The Wonk Room has a fine round-up of Republican voices who think the attacks on the 14th Amendment are a bad idea.
Former Bush speech writer and apologist Michael Gerson said:
“That is the wisdom of the authors of the 14th Amendment: They essentially wanted to take this very difficult issue — citizenship — outside of the political realm…”
And Bush image maker and ad man Mark McKinnon said:
“The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican party. It is a shame and an embarrassment that the GOP now wants to amend it for starkly political reasons …”
There is more hand wringing about the Republican/teabagger/wingnut effort to revise the 14th Amendment so that birthright citizenship for any child born in America can be replaced with a new standard of citizenship based on mob rule, class warfare, Fox News web polls or some other yet to be decided wingnut interpretation of fairness and justice. Perhaps they will just let the reenactors in Colonial Williamsburg decide who gets to be a citizen and who gets to be the child of a ‘guest worker’ born without any rights as a curse of their second class status.
What these silly rabbits fail to realize is that the Republican Party of their imagination is gone. Lincoln, Reagan and Goldwater would all be squishes in today’s Republican Party. A candidate with any of their views and using their rhetoric would never make it out of a Republican primary.
Today the Republican Party is controlled by the Confederate Party–those rebel dead-enders who used to control the Democratic Party until the Civil Rights era. When the Democrats embraced justice the Confederates went looking for a new home. Nixon invited them into the GOP thinking he could control their extreme ideas. It was a massive fail.
Today, the Republican Party exists in name only. Scratch it and you will find a party and movement fueled by the racism and treason of the Confederacy. Of course these weasels want to go after the 14th Amendment. This has been a goal of Confederate dead-enders since Nathan Bedford Forrest came up with the idea of creating terrorist cells who rode around in sheets.
It is amusing and pathetic to see these silly rabbits try to reclaim the Party that they helped to kill.
What a bunch of useful idiots.
Cheers
El Cid
I think it’s high time to rescind the 14th Amendment and its repression of Confederate insurrectionists from holding federal office and denial of federal responsibility for Confederate debts.
It’s time to move on and let right wing insurrectionists hold office.
Aw, who’m I kidding? They already do.
General Stuck
These idiots are walking into a perfect electoral storm. I can’t think of anything, short of concentration camps for minorities, that would galvanize their increasing numbers into voting democrat, than this nonsense. Who will they impress? The same tea tard morans who are already going to vote for them. There is no chance of meeting the 3/4 states threshold for repealing an amendment to the constitution. Especially, to take away rights.
Uncle Omar
Here’s a question for you…Where was George Washington born? Answer, from some Native American Activists in Michigan in the early 70’s, “On Indian Land!” I laugh whenever one of our nativist chumps starts telling me that his forebears came here legally, went through immigration, etc., etc.. Since we stole the whole country from the Indians, none of these damned fools has any more “right” to be here than the most recent “illegal” immigrant.
El Cid
Colbert is absolutely ripping on this whole 14th Amendment, race baiting, ‘anchor baby’ / dropping shit.
El Cid
@General Stuck: I first read this as walking into a perfect electrical storm. I think I’d prefer that.
SiubhanDuinne
@El Cid: LOL, I did exactly the same!
JenJen
Great post, Dennis. This one has me wanting to flip thru “Nixonland” again.
ellaesther
Ooh, I feel a need to blog pimp for someone else now!
My internet pal Paul W posted a funny and sharp consideration of the idiocy of all the silly GOP amendments talk. Go, read. You’ll enjoy! http://reformamendment.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-conservatives-attack-their.html
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: @El Cid:
Me, too! Didn’t realize it until I saw your two posts.
El Cid
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, they keep saying they love the Founding Fathers, like Ben Franklin, so we should give them a bunch of kites, metal lines, and keys.
General Stuck
@El Cid: Ha! that would probly be a more apt description.
ellaesther
I’m going to go out on a limb — and in this crowd, I really mean that, as I expect to be eviscerated — and say the following:
The GOP is going to do terribly in November, in no small part because of wingnut shenanigans (though not entirely), and the more truly conservative members of the party will wrest power back, and be able to conveniently ignore whatever part they’ve played in the sorry state their party is in, because they’ll be able to blame it on the wingnut shenanigans. And politics will go back to the old-fashioned unpleasantness (rather than this current, new-fangled repulsiveness) and it’ll feel like rainbows and unicorns by comparison (for a day or two).
And when my 7 year old gets to high school, the Tea Party will warrant a three-line mention in her junior year Poli Sci class.
ETA: I mean to add a dramatic: YOU MARK MY WORDS. So: Mark ’em.
Mike Kay (Team America)
O.T.
Toooooo Funnny!
hahahhahahahhahahahha-
Ned Lamont LOST again!
After spending $8 million and leading the polls through out year, up to today, he got blown out 58-42 in CT.
You have to tip your cap to the Firebaggers—once they give you the kiss of death, you stay dead.
The FDL graveyard: Dean, Edwards, Lamont, Halter, Zombie Lamont.
Heh!
ellaesther
@Mike Kay (Team America): I think Lev is talking about this over on the Open Thread. I mean, I can’t contribute at all, but Lev could!
Dave
This one fucking kills me. The party that is so fucking fearful of government controlling anything…wants to let the government control who is or isn’t a citizen. Words fail…
beltane
@Mike Kay (Team America): Don’t forget Romanoff, who was being endlessly touted by Sirota and others as a real firebrand progressive.
Did you know that the Vermont Progressive party used to run candidates against the corporatist sellout, no-better-than-a-Republican Howard Dean?
mr. whipple
@Mike Kay (Team America):
You didn’t get the memo. It turns out Lamont wasn’t nearly as progressive as he appeared the last time, so he lost even bigger this time.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: there are two epic asswhuppings heading down the pike for conservatives in the next decade….the first from the demographic timer, and the second from science.
the conservative base has been systematically culled to be lower IQ racists with 50 years of race-baiting and IQ-baiting.
Douthat and Beinart and Sully are starting to get it….they propose an IQ bussing program so intelligence-challenged redstate heartland kids can get into Harvard.
conservatives are not as smart and their smarter kids turn liberal.
i wonder if there will be IQ riots?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@mr. whipple: How dare you!
How dare you say the people taken in by Edwards were also duped by Ned!
