't remotely motivating to the writer).

As Bookman says: "But there's always a reason, isn't there?" Yes, there is, and there's always a rhetorical device like that. There's always a reason to redistribute wealth, appease dictators, maintain porous national borders, and surrender national sovereignty to foreign bodies. There's also always a reason to eat food, breathe air, take a shower, learn a skill, get a job, and pay the bills. The thing is, some reasons are better than others.

Bookman writes:

There is always some threat to security that is said to justify the surrender of liberty to government. In every nation that has ever lost freedom to government, there has always been a reason.

That skips the question of whether or not such losses are justified. Are they ever justified? What about surrendering some freedoms for the common good? For example, surrendering 20%-40% of our paychecks to ensure the benefits of those who cannot provide for themselves? Certainly, that's giving up a portion of our livelihood that we've traded blood, sweat and tears for, and that's money we could spend on donating to radical causes or buy supplies for painting signs when we go out to protest "the man". It's the surrendering of a degree of freedom.

What freedoms do you surrender when you get a driver's license? Is it worth it? What freedoms do you surrender when you move into an area with zoning restrictions? How can we possibly justify these limitations on our freedom and liberty?

Bookman continues (from the "well, duh" school of analogous rhetoric):

There was a reason that the soldiers of King George III burst into the homes of colonial Americans without warrants or reasonable cause. And back then, there were also those who saw nothing wrong with that practice, who believed that only those who had done something wrong had anything to fear.

This will always be the case. There are people who see nothing wrong with blowing up infidels. There are people who see nothing wrong with putting people do death for capital crimes. There are people who see nothing wrong with abortion. There are also folks who see nothing wrong with eating fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Clearly, enough people saw something wrong with it, because we're no longer a colony of England.

Another example the author could have cited was the suspension of Habeas Corpus by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, as well as the arrest of critical journalists and the deportation of sympathetic congressmen to the south. Talking about curtailing your constitutionally guaranteed freedoms! Some people thought that was justified. Some people obviously didn’t. Makes you think, doesn't it? Yet, here we are, all one country. And Lincoln is generally revered. Indeed, a common criticism of the Republicans is that "they are no longer the party of Lincoln". Which I suppose is true: we no longer suspend habeus corpus, have journalist thrown in jail, and deport hostile congressmen.

Bookman demonstrates he has no interest in even trying to treat the issue seriously when he writes:

This America, this increasingly strange America, is looking more and more like the land of the cowed and the home of the silent.

Like Mr. Bookman? He's keeping quiet? He's cowed? What about Howard Dean? James Carville? Noam Chomsky? Al Franken? Alternet? Daily Kos? Democrat Underground? Mother Jones? The Nation? Air America? Who, exactly, is silent and cowed in this situation? Either folks agree, disagree, or don't care. But when people can write books fantasizing about the assassination of a sitting president and some fine American's can put on a play about the assassination of the sitting president, nobody should take the assertion that there's some sort of Orwellian fear of jackbooted government thugs breaking in and arresting them because they did a search on the anarchist's cookbook. Or publicly announced there contention that "Bush sucks!"

While one can disagree with the policy and the process, it is simply counterfactual to assert that we're "cowed and silent". Maybe some folks are cowed and silent when it comes to discussing gender or race issues on college campuses these days, but, generally, you can discuss anything, as long as you can handle the fact that some folks are going to disagree with you.

Bookman writes:

In this America, we have a military agency, the National Security Agency, secretly tracking and analyzing every phone call or e-mail that is sent or received by hundreds of millions of American citizens, with records of all of those calls retained forever.

That program, he neglects to mention, is part of a program called Echelon. It, in addition to some of the laws involved in the most recent hubbub, were created and passed under Clinton, by a near unanimous vote in congress. No doubt, just an oversight, as the issue is the program, and not the party in control of the government at any specific time.

Bookman continues:

And in this America, millions and millions of people profess to be quite comfortable living under a government that wants to know who every one of us is talking to, and has the technology to realize that ambition.

