Dobson, showing his Christian values:
So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution?
Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left.
And Kathleen Parker learns what most of us learned a while ago- if you don’t toe the line with Dobson’s God-squad, you aren’t conservative. I guess it was too much to ask for him to end the column shouting “WOLVERINES.”
Stooleo
Its this sort of purity test that will keep the Republicans out in the wilderness for a decade, it not longer.
Dork
Let’s talk about gifts that keep giving….Pam Gellar simply cannot let this go
They’re apparently trying as hard as possible to get Clarance Thomas to review this, being the most partisan and douchbaggeristly biased judges on the court.
Nicole
I just started a blog offering commentary on rah-rah Reagan American 1980’s movies that I missed back in the 1980’s but am catching up on now- the first entry- Red Dawn. My husband said when he saw it in the theater it was "scary as hell and a whole sack full of awesome" but in rewatching it with me last weekend said it’s "not good." I’m just glad I now understand the "Wolverines" reference.
I’m enjoying Larison, by the way, but not today’s:
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/11/25/obama-and-foca/#comments
I am encouraged that several of the commenters are politely disagreeing with him. I wish When Abortion Was a Crime was still in print. Offers a good historical perspective on the anti-abortion movement.
Cain
@Dork:
So they’re shopping for an activist judge? I thought those were bad? IOKIYAR…
cain
Mar
I love it. They’re tearing themselves apart from within. There’s no such thing as constructive criticism…there’s only the "us vs. them" mentality.
Dave
Is it worth mentioning that Benedict Arnold did, in fact, play a key role in winning the Revolution through his actions at Saratoga in 1777?
Christ, I hate people like Dobson who always yammer about American values and history and then inevitably prove they don’t know shit about anything besides getting their hate on.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Shhhh! What’s that I hear?
::cups ear and leans slightly to the right::
"Why, that’s the sound of the right wing in their death throes of marginalization… YIPPPEEEE!"
I don’t mind truly conservative Republicans gaining hold of their party, but not this bunch of religious whackos. Let ’em drown.
The Other Steve
That is awesome!
jibeaux
The ideological purges will continue until the conservative movement is bigger.
aimai
Go Dave, up above. That BA quote struck me as very strange and bizarrely contrived.
aimai
Sachin
I too agree with Stooleo, its a kinda purity test…..seems so
Dave
Aimai,
I agree. Was Dobson casting himself as George Washington?
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
It’s the ideological equivalent of "trickle down economics" only working in reverse, and just as well.
Dennis - SGMM
@Dave:
I think that he was casting himself as an old Godbotherer thrashing for relevance in a political landscape that’s changed beyond his comprehension.
joe from Lowell
Awesome. Keep it up, wingnuts.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is making the Democrats the big tent party.
All your sane people are belong to us.
jibeaux
BTW, Alan Keyes has a lawyer challenging Barack Obama’s birth certificate? Can I assume that it’s that disbarred guy who wears a kilt to accomodate his oversized boy parts?
Zifnab
@Dork:
Lols! When FOX News and Rush Limbaugh and even journalistic bastion Michelle Malkin won’t touch it, YOU KNOW IT MUST BE TRUE!
To be fair, Parker basically demanded that Dobson’s faction move to the back of the bus, sit down, and shut up. I don’t care if you are the lunatic fringe frayed end of your party, you will still inevitably demand respect if you can bring in the votes. And Dobson was bringing in the votes. Parker? Not so much. So if American Pope James the First feels a little dissed after lining up to feed the GOP beast for the last twenty years and getting table scraps in return, I at least feel his pain.
I still think he’s a raving loon, but I at least know where he’s coming from.
MattF
I’ve always tended to put stuff from Dobson et. al. into the ‘inscrutable Gentiles’ folder. But, I mean– really, people– wtf? How does he get to call himself a Christian?
rea
Re: Pam Gellar–I particularly like the following from her website:
The Justices are, of course, prohibited by the rules of ethics from reading such communications.
Grand Moff Texan
It seems that Dobson cannot tell the difference between ideological warfare and warfare warfare.
.
joe from Lowell
I love the birth certificate story.
