Darwin's Wasp

In a year in which many of us celebrate both Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th birthday of the "Origin of Species," it is apropos to use what some have called "Darwin's wasp"—the Ichneumonidae—to make a point about the state of the Republican Party.

The parasitic wasp, which lays its eggs inside a caterpillar so that its larvae can feed on it, carefully guides its sting into each ganglion of the prey's central nervous system, not to kill it, but to paralyze it, so that its offspring will have fresh meat to eat. The victim is literally devoured alive from the inside out.

Darwin found this situation incompatible with his religious beliefs. He wrote,

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.

The Republican Party, like the unfortunate caterpillar, is being devoured from the inside out.

Caustic conservative chatterers, from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck, along with some extremist politicians like Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Joe Wilson, have attached themselves to the party and are, issue by issue, rant by rant, consuming its electoral life. They have effectively banished from the party moderates and patriots like Colin Powell, reasonable, moderately conservative writers like David Brooks or Sam Tanenhaus, and virtually anyone who dares to croon slightly off key in what has become a choir of fear, singing a menacing mantra: We hate Barack Hussein Obama.

Thus, the party of Lincoln is fast becoming a parochial, nationally irrelevant party.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan—in an electoral landslide—received 55% of the white vote. In 2008 John McCain—who lost by nearly 10 million votes—also received 55% of the white vote. What was the difference? The percentage of the overall electorate for white voters dropped from 88% in 1980 to 74% in 2008. So, while Republicans maintained their hold on white voters, the political clout of those voters had declined.

Understandably, Barack Obama had overwhelming support among African-Americans (95%) in 2008, but Republicans have otherwise struggled to attract more than 10% of black voters since Reagan's 14% showing in 1980. Since then the percentage of black voters among the overall electorate has increased from 10% to 13%.

But the real tale is told by the Hispanic vote.

In 1980 Hispanics comprised only 2% of the electorate, and Jimmy Carter received 54% of their votes compared with 36% for Reagan. In 2008, Hispanics had grown to 9% of the electorate (a 450% increase), and John McCain—having forsaken his moderate position on immigration reform in favor of the hard-line conservative stance—received only 31%. Obama won 67% of the Hispanic vote.

Add to this that Asian-Americans are now 2% of the electorate (the same as Hispanics in 1980) and that Obama managed to garner 62% of their votes, and the picture becomes very clear.

No matter what Republicans may think about these trends, they cannot be ignored with impunity. It may be that conservatives these days are incapable of embracing a philosophy adjusted to fit the reality of changing demographics. Certainly, a staunch adherence to purist conservative doctrine plays well in places like Jasper and Newton counties in Southwest Missouri, or in the Old South, but it is a doomed strategy for long-term national Republican success, even if the party manages to make modest inroads in 2010.

Rather than acknowledge this reality and adjust their positions on the various issues accordingly, most Republican “leaders” are content to prostrate themselves before Rush Limbaugh's Attila the Hun chair, and in one sycophantic spasm after another confirm that they are content with a regional appeal.

Joe Scarborough, the popular conservative host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," has written a book urging conservative Republicans to heed the advice of the founder of conservatism, Edmund Burke, who "had contempt for rigid ideologues of all stripes." So far, such advice goes unheeded.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal—the scourge of contemporary conservatism—came to pass largely because of the alignment of otherwise disparate groups that ignored important, but comparatively marginal, differences in favor of gaining political power sufficient to win elections. From 1932 through 1964, this coalition of "big city" political machines, labor unions, minorities, progressives, and Southern whites, won seven of nine presidential elections, losing only to WW II hero, Dwight Eisenhower.

If Republicans hope to continue as a national party, they have to shout down the strident voices of conservative ideologues and submit to demographic reality. It is difficult to understand why there isn’t one leader in the party who will take on the obviously unhinged Glenn Beck, just to name one glaring example. But so far, none has assumed the mantle of leadership necessary to save the party from irrelevance.