Technology to do what? Listen to every conversation? Review every transaction? Even if technologically possible, it is not practically feasible. There are more conversation hours per day than could be reviewed in a year. And the government doesn't want to know who every one of us is talking to. Why would it? What good would that do, for noble or nefarious schemes alike?

Then, he gets weird:

But then again, we all have something to hide, don't we? My something may be different than your something, but we all have something we would rather keep to ourselves — the things we read or watch, the things we do or think or buy, the people we talk with or the Web sites we visit."

I might prefer not to have folks standing over me when I'm oogling the underwear models in the Sears catalog, but if they found out, I'd live. I may not want to announce everything, certainly, but that's different from having something to hide. And what do folks need to hide in a world where they can publicly say they wished the president had choked to death on a pretzel without fear of any reprisal, except catcalls in regards to their poor taste?

Fortunately, Bookman has a good reason that the government shouldn't engage in data mining to try and identify potential terrorist activity:

But a strong people, a free people intent on remaining free, does not accept those reasons as sufficient. They are willing to accept the danger as the price of their liberty.

So, we should be willing to accept the 9/11s, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and congratulate ourselves that despite the huge cost in blood and treasure, the fact we checked out a risqué book from the library never went through some giant data mining program to be ignored as irrelevant. That's liberty!

Our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers were such people. We tell ourselves that we today are still that people. We still celebrate ourselves as willing to fight and die for freedom, but the evidence accumulates that we are not.

What sort of high school debating team is Mr. Bookman auditioning for? My father would make lemonade for the NSA guy tapping his phone from the other room, if it would prevent another 9/11, if it would stop the terrorists. Heck, his father probably would have, too, and I sure would. Either way, it's completely irrelevant. The real question is, of course, would the government listening in on my phone calls with prurient interest (easy job, though, as I don't talk on the phone much) be a productive use of resources to prevent terrorism? Probably not. And there's no indication that they actually do. If they do, it's less my "liberty" and "freedom" I'm worried about than what the hell are they doing wasting valuable terrorist-killing time listening to me call home to see if we have any chicken in the freezer?

And "fight and die for freedom"? Well, the folks willing to "fight and die" for freedom are our enlisted men and women. The rest of us just have to fight the good fight and home. It's not quite the same. But I've seen no evidence that the American fighting man (or woman) is not willing to fight and die for freedom. Even when the freedom they are fighting for isn't ours. But that's another tangent.

The infinitesimal danger that any one of us might be killed in a terror attack — a danger much smaller than that of getting killed by crossing the street — is enough to send too many of us scurrying to toss liberty onto the bonfire in the vain hope that the sacrifice might make us safe.

Of course, such a point begs the question: why is the risk of us getting killed by a terror attack so compartively low? Could it be in part because we are preventing terrorist attacks? And wouldn't it also stand to reason that terrorists want to do general damage to all of us, and our lives, not just by killing Americans but damaging infrastructure and sabatoging the economy? While the risk of my getting killed by accident may be higher than my risk of getting killed by a terrorist act (in this country, at least), the likelihood of airplanes flying into the Whitehouse by accident, or a dirty bomb going off in a port city, or a series of coordinated attacks against the financial centers of our country happening by accident are pretty small. But the chance of them happening thanks to an undetected or unchallenged terrorist plot are fairly high, and the effects would be far reaching.

And terrorism is not a zero-sum game. Successful terrorism will beget more terrorism. The first attack on the World Trade Center was in 1993, and our response was anemic, at best (the creation of Echelon under Clinton at about that time notwithstanding). Then the Kobar towers. Then Mogadishu. A soft touch certainly has it's place, but it does nothing to reduce, and probably increases, terrorism. Again, one of the reasons that the chance of any of us dying thanks to terrorist attack is so small is because we are working to foil terrorist plots at home and abroad.

I also object to the idea that reasonable precautions, and an understanding that the government should get to keep some things secret, is the same as "scurrying to toss liberty onto the bonfire". Or that we've sacrificed anything at all. While a few ordinary American's ability to consort and move cash through known terrorists organization may have been unreasonably compromised (boo-hoo), on the whole, who in this country has have their liberty curtailed? Who doesn't, in fact, enjoy much more general liberty today on almost every front than they would have in the 1950s? Way before the terrible Reagan-Bush-Bush era.

