It had to happen sooner or later, didn't it? I mean we can't let the people continue to be exposed to those liberal passages in the Bible, can we? After all, God is a Republican, isn't he?
Conservatizing the Bible
Thursday October 1, 2009
Categories: Religion (general)
The eager young men at Conservapedia are p.o.'d that the Bible might be seen as too liberal. So they've come up with the Wiki-style Conservative Bible Project, to make sure the Lord doesn't go all wobbly on us. Excerpt:
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[1]
Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[2]
Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[3] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle"
Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[4] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.
"The liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio"? Hoo-wee! Elitists like to use words, and lots of 'em! "Unnecessary ambiguities"? But how are you going to abide by the conservative mandate to avoid "dumbing down" Holy Writ while at the same time avoiding big words liberals use?
More seriously, the insane hubris of this really staggers the mind. These right-wing ideologues know better than the early church councils that canonized Scripture? They really think it's wise to force the word of God to conform to a 21st-century American idea of what constitutes conservatism? These jokers don't worship God. They worship ideology. As Mark Shea says:
Right wing dementia marches on apace. Some of this has a grain of sense to it, as ideological madness always does. For instance, the dumb attempts to feminize Scripture are pernicious and need to stop. But seriously: the story of the woman taken in adultery is "liberal"? Free market as Sacred tradition? Liberal wordiness?
You really need to read the whole Conservapedia entry to grasp how crazy this is. It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Secret of Palin's Appeal
The secret of Palin's appeal is race. Her "real Americans" are white. The whiter you are, the more American you are.
04 Oct 2009 06:13 pm
How Does The Birther Movement Survive?
Steve Mirsky digs into the science:
A part of the answer may lie in what’s called implicit social cognition, which involves the deep-rooted assumptions we all carry around and even act on without realizing it. Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is a leader in implicit social cognition research. She excavates the hidden beliefs people hold by measuring how fast they make value judgments when shown a rapid-fire succession of stimuli, such as photographs of faces.
At a talk she gave in October 2008 to a group of science journalists, Banaji discussed research she did with Thierry Devos, now at San Diego State University, that examined bias against Asians. They found that volunteers linked white Americans more strongly than Asian-Americans with, well, America. Banaji and Devos then decided to do what even they thought was a “bizarre” study: they had people gauge the “American-ness” of famous Asian-Americans, such as Connie Chung and tennis player Michael Chang, versus European whites, such as Hugh Grant.The study found that white Europeans are more “American” than are nonwhite Americans in most minds.
04 Oct 2009 06:13 pm
How Does The Birther Movement Survive?
Steve Mirsky digs into the science:
A part of the answer may lie in what’s called implicit social cognition, which involves the deep-rooted assumptions we all carry around and even act on without realizing it. Harvard University psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is a leader in implicit social cognition research. She excavates the hidden beliefs people hold by measuring how fast they make value judgments when shown a rapid-fire succession of stimuli, such as photographs of faces.
At a talk she gave in October 2008 to a group of science journalists, Banaji discussed research she did with Thierry Devos, now at San Diego State University, that examined bias against Asians. They found that volunteers linked white Americans more strongly than Asian-Americans with, well, America. Banaji and Devos then decided to do what even they thought was a “bizarre” study: they had people gauge the “American-ness” of famous Asian-Americans, such as Connie Chung and tennis player Michael Chang, versus European whites, such as Hugh Grant.The study found that white Europeans are more “American” than are nonwhite Americans in most minds.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Palin Farce
The Palin Farce beats anything by far that I have ever seen in my political lifetime. She is red meat to the white Confederates found mostly in the South. That is ALL she is.