In the early days of the 20th century conservative movement, William F. Buckley, a conservative and a Republican, gave the left foot of fellowship to the John Birch Society, who, he surmised, would ultimately prove lethal to the conservative cause. He did the same thing to the Objectivists, most especially Ayn Rand. Mr. Buckley much later had to call out conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran, when they expressed opinions that appeared to embrace an anti-Semitic philosophy. In that regard, Buckley acted like a true father of the movement, an adult who had to call out phony or wayward conservatives in the name of preserving the conservative family and by extension the Republican Party.

There is no one in the conservative movement with the stature William Buckley enjoyed (before he embraced late in life and inexplicably, Rush Limbaugh), and there certainly appears to be no adults in the Republican Party, but perhaps there is someone out there with sufficient courage who is willing to take on the conservative bullies. We can only hope.

Darwin lost at least part of his faith because he could not imagine that God could create the Ichneumonidae and its seemingly cruel method of survival. For him, such cruelty seemed incompatible with decency.

Today, the parasitic wasps in the Republican Party—those who are using the party only to advance their extremist ideological causes with little regard for the party’s survival—may not cause many to lose faith in God, but the tolerance of such people by party leaders causes many of us to doubt their decency.

And sadly, while there are many caterpillars in which Darwin’s wasp can lay its eggs, there is only one Grand Old Party.

Knowing Pains

Former 1980s sitcom star, Kirk Cameron, has said and done some goofy things since his conversion to radical Christianity. But he and his strange "partner," Ray Comfort, have gone too far, even for these two.

They plan to give away 50,000 copies of Darwin's Origin of Species with a "Special Introduction," written by Comfort. The introduction begins with a biography of Darwin and ends with an appeal to accept Jesus as Savior. In between is a blatant attack on evolution, complete with the obligatory reference to Hitler (he was an "evolutionist," therefore evolution is wrong).

Ray Comfort's come-to-Jesus logic, which he has used countless times, goes something like this:

Even if you have committed only one teeny weenie sin, like stealing a paper clip or telling your wife she isn't fat, you are a "lying thief," worthy of the deepest, darkest pits of hell. What's more, in God's eyes, your teeny weenie sin is the moral equivalent of the murder of a nine-year-old girl, who "had been kidnapped, brutally raped, and then buried alive." The little girl Comfort references is Jessica Lunsford, who he says, "was found tied up, in a kneeling position, clutching a stuffed toy."

Now, the moral of this story for Comfort is not the theologically stupid idea that God is apparently unable to differentiate between white lies and brutal murder; it is that God is vicious enough to send you straight to hell for the smallest of sins because...well, I'll let him explain it:

Many people believe that because God is good, He will forgive everyone, and let all sinners into Heaven. But they misunderstand His goodness. When Moses once asked to see God’s glory, God told him that he couldn’t see Him and live. Moses would instantly die if he looked upon God... The goodness of God would have killed Moses instantly because of his personal sinfulness.The fire of God’s goodness would have consumed him, like a cup of water dropped onto the surface of the sun....

These are extremely fearful thoughts, because the God we are speaking about is nothing like the commonly accepted image. He is not a benevolent Father-figure, who is happily smiling upon sinful humanity.

In the midst of these frightening thoughts, remember to let fear work for you. The fear of God is the healthiest fear you can have.

It is bad enough that this appalling theology is taught and believed by many church-going people Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday night after Wednesday night, right here in Southwest Missouri and elsewhere; but to include such trash in an edition of the one book that, maybe more than any other in history, has helped free human minds from superstition and fear, is simply unconscionable.

Kirk Cameron made a little video of his plan to deceive unsuspecting people with the phony edition of Origin of Species, but I prefer the following video, in which someone named Cristina rips Cameron a new orifice. [Beware of some mild profanity.]

A Fifth Column Of Insanity

"We have a village idiot in this country—it's called fundamentalist Christianity—and...until the Republican leadership has the guts to stand up and say it would be better not to have a Republican Party than have a party that caters to the village idiot, there's going to be no end in sight." – Frank Schaeffer

Months ago, I wrote a piece on Frank Schaeffer’s book, “Crazy for God.” Mr. Schaeffer, a former fundamentalist and evangelical writer and speaker, and son of the famous evangelicals Francis and Edith Schaeffer, subsequently sent me an email thanking me for the effort.

