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And do a little research before you argue. Crypticlife attempts to exculpate the actions of the secular speech-haters at La Sapienza:

These protestors are not in executory positions of power, and aren’t about to murder or jail anyone…. And yet you claim a group of protestors is “authoritarian”

Michael Ledeen notes on The Corner: “I taught for several years at the “La Sapienza” University in Rome, back in the seventies. Lots of terrific students, incredible colleagues, and plenty of political terror. One of the most distinguished men in Rome, a member of the Supreme Court, was gunned down in his car in the middle of the “campus.” Other unpopular professors were beaten up, a couple were locked in elevators for half a day or more. Exams were all oral, and I had to deal with “student collectives” who wanted to march into the exam room in groups of thirty or so, then I would ask a question and they would decide who would answer.

Yes, yes I do consider this particular group of protestors to be very authoritarian indeed. Would-be totalitarians, in fact. I’m not going to pretend that I knew about this particular murder or the collective oral exams, but I do happen to know a bit about Italy in general, so I’m not at all surprised to learn about any of this. The European Left is very different than the American Left, among other things, it really doesn’t bother to hide its intentions.

Instead of attempting to steal identities such as “liberal” and “conservative”, the European leftist proudly calls himself a socialist or communist. (Anarchist merely means anti the current government, these “anarchists” actually tend to favor MORE government, ironically enough.) The fact that his political positions are generally quite similar to those of the average American Democrat is, I am sure, mere happenstance.

I realize that it’s not exactly up there with The God Delusion spending something like 1000 straight weeks as a New York Times bestseller or whatever, or Liberal Fascism leaping right to #1 in Politics and #1 overall on Amazon. But considering that the book isn’t even officially available yet and the most rabid Ilk are holding off on ordering – or at least ordering another copy – until this Saturday evening, I think it’s amazing that The Irrational Atheist already ranks in the top 15k overall and the top 15 in Atheism. I mean, when everyone got together on the Rebel Moon shot, the OC and I were hoping that it just might hit the top 10k.

Given my notoriously disturbing take on things, I really don’t expect vast quantities of people to pay much attention to what I’m thinking. So, it’s both delightful and a little alarming to realize that this isn’t likely to be just another novel that will never be reviewed anywhere or another random column fired off on Sunday afternoon before the football starts.

But I feel pretty good. I’m not scared at all. I feel kind of… I feel kind of invincible.

Derb mocks the formerly conservative commentariat:

The Looming Menace of Paul [John Derbyshire]

Yep, it’s open season on Ron Paul all right. We can’t have people going around talking about liberty, the Constitution, congressional declarations of war, and the abolition of federal government departments. Only Nazis and Islamofascists go for that stuff — everyone knows how keen they are on limited government power. Stop this man! Expect things to get much worse if Paul polls well in Nevada, which looks possible.

The ironic thing about the way all these conservative-hating “conservatives” have behaved towards Ron Paul is that most of them, who claim to revere Reagan, are exactly in the mold of the Republican media figures who attacked Reagan as a crazy, kooky old guy thirty years ago and pushed Gerald Ford as an “electable” candidate.

It’s amazing how these secular free-speech haters don’t seem to understand that trying to shut down someone else’s free speech really does make them the bad guy:

“Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome’s La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university’s physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition’s verdict against Galileo in 1633…. The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an ‘incredible violation” of the university’s autonomy. Cini said of Benedict’s cancellation: ‘By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'”

Let’s break down the logic here:

1. Pope scheduled to speak.
2. Secular bigots protest scheduled speech and demand its cancellation.
3. Pope cancels speech, as per demand.
4. Secular bigots whine that they’ll be blamed for refusing dialogue. Gee, how could anyone possibly reach that conclusion?

It seems to me that this moronic minority is either being amazingly disingenuous here or truly doesn’t understand the meaning of the term “dialogue”. After all, they have made it very clear that they are not only wholly uninterested in a back-and-forth dialogue, they actually wish to prevent anyone from being permitted to hear a view that might oppose their own. This is a very good example of the authoritarian impulse intrinsic to atheism that I described in the post entitled “Daily TIA talk” earlier today.

