Newshoggers.com

Faith, Fear and Christopher Badeaux

By Steve Hynd

I think it's a bit rich of Christopher Badeaux to be publishing stuff like this:

Like a real-life, hyper-garrulous Forrest Gump, Sullivan has been present for, or at least has shared his thoughts — stray, organized, rational, and delusional — on most of the major events of the last twenty five years, at a rate that has only increased since he began blogging (before it was cool) and taking long vacations after pledge drives (which has been cool forever). More impressive than his output is his utter lack of fear of self-contradiction, flights of laughter-inducing hyperbole, public obsessiveness, repeated self-contradiction, betrayals of utter ignorance, and failed attempts to mimic the Bard by coining bizarre neologisms to match his wandering moods.

...To say that Sullivan has focused his laser-like mind on human reproductive organs is to engage in an understatement worthy of the master himself. We could simply look at Sullivan’s relentless, years-long focus on circumcision (a relentlessness not well-captured by the internet tubes, as Sullivan’s archives traditionally become difficult to search when he moves from site to site), an unusual genre for a man who will never have children and who is not Jewish or Muslim, though perhaps not so unusual given his general interest in the member in question. One could focus on his decision to start calling a 4,000 year old religious tradition “male genital mutilation,” thus cleverly calling untold generations of Jews child abusers and torturers, a decision that marks the sort of intellectual territory into which only a man bravely unwilling to live in Israel can tread.

When he's responsible for pretentiously written crap like this, in what is ostensibly a simple book review. 

I think it’s fair to say that Cormac McCarthy’s novels increasingly reflect a deeply disordered universe.

That requires some elaboration, and a brief excursion into natural law. A full exposition on that topic is beyond the scope of this essay, and frankly beyond my abilities, but in brief: The Lord made the Universe according to a set of hidden but largely discernable rules, and those rules produce specific, predictable outcomes once the rules and variables are known. Furthermore, all things are made ordered—oriented, if you prefer—to not only the Lord, but also to decent and right outcomes.

This is reflected in little things, like two plus two always yielding four; and in such obvious things that we’ve lost the ability to rationalize them, such as a man and a woman together yield life, where a man and a man together are sterile. In other words, there is not only the obvious physical event, but good things come of the act because it satisfies the underlying order God instilled in things. This order lies not merely in individual acts, but in an interconnected web that binds all things together in ways immediately detectable, often predictable, and usually inexplicable.

Our consciences and our natural inclinations are manifestations of this intrinsic order; disregarding them gives rise to disorder. Indeed, even doing things that are right and good can be taken to extremes that place one outside of that natural order. When we step outside of that order, as anyone who has lived with someone suffering through, say, anorexia or alcohol addiction can tell you, the disorder radiates outward in a spiderweb-crack pattern of pain. Sin itself is definitionally an intrinsically disordered act, because it puts one apart from, and against, God. In a sense, Original Sin is the greatest intrinsically disordered act of all, and we deal with its ripples to this day. [Emphasis mine]

One has to wonder if Badeaux's problem with Sullivan is that he's not succinct enough, not Catholic enough, not conservative enough...or simply not straight enough.

Just Saying.

Put Up or Shut Up, Wingnut Haters

By Steve Hynd

Regular readers know I love to read a righteous rant. And they don't come any more righteous than this from my pal Sara Robinson - Memo to the Right Wing: Put Up or Shut Up. A big blockquote is very definitely in order, but go read the whole thing.

Dear Conservatives:

Your fellow Americans demand an answer -- and we want it now. Just one simple question:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don't insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are -- and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this -- but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.

You did.

The assassins themselves are ratting you out. They're telling us, straight up, that they were inspired to act by the hate radio talkers that you empowered -- one of whom is now the de facto head of the Republican party. They got it from media outlets owned by your biggest donors. They got it from bloggers who receive daily talking points faxed in from the GOP. They got it from activists representing causes that would have never become causes in the first place if the issues hadn't been politically expedient for you.

