I’ve thought about a response to the warnings of Ryan Sager that social conservatives and libertarians are going splitsville and scuttling the Republican Party in the process. This was, I thought, a ridiculous idea unless malcontents like Sager manage…

First we must deal with the elephant in the room. Not just any elephant, but the wounded, clinically depressed, angry, bipolar, borderline psychotic elephant that is the GOP today….

The Republicans should start their own Fight Club and then we could settle this all in friendly, violent ways.

frankj on November 14, 2006 at 11:53 AM
The quicker and the bloodier, the BETTER!

United we Stand!

Divided the Dems take control of everything for the foreseeable future!

You’ve seen what happens when Republicans lose their way and become the big-government party of divinely inspired legislation and security primacy: they lose at the polls.

As for us being aggressors, last time I checked it wasn’t evangelicals starting a huge fight over gay marriage–it’s liberals like Gavin Newsome and the Mass Supreme Court who are starting these divisive social issues fights.

You must not be on the same right-wing-wacko mailing lists that I am. The only times the gay marriage issue has ever affected me in the least is when anti-gay groups have sent “if you vote Democrat, gay people will make out on your porch” fliers. See also: “homosexuals will ban the bible” … that was a cute flier.

Without the evangelical + bigot reaction to this issue, there would be no fight.

Ryan Sager — whatever his shortcomings — agrees with everybody else who wants to fix the GOP before it’s too late to stop Hillary: Steele, Pence and Shadegg, not Martinez, Boehner and Blunt. Let’s get ‘r done….

Take those wedge issues and push them out of the Federal government and to the states.

Right. The states had complete discretion on abortion law before Roe v. Wade.

So what you are saying is, “Repeal Roe v. Wade“? I’m down for that.

Also, you are saying “Overturn Lawrence v. Texas, so that states can outlaw consensual sodomy,” correct?

The Supreme Court decision that forced VMI to go coed — repeal that. While we’re at it, repeal the 19th Amendment, so that each state can decide for itself whether to allow women to vote.

You know, this is really cool. There ought to be some kind of phrase for this idea, but … doggone it, I just can’t think of one.

But generally speaking, I am in favor of local government. It’s just that you Yankees won’t let us have it. So since y’all insist that everything be decided in Washington, I guess we’ll just have to fight it out there.

So in this sense, Bryan, it is the social concervatives who are being aggressive and fracturing the party.

Ryan Sager: It’s not that we don’t want the Evangellical vote. It’s that we want them to be quiet and do as they’re told. Heck, they’re supposed to be the meek ones, anyway. So, be meek, STFU, and stay out of our way while we do “grown-up things.”

Even if the time obstacle was overcome, DNA isn’t unequivocal support for evolution anyway. The creationist believes it shows a common designer.

I agree that creationism alone is unfalsifiable. No matter the evidence, it can be said, “it was created that way”. But particular strains of creationism, like, say, Biblical creationism is indeed falsifiable. There are a great number of predictions that can be made and tested. Levels of minerals in the oceans, for instance. The recession of the moon. C14 found in coal. Stasis in the fossil record, attested to by none other than Stephen J Gould.

Furthermore, there are a lot more categories of views than simply Libertarian v. Evangelical. I’m an atheist with some libertarian leanings, but I think it’s dangerous to view human life as a nuisance (abortion) or an experiment (embryonic stem cells), I think it’s a disaster when a child is born out of wedlock, and I am very comfortable with my evangelical neighbors and relatives. So do I get purged as well?

Clark1 on November 14, 2006 at 4:01 PM

Good points. I’m in a similar boat, although I wouldn’t call myself atheist, I’m definitely not an evangelical Christian by about a million light years … and yet I find myself agreeing with them on a lot of these issues such as abortion and federal funding for ESC research. If they get purged, I’m going with ‘em.

Evolution is very easily falsifiable. It’s just that we have literally trillions of pieces of evidence that all support evolution. Every piece of DNA sequence from every organism (e.g. 3 billion bases from humans alone) for which we have data is completely in line with the predictions of evolution. If you were to find an organism (say a mammal) with DNA sequence that did not compare to it’s close relatives (other mammals) the way evolution predicts, that would falsify the model. If you were to find an organism that did not share similarities in cellular structures, functions, and protein sequences to many other organisms, that would also falsify evolution.

