Regent in the governor’s hizouse, or running for it anyway. I don’t think there’s too much value in holding a 20 year-old master’s thesis against anyone (I skipped reading the article til TPM excerpted it and I saw the Regent connection), but this one is radical enough that McDonnell should have to go through and explain exactly which right-wing extremist things he still believes and which ones he doesn’t.
The thesis wasn’t so much a case against government as a blueprint to change what he saw as a liberal model into one that actively promoted conservative, faith-based principles through tax policy, the public schools, welfare reform and other avenues.
“Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state,” he wrote. “Historically, the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment were intended to prevent government encroachment upon the free church, not eliminate the impact of religion on society.”
He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.” He lamented the “purging of religious influence” from public schools. And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.
It always come down to spanking, doesn’t it?
In complete fairness, McDonnell has been less of a whack as a public servant than that thesis suggests. Nevertheless, after reading about his thesis and contemplating the possibility (however unlikely) of Republicans running the country again, I was ready to go home to take pain pills and die.
General Winfield Stuck
DougJ goes home;
What is your favorite color. Orange?
It’s PEOPLES!
R-Jud
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH. I’ve come up against this brick wall with winger relatives so many times. James Madison, a major framer of the Constitution, was pretty fucking explicit:
kay
I don’t know. His defense of his change of heart on the “women who work theory” is not great.
He’s pointing to welfare reform legislation, where he allocated funds for daycare to single parents for “welfare to work”.
Of course he did that. He couldn’t enact welfare to work without a child care component. If there’s only one parent, and that parent goes to work, and that work doesn’t pay enough to both cover daycare and leave anything left over, you’re talking about children being left home alone, or cutting them off welfare. No choice there.
That isn’t what’s in the thesis. There, he says tax credits for child care “encourage” women to work, and are poor public policy. One is not like the other.
Comrade Darkness
He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce.
Well, so he is pro murder, best accomplished with unidentifiable toxins from obscure rainforest sources. At least he has that going for him.
burnspbesq
If I still lived in NoVa, I would be giving the legal maximum amount of $ to the Deeds campaign and volunteering every weekend. This guy is way, waaaaaaaaay out there.
JackieBinAZ
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
geg6
Well, sounds like he’ll rack up the votes among the barefoot-and-pregnant and the snake-handling-at-worship-services crowd. But is that the biggest voting block in VA these days? In pockets, I’m sure. But VA did go blue last November, so I’m hoping those pockets aren’t the springboard to electoral victory.
Zifnab
So, basically, he wanted to take a system that worked (abet imperfectly) and change it into one that didn’t work.
When was the last time a group of conservatives set out to re-envision the roll of government without turning it into a corporate whoring completely dysfunctional Orwellian nightmare? The fact that he managed to make it as city dog catcher without crashing his van into an orphanage while screaming “Torah! Torah! Torah!” doesn’t incline me to offer him the keys to a whole state.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
It’s boilerplate wingnuttery. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t shot full of the stupid holes you describe.
It’s fantasy land with little relation to actual people living actual lives making actual people mistakes out of natural human abundance of imperfection. We have lived thru about 30 years of this nonsense and should be well versed in the failures of conservative ideology as a primary blueprint for a nation to live by.
It is fine and dandy for individuals to adopt these principles to live their own lives by, and some even manage to pull it off with some success. But most wingnuts are like the rest of us and specialize in screwing there lives up regardless.
And when the winger nation gets their leaders elected we get Mark Sanford, Newt Gingrich et al and even some dems trying to parrot this perfect family values crap, see JOhn Edwards.
It is a recipe for disaster and thankfully our founders realized this and left the door open for citizens to fumble and bolt along without a lot of rules, except some basic principles where you can’t visit personal failings on others that deny them their rights.
But people in this country have a short attention span and love to that someone tell them they are somehow lifted by pointing fingers at others for falling short of some mark, It’s one of wingnuttia’s most productive grifts.
par4
Spanking,diapers,trolling bathrooms,double wetsuits,barnyard animals,male prostitutes,ad infinitum…and still considered a legitimate political party. Might as well stick a fork in this country it’s well done.
geg6
Zifnab: That last sentence is a thing of beauty. I hope you don’t mind if I steal it for the next time some dimwit around here tells me that our local state legislator, Elder Vogel, should run for higher office. And, yes, he’s as bible-thumping insane as his name sounds. Thanks, again, old people of Beaver County (and I’m allowed to say that…I’m 50 and considered a youngster in the demographics around here).