Last night, he appeared on Rachel Maddow’s show, and what he said was fascinating, something everyone should hear and consider. The context of the discussion involved the recent and to some (but not me) startling poll in which it was found that among conservatives in New Jersey more than 1/3 of them believe that Barack Obama is or might be the anti-Christ.

Mr. Schaeffer discussed the fact that the mainstream culture does not sufficiently understand the reality that there is a subculture of Christians who represent what he calls a “fifth column of insanity.” The rapturous theology of this group of Christians, he says,

…is the source of all these insanities that we see leveled at the president. One way or another they go back to this little evangelical subculture. It’s a disaster.

The segment is 6½ minutes long, but it is important to understand what role the disproportionately powerful Religious Right is playing in the “We Hate Obama Movement.” Please watch:

The Sowell of Darwin

Thomas Sowell ends his column in the Joplin Globe (Aug. 14) with these words: "If you cannot tolerate imperfections, be prepared to kiss your freedom goodbye."

The basis of that odd but predictable ending was a couple of quotes from Edmund Burke (at least there are still some around who will quote the Old Conservative rather than Rush Limbaugh):

It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know much of an evil ought to be tolerated.

I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.

Sowell's column demonstrates the problem with libertarian-conservative philosophy. Despite its rhetorically effective ("Less government!") but practically leaky ("Don't touch my Medicare!") approach, when it is consistent, that philosophy essentially entails a quasi-Darwinian view of life: Let the strongest survive, and let nature rule.

Shamelessly repeating the lie that the government is out to kill old folks ("do not be surprised when life-and-death decisions about you or your family are taken out of your hands—and out of the hands of your doctor—and transferred to bureaucrats in Washington"), Sowell obviously has no interest in things like "universal health care" or "social justice." To him and other libertarian-conservatives, there is no such thing as social justice. There is only the hard truth that,

the universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem.

But that's not the "big question" at all. The really big question is, "Are we content with the state of nature, or is there something we can do about the inequality and injustice all around us?"

Surely, the answer to that question has changed since the 18th century. In Burke's day, there wasn't much that could be done about many "infirmities," even if they festered into "crimes." Thus it was practical (though no less ornery) to argue for a certain toleration of "evil," there being no workable alternatives. The tools to make possible "universal health care" or "social justice" simply weren't available.

That is the trouble with adhering to any static philosophy, especially one baked in the oven of the 18th century. Things change (as Edmund Burke knew and understood, of course), and as bright a man as he was, Burke could not see into our 21st century world, in which the resources (but not yet the will) are available to eradicate not just American but world-wide hunger and supply even the most remote tribal people with basic health care. Should we just continue to let people starve and get sick and die needlessly?

In many cases, it's not a matter of tolerating evil that we can't fix; it is generating the collective will to fix the evil that we can. And I suppose that is the difference between liberal-progressives and libertarian-conservatives, the optimists and the pessimists.

One group believes that not only is "social justice" a meaningful concept, but one which we should at least attempt to attain, even if we know we will inevitably fall short. These optimists believe government—we the people—can make things better. They have a larger and firmer—because it is more humane—principle of "freedom" that includes freedom from unnecessary suffering.

The other group, derisively dismissing any notion of social justice, is content with the sometimes ugly status quo, protecting a laudable and lofty—but for many, illusory—principle of "freedom."

To a sick man or woman, or a hungry little boy or little girl, an abstract, philosophical "freedom" means nothing; and in the face of such poverty, telling them, "It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know much of an evil ought to be tolerated," is a "crime," even a Burkean one.

The Whys of a Doubter

Friday, May 22, 2009, 12:56 PM

People ask me why I began to doubt my religious convictions, eventuating in a vigorous skepticism.

A perfect example appeared in today's Globe on page 4C. Headlined "Young mom charged with killing son on playground," the story reports on the murder of a 3-year-old boy, suffocated by his homeless mother in Albuquerque.