Mike Kay (Team America)
@beltane: Yes I did, sis. This is when they lost me. As a green mountain resident, you know how in the very year Governor Dean literally put his life on the line to be the first state to pass Civil Unions, the Nader goons came a whisker away from handing the seat to the republicans in the 2000 election. When the stab a man like Howard Dean in the back, what good are they for.
Omnes Omnibus
@matoko_chan: You are becoming a bit monotonous on this issue.
Chad N Freude
@ellaesther: It is impossible to predict what’s going to happen in November based on the tenuous polling and hopelessly obfuscatory reporting of everybody but Rachel Maddow. Whether the Tea Party feral chimpanzees have any real influence is unknowable — screaming and flinging of feces tells us nothing. Whether the real conservatives (if any actually remain) can wrest any power back from the nut cases is unknowable. So you may be right. Or you may be wrong. I’m withholding judgment until 3 November.
Consider yourself eviscerated.
suzanne
@matoko_chan: Holy shit. Do you talk about anything else EVER? Good God. Sober up and read a trashy novel already.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
or a virus of the mind.
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: Or that.
ETA: I enjoy understatement.
Mike Kay (Team America)
14th Amendment = Term limits.
Back in 1994, term limits were the rage. Gingrich and company promised if they got elected they would pass a constitutional amendment setting term limits. They actually conned enough voters into believing it. Once they got in, they took a vote, it failed, and they never-ever brought it up again (not once). Only a sucker would believe greedy amoral and immoral pols like Trent Lott would ever limit their accumulation of power and money.
Alas, a sucker is born every minute. If the thugs are elected, they’ll have a vote, it will fail, and you’ll never hear about it again. Then they go back to gay-baiting.
That’s another issue — how can any gay or lesbian ever vote for the republicans? I mean, I never ever heard of an African-American voting for segregation during the 50s, and yet plenty gays vote for and contribute to bigots like Boehner. And you just know when SCOTUS rules in favor of gay marriage, a couple of years from now, the thugs will start screaming for a amendment to ban gay marriage.
Martin
So, if we repealed the 14th amendment, does that mean that anyone born in the south during the Civil War would have their citizenship revoked, and by extension the citizenship of their children on down the line?
I could be okay with this…
Tattoosydney
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fixt.
Question for matoku: Why do you spell “bullshit” as “bullshytt”? Is the letter i a symbol of the oppressive low IQ dead heterosexual white male paradigm?
weichi
“citizenship for any child born in America can be replaced with a new standard of citizenship based on mob rule, class warfare, Fox News web polls or some other yet to be decided wingnut interpretation of fairness and justice.”
But you can just change the amendment to state that you are a citizen if 1) you were a citizen the day the new amendment passes OR 2) one of (or both) of your parents was a citizen OR 3) you have been naturalized as a citizen.
I think that type of change would be surprisingly popular. Not popular enough to pass, but working toward passing it might be an effective wedge issue.
ellaesther
@Chad N Freude: Oh man, that was weak! Not mean and disdainful enough. You’ll have to work on that!
I am basing my prediction on a life of living as a political creature and watching people freak out and go up and down and then: Boom. Nothing much happens.
I’m telling you — the Tea Party (et al) will flame out, or it will flame out spectacularly. And soon (read: November).
I remember when everyone on my side of the political map was scared silly by all the ridiculous Republican candidates and I was just calmly walking around saying “It’ll be McCain. He’s the least crazy one.” (Which, by the way, is why I know that Sarah Palin will never be nominated as a Presidential candidate. Vice President? Maybe. But not President).
Mind you, to my mind, the real danger of the wingnuts is that they make garden variety Republicans look positively harmless! Which of course they’re not. But they can get away with some terrible stuff, because it’s not as bad as what the crazy people want.
Anyway: MARK MY WORDS.
freelancer
Obviously, the larger point we should take from this post is that Dengre wants to shoot Texans in the head.
Martin
@General Stuck: Only someone with a low IQ would get so fixated on such a stupid subject.
Andy K
@ellaesther:
Already signs of the flame-out here in Michigan, where the very moderate Rick Snyder won the GOP primary for the Governor’s mansion. Snyder beat out Peter Hoekstra and two candidates to Hoekstra’s right, Mike Cox (the Amway candidate) and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
What worries me is that Snyder won with the help of conservaDems. I don’t think the populist Dem who won his primary, Virg Bernero, can get them back in the general election.
matoko_chan
@Tattoosydney: its from Stephensons Anathem.
im just kinda depressed about my epiphany that americans arent the good guys. we aren’t even the better guys. we are the stupid guys.
don’t mind me.
im just american trash.
And everyone’s shutting down
The people are so worn out
Wake up the dream is over
Everyone’s shutting down
The people are so worn out
Wake up the dream is over
Wake up the dream is over
(‘Cause I-)
Wake up…
I’m just American-
Stupid American trash
I’m just American trash
Stupid American trash
I’m just American
Trash.
Violet
@ellaesther:
She wouldn’t do VP again because she’d see it as a step backwards. She’d do the Presidential thing, but only if she didn’t have to campaign. Because campaigning is work and Sarah Palin doesn’t do work.
But she’ll run. She’ll run because she’d love the “title” (her word) and trappings, so long as she didn’t have to worry about the actual hard work. And she has surrounded herself with flattering sycophants who endlessly tell her how wonderful she is and how she has a real shot. And she believes them.
Chris G.
@Violet: I’m sure she would see it as a step backwards, but more importantly I can’t imagine anyone else wanting to run, let alone try to govern, with her.
KG
@ellaesther: I’ve been thinking the same way, actually. My feeling is that when people start actually paying attention to the campaigns, they are going to be turned off by a lot of the Tea Party bullshit. I was in Vegas over the weekend, visiting family, and caught a couple of Sharon Angle commercials… she was trying to blame the fact that home prices fell by as much as half on Ried. If that is the best that she has, and if it’s representative of GOP candidates as a whole, then they are in trouble.
Though, I’m not sure what becomes of the GOP. I think the party is in the midst of a generational shift, but the new generation hasn’t quite shown itself yet. They may have chased the next generation of leadership off, and if that’s the case, the GOP may die on the vine.
Lev
@Mike Kay (Team America): The difference is that it’s a lot harder for black people to be the racial equivalent of “in the closet”, Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain notwithstanding. Also, I don’t think many black people were ashamed of being black back then.
