First up, Dennis Prager, a pundit uniquely “attuned to the importance of words” poses an unanswerable conundrum to liberal smartypants:
Question to Left: If You Love America, Why “Transform” It? by Dennis PragerIf you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found living her rather difficult?The answer is obvious: Those who wish to remake anything (or anyone) do not think highly of the person or thing they wish to remake.Little is as revealing of Barack Obama’s and the Left’s view of America than their use of the words “transform” and “remake” when applied to what they most want to do to America.
How about if you met a man who was walking through a field with his wife, when suddenly a drunken Dick Cheney reared up from behind a bush and shot her in the face, blowing her ear clean off? And how about if, while the wife clutched her bleeding head and screamed, “Find my ear, put it on ice! Maybe they can reattach it at the hospital!” the husband said, “Honey, I loved you when you had two ears, and I love you just as much now that you’ve got one ear, and a cheek full of birdshot. I don’t want you changing on my account.” Then, suddenly, a drunken George W. Bush burst from the underbrush on an ATV and ran over the man’s wife, fracturing her leg. What would you conclude if the maimed woman shrieked, “call 911!” but her husband simply shook his head and smiled fondly and murmured, “Baby, I’m not going to try to ‘remake’ you into someone who’s got a pair of ears, a buckshot-free face, and two sound legs; you’re perfect in my eyes.” And as the wife’s pulse became thready and she slipped into shock, moaning, “Get an ambulance, you asshole — push the bone back inside the skin, set my leg, put it in a goddamn cast –!” he merely kissed her bloody forehead and softly crooned Billy Joel’s 1977 hit, “(I Love You) Just the Way You Are.”
Next up, fellow professional moralizer Michael Medved boldly advises Obama to Listen to Leviticus.
The core mistake of liberalism involves the confusion of charity and justice.How do we know it’s a disastrous error to blur the distinction between these two timeless virtues?Because the Bible specifically warns us against it.
“The Bible said it. I believe it. And that’s my column — thanks, I’m outta here!”
Allowing justice to be twisted by emotions of sympathy for the unfortunate is no less corrupting than bending toward the rich and powerful out of a sense of awe or admiration, or in hopes of personal advancement.
It’s just a lot less common.
In both cases, Jewish tradition suggests that the judge (or any other government official) has been, in effect, bribed.
As Dick Durbin complained recently of the Senate, the poor “frankly own the place.” When will our government institutions finally reject the influence of Big Pauper?
Does this mean that a system of progressive taxation constitutes the blurring of justice and charity that the Bible decries? The answer is almost certainly yes […] [I]t’s appropriate to recall the timeless and necessary Biblical separation between public justice and private compassion.
Separation of Church and State is a fundamental American ideal. Except when Leviticus has something convenient to say about homos or the flat tax.
A little further down the page we find the latest from Dr. Professor Mike Adams, Ph.D., who contributes his penetrating thoughts onLiberty and Tyranny.
For the past few years, I’ve been arguing that those who like to be called “liberals” should instead be called statists.
“So far, no one’s been listening to me. But the statists have had some success arguing that people who like to be called ‘criminology professors’ should instead be called ‘douchebags with an inexhaustible variety of novelty nozzles.’”
Edmund Burke was talking about these statists when he said “by (their) unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. Men would become little better than the flies of summer.”
Later, by changing just one word, Don Henley turned Burke’s pensée into a hit song.
The statist may well say that he rejects traditional religion because it provides an opiate to the masses. But there is more to his opposition to religion than his fear of a disincentive to revolt against ruling classes. He also fears that religion leads to judgment and intolerance – the kind that reminds him of his inferiority.
Dr. Mike also has a Ph.D in Inferiority Studies. However, since Democrats in Congress can’t even manage to cap usurious credit card interest rates, I kind of doubt that Arlen Specter, now that he’s a “statist,” is going to go on a Spanish Civil War-style pillage of the church.
As we bid a reluctant farewell to Townhall, let’s take a quick side trip over to RenewAmerica, where easily panicked electrical engineerJoseph Pecar believes that Barack Obama’s upcoming commencement address at Notre Dame “will indisputably increase the number of Abortions and therefore the number of victims of so-called ‘Botched Abortions’ — that is born-alive infants who either later die or who survive but are condemned to lifetimes of unimaginable suffering resulting from the pernicious side-effects of attempted Abortions that fail.”