Josh Huaco
Josh Huaco
Ugh, my html-fu is weak. Try this: http://tinyurl.com/4sonr
jenniebee
You should see the commercials he’s running, they’re pure ideology, no practical suggestions.
One thing to know about Virginia, in case you don’t know it, is that we’ve been cutting state revenues to the bone for decades now (for a while, under then Governor Warner, DMV offices were on shortened schedules and some of them were closed because of funding issues). By contrast, Creigh Deeds is running on a platform of offering a tax cut to every company that creates one new job this year, which is probably pretty silly but it sounds great.
Besides that, the last Republican governor in this state screwed up in a way that people can’t help remembering at least once a year. Jim Gilmore, two governors ago, got elected by pledging to eliminate the personal property tax – unfortunately that’s a county, not a state tax. So the state now reimburses the counties for a certain amount of the revenues, but they never could actually get rid of the car tax.
burnspbesq
Well, Ahn-drew saved the worst stunt double of all for the last week of his hiatus: Jim Manzi.
I am not going there this week. Nuh-uh. NFW.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Exactly.
I somewhat admire his younger self for admitting the contraception “problem” conservatives have, re: The Dogma. It really doesn’t make sense to oppose Roe and support the Connecticut contraception case that led to Roe. Either there’s a fundamental right to privacy, or there’s not. If there’s not, Connecticut Catholics can outlaw contraception, given a majority in the statehouse, because, um, that’s what they DID DO. That happened. Hence, the court case.
They can’t admit that, or women voters would run, screaming in horror, but there it is.
It’s the “what actually happened” problem they keep running into, and how history doesn’t gibe with dogma.
calipygian
Thank you for running this because it reminded me to donate to both my local delegate (who has been very good on all the local issues) and Creigh Deeds who is not batshit insane like the insanely scary McDonnell.
I’d hate to see my adopted state slide back into redneck fucktardness.
Chad N Freude
@R-Jud: I’m going to have that quote put on a tee shirt.
wasabi gasp
I don’t wanna come out swingin’ at Jesus, but that dusty ol’ book he and his pops wrote is just a perpetual get out of jail free card for holey souls.
Chad N Freude
@Zifnab:
That should be “Tora! Tora! Tora!” What you typed in your comment was the cry of the Israeli Air Force.
Roger Moore
Except for the parental authority to control their children’s religious education. If you don’t agree with his views and want to raise your kids as Moslems, Buddhists, Wiccans, or (gasp) Athiests, I don’t think he’s going to see things your way.
Demo Woman
The idea that this guy could be governor is scary. Maybe McDonnell will end up hiking the Appalachian trail.
Wilson Heath
He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.”
Less government encroachment into parenting except when he fears the parenting was not sufficiently fundie. Yep. What an a-hole.
Nutella
So if parents who are, say, Bhuddist, attempt to exercise parental authority to block the Judeo-Christian indoctrination of their children in the public schools, which of those two positions prevails?
Consistency is obviously not his strong point.
Roger Moore
@Wilson Heath:
Yep. It’s classic ‘tard thinking: “Freedom means everyone is free to see things my way.”
Chad N Freude
@Roger Moore: I’ve always wondered why Judeo-Christian values seem to include getting rid of the Judeo part through conversion genocide.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude:
Let’s trty that again.
Silver Owl
Faith based and being god awful fucking lazy and stupid seem to go hand in hand. I’ll skip the get ignorant and idiotic for God.
I honestly do not believe the person has actually ever contemplated the power and intelligence of the diety he supposedly believes in. Nor has he even noticed the complexities of any species, let alone the human race. He is childishly oblivious to the constant fight to be free from oppressive religious leaders that always seem to dwell in the pits of heinous behavior.
God totes around many a barf dumpster when faced with today’s religious right.
Chad N Freude
And I don’t know why I clicked on Roger Moore’s comment or mistyped “try”.
Anne Laurie
Maybe we could interest McDonnell in that Cat Spanking video? That calico looked plenty big enough to defend herself if necessary…
GregB
Talmud! Talmud! Talmud!
