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PhD Mom writes: I had to laugh when I read the email from someone who couldn’t imagine what a “leftist” education would be. Although I have since recovered, in my elementary, secondary, and most of my college educations, I was the victim of just such a scheme.

For example, in my junior high years, I was taught that the Palestinians were right and Zionism was racism. I was taught that abortion is a right, and “anti-choice” extremists were not only disagreeable, but both stupid and cruel. I was taught that animals are more important than people. In my math class, we once figured the cost of raising a child as opposed to the cost of having an abortion. Every year, when we had debates and individual presentations, the issues of gun control, abortion, prayer in schools, and Palestine were always among the most popular. There was no question which side of the argument would garner the better grade.

In college, I was trained in Marxism, Maoism, and feminism. I was taught a class on sexism, racism, classism and heterosexism in American life by an avowed Wiccan who wore a pentagram around her neck in class. I was taught political economy by a professor who carried a copy of Das Kapital everywhere he went and called it his “Bible.” (Of course, none of my instructors would ever have carried a REAL Bible.)

At long last, God chased me down and changed my mind. I became a Christian just before beginning my PhD dissertation, after many years as a teacher’s pet feminist secularist. Things…changed. My professors were terribly disappointed and lost all respect for me (though eventually they did pass my dissertation which was promptly academically published, despite treating pro-life activists as a legitimate political faction instead of a disease in the body politic).

On the way, however, there was no end to the insults to which I was subjected. For example, I asked my major professor for a letter of reference to apply to teach at a Christian college. He agreed, but told me I shouldn’t need it. “A place like that,” he said, “isn’t looking for excellence.” Really? Suppose I had received the same reply when asking for a reference for a historically black university? Would I have had grounds to sue? You betcha–and this professor would have been the first to say so. But in the rareified air of the academy, only one kind of prejudice doesn’t have an odor to it.

At any rate, I hope now your correspondent understands what a “leftist” education is. It is not a “fair and balanced” (you’ll excuse the expression) view, egalitarianism, or a grounding in justice and equality. It is a form of elitist brianwashing that beats down those who are subject to it, presses its case at every opportunity, and demands adherence to communist catechism in even the smallest of things. And, in the absence of radical internal change, the victim nearly always emerges in the form required for the Democratic party to succeed.

Another poorly-educated, easily-led Christian. And a mother, no less! I wonder how she manages to survive the sexist oppression of her home life. The poor thing.

JH writes: In your latest column, you refer to secularist American politicians as a “secular inquisition.” In using this phrase, you trivialize the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of Christians (and non-Christians). If you were a reader of European history, you would know that Protestants and proto-Protestants suffered appallingly at the hands of the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions. You insult the memory of these martyrs when you compare non-violent advocates of secularism to the fiends of centuries past.

I am, as many of you know, a reader of European history. Which I have read in italiano and Deutsch, as well as English. The purpose of the Spanish Inquisition – which was a government affair instigated at the command of Queen Isabella – was not to persecute non-Christians, it was to ferret out non-Christians – mostly Jews – who were falsely pretending to be Christians in order to violate the King’s proclamation which banned Jews from the kingdom, as well as heretics pretending to be orthodox. It was not a haphazard persecution of imaginary enemies, although like all government programs, it had a tendency to run amok at times.

I once thought much as JH, until I began reading some of the historical documents relating to the Spanish Inquisition. The first thing that struck me was how the rules and procedures were tightly written to protect those being “asked the question”. They could only be tortured twice, by law, and no blood was allowed to be shed. Contrast with this the procedures which are used by modern secular torturers, which are far more savage and used with far less discrimination. Much of what was assumed of the Inquisitions was largely after-the-fact Protestant propaganda – and please keep in mind that I am a Protestant myself, I am no Catholic apologist.

Furthermore, the most recent analyses of the Inquisition estimate around 6,000 executions in 356 years. This pales in comparison to nearly every human tragedy of the past, and is again testimony to the relatively civilized nature of the Inquisition. One can hardly call it a great tragedy when more than twice as many American children are killed on bicycles ever year than perished in the dread flames of the auto-da-fe. I am not defending the Inquisition itself, I do, however, insist on defending the historical record and I stand by my condemnation of the secular inquisition, which poses a far greater threat than the Spanish Inquisition ever did.

