On tonight’s episode of Modern Family (perhaps TV’s best sitcom), one of the storylines deals with what happens when a young child starts using curse words. One of America’s more prominent gatekeepers of the public morality, the Parents Television council, immediately lurched into a galloping conniption. That they haven’t actually seen the episode, and hence, have no fudging idea what they’re screeching about, is beside the point.

“It’s not suitable language for a child that young in the real world, and it’s not suitable language for a child that young on television, either.”

Turns out the adorable little child actress is saying “fudge” instead of the more vapors-inducing “fuck.”

It all feels so familiar. Like back in the ’80s when Tipper Gore and her friends got their granny panties in a bunch over things like Ozzy’s “Ultimate Sin” which, despite the hot demonic chick in the video turns out to have been a love song about “how could you leave me?” The album, of course, featured other such Satanic themes as “nuclear war is bad,” so you can understand their pique. Anyhoo, Tippy and the rest of the Concerned Responsible People^® in Washington formed the Parents Music Resource Council, a forebear to the PTC, to by jingies slap some labels on all that objectionable comment.

This was a debacle from one end to the other, but their first really huge mistake was in summoning Frank Zappa and then handing him a microphone. What followed was a first-ballot induction into the Beatdown Hall of Fame.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then later on, they compounded their error by calling Steven Dallas, who was then the manager of heavy metal band Deathtöngue. Here’s how that went down.

Yes, well. We seem to have no fewer narrow-minded zealots than we did a generation ago, nor does our current crop of zealots seem to feel any more obligation than their predecessors did to actually, you know, understanding what they were talking about.

I’m torn. Part of me wants to encourage the PTC to shut the fudge up. But another part of me enjoys watching the self-righteous idiocracy clown itself while the world watches.

In any case, I look forward to tonight’s episode. But I’ll watch it lying down so that I won’t bump my head if I faint.

_____

Credit: Berke Breathed, Billy and the Boingers Bootleg. Little, Brown, 1987. Highly recommended.

It was as thorough a beatdown as we have seen. And Timmy was completely overmatched.

So what did the Tebowistas learn? Nothing, probably.

The Tebowistas did not see the same game the rest of of saw. Last night, one analyst on ESPN was talking about all the dropped passes by Bronco recievers. As a general rule, QBs don’t worry about dropped passes, because for every one that is waist high and perfect that the reciever doesn’t catch, there is another at shoe lace level that a receiver does catch. At any rate, if Tebow’s receivers had caught all those bad balls, it wouldn’t have mattered much. His QB rating might have reached the twenties, where it lived all season, rather than the wretched 9.5 he achieved. Exactly 1/10th of Brady’s rating, 95.1.

What did the rest of us learn?

1. Tebow is not, and will likely never be a top-tier NFL quarterback. He is too inaccurate, his throws too wobbly, and his motion too elongated. He will continue to miss receivers and to fumble, as rushers strip him from the back side over and over and over.

2. Tebow is better than most of us ever thought he would be. He’s strong, has excellent judgment, and can read defenses, particularly when his scrambling causes coverages to break down. He is a lot of fun to watch.

3. Maybe Kyle Orton wasn’t so bad either. Yesterday was not all Tim’s fault.  The O line was absolutely woeful. Orton looked very bad behind that line, and Tebow looked worse. Once the Patriots established a lead and the Broncos needed to pass to catch up, the team’s line deficiency was completely exposed. Nor was the defense as good as advertised. For the second time in a month, a defense that looked good against the mediocre teams on the Broncs’ schedule proved to be about as effective as rice paper against a competent offense. The Patriots scored 45 and could have scored 65 had they wanted. Even us T-bow haters can’t reasonably expect a first year QB to overcome that.

4. The Tebow offense is probably not destined for a lot of success in the NFL. Every decade or so, someone tries some version of this, has some initial success, and we all get excited. Then the defenses watch a little film and it’s over. It may be over now for the Denver Broncos.

5.  John Elway is seriously screwed–his team has frittered away a good draft position and is stuck with the worst QB in the league. Now what, boys? Of course, it may not matter because they may still be able to fill the stands and sell a trillion jerseys to the true believers, but Elway came back to lead his team to the promised land. Instead it looks like it’s forty years in the wilderness.

6. John Fox deserves what he gets. He pandered to the masses putting in this offense and running Orton out of town. “…whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)  Oh well, at least Tim’s not completing passes to the other guys like his last QB, Jake the Shake Delhomme.

7. Even Jesus loves Tom Brady more than Tim Tebow. Well, duh.

Why, go lookin’ for Mr. Right, of course.

As Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in an interview with NPR broadcast this morning, “Before we marry the guy next door, don’t you think we ought to have a fling with a tall dark stranger and see if he can support us in the manner to which we’d like to be accustomed? And if he can’t, we can always marry the steady beau who lives next door.”

I know what he meant: they’re still looking for a Not Romney. And I could see that phrase coming out of the mouths of many women that I know–especially the ones I know just looking for Mr. Right Now. And I have a number of gay male friends who might express that idea in those words. But I about fell over when I heard Mr. Land use an analogy that amounts to a same-sex relationship to describe the Religious Right’s current conundrum. I can’t even imagine Phyllis Schlaffley or Anita Thomas using that analogy.

Now, most men I know, to express a similar idea, would refer to “the girl next door” and a fling with a beautiful woman. But, perhaps, Mr. Land is so entrenched in his male-centric view of leadership that he never thought to veer from masculine mindset. On the other hand, there have been enough Ted Haggard-style revelations that maybe Mr. Land’s Freudian slip was showing.

The other problem with Mr. Land’s analogy is his callous and casual attitude towards courtship and marriage. For a man who represents a denomination associated with covenant marriage, works to oppose same-sex marriage, and supports traditional male-female unions, this is disturbing. Does he really believe a pre-marital fling is a good idea? Certainly his denomination would disagree.

I know that Mr. Land was probably doing his best to make a joke. And granted, it was funny–but probably not the way he intended. I certainly got a good laugh out of it and had to listen a second time to be sure he really said that. But like so many jokes this political season, in many ways, it’s not very funny at all, but it does tell us a lot about the person who told it: it’s gettin’ close to closin’ time and the choices aren’t gettin’ any prettier. He’s probably just hoping that he doesn’t wake to a coyote morning.

And that’s OK. It’s clear now that Tim is a fungible NFL quarterback. He threw for 316 yards (yes, yes, John 3:16 and all that) last week against a pretty good defense. 300 yards is 300 yards. The guy threw for 300 yards against a quality NFL defense. I was wrong. He is an NFL quarterback. A great one? Probably not. But Bobby Douglass had an eleven-year career. His teams went 13-31-1. His passing stats were never very good, but he was famous for setting up a quarterback rushing record which stood for over thirty years. That may well be what we see from Tebow: a solid career with a few bright and shining moments, and a bucket full of rushing records. If you’re a Denver fan,having Tebow as a QB probably condemns you to perpetual mediocrity, because 8 and 8 teams exist in NFL purgatory–not good enough to go to the SB and too good for high draft picks, but it sounds as if most Denverarians are OK with that. Good for them. There aren’t enough Staffords and Lucks to go around anyway.

One more thought on his Tebowness. I watched part of that game with a high school coach from southern California who coaches for a Catholic school and is devout himself. And he made a pretty darn good point. Many of those who don’t like Tebow don’t like him not because of his football skills, but because we don’t like his aggressive stance on religion (and the fact that he jumped several queues to get to where he is due to the evangelical-good-old-boy network.) But is Tebow’s stance on religion more objectionable than Roethlisberger’s off-field behavior. Probably not. Tebow may be a pain, but to the best of my knowledge he hasn’t been accused of sexual assault. Twice.

Tebow is probably not the great quarterback his believers think he is. But then again, he clearly not the disaster I thought he was going to be. And all things considered, maybe he’s not so bad for football either.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The producer of the video, Scott Siepker, is an Iowa State University grad and host of Iowa Outdoors on Iowa Public Television.

“The main objective was just to make people laugh,” Siepker, 29, said.

The video, titled “Iowa Nice,” does have more serious purposes as well. Because there is no Democratic challenger for President Barack Obama, a one-sided perspective of Iowans is being highlighted with the national media in town for the first-in-the-nation caucuses, Siepker said.

A friend asked me this morning what this piece was in response to, exactly. Everybody loves Iowa, he said.

I don’t know Siepker, obviously, but I do know a bit about Iowa, having spent two years there in the late 1980s earning my MA from Iowa State. I responded that I think the caucus process has put a real bender on Iowans this time around. For months there’s been all this attention on barking gongbat candidates and the voters who love them (seriously, the only way the Republican Party can get any crazier is if the candidates start running around naked, picking lice out of each other’s hair and debating in trees). And all those idiot voters are Iowans. Perhaps the feeling among intelligent Iowans is that the abuse being heaped on the morons, richly deserved though it may be, has generalized a bit too much.

As someone born and raised in the South, I have plenty of experience when it comes to ridicule. You almost can’t help getting a little sensitive, even when you agree with the criticisms. Even when you know, firsthand, that the real story is worse than everybody outside the region realizes. There’s always this little part of you that wants to defend yourself, at the least, to make sure that everybody knows that all citizens of your state or region aren’t like that.

