Reposted from www.skepticmoney.com
Rick Perry has left the field. Thank goodness. After having Santorum win Iowa with a 34 vote margin in a state that doesn’t allow recounts and probably can’t count them right in the first place. But then it’s all about state rights, Perry is history. Remember Virginia where they wouldn’t put candidates on the ballet having lack of sufficient, validated petition signatures?
It seemed like the GOP would soften and go for Romney but in fact they didn’t, or I should say haven’t yet. Louise, my spouse, had been warning me about Santorum and I refused to believe that such a kook would ever be able to effectively run.
It only shows how incredibly desperate the GOP is. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised since more people believe the rapture is near than go out and vote. Hell, more people read the Left Behind series than go out and vote–at least that’s what it would seem here in the backwaters of West Virginia where even the squirrels attend church. I suppose it takes a hellfire, brimstone, family candidate to stir up enough interest to go prove them elitist, snobbish, expensive-coffee drinkers wrong. Everyone knows we’re the righteous travelers to heaven and the rest of you be damned.
So I thought to myself, who’s crazier, Perry or Santorum. Almost by definition Santorum had to be now because Perry dropped out but I typed in ”Rick Perry Crazy” and hit search. I wanted to prove that Perry had been too crazy to even be considered, kind of like Harold Camping, the Michigan Pastor who after being wrong several times still insists he knows the exact date when the streets will flow with blood and the righteous shall ascend.
Why not? The GOP has not been in such a disarray and confused about who to nominate since, since, I don’t know when…hmm…since Kennedy was assassinated; Johnson was promoting his great society and Barry Goldwater from Arizona was shaking conservative trees while espousing religious tolerance and endearing himself to corporate types. No good pubcon wants a tolerant believer in office.
Johnson won in 1964 with 61% of the vote. The widest margin since 1820 and the sixth most lopsided election ever, the fifth most popular margin. No election since has been so lopsided. My grandfather could hardly pass a day without cursing Johnson, without slang, as he saved that for niggers, wops, kikes,and jeuws; though he respected jews they worked harder than anyone else and he was mindful of my sour looks as my dad was a jew though I never met him. I wrote three letters to President Johnson and Ladybird which earned his ultimate respect–but they weren’t castigations.
Johnson portrayed Goldwater as a dangerous extremist and Goldwater couldn’t get support from the real extremists. He was too soft. He actually got support form deep south Democrats. The same ones that would, when they came to their senses, become Republicans. And those gentile southern ladies who charmed with hospitality decided the Democratic party was anathema for helping the poor by using public money. After all as the bible says “there will always be the poor”. Who needs social welfare programs if humans are such sinners that there will always be the poor. Get a job, go to church, and mind your manners!
This kicked the seat of the modern conservative movement ushered in by William F Buckley Jr, an intelligent, eloquent but crazy bastard, who in 1955 started the National Review with:
“It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.”
Buckley described his faith by saying, “I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith.” Once again proving you are the faith you are raised in and and it has nothing to do with any content of the faith itself.
In any case, still suffering from the war of yankee aggression who on south earth would want big government to come down and tell them those black boys could date their gals. Hell they couldn’t even socialize with them even if they did attend their church, which they shouldn’t, couldn’t. Everybody, and I mean everybody went to church. Lack of attendance was the worst sin of all. By this rule secularists were pure evil and really quite suddenly school prayer, abortion, and homosexuality became the rallying call of the modern conservative movement.
In 1973 Michael Harrington, coined the term neoconservative against the policy ideas ofDaniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol. But it would be Kristol who would become the godfather and would abandon his New York Secular Jewish friends like Irving Howe and other New York intellectuals discussing socialism in the sixties, after their intellectual fathers had bashed Stalinism in the 30’s and 40’s as leftists, for being too argumentative against tradition. A departure well described in the documentary “Arguing the World”. Neocons were leftists who abandoned their friends for reality. Kristol is famous for saying a neoconservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” Clearly the mugger clipped Kristol’s head before taking the money and running.
Kristol a classicist, anti-utopian, and believer of “persuasion” and not ideology objected to welfare programs, international “revolution” through nation-building/militarily imposed “democracy” and application of Fabian Socialism/Keynesianism models.
And so here we are today looking up “perry crazy” and wondering how the even more crazy Santorum is looking good to pubcons. What? I see link after link of Perry bringing home a dead baby for a day and an interview where the host gawffs and then has to retract his lack of manners concerning their privacy.
Puhllleeeze, you mean the Perry who brings faith into politics and has no qualms telling the rest of us we’re going to hell because our private belief is wrong and lying, telling us we’re going to hell in the public square is the moral thing to do.
Even worse that he and his ilk hide behind the bible saying they are not judging but knowing damned well that no one can read the bible and not get that you’re going to hell unless you believe the word of God. Isn’t that what evangelism is all about? You are going to hell unless you believe the bible is the word of God and you go through Christ!
I find this far more offensive than bringing a dead baby home. Hell, he could have cannibalized it and I’d be less offended. Grossed out but not offended. Aside from legal considerations, bury it in the yard, mummify it and keep it in the bedroom, stuff it for the sofa, bronze it and put it on the shelf but keep your damned faith out of politics and out of my house!
If you are motivated by your perverse faith, fine. Tell me you think abortion is wrong because a couple cells are a person but don’t tell me God told you a soul became the instant that sperm broke the cell wall and that’s why you vote like a fool. It’s just not politically moral that I hear it. It’s private. Go take your religious pornography elsewhere.
Too much, this is too much. I can’t even go on to the next search on “santorum crazy”. I have to have some coffee and take a walk-jog.
Jim Newman, bright and well