The sobering account of the act went like this:

The police chief said Toribio told detectives that she suffocated her son in Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 by putting her hand over his mouth and nose.

She said she had second thoughts and performed CPR on the boy, resuscitating him, but reconsidered and smothered him again. Investigators said she then buried him under the climbing gym's hanging bridge, where the body was found two days later.

Now, I know there are those who believe that God makes parking spaces at Wal-Mart available to them after a prayer request. And I know there are those who believe that God speaks to them, if not audibly, at least sufficiently understandably to encourage them to do things, like give money to televangelists or write letters to the newspaper.

There are also people who believe that God steers hurricanes toward sinful cities, causes earthquakes in reprobate regions, and brings plagues like AIDS upon hedonistic homosexuals. I know people believe such things because I know many of them.

But I don't know anyone who can explain why God—who believers contend hears and answers prayers, who they insist is interested in every detail of life, and who they are certain is infinitely knowledgeable and powerful—could not persuade someone to go to Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and stay the hand of that little boy's mother, who not once, but twice, smothered him to a dreadful death.

I have read and studied more theology than I care to admit, and have listened to every conceivable explanation for the incongruence between believer's speculations about the attributes of God and the testimony of reality in places like Albuquerque or—lest we forget Rowan Ford—Southwest Missouri.

Nothing in all the words written or spoken in defense of God, who allegedly can but won't intervene in such horrific acts, serves to assuage my doubts and make me believe that there sits on a throne in heaven an omnipotent and omniscient being, full of Love, watching 3-year-old Tyruss Toribio suffer at the terrible hands of his mother without dispatching help.

Nothing written by earnest Christians on the opinion pages of the Joplin Globe about "the love of God"—or more often "the wrath of God"—or any other such fantasy, serves to explain why 9-year-old Rowan Ford was raped and murdered by (still, "allegedly") two fellow-citizens, one her slobbish stepfather, the other his six-foot, six-inch ally, while God, who supposedly cares whether homosexuals marry each other, could not so much as whisper to one knee-bent believer that the little girl needed help.

And that is why I doubt.

Sex and Central Planning

Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 07:43 AM

I heard the most amazing thing on Larry King last night. Dennis Prager, a popular Jewish conservative radio host, was on the show defending traditional marriage. He made an argument against gay marriage I had never heard anyone on the Right make.

His argument went like this: Research is showing that female (but not most male) sexuality is "fluid," in that it can be influenced by social circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary for the state to protect traditional marriage so that it encourages little girls not to grow up and become lesbians, but to grow up and marry men because it is "best to be raised by a mom and a dad."

Essentially, the conservative Dennis Prager (another "family values" guy who has been married three times) is advocating that the government retain marriage between a man and a woman as part of a grand social engineering scheme to prevent an increase in lesbianism.

Unconvinced that Mr. Prager had really meant that his opposition to gay marriage was culturally pragmatic rather than moral, I found a column he wrote last year in which he said:

Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage.

And you thought liberals were the social engineers of our political family.

KZRG Is Out To Get Me

Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 11:30 AM

Awakened Monday morning by the clock radio, the alarm mistakenly set for 2:45am, I was entertained by a program on Mark Kinsley's beloved KZRG called, "Coast To Coast AM with George Noory," apparently broadcast each night from Midnight to 5:00am.

Part of the program involved a host, who was quite serious, taking calls from people with various accounts of strange powers or strange experiences. Like Julie in Oshkosh, who reported that the ringing in her ears correlated with various earthquakes around the world. Or Jacqueline, who described her abduction, in which she was taken into the sky, and her belief that the government was tracking her via microchips placed strategically in credit cards she receives in the mail. The host, helpfully, reminded her that they could just as easily be planted in her body, and he also advised her to get a body scan. "Maybe, I will get one next week," she said.

And there was Linda in Chicago, who speculated that the latest swine flu virus may have been engineered by the government, as a weapon. The host, in a rare moment of rationality, assured her that, as of yet, there wasn't enough evidence to believe the government was involved.