This is what I think is going on in “Iowa Nice” and I think the piece is fantastic. It’s smart, it’s perfectly attuned to what people are saying, and best of all, Siepker crawls up in your grille with an attitude that isn’t at all what we expect of Iowans, who are easily the nicest people in America.

Thing is, all the ill-will being projected Iowa’s way today is a result of a faulty electoral process that every four years manages to drag the nation even deeper into the mire. The US is well and truly fucked, and thanks to the ways in which both major parties are rigged against the citizenry it seems likely to remain that way for the indefinite future. When you structure a nominating process the way we have, kicking the game off in Iowa is like starting the Super Bowl by shooting both starting quarterbacks in the head. What ensues might be interesting. It might be competitive and dramatic and even entertaining (in the way that mud wrestling night at a truck stop is entertaining). But it isn’t going to be the sort of thing that either team can walk away from feeling proud about.

In 1988, I got a good up-close look at the inside of the Iowa Republican Caucuses. At that point in my life I was a young GOPer who had voted for Reagan twice. I was educated and moderate, but I had significant problems with the Democratic Party. Looking back, I am not proud of those days, but that’s a subject for another post.

I arrived at the caucus with my friend Kristen, not really knowing what to expect. What unfolded was nothing short of earth-shattering for me. If you’ll recall, that was the year that Pat Robertson was running, and at caucus time Jack Kemp was another front-runner. Nobody was really taking Vice President Bush, the eventual nominee, seriously. For my part, the main frustration was that the man who was clearly the best candidate available, Howard Baker, didn’t seem to be running at all.

The scene in the caucus looked like an outtake from a Ma and Pa Kettle movie. I lived in Ames proper and spent all my time either on campus or at the club where I DJed, so I had never seen the local white trashery in all its glory before. Sweet hell, you could have cast a sequel to Deliverance out of that room. Some speaking in tongues and serpent handling wouldn’t have been entirely out of place.

I’m making sport at people’s expense, I know, but the truth is they were by any measure I can think of some of the most stupid human beings I had ever been in the same room with, and given where I grew up, that’s a considerable statement. And these people, they were going to dictate who America got to choose from in November. If memory serves, Kemp won the precinct and Rev. Pat took second.

Miraculously, I was able to get myself elected as a delegate to the county convention. (I was picked as an alternate, and then one of the electees couldn’t make it.) I did so as a vocal Baker supporter, using a strategy that leveraged the man’s loyal support of Reagan, whom everybody worshipped.

The county convention was more of the same, though. It was a better dressed class of entitled fundamentalist hillbilly, to be sure, but the five moderates in the room got nard-stomped on every vote. You have to understand, too – this was a major university town. Way back in the 1980s. Before FOX News. These days, we’re accustomed to a GOP where you win by proving that you’re the most unhinged, I will bomb Canada the day I’m elected motherfucker in the race. Science is a liberal Jew-boy conspiracy and you’re not 100% certain about elementary math, either. Iowa Republicans were a generation ahead of the rest of the nation in pure, off-its-meds psychopathology. Proto-teabaggers, if you will. I cannot fathom what the place is going to be like tonight.

This was the day that I finally realized that I had no business being a Republican, in the same way that just a few years earlier the Southern Baptist Convention had demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, that I had no business associating with them, either.

I feel for Scott Siepker and the rest of Iowa’s rational citizens. I know they’re embarrassed and I know they wish they could make it stop. But it isn’t going to as long as Iowa insists on going first because leading that political charge is so important to the self-image of a state that leads the nation in very little besides corn and brain-drain. I asked one of my classes in 1988 how many were leaving Iowa after graduating. 24 hands out of 27 went up. If you’re not going to farm, there’s not a lot to do. That’s a shame because the state has more to offer culturally than you’d think, and its public educational system (then, at least) was among the best in the US.

That said, we’d all be better served if the first shots of the electoral war were fired in places that were a little less at the mercy of slobbering hillbillies. You might argue that in this day and age Iowa’s argument that it represents real America is dead-on, but is representative really a worthy goal when things get as bad as they are? Wouldn’t we better served by aiming a little higher, by emphasizing those ideals that we admire and aspire to?

I don’t know which state ought to go first, ideally, but if it were my decision I’d give California and New York a shot. I can hear the howling from the right already, but I don’t much care. Those folks are the problem, and I’m more concerned about the solution.

by Robert Becker

Is “Higgs boson” a creative particle or energy field? Can we thus infer an “anti-God particle,” as anti-matter opposes matter, or dark energy battles gravity?

Any covenant with Godhead, in my book, comes down to Creation. Genesis, the source of time, space, and being; in short, existence. Especially our piddling existence. Without creation as we know it, we’d be deficient in mass, not even rocks; or with multiverse speculations, we could also be someone else, who knows where, gabbing with utter aliens. Because we esteem existence (over all the sorry alternatives), let us greet the New Year by honoring the force that could well have made something real out of, well, something not. The “God Particle.” Hallelujah!

If this particle is a particle. Could be more an energy or force field, but let’s not quibble yet about what stabilizes mass, from atoms to black holes. Hark, this herald angel sings, glory to the brand-new king, the Higgs boson “God particle,” as the media (and some scientists) sing forth. And good news, too, for all of our enlightened defiance against the noxious rearguard, a.k.a. Biblical literalism — folks “born-again” looking backwards, stuck in an outdated 2000 year-old, flat earth-centered time warp.

Without creation, what sort of enduring covenant could exist between the consciousness that dies, in short us, and something greater, higher, farther out? And more permanent we hope than rocks. Science is “tantalizingly close” to explaining man’s ultimate free-lunch quandary — what makes something from nothing (or chaos)? Fundamentalists, beware — here’s an ever-present catalyst that refudiates that humanized, Old Testament figure notorious for bad temper, non-negotiable demands, and playing favorites. On the line, if physics identifies the source of creation, boom goes the creditability for our most famous creation myth, part of our cultural, moralistic dogma to make tribes pray, shamans honored, and offspring obedient.

Outside is inside

Happily, the God Particle evokes no impatient, abstract father figure but the very catalyst that facilitates mass, as the glue-like Higgs boson, per one scientist, “surrounds us and penetrates us, binding the galaxy together.” Does not reality depend wholly on something that gives mass to the otherwise massless? Not Darwin, Freud nor Einstein introduced this ultimate root of the root, delivering a big-time, dope-smack to outdated Bronze Age creation fables.

Alas, even this breakthrough will not free fundamentalists from their most onerous fallacy. How can one tribe’s assemblage of texts, inscribed by fallen men as specified by the Eden story, be declared inerrant because they say so? How can anyone take on faith alone what every century since 1500 has progressively discredited as fable? Not only is the earth not fixed, flat nor immobile, we’re not the center of anything (except human ego); further, there’s no “up there” there for heaven, no species (with or without souls) that was created perfect and immutable, and DNA stamps our link to all other life. We are, in defiance of zealotry, the offspring of this earth, linked by proteins (and atoms, thus Higgs) to everything, and especially to everything that reproduces. All else is noise.

What rational being proposes a humanoid first mover who “in the beginning” out of the void “created the heavens and the earth”? That’s just so Old Testament, signaling the true “void” was human knowledge, lacking the technology, mindsets, and hard-won evidence that conveys orderly creation. We don’t look to the Bible for medical cures, shape of the earth, structure/motion of our solar system, genealogical precision, geographic accuracy, nor historical veracity. Why then swallow its take on creation hook, line and sinker?

Epic Battle: Knowledge vs. Ignorance

First breakthrough insight from the God particle: truth is not “out there, up there or far away,” but inside our elemental core, every atom, and every process that ultimately defines what human means. We exist only because quantum stuff, like quarks, got ordered into the push-pull of strong and weak forces in universal play. We think because something like the God Particle (or its cousins) organized energy (or fields) into mass, starting the pinball game of life, its own “ineluctable modality of the visible,” in James Joyce’s phrase.

The Bible isn’t only wrongheaded about the origin and structure of the universe, for me it presents an intellectual dead end. If some humanoid simply created everything — as a gift to his self-regard — then creation becomes an effect without an engaging, revelatory cause. Science now suggests “creation” is far older, and far more bewitching, than today’s novelty, that 19th C. marvel called Creationism. In the epic, unending battle between knowledge and ignorance — the only battle truly worth fighting for — science now takes on Creationists and the Rapture. The real, adult intellectual and spiritual action is not fixating Genesis, but distinguishing reality from delusional, solipsistic leaps of faith.

Confirmation of the Higgs boson (or related forces) complicates creation in all the right ways, without demolishing what we already know. Further, the Higgs, by informing mass, advances the great, remaining mystery — what causes gravity — allowing tantalizing peeks inside the inside. For those mystic-minded, the God particle reinforces notions of supersymmetry, proposing every known type of particle has an undiscovered twin. That helps physicists explain how elemental forces behaved when the universe was young. We’re not talking 5000 years ago either, but when stuff tussled across primordial, contending battlegrounds — some forces favoring connectedness (the order of the cosmos) and some “darker,” expansive, more entropic backing random movement.

Science the Great Unifier

This discovery so transcends Genesis we could have a whole new narrative bridging science with philosophy, even religion, for we embrace the architecture of order itself, with mass, direction, even implied values called meaning. Intriguingly enough, finding this God particle answers to predictions from the 1960s, just like anti-matter, predicted in 1928, was confirmed by 1932. Of course, attributing god-like attributes to quanta doesn’t disprove the existence of an ultimate power (a galactic force field) but we happily leave behind that paternalistic master of ceremonies evoking light and day and night as if a stage director with an infinite budget.