My favorite version is as follows: the President-elect was born "Barack Mohammed Obama," but the puppetmasters who decided to arrange his rise to power thought that name was too foreign-sounding and could be a political liability, so they changed his name to something more all-American:
Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
ThresherK
Let’s not harsh on Alan Keyes. He is, after all, the failed African-American candidate whose failure made voting for Obama, on Obama’s merits, a safe and explicable thing to do for many a white suburban guy. (Disclaimer: White suburban guy, solid Dem.)
How many other people will be have this scenario? Meeting long-lost relatives on Thanksgiving, saying "I voted Obama", and when the lame "Token black" charge comes up, will respond with an earful of "Yeah, just like Alan Keyes and his 50 million votes" sarcasm.
Wondering if Kathleen Parker will do the full David Brock.
cleek
now if the Dems would just stop it with the "Obama’s Not Liberal Enough!!" garbage, we could make some progress.
Dave S.
No need to. His regular readers add that on their own.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
The word Christian doesn’t mean what you were taught to think it did. It never really did, that belief you had that Christians were kindly souls who believed in Jesus? Nonsense, but, unless you read up on the false prophet Paul’s true intentions, you’d never know this. They follow Paul, not Jesus.
Here’s a hint: Paul was a pharisee who used to torture Christians, he never stopped really, he just took his business underground by leading their religion into a completely different direction. He is the author of about half of the New Testament, and he undoes all of what Jesus taught in his teachings.
TenguPhule
Which means Thomas, Scalito and Roberts will naturally take the case.
Punchy
rea — that assumes, incorrectly, that Thomas has any ethics.
Joshua Norton
The funny thing is Obama never claimed to be a radical progressive. When he was making all his fluffy feel-good speeches in the beginning every one went ga-ga and sort of projected their personal agenda on him, but he’s always played his cards close to his vest. I’d point out that he never really said all of the things they were claiming he stood for and their heads would practically explode.
A lot of folks are in for a rude awakening.
Pender
I prefer calling them the Jesus Jihad. This has two advantages: it’s more accurate, and it’s custom-tailored to infuriate them. Please join me in this cause.
Bostondreams
Actually, Benedict Arnold was a hell of a military commander and leader before he turned against the Congress for what he viewed as disrespect and unappreciation…so perhaps that analogy works pretty well…
Joshua Norton
They play religion like it’s one big monopoly game. All they have to do is follow the rules (that they’ve cherry picked from the bible) and they get to use the word "christian" on themselves. There’s no emotional commitment, just lip service to the written word. Then supposedly you can use your "get into heaven free" card.
I don’t think Jesus meant his followers to be the fundie anti-social hate mongers that have pretty much poisoned the religious well.
ppcli
But, but, …. Rush promised that Obama would be a socialist.
Comrade Jake
@Joshua Norton:
Yup. What’s interesting to me is that he never really tried to fight the right’s notion that he was the most liberal Senator, that he’d be the most liberal POTUS, evah. He just let them keep saying that sort of thing, while he proceeded to describe a set of policies that were, for the most part, fairly middle of the road.
So lots of independents looked at what the far right was saying at Obama, compared it to what he was actually saying on the stump, and concluded they were just lying. Meanwhile there appear to be more than a few people on the far left who believed what the far right was saying. Pretty good fucking strategy on Obama’s part.
John Cole
It is actually maddening. He has always stated he wants to go with what works- there will be some policies that are progressive, because, quite frankly, some of the problems we face require a progressive policy solution. Think healthcare, think unemployment, think regulating the markets, think global warming and alternative energy. Likewise, there will be some things he pursues that are more conservative- his foreign policy looks to be center-center-right and interventionist. Obama never said he was against wars. He was against stupid wars.
And what will be even funnier, is that after everything he does, if it is a progressive response from Obama, there will be a thousand idiots blogging that “See, he is a secret liberal.” Then a week later, when he does something ‘conservative,’ the same idiots will lament that he has thrown the netroots and progressives under the bus.
After just a few weeks of watching the wankery, I am now to the point that I think Obama should say “Thanks, but no thanks” and refuse to be sworn in. Who in their right mind would want to deal with us?