Another part of the program featured a couple, Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips, whose story is, well, miraculous. It seems Ms. O'Brien, an alleged victim of the CIA's MK-ULTRA research program, was "covertly rescued from her mind control enslavement by Intelligence insider Mark Phillips." While it would take too long to go into the intricate details, here is a summary of the things the couple have alleged happened to Ms. O'Brien, some mentioned on the show on Monday:

O'Brien alleges that she was abducted by the CIA as a child and forced to participate in a mind control program named Project Monarch, which is said to be a subsection of MKULTRA and Project ARTICHOKE.

O'Brien claims that, as part of Monarch, she was forced to serve as "a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave" for (among others) Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter with West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd working as her handler for the latter part of her time in the program. She states that she remained in the program until 1988 when she was rescued by Mark Phillips, who she claims is a former CIA operative.

O'Brien alleges that her daughter Kelly (born 1980), currently a ward of the state of Tennessee, is also a victim of Monarch.

Of O'Brien, religion scholar Matthias Gardell writes:

O'Brien claims to have been abused since she was a toddler. Forced to partake in satanic sadomasochistic child pornography movies produced for Gerald Ford, she was eventually sold to the CIA, which was looking for traumatized children for their mind-control program ... U.S. Presidents Ford, [and many other world leaders] all sexually brutalized her. She recounts in graphic detail how the elder George Bush raped her thirteen year old daughter and how she was forced to have oral sex with Illuminati witch Hillary Clinton ... While being sodomized, whipped, bound and raped, O'Brien overheard the globalist elite planning a military coup in the United States and conspiring to usher in the satanic New World Order.

On websites, O'Brien claims she was rescued in 1988, which suggests that her daughter Kelly was no more than eight years old when last abused. Phillips stated in a Granada Forum lecture in 1996 that Kelly was in fact institutionalized when she was eight and has been raised in a mental institution.

Now, while I thought it strange and perplexing that any radio station that calls itself "News Talk, Radio You Can Depend On" would resort to such tacky overnight programming, I soon figured it all out.

On the "Links of Interest" page on the KZRG website, there are, understandably, links to local Republican representatives, who, after all, dominate our politics. But there is a link to the Missouri Republican Party and no such link to the Missouri Democratic Party. Further, the last time I checked, we had a Democratic Governor, whose website might perhaps qualify as a "link of interest." But Gov. Nixon enjoys no such connection to the Joplin conspiracy-believing public.

So, I surmised that only Republicans—currently bewildered by their lack of political power—would be interested in conspiracies in order to understand and explain their electoral crisis. And to offer such paranoid Republicans some spiritual support, KZRG offers on Sundays from 8am to 11am a talk show hosted by perhaps the most famous Republican of all, Jesus Christ.

And then I realized the KZRG's attempt to cater to the conspiracist crowd wasn't just limited to overnight programming. I remembered that the story of the CIA-controlled, White House sex-slave, Cathy O'Brien, was told and presented as truth on the same station that carries Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Voila! Of course! It wasn't so strange that KZRG would carry wee-hour programs such as "Coast to Coast, " with its appeal to paranoics, because much of the daytime programming at KZRG is also about fear and paranoia, about Obama plots and Democratic schemes, about, well, government conspiracies.

Some of these daytime hosts entertain callers who also phone in with wild tales, most as nutty as Jacqueline's account of being whisked skyward by her secret abductor. On the same day that Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips were guests on "Coast to Coast," Rush Limbaugh took a call from Christine in Westchester :

CALLER: Thank goodness for you and the Heritage Foundation, otherwise I don't know what we would do. The reason I'm calling you today is I'm commenting on your comment regarding Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama's being a great student of his, and I think as a more contemporary person I would focus on George Soros. I mean, it just seems to me that the little bit that I know about him, it's not just about the money, it's just... If you look at everything that Obama is doing, it's George Soros.

RUSH: Well, we can argue about, you know, who is the man behind the curtain, but why do you think there is one?

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: Really, no, I'm serious.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: This is not a trick question. Why do you think there's somebody, whoever it is, behind Obama?