But this is about more than civil liberties, as precious as they might be. These violations of constitutional rights are made possible because of a still more fundamental problem: The system isn't working; the checks and balances built into government by our Founding Fathers have been dismantled.

Again, this would be more concerning, if it were true. But saying it with a flourish does not make it so. The chief executive is certainly more restrained today than he has been in the past (Truman, FDR, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, to name but a few who asserted, and used, wide executive lattitude) and much of what is under debate was passed by congress and done with oversight and awareness--even the NSA "domestic spying" program was done with the oversight of a congressional committee. Senator Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi knew about it at the time! This is not, like it or not, an "above the law, out of control" executive branch. And to act like it is seems more election year posturing that practical concern, to me.

Congress has passed laws to ensure that any spying on the American people is conducted appropriately and within the Constitution; the executive branch simply proclaims it will not be bound by those laws.

However, this isn't exactly true. The current NSA flap is about powers given to the executive branch (and programs authorized for the NSA) when Clinton was in office by a plurality of congressional votes, Democrat and Republican. This is not an issue of an out-of-control executive branch, but may be a cautionary tale (if accurately viewed) of letting the fact that you might not always be the party in power inform the sorts of decisions politicians make about giving too much power to one branch of government or the other.

Again, it may be a bad program, the NSA may have powers that are too broad, or the chief executive may have powers that are too broad, but to characterize the issue as being one of an out of control executive branch (coincidentally, occupied by a Republican at the moment, in an election year) is play politics rather than to engage in thoughtful debate.

Bookman points out:

Then Gen. Michael Hayden, the president's nominee as CIA director, told members of the Senate that he might be open to allowing debate on legalizing warrantless wiretapping, an ongoing practice that violates federal law.

Oh, my gosh! He's open to debate on the issue! Liberty is threatened!

And the compromise in question? Congress would be allowed to legalize what the executive branch has already decided to do anyway.

Or, more accurately, what congress already said the executive branch could do in 1994.

We need to have a fight about all this.

Oh, please? Would you?

It won't be pleasant, it won't be fun, but we need to hash it all out in a down and dirty political brouhaha. As the party in opposition, the Democrats need to lead that fight using every tool at their disposal.

Well, if you can convince them political victory lies in that direction, they'd eat their own children, so that's what you gotta do. If they believe that it might compromise electoral victory, they won't touch it, or will stake out the sacred "middle ground". And by "they", I mean the political class. It would be a strictly non-partisan consuming of their own young that I'm referring to.

If so, then they also lack the guts to lead this country, and I fear to think where that would leave us, forced to choose between one party with no courage and another with no brains or perspective."

Well, I can't disagree with that, although I'd say the party without courage is the Republicans, and the party without brains or perspective is the Democrats, and I'm willing to bet that Mr. Bookman would say the reverse.

Other than that, we're in total agreement on that point. Who says we can't find common ground?

Christians Aren't Just Stupid . . .

Read it on KevinWillis.net

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They're a cause of numerous social ills, to boot. But they are also quite stupid, as well. And they hate sex.

A few months ago I wrote an article--You Christians Are Stupid and We Hate You--about the political left's antipathy towards Christians, and was dubious of the wisdom of calling Christians stupid as a tool for making political progress in America. And I don't think it's a winning strategy.

And you folks know I write for a reasonably select audience--not that it's a private blog, but it's mostly for friends and folks I know. So it's interesting that the first email I got from someone that I don't know (at least, as far as I know I don't know them) regarding anything I've written here was on that article. And it didn't address the point of what I was writing--which is that some folks on the left are outright hostile to Christians, mix it up with politics, trend towards hyperbole in their critique of the many perceived Christian evils they are subjected to, and strangely seem to expect that to be a big vote-getter in a country where a majority of folks self- identify as Christian.

