'Renew America,' Anew
We haven't checked in on our friends at Alan Keyes' Renew America for a while, so let's see what's a doin'.
1. The old first friend we encounter is Judson Cox, the young man who alerted us to the threat posed by cloned pandas, and who also made us aware of a great conservative dating service he'd just discovered -- which, when it was proved to be registered in his name, he blamed on his computer illiterate, old mother. (Sadly, the site Conservative Connections.com appears to be no more. Poor Mrs. Cox -- it's always the mothers who suffer when Young Conservatives try to pull a fast one.)
Anyway, this week Judson offers up a moderate and reasoned column entitled Michael Berg is Insane! Judson's central thesis seems to be that Michael Berg is insane. You know, because he'd have to be insane to believe that the Bush administration had anything to do with the conditions that led to the death of his son.
Judson builds his case by claiming:
(a) Michael Berg is a liberal. And, as proven by Michael Savage Weiner, author of a book with "liberals" in its title (who also got a degree in liberal studies, which makes him an expert on the subject), all liberals are insane. Therefore, Berg is insane.
He's also insane because (b) Muslims are responsible for everything bad that has happened since the Middle Ages. President Bush isn't a Muslim. Therefore, he couldn't be responsible in any way for Nicholas Berg's death. Berg would have to be insane to dispute that reality.
Q.E.D.
And, of course, Iraq was behind 9/11 (an event which forced us to invade them, and thereby caused Berg to get killed). Besides the fact that they're Muslim, Judson offers this proof of their culpability:
How can liberals equate the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, tortured and killed by Saddam Hussein, to the deviant actions of 12 American prison guards? How can they continue to deny Saddam's links! to al Qaida?U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer, has made a legal finding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks. His ruling was upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.According to Czech intelligence, Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague just prior to the 9-11 attacks.Papers found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters document Saddam's efforts to establish a relationship with al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden's top aid visited Iraq in 1998 at Saddam's request.
Hey, these "proofs of Iraq being behind 9/11" sound awfully familiar? Didn't we discuss those exact three claims just four or five days ago ... when they were presented by Ann Coulter? And wasn't her wording awfully similar to Judson's? (In case you don't want to read Ann's stuff again, you can just trust me that the answer is yes.)
You know, when Judson claimed in his bio that "his confrontational style lies somewhere between Ann Coulter and Merle Haggard," he didn't mention that it was because he was going to be stealing Ann Coulter's material (which has to be as low as a person with a failed dating service can sink). If I were Merle Haggard, I'd be watching my back.
One more example from Judson:
Let's look at the Crusades:Muslims invaded Europe, and imposed their religion upon Westerners by force. Christian armies drove them back. The Crusades lasted about 200 years, but freed Europe from Islamic rule for nearly 1,000 years. Islamic fascism has always been the aggressor.
What the hell is he talking about? I'm guessing that he thinks that the Crusades were when everybody in Europe sent forces to get the Moors out of Iberia. Or maybe he thinks that Jerusalem used to be part of Europe, and the Muslims not only forced the locals to accept Islam, they also made them move the Holy Land to the Middle East.
Or he's insane.
Or maybe he's just copying off somebody else's paper again. Take a look at this passage, widely disseminated in wingnut circles -- it's part of an opinion piece which appeared last month in the Panama City, FL News Herald ("A Freedom Paper"):
Let's recap the Crusades.Muslims invaded Europe and when they reached sufficient numbers they imposed their intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years.
It's sad when America's young people are forced to get their knowledge of the Crusades from a paragraph in a rant they saw copied to somebody else's rant. I suggest we take up a subscription and buy Judson a Wikipedia entry. As for teaching him that plagiarism is wrong -- well, if he didn't learn that at Liberty University, I don't know if there's any help for him. But hey, maybe Jack Kelley can give him some pointers on how to do a better job of it.