I think it is fair to lay at least partial blame for the Molochian holocaust of American abortion at the feet of this secular inquisition; a tragedy which in a single year far exceeds the 356-year toll of the Inquisition. In any case, the secular inquisition – which consists of more than America’s politicians – has only been with us for about thirty years; it has another 326 to go before one can absolve it of innocence in comparison with one of its historical predecessors. As to the Roman, I have not done my due diligence, but I will be glad to address that question once I have.

PZ writes: As a flaming liberal I don’t understand why your side thinks we need government running our religious lives. Is it he place of government to decide if a gay couple can get married? If so, show me where it’s at in the Constitution. Is it the place of government to say gays should go to jail for having consensual sex? I don’t think so. Religion is an excuse to hate, or better put, your version of religion justifies your hate on anyone who doesn’t pander to your religious beliefs. I have a suggestion, grow up.

PZ leaps in by demonstrating that he’s unfamiliar with both my column and the blog, as well as his failure to comprehend what he reads. It seems that in his mind, defending Howard Dean’s suspiciously timed quasi-profession of faith is tantamount to advocating government running the religious lives of the people. As all my regular readers know, I am a libertarian and do not want the government doing anything except defending national borders and property rights. While I have supported the Defense of Marriage Amendment in the past – not that PZ would know – this is only because the state is already integrated into the process. I will withdraw my support of DoMA the moment marriage is returned to the sole purview of the churches. As for religion being an excuse to hate, I have a plethora of hate-filled emails from atheists that disprove this, as do the writings of many a secularist hatemonger such as Lenin. Furthermore, PZ contradicts himself. Howard Dean is pandering to Christians, so therefore I hate him because he isn’t pandering to my religious beliefs? This makes no sense.

I’m thinking you’re one of those religious nuts who has to have YOUR religion stroked or you’re not satisfied. If Dean wasn’t a Christian you’d have another reason to hate him wouldn’t you. I like how so-called Christians use their religions to justify bigotry and hate.

Here PZ equates a failure to support politically with hate. An interesting insight into the unstable mind of the Left. He may like how so-called Christians justify bigotry and hate, but I don’t know what that has to do with my column on Howard Dean, except for PZ’s very broad expansion of the concept of hate. And, of course, Howard Dean IS stroking my religion, so again, PZ reveals his inability to understand either what Howard Dean is doing, why Christians are taking exception to it or what I wrote in defense of his actions.



This statement is a blatant lie; “And having wrapped up the loyalties of the small, but vicious anti-Christian left, Dean knows he now must tack hard to the religious right to have any hope of winning in November. He cannot hope to win the evangelical vote.: I dont have a problem with religions but clearly you think anyone who disagrees with YOU is a “vicious anti-Christian.” Once again, grow up…and stop listening to those whove taught you to hate.

Another howler. Is there an anti-Christian left? Yes, there certainly is. Is it numerically large? Not according to any poll I’ve ever seen. Is it vicious? Yes, one need merely peruse its writings. Who do these people most strongly support in the Democratic primary? Howard Dean. Is Howard Dean tacking to the religious right? He has announced his intention to do so in the Boston Globe. Can he win the evangelical vote? No, not a single political expert believes he can. Not a single untruth, much less a blatant lie, in my statement. There are many, many people who disagree with me, Republicans and Democrats alike, for I am neither. Considering that I stated the number of vicious anti-Christians is small, how is it remotely conceivable to state that I think anyone who disagrees with me belongs to that group?

As to the repeated instruction to “grow up”, these, combined with the baseless and irrational assertions made, demonstrate that PZ is engaging in some powerful emotional projection. He would do well to heed his own advice.

An adult knows people have opposing points of views and doesn’t label everyone in a group as being anti-anything. When you attack, expect to be attacked back. If you can’t take it, stop attacking or stop writing.