The email was also anonymous, which just strikes me as strange, given the tone seems to be one of establishing a dialog. Perhaps he or she lacks the courage of his or her convictions, or was fearful I might call out the Christian attack dogs if I knew who they were. And the author certainly doesn't actually dispute the core points of my original article, which is that folks on the left generally don't like Christians and think they are stupid. In fact, he or she seems to emphasize the point, blaming all sorts of other manner of evils on Christians:

In response to certain claims that you make in your article, I submit the following study, which finds correlations between religiosity and various types of social dysfunction, such as child mortality, homicide, abortions, STDs, low life expectancy, etc. All of the aforementioned social ills seem to increase as the percentage of the population that believes in God increases:

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.html

This is going to be a two-parter. On my next post, I'm going to examine said study more closely. But just as a general point, as any statistician can tell you, correlation is not causation. It would be just as easy, and as likely, to say that in environments where social dysfunction is high and moral turpitude plentiful, people turn to religion for hope, direction, and fulfillment. Other factors could be responsible for STDs and low life expectancy and high abortion rates, if this is, indeed, a true statistical correlation where the data has not been massaged for a more pleasing outcome. And people could be more prone to find solace in religion where such factors are plentiful. Indeed, people frequently do not turn to God until things turn bad for them. It's often unpleasant exterior circumstances that reveal a deeper, spiritual world. And it could be possible that such data is, at the least, questionable.

The first thing that occurs to me is that the Soviet Union, where atheism was the state religion and enforced by imprisonment and death, there were numerous social ills, including high child mortality and STDs, rampant alcoholism, and low life expectancy, although the murder rate wasn't that bad, if you didn't count the ten million Russian citizens slaughtered by the superior secular state. But perhaps Communist China is a better example. Certainly, the economy isn't as terrible as was the Soviet Union’s. Although through execution, starvation, and forced labor, the People's Party managed to kill by most estimates almost 25 million of its people. And certain social ills, like malnutrition, force abortions, and torturous deaths for the treason of practicing Christianity (or being Jewish or Muslim) could also be considered social ills. But then, of course, there's North Korea . . .

Sufficed to say, I'm not convinced that a study that finds a causal relationship of social dysfunction and religiosity has been completely thorough. But I'll review the report, Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies(try saying that with a mouthful of marbles), next time.

But I do wonder what the author would have made of a similar study that found correlations of certain social ills with large populations of registered Democrats (and this can be done), or correlations of certain social ills with large populations of blacks (and this can be done as well). As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Correlation and causation aren't the same thing, and are usually entirely different. Or a matrix that demonstrated that populations with more Methodist churches than Baptist Churches had far more social ills than populations with more Baptist Churches than Methodist churches. Now, I don't know for sure that that can be done, but I know something very much like it can definitely be done. That is the magic of statistical analysis.

My anonymous correspondent continues:

In answer to your question regarding how many Americans reject evolution, the International Social Survey Program, cited by the above paper, puts that figure at a little over 50%. Not quite 77%, but still the highest evolution rejection rate in the developed world. (Not necessarily the highest rejection rate among third-world theocracies like Iran).

"Not quite" 77%. Quite a statistical leap, to go from one unsupported claim for 77% of Americans disbelieving in evolution (the number that was in the original Alternet article that I critiqued in the post my anonymous emailer is responding to) to 50%. That's a 27% difference. Well, if there was another 27% jump downwards in there, that'd mean only 23% of Americans disbelieved in evolution. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that figure is right. Half the folks in the country don't believe the human race evolved from lower life forms. Okay. At least half of America is dumber than you and less enlightened than you, my anonymous friend. Great! Yay for you!

I don't intend to be flip when I say: so what? What does that mean, really?

Certainly, I part company from many good Christian folks when I say that the evolution of man from lower life forms was the mechanism of God's creation of man. But perhaps not as many as you think. But does that make me happier than you? Or a better person in some fundamental way than a strict Creationist? Does it make me better at my job to believe in a Darwinian origin of species? A better musician, writer, husband or father? At the very most, it makes me right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle on one issue that's largely immaterial to day to day life.