2. Now, let's hear what the Rev. Mark H. Creech has to say -- his column is called "Simply Raising Pagans For Fun and Profit."
Like Moses and Aaron leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, T.C. Pinckney and Bruce Shortt want to lead Southern Baptists parents to pull their children from government-run schools.[...]I, for one, believe that Pickney and Shortt's leadership in this matter is not only heroic and courageous, but also a call from God. I see it as a breath of fresh air and something that actually gives hope for the restoration of education in America. Between 12 and 15 million evangelical Christian children attend public schools. If the mass majority of these students were to leave public education, it would cripple the one system that is doing more harm to our nation than any single thing except perhaps the popular media.
Yes, education is doing great harm to our nation by teaching stuff to our kids -- weird, unholy stuff not mentioned in the Bible, like volleyball and algebra. And I, for two, say "Hey, teachers, leave those kids alone" (Bart Simpson makes three). I hold that children should remain innocently ignorant of ungodly subjects like evolution, French, and the history of the Crusades -- you know, like our Founding Fathers were. (Well, they probably knew French and world history, but I bet THEY didn't believe in public education.)
Others will argue that they've sent their children to public school and it hasn't hurt them. Yes, but every time a Christian parent sends their child to a government-run school, it's a gamble with the child's eternal soul.
Yeah, it's the same thing every morning: Dad says, "What are the Vegas odds on little Bobby losing his eternal soul today? 3 to 1? I can live with those odds. Get dressed, Bobby -- you're going to school until it's even money."
And then Mom says, "I want a piece of the action -- put me down for $20 against Bobby's soul."
3. And here's another contender for the crown of "America's Youngest Old Fart" (the title is currently held by Ben Shapiro, but insiders say that Kyle Williams has a shot at wrestling it away from him -- you know, when they wrestle). Yes, it's old pal (and Hillsdale college student) Hans Zeigler. His column this week concerns Spiritual Viagra (the faith-based alternate to prescription Viagra, and an important part of George Bush's vision of an America made up of people "who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves."
There seems to be a proliferation of television ads for Viagra, Cialis, and the other mass-market impotence drugs. There are nearly three times as many Google hits for "Viagra" as for "George Bush."
Which doesn't seem fair, seeing as George Bush gets some men just as hard as those drugs do.
Then there is the most frequently deleted spam title from my email box, something about potions that one can order online to restore vitality. I suppose with the market as it is, Bob Dole's crusade against E.D. is moving toward a victorious end. Yet the question remains, what about the vitality of the soul?
Yes, Hans is right: there are all those commericals for impotence drugs, all that spam for herbal impotence remedies -- and yet none of it mentions our souls? What's up with that? Don't FDA regulations require them to address any spiritual side-effects that their medication might cause ("Four-hour erections, while rare, could cause you to go to hell if you use them with women who are not your wife)?
Hans cites a study which shows that the only people who went to church last Sunday were some old ladies in Minnesota. He concludes, like Doug Giles before him, that the problem is those Precious Moments figurines of Jesus on the Cross -- but Hans blames the liberals for them.
The sissification of the American church has been occurring for over a century now. The release of the Barna survey coincided appropriately with my reading of J. Gresham Machen's 1923 landmark treatise Christianity and Liberalism. "The greatest menace to the Christian church today comes not from the enemies outside, but from the enemies within; it comes from the presence within the Church of a type of faith and practice that is anti-Christian to the core," Machen declared.Liberalism has so infected American churches since Machen wrote that it is now impossible to speak of churches being entirely Christian. Christianity is not dead, and in fact cannot be. Christianity is dependent on grace that transcends the weakness of humanity. But churches, which can be either churches of God or churches of man, have too often chosen the latter course and find themselves dying.
