Epops: You’re mistaken: men of sense often learn from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learned from a friend, but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.

— Aristophanes, Birds

Or, as Pastor Swank more eloquently put it:

US, LEARN FROM JAKARTA HOW TO SPIKE MUSLIM OBAMA

America should learn from Jakarta’s protesters how to clog the streets with cries of imploding the Oval Office imposter.

The lesson here is plain: eat more fiber.

Marxist Muslim Barack Hussein Obama is beheading America by throwing our money into the downdrains.

A conservative Christian would use an axe or a knife to decapitate the country, because it’s more efficient. A liberal, meanwhile, thinks you can solve any problem by throwing money at it, including the problem of how to behead America; but you’d probably have to use coins — sharpened like shurikens, because I don’t think folding money is capable of delivering a neck-severing paper cut — and you’d probably have to throw them really, really hard. On the bright side, at least Obama is cutting our nation’s head off near the downdrains, because I doubt there’s enough paper towels in the world to deal with a blood stain that size, even if they did have thirst pockets.

He’s a liar. He breaks his promises. He plays dictator. His crook and liar cronies stand to right and left of his every move. His wife is team member with him.

I heard his wife was team Jacob, but if she’s team member that’s okay with me too. I like a woman who’s pro-boner and not afraid to admit it.

There is no doubt that Obama is using every means possible to wipe out this Republic. That is the prime purpose of any Muslim—eliminate the infidels. Beheading is the favorite modus operandi. But if one can behead without shedding blood, so much the cleaner.

And Pastor Swank’s violent eschatology takes a weird, sudden swing into Billy Mays territory.

“And if you can behead without blood, so much the cleaner!”

Obama is working night and day with cohorts Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to shred this nation from coast to coast.

The Democrats are bankrupting America, buying all this sick skateboarding gear!

This is most evident with the Obamangst “care”

“Obamangst?” I am second to none in my admiration of the Pastor’s ability to neologize, but like the speed of light, there is apparently a physical limit to Obama name puns, beyond which acceleration, and sense-making, is impossible. And that dull, moist-sounding smack was the Pastor hitting it face first.

bill ram-jammed down our throats.

As you know, Pastor Swank doesn’t always get the latest wingnut talking points (he still thinks “Teabaggers” is a badge of honor), but he must have recently figured out how to use email, since he’s jumped aboard the whole “Obama and Congress are ramming health care reform down our throats” meme. And yet, being Swank, he’s decided this argument would be more effective if it internally rhymed. And that’s why he’s awesome!

Reasonable newsfeeds don’t know how to word their coverage of this insanity. Fox Newscasters in particular are stymied when trying to figure out logical ways to communicate this crazy scene from the White House.

Every day they grope for new verbiage by which to state that the present administration is killing our democracy and no one seems to know how to stop it.

“Verbiage fails me.”

Well, in Jakarta, protesters fill the air with cries that Obama is not to arrive there because he is not Muslim enough. There you have it. In America, Muslim Obama is Muslim Number One. In Jakarta Obama is not Muslim enough.

While in a remote cottage occupied by a family of bears, Obama is just Muslim enough.

Now this brings us to the spiritual analysis. God is at work through this whole mess. Why? Because of the righteous remnant at the time of America’s start and at the present moment. Those prayers match up before heaven’s throne.

It’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…And they’re all here to play The Family Feud!”

Satan is also at work, evidently.

Not only that, but he just got a big bonus from Goldman Sachs.

Satan wants to destroy America because it is the only country begun with a Christian stand. America is the Christian-heritage nation of the planet.

Just add water, and the Christian Stand™ will reduce the chance of fire and keep your Christian fresh and healthy-looking for up to three weeks! (For best results, lop off the bottom 2 to 3 inches of your Christian before inserting in Stand.)

We must not try to play God. We must let God guide us socially, spiritually and politically—which He will do.

I use the Google God app for iPhone.

Watch how God moves in the future to rescue America from the Marxist Muslim schemes to rid the world of the Christian-heritage United States of America.

And my dad will be able to beat up your dad at some indeterminate point in the space-time continuum.

Jakarta is an example of how to protest Obama at the moment. Other protestations will show up on life’s screen.

I think the Pastor’s telling us he just discovered YouTube.

In each of these, God will work His move.

And God works His move in mysterious way.

Anyway…Keep Watching the Life Screens!

Oh Lord | 11 Comments »

Riley (avec Moondoggie):

Riley: I’m glad to have this opportunity to speak directly to my fans…

Moondoggie: Hey, why does she get to be in front? You said the camera loves me…”

And Moondoggie:

Moondoggie: Yes, yes…This is more like it. Snap away, Helmut Newton! That’s right…work with me…!

Wild Things | 11 Comments »

We all have our quirky little enthusiasms. Interests and attachments that are difficult to defend — even objectively silly — but nonetheless fun and fulfilling. I happen to have a passion for egregiously bad movies. Mary is partial to the TV series Castle. Riley enjoys a fine catnip and a persistent patch of sunlight. And managing editor of World Net Daily David Kupelian really, really likes rape.