TenguPhule
All politicians are crazy.
Some are simply crazier then others.
TenguPhule
That encompasses most wars.
TheFountainHead
If Dobson ever met Jesus, do you think Jesus would smite him with a lightning bolt or something less dramatic, like just opening up a hole in the earth beneath his feet.
Face
Here’s the new cant-lose talking points seen on a few righty blogs: Since Obama chose to keep Gates, he’s therefore "against change", thus he lied and ran a phony campaign. But of course, would he have thrown Gates out, he’d be putting the troops in danger ("learning curve!") and disrespecting a quality military man.
In their world, they never lose. Everything Obama does is wrong, no matter which direction he goes.
Brick Oven Bill
Focus on the Family Alert:
Dobson appears to have been highly successful with his advances on the cities of New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Detroit. The crime rates there are now the highest in the nation.
Fortunately, Dobson’s forces appear to have been stopped at the gates of Fond du Lac Wisconsin, which remains America’s safest city.
Hopefully all talk of a Swedish offensive is now off the table.
MobiusKlein
So what would be the effect if the Supremes ruled that Barack Obama was ineligible? Wouldn’t Biden just take over?
WereBear
I so agree. It was Paul’s meanness & misogyny that drove me away from organized Christianity, which is more organized than Christian.
NonyNony
@Face:
Well sure. Hence the increasingly ridiculous "THIS IS GOOD NEWS – FOR JOHN McCAIN" mocking of them that ran around the Toobz through most of the election. Sure some of that was mocking the conservative talking heads on the "Nooz" shows, but those talking heads have the exact. same. mentality. as a good chunk o’ right-wing bloggerdom.
This actually gets at John’s comment above about progresives complaining about Obama. It’s actually fundamentally at the core of what separates right-wing-blogs from left-wing-blogs at an operational level (rather than at an ideological one). In Wingnutistan, everyone lines up and smacks down people who criticize the cheerleaders – if you’re not on the bus you’re under it. In Moonbatopia, everyone lines up to smack down the cheerleaders. I think the second dynamic is actually healthier overall, since there’s a chance that real criticism and real analysis might emerge from it (see Glenn Greenwald, for example), but taken to its extreme it’s probably as bad as what they do in Blogistan.
Joshua Norton
But "the people have spoken" and the results are untouchable, as the wingnutz are trying to claim in California about Prop 8.
Funny how they can simultaneously take both sides of the same argument with equal conviction. It goes miles beyond hypocrisy and aimlessly wanders into some sort of pathology.
The Moar You Know
@TheFountainHead: None of the above. I think the most horrific thing that could happen to Dobson, and it would certainly fit with the teachings of Jesus of Nazaeth, is for Jesus to sit him down and explain, calmly, all the many and manifest ways in which he had failed Him, failed at being a good person, and failed at life.
And Dobson should count himself lucky if that is what happens. Dobson’s version of Jesus would set Dobson’s testicles on fire for eternity.
NonyNony
@MobiusKlein:
From a purely theoretical standpoint, I would assume that if the ruling came down before the Electoral College met, the electors could change their votes and put someone else up there. The responsible thing to do would to put Biden in there. The PUMA thing to do would put Clinton in there (though god almighty she’d probably get eaten alive if she were made President under those circumstances). If the ruling were to come down after the Electoral College met it would follow the order of succession and Biden would be President.
But that’s just theory. Because the idea that a birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii and certified by the state of Hawaii as "not a forgery" wouldn’t be enough to prove his citizenship status would mean that none of our previous Presidents had enough "evidence" that they were "natural born citizens" either. The whole idea is so insane.
Incertus
@TheFountainHead:
I’d hope for something more like what happens at the end of Dogma, where Ben Affleck’s head explodes.
Dennis - SGMM
Dobson has moved beyond the Gospels. Jesus merely taught his disciples to be fishers of men. Dobson is now a fisher of mens’ wallets as well.
Chuck Butcher
@TheFountainHead:
Well, as a non-Christian who has read the book, I’d say the chances are it would involve tipped over tables. That would be a sort of temper induced teaching moment. The exact quotes of the guy don’t indicate a lot of vindictivness. I find it pretty amusing that the Old Testament gets such play when the he said he was bringing something new. But then, the GOP was the party of Lincoln once, also.
