June 7, 2005 by s.z.

BTW We finally got around to changing the blog roll to reflect the new address for Suburban Guerilla.  In honor of this event, we invite you to a party at Susie's place, where you'll find posts on the Bush administration's proposal to cut 2/3 of the federal funding for adult education; the $30 billion bailout for Boeing; the super-rich; those who don't even have running water; and more.  (And that's just in the past day!) Oh, and there will be cake, punch, and storms outside laundromats. 6:23:44 AM

Be Just A Little Scared David Shiflett has written a book called Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity.   So, he's an expert on religion, and therefore we can be reassured by his NRO column (based on his book research) entitled "Don’t Be Too Scared: In Search of the Christian Theocrats."  Anyway, let's briefly look at Dave's work, and admire how he savagely pies a liberal strawman. The Christian theocrats are said to be running amok in Red America, rousing the rabble with their strange beliefs and perhaps stoking the dungeon fires as they finalize their hit lists. Of course it doesn’t take much to be accused of religious intrigue and assault these days: An Air Force cadet who sent an e-mail containing a Christian message was last week accused of harassment. Well, per the news story that Dave cites, the cadet was in a leadership position; the email contained several Bible verses; the cadet sent the email to 3000 cadets, and he did this after a memo had been sent reminding commanders that "using their power and position to promote their religious beliefs is 'wholly inappropriate.'"  Oh, and I can't see anywhere in the article where he was accused of harassment.  (It looks like he is being investigated for possibly violating the rule against using government channels for sectarian messages.) But I'm sure that Dave is totally to be believed when he says that liberals belief that Christian theocrats are "stoking the dungeon fires as they finalize their hit lists." It seems we are in the midst of a new Red Scare — with Commies being replaced by Red State Christians and their allies in the Blue zone. [...] Yet one finds little of the crusading spirit of religious certitude even among the dread born-again Christians and Evangelicals. Pollsters, including the much-quoted George Barna, have instead divined widespread heterodoxy and a live-and-let-live attitude. Born-again Christians simply aren’t as generally advertised. Consider their view of Jesus, once regarded as the Sinless One. Twenty-eight percent agree that “while he lived on earth, Jesus committed sins, like other people.” That is far from a crusading belief. Even further afield, 35 percent of these supposedly hard-core believers do not believe Jesus experienced a physical resurrection, a belief shared by 39 percent of the general population (85 percent of Americans say they believe that Jesus is “spiritually alive,” whatever that may mean. One recalls that many Americans believe their deceased pets are now ghosts, which may also qualify as being spiritually alive. ) Yes, and those "live and let live" born-agains are ignorant, unbiblical, non-devout slackers who don't deserve to say that they were born again, say the real crusaders. (Here a just a few examples of concern regarding the Barna results (especially regarding such 'live and let live" ideas as "good people of all faiths can go to heaven." And anyway, nobody is concerned about Red State Christians believing too strongly in Jesus's divinity -- the concern is that some of them (the wingnutty ones) are trying to impose their beliefs on others.  Most evangelicals are good people, good neighbors, and much nicer to have around than NRO columists.  (Even the ones who believe that non-Christians will burn in hell for all eternity aren't seen as a commie-like menace by anybody I know.) It's the ones like James Dobson, who are using their religious platforms to influence the political process that are worrisome.  And Dave only briefly touches on this. [T]o be sure there are conservative believers who hope to influence politics. Their bold assertion is that being seriously religious should not be a disenfranchising offence. Many are also under the firm belief that most of the crusading comes from the secular world. Father McCloskey’s website, for instance, includes an essay in which he muses about the possibility of large-scale martyrdom of North American Christians.    So, if Father McCloskey belives that Christians are going to be martyrded by the secularist horde, then obviously there is nothing to the liberal concern that James Dobson is strongly pushing the Bush administration to try to get it to enact, pro-blastocyst, anti-homosexual policies. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention does harbor hope of reestablishing a more religious public environment. If school days and football games began with the Lord’s Prayer, and abortion on demand was not the law of the land, would that constitute a theocracy? If so, America was a theocracy until fairly recently. Traditionalists have the better part of the argument, from my perspective, when they say they seek a restoration, not a revolution, and that indeed a secular revolution has increasingly marginalized public expressions of religious faith  [...]. And 350 years ago, "failure to attend church twice each day was punishable in the first instance by the loss of a day's food. A second offense was punishable by a whipping and a third by six months of rowing in the colony's galleys."  If we return to the practices of our Puritan forebears, wouldn't that just constitute a restoration?  