He doesn’t come close to proving it, of course, but I was enchanted by Mr. Pecar nonetheless; despite larding his column with such grim phrases as “[Obama’s] pro-Abortion, pro-Infanticide, pro-Black Genocide quest” and “stabbing and crushing the head of a live baby,” the three exclamation points in the headline makes him sound less like an elderly crank and more like an overexcited tween texting on her Sidekick.
Posted by scott on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 10:00 am
18 Responses to “Townhall: The Pu Pu Platter Edition”
That Burke quotation is about revolutionaries, and Adams is either lying or an idiot if he claims otherwise. Adams appears to think that since Burke is identified as a founder of conservatism that he must have been on board with the modern movementarian synthesis of glibertarianism, social darwinism, and corporate stoogery. He was not. He identified the realm of the state to be “every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.” While being opposed to trade controls, he also explicitly endorsed the government managing “the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat.” This quote is on Wikipedia. There is no excuse for Adams being so blatantly incorrect about this. Movement conservatives like Adams fallaciously equate statism with totalitarianism and then label their opponents as “statists.” In the glibby sense of “statism” (i.e., thinking that government should serve as something more than hired goons to protect capitalists from the exploited), Burke was a statist.
I love you guys. There are only a few writers who make me laugh til I cry just about every time.
Thanks
Thanks
Your response to Prager’s typically idiotic question was beyond perfect.
Did Prager just say that if we love anything, it must be perfect? And by extension, we can only love something if it is perfect?
1) I don’t know if there’s some equivalent of the Longitude Prize awaiting the first American who manages to break the Goldberg Stupidity Barrier, but Prager should claim it.
2) I’m reasonably sure no one, other than The Sponsor, maybe, has ever asked Medved to kowtow to the ruling Christianists. So can the Leviticus routine, Bubbulah; you’ve been superseded by the New Improved Version.
3) I have no respect for the Burke cult, and that’s for people who presumably have read him, not those who mine someone else’s work for quotes.
4) Hey, RA Designated Cranky Grandpa of the Day: what th’ fuck did your party ever do about it?
2) I’m reasonably sure no one, other than The Sponsor, maybe, has ever asked Medved to kowtow to the ruling Christianists. So can the Leviticus routine, Bubbulah; you’ve been superseded by the New Improved Version.
3) I have no respect for the Burke cult, and that’s for people who presumably have read him, not those who mine someone else’s work for quotes.
4) Hey, RA Designated Cranky Grandpa of the Day: what th’ fuck did your party ever do about it?
Scott quotes Nerd Penis Rag:
If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found living her rather difficult?
Scott’s take on this is Da Bumb, as you kids put it, but I would also note that the preponderence of breasticular augmentification, botoxifitory dewrinklizing, buttockulent entautening, and other cosmetical ensurguricality appears to be happening on his side of the culture fence.
Djur:
[Burke] identified the realm of the state to be “every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.”
Sounds more than a little socialist to me.
I guess it takes a berk to misrepresent a Burke.
If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found living her rather difficult?
Scott’s take on this is Da Bumb, as you kids put it, but I would also note that the preponderence of breasticular augmentification, botoxifitory dewrinklizing, buttockulent entautening, and other cosmetical ensurguricality appears to be happening on his side of the culture fence.
Djur:
[Burke] identified the realm of the state to be “every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.”
Sounds more than a little socialist to me.
I guess it takes a berk to misrepresent a Burke.
Does this mean that a system of progressive taxation constitutes the blurring of justice and charity that the Bible decries? The answer is almost certainly yes […] [I]t’s appropriate to recall the timeless and necessary Biblical separation between public justice and private compassion. — Michael Medved
You mean this one?
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. — Jesus (Matthew 12:17)
And, for Dr. Professor Mike Adams, who likes to quote 19th-century Brits, here’s another from that era that applies to the good Dr. Professor:
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
John Stuart Mill, letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866)
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmill.htm
How much longer before their brains explode from the stupidity?
You mean this one?
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. — Jesus (Matthew 12:17)
And, for Dr. Professor Mike Adams, who likes to quote 19th-century Brits, here’s another from that era that applies to the good Dr. Professor:
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
John Stuart Mill, letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866)
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmill.htm
How much longer before their brains explode from the stupidity?
Isn’t the latest Republican project the “National Council for a New America”? So what’s wrong with the America we already have, HUH? HUH? Answer me THAT, you traitors!
When will our government institutions finally reject the influence of Big Pauper?
You just made my day with that.
You just made my day with that.
Question to Left: If You Love America, Why “Transform” It?
Question to one-third of Republicans nationwide: if it’s your country right or wrong, how come you want to secede from it?