And you can see why. For a man whose sexual confidence seems to constantly tremble like a Jenga tower in the later stages of play, rape is a wonderfully convenient, labor-saving device, the Swiss Army knife of metaphors. In 2005, when a movie sympathetic to the plight of gay men in America was released to favorable reviews, and David was reduced to a lonely voice, howling in the wilderness, rape was there for him:

“Brokeback Mountain,” the controversial “gay cowboy” film that has garnered seven Golden Globe nominations and breathless media reviews – and has now emerged as a front-runner for the Oscars – is a brilliant propaganda film, reportedly causing viewers to change the way they feel about homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage.

And how do the movie-makers pull off such a dazzling feat? Simple. They do it by raping the “Marlboro Man,” that revered American symbol of rugged individualism and masculinity.

What could be worse than Hollywood sodomizing our beloved corporate mascots? Only the prospect of the White House — the home of America’s Caesars! — occupied by a Nubian upstart whose idea of bipartisanship is to ask, “Where the white women at?”

Barack Obama and the date-rape of America

Good Americans from sea to shining sea are grappling right now with how to mentally process what they’re witnessing in Washington, D.C.

The spectacle of a far leftist president literally forcing socialized medicine down the throat of an unwilling center-right America is reminiscent, perhaps more than any other contemporary metaphor, of date rape.

America is like South Carolina in the second half of Birth of a Nation — ravished by triumphant Negroes — but even worse, because at least those guys were actually white under all that burnt cork.

A man determined to have his way with a woman may start off seducing her with lies, flattery and the usual pretense of caring about her. But at a critical moment, when she says, “Stop, I’m not comfortable with this and don’t want to go any further,” he has a choice: Either do the right thing and back off, or abandon all prior pretensions and take her by force.

I’m not surprised to see that David, as a traditionalist, has followed the time-honored literary dictum, write what you know.

As president, Barack Obama courted us with sweet talk, but America grew increasingly uncomfortable with his advances and firmly said, “Stop” – in fact, screamed bloody murder for months. Yet Obama remains obsessed with forcing himself on America.

In addition to serving as editor of WND and Whistleblower, David has authored several books of best-selling moral wisdom, including How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom, and The Huge Black Penis of Evil: How Evil Has a Huge Black Penis.

Put aside for the moment the fact that Obama is single-handedly destroying the Democratic Party for years, perhaps decades, by maniacally pursuing Obamacare as though it were Moby Dick and he Captain Ahab, leading all the Pequod’s hapless Democrat crewmen into political destruction.

Most experts agree that in the wild, the Huge Black Penis has only one natural enemy: Moby Dick.

America is not, after all, a place like Cuba or Zimbabwe where corrupt dictators get their way through sheer ruthlessness, intimidation and naked arrogance. We’re accustomed to the rule of law, to civility, to due process, even in the most difficult and contentious of times. After all, when Hillarycare was soundly rejected by Americans during Bill Clinton’s first term, he wisely backed off and stopped trying to force socialized medicine on us. (And Bill was a guy with his own date-rape problems, but that’s another story.)

And he was a white man, and stuck to his own kind, and we don’t really care what the poor white trash get up to with themselves, so long as they don’t frighten horses or show up drunk to church.

A few weeks ago I interviewed a top forensic psychiatrist – a medical professional who makes his living evaluating and providing expert testimony regarding the mental condition of people in court cases…I asked him, “Does Barack Obama have Narcissistic Personality Disorder?” Mind you, this was not about whether the president is “narcissistic,” which everyone already knows. Rather, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a serious mental illness or personality disorder with a broad and disturbing symptom picture.

The forensic psychiatrist’s response to my question: “Yes, that’s a fair assessment, maybe even Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (which crosses over into criminality).

It’s like that Dick Van Dyke geriatric mystery series, combined with a pervy Dick Wolf procedureal. Diagnosis: Rape.

We went through a few of the major symptoms, including: 1) a grandiose view of one’s achievements (everything with Obama is “historic”)

Obama thinks he’s something special, but lots of black men have gotten themselves elected President of the United States. Morgan Freeman does it like three times a year.

2) utter inability to handle criticism (everyone criticizing him or his policies is attacked as a radical or extremist, even Fox News was attacked)

Roosevelt was the same way in 1941 (everyone who bombed us was attacked as treacherous and dastardly, even Tokyo was attacked). If FDR had had a lick of self-reflection, he would have taken Pearl Harbor as constructive criticism of our scrap metal embargo.

and 3) lack of genuine empathy (in his televised speech immediately after the Fort Hood shooting – while the entire nation was reeling in shock – he engaged in small talk and “shout-outs” for two full minutes before mentioning the worst terror attack on our soil since 9/11.)

I prefer paralysis or panic in my presidents, and Bush managed both in one day. That’s versatility.

Imagine you just met someone who was unusually arrogant, greedy and selfish, who considered himself far superior to everyone else, above the need to be truthful, above the law (and willing to break any law he could get away with), who was contemptuous of others and utterly impervious to criticism or self-reflection – and who also harbored an overwhelming urge not only to take your money, but to control you, to exert power over your life! You might understandably conclude that person is mentally deranged or even a criminal.

Or you might just wonder why your hostess seated you next to Glenn Beck.

how can he justify using such dishonest means to force his will on an unwilling American public? In other words, how can he countenance, in effect, date-raping America?