I have for years made noises that Godhead relates to electro-magnetism and atomic valance, for I come from an industry (high end audio) that applies electricity, electron flows, and shifting energy fields. Loudspeakers, for example, translate tiny electric pulses into the physical motion of sound waves re-created in your very room. Now we explore well beyond to ponder special catalysts, without any big guy in the sky, but how sub-atomic smithereens became you and me — and even those rigid fundamentalists down the street. Now that’s a unifying, reassuring winter solstice miracle that gets my blood flowing and my head reassured we may be more than just chemicals colliding. We are insightful creators ourselves.

And where there’s a consumer need, an industry will emerge, whether the product is ringtones or salvation. Religion is the business of god. We have had organized religion in every society and every geography at every time in history, and we always will. To quote myself, if we abolished every religion at midnight, we’d have a thousand more by sunrise.

These days we are absolutely drowning in spirituality and religions.  Old ones, new ones, big ones, small ones.  Indeed, many people now practice two or three religions at a time, like my Zen-Buddhist-Jew-friend Lenny, or my Christian-Buddhist-astrologist-yoga teacher, Beth.

The problem, as a recent comment thread on this site highlighted, is that some religions are demonstrably better than others. The example given was “social Christians” vs. “evangelical Christians.”  There is no Consumer Reports Best Buy for religion. Religions themselves aren’t very good at defining the metrics of “good” and “bad.” For the most part, followers of a religion define “good” as the one they belong to and “bad” as the one someone else belongs to.

It’s time to add a little science to this thing.  Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s score the religions.

We will start with the very generous assumption that religion in its pure form is a good thing. It provides community, comfort to those in emotional pain, and industrialized kindness in the form of philanthropy and the like.  It also provides a central organizing principle for people’s lives. We all need structure—somewhere to go, something to spend our time on, an affiliation, people to be with.  It surely makes just as much sense to dress up and go to church on Sunday as it does to put on face paint and go to a Raiders game in your silver-and-black 1985 Mercury.

Assuming that every religion starts with good intentions, then, let’s give each one hundred points. Then let’s deduct points for the bad things that particular religion does. I came up with seven possible deductions, but you may have more (or less.)

Deduction number 1: Proselytizing. Many religions believe it is their mission to convert non-believers to believers. This is annoying and downright offensive to the rest of us who believe what’s inside our head and heart is our own businesses. Of course, religions that proselytize believe it doesn’t matter if we like it or not. It’s good for us, like exercise.  Young religions (e.g., Islam) are much worse at this than old religions, like Judaism. You never see Jews going door to door handing out tracts. On this scale, the harder the religion proselytizes, the greater the deduction, up to a maximum of 10 for forced conversion.

Deduction number 2. Avarice.  All religions involve some sort of shake down. Sometimes it is a gentle and well-intended shakedown, like passing the collection plate and giving the money to the poor.  Sometimes it is a hard shake where the money goes to build a huge edifice like the Crystal Palace. Sometimes it goes from “give what you can” to “give more than you can and God will replace it” and becomes downright fraud and theft, like the “prosperity gospel.”  The greedier the religion, the more points deducted, again up to 10.

Deduction number 3. Anti-science. OK, I know this is tough for a lot of lefties, but science is good. No, I don’t like Frankenfoods or the disposal policies of the nuclear industry or big pharma, etc. But on balance science has done much more good than bad. The problem is science is competition for religion. If science explains an eclipse as a natural event, it sort of makes the priest sacrificing the virgin atop the pyramid look like the phony he is. So it’s no surprise that many religions attack science at every turn, even when they don’t need to. Climate science doesn’t really run counter to Christian belief, but it’s science, and they’re agin’ it.

Deduction number 4. Politicization. When politicians see organized religion, they see opportunity.  It is no coincidence that Harry Reid converted to Mormonism, Nikki Haley became a devout Christian, and Bobby Jindal Catholic when they went into politics. It’s also no coincidence that those are the dominant religions in the states where they live. The whole “blind faith” thing means religions lend themselves to being corrupted, and politicians know it, and jump to capitalize on it. And when religions see politics, they see opportunity as well, e.g., Iran. State religions/religious states like Saudi Arabia and Israel get the highest deductions here.

Deduction number 5. Violence. Most religions have tenets against violence, but that doesn’t seem to stop their adherents from participating in it, and often the religions themselves are very slow to condemn it—from Islam to Judaism to Hinduism to Christianity.

Deduction number 6. Misogynism. I have no idea why, but many, many religions have an anti-woman bias. It ranges from the mild (marriage vows that say “obey your husband”) to the moderate (no women clerics) to the severe (polygamy and forced marriage) to the extreme (stoning for adultery and honor killings.)

Deduction number 7. Sexual Predation. Every institution lends itself to sexual predation because of its hierarchical nature. It’s true for corporations, universities, and churches. Religion tends to be particularly susceptible because it attracts very vulnerable people, is by its nature secretive, and lacks any checks and balances.  Religions that have a built-in forgiveness button are the worst, because they allow predators to hit reset whenever they get caught. The scoring here is based on how common it appears to be and how aggressively the religion has dealt with it.

How do they stack up? What’s the world’s best religion? Worst? A few quick observations. No religion is perfect. Mainstream Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism score at the top, but even they have issues. Islam scores worst. But Evangelical Christianity is not very far behind. Now, obviously, this does not mean that there are not good deeds done in Islam by Muslims, etc.  But still, on balance, it’s just not a good religion.  If you were on the religious aisle in the supermarket, you’d be better off buying a six pack of Judaism or the super size of Buddhism.

Are these ratings perfect? Probably not. I know evangelical christianity very well, and perhaps I am excessively hard on that religion because I have seen its problems up close and personal. But are they close? Probably so.  The final scores certainly make intuitive sense.

Just for fun, I also tried to score atheism, but it’s not exactly possible using this methodology.  But to the extent I could approximate, it actually scored worse than every single religion. It doesn’t have many of the drawbacks of religion, but it doesn’t provide the benefits either—community, comfort, philanthropy or structure. Go figure.

What do you think? How would you score religions?

Fischer: ‘Allah is a demon god of darkness, violence, death, and destruction’
Right Wing Watch
December 23, 2011

Considering Bryan Fischer makes so much hateful noise, is it any wonder that it’s relatively difficult to get in touch with him? More’s the pity. I had hoped to correct him for his error and apprise him of a little bit of his own scripture. Maybe this post or one like it will come to his attention, not that I think it will actually do any good. Meanwhile, this post is reaching you. That is what matters.

Disclosure: I, myself, am not an adherent of any faith. I am an agnostic. That said, while I may not share the beliefs of Christianity as a whole, I do hold many tenets of the Christian faith in high esteem, as well as tenets of various other faiths. More to the point, I am also a realist when it comes to the political power held by Christians in modern-day America. In particular, I am keenly aware of the disproportionate amount of influence wielded by a segment of Christianity, those of an evangelical persuasion, comprising approximately 26.3% of adults in America. As an astute observer, you will recognize that this is a minority position.

If claims from the evangelical right were of no direct social impact on the remaining ~75% of adults in America (to say nothing of the ~75.6 million children), I wouldn’t have sufficient reason to dispute the beliefs, claims, or demands of evangelical Christians. Since claims from the religious right in America do have such tremendous social impact, I hold it a patriotic duty to highlight the issues I have with their arrogation unto themselves of dogmatic authority and political influence. I do not hold any such authority or influence, so I humbly submit the following for your consideration.

• Fischer makes the erroneous claim that the deity of Islam is not also the deity of Christianity (and thus, also not of Judaism).
• Fischer, a putatively devout Christian, impugns (read: blasphemes) the spirit of the deity of Islam, ergo, the deity of Christianity and thus commits the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as widely understood by Christians on the scriptural authority of Matthew 12:31. See What is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? by Tim Greenwood for an excellent analysis.

Before exploring each of those points in just a bit more detail, we need to ask ourselves why it even matters that Fischer espouses the views that he does. Consider, “Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics.” Consider also, that on an unrelated issue, AFA has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. While the SPLC designation is unrelated to Islamophobia, it would seem that the underlying rationale for such labeling would apply here…for “propagation of known falsehoods” and “repeated, groundless name-calling.” Note, SPLC is not making that claim, I am. Consider also, that Fischer can hardly hide behind a veneer of stupidity. Educated at Stanford University and Dallas Theological Seminary, his intelligence is manifest. Consider also that, “he has been featured on media outlets such as Fox News, CBS News, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, Russia Today television and the Associated Press, has been a frequent guest on talk radio to discuss cultural and religious issues, and has written op-eds for political websites such as The Hill.” Consider as well that, as of this writing, AFA enjoys 77,411 page likes at Facebook, a none-too-shabby indicator of their reach.

That said, let’s briefly investigate each of the claims I make above.

Erroneous claim that the deity of Islam is not also the deity of Christianity

In the video, Fischer makes the following case:

• Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (II Corinthians 3:17)
• The Lord indicated in II Cor. 3:17 is Yahweh, the spirit revealed in the Old and New Testaments
• The spirit of the Lord indicated in II Cor. 3:17 is not the spirit of Allah

Ergo, according to Fischer, Allah is not the Lord of the Old and New Testaments.

