Lessons of War

It is worth stating something plainly because people often assume political views appear fully formed. They rarely do. Mine certainly didn’t.

active Republican Christian terrorist in Washington state

This is fine:

"as of this writing, an alleged practitioner of radical Christian terrorism remains a state legislator in Washington."

You really have to read about Matt Shea to believe it is even real:

"Last year, the chair of the Republican caucus in Washington’s state legislature acknowledged that he had written a manifesto on the 'Biblical Basis for War.' In that document, the lawmaker argued that – as far as Jesus Christ was concerned – American Christians have the right to 'kill all males' who support abortion, same-sex marriage or communism (so long as they first give such infidels the opportunity to renounce their heresies).

The manifesto’s revelation cost its author, Matt Shea, his chairmanship. But Shea insisted that his writings were merely 'a summary of church sermons on Old Testament war that could help place current events in historical context.' And so, the Washington GOP did not call for Shea to resign or expel him from its House caucus. [emphasis mine]"

Although they finally suspended him from the caucus when more information came out, the fact that Republicans in Washington kept a white Christian terrorist in their protective circle tells you all you need to know...notwithstanding my hyperbolic use of #AmericanTaliban.

From April:

"At various points in his strange career, State Representative Matt Shea of Washington’s Spokane Valley has called for a holy war on liberals, advocated for eastern Washington to secede from the union, and spoken to meetings of the John Birch Society. Now, despite a new report that details his participation in a disturbing far-right group chat, Shea, a Republican, is clinging to power. His party seems reluctant to condemn him."

I wrote about Christian theonomy about 13.5 years ago...jeez the more the change, eh?

Proclivity towards lore, legend, myth and BS

Both liberals and conservatives are capable of letting their feeling get in the way of their thinking. That's been known for some time now. But what is less well-known is that the conservative mindset is correlated with a propensity towards paranoia:

conservatives respond much more rapidly to threatening and aversive stimuli (for instance, images of "a very large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face, and an open wound with maggots in it," as one of their papers put it). In other words, the conservative ideology, and especially one of its major facets—centered on a strong military, tough law enforcement, resistance to immigration, widespread availability of guns—would seem well tailored for an underlying, threat-oriented biology. The authors go on to speculate that this ultimately reflects an evolutionary imperative. "One possibility," they write, "is that a strong negativity bias was extremely useful in the Pleistocene," when it would have been super-helpful in preventing you from getting killed. 

A good summary:

research shows that conservatives have more of a “negativity bias”, which means “they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments.” In other words, they are more fearful and respond more to fear-mongering than liberals. Fox News could have told you that, but it’s always nice to have some scientific evidence.

And that’s what these conservative urban legends are about: Conservatives keeping each other in a heightened state of fear by constantly warning each other about the endless threats to their safety, their identity, their masculinity, their religious holidays, whatever they’re hyped up about today. And using that fear to justify reactionary politics.

At the risk of over-generalizing, it may simply be brain differences that divide us into liberal and conservative camps. People who are psychologically "high strung" -- able to be terrified easily -- may move towards conservatism as a way to manage anxiety. Are right-wingers' stances on the strong military, law enforcement, lots of guns around, etc., all just preferences that arise from fear, not reason?

A crucial insight

Something that maybe eluded me, or at least that I've seen from a different perspective: conservatives of the political and religious stripes simultaneously glorify America / religion while betting on the doom of society that rejects their viewpoints. On the one hand, America is a wonderful place of liberty, by definition, the freedom to pursue happiness in one's own chosen way. On the other hand, America cannot survive the liberal culture and secular "falling away" from religion.

It's an interesting contrast.

As Frank Schaffer says,

The leaders of the new religious right were gleefully betting on American failure. If secular, democratic, diverse and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn’t that prove that we were wrong about God only wanting to bless “Christian America?” If, for instance, crime went down dramatically in New York City, for any other reason than a reformation and revival, wouldn’t that make the prophets of doom look silly? And if the economy was booming without anyone repenting, what did that mean?

Exactly. That's from the religious perspective. I think I've mentioned Schaeffer's "falling away" before.