I am not sure I understand what you said about falsifying creationism. Could you please explain what observation would disprove creationism?

This whole argument is so silly. Pure-blood libertarians are such a miniscule portion of the Republican base that the idea of them “purging” the party is ridiculous.

Clark, I’ll lay you good money that that is EXACTLY what Joe Lieberman said to himself about the Democrats’ moonbat constituency.

Furthermore, there are a lot more categories of views than simply Libertarian v. Evangelical. I’m an atheist with some libertarian leanings, but I think it’s dangerous to view human life as a nuisance (abortion) or an experiment (embryonic stem cells), I think it’s a disaster when a child is born out of wedlock, and I am very comfortable with my evangelical neighbors and relatives. So do I get purged as well?

Just about every tenet of naturalism has been shown false and yet that pathetic theory keeps being propped up by ever more lame excuses. Evolution (in a positive direction) has never been observed, nor is there any guess as to how it could happen. The conditions needed for evolution to occur contradict every observable, testable law of operational science. The fossil record shows stasis to be the rule—no credible transitional forms. Despite all this, we’re told evolution obviously happened because, hey, we’re here, aren’t we?

Creationism is also falsifiable. We expect to see distinct groups of organisms with variation (just as one example). Lo, and behold, that’s what the fossil record and biology show. Huh.

i am offended – i think justifiably – whenever i hear the term “homosexual agenda” applied (by christians and pandering secularists alike) to what is in fact an agenda waged by progressives of general social deconstruction which uses gay individuals as cannonballs. the fact that gays and not progressives become the target means we’re not aiming at the forces aiming at us. so it is with many things on the right. — jummy

…to be honest, the homosexual community has lent itself to this controversy vis a vis the “progressives”.

Look at the willingness of these “champions of privacy” to “out” folks with whom they share…er…tastes and lifestyle decisions when it suits ‘em.

There certainly *IS* a “homosexual agenda” in the minds of an activist remnant of the homosexual community. The rest, as among evangelicals and libertarians, are quietly homosexual…just as most evangelicals and libertarians don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves.

The Left has glommed onto this issue as another divider to us to drive fissures into the ediface. In almost *EVERY* case, the reaction to the moves for homosexual “marriage”, etc., are just that…reactions.

If folks get up to icky things in private, that’s their business. When it is *MADE* the business of the rest of us, when they try to wrest approval from the majority, teach tolerance of their…er…positions in public schools…well, it’s an “agenda”, full stop.

Like most of these divisive social issues — homosexuality, the environment, race, the homeless — the Left jumps from issue to isse, using them as anything from irritants to major cause celebres depending on the amount of mileage they’l get out’ve ‘em…regardless of whether all the attention they receive goes to solving *ANY* of the problems raised.

You want to succeed in politics? Keep bringing up problems to someone who’s actually interested in solving problems…until he gets overloaded or disgusted and quits.

I think he would rather see these “big-government” evangelicals join the Democrats and help form a permanent majority for them, leaving the Republican party to serve as the Slightly Less Crazy Libertarian Party.

I’m still waiting for the Libertarian soup kitchens to sprout up.

so very true.

Let’s here some ideas for bringing the party together toward the common goal of taking back Congress and retaining the White House in 2008. McCain and Guliani are not the answers.

maybe i’m naive about this, but that used to be easy when it was all about provident change and local controll.

And, jummy, do you really want to line up with the left on partial-birth abortion? Is that a “libertarian” position?

no. don’t recall suggesting any such thing.

Have you really studied the science behind evolution theory well enough to tell Christians that creationism is “mythology”?

i could study it extensively and never arrive with as complete an explaination as the bible provides. leaving your theory open to falsifiability is a deficit that way i guess.

and of course i don’t equate all christians with snake handlers, though i did make that equasion here out of spite because i’m angry about this.

i am offended – i think justifiably – whenever i hear the term “homosexual agenda” applied (by christians and pandering secularists alike) to what is in fact an agenda waged by progressives of general social deconstruction which uses gay individuals as cannonballs. the fact that gays and not progressives become the target means we’re not aiming at the forces aiming at us. so it is with many things on the right.

the appropriation of christianity into the conservative world view has prevented the conservative movement from developing a secular social theory – something which must be developed for conservatism to be a whole disposition.