Well, no WONDER no men are church-goers these days -- the churches have gone all liberal, preaching stuff like, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." And they should be giving us Jesus Christ, Conservative CEO, the guy who said stuff like, "The widows and orphans brought their own affliction on themselves by their shoddy work ethic -- you'd only be enabling them if you gave them a hand. And so what if you get a little spotted by the world? Just say it was a youthful indiscretion, and it doesn't count against you. Oh, and watch 'The Passion of the Me,' so you'll understand the importance of being tough and butch -- I don't want any sissies in MY church!"
Yes, those damned liberal, nancy-boy churches are what's wrong with our souls. And Hans isn't afraid to name names, and kick sissy Christian butt:
The reason that so few Americans attend church is that so few churches are Christian. Liberal pastors speak much of unity and peace and social justice and harmony and the like. The human condition and the Cross are seldom preached in many churches. And if the claim seems too vague, I will name names (generally speaking): Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the Episcopal Church USA, to name a few.
If you are a member of any of the above limp-wristed liberal churches, Hans wants to meet you in the parking lot -- he said he is going to open a can of industrial strength whoop-ass on your peace-loving hinders, and show you where you went astray doctrinely. If you want to meet him as a mob, and bring some tar and feathers, I'm sure it's fine with him.
But Hans does hold out some hope for "young Christians," because he met some manly ones at a retreat he attended last week. There seemed to be "a new-found passion" among them. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Anyway, Hans promises to tell us more about the retreat next time -- so stay tuned for his next piece, "Chicken Soup for the Cock."
4. Our final Renewer is old favorite Jan England. This week she uses her column to review Dick Morris's Hillary book -- in her own unique fashion:
Dweeb. Acquisitor. Celebrity-fawner. Revenge-seeker. Motive-hider. Dirt-spreader. Bill Clinton-protector. Bill Clinton-enabler. Bill Clinton-mess-cleaner-upper. Inveterate liar.Does this sound like the "smartest woman in the world," as Hillary Rodham Clinton has been rumored to be?It's the impression that Dick Morris gives of Hillary Clinton in his new book "Rewriting Histor. [Note: Jan apparently has religious objections to spelling out the world "history."]
So, if Jan got the impression from Morris's book that Hillary is a "dweeb," then Hillary certainly couldn't be "the smartest woman in the world," as some claim.
Which, of course, brings up the question: who is spreading rumors about Hillary being the smartest woman in the world? Where (since even Jan doesn't claim that Hillary is saying it) did Jan hear this allegation?
A google search reveals that she either heard from (a) That joke about the 4 people with only 3 parachutes (which, when I first heard it in the '70s, featured Henry Kissinger, as "the smartest man in the world"); (b) A widely-circulated email hoax that claimed that Hillary shut down Yale University to defend a murderous Black Panther; (c) Columns or posts at National Review, FreeRepublic, and their ilk; or (d) a 1999 Cal Thomas piece which claimed that "convicted felon Dan Rostenkowski" described her that way. I'd say that Dan was the originator of the "smartest woman in the world" label, except that there are only three hits for "Dan Rostenkowski" and "smartest women in the world" -- two of them are from that Cal Thomas piece, and one is from a blog which seems to have gotten its info from Cal.
So, Jan heard all those "rumors" (or rather, "insults") about Hillary's intelligence from the wingnuts -- because nothing scares them more than a strong, independent, smart woman.
Oh, and for a little "Blast from the Past" fun, here's part of that 1999 Cal Thomas column:
Like former Clinton advisor Dick Morris, I, too, believe she won't run, at least for the New York Senate seat. She'll probably take her political campaign war chest and run, perhaps to Illinois, perhaps back to Arkansas, where she will plot her return to political power
Yeah, that Dick Morris is quite the political prophet and Hillary expert -- no wonder Jan thought so highly of his current book.
And here's Cal's conclusion, from 1999:
It may take a miracle for Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the Senate seat if she decides to run. It would be a disaster for the state and the nation if she wins.
Yeah, I see dogs and cats, living together, even as we speak.
Anyway, that's it for today. I hope you feel renewed.
4:31:20 AM
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