...We are demanding an accounting from you. We are demanding that you take responsibility for the situation you've created. We are looking you straight in the eyes and demanding a straight answer:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get the America you want is to negate a fair election, shred the Constitution, and violently cleanse the country of everyone who doesn't agree with you, then man up and get on with it. If it's a shooting war you want, do not doubt that there are plenty of progressives who will oblige you. If this goal is so important that you're really willing to kill for it, please don't forget that you will also need to be willing to die for it. Because, like martyrs Greg McKendry and Steven Johns proved, we are willing to do whatever is necessary to stop you.

If your answer is no, then you have just one other choice. Knock off the tantrums, grow up, rebuild your party, come back to the table, and sit down and govern with us. (We know this will be a stretch, but we think some of you are capable of it.) You will need to learn, many of you for the first time, to get your way as adults do -- without fear-based politics, polarizing rhetoric, on-air threats against those who disagree with you, and repeating outrageous lies in the face of stone facts and irrefutable evidence.

And most of all: you need to stop feeding the crazies. You need to disavow them in every way possible -- sincerely, emphatically, and with full awareness that every time one of these people acts, it destroys the credibility of "conservatives," "Republicans," and "the right wing" in the eyes of the country.

It will, of course, fall on mostly deaf ears. Even though they've been actively talking about violence and even a civil war for a long time now, the wingnuts have already exonerated themselves. They know who to blame.

Emotions and power

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Those in power or wish to be in power use human emotions.  Perhaps the two strongest emotions are fear and sex. Religious hegonomists have long used sex but the political hegemonists use fear.  And as we all know the neocons and the Bush/Cheney administration have used fear with success.  Now the fear factor is not really working all that well now but the few right wingers still around are still driven by it.

Glen Greenwald: The paralyzing fears of the Right. The latest thing that is terrorizing those on the right are 17 Chinese Uighurs.  They have been imprisoned at GITMO for seven years in spite of the fact that the Pentagon does not consider them a threat.  The Island of Palau has agreed to take them (for a price) and the wingers have wet their collective pants.

Writing on Michelle Malkin's blog Hot Air today, war-supporting tough guy Ed Morrissey is petrified about this development and, as a result, he has announced that he is now too fearful to consider visiting that island:

Of course, with a recidivism rate for released Gitmo detainees of around 14%, odds are that a couple of the Uighurs might not be quite as cuddly as Obama promises. Hopefully it will work out all right for Palau and its tourists, but if I were making decisions on expensive South Pacific vacations, I’d start looking elsewhere.

It's hard to put into words how inebriated with irrational fear someone has to be in order to be so scared of 17 Uighurs -- who were never guilty of anything -- that they would avoid traveling to whatever place this handful of persecuted individuals is located.  But this is the right-wing movement at its core:  its leaders cynically ratchet up fear levels as high as possible to justify whatever they want to do (invade Iraq, torture people, spy on Americans with no warrants) and their adherents (along with plenty of others) become more and more paralyzed by their fears of anything Muslim. 

These of course are the same people that were indignant with DHS listed right wing extremists as a terror threat.  But are they afraid of the the man who killed Dr Tillman or the white supremest who opened fire at the holocaust museum today.  No they don't - the powerful are very good at directing the fear.  It's those Muslims and brown people you need to be afraid of.  And don't forget the people who aren't Christian - not evangelical Christians. 

Is The Weekly Standard About To Get Even Crazier?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Now that Rupert Murdoch has The Wall Street Journal does he really need the moronic rantings of William Kristol and Fred Barnes?  Maybe not:

News Corp. in talks to unload Weekly Standard to Anschutz

News Corp. is near a deal to sell its right-wing political magazine, the Weekly Standard, to conservative media mogul Philip Anschutz, according to people familiar with the situation.

Launched in 1995 and edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard has been a pet political project for News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. While its circulation, according to the magazine's website is only 83,000 (it hasn't been audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulation since 1996), it reaches the upper echelon of Capitol Hill insiders and gave the media mogul cache among the Washington elite.

Now that Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, however, whose conservative editorial page wields a much bigger political stick, he may no longer really need the Weekly Standard, which preaches much the same message, but to a considerably smaller audience. Murdoch's own political views seem to have swung more toward the center over the last few years, and that, too, might be a factor in his decision to sell.