Dave goes on to say that he interviewed "several Christians who are familiar to NRO readers," and while may come from different faiths, none of them believe in the liberal God. (Imagine that!) The progressive God often resembles a social worker or a lodge brother, or perhaps the guy on the next bar stool. He wants to help us realize our full potential. [...] The more traditionalist God, who is gaining favor among Americans, is of a sterner nature. He makes demands, and requires obedience. He will bring low the mighty, and raise the humble to glorious heights. [...] This God does make liberals uneasy, a sensation made worse when they note the trend toward traditionalism throughout the world. So, per Dave, liberals shouldn't worry that Christian theocrats are running amok, because really they are nice, normal, live-and-let live people. But they should be afraid of the red-state God, because He's a stern, vengeful, mean SOB, and He can beat up their wimpy social worker God with one omnipotent hand tied behind His back. I'm glad Dave could clear this up for us. Anyway, Dave has another column due out today which will discuss how the "spiritual alliance between the rapidly expanding southern populations and the Prince of Darkness [Robert Novak] is no doubt the stuff of progressive nightmares." I can hardly wait. 5:37:04 AM

Who Said It? Now, with Splenda! So, name the wingnuts who said the following (the quotes in blue, that is -- I said the other stuff): 1.  Once again, everything is about how nobody treated this Mystery Guest with the proper respect when he related scurrilous third-hand rumors about Bill Clinton. Why did The Post believe Mr. Felt? Was it because he was an FBI agent? Contrast that with how The Post treated me, a 26-year veteran of the FBI when I came forward with political allegations against then-President Clinton. They attacked me in many articles, writing that I could not possibly be telling the truth. But he WAS telling the truth!  No, wait, he wasn't.  But the point is, it's not fair that the Post believed Felt when he offered them proof of Nixon's wrongdoing, but they wouldn't believe this guy when he said that Hillary Clinton decorated her Christmas tree with crack pipes and condoms. 2.  More about Deep Throat from the foreign author of America Alone: Our Country's Future as a Lone Warrior: But "Revenge Of The Sith" is a marvel of motivational integrity compared to Revenge Of The Felt, the concluding chapter in that other '70s saga, Watergate. {...} So Darth Throat, a fully paid-up Dark Lord of the Milhous, saved the Republic from the imperial paranoia of Chancellor Nixotine by transforming himself into Anakin Slytalker and telling what he knew to the Bradli knights of The Washington Post. Now we learn Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J. Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the director's job when the big guy keeled over after a half-century in harness. We know about Felt's motivations because we have the power to read mens' minds.  Well, maybe it's just this guy -- he is, after all, "probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world."  And so he probably has other super powers too.  3.  Just what the world needed: a new blog devoted to this Mystery Guest's screeds. Three and a half years ago, a guard kicked a Qur’an. It’s a front page story today. Well, who am I to question the news judgment of the Post? Obviously it matters. One then must ask: is flushing worse than kicking? Flushing, after all, requires some amount of premeditation. One has to decide to flush a book. Kicking a book may be done in the heat of anger – say, when you’re interviewing someone fighting for a movement that wanted little girls to stay indoors all their lives dressed in hot sacks until the merry day when they were married off at 14 to some middle-aged guy with a nice job in the Remnants of Buddhism Demolition Division. If the guy might have info on what Al Qaeda was up to next – you know, the group from which the terro (SORRY!) detainee was plucked a mere five months after the Twin Towers thundered down, you might be tempted to shed all your civilized inhibitions andkick a book. It's a shame that all of this righteous anger is being wasted here in the U.S. -- maybe he could get a CACI contract interrogator job, and go to Guantanamo and kick some terrorist books (but only to protect lives here at home).  P.S.  Maybe I'm being too harsh on him .  He writes today, "I’m doing medical marijuana, mostly because I came up with a line I really wanted to use."  I really shouldn't pick on a guy who is doing lines of medical marijuana. 4.  Apparently "The Never Ending Story of Why Judeo-Christians are Better Than Liberals" has ended, leaving this guy free to write about how Amnesty International defamed gulags. If Amnesty International does not fire Irene Khan and retract her obscene comparison, it is unworthy of respect or support. A new non-leftist anti-torture organization must be built. What a joker!  This guy really cracks me up! Sorry, didn't mean to laugh, Mystery Guest.  Anyway, best of luck with that non-leftist anti-torture organization. 5. He's BAA-ACK!  (But he's still cranky.) And, of course, there is no inconsistency between my opposition to abortion and my opposition to gun control. Put simply, I am committed to the protection of innocent life. I want the fetus to be protected from the abortionist who seeks to take an innocent life. I also want adults to be protected from the murderer who seeks to take an innocent life. So, he's consistent in his view that we should arm innocent fetuses with teeny tiny handguns, so they can be protected, just like adults. Of course, critics of my response to Rita will argue that a fetus is not a person in order to rebut my assertion that "the abortionist...seeks to take an innocent life." But the real issue, the one that my critics will not touch, regards the status of the college student.   