Again, PZ engages in projection, while making me wonder how he would choose to label a group that consists solely of those who virulently oppose something in every way. Would no adult label Greenpeace anti-pollution? Just a silly, silly assertion. I never said all Dean supporters fell into the anti-Christian category, only that those individuals who do fall into that group are strong Dean supporters. And once more, PZ reveals his total lack of familiarity with me, my column and my blog, as I can state with reasonable assurance that there is no nationally syndicated columnist who responds publicly to a higher percentage of his critical mail than I do.

Of course, as PZ has now learned, there’s a reason why my hate mail has dropped 90 percent since I instituted the Mailbox. Write whatever you want – attack me however you like – there’s a reasonable chance I’ll publish it. And it’s possible that you might even come off well.

But your odds, well, they’re not so good.

I spotted this on Julian Sanchez’s blog, via an Instapundit link:

I think you’re giving too much credit to religious folks. For one, this whole religious-tactic is only being discussed within the blogsphere – it hasn’t made it’s way into the mainstream yet. Hell, I doubt most Southern churchgoers evey know who Dean is… Consider the demographic Dean’s trying to target: White, conservative, religious Southerners… it’s not exactly a group that’s known for it’s smarts.

On the lower end of this group’s income spectrum you’ve actually got people who vote Republican when it runs counter to everything they actually need (welfare, aid, education) from an elected official. This was Dean’s whole point with the confederate flag comment – that he wants to reach out and grab a group who vote with their bibles and not their brains… based upon just a few issues. If he can sway them it will be a windfall.

Yes, as the Washington Post famously reported, we evangelicals are poorly educated and easily led. I look forward to hearing how this joker – Will, by name – plans to explain it after these poor ignorant folk too stupid to see that they’re being used see through Mr. Dean’s transparent ruse and fail to deliver him a single Southern state in the general election. Assuming, of course, that this doesn’t blow up so badly in his face that he doesn’t make it that far. Don’t get me wrong, Dean has the right idea if he wants to have any chance of winning, it’s just that his execution is appallingly clumsy.

The first irony is that there are quite possibly more evangelical bloggers than there are arrogant left-wing cretins like Will. Which is why it is being discussed in the blogosphere. One of my favorite studies a few years back showed that members of the Christian Coalition were significantly more likely to own computers and modems than the average American. Let them keep underestimating us; they’ve been doing it since the days of Nero.

Kevin McCullough invited me to talk with him about Tolkien on his radio show this afternoon. It was fun, although radio is an annoyingly short-term medium that prevents one from going into any reasonable detail. He did ask me one tough question, though: who is the hero of The Lord of the Rings. I went with Frodo, although I think you can make a reasonable case for Aragorn. I tend to agree with those who think Peter Jackson went just a little overboard with the noble Sam.

One aspect that I find interesting is that Tolkien creates three, not one, Christ-figures. Frodo is the Lamb, who must shoulder the burden. Gandalf is the Savior Risen. And Aragorn, of course, is the King Returning back to claim his throne. The trilogy may have been accidental, but I don’t think this three-in-one is, do you?

I would have mentioned that, but we ran out of time. Sorry, Kevin. Maybe we can talk about CS Lewis next time?

CW writes: I enjoyed your article this morning on WND. I had one question, though. You quoted from the Bible a statement that Paul made. Can you tell me where that statement can be found?

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I should point out that the reason this column took longer to write than normal was that I couldn’t find the verse – I had to skim everything from Acts onward to find it. But sure enough, it was there. Philippians 1:15-18.

Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News writes in Touchstone magazine:

“The bias of the news media against religious conservatives is by this point a dog-bites-man story of the first degree. Everybody knows that pro-life marchers and churches who resist gay “marriage” aren’t going to get a fair shake from the newspaper, and we’ve gotten used to that. But the importance of this phenomenon is both broader and deeper than individual stories. In a media-driven society, the press sets the terms of public debate, and in so doing establishes the narrative that will inescapably influence the way society thinks about and acts on issues and challenges.