The historical record does not support this claim. In The God of Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad, Jack Miles has this to say:

That Jews, Christians, and Muslims have always assumed their differences to be about the character rather than the identity of God is abundantly witnessed centuries later in late medieval Spain where the three religions mingled freely and the best scholars were bi- or even trilingual in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew. During that era, a number of famous theological debates took place in which all participants transparently assumed that all other participants were speaking of-—and, of course, disagreeing about—-the same divine subject.

As for Islamic scriptural authority on this point, consider the Qur’an, 4:15 (with my apologies for not being as well versed in citing scripture from the Qur’an:

And who is better in religion than one who submits himself to Allah while being a doer of good and follows the religion of Abraham, inclining toward truth? And Allah took Abraham as an intimate friend.

For a further interesting take on whether or not the god of Islam is also the god of Christianity and/or Judaism, you may wish to read the debate at Throne & Altar entitled “Maverick Philosopher on whether Muslims worship the same God.” When one considers that the arguments for the identification for this shared deity are presented as a form of assault on Western secular/atheist thinking, it’s at least difficult to make the claim that the arguments are derived from any anti-Christian intent. Of note, one commenter there quotes para 841 of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” thusly:

“The Church’s relationship with the Muslims: The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

As one searches the Internet for sources on this topic, three things becomes quickly evident: that passions run high on both sides of the dispute, that citations to historical sources are as rare as humps on monkeys, and that the most strident arguments against such an identification stem from overwhelmingly sectarian evangelical Christian sources. As for me, I’ll go with the historical record, the claims inherent in Islam, and a majority position of Christianity and conclude that the god of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are one and the same with confidence that I have a much broader body of reference by way of support.

Fischer commits the unforgiveable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

Having established firmly, to my satisfaction, that the god of Christianity is one and the same as the god of Islam, while conceding the obvious differences in how they are understood, I have also established that to malign the spirit of one of those gods is to malign the other simultaneously, to wit, blasphemy against the spirit of the god of Islam is blasphemy against the spirit of God, i.e., the Holy Spirit, in Christianity. Christianity’s own deity-made-flesh, Jesus, had this to say on the subject when the Pharisees accused him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, ruler of demons:

27 If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges. ²⁸ But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. ²⁹ Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.

³⁰ He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.

³¹ “Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. ³² Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

As noted above, one Tim Greenwood provided an excellent analysis of what it means to commit such a blasphemy in his article, “What is Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost?”

Well it’s really pretty simple. “Blasphemy” is something slanderous and/or injurious to one’s good name. And the Greek word for “against” can mean “according to the case against” or “to the charge of” which is legal language. So what I believe this is saying is that “speaking blasphemy against” the Holy Spirit is like when someone one knowingly and deliberately as a legal witness attributes the works, operations and/or gifts of the Holy Spirit to the Devil or attributes the works, operations of the Devil to the Holy Spirit.

The Pharisees did this when Jesus was casting out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit. They proclaimed: “He cast out demon spirits by the power of Beelzebub!” 

Jesus stopped their mouths right then and there and straightened them out.

Now Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is NOT someone that is just parroting someone else or speaking out of ignorance. Paul in 1Tim 1:12-13 said that He had even blasphemed the Holy Spirit, but that he had done this out of ignorance.

This is also NOT just something stupid that someone casually says once or twice. This is something that is said deliberately – in abundance – from the heart. How do we know that? We know that from the context of the rest of this passage.

vs. 33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit
vs. 34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
vs. 35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
vs. 36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
vs. 37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Perhaps Fischer will find his own faith-based exoneration in the exemption for ignorance. As I read the above, according to the tenets of his own scripture, this would simply not be the case.

In keeping with its own deeply heretical views, views that run counter to the teachings of their own god-made-flesh, Fischer may well be the ideal mouthpiece for their particular brand of virulence and hate. For anyone else of any faith or lack thereof following the issue of hate group AFA’s influence on American culture, it should be dramatically clear that they have either chosen very poorly or have clearly aligned themselves with what others of faith, be it Christian, Islam, or otherwise, would rightly see as diabolical forces. Fischer and his malign cohort may enjoy the same freedoms of speech and religion as the rest of us, but we would all be better served if more voices were raised in a righteous lament over their undue influence.

My challenge to you: whenever you encounter news of AFA’s influence over government or private industry, contact those officials catering to their hateful, un-Christian, and un-American views and let them know very clearly that AFA does not speak for you or your faith. Further, make it abundantly clear that further concessions to the AFA and their ilk will result in accountability, either at the polls, the cash register, or the opening bell on Wall Street.

Televangelist Pat Robertson doesn’t mince words when it comes to faith and this time is no exception. The outspoken faith-keeper blasted Saturday Night Live‘s recent skit of Denver Bronco’s quarterback Tim Tebow on Monday, calling the parody a “disgusting” attack on Christianity.

 “There’s an anti-Christian bigotry that is just disgusting and I think Saturday Night Live did a parody of that, had Jesus come in,” Robertson said.

Robertson even went on to suggest that if SNL had done a similar parody mocking Muslims, there would be “bodies on the street.”

This morning it was reported that Pat Robertson slammed the SNL skit making fun of Tebow and chalked up much of the anti-Tebow sentiment to “anti-Christian” bigotry. And he’s right.

There are two basic reasons not to like Tebow. First, he’s not a conventional quarterback. His motion takes a week to complete and the resulting throw is pathetic. I’ve seen better velocity on stuff coming out of freshmen’s mouths after a frat party.

But the other reason is that he pushes his religion in his our faces, a habit evangelicals feel is completely appropriate and indeed required by their religion, and the rest of us feel is invasive and annoying–just like the way Islam forces itself on people in Saudi Arabia. I know both evangelicals and Muslims feel they are doing us a favor and saving us from ourselves, but I don’t want to be saved from myself. (And no, I am not comfortable with my fellow liberals trying to save poor people from themselves either.)

So yes, it’s true. Part of the reason I don’t like Tebow is that he sticks his Christianity in my face. If you want to call that bigotry, OK. That’s not quite the right definition of the word, but Pat’s not the sharpest thorn on the crown. Of course, what Robertson didn’t say, and is also contributing to the whole thing: Tebow only has his job in the pros because of pro-Christian bigotry. He never would have gotten past third string without it.

Nonetheless, I like to think I am better than Pat Robertson (not a very high bar) and his closed-minded ilk, and when I evaluate Tebow on his merits, I come out thinking he’s not a bad quarterback. No, Tebow doesn’t look like a quarterback, but Ryan Leaf did look like one, and see where that got us. Quarterbacking is about a lot more than having a cannon sewn to your shoulder. It’s also about vision and anticipation, and Tebow seems to be pretty good at that. My rookie quarterback, Caleb “Heinous” Hanie, is throwing three or four picks a game. Tebow isn’t, because he only throws to wide open recievers. At least he knows what he can’t do.

And the hoopla about Brady schooling Tebow yesterday is nonsense. Brady doesn’t play Tebow, his cornerbacks do. And Tebow doesn’t play Brady, Von Miller does. The truth is Tebow had a pretty good game, with almost three hundred yards of offense.

No I don’t buy all that hyperventilated nonsense of fools like Skip Bayless (“HE’S A BALLER. HE’S A BALLER”) who believes Tebow is the second coming of Sammy Baugh (or Fran Tarkenton or Steve Young or somebody.) Tebow may very well go to the Pro Bowl, but if he does that will say more about the Pro Bowl than it does about his prowess as a quarterback.

At best, I still think Tebow is Bobby Douglass without the arm. But even that is better than I expected.

However, these men are bound together by … wait for it … an unwavering and extremely public faith in God that has grown with each episode. This past week’s show might as well have been a praise rally, as the tribe was gathered for on-your-knees, hand-holding chest-thumping prayer at least three times (and this doesn’t count Coach’s Tai Chi/I’m Not Worthy Father workout routine, which was played with a performative subtlety worthy of a Commedia dell’Arte).

The moral of this story isn’t the annoying PDP, though. It gets better. What they were praying for was that the tribe could find the hidden immunity idol. Which is sacrilegious to start with – you think The Lord Most High gives a fuck about Survivor? Please. He’s got enough on his hands trying to save the Denver Broncos from Tim Tebow’s inability to read a safety blitz.

Hang on – even that isn’t the good part. No, the real payoff is that Coach already has the idol. He’s had it for days and has been keeping it a secret from Brandon because, well, because Brandon’s crazier than a sack of bats on nitrous. Two other members of the tribe know, as well, so there they are, on their knees on national television, using God as a red herring. Which proves there’s no god pretty conclusively, I’d think. If there were, He’d have “voted the whole tribe off the island” on the spot, if you catch my meaning.

The Jesus-and-pony show continued unabated throughout the rest of the season, and not much happened to change my opinion of the whole charade. (Although we have since learned that, while Brandon Hantz is indeed about as stable as a weeble on a fault line, there are reasons for it. In short, had she grown up in that family, Mother Teresa would probably have wound up a crack whore.)

In last night’s season finale and the subsequent reunion show, we continued hearing terms like “faith” and “Christian man” every other sentence or so and nobody came close to poking a stick at the hypocrisy angle. I found myself wishing that I were on the jury, so that when my time came I could stand in front of the three finalists on national TV and say the following:

I’m not a Christian, but I grew up Southern Baptist and was a Christian until my late 20s. So I know a little about the religion. With that in mind I want to reflect back on the day when the five members of your alliance gathered on the beach to hunt for the hidden immunity idol.