Incertus
@MobiusKlein: Do you mean after the riots end and the fires go out?
MikeJ
I always hear about these people, and it’s taken as a matter of faith that all those wild eyed lefty Obama supporters are deluded, but I’ve never actually met anybody (on the left) who ever thought Obama was of the left.
And I’m not the shy retiring type. I go to Drinking Liberally and Dem meetings in my LD and wave signs for people running for the statehouse. I’m a real live lefty, I hang out with real live lefties, and don’t know anyone who thinks Obama is a lefty. Or a secret mooslim either, although I love to taunt the neighbor with the christian flag about the coming of sharia.
I’m sure that there do exist at least a few of these people, and if you look around online you’ll find any demented viewpoint you want (the political corollary to Rule 34), I simply don’t think there’s many more people who ever thought Obama was a lefty than there were PUMAs.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
There, fixt.
Cain
OT:
Mumbai..(fuck, it’s Bombay, goddam it) has had a coordinated terrorist attack, and my uncle was saying that there is a hostage situation with american and british nationals at the Oberoi Hotel.
Here
cain
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Lefty, schmefty.
I’m happy that Obama is on good terms with reality, and he has more than three fucking brain cells to rub together.
Anything else is pure fucking gravy.
Glocksman
As others have noted, Arnold was actually a decent General.
It’s the Christofacists such as Dobson, along with the neocon assholes and the ‘supply side’ ideologues, that turned this former conservative Republican into Obama voter.
Dobson can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Randall
In order to prove he was ineligible, they would have to prove his mother wasn’t an American citizen.
I think most of the people who promote this conspiracy know this.
Says a lot about what they think of their readers.
JD Rhoades
This is a good point. Parker was pretty rude to and dismissive of the Dobson crowd, he’s pretty tough on her.
Meanwhile, I have popcorn here if anyone would like some while we watch.
jake 4 that 1
If she wants to get back into Blobson’s good graces Ms. Parker will have to sing all twenty verses of the fReichtard National Anthem: Doucheland, Doucheland über alles.
ChrisA
@The Moar You Know
I believe Dobson would receive the response somewhere along these lines.
Matthew 7:21-23
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
From Pammy:
The course of history, [email protected]
Sadly, Pam, the system is completely corrupted. So there’s that. But please do continue in your efforts. We’re listening.
The Moar You Know
@ChrisA: Thanks, Chris. I couldn’t agree more.
My Biblical knowledge of specific verses in not what it could be, a knowledge gap caused by my raging agnosticism. But I’m pretty sure I read enough to get the idea of how Jesus dealt with things, and it doesn’t involve smashing testicles or calling down lightning strikes on people’s heads.
Punchy
@Cain: Yes, but those are brown people, so….like….did you see that Paris broke up with her boyfriend?
Kilkee
Simple. Henceforth, we’d have two co-equal branches of government.
liberal
@John Cole:
I don’t think "interventionist" foreign policy can be described as "what works".
I’m sure Bacevich would agree.
:-)
Delia
Well, Dr. Dobson seems to have cornered the market on this definition of the term.
The Other Steve
Yeah, and I think short term her argument is going to have the exact opposite effect of what she wants. Instead the rabid religious right will rally around Dobson and go further wacko.
You can’t really lead by telling people what they’re doing wrong. You have to show a better way.
That being said, I don’t think Parker is intending to lead. She just wanted to start a debate.
The Other Steve
She should change her blog name to "Sadly, Pam".
phobos
Technicalities. What he really meant was "radical collectivist".
JD Rhoades
Oh, well played, sir! Well played indeed!
Gus
I think less dramatic still; a good kick in the junk.
Blue Raven
Nah. He’d smack a bitch. Kick in the junk would come after Dobson proved he wasn’t listening after the bitchslap.
joe from Lowell
Jesus is classy.