I hereby declare the civil rights-gay rights comparisons cliched and not useful. They’re nearly as bad as those posts talking about how Obama should just be more like FDR. Obama took office amidst a bad recession, Roosevelt took office in the middle of a depression. If the unemployment rate had been 25% on Election Day 2008, the Dems would have won 100 seats in the House and would probably have a veto-proof majority in the Senate.
@ellaesther: Define terribly. Does a 25-seat gain in the House and only a one-seat gain in the Senate (Dem hold CO, CA, WA, WI, PA and IL, and win OH, KY and get Crist to caucus with the Dems in FL) constitute a terrible year for the GOP with all they’ve got going for them? I could get behind that prediction.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@matoko_chan:
Yes, but only here, where you post.
Chad N Freude
@ellaesther: Weak? Weak? I’ll show you Weak! You’re mean. How’s that for weak?
As for mean and disdainful, you, ellaesther, are Kryptonite to my meanness and disdain.
None of which negates the proposition that your optimistic analysis is optimistic in a world where pessimism prevails (and is usually accurate) and is based entirely upon upbeat thinking. But I hope you’re right, or would hope if everything wasn’t so hopeless making it pointless to hope you’re right.
Chad N Freude
@Chris G.: Palin for President with Glenn Beck as her running mate.
ellaesther
@Violet: Run? Yes. Sure. That’s her all over! But get the nomination? Nope. Just ain’t gonna happen.
ellaesther
@Lev: Oh, I’m not sure I could actually define “terribly” all that well. I usually get a little too optimistic around about Nov 2 and then am disappointed.
I’ll just say this: The extreme right will do enough damage to the currently cowering-in-the-corner center of the party that the party will be forced to finally deal with them. What that means in terms of numbers, I don’t know.
I’m big picture, baby! You can’t tie me down with numbers!
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Lev: There are always gonna be “self-haters” and opportunists like Phyllis Schlafly and Joe Lieberman (John Hagee apologist), but I don’t know anyone who’s ashamed of being gay. Sure, if someone lives in a hostile rural area, they will hide their feelings, if only out of survival, but they’re not ashamed.
Lev
@Mike Kay (Team America): Two words: Larry Craig.
THE
matoko,
im just kinda depressed about my epiphany that americans arent the good guys. we aren’t even the better guys. we are the stupid guys.
Don’t ever underestimate the positive contribution of the USA to 20th century history. Freedom would probably not have survived without the USA.
The irony of it is that in many ways, it was the reluctance of USA to get involved in the world’s wars that so contributed to her ability to dominate the postwar order. The “last one standing” phenomenon.
That’s why the hyper-interventionism of contemporary USA is so perverse. It is better to let the tyrants exhaust themselves in empire and aggression. Democracy’s strength lay in its reasonableness – it reluctance to go to war. The neocon project to democratize the world by force was and is crazy.
Isolationism is a very healthy tendency in democracies. War should be a last resort.
KG
I don’t think Palin will run, because I think she knows she couldn’t win. Plus, she wouldn’t be able to protect herself in Iowa and New Hampshire like she has over the last couple of years. You actually have to shake hands and not be a complete asshole to complete strangers in those states.
Nope, I think she’s going to stay out of the race and try to play kingmaker.
handy
Okay respelling a word and pretending this makes its meaning any different is bullshit.
ellaesther
@Chad N Freude: Whew, that was a thicket of right and wrong and hope and hopeless! And now I will say this:
In an odd way, it’s not really optimism. Because all I’m saying is that it’s not as bad as we fear in our worst nightmares. And by way of contrast, the re-conquering heroes of the GOP will look like heroes, or mavericks, or something, and people will allow themselves to continue to be conned into thinking that tax cuts for the rich are good for the poor, and war is good for peace.
So, bottom line, I’m an odd kind of pessimist.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@KG:
Just tweaked it a little.
Violet
@ellaesther:
I’m fascinated to see how the Republican Presidential primary process is going to work out. Romney has the most money, but he’s Mormon and the evangelicals don’t really support him.
Huckabee’s got the evangelical thing going for him, but a lot of the rabid evangelicals support Palin a lot more.
Palin’s got rabid supporters and equally rabid haters. Assuming the Dems don’t shoot themselves in the head by trying to primary Obama, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some Dems cross over and vote for Palin in primaries in states in which that’s allowed.
Then there’s Pawlenty, a bland, dull milquetoast if there ever was one. He seems to think more highly of his chances than about anyone else.
Who else do they have? Jindal? Really? A brown-skinned guy in this racially charged climate? Jeb Bush? Another Bush? Really? Liz Cheney? Another Cheney? Really, really?
I guess there’s prairie-wind-chapped John Thune, but outside of a few political junkies, who’s really even heard of him?
So who else do they have?
Gian
@Chad N Freude:
midterm voting usually has low turnout. the GOP is motiviating it’s base – the 27% or so with the red meat of racism, they gobble it up.
the Dems, as far as I can tell are relying on the GOP using racism to motivate their base to motivate teh democratic base, while having the press secretary publically “dis” the base
yeah, it could be some super secret plan to just give the GOPers more rope, and rebound in the 2014 election, but I’m nervous.
the classic thing to sell voters is tangible benefits at the local level. by delaying the onset of health care reform, it delayed the tangible benefit, and put it so far out that credit may well not go to the people who passed it. (the cop-yeacher-firefighter thing from today is different, and the dems in congress need to use the franking privilege to inform people of it)
thing is, if past is prolouge, low tirnout, motiviated 27% bigots, unmotivated rest, big GOP pickup
to motivate the democratic party’s base? I dunno, if they aren’t motivated to vote for anyone but the GOP and rush out there to do it, I’m not sure what more, in practical reachable goals the admin could’ve done. (though telling them they’re drug influenced crazies sure doesn’t help)
KG
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: of course, the “for hire” part just went without saying.
Gian
@KG:
kingmaker? a great avalon hill game, but sarah playing it?
she doesn’t have the mental horsepower…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingmaker_(board_game)
matoko_chan
@handy: its from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. you would have to read the book to understand how im using it.
like you even read.
you sound like a ‘sline.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Gian:
It could help them put down the pipe.