If you recall, you all joined hands, bowed your heads and prayed to your savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to help you find the idol. I don’t even want to worry about the idea that the supreme being, the creator of the world, is interested in the outcome of this season of Survivor. Instead, I want to remind you that all three of you sitting in front of me knew that the idol was, at that moment, in Coach’s pocket.

I think back to my Christian youth and to the values I was taught, and a part of me shudders at the idea of intentionally using God as a prop on a reality show. Had I done something like that everyone would have moved away from me so that they didn’t get hit when I was struck down on the spot.

So here’s the question, and I’d like to hear from each of you. You all believe that on Judgment Day you’ll stand before God to answer for your sins. When he asks you about your prayer, on television, for help in locating an item that you already had, what will you say to him? When asks how you justify clowning your faith in front of millions of people, what will you say? When he says that someone out there saw that shameless display and turned away from him because of the arrogance of his followers, what will you say?

Coach, you go first.

The next time you hear a Christian complaining about the threat that non-believers pose to their faith, do me a favor: hand them a mirror.

If Chris Corner’s tribute to the man seems conflicted, that is perhaps appropriate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The key to unabashed cheerfulness, like mine, is moderating expectations. Set low enough standards, as some ancient codger must have mused, and you’ll never be disappointed. So, wide-eyed optimists jarred from a deep sleep by a furious thunderclap will take heart – if our roof isn’t leaking, the house still level, and the toilet flushes. We positivists wake to the morning’s renewed, infinite possibilities – until space, time, commuting, bosses, or family-holiday dinners intervene.

In this spirit, let’s tackle the wild idea that fringe extremism hijacked a less delusional, “conservative” party open to compromise. Right, the steamroller for decades busting its gut to repeal the 20th Century by reinstating the ominous 19th. Or for Newt (no child labor laws) Gingrich, the 18th. Nevertheless, this season’s spectacle of imploding nincompoops caused the pundit left to overshoot, stereotyping every rightwing claim as irrational and extreme. Today, we unpack moderate chunks in the extremist gumbo by adopting this philosophic perspective: “could be worse.” Optimists are optimistic not because we think things are great but because we can imagine worse.

‘This is nothing’

Reality, after all, is 80% perspective, unless you’re flattened by pain, in jail, drenched by pepper-spray or bloodied by a police riot. To get a handle on what appears careening out of control, recall Dustin Hoffman’s refrain, as the producer in Wag the Dog: “this is nothing. This is nothing. D’you ever shoot in Italy? Try three Italian starlets whacked out on Benzedrine and grappa, this is a walk in the park.”

First up – what seems moral and legal depravity: war cries from stumbling, third-rate fringe candidates to keep torture in our anti-terrorism tool kit. Rick Perry is willing to defend waterboarding “until I die,” a curious turn of phrase considering how many die from torture. Nevertheless, we’re gifted with another unforgettable Perryism: “Give them torture or give me death.”

Of course torture only qualifies as torture when done to someone else, say pepper-spraying blatant enemies of the state, like that non-violent, 84 year-old woman from Seattle. Thankfully, this heroic Occupy protester wasn’t locked up, nor tortured further, put on the rack, nor scheduled for rendition. So far, we think, she’s escaped the White House hit list, our honor roll of untried citizen marauders up for termination. Like I said, there’s always good news if you look hard enough.

The Untortured 99%

Speaking of torture and Occupy movements, thanks due to Dick Cheney for first fixating 99% as a magic number – though his paranoid threshold claimed a 1% chance of attack justified mass imprisonment, no due process, and the third degree. Not only was his 1% presumed guilty, the nefarious part was denying them any means to prove their innocence. How weirdly wonderful OWS refreshes 99% to high prominence, aptly identifying the real enemy – super-rich pigs at the trough violently guarding their treasure. Plus, unlike Cheney’s fantasies, the 1% targeted today are both liable and totally identifiable – count their excess compensation, bank balances, and political graft.

In any case, no GOP candidates yet demand occupiers be waterboarded or locked in the slammer permanently. And even Perry mercifully withholds capital punishment for camping out in public parks. Are these signs of moderation, or what? Plus, our most discredited, war hero-maverick, John McCain, crawled from senility to rebuke the torture brigade, assailing “enhanced interrogation” as impractical, immoral, illegal, and encouraging retaliation. Of course, the immoderate Rush Limbaugh will shift the debate tomorrow with some new “outrage of the day,” like pushing public lynching of uppity minorities or police dogs sicced on Zuccotti Park.

Restraint on Iran

Next up, GOP moderation today that reforms the unilateral, pre-emptive Bush Doctrine — that swashbuckling, imperialist scheme vexing Sarah Palin. Of all nitwits, let us praise the Hermanator not just for displaying bold restraint but truly revealing, though singular logic. From a real interview:

JOURNAL SENTINEL: Would you favor a military strike against Iran to stop that country from developing a nuclear capability?

HERMAN CAIN: That is not a practical, top-tier alternative and here’s why. If you look at the topography of Iran. Where are you going to strike? It’s very mountainous. That’s what makes it very difficult.

Guess, we’ll have to find another way around peaks. Look, we wide-eyed, anti-war fanatics grasp at any straw, even Ron Paul’s notion all remote, non-essential brutality violates a myriad of Constitutional clauses. Now it’s Cain’s slogan for the ages: “give us mountains or give them death.” Good peace work, Herman, though no compliments to your fact-checking staff. Curiously, the McCain who hates tortures carries no such qualms about war-making, as in “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” Right, just temporary insanity.

Further evidence of newly-minted GOP prudence: Newt the loose cannon nominally agrees with Cain, attacking Iran only if and when that destroys the regime in power. What moderation, here — worked in Vietnam and Afghanistan, didn’t it? How Gingrich guarantees absolute results from bunker-busting bombs, aside from infuriating Iranians, we leave to the next comic GOP debate. But note: this wary, vote-hungry Newt sounds restrained next to past Cheney-Rumsfeld rampaging — whose pre-emptive strikes against non-belligerents only mandated “too big an oil patch to fail.”

Bordering on reason

And finally, look how immigration spawns GOP moderation. True, the Hermanator joked about electrified borders, and rumors of alligators in border moats, but just for laughs. The good news: who else on the right rushed to endorse burning immigrants, with or without Miranda warnings? And no one yet urges the torture the right loves, nor a firing squad, for hungry interlopers. Even Perry the great capital punisher goes mushy moderate when defending education for children of Texas’ undocumented. Contrast Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, and Romney, berating Perry for mottle-codling – equating any goodies for “illegals” with the dreaded A-word: Amnesty. Make living in America so unbearable, they say, starving Mexicans will sneak back across the border, still carrying their sole belongings. Right, now that’s immoderate, especially with border guards on alert both ways.

Again, we’re saved by Newt, whose moderation here now angers his fringe base: “If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grand kids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.” But Newt, what if they’re childless atheists who pay no taxes? Round ‘em up, move “em out? Only the fertile, born-again and employed stay.

But his half-assed moderation paid off as the very conservative New Hampshire Union Leader Sunday endorsed Gingrich for his principled defiance of popular prejudices. Gingrich, principled?! Editorial page editor, Andrew Cline, explains, “Given the choice between the candidate who wants to be liked and the candidate who wants to be respected, we would rather have the guy who wants to be respected.” Thus, Cline scalds Mitt as the “very play-it-safe candidate” more suitable for “the late 19th century.” Ouch, but how true. Ironically, Cline can’t “imagine” a president who forever plays it safe, never wants “to offend anybody” and “wants to be liked” by all.

Well, actually, Mr. Dimwitted Cline, we all know exactly what extreme presidential caution looks like, the ultimate, squishy, compromising moderate whose bottom line is “play it safe,” desperate never to consciously offend any voting block, left, right or middle. Not of course, the disagreeable Romney, a craven roulette wheel of increasingly rightwing lurches devoid of moderation. Cline’s language best describes only one candidate, the guy already in the White House – a virtual slave to moderation. But that’s another essay, left for another day. I never said GOP moderation, such as it is, doesn’t have its own tradeoffs.

Like many evangelicals in Iowa, Steve Deace, an influential conservative radio host, is wrestling with the possibility that Newt Gingrich may be the most viable standard bearer for family-values voters in the next election. It’s a conundrum, he says, that many others are also grappling with. “Maybe the guy in the race that would make the best president is on his third marriage,” he says. “How do we reconcile that?”
…
“Under normal circumstances, Gingrich would have some real problems with the social-conservative community,” says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. “But these aren’t normal circumstances.”
…
Gingrich benefits, of course, from the powerful Christian narrative of sin and deliverance. “These voters believe in forgiveness, they believe in redemption,” says Ralph Reed, who leads the Faith and Freedom Coalition. After all, as he points out, it was evangelicals who helped elect Ronald Reagan, our first and only divorced president.

Put another way, evangelicals would rather have a liar and a hypocrite and has been married three times than a Mormon. And if anyone seriously believes Gingrich has repented, I’ve got a beautiful orange bridge in San Francisco to sell you.

I suppose another possibility is that the Romney-hating evangelicals might instead believe that dishonesty, hypocrisy, and misogyny actually are family values.