I don’t know, Dave, but maybe you should be a little more concerned about what you’re going to tell the police, since DNA testing has found traces of your semen in the rectum of the English language.

What we need to understand is that, between his hate-based ideology (Winston Churchill called socialism the “gospel of envy”), extreme narcissism and long-internalized political corruption, Obama and others like him, literally drunk on power, live essentially in a state of delusion: Down is up, truth is cruel and impractical, corruption is just “conducting business,” morality is repression, lying is a creative force.

You know what, I’m flat out of projection, and homeless-guy-arguing-with-his-reflection-in-a-plate-glass-window jokes. You guys got anything?

Those on the far left regions where Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid dwell regard free-market capitalism as irredeemably evil, exploitive and unjust – and therefore in need of destruction to make way for the creation of something more noble and just. Likewise, they look at influential conservatives not simply as “old-fashioned,” “selfish” or “religious nuts,” but as evil. (Remember, Dick Cheney was “Darth Vader” and Karl Rove “the emperor.”) If you think I exaggerate the monumental, self-righteous rage with which the left abhors conservatives, watch MSLSD for 15 minutes. I rest my case.

The jury will now retire to consider their verdict and beat the prosecutor senseless with a bar of Lifebuoy stuffed in a tubesock.

Thus, the left thinks of their constant lying and deceiving the way you and I might regard lying and deceiving were we German undercover operatives in the Nazi army plotting to kill Hitler, as in the true-life Operation Valkyrie. Col. von Stauffenberg and the other courageous patriots in the German army were lying and deceiving all day long. After all, war is deception, and they were operating behind enemy lines, trying to slay a monster and end a terrible war. Their deceptions were indeed noble.

Shorter David Kupelian: “Yes, but we’re like the good Nazis!”

That’s how Obama and company think of their daily depredations that endanger the very existence of America as a land of liberty and light among the nations.

President, Don’t Let the Sun Set on You in America.

Any way you slice it – psychologically, ideologically, politically, morally – we are talking about people in the grip of dark forces and delusion, hell-bent on leading the rest of us downward, which they see as upward. The fact that they may not be fully conscious of the evil they do may make it easier for us not to hate them.

Yeah, um…the feeling’s not mutual.

But hate is not what we need, anyway. What we need is to vote every single one of Obama’s congressional collaborators out of office this November, and to do it so decisively that even “the anointed one’s” gigantic fortress-life shell of denial is shattered into a million pieces – as the bells of freedom ring once again throughout America.

“Jeb, you set up the card table over there with the voter guides and the ‘I Voted!’ stickers. Wade, you hand out the leaflets, but be careful not to electioneer within a hundred feet of the polling place.”

Can I Peek Under Your Hood? | 23 Comments »

I’ve been avoiding Dr. Mike lately, because life is short, and his shtick, while never original, has begun making me feel like that one guy at a Gallagher concert who forgot to bring a plastic poncho. However, a correspondent was kind and cruel enough to inform us that UNC-W’s most distinguished gun-fondling kolpophobe is lately so haunted by what we might delicately call “Aphrodite’s Aperture,” that he’s been gibbering on about The Vagina Monologues for the past two columns.

But Dr. Mike is not resting on his anti-vaginal laurels, because there pretty much isn’t a single part of a woman’s body he isn’t revolted by in some way, as witnessed by the fact that last week’s offering is a painstaking, 700-word build-up to a fart joke.

I Am Woman Hear Me Toot

As our story opens, Dr. Mike is having another imaginary conversation with a “friend,” who we can be pretty sure is imaginary himself because he claims to have read Dr. Mike’s book, Feminists Say the Darnedest Things. On the bright side, he was so inspired by it that he filched a notice off the door of a women’s restroom.

He then took it into my office for my personal inspection

Ewww!

and not to mention my personal entertainment.

Ladies, please laminate your restroom signs, because Dr. Mike may secretly borrow and “entertain” himself with them behind closed doors. Also your shoes, probably, but I don’t know how you’d go about laminating those. Maybe just double up on the Scotch Guard.

The sign reads as follows:

BE AWARE! YOUR VOICE CAN CARRY INTO ADJACENT ROOMS. IT’S BEST TO CONDUCT PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL OFFICES.

Well, that sounds like good advice; not particularly risible, really, and certainly not offensive. But apparently Dr. Mike’s familiar felt the need to fetch this announcement because it reminded him of that one time when Dr. Mike triumphed over over feminism because he talked to a secretary at school and she didn’t file a restraining order against him.

The secretary explained to the feminist that I was not calling anyone an “idiot” but that instead we were joking about the movie Napoleon Dynamite. So, of course, no complaint was filed. But, after I made light of the situation in my book, some feminists got angry. I suppose that the same right to privacy that allows a feminist to have an abortion allows her to encourage false accusations of “workplace harassment.”

Yes, but if that were the case, wouldn’t some feminist have had a Planned Parenthood physician collapse Dr. Mike’s skull and vacuum out his brain by now? Although I suppose it could have happened and I just didn’t notice.

Nonetheless, I am now thinking about posting the following sign on the women’s restroom just for fun: BE AWARE! YOUR VOICE CAN CARRY INTO ADJACENT ROOMS. IT’S BEST TO CONDUCT MCCARTHYITE WITCH HUNTS IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL OFFICES.