30 Sep 2009 09:59 am
The Right Goes Rogue by Andrew Sullivan
It's necessary to recall that the nomination of Sarah Palin to be vice-president of the United States was a farce. As the Republican State Senate President of Alaska, Lyda Green, noted on August 30, 2008:
"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
Unlike the reckless McCain campaign, Green knew Palin and was from her hometown. The campaign subsequently proved her right. We discovered that Palin knew nothing even about energy policy and was incapable of keeping her stories straight on any number of matters, large and small. She was a cynical tool of cynical people, marketed entirely as an identity politics candidate to appeal to white conservative red staters. In a party where the number of serious figures actually trying to address policy questions can be counted on one hand, she relied on absurd slogans such as "Drill, baby, drill!" and ugly insinuations about "real America." Her emergence revealed that America is in a period of decadence and unseriousness, even as its decline as an economic and world power accelerated and its moral authority crumbled.
But the cynicism endured. We are asked to believe that she wrote a 400-page autobiography in two months. Although no one ever believed Harper Collins' Jonathan Burnham was actually interested in the content of books, this new contract and its absurd delivery date closes the case.
Then we have John Fund this morning hailing the book as a sure-fire best-seller, and praising the rogue strategy against McCain. He is no doubt correct about the sales. But Fund is allegedly a serious figure on the right. His and his newspaper's capitulation to the Palin farce is another sign that just as Burnham believes publishing is simply marketing, so Fund believes politics is about what sells.
He reveals the contours of the next Republican presidential campaign, in which Palin will lead a cohort of Beck and Limbaugh dittoheads on a platform of a holy war in the Middle East, the restitution of torture as a core American value, and tax cuts in the face of massive and mounting debt. Here's what we will face in the future:
Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn't even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. "She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now 'going rogue' and booking her own interviews," Mr. Beck told me. "I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they'd built for her and we were finally talking."
Translation: we couldn't get enough infomercials on Fox, but next time we will. The days of open press conferences will be over as Palin narrow-casts only to the base. At the same time, you see the right urging a coup, while all but beating a drum for the assassination of the president, an event that would tip this country into a near civil war. In this climate, establishment conservatism for the most part is fanning the flames and pouring on the gasoline.
I always thought it would get worse before it gets better. But I never thought it would get this poisonous this soon.
(Full disclosure: Burnham published my last book, The Conservative Soul. I know whereof I speak.)
30 Sep 2009 09:59 am
The Right Goes Rogue by Andrew Sullivan
It's necessary to recall that the nomination of Sarah Palin to be vice-president of the United States was a farce. As the Republican State Senate President of Alaska, Lyda Green, noted on August 30, 2008:
"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
Unlike the reckless McCain campaign, Green knew Palin and was from her hometown. The campaign subsequently proved her right. We discovered that Palin knew nothing even about energy policy and was incapable of keeping her stories straight on any number of matters, large and small. She was a cynical tool of cynical people, marketed entirely as an identity politics candidate to appeal to white conservative red staters. In a party where the number of serious figures actually trying to address policy questions can be counted on one hand, she relied on absurd slogans such as "Drill, baby, drill!" and ugly insinuations about "real America." Her emergence revealed that America is in a period of decadence and unseriousness, even as its decline as an economic and world power accelerated and its moral authority crumbled.
But the cynicism endured. We are asked to believe that she wrote a 400-page autobiography in two months. Although no one ever believed Harper Collins' Jonathan Burnham was actually interested in the content of books, this new contract and its absurd delivery date closes the case.
Then we have John Fund this morning hailing the book as a sure-fire best-seller, and praising the rogue strategy against McCain. He is no doubt correct about the sales. But Fund is allegedly a serious figure on the right. His and his newspaper's capitulation to the Palin farce is another sign that just as Burnham believes publishing is simply marketing, so Fund believes politics is about what sells.
He reveals the contours of the next Republican presidential campaign, in which Palin will lead a cohort of Beck and Limbaugh dittoheads on a platform of a holy war in the Middle East, the restitution of torture as a core American value, and tax cuts in the face of massive and mounting debt. Here's what we will face in the future:
Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn't even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. "She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now 'going rogue' and booking her own interviews," Mr. Beck told me. "I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they'd built for her and we were finally talking."