Or, to be blunt, News Corp., as the prospects for print media shrink, may be reviewing all its assets and deciding what stays and what goes. Using that rationale, holding on to what we suspect is a money-losing magazine doesn't make much sense.

So just who is Philip Anschutz?  Via Sully, not just a conservative but an ultra right wing Christian conservative.

The possible buyer is a far right Christianist, Philip Anschutz, whose campaigns include keeping gay people marginalized (he funded Colorado's Amendment 2), discouraging the teaching of evolution (he founded the Discovery Institute), and the Pass It On organization, the Foundation For A Better Life.

Now Fred Barnes will feel right at home with Mr Anschutz.  He is a self described orthodox Anglican who supported the move by his church to leave the Episcopalian denomination over the issue of gays.

William Kristol may feel less at home.

That's just the deal, you understand—supporting a crusade for moral values is just the price we have to pay for a foreign policy that we can defend as a whole.

Will Kristol and Barnes get to hold onto their soap boxes on the FOX "all stars"?

Domestic Terrorists - The Christian Taliban

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The assassin who killed Dr. George Tiller at his church, murdered Tiller in order to keep him from performing therapeutic abortions for women. The murderer is one of a long line of religiously inspired radicals who have tried to shut down abortion providers through bombings and murders. They are not the mainstream of the pro-life movement; they are a fringe sect who are not content to protest abortion or even to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. Instead, they believe that they are justified in bombings and killings to prevent great evils that they regard as contrary to God's fundamental law.

Using violence-- like bombings and murders-- to intimidate people in this way is terrorism. It is so in common language, it is so defined in U.S. law. The terrorist in this case and the terrorists in previous abortion clinic bombings and murders are, as far as I am aware, not foreigners. They do not have Arabic or Islamic names. They are American and they live in the United States. However, just like Islamist terrorism, this terrorism is driven by fanatical religious belief. Many religiously inspired terrorists live in other countries; some, however, (who include both Christians and Muslims among their number) live in the United States and are U.S. citizens or resident aliens.

~Jack Balkin

 

Colleagues say Tiller knew something was coming

Two weeks before Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down in his church, he called colleague Susan Hill in North Carolina.

Tiller wanted her to send pictures of activists who'd recently been threatening Hill and her staff. He said he was seeing new anti-abortion protesters outside his clinic and wondered if they were traveling around.

"I said, 'I don't know, George. I think there's something coming.'," recalled Hill, who operates clinics in four states. "He said, 'I do, too.'

“We knew it. You smell it. Strange things were happening in our Mississippi clinic and in North Carolina. Strange people were coming around. And he admitted that for the first time, he really believed that something was going to go down.”

In the days since Tiller's death, abortion rights activists across the country say they sensed an uptick in incidents and threats before the shooting. That included more people at protests, more clinic vandalism and more protesters singling out certain clinic employees or physicians with threats.

Violence at abortion clinics declined during the eight years of the Bush administration because the Christian Taliban had one of their own in the White House.  When a pro-choice president was elected in November it was inevitable that the violence, domestic terrorism, would increase.  And make no mistake these religious zealots are terrorists and even more dangerous than the ones residing in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Jack Balkin wonders if they should be treated like terrorists.

(1) Should the United States be able to hold Roeder without trial in order to prevent him from returning to society to kill more abortion providers? If we believe that Roeder and other domestic terrorists will plan further attacks on abortion providers and abortion clinics if we let them free, can we subject them to indefinite detention?

(2) The Obama Administration is currently considering a national security court to make decisions about the detention of suspected terrorists, with the power to order continued preventive detention. Should this court be able to hear cases involving U.S. citizens, whether they are Muslim or Christian?

(3) The U.S. government has argued that at least some terrorists should not be tried through the criminal process with its various Bill of Rights protections but instead can and should be tried through military commissions, where the standards of proof and various procedural protections are lowered. If Roeder is a domestic terrorist, can the U.S. government subject him to trial by a military commission instead of a criminal prosecution? Although the current version of the 2006 Military Commission Act does not bestow jurisdiction to try citizens, could we or should we amend it to include citizens who we believe are likely to commit or have committed terrorist acts?