Wow. Dr. Mike is fun. I always forget how much fun he is, which I guess explains why he’s single. As Linda Cardellini says in Brokeback Mountain, “Girls don’t fall in love with fun!” And it’s so unfair. Anyway, in keeping with the toilet theme of today’s column, Drop Dead Fred makes a fart joke, and Dr. Mike feigns indignation so he can spend the next five paragraphs setting up a better fart joke. Which we’ll never see coming, because just when you think he’s taking us to the anus, he abruptly detours back to the vagina, like a porn star with a bad case of ADHD.

It may surprise my readers but I did not think Bob’s remarks were at all funny. I thought they were offensive. Such comments should be considered offensive not because they are crude but because they are actually sexist. Let me explain.

Why do I suspect that whenever Dr. Mike’s ex-wife asked to hear those “three little words,” these are the ones she got?

It is simply unimaginable that the same kind of remark would be directed towards a man. Men, while not necessarily expected to belch or break wind in public, certainly are given a pass when they so. However, a serious gender gap exists with regard to our tolerance of women who do exactly the same thing. And since women have achieved equality in nearly every other aspect of life it is not unreasonable to start tackling this issue. And I have a specific proposal.

Let me guess: It has something to do with the vagina?

When Eve Ensler first published The Vagina Monologues (TVM) she included a monologue called “Reclaiming (C-Word).” The idea behind the monologue was that a) the c-word had a nasty meaning and that b) by repeating the c-word over and over the negative stigma could be removed. The c-word could be reclaimed by those who wished to use it without offending anyone!

Amazingly, I think he may have missed the point here. Ensler’s use of “the c-word” — as anyone who isn’t Dr. Mike has known since, oh, the mid-90s — isn’t an attempt to make it acceptable to Gramps and Nana and whoever else is sitting around the Thanksgiving table. It’s like black folks’ use of the n-word, or gay peoples’ embrace of the q-word — the expropriation, through a kind of linguistic eminent domain, of a historically demeaning word, thus disarming one’s tormentor; or at least forcing him to scramble for a fresh insult. And let’s face it, that’s a lot of work. Jonah Goldberg spent an entire book repurposing the word “fascist” just because he was too lazy to rustle up a decent neologism.

Many feminists later added a similar monologue to TVM performances. This one involved having women get up on stage and simulate the noises they make when they have an orgasm.

At first, being unfamiliar with these sounds, Dr. Mike thought it was a demonstration of the Heimlich Maneuver.

The idea behind this was that women too should enjoy orgasms and that they should not be judged for doing so. I guess that closing the gender gap on this issue was the climax of the feminist movement.

You can tell Dr. Mike is so proud of that joke he was probably still snorting and tittering about it two hours later when he was hunkered down in the toilet stall. I just hope someone posted the appropriate sign on the Men’s Faculty Restroom door.

So, today, I propose that we add another monologue to TVM performances. This new monologue will be called “Reclaiming Toot.” It may sound unusual but it really isn’t.

It may also sound imbecilic, and really it is.

After all, feminists say the stigma associated with the c-word can be removed by simply saying the c-word over and over. So why not repeatedly break wind in front of a bunch of howling students until the toot loses its power to control women?

Because Dr. Mike finds it extremely unjust that anything — even flatulence — can control a woman when he can’t. He’s also in a bad mood, because while researching his proposal, he read a dirty limerick scratched into a toilet stall and found its complicated rhyme scheme “elitist.”

We don’t require dogs to leave the room before they break wind so why should women?

I don’t know, Dr. Mike…this whole thing seems like an awfully roundabout way to go, just to get to the point where you can yell BITCH!

Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man? | 33 Comments »

We’ve added a new (well, it’s been around for awhile, but we only just discovered it) blog to the roll, Museum of the Bourgeois. WO’C old timers may remember the proprietor, HH, as “Fred Burfle,” who has commented here a number of times, despite the difficulty of finding a good wifi connection in Hooterville. Welcome, H.

Now a word from our sponsor | No Comments »

Do you remember Nathan Tabor? No? Really? How I envy you.

Nathan was known as “the young Jesse Helms,” back when he spent three quarters of a million dollars losing a Republican primary race for Congress. Undaunted, he ran for North Carolina State Senate, and lost that too, before putting his hard-won experience to work as a political consultant. According to his Wikipedia page — which reads as though it were lovingly tended, nurtured, and monitored by Nathan on a daily, if not hourly basis, so it must be accurate — these are the highlights: “Nathan Tabor consulted with North Carolina Senator Fred Smith, who lost the primary for governor in 2008. In the past, Nathan has worked as the director of internet outreach for Congressman Duncan Hunter’s [failed] presidential campaign. Additionally, Tabor has worked for Jim Oberweis in his [unsuccessful] campaign for governor of Illinois in 2006, and Jeff Crank, who ran for Congress in Colorado [and lost].”

By this point, Nathan, who is also the founder of TCV Media, “a professional full-service internet and branding firm,” realized that the “Young Jesse Helms” image was slightly past its peak of flavor (as is, one assumes, the Old Jesse Helms), and that a more hip, edgy, up-to-date identity was needed to help Nathan connect with today’s youth. At last report time, he was rumored to be going with the “early middle-aged Jesse Jeans”

His Townhall bio tells us that “Nathan Tabor organizes and educates Christians on their role in Politics,” a program summed up by his trademarked slogan “Somebody has to root for the Washington Generals!”

