What to do

Crikey, PJ O’Rourke really has gone downhill, hasn’t he?

My impression of the piece is that he was making fun of the president, but way to subtly for his supporters (and evidently, Ted and D^2) to pick up on. Unfortunately, being too close to the object of its satire, it fails.

I can remember when P.J. O’Rourke was funny.

you be the judge.

That’s not what they teach you at Bible Camp.

P.J. O’Rourke, Satirist: By Appointment to the Richest and Most Powerful in the Land.

I’m inclined to agree on matters like the 10 commandments display, “In God We Trust,” and suchlike, but the cretins who are trying to undermine our children’s scientific education. It’s monstrously inappropriate and appalling, and God (ahem) bless the folks doing the grunt work on School Boards and, yes, filing lawsuits to stop them.

I never found PJO’R even a bit amusing, and I’m fairly easily pleased.

Perhaps a “Muppet Show” revival could feature a smug, pompous and unfunny right wing pundit muppet called R J O’Pourke.

I’ve noticed PJOR is a conservative when married and a libertarian when between wives (get that thought out of your head – that’s now what I meant). What’s his current marital (and thus political) status?

The separation of church and state may have won the first bout. There’s no guarantee about the outcome of the rematch. You don’t think the right is going to stop with prayer in the school or the Ten Commandments in the courthouse do you?

Maybe PJ is on the payroll like Armstrong….

Who really cares if Roy Moore plops a Ten Commandments monument in front of his courthouse?

“His” courthouse? WTF? This is the Kevin Drum that you consider your “better,” Ted?

Sounds to me like Drum’s still in post-election mode, casting about for innovative new ways to cede ground to the theocrats so the good, decent, salt-of-the-earth folks in flyover country will stop being afraid of liberals. Feh.

As for O’Rourke, that ugly little driblet of homophobic bile (“only if the bride and groom both have a beard”) doesn’t strike me as the least bit out of character.

I remember seeing him on a panel of comedy writers in the 90s. Watching him carelessly throw out hilarious one-liners was like watching Michael Jordan shoot free throws. He’s obviously a really talented guy, and I’d hold him responsible for a chunk of my lingering positive regard for libertarianism.

I’ve never, ever read anything from the guy that set my teeth on edge like that piece. It’s Mark Steyn-level. Maybe he needs to hit the road again.

You can still hear him being occasionally funny on Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me”, where he has some genuinely witty co-panelists to keep him on his toes

I saw him on Have I Got News For You and he was sooooo far out of his depth it was horrible. Admittedly some of the program was about purely local news that he wouldn’t necessarily have heard of, but even on the international stuff he just kept coming up empty. In the end he was reduced to making jokes about how Americans elected a stupid President because they were stupid. I ended up with uncontrollable twitching in my “come over here, Old Blue, I’ve got something to show you behind the shed” muscle.

As much as I hate losing at the ballot box, for me, this issue is a “matter of principle.” For me this is about “taking rights seriously” and in matters of principle the little things count.

I also think that this is a situation where adherence to principle is pragmatically wise over the long term despite the immediate political consequences.

I think one reason this issue does not seem like “a big deal” to so many moderates and liberals, even to strong advocates of church-state separation, is that so many Americans consider themselves Christian, over 80 percent according to Gallup. If the United States had more religious diversity, then this issue would be much more pressing and much more controversial. Religious freedom is relatively easy when most everyone is on the same page.

My reason for sticking to principle in this case is that one day America will indeed be a more religiously diverse nation. This issue might seem trivial now, but what happens when Michigan is 60 percent Muslim and New Jersey is 50 percent Hindu? Will the Christian right still be claiming we are a “Christian Republic” then? Today they claim that we can only survive if we remain a “Christian Republic.” Unless the law continues to reject that proposition in favor of strict neutrality, their claim will fulfill itself. If we do not lock in our commitment to separation of church and state now when its easy, we may not be able to so once it gets hard.

We talk a lot in America about our ability to live with religious diversity, but we really have no idea what we would do if this nation were truly diverse. The American experiment is, at least in theory, a test of the proposition that citizens with diverse and even conflicting comprehensive doctrines, conflicting conceptions of salvation and the divine, can successfully govern each other in a political community committed to a shared set of political values that are precedent to each individual’s own comprehensive doctrine. If we are to maintain our unity and our freedom in a pluralistic future, it will be because we built a strong constitutional democracy while we still had the chance. Whether the majority of Americans believe it or not, the only government fit for a people who are at once diverse, equal, and free is a government not under God but under law.

The PJ O’Rourke piece is a perfect example of “have it both ways” satire… On its face, it says that anyone who holds certain liberal values is a jerk, and deserves to be ruthlessly mocked — at very least.

But if anyone tries to call the author on this, he can quickly switch to saying “No, I’m actually making fun of the sort of person who might say such a thing — like GW Bush, if he were more like Rush Limbaugh.”

He wants it both ways: he wants the right side of his audience to think he’s mocking liberals, and he wants the left side of his audience to think he’s mocking Bush (or at least the idea of an “uncompassionate” Bush).

Both sides of his audience should treat this with the contempt it deserves.

Citizen, I think you’ve got it right. That is, that we’re a nation under law rather than a Christian Republic.

I think that regardless of which side of the aisle you consider, you’d find most folks would line up under that framework. I would think that even most Christians would agree.