Fucking quitters.
Question to one-third of Republicans nationwide: if it’s your country right or wrong, how come you want to secede from it?
Fucking quitters.
Scott,
Your second paragraph is a work of art. Incredibly gruesome, fun, and it makes your point limpidly clear without being didactic. Just what art should be. Well, at least art *I* like.
Your second paragraph is a work of art. Incredibly gruesome, fun, and it makes your point limpidly clear without being didactic. Just what art should be. Well, at least art *I* like.
The Golden Turkey: “The truth is that the Bible – both Old and New Testament—views compassion as a personal obligation rather than a public priority for governmental or judicial policy.”‘
Really? Did they remove Acts from the New Testament while I wasn’t paying attention? Acts chapter 5 starts with the account of two people who wanted to hold money they got from selling their land and use it for themselves, rather then putting all of the proceeds from the sale of their own personal property into a communal fund that would be distributed equally to everybody in the little communistic society the apostles had built for themselves.
And the both of them were struck stone dead for their deceitful act.
What always amazes me about right wingers like Medved who throw the bible in our faces every time they want to justify their own beliefs and prejudices is how incredibly little knowledge of the bible you need to torpedo their claims.
I have vague memories from having read Matthew and Mark a long time ago, and I remember that one story from Acts, which I haven’t even read all of, and that alone is enough to supply me with convincing ammunition against pretty much every claim these guys make about how God really loves selfishness and the free market.
It really doesn’t take much at all.
Really? Did they remove Acts from the New Testament while I wasn’t paying attention? Acts chapter 5 starts with the account of two people who wanted to hold money they got from selling their land and use it for themselves, rather then putting all of the proceeds from the sale of their own personal property into a communal fund that would be distributed equally to everybody in the little communistic society the apostles had built for themselves.
And the both of them were struck stone dead for their deceitful act.
What always amazes me about right wingers like Medved who throw the bible in our faces every time they want to justify their own beliefs and prejudices is how incredibly little knowledge of the bible you need to torpedo their claims.
I have vague memories from having read Matthew and Mark a long time ago, and I remember that one story from Acts, which I haven’t even read all of, and that alone is enough to supply me with convincing ammunition against pretty much every claim these guys make about how God really loves selfishness and the free market.
It really doesn’t take much at all.
Like most “spiritual” conservatives, they conveniently forget the part that says, “And the greatest of these is Charity”.
Hell, *I* know it, and I make no pretense about being a biblical scholar.
Hell, *I* know it, and I make no pretense about being a biblical scholar.
Hmmm… I seem to remember Don Rumsfeld had a doctrine with regard to the US military, to “bring it into the 21st century”, what was that policy called again?
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/013102g1.htm
If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his [military], would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his [military] and loved [it]? Or b) held his [military] in rather low esteem and therefore found [running it] rather difficult?
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0102/013102g1.htm
If you met a man who said he would like to “transform” or “remake” his [military], would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his [military] and loved [it]? Or b) held his [military] in rather low esteem and therefore found [running it] rather difficult?
Swoon squared.
Edmund Burke was talking about these statists
Thomas Paine — inexplicably the favorite Founding Father of Nimrod Glenn Beck — said of Burke’s caterwauling about ancien regime France that “he pities the plumage but forgets the dying bird.”
Similarly, Mike Sadams is pitiful.
Thomas Paine — inexplicably the favorite Founding Father of Nimrod Glenn Beck — said of Burke’s caterwauling about ancien regime France that “he pities the plumage but forgets the dying bird.”
Similarly, Mike Sadams is pitiful.
Not sure it’s really to the point to quote the New Improved Version to the Token Jew. But there are some other texts in the First Edition. Did Medved ever read the graphic description of the sin of Sodom in the 16th chapter of Ezekiel? I bet not: didn’t want to pollute his mind with exposure to that faggotry. So, look out, this describes really dirty stuff:
48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.
49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Remind me to be in San Francisco and not in whatever hell-hole Medved inhabits the next time G-d gets pissed off. Well, save your breath, I’ll remember anyway.
48 As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.
49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Remind me to be in San Francisco and not in whatever hell-hole Medved inhabits the next time G-d gets pissed off. Well, save your breath, I’ll remember anyway.
And three cheers and a Sis Boom Bah to Notre Dame, a notable Catholic University working on being a great University as well. Every once in a while, perhaps even more than once every 400 years, it’s necessary to stand against a nervous disorder prevalent in the hierarchy, and they drew the short straw this time, and they don’t seem ready to blink.
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