He’d conspicuously turn his cheek towards SpongeDob and say "Would you like to hit this one now?"
jake 4 that 1
Where can I donate money to buy them a bigger microphone? I want these ugly, small-minded, hypocritical sonsuvbeotches to be the very public face of the NeoCon movement.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
On this same theme, normally right-wing humor doesn’t do much for me, but I have to admit this was pretty funny:
Obama names Bill Clinton to president post
Bubblegum Tate
I think Jesus would probably Force choke him. I imagine he has a pretty referential sense of humor/irony like that.
Mike G
Because the idea that a birth certificate issued by the state of Hawaii and certified by the state of Hawaii as "not a forgery" wouldn’t be enough to prove his citizenship status would mean that none of our previous Presidents had enough "evidence" that they were "natural born citizens" either.
Wasn’t there a birth announcement in the Honolulu paper as well?
All part of the deception, of course. Because in 1961, his parents knew that the son of a Kenyan immigrant named Barack Hussein Obama would be a shoo-in President when he grew up.
lovethebomb
I agree that Paul seems to have poisoned the Xian well. As a child of a pastor, I spent 15 yrs thinking what he wrote was God’s stenographer, but by my 20’s began to realize the cold inhuman nature of his faith. He was pro slavery, for example, which I could never agree with. Misogynist to the core. Most important, he set and made himself the example of an authoritarian leader of the Xian church – which people like Dobson follow. He once chided the Corinthians for a member who had sex with his step mother – to deliver his body to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Now, this seems a bit at odds with the whole salvation, forgiveness, redemption thing. He was surprised in the 2nd epistle that they were upset and then, at that point, instructed them to forgive the boy. For one thing, how were they supposed to go about finding Satan to deliver this boy’s body for destruction? A puzzler. He was the ultimate authoritarian – arbitrary power run amuk. That is why Xian leaders – of whom my dad was one – so love the guy. He is the example of concentrated unaccountable power – who gets to deign the fate of all at his whim. The precise opposite of Christ. Most "churches" are little cults with tiny cult leaders, all following Paul’s example.
demimondian
@Crematorium Oven Bill: Yeah, yeah. I know, you’re afeered of dose skeery beige "people".
Go away, troll.
demimondian
@Zifnab: Worse, there’s no reason to believe that Parker disagrees with any of Dobson’s fundamental goals. She merely wants him to shut up and wait for the time to be ripe for those goals to be enacted.
The only problem with Dobson’s comment, in fact, if the implicit claim that conservatism is intrinsically religious. That’s a losing argument.
Cain
@Punchy:
Wait.. really?! Shit.. I thought he was like the love of her life or vice versa or something like that. The BF had a great quote about the media trying to break up something good just for good press or something like that. Oh well..
cain
CWD
Looks like Santa may be bringing my boys a Rightwing Death Rattle for Christmass. Good times.
srv
Hey Bill, here’s an updated Atlas Shrugged for ya:
http://mcsweeneys.net/2008/11/20tucker.html
glesslib
James, James, James……It couldn’t be that the current wave of honesty among conservative writers about how the religious right has hurt the party is making you nervous, could it?
Are you fearing a loss of power and prestige in the party? Do you see a day when you won’t be able to get politicians to lie about how anti-abortion and anti-gay they are just to get your endorsement? No more grovelling at your door?
It would appear that the torch is even being passed in the GOP. Too bad for you.
demimondian
@glesslib: I don’t think that Dobson actually believes much of the tripe he spews, actually. What I do believe that he’s got a sharp ear for what offends *his* base — and he knows that Parker’s dismissal of their concerns will rile them up. He’s a smart man; he’s decided to stand up and climb in front of the parade.
Mr. Mises
At a wingnut blog not long ago I observed the mobbing of a long time (neocon atheist anarcho-libertarian) regular commenter. The others decided that since he wasn’t a Christian, he had to be a lefty. He was ostracized.
studebaker hawk
Some people grade on a curve.