Translation: we couldn't get enough infomercials on Fox, but next time we will. The days of open press conferences will be over as Palin narrow-casts only to the base. At the same time, you see the right urging a coup, while all but beating a drum for the assassination of the president, an event that would tip this country into a near civil war. In this climate, establishment conservatism for the most part is fanning the flames and pouring on the gasoline.
I always thought it would get worse before it gets better. But I never thought it would get this poisonous this soon.
(Full disclosure: Burnham published my last book, The Conservative Soul. I know whereof I speak.)
Who Would Want to Listen to a Blithering Idiot?
Palin Lectures Not Selling, No One Wants To Book Her: NY Post
Sarah Palin is not selling well on the lecture circuit, an industry insider told the New York Post.
"The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot," the source said. "They don't want to tick people off."
Palin's fee for a recent speech in Hong Kong was rumored to be in the low six figures.
Palin finished her memoir, "Going Rogue," in just four months -- ahead of schedule and in time for the holiday season.
Get HuffPost Politics Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/palin-lectures-not-sellin_n_304020.html
Sarah Palin is not selling well on the lecture circuit, an industry insider told the New York Post.
"The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot," the source said. "They don't want to tick people off."
Palin's fee for a recent speech in Hong Kong was rumored to be in the low six figures.
Palin finished her memoir, "Going Rogue," in just four months -- ahead of schedule and in time for the holiday season.
Get HuffPost Politics Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/palin-lectures-not-sellin_n_304020.html
From Paul Krugman
September 30, 2009, 7:22 am — Updated: 7:22 am -->
Moral decay? Or deregulation?
Andrew Leonard is unhappy with my colleague David Brooks for suggesting that rising debt in America reflects moral decay. Surprisingly, however, Leonard doesn’t make what I thought was the most compelling critique.
David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 — that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. Although he doesn’t point this out, this was also when the federal government first began running substantial deficits even in good years.
David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn’t something else happen around 1980? Can’t quite remember .. someone whose name begins with the letter “R”?
Yes, Reagan did it.
The turn to budget deficits was a direct result of the new, Irving-Kristol inspired political strategy of pushing tax cuts without worrying about the “accounting deficiencies of government.”
Meanwhile, the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation.
So what happened? Did we lose our economic morality? No, we were the victims of politics.
Moral decay? Or deregulation?
Andrew Leonard is unhappy with my colleague David Brooks for suggesting that rising debt in America reflects moral decay. Surprisingly, however, Leonard doesn’t make what I thought was the most compelling critique.
David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 — that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. Although he doesn’t point this out, this was also when the federal government first began running substantial deficits even in good years.
David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn’t something else happen around 1980? Can’t quite remember .. someone whose name begins with the letter “R”?
Yes, Reagan did it.
The turn to budget deficits was a direct result of the new, Irving-Kristol inspired political strategy of pushing tax cuts without worrying about the “accounting deficiencies of government.”
Meanwhile, the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation.
So what happened? Did we lose our economic morality? No, we were the victims of politics.
The Decline & Fall of David Brooks
By Andrew Leonard
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 09:19 PDT
The decline and fall of David Brooks
America needs "a moral revival," declares David Brooks in Tuesday's New York Times. We are drowning in a sea of debt, and this is because we have lost our moorings; we have abandoned our tradition of Calvinist restraint, self-denial and frugal responsibility. If we don't start living right, we run the risk of cultural failure, that time-honored historical pattern in which "affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline."
My my my. I've seen some high horses in my day, but David Brooks is perched on a saddle so far aloft in the clouds of self-delusion that he can't even see the earth, much less reality. Let's examine his thesis more closely.
Americans ran up a lot of debt in the last few decades. There's no question about that. But one of the most striking developments of the last year has been how Americans have responded to the financial crisis at an individual level. We made a collective decision to start saving and stop spending. Is this because we woke up one morning last fall and suddenly became born-again Calvinists? No, it seems clear that we were responding rationally to economic incentives. The economy crashed, unemployment surged, home prices plummeted, and presto: We all started pinching pennies. Morality, insofar as expressed via our spending habits, is merely a reflection of the economy.