Btw, egotistical online big mouths aren’t the base. The online base supported Edwards by a 2 to 1 margin, yet that translated to squat. They could only manage to scratch out 17% of the vote in New Hampshire. Hillary, who was universally loathed by the online base ended up winning NH.
KG
@Violet: the GOP tends to go with the guy whose turn it is. On that metric, I would put money on Romney… but I just don’t think that’ll happen more so for Romneycare than being Mormon. Huckabee doesn’t strike me as serious, but I suppose is probably a frontrunner at this point. The only other person that can fall into this category is Gingrich, and he’s got too much baggage, I think.
I just don’t see an obvious choice right now. None of the also rans you mention would be viable before 2016.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
You mean, a brown-skinned utterly irredeemable horse’s ass.
The King of Berms(tm). Here’s the crazy fucker telling everybody how wonderfully the Berm Warfare project is going.
I hope that they name them the Jindal Islands. Maybe he can open them up to beachgoers?
jwb
@ellaesther: I used to be able to trust my gut on these things and have a pretty good handle on when the electorate was turning. Then Nov 2004 came along… Now I rarely trust my feelings of optimism.
Personally I think the economy is just going to end up being to large a drag on the Dems and so we’re going to end up with a wingnut circus for the next two years. I hope I’m wrong and you’re right however.
Lev
@ellaesther: Fair ’nuff.
As for 2012, here’s my guess as to how it plays out: Mitt’s in, Sarah’s in, Newt’s in, Huckabee skips and so does Jeb. (All the others are minor contenders.) Mitt plays the frontrunner with Sarah as the second banana. It’ll get ugly and Newt will sit back and try to act all statesmanlike to pick up the crumbs that fall from the table. The GOP rank-and-file follow their elites, who follow the money men, who overwhelmingly support Romney. Evangelicals won’t like it, and some percentage of them won’t turn out, but most of them will hold their nose and vote for Romney. Or, should I say, vote against Obama. Sarah will win Iowa but nothing else. She’ll be the Giuliani of 2012, before becoming a full-time FNC pundit (which is what she wants anyway).
Romney, though, will be an easy opponent for Obama. Romney screams JUST ANOTHER POLITICIAN. He’s slick, well-spoken, and has the good looks and patrician bearing of the well-off career politician. He’s the opposite of the sort of politician the GOP base falls in love with (i.e. the antipolitician) and he’ll have the same sort of turnout problems with his base that McCain had. Plus, he’s of the CEO class in an environment where that is, um, not a good thing to be. Obama will be able to define him early, and my guess is that Romney will be too busy dealing with oppo leaks from angry staffers from losing Repub campaigns to do much to define Obama, since literally everyone in politics seems to hate him. He’ll pick a Jesuser to fill out the ticket (Biola Alum John Thune seems the most likely here) to maximize the blandness and if the Fed is right and unemployment by the end of 2012 is in the 7-7.5 range, my guess is that Obama’s eerie parallel to Reagan will continue and he’ll win with something like 57-41.
Chad N Freude
@ellaesther: When the sky is a bright canary yellow
I forget every cloud I’ve ever seen
So they call me a cock-eyed optimist
Immature and incurably green
I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we’re done and we might as well be dead
But I’m only a cock-eyed optimist
And I can’t get it into my head
I hear the human race is falling on its face
And hasn’t very far to go
But every whip-poor-will is selling me a bill
And telling me it just ain’t so
I could say life is just a bowl of jello
And appear more intelligent and smart
But I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope
And I can’t get it out of my heart
Not this heart
From “South Pacific”. This was the only posting of the lyrics I found that got the first line right. Oscar Hammerstein deserves better than Internet misquotes.
Gian
@Mike Kay (Team America):
and president Hillary after her NH victory has done a great job?
apples and oranges, midterms are low turnout. presidential races are not. (which kinda was the point if you think about it)
the base are the most likely voters to turn out in a low turnout election. Not doing everything they want is OK, actively insulting them? Is the benefit of swaying someone to come over to your side going to outweigh the personally insulted sulking? I’ve got no way to figure that math out, and no model either. It’s an open question how demotivated is the democratic base, how motivated are the knucklegraggers?
the only polls I’d really trust on that aren’t public information, and a lot of that depends on the “likely” voter model used
Yutsano
@KG: Oh she’s running. No doubt in my gourd at all. Seeing that video of her dissing the teacher sold me that she definitely possesses the arrogance and lack of foresight to stop herself. She tried to convinced that teacher of her awesomeness and I’d bet she thought she succeeded when the encounter was over. She is both delusional and drunk on the buzz of attention. The fact that she will fail miserably isn’t even on her radar.
@Tattoosydney: That way lay madness hon. Trust me, I’ve tried. Not entering those waters again.
gex
@Lev: I guess I am just confused as to why gay rights aren’t civil rights. Civil rights belong to all citizens. Calling gay rights plays into their framing that we want something special. And I don’t think it does society any favors implicitly endorsing the idea that so long as blacks had it worse, why worry about what we’re doing to the gays? It’s totally different anyhow.
ETA: so yeah, I see your point.
Uloborus
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Yeah, the people who bitch about Obama alienating the base have been proven very thoroughly by polling to not be the base. And really, if you’re a tiny minority and you’re the first people to not vote because of disappointment, how can you BE the base?
@ellaesther:
I pretty much agree. I think GOP gains will be way smaller than predicted. The Tea Partiers are highly motivated, but they’re picky and fractious and unreliable. And moderates (as opposed to ‘independents’) loathe them and their candidates. I’m not sure if this will mean mainstream (merely assholes and corporate whores as opposed to lunatics) conservatives will take over again this cycle, though. So far ‘doubling down on the crazy’ has been the conservative reaction to losing. Somehow, it’s always Good News For John McCain. Maybe after they get their asses handed to them in 2012. Eventually they’ll pull out. Political parties are tremendously durable.
@Gian:
Again, the Dems who are pissed are not ‘the base’. They just think they are.
JGabriel
Dengre @ Top:
You go way too easy on Reagan. Remember Philadelphia, MS, 1980?
Reagan was just as much a party to the Southern Strategy as Nixon, albeit coming to it marginally later, and nearly everything that Bush fils did, particularly on the economy, was merely a fulfillment of Reagan’s rhetoric and oft-expressed wishes.
Reagan, to his discredit, would do just fine in today’s GOP.
.