For those in the "Paul hijacked the Jesus movement" camp, I’d recommend you take a look at Garry Wills’ book "What Paul Meant." He has some interesting thoughts on this, including the idea that later Christian authorities, especially post-Constantine, distorted Paul’s teachings as much as some of us tend to think Paul distorted those of Jesus. It’s a take worth checking out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
ppcli
It’s an exceptionally interesting book, and it changed my mind about a lot of things. But it’s also a bit frustrating in that most of the central arguments depend on excluding many of the more authoritarian notes as belonging to epistles that aren’t authentically Pauline. (For example, 1, 2 Timothy and Titus.) He refers us elsewhere for the scholarly arguments to this effect. I don’t find this implausible, but it does mean that many of the key moving parts in his machine don’t appear in the book itself.
skippy
just need to echo that dave @ #6 beat me to the punch…benedict arnold was a revolutionary war hero, and wasn’t categorized as a traitor until well after the war (and then mainly because he disagreed w/the powers that be and lost…and winners write the history books).
so dobson’s analogy, like most of his logic is flawed to the point of being 180 degrees away from what he meant to say.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Sounds like it’s a groundbreaking book, and I’m interested in reading it.
I don’t question that post Constantine authorities created more confusion than previously, but Paul is not off the hook.
Paul, for one thing, is a 13th Apostle who never walked with Jesus, his "apostleship" is based solely on his own transformation, in which he describes the events more than once and changes the story. A twelfth apostle was already chosen by lots previous to Paul’s conversion (Matthias) based on the prerequisite that the one chosen would have to have walked with Jesus for the three years and knew him and his tenets.
Paul also lies, boasts, calls himself father, and says "be followers of me". (scroll to the bottom of the page for the links to info about Paul).
Paul makes many a faux pas that someone who has read the gospels would discern if they truly looked at the messages written in the gospels and compare them to Paul’s teachings. I’m glad to see others here have noticed as well.
That said, I plan to check out this book.
(btw, Constantine was an ancestor of mine, I’m not proud of that fact).
lovethebomb
Paul certainly is a mixed bag. Most doctrinal tenets of the Christian faith as we know it are to be found in Ephesians, Galatians, Romans and elsewhere. He also does, however, exhibit behavior and propose ideas and beliefs which I could not ever sanction. I suppose one has to be of a self possessed independent mind to be able to seperate the wheat from the chaff, if you will. This requires a close scrutiny of the canonization process itself, before you can arrive at the kind of freedom I believe we are intended to have about the recieved texts. Done at the order of a recently converted pagan emporer by 4th century Catholic bishops well into total corruption, their selection process can hardly be considered an authoritative act of God.
So there’s the rub. Most Xians wouldn’t dream of questioning the canon because they exist in the authoritarian mind, the slave mind and in the sheep fold, bahing when their "shepherds’ thwack them with their rod, ala Dobson. It takes a bit of courage to step outside of the fear engendered by the early childhood indoctrination process and recognize the texts are largely historical documents which contain some revelation, but also provide example of what to avoid and reject. In the topsy turvy chaotic dervish that is life, it is evident to me that God intends we use the minds he gave us to determine truth than relying on a dogma encrusted in millenia of textism.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Well, there are several areas both in the Old Testament and in the gospels that implore the believer to question the doctrines and see if they are from God or from man. Modern day Xtian sheep are told NOT to do so (by the same authority that knows it would fall from grace if their adherents were to do so).
ew
The leftist illuminati would like to say that there is a necessity that all conservatives follow the same religion. I think there is nothing in the political scope that all have to agree on in that sense.
Glenn
I can only pray that the GOP stays firmly in the pocket of people like Herr Dobson and his Xian God-squad. These a-holes are so obnoxious they even drive away the conservatives.
absentee
Your "argument", such as it is, is fatuous nonsense. Parker’s article was no mere dissenting point of view. She argues the abolishment of the social conservatism leg of the party. This is electoral suicide for the party, of course. But on top of that, it’s Parker, as Dobson said, disinviting Christians from public discourse. I’m sure it feels very good to cry out that Parker is being silenced and stand with her. I’m sure you feel very open-minded and proud. But it isn’t Dobson telling anyone to take their opinions and shove them. It’s Parker doing that, which is evidently totally fine with you.
"Either the Republican Party needs a new base — or the nation may need a new party. "
That’s what she said. "Piss off, Christians" might be another way to put that.