Perhaps the known facts of evolution are very important to you because you feel they disprove the existence of a Creator. But I just see it was one more part of God's grand Creation. I may be wrong. If I am, and you're right, you win. So why worry about it?

And one more comment here. Evolution is a broad term. Are we establishing that people don't believe that man evolved from apes, or a common ape-like ancestor? Or that they don't believe in dog breeding, genetic engineering, inheritance, and animal husbandry? Or are we talking an either/or--do you believe that man evolved from a thick organic soup as a matter of chance, or do you believe God created man in his image? There's not an option in that sort of question for a "yes, I believe in evolution and I believe in God, too" sort of answer. And I've taken surveys with those sorts of questions, so I know they can happen.

My friend writes:

It is ironic that, while Christians howl about abortion, their anti- birth control teachings drive the abortion rate through the roof, as folks who believe that condoms don't work, as Christians teach, use the ineffective, and Biblical, "pull and pray" method instead, resorting to abortion when this fails.

I don't know about you, but I have not personally experienced a church teaching the "pull and pray" method. I know the church counsels against premarital sex, and there are good reasons for this, but, except for the orthodox Catholic church, how much of the Christian church counsels against birth control? I'm not arguing for Catholicism. To be honest, I'm not arguing for Christianity, per se, as I don't believe I'm called to be a witness in the way that some Christians are.

For the record, I'm not howling about abortion. I don't think it's right. And I think it is a form of infanticide. And I think birth control is a great thing. I don't think teen sex is such a great thing, because teens are generally emotionally immature, because the girls usually end up getting hurt, because teen pregnancies happen when even educated teens misuse, or forget to use, their free condoms and because . . . well, there's a reason it's not Christmas every frickin' day of the year. There's a reason fine wines are aged. Some things are better when you wait.

And, technically, "pull and pray" would not be Biblical. You weren't supposed to spill your seed upon the ground, either.

My friend continues:

You never did answer why you believe in the Christian god to begin with. All Christians whose answers I've ever heard have admitted that they simply assume that the assertions of Christianity are correct. Those who don't admit that they're simply assuming that the Gospels are true avoid the question like the plague, preferring to commit harder-to-spot fallacies instead (special pleading in your case: You admit that assuming the existence of the Greek gods and Santa Claus is absurd, but you insinuate the idea that it's somehow different to assume the Hebrew god's existence-- Insistingthat atheists just don't "get it" is an inarticulate cop-out).

Actually, it was an "aside", as it wasn't really the point of the post. And while I can see exactly how it was a cop-out, I'm not sure how it was "inarticulate". You seemed to understand it well enough.

I didn't answer the question as to why I believe in God to begin with because it wasn't actually a question posed in the post, just a statement of fact. But my answer isn't going to be very different from all the other answers you've heard. I have faith. That's why I believe. I know what I have experienced. What I've learned. I could not encompass all of that here, and, in any case, it wouldn't mean much to you. Like I said, I was an atheist. Every single example, every brick that slowly built the wall of my belief, even the biggest ones, could be dismissed by you. Was exactly the sort of stuff I dismissed for a long, long time. I wish I had something better to give you here, but I don't. Maybe one day I will.

But you sound happy with your beliefs, and I'm not going to try and dissuade you. It may make me a crappy Christian, but I don't want to sell you something you don't want. I was evangelized several times in my life, and never bought it. At all. I was completely alone when I accepted Jesus Christ. So, I personally don't go the evangelism route. You asked, I try to answer, but that's pretty much that. It would appear that you've got answers that your satisfied with, and I've got answers I'm largely satisfied with, so we're both good and that's that.

By the way, I don't say that assuming the existence of Greek gods and Santa Claus is absurd, per se, simply that it's a clever rhetorical trick liberals and the anti-religious to make the beliefs of Christians and Jews sound more silly. Actually, a belief in Santa Claus makes sense for a young child who is told by his parents that Santa is real. Belief in the Greek Gods made perfect sense to many Greeks at the time. A belief in God makes sense to me, now. A belief in nothing makes sense to you. I'm not about to make fun of, or ridicule, your beliefs. I was an atheist until I was 33 years old. I'm not about to start pointing fingers.