(4) One of the most important reasons for detaining terrorists (suspected or otherwise) is to obtain information about future terrorist attacks that may save lives and prevent future bombings. To procure this information, can the government dispense with the usual constitutional and legal safeguards against coercive interrogation? Should it be able to subject Roeder to enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and other methods, to determine whether Roeder knows of any other persons who are likely to commit violence against abortion clinics or against abortion providers in the future? Would your answer change if you believed that an attack on an abortion provider or a bombing of an abortion clinic was imminent?

(5) Terrorists and terrorist organizations need money and resources to operate effectively. Often the only way to stop them is to dry up their sources of financial and logistical support. Can the U.S. government freeze the assets of pro-life organizations and make it illegal to contribute money to a pro-life charity that it believes might funnel money or provide material support to persons like Roeder or to organizations that practice violence against abortion providers? Can the government arrest, detain, and seize the property of anti-abortion activists who helped Roeder in any way in the months leading up to his crime, for example by giving him rides or allowing him to stay in their homes?

Of course they shouldn't be treated this way.  It would be against everything this country stands for but the same can be said for the individuals who have already been so treated.

Ignorance is Bliss

By BJ Bjornson

At least according to the Government of Alberta.

Alberta legislators passed legislation early Tuesday that will give parents the option of pulling their children out of class when lessons on sex, religion or sexual orientation are being taught.

. . .

A clause in the bill, which is an amendment to the province's human rights legislation, requires that school boards give parents written notice when controversial topics are going to be covered in the curriculum. Parents can then ask for their child to be excluded from the discussion.

First, let me repeat what I said when this legislation was first introduced.

After all, we wouldn't want children to actually learn things while in school, would we? I mean, if they were to start acquiring knowledge, they may start questioning the silly superstitions and prejudices of their parents, and we can't have that.

Second, note that this is bill amends the province's human rights legislation, meaning teachers are going to face human rights complaints if they happen to put anything into their lesson plans that some nutjob decides is objectionable.  That should really assist the curriculum, shouldn't it?  And what does this do to testing?  Is it now going to be possible to pass high school biology without ever having even heard of evolution, let alone been tested on its basics?

And I can't help but love the defense one of the Conservative MP's came up with during the legislative debate:

"There are thousands and thousands of parents, the silent majority, severely normal Albertans that are extremely happy with this legislation, that believe it's right to affirm the right of parents as being the primary educators of their children on these subjects," Anderson said during the debate.

"Severely normal"?  When have you ever heard of a group of people being described as severely normal?  Do you get the impression that Mr. Anderson has a very strict and narrow definition of what constitutes, "normal"?  And that his hope is that this kind of legislation helps ensure that the next generation of Albertans don't learn enough while they're in school to deviate from that definition?

All I can say is that I can't help but feel sorry for the youth of Alberta, who are now going to have a big asterisk attached to their educational achievements.

More on the Tiller Murder

By BJ Bjornson

Police have arrested a man, believed to be Scott Roeder, for the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Roeder is apparently connected to the group Operation Rescue, whose founder came out today to call Tiller, "a mass murderer".

Justin Gardiner has a couple of pieces of information about Roeder up on his blog, the second concerning his criminal record over having bomb components and tax protests. Bastard.logic also found this little gem from the man.

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Earlier today, Dr. Slammy offered a bet:

Here’s the wager: the murderer will turn out to be a right-wing Christian terrorist. I’ll also offer a side bet: his media consumption includes the like of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.

If I’m wrong, check this space. I’ll gladly post an update noting my mistake. But as of this moment, would you bet against me?

I wouldn't have bet against him, and it is fairly clear he would have won against all takers.

In the comments to my earlier post, Steve pointed to this post on The Brad Blog, pointing out much of the same sentiment.

Tiller was better known to Fox "News" viewers as "Tiller the Baby Killer", as he's long been described by Bill O'Reilly who has spent years targeting Tiller on the most-watched show in cable news. O'Reilly has long demonized him with allegations of performing illegal late-term abortions, characterized as murder by O'Reilly and his guests.

Of course, it's no more O'Reilly's fault when a lunatic takes action to murder someone the Fox host has targeted for years on his popular television show, than it was when another lunatic gunned down church-goers in Tennessee last year claiming in his pre-murder "manifesto" that it was "a symbolic killing", and that he had "wanted to kill...every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." Goldberg is a regular featured guest on O'Reilly's show, and the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).

Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville, TN murderer, also advocated the murder of "liberals" in his manifesto, echoing comments frequently made by O'Reilly that "The Major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists."

Those are all merely coincidences, of course. Nobody, other than the murderers themselves, should feel it necessary to take any personal responsibility whatsoever when such events occur.

Personal responsibility isn't something the right-wing excels at. Any time one of their more extreme elements takes it upon themselves to follow through on their hate-mongering, they wash their hands of it and offer half-hearted condolences while going right back to the rhetoric that inspired the violence in the first place. And from browsing the right-wing blog headlines at memeorandum, there is not a little bit of subtle celebration going on.

RIH: Baby Murderer George Tiller Shot Dead - Macsmind

Abortionist George “Baby Killer” Tiller Shot Dead In Kansas - theblogprof

George Tiller (Child Murderer) shot to death at Wichita church - freerepublic

Report: George Tiller Shot To Death [Child Murderer Killed At Wichita Church] - also freerepublic

Child Killer George Tiller Killed - La Shawn Barber

Many of the rest include "partial-birth" or "late-term abortionist" in their title, and no, I'm not linking to any of them. Go forth and find the filth yourself if you're of mind to.

It all reminds me nothing so much as their response when it was disclosed that Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Muhammad where waterboarded a couple of hundred times. As in, sure it was illegal and everything, but they're really evil and therefore deserved it.

They won't come out and defend Roeder, probably. They don't want to be that closely linked to him. But they are making it quite clear that they aren't too distressed about his assassination of the "child murderer" Tiller. Or, as deBeauxOs puts it:

Pity the poor abortion criminalizers for they cannot rejoice out loud.

Shed a tear for their plight; Bill Donohue and Jill Stanek stewing in their venom, silenced because their noisy jubilation could attract unwanted FBI attention.

Consider their dilemma: for years they've directed murderous hatred towards health care practitioners who provide abortion and now they're not able to claim the glory.

So sad for the members of the Vulture Culture who want to embrace the man who shot Dr George Tiller dead in the lobby of his church.

Life is unfair, they cannot trumpet that this is a MASSIVE victory for their side, lest they be charged as co-conspirators in this public assassination.

I'll point you to this post as well. Go down to where she's got the Twitter round-up. It's f**king unbelievable.

The Repellant Conservative ID

By Fester:

Last year during the primary, I argued that Democrats and liberals benefit when the conservative movement's ideological ID is on full public display.  There is minimal pay-off for Democrats to gather into a defensive crouch and fear the freepified ID as the political reality of the second part of this decade and the probable realities of the future is very different than the political and demographic realities of the 80s and 90s when the ID was a powerful and effective political force:

In the past couple of years, one of the most reliable indicators of a winning Democratic issue is when the conservative movement ID is at the forefront of the public debate. It is ugly, repulsive and oozing with pus, and it alienates marginally attached Republican voters and winnable for the GOP Independent and Democratic voters....

It is the same analysis that would have led one to conclude that caving in on Schiavo was a good idea....

It is the same analysis that would have led one to cower as the economic Id of the GOP was on full display during the privatize and destroy Social Security debate....

Kevin Drum is looking at the National Review's Corner reaction to the Obama speech this morning, and is making a political error of grievious magnitude: See? Barack Obama's just another race hustler. I suspect that the "official" conservative reaction in columns and op-eds will be more restrained, but the longer that race stays front and center in the campaign, the more time the real conservative id will have to ooze into the forefront. Obama can't be looking forward to that. [my emphasis] In the past couple of years, one of the most reliable indicators of a winning Democratic issue is when the conservative movement ID is at the forefront of the public debate. It is ugly, repulsive and oozing with pus, and it alienates marginally attached Republican voters and winnable for the GOP Independent and Democratic voters. We want more of the conservative Id in the forefront of the conversation. It is the same analysis that would have led one to conclude that caving in on Schiavo was a good idea. Instead the American public reacted harshly against this massive federal inteferernce into a painful and personal decision process. It is the same analysis that would have led one to cower as the economic Id of the GOP was on full display during the privatize and destroy Social Security debate. Contrasting this Hobbesian vision with a collective security provided by the common effort led to a rapid squandering of any political capital that Bush may have thought he possessed for overt actions. It is the same analysis that has made anti-immigration rhetoric the tough new thing from both the GOP and the DLC wing of the Democratic Party despite knowing that this rhetoric will piss off a massive and growing swing voting bloc.... The conservative Id is ineffective and counterproductive to advancing the GOP's political fortunes, and it is not something that should inspire fear in Democrats. Instead it should be welcomed as a golden opportunity to create a sharp and sustained politics of contrast that works.