Or maybe the Reed/Perkins style of evangelical believes that he can behave however horribly he wants from Monday through Saturday so long as he pretends to ask God for forgiveness on Sunday. In my opinion, a God who was so fickle to actually grant forgiveness to a human being this rotten (evangelical or not) is unworthy of worship, but that’s just me.

I, and most people who think they know something about football, have been pretty vocal about the fact that Tebow sucks as a quarterback. The people who disagree with us insist his intangibles make up for his lack of tangibles, an argument so absurd that we have trouble getting our heads around it. If tangibles don’t matter, maybe I should not have been so quick to dismiss a career as a porn star.

Of course, what drives most of us crazy is that the people who are making the argument for Tebow happen to be not only white, but bat-shit crazy evangelicals, raising the suspicion in our minds that maybe this isn’t about football and logic at all, but about racism or religion. After all, for years after blacks were finally allowed to play professional football they weren’t allowed to play quarterback because they lacked intangibles like intelligence, unlike white quarterbacks like Terry Bradshaw and Kerry Collins, the latter of whom was so smart that he thought his offensive line (the guys charged with protecting him) would enjoy hearing racist jokes. But Kerry failed to notice his O-line was black, and the next game they looked less like football players and more like matadors letting bulls rush by. In other words, the intelligence thing was yet another bit of back door discrimination.

And evangelicals really do believe that God intercedes actively and continuously in daily events, meaning there’s no reason not to believe that he would stick out a heavenly toe to trip a cornerback if it meant one of Timmy’s recievers could get open. Of course that still leaves the problem that Tim is about as accurate as a forty-four magnum handgun with a sawed-off barrel, that is to say, not at all. So there’s no guarantee that Tim could hit said reciever if he stood all by himself in the middle of the field while God smote every defender in sight.

But tonight, having watched Tebow’s crew win another game they should not have won, I am rethinking my position. No, I still don’t think God, were he or she to exist, would bother to rig a professional sports game for the benefit of a handful of fans. Nor do I believe that if she were to do so, she would do it for evangelicals, who are about as obnoxious as you can get and not be a coach for Penn State. And I certainly don’t believe that Tebow can throw or ever will be able to.

But what I am rethinking is my belief that you have to be able to throw to be a quarterback. Maybe you don’t. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed by listening to thousands of hours of ESPN and the like where broadcasters drone on about “this is quarterback’s league” and “you must have an elite quarterback to win.” Because obviously, that ain’t true. Philip Rivers can throw a football through a donut at sixty yards and what good has that done the Chargers? Tebow throws like my sister and he’s 4 and 1.

Maybe the fact that Matt Millen, the one human being who has proved beyond all doubt that he knows absolutely nothing about football, can get a job as an expert should have tipped me off.

In other words, Tebow is fine. It’s football that’s fucked.

“He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.” (Proverbs 13:24)

“Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” (Proverbs 23:13-14)

By now, you’ve probably heard about the video of Texas judge William Adams beating his disabled, then-16 year-old daughter, Hillary, with a belt. You may even have seen the video. If not, a caution: it’s every bit as disturbing as reports would lead you to believe. We’re not used to seeing this kind of domestic brutality on YouTube, especially when it’s punctuated by lines like ”lay down or I’ll spank you in your fucking face.”

I initially ignored this story. I heard the headlines, made the same assumptions as a lot of people probably did and moved along. But today the story hooked me back in when I saw that Adams, in the process of blaming the victim (she only released the tape because he was cutting her off and taking away her Mercedes, he says), suggesting that the footage looked “worse than it was.”

What we see on the tape is prima facie evidence of a crime. It’s either child abuse or assault, depending on the victim’s age, and it sounds like the facts in this case are that she was old enough to make it assault, but the statute of limitations has run out. I would say lucky him, but I suspect that the worst the law could possibly do to him pales to what YouTube has in store.

I don’t know Adams. I don’t his daughter. I have no first-hand evidence whatsoever of the internal dynamics of the family, of whether or not she’s acting out of concern or spite. There’s one thing I’m pretty sure I do know, however: no, Judge, it’s worse than it looked.

I have some experience with what Hillary suffered that night, because it’s similar to what I endured growing up. I was routinely subjected to whippings, either with a belt or a hickory switch, that if they happened to a child today would result in the child’s immediate removal from the home by protective services and the arrest of the offending parent. On multiple occasions I was beaten as badly, or worse than, Hillary Adams.

But – and here’s the sticky part – it wasn’t child abuse. Not by the standards of the day, and not by the standards of nearly all of human history. I was taken in by my paternal grandparents when I was three. My parents split and, well, I’ll spare you that part. It was deemed best for me if I went to live with them. In many respects this was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

My grandparents, though, were old school Southern working class Baptist, born and bred to the wisdom of the Old Testament. To the modern ear, the idea of beating a child because you love him sounds counter-intuitive, but to people of their generation (born in 1913 and 1914, respectively) you had to administer corporal punishment if you loved a child. Failing to do so was to fail as a parent and to literally risk the child’s eternal soul. The swats with their hands were no big deal. Call those attention-getters, if you like. But when I’d do something they deemed serious, the results could leave welts for days.

There is no question that they loved me. Totally and unconditionally. And I loved them just as completely. I have published poetry honoring my grandfather and in 1989 I took the step of changing my name to his legally (I was not born Samuel) because he was the only real father I had ever had. And just the other day, I described my grandmother as the single most important person in my entire life. I have said many times, and I mean it, that without them I have no idea where I’d be today, but it’s not likely I’d ever have amounted to much. A big part of me feels like I’m betraying their memories in writing this, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that if I can say something that helps, then it’s worth it. I also do not blame them. I’m 100% convinced that my grandparents were purely the products of their context, and that if they were young parents today they’d die before they’d hurt their children.

All that said, violent physical discipline leaves psychic and emotional scars that may never heal. For starters, one comes to accept that love and pain are inextricably connected. One also can’t help seeing violence as a logical and normal solution to problems. Rationally speaking, I know that violence is sometimes necessary and perhaps even appropriate, but if you grew up like I did there’s the uncomfortable tendency to see it as a first resort instead of the last resort.

Those who know me the best probably wonder where this streak of mine comes from. I’m not a violent man, but I suppose you might say there is a great deal of turbulence in my soul. To the consternation of many of my more enlightened friends (and in truth, most of my friends are more enlightened than I am) I have no issue with the death penalty in principle. I have been known to find satisfaction when brutal justice catches up to genuinely bad human beings. I’ve never said this before, but I’m disturbed when I reflect on the kinds of fate I wish for people like Michael Vick. There’s an irony in it, I suppose: in my mind, the worst criminals are those who abuse the helpless. The retribution: render them helpless and visit upon them the same abuse they inflicted.

I hate abusers and always will, but I cannot stand the feelings they arouse in me. Even in pondering justice, the abuse I suffered as a boy fosters an enduring rage that thrives at a deep, inescapable emotional level.

Of course, it isn’t just me. How many millions of people across this country and beyond would read this and understand exactly what I’m saying? How many people think, as did one friend of mine some years ago, that he owes who he is as a human being to the fact that his father beat the hell out of him? And what implications does this have for his children?

I don’t have anything to say here that a legion of child psychologists haven’t said more compellingly, I suppose, but I find myself wishing I could talk to Judge Adams. While those watching the video linked above are absolutely seeing what they’re seeing and I’m hardly absolving the man, I find it perfectly plausible that he loves his daughter and that he was genuinely, honestly doing what he thought was best for her. He doesn’t act like it’s hurting him more than it is her (that line may well have been my earliest education in the art of irony), but part of me suspects that you simply have to slam the door on the part of you that empathizes with your loved one in order to “do what’s best for them.”

It’s pathological in the extreme, but maybe his generation, and some of mine, and certainly every generation that came before suffers from a sort of collective post-traumatic stress disorder. To note that this particular beast is self-replicating seems almost too obvious to mention.

William Adams says his daughter released the video to get even with him. Hillary Adams says she did it so that he would get help. I don’t think the rest of us have any way of knowing who’s right. Regardless, my advice to Judge Adams is to get help. Also, I hope Hillary Adams gets help, because the beast is alive in her. Probably always will be.

This is an ugly case that nobody would ever have known about before the advent of social media. And as banal and pointless as channels like YouTube can be, today it presents millions of American families with an opportunity to learn and heal, and most importantly, to begin putting the wisdom of the Old Testament behind us for good.

Some time back I called Tim Tebow a “faith-based” quarterback. In that article I took on a prominent sports commentator who had lost all perspective and tried to address the ways in which the questions of religion and quarterbacking ability were getting all twisted up around the second-year Denver Broncos QB.

Since that post, some things have changed and others haven’t. The main thing that has changed is that, after an underwhelming first few games, the Doncs have made Tebow the starter. Which is good. First off, Kyle Orton may be a much better quarterback, but he was playing like hell. Second, like I said back in August, Denver isn’t going anywhere this season and the only way to resolve the Tebow question is to play him. If he can play, great. You have your signal-caller and can now turn your attention to the dozens of other severe problems the team has. If he can’t now you know and you can draft a quarterback next year.