I am especially interested in hearing how an atheist like you claim to have been gets converted into a Believer.

I think that "claim to have been" gives lie to your assertion that you're genuinely interested. But, at least it lets me know that you, my anonymous friend, aren't anybody I knew in the past. And I expect you weren't on any of the lists I've been on where religion was discussed. I can tell you, more than a few people were surprised--and disappointed--by my conversion, and some suggested it was probably just a phase.

But, it's a good thing you aren't actually interested, because it is not something I'm going to be able to tell you in a way you will understand. C.S. Lewis, a fellow converted atheist, described it as-- I'm paraphrasing--falling to his knees in awe of the undeniable truth of it. That idea would have done me no good when I was an atheist, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't convey anything of the actual experience. If you've ever seen a movie where a twist at the end changed the meaning of everything, so suddenly everything you saw earlier that you thought meant one thing now actually meant something else . . . well, it's like that. And I wish I could be clearer, and I'm really doing my best, but I'm not called to witness in that way. I'm almost sure of that.

You had to somehow be convinced that humans have a massless entity located somewhere within their body that is the true seat of consciousness (as opposed to the scientific theory that the brain is the seat of consciousness).

I disagree. And frankly, so does most of history, which indicates that numerous religious folks have forever located the mind somewhere in the body, indicating that the soul is something “beyond” the mind, or that we have an eternal, Platonic self connected to the physical body at some point (the pineal gland being a popular option). Additionally, one could easily believe that the brain is the seat of consciousness and the mind is entirely a matter of chemical reactions in this realm, and that it is transmuted by some supernatural mechanism at or after death to another state in another realm.

While some people may have at one time regarded the physical body as unrelated to consciousness, one hardly has to believe that the soul—and certainly our mental processes and sense-of-self--is unrelated to the brain, in order to believe in God.

I believe the brain is the seat of consciousness. I believe my memories, my emotions, my memories and my sense-of-self are a product of the electro-chemical reactions in my brains. And yet, for all of us, I believe the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. And that the hand of God is demonstrated in the fact. No doubt, you disagree, and, dude, that’s so cool. I was in that same place for, like, almost all of my life. I understand why you disagree, and I’m not going to try and talk you out of it.

But aren’t Christians called to witness? Aren’t we supposed to be salt of the earth, a light of our faith? Well, yes, but . . .

This entity, called a "soul" by Christians, somehow interacts with the brain to produce behavior, and somehow floats off and flies away somewhere at death.

You neglect the possibility of transmutation. But whatever it is and however it happens after death, I suspect the mechanism is not knowable to us. At least until after we’re dead. And maybe not then. I can’t promise you, one way or the other, because I haven’t been dead yet.

I have yet to encounter a Christian who believes this by anything other than assumption.

Otherwise known as faith. There are reasons for faith, but direct empirical observation of the face of God or life-after-death is generally not one of them.

It's not a conclusion that could ever be reached by any sort of empirical investigation-- you have to presuppose that this absolutely undetectable entity exists, or you can't believe it.So how does a Christian go about convincing an atheist that souls really exist?

I suspect, in most cases, that they don’t. I was not convinced by evangelism or proselytizing. It was a conclusion I had been building toward for awhile without knowing it, and some minor difficult circumstances in my life were enough to open my eyes, as it were. Not quite having the scales fall off my eyes on the road to Damascus, but close enough for government work. However, I was proselytized several times and by several people, and none of that figured in to it. The one guy who I had once discussed such issues with, atheist-to-believer, that did have some effect, in retrospect, had discussed his opinions on the issues but had not really tried to proselytize me. I would have liked to discuss things with him more, now, but I don’t have any way to contact him. So I’m stuck there.

If there is something a believer can say to an atheist to convert him, I don’t know it and I’m not that guy. I do know that every argument every used on me—and there were many—didn’t work. So I’m prone to believe you've got to find your own way. If anything is going to bring you to God, it's probably not going to me.