From the (purely?) political perspective, Sophia McClennen writes,

One of Colbert’s greatest gifts was his ability to expose logical fallacies and faulty reasoning. His second book, “America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t,” epitomized one of the primary flaws in logic to conservative patriotism: How can the United States be the greatest nation ever and also be on the verge of total collapse? Or, as Limbaugh put it in his attack on me: “Meanwhile, we’re losing everything this country’s known for. The culture is rotting away, the culture is corrupting itself away, being perverted away, and all of that’s being celebrated.” Again and again, Colbert showed us that the right had created an almost devotional quality to their version of American exceptionalism, one that could not account for practical realities and one that could not handle any sort of questioning. If you asked about the treatment of Native Americans, then you hated freedom. If you thought that the U.S. should not practice unilateral foreign policy, you were weak. Any time anyone had a different view on these issues they were immediately attacked for “hating” their country. It’s worth pausing to reflect on the very idea of attacking someone for “hating” their country when you disagree politically. How did politics become overrun with hyperbolic emotion? When Colbert began his show, much conservative political discourse had devolved to highly emotional language. There is no question that a degree of affect and emotion is a part of politics regardless of party affiliation, but most scholars of democracy agree that democracy works best when its citizens use reason and judgment to form their decisions.

None of that is exceptionally insightful, but it's a set of points that deserve to be framed and highlighted

Palin saves Xmas

It's easier to spend time hooking suckers to buy your new book than to work on legislation (i.e., Farm Bill, Immigration).

Why does this "War on Christmas" shit drag on? (here, here, here...)

As Krugman memorably put it, the modern GOP is an alliance between the plutocrats and the preachers. You can't get middle and lower-class Americans to vote for plutocrats openly, so you make BS like this the underlying current that drives them. This is of course the famous "What's the matter with Kansas?" thesis. As the GOP continues its rightward slide, I can't help but think that as older white people die off so will the party they support. The GOP will become a truly regional party, largely rooted in Southern Christianity.

PS: I'm a not-so-angry atheist without an attorney. Thus I won't be "telling" Palin that Christ is no longer a part of Christmas. Lolz

"Derp" - a new word for something I've long known

As you may suspect, derp is not limited to wingnuttian politics. It is quite prominent in religion (esp. American Christianity) as well. Typical signs: bumper-sticker-theology and/or cliches, sloganeering, smugness, frequent visits to the Creation Museum's "Dragon vs. Dinosaur" exhibit.

Stupid arguments

MediaMatters flagged a blog by one of the nutball religious right organizations, the American Family Association ("We love all families...so long as they're straight and Christian."). In it, the author argues, with apparent seriousness, that we ought to adopt a policy to stop Muslims from immigrating to America and ship off the ones who are already here.

After I read it, shaking my head, I read the next blog post by the same author, and I just literally can't believe how stupid it is. First, I don't know of any liberal "elitist" who thinks all cultures are "equal" in the way that he pretends. Rather, most postmoderns think that certain customs or traditions within culture are difficult to objectively evaluate. I don't think anyone would say that there aren't valuable things within all cultures, as well as some things that we should perhaps all be critical of (e.g., Western culture promotes materialism and Social Darwinism).

The last part of his post just has to be a spoof. I hope. Read this part:

My point all along has been that the more devout a Muslim becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security. And we just can't know when a "moderate" Muslim, like Maj. Hasan, will suddenly decide to get serious about his faith and wind up going jihadi on Americans.

The question then, which regrettably I failed to ask Imran, is this: how can we tell the difference between the Muslims we don't have to worry about (such as Imran) and the ones we do (such as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan)? I've yet to receive a satisfactory answer to that question. Once Muslims help us to find a foolproof way to identify the troublesome Muslims, it might make sense to loosen immigration restrictions. Until that day comes, unrestricted Islamic immigration remains a threat to our national security.

Ok. So let me change a few words around there and give that back to this idiot:

My point all along has been that the more devout a Christian becomes, the more of a threat he becomes to our national security. And we just can't know when a "moderate" Christian may evolve into "Christian" militias or Tim McVeigh, and suddenly decide to get serious about his (or her) beliefs and wind up killing Americans.

The question then, which regrettably I failed to ask Bryan Fischer, is this: how can we tell the difference between the Christians we don't have to worry about (such as Bryan Fischer) and the ones we do (such as "Christian" militias or Tim McVeigh)? I've yet to receive a satisfactory answer to that question. Once Christians help us to find a foolproof way to identify the troublesome Christians, it might make sense to loosen immigration restrictions. Until that day comes, unrestricted Christian immigration remains a threat to our national security. We should send devout Christians back to their home countries.

I wonder how he would feel if someone said this to him? I mean, hey, our country is not (to Bryan Fischer's chagrin) a "Christian nation", but an explicitly secular state. We can't afford to have all these devout Christians running around trying to make everyone do what they want them to do.