What hasn’t changed? The rabid, patently irrational levels of support Tebow enjoys. He’s the biggest topic here in the 5280. He’s the biggest topic on the national sports scene. Seriously – the guy gets more coverage than Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, the Brothers Manning, and all the rookies quarterbacks currently starting combined. That isn’t hyperbole – sit in front of ESPN with a pad and a stopwatch if you don’t believe me. Never in my memory has a player with so little to recommend him on the field been the focus of so much attention. It’s gotten to the point where I expect the feckin’ weather report to begin with an item on #15.

And how bad is it on Denver sports talk? Last week I got in the truck and just as I was getting ready to flip the radio on, I stopped and said “I wonder how long it will be before I hear the word “Tebow”? So I counted. Four seconds. I flipped to the other local stations (we have three Denver-based FM sports talkers and ESPN radio on AM) and they were all talking about Tebow. Then yesterday I headed out, turned on the radio, and the result was like a cheap sitcom: *click*TEBBOW. Instant. Like they were waiting for me.

I’m just about convinced that the media ubiquity of the Tebow craze is the goddamnedest thing to hit America since Beatlemania.

If you’ve been following the drama (which is to say, if you have a radio a TV or an Internet connection), then you know that Tebow is popular with commentators coast to coast. Some are true believers and others are just cynical hacks who know in which direction ratings lie. It’s easy enough to cobble together a debate between one former player who thinks Tebow can make it as an NFL quarterback and another one who doesn’t. But yesterday, as I drove around listening to The Stupid Show, something was different. Boy howdy. After Sunday’s godawful – and sweet hell, I mean abysmal – performance versus the Lions, even the overtly Christian analysts who had been handling Tebow with kid gloves before are upon him.

Let’s review that performance, and understand that the final stat line doesn’t come close to showing how bad he really was.

18/39, 172 yds, 1 TD, 1 INT, 56.8 rating

• He was lucky he threw only one interception. There were at least two other throws that everybody in the stadium, probably including Tebow himself, will tell you should have been picked. (I say “Tebow himself” because whatever else is wrong with him as a player, he’s a hard-working, self-effacing kid who is a model character and locker room personality. He never blames others and is as fair as he can be about his own performance. If he could actually play his position and leave the self-aggrandizing PDPs at home I’d wish I had 50 more just like him on the roster.)
• A vast majority of those completions and yards came once Detroit had the game put away. At 45-3, you’re going to call off the dogs. Tebow was having all kinds of luck hitting open receivers underneath as the Lions dropped way the hell off into prevent. And by a vast majority, I mean probably 3/4.
• The TD pass he threw was a WR screen. He threw the ball about five yards to a receiver behind the line, who then broke three tackles to score. So Tim had very little to do with it. In his defense, though, he threw a nice ball on the first drive that could have been a TD easily. Decker couldn’t quite get the second foot down and it was close enough that it wasn’t even conclusive on replay. The lord giveth, the lord taketh away.
• The INT was a 101-yard pick-6 that was just horrific. (Of course, most 100-yard interception returns are horrific.)
• He also got strip-sacked for a TD.
• He got sacked seven times, and most of them were his fault.
• If you paid attention, it’s clear that he’s marginally competent if his first read is open. But I don’t think I saw him work past that and into even a second option in the progressions all day. Tebow reads defenses the way Snooki reads Proust – which is to say, infrequently and without great insight.

All in all, he didn’t do anything Sunday – and I mean this literally – that any third-stringer in the league couldn’t have done. He’s the worst QB on the active roster behind Orton and Brady Quinn and he may be worse than the guy on the practice squad, too, although you never know until you put him in.

And now, even his apologists and boosters in the press are being left with few places to turn.

But listen to the laymen, the fans with the #15 jerseys, the ones who chanted “TE-BOW! TE-BOW!” as Orton melted down. The ones who call the sports talkers and say that John Elway’s early stats were as bad as Tebow’s (which is occasionally true, but utterly beside the point because in college John had demonstrated that he could pass accurately, something Tebow has never done). The ones whose main argument was that you should put Tebow in so we can see what he can do. You have to give him a chance to prove he can’t do it. Well, by that logic you should start me, because I’ve never proven on the field in a real game situation that I can’t be an NFL quarterback, either. It’s as though te objective record of his college years and what the coaches see in practice don’t really count at all.

Listen closely, because you can predict exactly what they’re going to say. It goes like this:

1. If the Broncos win, it’s because Tebow is the real deal.
2. If they win but he sucks, the stats don’t matter. All that matters is that “he’s a winner.”
3. If they lose, it’s not his fault. The play calling sucked, the team played poorly, the management traded away his weapons, etc. But that’s okay, just stick with the plan and he’ll win because he’s a winner.

Which brings us back to why I called him a faith-based QB. The structure of these arguments is exactly like religion. Exactly. In a religion, the truth of the religion is a given. All further data is interpreted in light of the precepts of the religion. Supporting data is foregrounded (she prayed and her cancer was miraculously cured) and data that doesn’t support the belief system is ignored, dismissed or systematically explained away (because the lord works in mysterious ways, or the lord always answers prayers but sometimes the answer is no, etc.) Structurally, the truth isn’t something you seek or that you arrive at, it is the thing you’re given a priori.

It isn’t just religion that works this way, of course. Political systems are like this, to be sure. Economic systems (by all means, go read The Black Swan). As a PhD student I certainly dealt with my share of “social theories” where the process was functionally the same as any other ritual proof of the Truth of the givens.

And of course, it happens in sports.

Listening to the apologists and the Tebow passionistas right now is instructive. Perhaps in its way it’s even illustrative of America, writ large. We have, forever, been a nation with a powerful set of ideologies, and no facts, no matter how glaring, have ever been allowed to get in the way of “the United States is the greatest nation on earth.”

At some point, though, whether you’re a nation or a football fan, you have to realize that the refusal to acknowledge facts doesn’t mean they cease to exist.

I won’t lie, though. I’m very much not a Christian myself and I’ve read my Dawkins and my Harris. I’m a persistent fan of evidence, and I’m not idiot enough to think that we know all there is to know. In particular I’m intrigued by the study of energy and the question of whether perhaps it coheres once we die. But this is a question of science, not blind religion. I feel no particular need to believe in a “higher power” or in the existence of a spirit realm. I’m certainly spiritual, but since spiritualism as expressed by humanist awareness is more than I’ll ever unravel, I have no need for superstition.

Let’s also understand my long, deep relationship with Christianity. I grew up Southern Baptist. Some of the finest human beings I ever met are Christians. This number would include my grandmother, who raised me from the time I was three as though I were her own son and who was, without question, the single most important person in my entire life. There may be people reading this who knew her, and they can attest to the fact that she was a saint navigating a harsh world on crutches with never a bad word for anyone, no matter how much they deserved one. Also in that number you’d find one of my sisters and her family, several of my closest friends and half the guys in my wedding party.

So no, I don’t hate Christians.

I do, however, have a tremendous distaste for Christianity as an institution, which has done unspeakable damage to every culture it has touched throughout the centuries. This argument, though, isn’t really about Christianity per se - what I’m reacting against is a natural function of any creed that attains a certain level of political power. I have lots of neo-pagan friends and have been known to describe myself in those terms, but I know without question that had this set of religions gained the status and influence that Christianity enjoys they would be every bit as corrupt and anti-human. The Holy Druidic Empire? Be afraid.

Since I live in Denver, home to our nation’s most rabid cult of the moment, Tebowism, I’ve had ample opportunity lately to reflect on what, exactly, bothers me so much about our currently fashionable epidemic of “faith.” I’m obviously concerned about the fact that 85% of Americans can vote whatever the hell they want into law, especially when the Supreme Court itself becomes co-opted. But at an even more elemental level, I think what gets to me is the arrogance and the hypocrisy.

First, the arrogance of evangelism. If you don’t believe what I do you’re going to burn in an actual lake of fire for eternity. I even got this pitch a couple of times back when I was a Christian because apparently I wasn’t Christian enough. (You could tell because I was a member of the highly suspicious fringe liberal Southern Baptist denomination.) I was taught that Catholics were going to hell because their kind of baptism didn’t count. Imagine, then, what awaits those of us who don’t even pretend.

You can’t argue the point, of course. If you do, that just proves that you’re doomed.

The most annoying form of arrogance on display in the US today? PDPs: public displays of piety.

Sideline Reporter: “Steve, that was a remarkable diving catch in the end zone to win the game. How did you beat the coverage?”

Wide Receiver: “Janice, I’d like to thank my lord and personal savior, Jesus Christ.”

Ummm, okay. But he’s just expressing his faith, right? And that’s in the Constitution, you say? Fine, let’s test that theory:

Sideline Reporter: “Steve, that was a remarkable diving catch in the end zone to win the game. How did you beat the coverage?”

Wide Receiver: “Janice, I’d like to thank the dark lord of this world, Lucifer.”

Still good?

And did you see this last weekend?

No, this isn’t bowing. It’s Tebowing. I kid you not. And it’s bigger than the Cabbage Patch, Disco and the Loco-Motion put together. I quote no less a source than NFL.com – it’s a sensation.

Because in this, our most ostentatiously pious of eras, your religion doesn’t count unless a lot of people are watching. When a guy scores a touchdown and points to heaven, we don’t look at heaven, do we?

I can’t help thinking about the fact that the best Christian I ever knew in my life, my aforementioned grandmother, Helen Marshall Smith, never once engaged in untoward PDP. She was a fervent believer but I don’t even recall us even having a blessing when we went out to dinner with Christian friends. Unforgivable, huh?