Publius is looking at the upcoming Supreme Court fight and is making the same type of analysis now:

it’s worth remembering that the nature of the conservative opposition will primarily be a function of intra-GOP politics.  In other words, organized conservative criticism isn’t really intended for a national audience – it’s intended primarily for social conservatives within the party.  And that’s a good thing for Democrats.The social conservative wing of the GOP has extremely intense preferences on judges....

Republican politicians and activist organizations that rely on social conservatives are going to have to put on a good show.  And that's the problem.Specifically, these intra-party dynamics will force the party to put on its least persuasive and most alienating face to the public during the Court fights....

Instead, the opposition seems like it will have a distinctly 2004 tone ...

And it will certainly reinforce the GOP’s current image problems as a regional, slightly creepy fundamentalist party.

The Conservative ID is a winner for liberals.   The more it is highlighted as the defining characteristics of a good Republican, the fewer Republicans, "good" or not, there will be as people who the base considers "squishes" will leave. 

Ahh, the wonders of a positive feedback loop...

The Rise and Fall of The Conservative Movement

Commentary By Ron Beasley

As we have noted here the Republican Party and the conservative movement are in decline.  Pragmatic conservative Richard Posner takes a pragmatic look at what happened.

The Rise

The domestic disorder of the late 1960s, the excesses of Johnson's "Great Society," significant advances in the economics of antitrust and regulation, the "stagflation" of the 1970s, and the belief (which turned out to be mistaken) that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War--all these developments stimulated the growth of a varied and vibrant conservative movement, which finally achieved electoral success with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981. The movement included the free-market economics associated with the "Chicago School" (and therefore deregulation, privatization, monetarism, low taxes, and a rejection of Keynesian macroeconomics), "neoconservatism" in the sense of a strong military and a rejection of liberal internationalism, and cultural conservatism, involving respect for traditional values, resistance to feminism and affirmative action, and a tough line on crime.

The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement. But there were signs that it had not only already peaked, but was beginning to decline. Leading conservative intellectual figures grew old and died (Friedman, Hayek, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Buckley, etc.) and others as they aged became silent or less active (such as Robert Bork, Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb), and their successors lacked equivalent public prominence, as conservatism grew strident and populist.

The Fall

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

And then came the financial crash last September and the ensuing depression. These unanticipated and shocking events have exposed significant analytical weaknesses in core beliefs of conservative economists concerning the business cycle and the macroeconomy generally. Friedmanite monetarism and the efficient-market theory of finance have taken some sharp hits, and there is renewed respect for the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Kenyes, a conservatives' bête noire.

As Posner points out the intellectual base of the conservative movement has been replaced by Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.  William Buckley is dead and his son Chris has left the Republican Party.  Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb are old and silent; their son William is a semi-literate idiot.  The Republican Party and the conservative movement is largely made up of bigoted white trash religious fanatics. 

Update

I see that others are responding to Judge Posner's observations.

On the left we have Matt Yglesias:

I don’t agree with this in every detail. I don’t see a lot of evidence, for example, that the GOP’s opposition to abortion rights suddenly became a huge political loser starting in 2006. But Posner is unusual, even among the dissident camp in the conservative movement, in his willingness to acknowledge that (a) conservatism is as conservatism does and you can’t just wash your hands of George W. Bush, and (b) that the failures of conservatism-in-practice were really comprehensive across a whole swathe of different policy domains.

And on the right we have the equally pragmatic Rick Moran:

But Posner’s real gripe - and the gripe of many less ideological conservatives - is that “the new conservatism [is] powered largely by emotion and religion and [has]for the most part weak intellectual groundings.”