The RR isn't dead yet (unfortunately)

The crazy. It burns:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More from Steve Benen:

First up from the God Machine this week is a look at something called the "prayercast," organized by Family Research Council Action PAC, a leading religious right outfit. The point of the event was to organize right-wing activists to pray for the failure of health care reform in the Senate.

It's hard to truly appreciate the true madness surrounding the event and its neo-theocratic organizers/participants, but I found Rachel Maddow's coverage helped capture some of the more disturbing elements.

Of particular note, remember that high-ranking, elected federal officials were integrally involved in this rather bizarre right-wing gathering. Alongside religious right heavyweights like Tony Perkins and James Dobson, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) were on hand, and Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.) even helped lead attendees in prayer against health care reform.

Right Wing Watch had some of the best coverage of the "prayercast" anywhere, and posted some striking clips from the event, including this one in which Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) argues that the Bible should be a "blueprint" for American government, and this one in which James and Shirley Dobson ask God to "frustrate the plans of the Evil One."

yowza

Religious "nones" and crazy people

So a new study indicates (summary here) that if the current trend in the fastest-growing sector of American religion -- "none" or "not affiliated" -- continues, about 25% of Americans will belong to that group withing twenty years.

That's not surprising to me at all, and I actually think it may be a little low. The reason is that, as the authors report, a large chunk of the "none" crowd, or non-religious sector, as I think we ought to be referred, is young and 1st-generational. 30% of us are under 30 and only 5% over 70 (see Fig. 1.2). This means that our impact on our children will be felt in twenty years even as the current trend among our generation (Gen Y) continues.

See more atheism stats here.

I've said before (actually, quoted before) that the Religious Right is getting dumber with time. Want to see recent evidence? Check out a woman speaker suggesting that we have public abortions at the "Values Voters Summit" and this weeks' "How to Take Back America" conference co-chair elaborate on conspiracy theories. These people are complete nutjobs.

Culture wars comment

As I mentioned the other day, some are declaring a hasty victory in the culture wars. Dedicated religious fundamentalists will not give up so long as they feel they have "God on their side", so we ought not let down our guard. Creationists are still trying to remove scientific fact from textbooks. People who don't like women's right to plan their family are still trying to remove choice from law. Modern-day Puritans still don't like porn being available to adults (perhaps because they themselves sample it so heavily).

If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out

Longshanks' famous Braveheart quote leaves me depressed at times, as I consider the fact that the people who I know that have 3+ kids are all ridiculously religious and ridiculously conservative. It's obvious that religion's built-in self-preservation device is a strong Darwinian competitor, even in areas where children starve to death because their parents' religion denies them the right to plan their families and control birth.

The good news is, as I've analyzed before, the picture may not be as gloomy for my generation of young liberals as it was for the prior ones. Basically we just have to decide to use the inexorable math involved to push for policy changes in "socialized day care, family leave, and other dreamy Scandinavian-style policies," to pump up birthrates among liberals, according to Michelle Goldberg.

Religious Right articles

Two mainstream articles today look at the political failures of the Religious Right:

1. Washington Post's Kathleen Parker: "Political Pullback for the Christian Right."
2. Newsweek's Jon Meacham: "The End of Christian America."

Despite Meacham's hasty title, he notes,

Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe.

Both are worth reading in their entirety.

Explain this to me

A victory today for freedom.

Now, I have a "traditional family": one woman, one man, a biological child by us.

Explain to me how allowing gay people to have the same right to marry whomever they choose as I have "threatens" my family?

Quote:

The ruling is viewed as a victory for the gay rights movement in Iowa and elsewhere, and a setback for social conservatives who wanted to protect traditional families.

Religious Right troglodytes don't want to "protect" me from the "threat" of gay marriage. They want to enforce their particular interpretation of one ancient religion's view of gay people on everyone else as law. They want our secular country turned into a theocratic state.

Please protect us from them.

Keep in mind how we're told that the media is completely biased the next time you read a newspaper that reports that Religious Right thugs want to "protect" us rather than the truth: that they want to make us into a Christian version of Iran.

Conservatives heart porn

A new interesting study done on the correlation between political conservatism and porn:

• Benjamin Edelman --Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?. Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 1 (winter 2009): 209-220.
• New Scientist summary
• Charles Blow NYT blog summary
  

Eight of the top ten per capita porn consuming states gave their votes to John McCain.

The reason this is funny (to me) is the fact that conservatives and their puritanical style of government are so ironic and hypocritical. When the Religious Right and Rush Limbaugh run your party, you know you have some issues. If the Democrats headlined a former gay porn star at their far-left conference, it wouldn't be nearly as funny as when Republicans do it at their CPAC conference, because of the RR influence.