Are college students people?  That's our debate topic for today.  (Hey, we already know from Ben Shapiro's writings that they're not innocent life.)  6.  This Mystery Guest goes off on the NY Times' story about the widening gap between the super-rich and everybody else. But basically what we have here is a class envy story designed to depress and anger people over Bush tax cuts to continue to give the left ammo. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why the super-rich...? I betcha these numbers are no different from the superrich categories of old days. There have always been the super-rich, the hyper-rich. We've always had the Kennedys. We've always had the W. Averell Harrimans. We've always had these people, the George Soroses. I mean, who are we talking about here? We're talking about a bunch of rich Democrats, largely a number of people who inherited their money, are we not -- from old time families that started railroads or imported 159 whiskey or whatever it was that they did? This is, pardon the expression, rich coming from a guy who reportedly makes over $30 million a year. Oh, and he also said it's not like anybody but the rich actually pay taxes, after all. Taxes for the middle class basically don't exist, not income taxes. I bet that comes has a happy surprise to most of you. But during the break, he must have been reminded that he was technically one of those super-rich people whom the Times was talking about, because he then ammended his story, now claiming that it's good that some people are really, really well-compensated for what they do.  Now, hear me on this. There is a new level, there's a new type of money that is being earned in this country -- and that's the key: It's being earned.  [...] So a Times story comes along like this and its intent is to discredit these people and to make you mad that you don't have a chance to become one of them. Yes, if you take the NYT's bait, and you get mad at the super-rich, they won't let you into their super-cool, super-rich, super-club, like they were planning to do. 3:27:08 AM

John Wayne Also Said* If it wasn't "the real life Indian Jones" who was saying it (and it wasn't being reported at WorldNetDaily), I would be rather disturbed by this: Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" – when dealing with Muslims, reports geopolitical analysts Jack Wheeler. In a column on his intelligence website, To the Point, Wheeler explains Wayne's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," made in 1948, though lesser known than many of the star's films, includes what's been called one of the top 100 movie quotes of all time. Wayne's character, Capt. Nathan Brittles, who is facing an Indian attack, advises a junior officer: "Never apologize, son. It's a sign of weakness." It's that attitude that some employees of the Pentagon, State Department and White House are urging President Bush to take when dealing with charges of Quran desecration and other allegations from radical Muslims. They've even sent a DVD copy of the film to the commander in chief. Hey, if making policy decisions based on old movies was good enough for Ronald Reagan, it's good enough for George W. Bush. "Their numbers are small," explains Wheeler, "but they are seriously sick and tired of squishing-out to the hadjis (the nickname our soldiers give the Muslim terrorists in Iraq and their sympathizers – pronounced 'hah-geez,' referring to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca called the hadj). So, the nickname is a derisive term for Muslims which "our soldiers" use to refer to terrorists in Iraq -- and some employees of the State Dept, Pentagon, and White House employed it when urging the President to not apologize to the Muslim world for desecrating their holy book.  Yes, Bush should certainly take advise from these guys. These sympathizers now include not just rioters on Pakistani streets but Newsweek magazine and Amnesty International. Everybody who works for Newsweek are "hadjis."  Interesting.    (Oh, and I suspect that the turbaned, Indian character from "Jonny Quest" might have had something to do with the etymology of this term for brown people.  And the reports I've read indicate that "hadji" is used to refer to all Iraqis, not just terrorists, Amnesty International officials, and reporters from Newsweek.  As the LA Times said, "All Iraqis are known as 'hadjis,' for the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Often the terms 'hadji' and 'the enemy' are used interchangeably". ) "'The more we kiss the hadjis' tushes, the more they denounce us and the less they respect us,' one of them told me. 'Just take a look at the DOD's procedures for the handling and inspecting of detainee Korans . You won't believe how impossibly respectful and careful they are. What good does this do us? All we get is lies, lawsuits and riots in return.'" Yeah!  We could try harder to follow those DOD procedures, but it's easier (and more fun) to just tell the Muslim world, "If you don't like it, stuff it," as Wheeler puts it.   Writes Wheeler: "So cross your fingers he takes the movie and the message to heart. The day the president of the United States announces that Muslims owe an apology to us and not the other way around will be the day we truly begin to win this war." Just like how Wayne defeated the commies ... I mean, injuns.  But I think Wayne was advising the the junior officer to refrain from apologizing to his own people, not the injuns -- and that's something that George Bush doesn't need any movie to teach him. *  John Wayne, the real person said: "I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble. 2:34:26 AM