CALLER: Because I don't think he's good enough to have done all of this all on his own.

RUSH: You mean at age 47 and as a community organizer, you're not really prepped to be president?

CALLER: You betcha. Yes, I do.

RUSH: And after a hundred days working in the Senate, you're not qualified enough to be president?

CALLER: No absolutely not.

RUSH: So you think that somebody picked Obama because they knew that the combination of things Obama is -- his race, his eloquence, his ability to read the teleprompter -- would sort of make him immune from any criticism, that nobody will have the guts to be critical of Obama?

CALLER: I think so. I think he's been primed for a lot longer than most of us ever even imagine. Now, I may sound a little crazy, and maybe I'm a little bit of a conspiracy kook.

RUSH: Okay, so why do you... Well, this is what happened. She's reacting, by the way, folks, to a comment I made a little over an hour ago. I had a bunch of houseguests in for the week, 15 people here from Wednesday night through Saturday night (they all left on Sunday) and at dinner every night, all these topics were discussed. One of the things that was discussed is it turned out everybody had a theory explaining Obama, much like yours, Christine. They just don't think this guy could have risen himself from his own background, had to have a sponsor, had to have somebody orchestrating, directing it, so forth and so on. So everybody started talking about names, who might it be, and of course Soros is a popular one because his hatred of America is well known. His hatred of Republicans is well known. His pocketbook size is also well known.

One of the guests suggesting that it was even somebody like the king of Saudi Arabia after Obama's bow, because Obama is eager to paralyze our ability to defend ourselves, which is what our enemies want. One person, just to show you how much fun we have when we get together -- Christine, you'll probably love this -- one guy in the group said, "Everybody's waiting on a second terror attack. There's not going to be a second terror attack. There isn't going to be one! The terrorists, they're entertainers. They know performance requirements. They know theatrics. They know if they do a second terror attack. They're going to have to make it much bigger than 9/11. Your second act has to be bigger than the first act." He said, "Besides, they don't need a second act. Obama is the second terrorist act!" I mean, I had opinions in my house going all over the ballpark. It was fascinating. And these are all, in their own right, involved, intelligent people.

But somebody actually thought Obama is terrorist attack number two. Obama is the follow-up to 9/11. So I find it interesting that among those who oppose Obama a lot of people think he couldn't be doing this on his own. There's gotta be somebody behind him, somebody writing the speeches. We know that's Axelrod. Somebody putting words in the teleprompter. We know that that's Axelrod. Somebody who may have chosen him, prepped him, groomed him, what have you, some man behind the curtain. So she thinks it's Soros. In the discussion in the last hour, I mentioned, "It's Alinsky! It's Saul Alinsky. It's Rules for Radicals. It's the book."

After hearing Limbaugh discuss his and his guests' conspiratorial delusions, I concluded that the people on "Coast to Coast," those who believe that they are routinely abducted by aliens or the CIA, didn't seem so crazy after all. And at least those people are sequestered on nighttime radio, on programs with anemic ratings and inconsequential hosts, where their peculiar and paranoia-soaked theories do not enjoy much legitimacy.

But rightwing talk radio in the daytime is much different. In some markets it is quite popular, but that's not the main reason it is so hazardous to our collective health. The fact that Republican politicians—among them future party leaders—refuse to criticize such programs and their hosts is the real danger in the proliferation of paranoia facilitated by stations like KZRG. There is apparently nothing that Rush Limbaugh can say or do that would cause a single Republican politician of consequence to criticize him, without later repenting in a fit of sycophantic prostration.

Sadly, Limbaugh is free from censure from the very people who might be able to rescue the Republican Party from its troubles. And as long as potential Republican leaders stand in his shadow, they will serve a party that is itself only a bit player in our national politics. And as long as they remain silent about comments like the following, made on Monday, they will give legitimacy to them:

LIMBAUGH: The reason that the swine flu and the torture garbage is out there is to cover up the mess that is the United States of America right now.

Is it any wonder that Linda in Chicago can believe that the government might be in the business of creating flu viruses?