Amen and Hallelujah. What Posner refers to as “new” conservatism (a term I will be shamelessly stealing from now on), calls on such intellectual luminaries as Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Beck, for sustenance. In this, the leading lights of the new conservatism dole out philosophy and rationale the way a Baskin Robbins ice cream server spoons whipped creme on to his concoctions. The result are that ideas and concepts with the heft of cotton candy, but extremely palatable to the narrow minded, are passed off as conservative dogma.

Religion has been confused with “traditional values” in order to justify the infallibility of many positions on social issues. Posner points specifically to abortion but might have also included gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and the teaching of creationism in schools. And the slice of conservatism that also identifies itself as “evangelical” - influential beyond their numbers - makes these “values” the centerpiece of their political universe.

I think that after only a hundred days we are seeing that Obama and the Democrats might be vulnerable in 2010 and 2012 but the Republicans will be in no position to take advantage of it. 

And on the 7th day man created God

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Upon on occasion I like to watch something from the dark side.  Last night I watched Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  Since it's an attempt to push "intelligent design" over evolution one would expect warped logic and intellectual dishonesty but the scope was truly amazing.  When Stein attempts to blame the holocaust on Darwinism he makes use of the two best tools of deception - quotes taken out of context and selective history.  Stein interviews both sides but taking a cue from Roger Moore manages to make the proponents of evolution look like crazed zealots and those in favor of "intelligent design" look like reasonable and thoughtful  men.  Scientific American magazine has some good point by point take downs here and here.

Matt Taibbi takes a look at the religious VS the godless in Religion, agnostics, and the cure for baldness.

Read it all but here is a snip:

Like almost all great defenders of religion, Eagleton specializes in putting bunches of words together in ways that sound like linear arguments, but actually make no sense whatsoever. In one speech he takes issue with what he calls the “Yeti” view of faith as espoused by atheists, i.e. the idea that religion is based upon the belief in an object whose existence, like that of the Yeti or the Tooth Fairy, cannot be verified by observation “in the reasonably straightforward way that we can demonstrate the existence of necrophilia or Michael Jackson” (one of a disturbingly high number of Eagleton jokes that nonsensically reference pop culture figures of at best semi-recent vintage). Eagleton’s response to what he calls this “travesty” of illogic:

For one thing, of course, God differs from Unidentified Flying Objects or the Yeti or the Tooth Fairy in not being even a possible object of cognition… it’s not just we cannot see Him, it is as it were that our not seeing him is inherent to God Himself, which is presumably not true of the Yeti.

Got that? It’s not that we can’t see God — it’s that God is inherently unseen! Take that, atheists!

As absurd as that might be we shouldn't laugh - religion has always been and remains today a dangerous form of tyranny.

Religious bullying is a problem around the world

Vigilante enforcement of theocratic codes can crop up when a minority group doesn't conform.

The tribal Muslim clerics in Swat, he said, have declared open season on reporters whose writings they disapprove of. My friend, a brave and devout Sunni Muslim, seemed quite shaken, having spent two weeks reporting under threat in Swat, an area once called the Switzerland of Pakistan. Several journalists have already been murdered for a perceived breach of theocratic codes.

Such violence is religious "correctness" in the extreme, but vigilante enforcement of theocratic codes can crop up whenever and wherever an individual or minority does not conform to the religious tenets of the majority.

In the United States, when Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D) of Minnesota asked to be sworn in using the Koran, the personal attacks on him from the Christian right were just short of poisonous.

In areas such as the Balkans and Iraq, religious intimidation has taken the form of ethnic cleansing, forcibly coercing religious minorities to emigrate.

In the West Bank a decade ago, I witnessed Hamas activists taunting Christian women for wearing crosses around their necks. Though Palestinian officials deny religious coercion, the exodus of Christian Arabs from the West Bank suggests otherwise.

Another form of religious intimidation worms its way through US high schools. Teenagers complain of being verbally assaulted by "God squads," whose members roam corridors demanding to know if their fellow students share their messianic religious visions – and if not, why not?

The insistence that theology and mythology be taught as science and given the same respect as science is part of this "bullying."  As the Religious Right begins to lose it's political clout this we can expect to see it increase.