And while I’m glad he’s sitting down with the next generation of aspiring politicians and sharing with them the secretions of his success, I’m also relieved to see that he hasn’t abandoned his role as a hard-hitting investigative scold. And this week he’s broken perhaps the biggest story of his career — a scandalous case of religious bigotry in a Texas school:

We Are Not Ashamed; Are You?

No? Well, to quote Yoda: “You will be. You…will…be!”

School administrators in Texas face a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of three students, accusing the school district of refusing to allow children to carry or read the Bible.

The lawsuit, filed in Houston, alleges that a teacher pulled two sisters from class after discovering that they were carrying Bibles and threatened to have them picked up by child-welfare authorities.

Another teacher told a pupil he was not allowed to read the Bible during free reading time and forced him to put it away, the lawsuit alleges. The boy also was required to remove a Ten Commandments book cover from another book, the lawsuit states.

“My daughters called me, were hysterical, and said, ‘Mama, they took our Bibles and called them garbage and threw them in the garbage and then threatened to call Child Protective Services,’ ” said Deborah Bedenbender, 37, a Willis homemaker.

Even I find this story disturbing, and can only hope the major media follow up and help to expose this abuse of civil liberties. At the same time, I want to congratulate Nathan on his scoop; it’s a triumph of old school, shoe leather journalism, and I don’t believe his achievement is in any way diluted by the fact that this story is ten years old (the plaintiff, Homemaker Bedenbender, filed her lawsuit on May 19, 2000, and voluntarily withdrew it less than two weeks, later, on June 1).

So when Nathan says, in the present tense, that “[s]chool administrators in Texas face a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of three students,” he’s simply acknowledging the Einsteinian concept that space-time is curved, and eventually we’ll all meet and kill our own grandfathers.

Not only do actions by teachers and administrators described above hurt Christians

But actions by other municipal authorities also hurt Christians. Like feeding them to lions, or crucifying them upside down. That shit’s gotta stop.

they also send a message to non-believing children and parents that there is something wrong with believing in a saving Jesus Christ, and that such expressions of faith should be hidden from public view.

Or maybe just kept out of the classroom, although that one kid got kind of a raw deal just for doodling pictures of Jesus double-fouling the moneychangers on his Pee Chee folder.

In essence, these government officials are telling Christians that they should be ashamed of their beliefs and they should cower in their homes secretly reading Scripture.

In essence, that’s appalling! In reality, not so much, since according to the district superintendent, “Students of Willis Independent School District have not been told they cannot bring Bibles to school, and Bibles were never confiscated or thrown into the trash.” Also, “an investigation by the district found no evidence that Bibles or any other materials had been confiscated. [The Superintendent] did say, however, that only school study materials were allowed in the Saturday class that the girls had been attending to make up for time missed.”

So the girls missed school, were required to make up the lessons on Saturday, and instead of doing the assigned work, they started reading their Bibles in class. That’s either a saintly degree of devotion to Jesus, or a big Fuck You to the teacher.

However, there is a new movement within the Body of Jesus

That is a really an unfortunate turn of phrase…

that couples Bible-reading Christianity with modern communications. Beginning Monday, March 1, individuals from the United States and the world can participate in the first-ever online video Bible. They can simply film themselves reading or quoting Scripture passages and then upload their videos to the new “I Am Not Ashamed” campaign web site, (www.iamnotashamed.org).

I sort of wasn’t paying attention by this point in the column, and accidentally typed iamnotashamed.com, rather than .org into the browser, and discovered this piece of Renaissance art, which I believe is entitled Christ Ministering to the Rough Boys:

The campaign launches simultaneously on the Internet and on television, with commercial spots featuring participants quoting Bible verses.

But you’ll have to go to the website to watch the full length, uncensored commercial with the implied lesbian content.

Oh Lord | 11 Comments »

Pro-Am pundit and habitual ratiocinator Selwyn Duke is over at American Thinker today, squeezing the Air Jordan-style pump in his chin and inflating his cranium to 34 psi. Today’s big thoughts are being thunk on the subject of how Moral Relativists have apparently rid the world of sin — which is great for Mankind, but leaves Selwyn feeling a bit like a Irish herpetologist.

I stumbled across [an article] about Tiger Woods, his Buddhism, and his reaction to Brit Hume’s January recommendation that he explore Christianity to remedy his woes. It was penned by David Gibson, a “religion” writer who says that he is, as I am, a convert to Catholicism. If I seem suspicious of his Catholicity — of, in fact, his religiosity — it’s because I am.

Selwyn then goes on to list a couple of professional awards Gibson has won, and while you can’t actually hear his fingers stabbing out each letter as though he was Freddie Kruger and the keyboard was a slumbering ingenue, it does seem to gall him. But for all I know Selwyn has won some writing awards himself, and was simply too modest to list them in his bio. In fact, he’s so self-effacing he no longer offers a bio, not even on his personal website; but then, he’s a man who needs no introduction, so why waste the electrons?

His biography states, “Gibson won the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, the top honor for journalists covering religion in the secular press. In November he will receive the top prize for opinion writing from the American Academy of Religion.” Both are quite fitting. His writing seems more secular than religious and reduces Truth to opinion.