Lev
@gex: You’re right of course. I was speaking specifically about the civil rights struggle of the 50s and 60s. And you’re absolutely right that they’re completely different issues, linked only in that the most vociferous opponents of both are the same.
d.s.
In a decade the media is going to refer to the 14th amendment as “the controversial 14th amendment” and repealing it will be part of every Republican candidate’s platform.
Republicans know how to shift discourse to the right.
Of course they’ll never actually get the votes to repeal the 14th amendment. But if they can keep up their drumbeat and turn what used to be a guaranteed right into a controversy, a conservative Supreme Court could get away with releasing some wacky ruling saying that the Constitution doesn’t apply to illegal immigrants, and gut birthright citizenship that way.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Yep. She’s going to run. Her ego won’t allow her not to. But as soon as it becomes obvious that she has to do some real work, or she gets her rear end handed to her by the voters of some state (probably NH, they don’t brook her style of nonsense), she’ll quit (again) citing some reason or other where she blames the Lame Stream Media and anything else she can think of, while accepting no responsibility for her failure as a candidate.
Sloegin
Is citizenship something that is covered Ex Post Facto?
I’d imagine most everyone is screwed for citizenship unless you can document a direct ancestor getting naturalized *before* popping teh babies. I know I’m hosed, and thats 3 generations on one side of the family, 6 generations on the other.
Lev
@JGabriel: Not on judicial appointments or immigration. And removing the lead from gasoline? Today’s right would never forgive Reagan for that. Removing that lead is a communistic big-government plot. We should leave the lead in gasoline, just like God Himself intended when he invented it.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@d.s.:
I seriously doubt it. Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic and are headed for being a quarter of the US population in about 40 years. They are already the largest minority population in the country.
A strategy of continued war on a large and growing minority, which happens to already be at the 30%+ point in several key red states, would be suicidal for the Republican party. They might enjoy some temporary lift right now from issues like this one, but they are going to pay big time, down the road.
Yutsano
@Sloegin: Virtually my entire family has been American less than 100 years. And good luck deciding where to repatriate me as we came from all over Europe. But if I get to choose I’m going back north and getting my francais back up to snuff. I can handle a few Montreal winters and free health care.
ellaesther
@Chad N Freude: South Pacific! Can I wash McCain right out of my hair? Pls?
@Lev: God damn you’re good at this. Everything you said makes perfect sense to me and my big-picture gut. Mark my words again: I think you’re absolutely right, within a reasonable margin of error, and I would be willing to bet actual money on it. I’m cut-n-pasting this to the inside of my brain, and I will claim your intelligence as my own, come October. (Unless some new candidate suddenly arises who is more palatable to all the various forces you mention than Romney. Then it’ll be that guy).
JGabriel
In India, they’ve been doing that for years.
.
Tattoosydney
@matoko_chan:
That would explain a lot – the only one of his books which defeated me (or rather, which I threw out the window in disgust).
Um. We in the rest of the world have known that for a long time.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Uloborus:
Not only have they been dis-proven by polls but, most importantly, more specifically, by the ballot box.
Online bloggers ≠ the voting base. Just ask Governor Ned Lamont and Senator Bill Halter.
Lev
Nate Silver tweets that Mark Dayton won the primary for Minnesota Governor. I always thought the guy was a whackjob, but evidently he’s favored to win in the general too.
Then again, Minnesota seems to have decent taste in senators (Wellstone, Klobuchar, Franken) but awful taste in governors.
Lev
@Mike Kay (Team America): Eh, Halter seemed like a good guy and came very, very close to doing something very, very difficult, even in this sort of environment: knocking off an incumbent senator.
Other than that, though, you’re right: in the case of Dean, Edwards and Lamont you have a case where nobody wants what the online activists are peddling. Then again, one can say the same thing of Club for Growth. I don’t think activists are very good at finding good ideological candidates, regardless of orientation.
Yutsano
@Lev: I’ve wondered if that is similar to the situation that exist in Massachusetts, where giving the governorship to a Republican is considered a counterbalance to an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature (which I can’t recall the exact name for up there but it’s not Democratic per se) and that’s why they keep electing fucktards like TPaw. Or it’s just some bizarre abberration.
@Tattoosydney: Things just made…a lot more sense. I feel edified now. Plus hornets can be fun when they buzz, as long as they don’t buzz me.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
I can’t help it – it’s like a scab I need to pick – I know it’s going to hurt and bleed, but it feels so good.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Mike Kay (Team America): What don’t you understand? Probably close to 1/4 of the GOPer caucus in the house is closeted.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Mike Kay (Team America): Do you enjoy being this big an asshole? Or does that just come naturally?
Yutsano
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Save Aaron Schock who is either so straight he definitely can’t dress himself or is advertising hardcore for his next
rentboyboyfriend. Either way I’d probably go there. When it comes to sex I’m pretty shameless.Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Uloborus: You do realize the poll you like to quote comes from a Democratic firm, right? And do you consider Chris Bowers a clownshow?
Lev
@Yutsano: I think that’s about right, but it’s worth noting that both T-Paw and Norm Coleman both got first elected (and in Nice Suit Norm’s case, only elected) back in 2002, when the country went fucking nuts over terrorism. Minnesota’s prior Republican officeholders were RINOs like Arne Carlson and Dave Durenburger. Maybe it was just a sign of the times.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Yutsano: Howie over at DWT seems to have all the info. And, well, if you read him, I think you’ll know where he stands on Schock.
Villago Delenda Est
Dennis…
I think your observation that the GOP is now “the Confederate Party” is pretty astute, although I might take it a bit farther.
I view them as the party of neo-feudalism, which encompasses the general outlook of the Confederacy quite nicely, although it also embraces the corporatists and their outlook without the racism that the Confederacy had at its core. It’s got a theocratic element to it of course…Palin, Bachmann, and that crazy Angle woman all inject Jeebus into their screeds repeatedly, to appeal to the Jeebofascists out there. Don’t forget that the Confederates viewed “the Peculiar Institution” as the mandate of the invisible sky buddy.
The main thing though is that these people, at heart, loathe the Enlightenment and all its fruits, to most certainly include the Constitution of the United States. They imagine that the Founding Fathers were fundies (just like many of them) or rabid Randites (just like many of them) when they were absolutely nothing of either sort. They are openly hostile to both intellectualism and to the scientific method as well…two more fruits of the Enlightenment. Egalitarianism is of course right out.