Then there’s the hypocrisy. This isn’t new, of course, nor is it unique to members of any particular religion. But the bigger a show you make of your piety, the more appalling it is when you fail your own standards. This past week gave us an incredible example of what I’m talking about, and if you watch Survivor, you already know where I’m going.

The Upolu tribe (“Upolu” is the Samoan word for “praise Jesus because the cameras are rolling”) features a couple of the worst jackasses in the game’s history, Coach (Ben Wade) and Brandon Hantz, the clueless fuckwit nephew of the show’s most notorious villain, Russell Hantz. Coach made a name for himself on Survivor: Tocantins as one of the game’s greatest wack jobs, but his “dragon slayer” act wasn’t the best part. The best part was the way in which he played an exceptionally deceptive game and then developed total amnesia, insisting that he had played honorably, that he had never lied, etc., despite all the actual footage.

Russell Hantz was pure unadulterated evil on a scale that would make Satan nervous, but Brandon quickly established himself as being less about ubiquitous malevolence and more about basic psychological instability (and a disturbing degree of misogyny born of some deep-seated demons I don’t even want to guess about).

However, these men are bound together by … wait for it … an unwavering and extremely public faith in God that has grown with each episode. This past week’s show might as well have been a praise rally, as the tribe was gathered for on-your-knees, hand-holding chest-thumping prayer at least three times (and this doesn’t count Coach’s Tai Chi/I’m Not Worthy Father workout routine, which was played with a performative subtlety worthy of a Commedia dell’Arte).

The moral of this story isn’t the annoying PDP, though. It gets better. What they were praying for was that the tribe could find the hidden immunity idol. Which is sacrilegious to start with – you think The Lord Most High gives a fuck about Survivor? Please. He’s got enough on his hands trying to save the Denver Broncos from Tim Tebow’s inability to read a safety blitz.

Hang on – even that isn’t the good part. No, the real payoff is that Coach already has the idol. He’s had it for days and has been keeping it a secret from Brandon because, well, because Brandon’s crazier than a sack of bats on nitrous. Two other members of the tribe know, as well, so there they are, on their knees on national television, using God as a red herring. Which proves there’s no god pretty conclusively, I’d think. If there were, He’d have “voted the whole tribe off the island” on the spot, if you catch my meaning.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a worse display of hypocrisy on television in my life, and I’ve lived through Jimmy Swaggart and the Bakkers.

Mercifully, Coach and Tim Tebow aren’t like most Christians. If they were, you couldn’t go to drive-through at McDonald’s without enduring a testimonial. “Can I get a Big Mac and a Coke?” “Yes sir, and I’d like to dedicate this order to my lord and personal savior, Jesus Christ.” Or the bank. “Hi, I’d like to deposit this check.” “Welcome to Bank of America, ma’am. Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?” I don’t even want to contemplate trying to get a lap dance down at the Diamond Cabaret.

No, most Christians are capable of getting through the day without clubbing somebody to death with their copy of the New Living Translation. I also imagine that they see all the Tebowing and are made a little uncomfortable. Some of them, anyway. And the pompous charades of asses like Coach (who, I assure you, will have no memory whatsoever of the events of this past Wednesday’s episode if he’s called on it) must be absolutely infuriating because of the light in which it casts other Christians.

In the end, public displays of piety, especially when performed in front of large audiences, aren’t about Him, they’re about You. And the more you perform, the less I believe you.

I hope that America’s more sensible Christians will, at some point, pull their self-aggrandizing brethren aside and have a quiet word with them.

by Robert S. Becker

Am I the Great Rudder — or What?

If his stumbling, not ready-for-prime-time worsens, Rick “Treat ‘Em Ugly” Perry will soon be cornered and dangerous. That’s when flinty hardscrabble guys squint, then draw, pumping out enough audacity of rogue to win GOP primaries. No more Mr. Smiley Nice Guy conservative, clinging to compassionate shreds — like educating immigrant kids, immunizing girls, pooh-poohing secession — or not throwing in derringers with school lunches. Hey, don’t 6th graders have drug, crime, bullying, fashion, and pocket money issues dying for resolution?

The power right anoints Perry the most “electable” fringe purist — so step aside, little crazy lady from Minnesota. This strutting Texas Twister is the spunkiest hired gun to depose any weakling, city-slicker president. Perry ain’t running for “debater-in-chief,” as he says, but commander-in-chief, able to deliver a Texas-sized, “deep, deep rudder” of leadership. Is he talking pilot-in-chief? — an unfortunate metaphor as he founders, with rudderless debates, swamped by this field of GOP giants.

Even movie-star handsome from a big state can’t survive weird pot shots guaranteed to unhinge old folks — like declaring Social Security not just unconstitutional and a “monstrous lie” but a criminal “Ponzi scheme.” Understatement don’t march through this cowboy’s resume. Now grandma, having dodged Obama death panels, must reimburse the fed for years of illegal payments (already paid for). Doesn’t knowingly being in receipts from a “criminal, Ponzi scheme” join you to the sham, an accessory after the fact, even a co-conspirator. Even that sharpie, Sarah Palin, never threatened death panels to Social Security and Medicare. Yowwee.

A Crusading Catechism

On the other hand, admire Perry’s gall, dragging total non-issues to center stage — then defending pigheadedness with vengeance. Real character. One small point, Governor. In our system, no individual — be they president or bank CEO — settles constitutionality. Did this Texas cracker forget courts only decide questions that legitimate parties bring to judgment? Know of one court challenge to Social Security, nor any noted legal scholars calling it a crime? Hell, Perry barely got through Ag school, so what legal creds let him fantasize some Supreme Court would take the case, let alone agree with his insupportable stance? Oh yeah, Perry’s totally transparent “Ponzi scheme” is more solvent than Congress-controlled, burgeoning federal debt. To call this great idea “a monstrous lie” is to commit a monstrous lie.

If all American business enterprise were criminalized because later money replaced earlier, capitalism would crawl up and die. In fact, by this bizarre Perry standard, all of life would be a mock “Ponzi Scheme” — every personal loan, every mortgage, every insurance plan, indeed, every promissory note or contract, calculated in what’s called money, to be repaid later.

But Perry’s propaganda is hardly intended to change laws. Decoy issues are smoke-screens for a far more radical agenda to shred federalism, if not the 20th C. What President Perry would deliver goes well beyond “fixing” a program or two. The core fringe mania is “taking back the country,” per a Perry-Manifesto conspicuous from rightwing ravings. As a public service, I here collate ten, nearly Biblical commandments for a born-again country. Were God to move in such mysterious ways, President Perry’s first inauguration speech will teem with excess. You heard it here first.

The Real Perry Manifesto

Mandate #1 — Let us declare our Founders endorsed only small, minimalist government, limited to taxation, currency, repayment of loans and border defense against enemies (armed invaders, immigrants, revolutionaries, deviants, etc.). Thus, every welfare or social notion since the New Deal is unconstitutional and unAmerican, namely: Medicare, Social Security, Dept. of Education, EPA, all civil rights laws, funding for science, pandemic diseases, global warming, evolution, PBS, NPR, etc.

Mandate #2 — Because God destined this a Christian nation (with evangelical rule), we should rededicate a true America to be a Dominionist stronghold answerable to a literalist reading of the Holy Bible, as interpreted by born-again preachers and heads of believers’ colleges. Elections are fine when the elect govern.

Mandate #3 — Abortion shall not only be banned but advocates imprisoned for committing “sins against God’s law.” Abortion doctors should be indicted for murder, liable to capital punishment. Women committing abortion shall be fined heavily; or, if poor, be open to impregnation by approved Christians to offset the killing of the unborn.

Mandate #4 — Sexuality outside of marriage will be punished by jail or, if teens and gays, humiliation in public stocks. Pregnancy outside of marriage shall be illegal, but no child will be aborted, without exception. Since “gay rights” is an oxymoron, no one can be gay and have any rights. Just like old times, homosexuality will be sinful, illegal and a mental condition.

Mandate #5 — The Pentagon will be granted direct taxing ability, plus the right to draft heterosexual males, whenever and wherever. For warrior males over 50, crippled or beyond military service, Pentagon-run camps will establish gung-ho patriotism weekends.

Mandate #6 — Gun ownership will be universal for men, optional for women. No school or location limitations, though counties may restrict minority access. Any white male over 18 not carrying a gun can’t vote, drink, own property or carouse in public.

Mandate #7 — The old-time religion will become the cultural norm, excepting racial slavery. Adult males will head households, women will take orders, and children only speak when spoken to. County government will track Sunday school, tithing, and church services, henceforth signs of the patriotic elect known as “true Americans.”

Mandate #8 — By majority rule, states may nullify any federal stature, especially regarding civil rights, invasions of privacy, or restrictions on alcohol or drug consumption or cultivation. States by two-thirds majority vote may secede or rejoin the union at will, thus providing a healthy dynamism that checks federal over-reach.

Mandate #9 — Since labor or workers’ union are not mentioned in the Constitution, all unions will be banned and dismantled, not just in the public sector.

Mandate #10 — Federal taxes shall not be raised without a two-thirds vote of Congress; however, taxes shall be lowered by a simple majority of House members. Every candidate for president, vice-president or senator must provide a long-form American birth certificate, plus evidence of never having been Muslim, socialist, or alien from outer space.

Portrait by Paul Szep.