To his credit, Brooks acknowledges this point. But then he immediately dismisses it:
Over the past few months, those debt levels have begun to come down. But that doesn't mean we've re-established standards of personal restraint. We've simply shifted from private debt to public debt.
This, Brooks suggests, proves that "there clearly has been an erosion in the country's financial values." Elsewhere he suggests that our cultural decline began sometime around 1980.
Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression. Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.
But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street.
Bruce Bartlett has calculated that even without Obama stimulus-related spending increases, the current deficit for fiscal year 2009 would be about $1.3 trillion instead of $1.6 trillion. If you are a believer in Keynesian economics, you can make a pretty good case that Obama's additional spending is designed to get the economy growing again, so as to avoid even worse deficits in the future. Do nothing, and a shrinking economy means lower tax revenues and higher social spending. Morality has very little to do it -- the appropriate, responsible fiscal choice at this point is for government to spend, while the people save.
Obama would be in much better position to do what's appropriate, of course, if he hadn't been saddled with a trillion-dollar deficit when he walked in the door. But the responsibility for that does not belong with some widespread betrayal of America's founding puritan values. It belongs explicitly to the party in control over the last eight years.
― Andrew Leonard
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Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 09:19 PDT
The decline and fall of David Brooks
America needs "a moral revival," declares David Brooks in Tuesday's New York Times. We are drowning in a sea of debt, and this is because we have lost our moorings; we have abandoned our tradition of Calvinist restraint, self-denial and frugal responsibility. If we don't start living right, we run the risk of cultural failure, that time-honored historical pattern in which "affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline."
My my my. I've seen some high horses in my day, but David Brooks is perched on a saddle so far aloft in the clouds of self-delusion that he can't even see the earth, much less reality. Let's examine his thesis more closely.
Americans ran up a lot of debt in the last few decades. There's no question about that. But one of the most striking developments of the last year has been how Americans have responded to the financial crisis at an individual level. We made a collective decision to start saving and stop spending. Is this because we woke up one morning last fall and suddenly became born-again Calvinists? No, it seems clear that we were responding rationally to economic incentives. The economy crashed, unemployment surged, home prices plummeted, and presto: We all started pinching pennies. Morality, insofar as expressed via our spending habits, is merely a reflection of the economy.
To his credit, Brooks acknowledges this point. But then he immediately dismisses it:
Over the past few months, those debt levels have begun to come down. But that doesn't mean we've re-established standards of personal restraint. We've simply shifted from private debt to public debt.
This, Brooks suggests, proves that "there clearly has been an erosion in the country's financial values." Elsewhere he suggests that our cultural decline began sometime around 1980.
Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression. Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.
But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street.
Bruce Bartlett has calculated that even without Obama stimulus-related spending increases, the current deficit for fiscal year 2009 would be about $1.3 trillion instead of $1.6 trillion. If you are a believer in Keynesian economics, you can make a pretty good case that Obama's additional spending is designed to get the economy growing again, so as to avoid even worse deficits in the future. Do nothing, and a shrinking economy means lower tax revenues and higher social spending. Morality has very little to do it -- the appropriate, responsible fiscal choice at this point is for government to spend, while the people save.
Obama would be in much better position to do what's appropriate, of course, if he hadn't been saddled with a trillion-dollar deficit when he walked in the door. But the responsibility for that does not belong with some widespread betrayal of America's founding puritan values. It belongs explicitly to the party in control over the last eight years.
― Andrew Leonard
46 comments
Post a comment
Facebook = White / MySpace = Black (?)
White Flight Online?
Dayo Olopade wonders:
MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.” And even within the networks, black kids befriend other black kids, Latinos mix with Latinos, and the self-segregation often practiced in real life is rampant online. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, compares this dash from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight” from inner cities.
Dayo Olopade wonders:
MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.” And even within the networks, black kids befriend other black kids, Latinos mix with Latinos, and the self-segregation often practiced in real life is rampant online. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, compares this dash from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight” from inner cities.
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