Lev
@Villago Delenda Est: I know that Andrew Sullivan is a contentious topic around here, but he had a pretty amazing takedown of the neocons today as being basically a malignant, premodern group. It really clicked for me.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/08/who-let.html
asiangrrlMN
New plain. I’m marrying FH#1 (hi, hon) and moving to Australia with their fabulous privatized retirement savings plan after this fucking country retroactively takes away my citizenship. I am a true anchor baby, so bye-bye to me. I can’t wait to see the look on TattooSydney’s mother’s face when he introduces me to his mother!
As for La Palina–she’s running. But she’ll quit the minute she realizes how haaaaaaaaaaaard it is and that she actually has to, you know, do press and shit.
And, reposted from last thread about the local primary for governor.
Three MN Dems entered the ring for the primaries in the governor fight. Apparently, one has emerged the winner. For the first time in a long time, I would have been happy with any of the top three Dem candidates. The important thing is beating Asshole Emmer in November.
asiangrrlMN
@ellaesther: Oddly enough, I am a pes@Lev: He’s not a whack-job. He’s just very strange. However, he is solidly progressive (and I am using that in a non-ironic way), and I intend to get involved in his campaign, so I will let you know.
@ellaesther: Madam, I slap your offending face with my glove. This wild ranting will not be supported–it will not. The gentlewoman with the new Doc Martens is correct in sitting down!
Heh. I just wanted to goose you. I go back and forth about the elections, so I am making no predictions.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Sigh. I shall just haz to find me a decent Canuckistani, preferably a defenceman, to slip a ring on. Or I’ll just get kicked back up North during the great 14th Amendment purge anyway. I guess the end result would be the same.
asiangrrlMN
@Lev: You have to understand that we have a third party that reliably gets 5% – 10% of the vote. Ratface Pawlenty won both times with under fifty percent of the vote. We Dems are, if you can believe it, not as unified in our voting habits as are the Republicans. Even tonight, MAK got 40% of the vote and Dayton 41%. Unfortunately, that’s how we roll here in MN (plus we have huge swaths of Republican pockets).
@Yutsano: You are not going to have your citizenship revoked, so no worries.
@Lev: I am not vouching for him yet. I’m just saying he’s not batshitcrazy. He has his issues, but I am willing to give him a chance. He is a smart man who cares passionately about issues. He’s a bit more pro-business than I’d like, but eh. You can’t have everything.
Lev
@asiangrrlMN: Ok, if you vouch for Dayton, I’ll believe it.
JGabriel
@Lev:
Only because Reagan had to get his nominees through a Democratic Senate. Don’t forget: Reagan nominated Bork.
.
BlueDWarrior
Between the Republican Party openly declaring they are batcrap crazy and the Progressive Blogosphere having yet another nuclear meltdown over what one of the higher ups in the WH said, I don’t know if I can mentally endure the news-based blogosphere until November
Btw, when the 14th Amendment raids begin, can I get sponsorship in Canada, please, pretty please?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@BlueDWarrior: the online left sure is full of drama queens. The funny thing is how they love to make fun of the legacy media for being providential whenever they throw a “I WILL NOT BE IGNORED” temper tantrum, like they did when Obama didn’t bring them along to his daughter’s soccer game. Meet the new media, as hysterical as the old media.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: pooor baby. there, there. you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.
hamletta
Wait, what? Mark Dayton is running for governor of MN? And Target gave money to Emmer (or some shell for his campaign)?
Isn’t Mark Dayton a Dayton of the Dayton-Hudsons? Is there some elaborate fake-out going on, or did the nominee piss off a great uncle or something?
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Lev: my point is more tailored. That is, online bloggers shouldn’t claim to speak for Democratic base (as measured by people who actually vote in low turnout primary elections) when their candidates have been rejected by the actual Democratic ballot box, time after time.
If they want to call themselves activists, that’s fine, but don’t claim to be “the base”.
Yutsano
@hamletta: Could be no relation. Or could be because he’s playing for the wrong team here as well. Although money and family is a funny thing, it’s possible it will flow back to Dayton if he is indeed related.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@hamletta: he is in fact part of Dayton family/Target fortune. Maybe he’s one of the good ones. Ya know, Ron Reagan Jr. and Patty Reagan couldn’t be more different than their parents.
asiangrrlMN
@hamletta: He is, indeed, a Dayton of that family. The asshat who gave money to Emmer is the CEO of Target, not a Dayton. It’s caused a shitstorm here because Target has branded itself as community-friendly. Yeah, good luck with that now.
@Yutsano: See my answer to hamletta. CEOs of Target = big asshats, but none of them are Daytons any more (as far as I know).
Sly
@Lev:
The problem for activists is more fundamental than that. Activists, especially the on-line sort, don’t fit neatly into an organized constituency that office holders can draw on for support (or that they fear will vote them out of office). Where their strength lies, such as it is, is in advocacy: activists work with office holders to craft arguments that win over constituencies. Yet there are far too many on-line activists who think that they can dictate the direction of legislation just by pouting.
The Pope has no divisions, and Democratic Underground has no electoral votes. That is simple reality.
de stijl
@Lev:
Not to harsh your buzz, but remember that Channel 9 newsreader guy? [Googles] Rod Grams – yeah that was the dude. Not just a no-brained newsreader, but a Channel 9 nitwit newsreader. C’mon, Minnesota? Rod fucking Grams?!? Was Dave Moore too crotchety? Or the windsor tie fella whose name escapes me?
(My drunk friend came about two feet from conking the WCCO windsor tie guy down in front of some high rise condos on 9th St south of Hennepin one late night in the late 80’s – sitting in the passenger seat watching him zoom by at close range was very strange – “Bob! Fuck! You almost hit [Windsor tie anchor guy whose name escapes me].
Goddamn, what was his name?
Lysana
And the real stupid part? The only reason the citizenship line is IN the 14th is the South was passing laws excluding slaves from birthright citizenship. It already existed as standard US policy, inherited from English common law. They had to make it a Constitutional amendment as a further bitchslap to the South on top of the other references to the CSA.
de stijl
Don Shelby! Christ, that was bugging me!