That is to say, Gibson seems to embrace the relativism that defines our age. I have read two articles he has written on the Hume/Woods story, and in neither one does he exhibit the slightest understanding of the concept of Absolute Truth.

Any religion beat reporter who can go two whole columns without reminding his readers that every faith besides Christianity, and every denomination besides Roman Catholicism, is bullshit, is clearly in the wrong business.

I’ll explain.

Oh, that’s what that high-pitched screeching sound is. I thought it was the ambassador’s phone melting.

I know a man who is an orthodox Jew. He walks the walk, following all of the 613 Judaic laws he must and praying at the appointed times of the day, regardless of where he finds himself. Now, because he is authentic, he believes that his religion contains the full deposit of faith.

Insured FDIC.

Of course, a corollary of this is that he believes that mine does not.

Does this bother me? Not really. In fact, while I disagree with his ultimate conclusion, I expect nothing less than his absolutism. Why sacrifice for a faith — constraining your impulses based on its teachings — if you think it’s just a flavor of the day? Heck, if I thought religion was just a fancy name for opinion, I’d become a hedonist — or at least a Unitarian.

And which flavor of the day were you selling as Absolute Truth before you converted to Catholicism? Because this is kind of like getting a lecture on the One True Faith from Methodist/Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox stalwart Rod Dreher.

In contrast, in Gibson’s commentary, there is never an acknowledgment that Hume is behaving in precisely the way a true man of faith would expect a true man of faith to behave.

Obnoxiously?

Instead, it smacks of secularism.

Hardly the sort of thing you’d expect from a reporter who won “the top honor for journalists covering religion in the secular press.”

Gibson acts as if Hume seeks to impose a taste, as if he has had the temerity to ask someone with a distinctively different palate to adopt his favorite flavor of ice cream.

Isabella and Ferdinand didn’t want to issue the Alhambra Degree, but their hand was forced when the Spanish Jews refused to even try Benedict & Jerry’s Pistachio Pope.

Yet this piece isn’t about Hume or Woods; in fact, it’s not even about Gibson.

Thanks for wasting eight paragraphs.

I’ve long understood that moral relativism is the characteristic spiritual disease of our time (and the worst of all time).

Who can forget when the Massacre of Vassy sparked the French Wars of Relativism?

I’ve also long known that this portends rapid moral collapse, and then the civilizational variety by consequence.

And it’s not doing much for your fallen arches.

But right now I’ll limit my commentary mostly to the impossible marriage between Christianity and relativism. (Non-Christians will find plenty here for them as well, however, so read on.)

SPOILER ALERT for non-Christians: What you’ll find here is the Universal Truth that you’re WRONG! Wrong about EVERYTHING! On the bright side, there’ll be plenty of it.

Let us be blunt: It is simply not possible to espouse relativism — which holds that right and wrong are opinion — and be a true Christian.

Right and wrong about what, Selwyn? Transubstantiation? Married clergy? Justification? Or does Universal Truth allow you a bit of a fudge factor when the secular are watching?

There are many doctrinal differences among the denominations, and good people could debate them ad nauseam and still not settle every one. Yet if anything is central to Christianity, it’s the belief that Truth is spelled with a capital “T” — that it is absolute, universal, and eternal.

So Jesus came to Jerusalem to sing patter songs and sell band instruments?

And also central is a corollary of this belief: that there is an absolute, universal, and eternal answer to every moral question; that right and wrong are not a matter of opinion, and that they don’t change from time to time and place to place

Hammurabi said it, I believe it, and that’s that.

(although the perception of them certainly can. Ergo, swords lopping off heads.).

Therefore, swords lopping off heads?

In fact, understand that moral relativism does nothing less than render the foundational act of Christianity, the sacrifice on the cross, incomprehensible. Why? Simply because Jesus died for our sins, and this presupposes that sin exists.

And that Jesus did.

However, if what we call morality is simply opinion, then there can be no such thing as sin.

In other words, if we don’t punish masturbators, we’d be hypocrites to punish murderers.

For who is to say?

Bronze Age goat herds, apparently.

“Hey, I have my truth, you have your truth. Don’t impose your values on me!” protests the relativist. And if there is no such thing as sin, then there was no reason for Jesus to sacrifice himself.

Really? Crap. Should we tell Him? I don’t think we should tell Him…

After all, what does anyone need to be forgiven for if there is no sin?

I think the real question is, why do Tiger Woods’ sins need to be forgiven by Brit Hume?

Now we come to why this piece isn’t just for Christians.

Well, it is, actually. But it it’s not just for breakfast anymore!

The concept of Absolute Truth lies at the heart of Judaism, Islam, and, in fact, philosophy itself. Why philosophy?

Because it’s not subject to the Scientific Method, so you can just make shit up?

Because, properly defined, philosophy is the search for Truth. Now, some — including many philosophy professors — would dispute this, but they not only are babies in philosophy, but they also have adopted the endeavor of a madman: searching while claiming there is nothing to find.

I would have paid good money to see Selwyn debating at the Oxford Union. “Sir, you state that moral distinctions stand upon the shifting sands of culture and intellectual fashion, rather than the sturdy bedrock of objective and universal standards of virtue. Ergo, you’re a kindergarten baby, you wash your face in gravy. You wrap it up in bubble gum and send it to the Navy.”