But, best of luck in all you do. And have a blessed day.

Bush = Idiot

Read it on KevinWillis.net

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Is Bush an Idiot? I dunno, but he's not the one campaigning against a sitting president who cannot run for re-election.

In Forrest Gump's Evil Twin (which, in the email I get from Alternet, is billed as "Bush = Idiot"), Stephen Pizzo continues the left's and liberal's interesting process of running against a president who cannot run again, and calling Bush, and folks who voted for him, and anybody who'd consider it or disagree with them about pretty much anything, idiots.

As Spock might say, "Fascinating, captain."

Pizzo writes:

How extraordinary. Something is happening here that has never happened in America's history. A consensus is sweeping the nation. Not that the war in Iraq is wrong, or that oil companies are screwing us blue, or that the climate is going to hell, or that good-paying jobs are being replaced by low-paying jobs, or that our national health care system is a disgrace, or that that the rich are getting a lot richer while the middle class gets poorer.

While all that's true, and more and more folks are getting it, that's not the consensus of which I speak.

Amazing. While I admit our health care system, although much better than it was 50 years ago, and more widely available (if lacking nostalgically pleasing house calls), could be much improved, what sort of alternate reality do these folks live in (oh, I forgot, duh: Alternet!). While opinion polls indicate a downward trend on the wisdom of Iraq, or how the war is going, or how it's being handled, a consense that the war is "wrong" simply isn't there. Except on the left. Maybe it should be there, maybe it would be if everybody understood how bad war is, but it's just not so. And there's no evidence to support such a claim. But perhaps I'm picking nits.

But someone should, because it doesn't stop there. Good-paying jobs (undefined by Pizzo, but let's define them as jobs paying $30k or above, for the sake of argument, although you could make that break just about anywhere) have been growing steadily. There are more now than ever before, and more now than there was last year and the year before that. By any actual measurement of the data. Maybe it has nothing to do with Bush or Repblicans, maybe it is a residual Clinton effect, maybe it's being engineered in secret by Democrats in congress, or maybe it would just be ten times better if we didn't have Bush in the Whitehouse. But that ain't the point. The point is, good-paying jobs are not being replaced by low-paying jobs. In fact, there are more of both.

Picking nits, yes. Okay. It could probably be better. John Kerry would have rocked our world, had we been smart enough to elect him. Certainly, being at War in Iraq, with all that entails, must be restraining the economy from where it would be, if only. But that's not the point. The point is, good paying jobs are not being replaced by low paying jobs by any measurement you can come up with. At least, not in America. I presume the author isn't referring to Europe or Canada and blaming that on Bush.

Ooops! Almost forgot about "oil companies screwing us blue". Yeah, they make a lot of money. Of course, most of that is enabled by politicians who then get to have their cake and eat it too by blaming the oil companies. And, the fact it, it's the price the market will bear. If it gets to be too much, we'll start biking everywhere, telecommuting, using alternative fuels--something. Right now, we aren't, because the high price of gasoline isn't too high for us to pay. And, by "screwing us blue", shouldn't that discourage such voracious consumption, thus protecting the environment? And lessening our dependence on foreign oil? Isn't that a good thing?

Part of the problem is the market. And the market would be much calmer if America allowed drilling in the Gulf and in ANWR. Apparently, the problem isn't bad enough to let us tap our own supplies, so I think "screwing us blue" may be hyperbole. But that truly is picking a nit: they make a lot of money, and we're paying a lot of money, so--admittedly, with our full cooperating--they are kind of screwing us blue. Okay.

Oh, and the rich getting richer while the middle class gets poorer? Well, there are two reasons that they don't say the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. The first one is, of course, that the poor are getting richer, too. Just not as fast as the rich are getting richer. But they are getting richer. Which is a good thing, isn't it? The second is, they feel their base in terms of votes and donations will be found in the middle class who feel squeezed in the modern economy, even if the external reality is, in fact, better than it has ever been in every conceivable way. So they want them to feel they are getting poorer, and need to vote for liberals.