But back to my original point. Not to belittle the United States Senate, which has had some outstanding American rhetoricians and thinkers in her chambers (that was more sexual than I intended), but Rod Grams was perhaps the most ineffectual, inarticulate (odd, for a newsreader), and just plain stupid members ever to grace her aforementioned chambers.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Hell yes. He’d be like a squeaky Republican bouncy castle.
(I have no idea what that means)
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Not only did I LOL I got exactly what you meant. I don’t want to even speculate what that means about either of us.
asiangrrlMN
@de stijl: You had to remind me, didn’t you? I had blocked Grams from my mind, but nooooooooo. Damn you. And, Shelby? You have to bring him up, too? You are just cruel.
@Tattoosydney:
@Yutsano:
You two just get a room already. Invite Aaron while you’re at it. Sheesh.
Anne Laurie
@Tattoosydney:
C’mon, we were all young and naive at one time. Maybe not quite that naive, but it’s nice to be reminded that there are also good things about getting old!
Ana Gama
@Violet:
Jindal would be the perfect person to address this issue. When Jindal was born, his parents were not yet citizens, yet by virtue of his birth in this country, he was granted citizenship. That makes Jindal an anchor baby.
de stijl
@asiangrrlMN:
This is a fairly interesting point. Minnesota has an unusual habit of electing outliers – not all the time, but they seem to have an affinity for the Paul Wellstone type for every Dave Durenburger they also elect for the bread and butter stuff. We seem to have this “Fuck seniority. Fuck committee chairmanships and such nonsense!” attitude for our elected legislative folk. For every Mondale, a Ventura. For every Coleman, a Franken.
Let’s face it, Paul Wellstone was as well-suited for the US Senate as you or I would be (as in not at all). A pissant little Carleton prof with his stupid green bus – and an unabashed honest-to-God, unapologitic liberal. Totally unelectable.
But then he got elected. Remember, he Beat Rudy “Plywood Minnesota” Boschwitz (another outlier).
(Why is it that everyone with the first name of Paul and a last name that starts “We…” is a god? Westerberg, Weller, Wellstone? It’s pretty uncanny.)
Rod Grams, on the other hand was a total waste and does not fit my theory at all, except that he is also so easily identified as an outlier.
Dammit, my theories suck!
Amir_Khalid
@JGabriel: Bangladesh, dude, not India.
@matoko_chan: About IQ: I once told a psychologist that I consistently scored above X on IQ tests, and asked him what that meant. He said it meant that I was “super intelligent”. I said I was actually asking what psychologists meant when they said someone was intelligent. He couldn’t (or didn’t, at any rate) give me a straight answer. Since then, I’ve had a feeling that all IQ tests really measure with consistency is your ability to perform well on IQ tests.
de stijl
@Amir_Khalid:
Give it up. matoko_chan is on IQ like Morrissey is on lugubriousness.
Jamey
All true. And yet, they’re likely to retake one house of the legislature and a majority of state houses. Sometimes I wish the Dems would be less reticent about playing politics with politics, so we wouldn’t be faced with this mess. Even as a ghost ship, the GOP have again beaten us to tack.
p.a.
Actually, to our shame as a nation, it worked for 2 generations. (defining generation as a 20 year period and defining Bill Clinton as the best Republican president of the post WWII era ;-) ).
Dennis G.
@weichi:
This would require a far more intrusive Federal Government. And it would allow an average citizen to make a complaint that anybody else was not actually a citizen because their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were not ‘legal’.
It would be great fun for birthers.
The idea is indefensible, but that will not stop them from trying. They have been trying to push back on the 14th Amendment for over 140 years. Why would they stop now.
Remember November
“Today the Republican Party is controlled by the Confederate Party—those rebel dead-enders who used to control the Democratic Party until the Civil Rights era. When the Democrats embraced justice the Confederates went looking for a new home. Nixon invited them into the GOP thinking he could control their extreme ideas. It was a massive fail.”
Exactly.
Henceforth today we should all refer to them as such. Giving them the honorific of their past-lauded party is disengenuous.
Con-servative, Con-federate see how easy that is?
redoubt
@p.a.: Since not enough of the GOP know or care about history the parallel to Franz von Papen flew right over their heads.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: Just the one issue?
soonergrunt
@Martin: That would be awesome. Unintended consequences, bitches!
Dennis G.
@Gian:
Somehow I did not take calling professional complainers–like David Sirota–the professional left as a dis of all liberals and progressives. Ed, Cenk, Jane, David and a host of others use auto-criticism of Democrats and the Administration as the way to build their brand, get read, get on the teevee and get paid for speaking and writing. They are professionals selling themselves as ‘authentic’ progressive voices and leaders.
To call what Gibbs said about them as a dis of the left can only be true if you follow these wankers like a sheep.
I thought what Gibbs said was inartful, but that the point he was trying to make was spot on.
Of course that doesn’t matter because the professional left will gnash their teeth and call for the head of Gibbs on a pike for all of August. Can a MoveOn petition to collect emails and donations around the dust-up be far behind?
Cheers
Dennis G.
@JGabriel:
Even with Philadelphia, Mississippi and all the other things Reagan did to cater to and inflate racism for political gain, he would still be called a squish today because he was never as extreme as your average wingnut Confederate Republican is today. That Reagan would be called a squish gives one an idea of just how insane the current GOP has become.
Cheers
El Cid
@Dennis G.: There’s such a proud legacy of Grandfather laws for the ballot box in the South.
Oh, for the halcyon days of Dixie, before all the John Brown terrorists and Communist outside agitators of the Yankee libruls and black churches ruined all the harmony we had.
matoko_chan
@Tattoosydney:
i was naive.
i relly liked Exum’s CNAS site, and talking about SNT and trusted networks….until the Wikileaks doc dump hit. Then Exum went full frontal warpimp. His little tabletop/dissertation empire is threatened by the truth. COIN cannot work.
Wikileaks graphically proves we are losing an unwinnable and immoral war.
1. 30k taliban are kicking ass on 430k coalition/afghan security forces.
2. COIN creates more “insurgents” than it destroys.
3. COIN is just the Bush Doctrine cut down to village size.
4. we are paying the ISI to help the Taliban kill american soldiers.
5. Manning didnt get paid for the docs…he gave to Assange. we have lost moral authority on the war with at least some of the analysts.
And we can never win….even if we succeded in standing up western-style democracy muslims would just vote for shariah when empowered to vote. that is the tragic flaw at the heart of both the Bush Doctrine and COIN.