When the RR has a conference, they choose only "non-porn offering hotels..." at first this sounds like a moral choice (to support businesses who are "more pure") but then you realize it's just so they can't control their urges to watch big manly bear porn. They also can't deal with the raw fact that gay sex is observed in the animal kingdom all the time, so they probably prefer hotels without the Discovery Channel too. Religion is like porn in many ways.

While many religious people will say that things like porn consumption make people "fall away" from the faith, it turns out that porn and faith seem to have no real impact on one another: Edelman found that a 1% increase in churchgoing in a postal zip code was correlated with a 0.1% drop in porn subscription purchases on Sunday...but that purchases through the rest of the week brought up those zip codes to the average (or above).

It turns out that abstinence until late adulthood contributes to sexual dysfunction. Perhaps it's because they spend too much time watching porn to practice the real thing and their expectations are all out of whack with reality ;)

On contraception and religious right troglodytes

Sometimes I think it's easier just to look forward and try to put behind us the regressive and ridiculous policies of the past decade, and especially social conservatism spearheaded by religious right troglodytes. However, we have to raise awareness of the real harm done by programs run by people like this. For example, in many nations, people are so poor they scavenge garbage dumps but are not given access to birth control (and are threatened with excommunication) because of the shameful and absurd Catholic Church. In Africa, millions are dying from AIDS and hunger but Bush's programs (for all the legacy spin) cause more death because they place all emphasis on "abstinence" and do not provide the sort of comprehensive sex ed and contraception options that are effective.

Bush appointed a birth control opponent to head the agency in charge of family planning: the Dept. of Health and Human Services. The religious right doesn't just want to prevent abortion. They want to control your reproductive rights. Specifically, they want to end all forms of birth control and there's a clear (although perhaps subconscious) reason why: religion is hereditary. The one surefire way to increase the number of parishioners in the church is to breed them. The church could care the less what quality life your children have -- that's between you and Jesus -- but they want to make sure you have children who are in the pews.

If the religious right was actually interested in human welfare, they'd support comprehensive sex ed and realize that countries with no reproductive rights are those with the highest rates of abortion. But they don't live in the reality-based community.

*UPDATE: Add another study to document the failure of "abstinence pledges" to do anything but increase STDs and teen pregnancies*

Xmas gifts for the crazy Christian you love

Ship of Fools presents great gifts for the religious nutcase in your life this holiday season. My favorite is their favorite (#1):

My parents would so put this in their yard.

Haggard floats back up

It's like a train wreck: you can't look away.

Since the guy fell from grace and his church took a huge hit, he just hasn't gone under; people with megalomania rarely do.

The waning Southern strategy

The NYT had a great front-page item today following up on what I wrote a few days ago about the (sad) role of Applachia in the election.

Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

They accompanied the analysis with a great graphic too:

Basically I would just say that I hope the party continues its slide into irrelevance and ignorance. Let the GOP be the party of the uneducated religious zealot, the bigoted redneck and the gun-crazed nutjob. According to Beliefnet, 52% of the anti-intellectual elements of the party (namely Evangelicals) apparently believed that Obama was a Muslim. Yet they still believe the media is ridiculously liberal, despite the media's inability to inform them of the basic fact of the President-elect's religion. Sad.

Frazer on "Christian Nation" nonsense

Arguments that purport to show that nearly all of the Founders of our nation were Evangelicals are based on bullsh*t. I've written before of the common rumors that float around in email chains (does everyone have a mother like mine, who forwards EVERY ridiculous email to you?). From a legal standpoint, it matters not one iota what the Founders believed, only what they wrote into the Constitution.

Anyway, Ed Brayton brings us a more accurate look at what the views of the Founders really were from Evangelical historian Greg Frazer: theistic rationalism.

Theistic rationalism was a hybrid belief system mixing elements of natural religion, Protestant Christianity, and rationalism – with rationalism as the decisive factor whenever conflict arose between the elements. Theistic rationalists believed that these three elements would generally be in accord and lead to the same end, but that reason was determinative on those relatively rare occasions in which there was disagreement. Rationalism as used here is the philosophical view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Educated in Enlightenment thought, theistic rationalists were at root rationalists, but their loosely Christian upbringing combined with reason to convince them that a creator God would not abandon his creation. Consequently, they rejected the absentee god of deism and embraced a theist God of, to a significant extent, their own construction. Hence the term theistic rationalism.