If there is no Truth and only opinion, then there are no answers to be found.

Well, not at American Thinker, anyway.

Of course, it’s tempting to embrace religious-equivalency doctrine in a multi-religious society because it’s thought that it enables us to get along. Like two little boys in a schoolyard who each agree to relinquish any claim that his daddy can beat up the other’s, we make the following unwritten pact: “I won’t say my faith is better than yours if you don’t say your faith is better than mine. Deal?” And it does work. Only then there is not only no reason to fight about religion, there is no reason to even discuss it. There is, in fact, no reason to even adopt it. That is, unless it somehow makes you feel good. But adherence to the principle “Do whatever feels good” is a pathway to something. It’s called sin.

So by agreeing to forgo arguments about just exactly who’s god is Top God, and avoiding bloodshed at recess, we’re a bunch of godless hippies who live by the maxim, “if it feels good, do it.” But what about those martyrs who experienced transcendent joy and ecstasy in faith when they were tortured, mutilated, and often killed for their devotion to a certain, relatively large, but nonetheless abridged part of their team’s doctrine. I mean, how do you even score that?

Through his embrace of relativism, modern man has made Christianity incomprehensible.

Just try explaining the Holy Ghost.

He has made philosophy incomprehensible. He has, in fact, made civilization itself incomprehensible.

This column? Totally incomprehensible. Thanks, Relativists!

Oh Lord | 29 Comments »

Riley:

“I like you. I’m going to kill you last.”

And Moondoggie:

“My ear itches…Why?”

Wild Things | 3 Comments »

“Well I bet I can turn that Orange Julius head of yours the color of an eggplant if I squeeze your nuts hard enough.”

“Jesus — no wonder you pronounce it BAY-ner. I bet I could load these in a BB gun…”

For No Good Reason | 4 Comments »

Back in 2007, while filing one of her periodic scouting reports, s.z. flagged James Lewis as a Wingnut to Watch. Then, for reasons unknown — I suspect a rare eruption of the self-preservation instinct, or, more likely, the gag reflex — we promptly forgot about him. But as it happens, I was wandering around Pajamas Media today when James emerged from his burrow and saw his shadow, which means we’re in for at least six more paragraphs of stupid.

Why Sarah Palin May Save America

Politics is the art of the impossible

Bismarck is feeling a little pessimistic today.

…the last resort of fools, scam artists, prostitutes of all kinds, low-lifes, crooks, and fanatics. Look at Washington, D.C. It’s pretty damned obvious, right?

You may say it’s impossible to hire a hooker in Washington, James, but I say: David Vitter has dreamed the possible dream!

Which is why Sarah Palin is so important to America’s well-being now and maybe for decades to come. The fact is that Obama is going to hang around for a long time, even if he gets defeated in 2012 — like Jimmy Carter, another egregious bankrupt of the left who won’t walk off the stage. Jimmy turned out to be quite an evil man after he wiped off that big phony smile.

Remember when it was still possible for these people to be satirized by The Simpsons?

Obama is going to be hanging on like a bad case of mononucleosis for decades to come. He has just signaled his real position in the political world by telling us that corrupt old Harry Reid is “on the right side of history,” in spite of all the nasty stuff he routinely commits.

Evil men commit stuff. Choosy mothers choose Jif. You people would know this if you’d studied up on natural law.

That is a pure, leftist definition of goodness. In this way of reckoning, Stalin and Lenin are “on the right side of history” — except maybe for killing 100,000,000 innocent human beings.

Because if there’s one thing we remember Lenin for, it’s bailing out Wall Street. By the way, Mr. Lewis’s bio says he’s “a scientist by trade, and carps as a hobby about the passing parade of human fraud and folly,” so one would assume he’s pretty good with numbers. But 100,000,000 seems a bit high, at a time when even Robert Conquest has reduced Stalin’s estimated death toll to somewhere south of twenty million. And that seems more than sufficient for monsterhood — hell, twenty people makes for an unusually productive serial killer — so I remain a bit confused over why why these guys feel the need to inflate already genocidal numbers. But then, I think My Lai was horrifying, so when it comes to body count, I’m apparently easy to please.

You can get away with a lot of bad stuff if you are on Obama’s “right side of history.”

Well, Obama was specifically referring to Reid’s support of voting rights, and that’s not as easy to get away with since they started using those Diebold machines.

The good part is that in the coming years, Obama will haunt the Democrats most of all. No Democrat will be able to run without the emperor’s gracious nod. They’re all going to be like Hillary, begging for Obama’s favors, and they’re going to hate it.

So Obama will be a failed, one term president like Carter, and like Carter, he will continue to rule the Democratic Party for life? But that’s not fair — we only just escaped the iron-fisted dictatorship of Michael Dukakis!

That’s the fun part. On the other side, Obama is going to throw regular hatfuls of bat guano at the rest of us for decades to come.

It’ll take awhile for Obama to get to everybody, so just be patient, and when he finally does swing by with your stingy-brim fedora full of batshit, make sure you’re standing in the front yard so when the guano drips off your pants and shirt it’ll fertilize the St. Augustine.