But those measurements that show the middle-class getting "poorer" are, in fact, aggregate numbers. The ranks of the lower-middle class have been growing. Why? Upper- and middle-middle class folks falling downwards? No, indeed. It's the upper-lower classes and middle-lower classes breaking into the middle class. So what they are complaining about, in fact, is the poor getting richer. Because that puts more lower-middle class folks in the sample. Huh.

But let's get to the nut. The real argument that liberals have for their ideology and Democrats have against Republicans. And Steve Pizzo writes:

Here it is: The president of the United States is a moron.

Yes, stupid, dumb as common road gravel. And not figuratively, but literally. George W. Bush, president of the world's last remaining superpower, is a moron. Forrest Gump's evil twin.

And, after several other uses of "idiot" and "moron" and "worse President in history", he writes these nuggets:

One of the trademarks of a moron is contempt for facts that challenge the simple but comfortable fictions that rule their daily routines. You can drag a moron to a library, but you can't force him to learn.

In fact morons get downright testy when someone challenges what they think they know. We saw this trait earlier this week when Bush was asked if he thought Don Rumsfeld should resign. The moron lashed out at the questioner, dashed into his imaginary phone booth and emerged as The Decider. "I'm the decider," he pronounced, with Mussolini-like swagger. You see, scratch a moron and beneath that smirking, ignorance-is-bliss exterior, you discover a fundamental truth: Beauty may be only skin deep, but moron goes right to the bone.

And ironic comment from someone who gets all the major assertions in regards to verifiable information wrong.
Ah, well.

You can read it all for yourself. The implicit point Pizzo doesn't quite get to is, however, touched on by a commentor. Everyone who voted for or supported Bush is a moron, too!

The commentor writes:

I've got to a gree that George W is a moron. In fact, it could be said he's the moron's moron. However that's not the problem. The problem is, that when over fifty percent of yanks are morons(he did get reelected) the odds are you're going to end up with a moron as President.
Unkind i know but the truth often is.

Another writes:

Now we know why he is President. This non thinking, totally oblivious idiot is in complete and total denial. Just listen to his words. Its a form of brain washing. NO facts, no links, no information, just the rote repeating of his church leaders. Its amazing to sit back and watch. Its like an experiment and the results are shocking. How really pathetic that he relects millions of Americans.

An interesting complaint, given the author of the article also had no real facts, no links, no documentation for his assertions. But that's not an issue, naturally.

Okay, one more, any more you gotta go check the article out for yourself. There's nearly 300 comments on this, almost all of them of the "Bush is an idiot" type or, as a variation, "Bush is smart but evil". Like this one!

Here is another non-american opinion, for what its worth.
Thinking of Bush as a moron is a great mistake. Read the evaluations made of him by one of his college professors. That he is envious, vengeful, unprincipled, lazy, a liar and emotional illiterate and other beautiful attributes, I have no doubt.

But believing he is a moron and acting accordingly, has given the democrats and the oposition many catastrophic surprises.

His values are not the same as those of most of the people on this blogs, perhaps excfepting the currency trader, who I hope is not holding any dollars. Anybody here believes that he gives a damn about the people of Iraq - or any other of the people under his beloved dictators - whether they have a democracy or not? No, he cares about the revenues of the oil companies and he has done a tremendously good job on this. Not giving a damn for taking the average americans (and his voters) for a ride.

You can think about his other personal priorities and will probably arrive at the same conclusions, he and his friends are doing fabulously.

His goals are personal and short term, and for this he uses the people who still believe in the greatness of USA's values, those who are afraid of everything beyond their borders, those who are afraid of change, those who like him have as main values the number of digits in their bank account - often an offshore account. Those for whom civilization, culture, feelings and empathy don't mean anything.

Sheesh. Who knows? Maybe it'll work for them. Maybe it won't. The only thing I can guarantee you is that the approach isn't objective, factual, honest, or even-handed. And I'm dubious about how well "If you don't agree with us you're stupid" works as an argument for your point of view.