Cole and Sully are both bleating about how we are going to be there forevah…..well….fucking DO SOMETHING.
Fucking WATBs.
kay
@Dennis G.:
I see them as issue advocates, which is an old-fashioned term for a certain sort of activist.
Not the “professional left”, Olberman et al, I actually agree with you on that, those people are brand-building, but the rank and file.
The problem is they seize every issue. There’s an actual list, and you’ve seen it. It includes civil liberties, and economic policy, and health care, and on and on. The same heat was generated on each and every one of these. The public option was just like closing the Cuban prison, and the stimulus was just like judicial nominations. Issue advocates are successful when they choose one issue and stick to it, because no politician or leader is going to meet the test on a such a long list of issues. They lose credibility when each and every issue becomes do or die, and, worse, they dilute any power they might have had, because the list just gets longer.
As an example, Glenn Greenwald’s issue was civil liberties. He’s less effective on the next issue he added (good government-money in politics-entrenched power) and less effective still on the next issue he added (economic policy). I recognize that he sees all these things as related, and they are, but he’s gone from a single issue to essentially a platform.
It’s not a coincidence that effective issue voter-activists are single issue. They specialize. Rabid anti-abortion activists gave Bush a pass on the economic policy that hurt them, because they got everything they wanted on that issue. They focused on one thing. Bush could give them one win on their issue, and they were along on everything else. It made sense, in terms of putting together a coalition.
Frank
@Dennis G.:
I wouldn’t be surprised. Heck, half of the diaries on the dailykos rec list are calling for Gibbs’ head. It is rather amazing. There is literally no analysis of what Gibbs said, or what his point was. It is no different compared to a year ago when they couldn’t understand why Obama needed the Senate to pass anything. I hope they realize that not many people agree with them. But I doubt it.
Joey Maloney
Mark Dayton? I was at school in the Twin Cities back in, it must’ve been 1982, and I remember seeing him at a candidates forum for something. Maybe Senator? He was the fresh young face, the new blood, the outsider…and I’m pretty sure he got beaten like a drum.
What’s he done since then?
Dennis G.
@kay:
There are single issue advocates but I don’t think Gibbs was talking about them. I think he was pointing to the new media/old media celebrities and celebrity want-a-bes who hype single issue items into anger talking points and reasons to give up.
The Public Option is a great study of this. It never was the most important element of reform, but it was inflated to the point where many believed and still believe that reform without a full PO was useless. These folks have done the same thing as they embraced the Wingnut talking point of the ‘scary’ government mandate to buy insurance. The fact that 80% of the things they say have no basis in fact does not prevent them from saying it.
It is a good business model. It generates outrage, readers and viewers. It builds your brand.
In many ways it is folks on the left trying to create progressive versions of Rush, Grover, Beck and all. It might make these folks a lot of money but it is not helpful. Gibbs was right to call them out, but dumb to do it the way he did. But then again I’ve watched a lot of his press briefings and the WH press corps is amazingly stupid. I can see how one could loose it from time to time when your job is to talk day in and out with these fools.
Cheers
Uloborus
@Dennis G.:
I personally think that a press secretary (is that Gibbs’ official title?) who makes statements *that* inartful probably needs to go. I completely agree with what he said, I just think it’s his job to not make enemies.
On the other hand, despite amazing amounts of whining that confuses negotiating with Conservadems with pandering to Republicans, this administration really does not seem reluctant to call ’em like they see ’em. Fox news, for example. Obama’s scrupulously polite, but he flat-out told the entire Republican caucus that he doesn’t have to negotiate with them because they won’t vote for anything he proposes. It just isn’t done in the Barney Frank ‘What planet are you from?’ style.
THE
@matoko_chan,
That reminds me. I wanted to ask you this earlier.
Did you ever read Justin Raimundo’s critique of CNAS?
It was published May 2009 – Old news now.
BTW just because this is the wrong war, and COIN is a poor strategy, doesn’t mean there is no strategy that could ever defeat an insurgency.
I can think of two, of which your bricolage could be one.
matoko_chan
@THE: well you are a dumbass too….sticking up for that partisan pimp and fake scientist razib khan.
The reason COIN cant work, and stupid fucking retarded interfaith discussion cant EVAH work, is that Islam is a CSS that evolved local strategies to immunize itself against proselytization.
And that is right FUCKING out of Maynard-Smith.
xianity evolved to proselytize, and islam evolved to be proselytization proof.
evo theory of games 101.
matoko_chan
environmental trigger response counter-strategy.
THE
sticking up for that partisan pimp and fake scientist razib khan.
Oh. Did he break your heart too? I am so sorry. ;)
xianity evolved to proselytize, and islam evolved to be proselytization proof.
Since I believe all forms of supernaturalistic religion are false; There are only two ways any such religion can spread.
It can spread by proselytization i.e. virally, or by imperialism. Both Islam and Christianity have used both strategies, historically, at least in some of their sectarian variations.
How else could they have become world religions?
Non viral variants can only survive by accretion and diffusion around the edges of real world religions.
Minor heresies can only survive in the interstices.
Sheila
Please no animal metaphors. Rabbits are gentle animals who are smarter than we think and decidedly smarter than the current crop of xenophobic gops.
matoko_chan
@THE: just double down the stupid. Islam evolved FROM judaism and xianity in situ, on a serial timeline, and evolved memetic immune defenses to xian proselytization.
do i care what you think?
i just care about what JMS says.
i knew razib and i were through when he and godless came out for Palin.
yeah, he broke my heart….GNXP was my shining city on the hill.
THE
@matoko_chan,
I don’t we’re in disagreement about the immune defenses thing. In fact it’s an interesting speculation that the very strong anti-apostasy provisions in Sharia are a consequence of evolving at the edges of the Christian world.
You should recall though, that it’s not that long ago since Christians were burning heretics at the stake too. So realworld Christianity had its own, very strong, anti-apostasy provisions once.
If you’ve seen the movie, Elizabeth, you’ll recall it begins with 3 heretics being burned at the stake during the reign of Bloody Mary. (d. 1558)
THE
List of people burned as heretics (Wikipedia)
JGabriel
@Amir_Khalid: Thanks for the correction, Amir.
@Dennis G.: Fair enough, though I’m not sure I agree.
.