As much as we can point to the hand of Divine providence at work throughout US history, that does not, in itself, make the US a Christian Republic. And although there seems to be the fear that a handful of zealous Christian Reconstructionists will seize the reigns of power, I doubt that a movement of that type will have the backing of rank and file Christians.

On the other hand, what does alarm a lot of Christians is the removal, or attempted removal, of a significant portion of the Christian heritage that has historically been a part of the US national experience. That extends to the present, and into the future, too. You might consider those of Christian faith as becoming disenfranchised with each attempt to stifle religious expression. There seems to be a growing intolerance for Christian expression especially from the secular left (please note Ajax Bucky, above).

So which will it be: the church ruling over the nation; the nation ruling over the church; or the two separate, but respectful of the other?

Ken Miller: You should try being an atheist in this country, if you want to know what intolerance is like. I have been asked more times that I can count, “If you are an atheist, then why don’t you kill someone?” Somehow I suspect Christians don’t get asked that question too often.

You should try being an atheist in this country, if you want to know what intolerance is like. I have been asked more times that I can count, “If you are an atheist, then why don’t you kill someone?” Somehow I suspect Christians don’t get asked that question too often.

You’re probably right, Walt. As a Christian, I get asked questions like, “How can you be so arrogant as to think everyone who disagrees with you is going to Hell?” or “Who do you think you are, going around speaking for God?” or “All you fundamentalist right-wingers care about is forcing women to spend their lives having babies, you know, like in that Handmaid’s Tale movie.” Okay, that last one isn’t a question, but you get the point. So, hang around a sufficiently wide range of people and eventually you’ll get asked some rude, uninformed, even belligerent questions. But let’s not call it intolerance, okay? Let’s call it “living in a democracy” or something like that.

I’m an atheist, more or less. I don’t talk much about it, partly because atheism does not have the place in my life that God does in a believer’s life. It’s not like I get down on my knees before bed every night and disbelieve for five minutes.

But there’s no doubt that atheism is more discriminated against than Christianity. For one thing, two Presidents Bush have expressed their doubts that an atheist could be a good citizen (the second Bush, while he was in office). Outside the bluest of blue states, I doubt that a known atheist could be elected to high office. (Jesse Ventura wasn’t that great, but at least he said that religion is a refuge for the weak-minded — and got away with it. But that was in Minnesota).

Christians have learned the power of self-pitying victimization, intimidation, and lying, and it will get worse before it gets better.

bernard yomtov and john emerson seem to have the odd idea that people whose ideas are unpopular are thereby the victims of intolerance or discrimination. Atheists are unlikely to be elected to high office in many parts of the U.S. because people tend to vote for those whose opinions (on a wide range of non-political as well as political issues) are similar to their own, and almost all Americans believe in some sort of God. No one has been denied any rights by failing to get elected to office. I think words like “intolerance” and “discrimination” need to be used a little — actually, a lot — less cheaply.

What Yomtov said.

Ayjay’s victimization (by harsh sarcasm, hyperbole, and perhaps even litotes) doesn’t amount to much, and is also the result of the fact that people disagree with his ideas. The victimization bar was lowered by that whiny little bastard, not by me.

In fact, a considerable proportion of Southerners would not vote for a Catholic. This fact has seriously diminished Pat Buchanan’s demagogic career, and William Bennett’s too, since the South would otherwise be the best audience for the rest of their message.

And for this and similiar reasons, we quite rightly call the Southerners bigots.

“And for this and similiar reasons, we quite rightly call the Southerners bigots.”

And we are officially back to why the left doesn’t win elections.

To all commentators:

People have the right to vote based on any premise they desire. Common religious affiliation implies a common moral ground. This may not be true, but the perception is there. The fact that a group of people would vote based on a perception of common interest and values is neither bigoted nor intolerant.

What is intolerant is to assume that only your individual reasons are justified enough to make correct voting determination.

If you wouldn’t vote for someone just because they’re an atheist, you’re a bad person, and in a just universe you would burn in hell for all eternity.

Ayjay: It doesn’t bother me all that much when someone asks me why I don’t go around killing people in my spare time. My point is that Christians in the U.S. who complain about intolerance have no idea what they’re talking about. Atheists are treated with a constant low level of contempt, and by and large they don’t complain about it. I only brought it up here to make the point that Christians don’t know how good they have it.

Yes, it’s hard for the Democrats to win elections when people in the South are bigots. The problem isn’t that we call them bigots, but because they are bigots.

The reasons why Buchanan and Bennet can’t get traction in the South isn’t because of the lack of a common moral ground. There’s plenty of that. It’s because of old fashioned Ian- Paisley- type bigotry.

My post wasn’t about electoral strategy. It was about bigotry. 40% of the voters in Alabama voted against repealing the miscegenation laws. They’re bigots too. And yeah, race hurts Democrats in the South too.

Ayjay: You agree with me? You mean two people have successfully communicated with each other on the internet, on a blog comment board no less? I’m cashing out my 401k. The end is nigh!

DBL, thank you for your well-reasoned post at 06:18 PM.

You should try being an atheist in this country, if you want to know what intolerance is like. I have been asked more times that I can count, “If you are an atheist, then why don’t you kill someone?”

That’s funny, I’ve never been asked that question despite the fact that the worst mass murderers in history have been atheists. Granted they were socialists as well, perhaps that’s the distinguishing feature.