-G
Keith G
@Chad N Freude: Why I love this place.
asiangrrlMN
DougJ, scoot your ass on over and give me the pills. I need a handful myself.
Brachiator
This has also been the policy view of the Heritage Foundation, which succeeded in getting some of their views reflected in Bush tax policy. But instead of getting rid of tax credits for child care, they increased the child tax credit and increased the tax advantage for married couples filing jointly over single filers.
Newt, Huckabee and others have offered the phony historical revisionism that separation of church and state has been misinterpreted. And the Bush Administration pushed a variation of this false doctrine in establishing faith-based organizations that could receive tax dollars.
McDonnell’s beliefs are mainstream GOP policy.
KCinDC
@geg6, the problem, if the polls are correct, is that Republicans are energized by Obama hatred, while Democrats are complacent and not excited by Deeds, so the “likely voters” mostly voted for McCain last year. Too many Democrats are looking like they’re going to stay home. We need to turn that around somehow.
I think DougJ is understating McDonnell’s whackness as an elected official, particularly when it comes to homosexuality.
Xenos
@Chad N Freude: “Conversion Genocide” is a pretty apt description of the main plot line in Revelations, so I did not think that was a typo.
robertdsc
I didn’t know Virginia was Taliban country, or could be under McDonnell’s vision. Good to know.
asiangrrlMN
@Chad N Freude: Huh. I read it as conversion genocide both times, which made perfect sense to me.
Funkhauser
As someone who wrote both an undergraduate thesis and a master’s thesis, I gotta ask: how is this nonsense given a passing grade? How is this scholarship, in any sense? [Note: it was for an MPA/JD.]
Then again – sorry DougJ – I say the same thing about almost all of the “empirical scholarship” published in law reviews. It’s all crap.
Chad N Freude
This thread may be over, but this should not be missed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/doctoral-dissertations-in_b_271509.html
Nancy Irving
He says he wants to teach kids traditional values in the public schools, because they are not getting those values at home from their parents; then he says he’s against the state interfering with parental rights.
Sigh.
Roger Moore
@Funkhauser:
Simple. It was done at a wingnut university. Religious wackos have set up an entire parallel educational system, so kids can go from kindergarden through PhD without having to encounter anything that would challenge their faith. If he had written anything except for whacked out dogmatic nonsense, he would have gotten a failing grade for disagreeing with their crazy interpretation of the Bible.
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ
This is why the Democrats keep losing, reading about McDonnell doesn’t make me want to take pain pills and die. It makes me want to go after Republicans like the Inglourious Basterds went after Nazis. You know that scene where Eli Roth goes to work on the Nazi with a baseball bat? I fantasize about doing that to Jonah Goldberg, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al. Democrats need to stop being suicidally depressed and start being homicidally enraged.
pegleghippie
I don’t comment often, but I need to say that Mcdonnell is as crazy as his thesis would suggest. Last year when he was attorney general, he came to speak to our university about leadership, and his entire talk was about how everyone’s priorities should be “God, duty, country family. In that order.” He also said that every person seeking a public job should first serve in the military, and that compulsive military service for males would do wonders for our society. I remember being scared shitless that someone so blind to the differences in people was making policy decisions. There was nothing redeeming about him, no sign of sanity or critical thinking at all. Just lots and lots of crazy.
IndieTarheel
This guy sounds delusional – his diametrically opposed opinions alone should disqualify him from higher office.
Bulworth
“He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.” ”
I see. So the schools need to teach tradional values because parents suck at it, but parents should be allowed to spank no matter what because they know what’s best for their kids.
...now I try to be amused
I was pleased to see it on Page 1 of the Post. They’re doing some of Deeds’ work for him.
Don
Within reasonable limits. Unlike some of the other times this kind of thing has resurfaced, this was written when he was in his middle thirties. I think the fact that he wrote this as a (theoretically) mature adult who’d been in the workforce for a decade makes it a little more significant than something barfed up by a 21 year old who’d never held a real job.
Some of it is less whacko than it’s being portrayed, however. Like the covenant marriage stuff – if two people want to sign up for a more restrictive arrangement for what they’d have to do if they ever choose to divorce, well, whatever floats your boat. So long as it’s just an option available to the fringe I don’t see an issue with it.
The attitudes about gays and women, however, I think need to be properly aired out. I think there’s no question that Deeds is going to beat him up on it, which suits me just fine.