Miss Coulter follows NRO’s lead in coming out for Captain Underoos:

The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide…. At worst, Romney will turn out to be a moderate Republican – a high-IQ, articulate, moral, wildly successful, moderate Republican.

I would understand this nominal pragmatism on Ann’s part – understand it, not agree with it – if every poll didn’t show Romney getting utterly destroyed by Clinton, Obama or Edwards. Romney is a terrible candidate. How she can claim that conservatives should clamor for a candidate who promised 20 billion in federal funding to Detroit in a futile attempt to turn back the clock is beyond me.

It seems to me that if one has a position of great personal influence, one use it in service of that which one genuinely believes to be right, not merely expedient. I really don’t see that here, and to be honest, I haven’t seen it in the greater part of the conservative commentariat. There are those who sincerely believe in Mitt Romney, like Hugh Hewitt for example. I find it hard to believe that that’s the case with Ann Coulter, and given her usual contempt for compromise, it’s a little disappointing.

And yet, you understand that this minor disappointment does not lessen in any way the great regard and affection we have for her. As I have said from before the beginning, it really doesn’t matter who or what you endorse this election cycle, the die is already cast.

Here’s two of the latest reviews of The Irrational Atheist to appear, and I am given to understand that one may be forthcoming soon from the nightmare that is Bane. One shudders to think what he could do with the ammunition I have given him… my apologies in advance.

Salt writes: “Funny, adroit, and a metaphorical bombs-away, Day delivers a big one on the “Unholy Trinity”…. This book is not recommended for late night reading, as you’ll be howling here and there and waking the neighborhood dogs.”

Tom E. writes: Very well researched and footnoted. *NOT* a religious book, but one that exposes the fallacies of the new atheist movement of Dawkins, et al.

Tom’s statement about the abolition of religion might be a bit unintentionally misleading here, because while that aspect is theoretically encompassed by one or two of my points, these are historical points not necessarily relevant to most atheism today, Onfray excluded. Indeed, one thing that I stress is the way the authoritarian impulse present in most atheism is not actually tied to anything religious or even anti-religious, but rather stems from the logical consequence of the need to force moral compliance in the absence of any convincing rationale for universal application. “Morality could be theoretically be based on X” != “Anyone will buy into X-based morality”. Thus, the potential threat from this impulse is not merely to religion and the religious, but to the irreligious as well. It’s a much more fundamental problem than most people understand, regardless of their creed. (Daniel Dennett, to his great credit, does grasp this.)

“Thus spake the Most High” may be considered ludicrous by some, but has historically proven to be perfectly sufficent for the great majority of the population; certainly more inherently compelling than “well, how would you feel?” Utilitarian happiness/suffering metrics may be superficially appealing to the shallow thinker, but they fall apart logically and empirically after even a modicum of reflection and/or research.

Regarding Salt’s quixotic Latin, I had best leave that for him to explain.

Surge. Saturday Evening. Soon.

Get that kid a Vikings jersey:

Father arrested for forcing son to wear Green Bay Packers jersey

PORTAGE, Wis. (AP) — Upset that his 7-year-old son wouldn’t wear a Green Bay Packers jersey during the team’s playoff victory Saturday, a man restrained the boy for an hour with tape and taped the jersey onto him.

I’m a bit conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I absolutely understand the father’s negative attitude towards his son’s sports treason. And the idea of arresting someone for forcibly dressing their child, however strangely, is heinous. If duct-tape is a crime, then who isn’t guilty?

On the other hand, I also firmly believe that anyone who voluntarily chooses to wear a Packers jersey SHOULD be locked up for the public safety, as they are obviously mad. Or at the very least, exiled to Wisconsin.

Chad the Elder unflinchingly stands by the colors:

Cheering for a team is not about calculating the odds and going with the winners. It’s about loyalty and eternal hope in the face of constant disappointment.

People occasionally ask me how I can persevere so stoically in the face of constant scorn, derision, mockery and ridicule. They marvel at my ability to shrug off the most scathing attacks with little more than a sardonic smile, and they wonder how I remain so blithely unmoved by criticism, dislike and hate.