We are all on Obama’s wrong side of history.

It’s like the climax of Spartacus, except we’re all yelling, “I’m Strom Thurmond!”.

So America will need a headliner to counter Obama’s famous brand of demagogy.

I suggest master magician Lance Burton.

Sarah Palin can do it.

See Rich Lowry’s dream journal.

But why Palin and not any of the other candidates? Because Sarah Palin appeals in a more-than-rational way to all of us.

Her winking makes me feel extra rational!

You can make policy arguments for Palin as a GOP president. She is a solid, substantive, conservative thinker.

This is a bit off-topic, but for some reason I suddenly find myself wondering what James’ discipline is. Molecular mesmerism? Political chiromancy? Nuclear-phlogistonics?

She is open-minded about facts

Very. After all, there’s no point in closing the brain door after the facts have run away.

unlike the current president — who just blocks out any evidence that doesn’t fit his mental party line. The Democrats will never have an original thought. They can only switch from one demagogic cliche to another one.

“By the way, I’m going to be using the word ‘demagogue’ a lot…”

But like Ronald Reagan, Palin adds something rare and special to a substantive understanding of life and politics.

Nice ‘n Easy Medium Neutral Brown?

The left voted for Obama because he was black and looked cute on TV.

That certainly explains why Will Smith was President of the United States from 1990 to 1996. But I’m a little surprised to discover that “the left” comprises 52.7 percent of the country. I should have listened to Norbiz…

Their campaign was pure rock star; there was no substance at all. It might have been Michael Jackson up there and they would have gone gaga just the same.

They think in sociological categories: black (check!), male (check!), cute (check!).

That’s also how I order sushi.

Okay, so casting a vote for someone who looks good on TV is stupid, got it.

Well, Sarah Palin happens to be an articulate

You betcha!

…conservative woman who also looks good on TV, thereby defeating all of the left’s stereotypes at a single glance.

Unless the stereotype you happen to be thinking of is “conservative women who look good on TV,” in which case you should just switch over to Fox News, where, by a bizarre coincidence, you’ll find Sarah Palin.

Add her eloquence and Reaganesque sense of confidence in her principles…

Astro-graphology? Hollow Earth Geophysics? Quantum Dowsing?

After all, the left claims to own all the women, blacks, gays, and kids as a matter of entitlement.

Bush’s “ownership society” really kinda got out of hand, didn’t it?

Everybody else is a “traitor to their race,” as they said about Justice Thomas.

Clarence Thomas: Lawyer. Supreme Court Justice. And every conservative’s imaginary friend.

Or to their gender. On the left you can be a traitor to everything except your country.

I think James is loyal to his country, but a traitor to his species.

The feminist lynch mob went into screech mode when Palin hit the national headlines, and they haven’t stopped yet.

I’m glad right wing pundits have overcome their habit of trivializing the ineradicable shame of lynching, and now only use it as a demeaning rhetorical device on special occasions, like Thirsty Thursdays.

You have to go back to the “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas to find them tearing off their smiley faces so blatantly.

Once Jimmy Carter taught liberals how to tear off their smiley masks for maximum effect, every Congressional hearing turned into the finale of Phantom of the Opera.

They really hate any of the designated victims if they dare to act as individuals.

Exactly! If you avail yourself of affirmative action programs, and then try to prevent anyone who follows you from doing the same, people should really respect your individuality.

Clarence Thomas coined the phrase “high-tech lynching” when he was viciously assaulted for being uppity — by being nominated for the Supreme Court as a conservative. It’s like “driving while conservative”: you’re automatically damned in the media.

Since being voted out of power is the moral equivalent of being denied the right to vote, it’s clear that no one better understands the struggle of Black folks than the Republican Party. If there was any justice in the world, they would have transferred John Mayer’s hood pass to James Lewis.

Justice Thomas knows what hatred looks like, having been born in the Deep South in the Jim Crow years. That’s what he saw during his nomination battle. It was a hard experience.

Clarence Thomas is Emmett Till with a better porn collection.

Personally I like Palin for her ideas, but then I’m a policy wonk.

And I just read Playboy for the indicia.

The left fears her for her looks, charm, and eloquence. She leaves them sputtering in helpless rage.

Actually, that was just a spit take, but go on…

You can watch it happen. It’s sort of fun if you can handle the sight of real, unvarnished hatred. It’s easier to laugh at it if you keep in mind that she can handle a shotgun.

Because Governor Palin’s ideas are best delivered at 1200 feet per second.

Sarah Palin is America’s anti-Obama is so many ways

James, when you’re right, you’re right.

and the libs feel this emotionally long before their brains get into gear. We have a new crop of promising conservative candidates, but we don’t seem to have any other charismatic conservatives today. They tend to come along only once in a generation.

Much like the Black Plague used to.

Governor Palin may need to learn more before running for the top position in the country. I don’t have any strong views on that. She learns fast, as we can see from the liberal obsession with her. They can’t stop giving her headlines.

We’re going to be cutting basic reading and math classes in elementary schools, but we’ll make up for it by giving the kids more headlines.

What’s the bottom line? She has to be on the GOP national ticket in 2012, because people instinctively recognize her as one of us.

Gooble, gobble, gooble, gobble!

Can I Peek Under Your Hood? | 34 Comments »