An emphasis on reason had long been accepted in the Christian community, but in Christian thought, reason was a supplement to revelation, which was supreme. Theistic rationalism turned this on its head and made revelation a supplement to reason. In fact, for theistic rationalists, reason determined what should be accepted as revelation from God. Unlike deists, theistic rationalists accepted the notion of revelation from God; unlike Christians, they felt free to pick apart the Bible and to consider only the parts which they determined to be rational to be legitimate divine revelation. They similarly felt free to define God according to the dictates of their own reason and to reject Christian doctrines which did not seem to them to be rational.

The God of the theistic rationalists was a unitary, personal God whose controlling attribute was benevolence. Theistic rationalists believed that God was present and active in the world and in the lives of men. Consequently, they believed in the efficacy of prayer – that someone was listening and might intervene on their behalf. Theistic rationalism was not a devotional or inward-looking belief system; it was centered on public morality. God was served by living and promoting a good, moral life. The primary value of religion was the promotion of morality, and the morality generated by religion was indispensable to a free society. Since all of the religions with which they were familiar promoted morality, they held that virtually all religions were more or less equally valid and led to the same God who is called by many names. Theistic rationalists generally disdained doctrines or dogmas. They found them to be divisive, speculative, and ultimately unimportant since many roads lead to God.

Interesting.

Time mag. asks, and I answer: Palin = disaster

Barack says that Bristol Palin's teenage pregnancy is off-limits:

MONROE, Michigan (CNN) – Barack Obama told reporters firmly that families are off-limits in this campaign, reacting to news that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.

“Let me be as clear as possible,” said Obama, “I think people’s families are off-limits and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.”

Obama said reporters should “back off these kinds of stories” and noted that he was born to an 18 year-old mother.

“How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off-limits.”

The Illinois senator became aggravated when asked about rumors on liberal blogs speculating that Palin’s fifth child - Trig - is actually her daughter Bristol’s. A Reuters report Monday quotes a senior McCain aide saying that Obama’s name is in some of posts, “in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their 'campaign of change,’”

“I am offended by that statement,” Obama shot back, not letting the reporter finish his question. “There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us.”

“We don’t go after people’s families,” Obama said. “We don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought that there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”

Although McCain's campaign insists that they knew about this, I remain skeptical, not the least reason being that they're now sending an army of lawyers to Alaska to try to contain this...which is something they should've done beforehand. Time magazine asks whether McCain's pick was "bold or disastrous?" I think that answer is becoming more clear. Let's have a run-down of the woman's baggage:

1. Late addition: She was a member of a fringe Alaskan political group that seeks its independence from the US, and was involved in their 2008 conference
   
2. Late addition: It looks like independent voters are seeing through the nonsense
   
3. She had a shotgun wedding as she got pregnant with her first kid out of wedlock
4. Her husband was arrested on a DWI
5. She's a staunch "abstinence-only" advocate whose teenage daughter got pregnant, the political fallout from which is still to be determined
   
6. Troopergate: She used her authority as governor to try to have her sister's ex-husband fired, then fired his boss when the boss refused, then lied about it [apparently the ex-husband was a dickhead, but the last two points are more important here]
7. She claimed in her first public appearance as VP candidate that she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere" but this turns out to be a lie, and a bad one, at that
8. She claims to have opposed corruption in Alaska, but said that calling for Ted Stevens resignation would be "premature" after his arrest and received his endorsement, which she paid to run as an ad
9. She directed Ted Stevens' 527 group on his behalf and appeared with him in July after his indictment to appeal for him politically
10. A few months ago, she claims to have no idea what the VP does everyday
    
11. In a 2006 gubenatorial questionaire, she said that she opposed abortions for incest and rape, only giving an exception if it could be proven that the mother might die from childbirth. The Religious Right loves her. Re-read that.
12. From the same source, and many others, she claims that teaching creationism in science classes is the way to go, "teach both."
    
13. On the same anti-science note, she is a global warming denialist
14. She is to the right of McCain on drilling in ANWR, protecting polar bears and protecting the environment in general (yet another anti-science Republican)
15. On the same line of reasoning, she semi-opposed the surge in Iraq, hailed as one of the only things that McCain has not failed at in the past decade or so
16. There is zero national security experience involved in being governor, so quit repeating the "commander-in-chief of the national guard" line. Campbell Brown stumped Tucker Bounds today (H/T: Kos) who tried to equivocate on this -- she didn't command troops to go to Iraq. Not even close. I'm the "commander-in-chief" of my classroom, but that doesn't make me an education policy wonk.
    
17. She is clearly and unequivocally unqualified to be president should something happen to McCain, the oldest presidential candidate ever nominated for a first term whose four bouts with cancer should make everyone think twice

Go Obama-Biden '08! (pic source)