I find it hard to understand the question. I am a Vikings fan. There is nothing you can throw at me that could make me feel any worse than I have felt before. I sobbed in 1974. I raged with burning fury in 1975. I cried in 1976. I felt sick in 1987. By 1998, there was nothing left inside but a frozen hollow. In 2000 and 2003, I barely blinked. That which did not break me has made me stronger and harder than you can possibly imagine.

We are cold and bleak, we men of the North. We are made of sorrow, snow and stone.

We are all Bud Grant.

What you think it means. NRO’s editors claim that despite his promises to bring a new Federal public-private partnership to Detroit to revive the auto industry, Mitt Romney is the most conservative “viable” candidate. Meanwhile, just down the page, J.J. Pitney Jr. notes that Romney appears to be the least electable of the “major” Republican candidates. “According to recent trial-heat surveys, Romney would lose to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama by the widest margins of any major Republican candidate.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m very much enjoying the increasing insanity of this election campaign. The Republicans are imploding one after another, Hillary nearly lost to no one and her closest rival is an admitted drug user* who belongs to an African supremacist church. America, how very richly you deserve the government you are going to get! And though our reasons may differ, I find myself in agreement with everyone’s favorite science educator:

I’m feeling a bit like I’m watching a whole country merrily running towards that cliff right now.

The hilarious thing about PZ and company is that they completely fail to understand that they are right there running in the midst of the rest of the lemmings. Huckabee and Hillary are going in exactly the same direction and they’re not the only ones.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with that, we ARE libertarians.

Attention all one-star-rating, non-reading “reviewers”… you may now start your engines:

Digital Cowboy writes: “I read this book in a very short time because I couldn’t let go of it. I had high expectations for this book and Vox managed to exceed them. It was far more humorous than I expected, for one. I’ve always loved his writing style and I particularly enjoy the irreverence. I’ve described it to others as “what most people would call arrogance but as we say in Texas, ‘It ain’t braggin’ if ya done it.'” With this book Vox did it. It’s an irrefutable case that he makes largely because he avoids the silly mistakes most Christians make when responding to atheists – primarily, appealing to authority that they don’t recognize. Vox says in the preface that he will battle them on their terms – their chosen ground of logic and reason – and he does it overwhelmingly and convincingly…. I almost feel sorry for his targets. He’s left them no wiggle room at all.

D. Christensen writes: This is not just a polemic against the New Atheists; the best part is that for each of the subjects he lists some glaring logical and factual errors…. Harris, et al, have really got their credibility on the line now, and they are going to have to respond. If they don’t, that ommission will be just as glaring.

I’m very pleased to see that a certain theme appears to be emerging in the various reviews beyond, “hey, I liked it”. I did not set out to write a Christian apologetic, but rather an entirely secular assault and readers appear to be grasping that. One of the pre-release readers, a fellow BenBella author named Read Mercer Schuchardt, an Assistant Professor of Communication at Wheaton College, had this to say about TIA: “Day’s work is a healthy kick in the head to the comfortably numb. Using their own claims against them, he uses logic, reason, and rhetoric to reveal that atheists are the new fanatics, and that we should all—religious or irreligious— be very wary of their schemes. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that without God, there would be no atheists; Day updates this by showing how atheism itself is an evolutionary dead-end. A provocative, gutsy, and in-your-face book, but eminently enjoyable reading.”

Please note that posting these reviews should not be interpreted as a hint to order the book from Amazon today. It’s Saturday that would be the ideal time to do so if you happen to feel so moved.

By the way, please don’t worry that this blog is going to turn into an all-TIA, all-the-time hair-braiding fest. Yes, there will probably be a fair amount of posts related to it over the next week or two, but if you’re not interested in the subject, don’t worry, there will be even more posts on other, unrelated subjects as well.

UPDATE – Amazon must be policing its reviews and tag associations. I just noticed that TIA is no longer associated with “crap”, “total inanity” and “doughy pantload”. I always thought those associations were interesting considering that the book wasn’t even available yet although I have to admit, I did find the behavior to be most amusing on the part of such a rational, intelligent, and open-minded collection of highly evolved primates.