Anti-religious media bias has profound implications for the future of American politics, or so say social scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio in “Our Secularist Democratic Party,” an important article published in a recent issue of The Public Interest. The Baruch College researchers say that the parochialism of journalists is blinding them to one of the biggest stories in American politics: how the Democratic Party has become a stronghold of fervent secularists, and how secularism “is just as powerful a determinant of social attitudes and voting behavior as is a religiously traditional outlook.”

Among political journalists, the dominant paradigm—what you might call the “official story”—holds that religious conservatives bullied their way onto the American political scene with the election of Ronald Reagan, and rudely brought into the political arena the culture war that had been raging since the 1960s. That’s exactly wrong, say the authors, who attribute the “true origins of this conflict” to “the increased prominence of secularists within the Democratic Party, and the party’s resulting antagonism toward traditional values.”

Until relatively recently, both major parties were of similar mind on issues of personal morality. Then came the 1972 Democratic Convention, at which secularists—defined as agnostics, atheists, and those who seldom or never attend religious services—seized control of the party and nominated George McGovern. Prior to that year, neither party had many secularists among its delegates. According to a comprehensive study of survey data from the Democratic delegates, the party was badly split between religious and moral traditionalists on one side, and secularists on the other. They fought over moral issues: abortion, women’s rights, homosexuality, the traditional family. What the authors call a “secularist putsch” triumphed, giving us what Richard Nixon mocked as the party of “acid, amnesty, and abortion,” and instigating—with help from the Supreme Court on January 22, 1973—the long march of religious and moral conservatives to the GOP, which became the party of traditionalists by default. “What was first an intra-party culture war among Democratic elites became by the 1980s an inter-party culture war.”

Survey data from the 1992 national conventions show how thoroughly polarized the parties had by that time become around religious orientation. Only 20 percent of white Democratic delegates (N.B., this secular-religious antagonism is a white voter phenomenon, the authors say) went to religious services at least once a month, while over three times that number of white Republican delegates did. A fascinating set of statistics emerged when questioners polled each party’s delegates on their views of various subgroups among the other party’s activists. Both Democrats and Republicans were “significantly more negative toward groups associated with the newer religious and cultural division in the electorate than toward groups associated with older political cleavages based on class, race, ethnicity, party or ideology.” That is, Republican delegates felt much warmer toward union leaders, mainline liberals, blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats than toward feminists, environmentalists, and pro-abortion activists. For their part, the Democrats were more favorably disposed to big-business types, the rich, political conservatives and Republicans than toward pro-lifers and conservative Christians. Of the 18 groups covered by the survey, Christian fundamentalists came in as the most despised, with over half the Democratic delegates giving them the absolute minimum score possible. Put another way, Republican delegates thought more highly of those who favor the legalized killing of unborn children than their Democratic counterparts thought of people who believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture.”

For the entire article, read The Godless Party.

BG writes: I read your articles from time to time. I feel they are above the average individual. Do you feel that your articles are directed to a certain person, or just for whoever stumbles upon them? I myself have read only a few, and think you are one of the best writers I have ever heard of…. Surely you must have a plan, or have been given a call. I truly hope you don’t waste your talents picking apart the evil of the left while trying to show off your obviously elevated writing intellect. I’m not slamming you at all. I wish there were more people like you, a long time ago there were.

What makes this a difficult question to answer is that the truth is rather prosaic. I write because that’s what I do. I was writing almost every day back when no one ever read anything I’d written, and were I ever to lose my various publication outlets, I would continue to write in much the same manner that I do now.

It is possible that my writing is at times too elevated. Certainly, UPS has been told this by editors at some of America’s largest newspapers and I have been encouraged by numerous people, including members of my own family, to make it more accessible. I even made an attempt at this – rewriting my WND column for the syndicate using less complex sentences – but it was too much work to be worth the effort. This isn’t an artistic arrogance thing or anything like that, it’s just that one writes how one happens to write – which is usually not the way one speaks, by the way. One thing I have noticed is that there is a rhythmic component to my prose that only becomes noticeable when an editor modifies a word or two and throws the pattern off – often the changes are quite gramatically correct, but I find them very jarring.

For whom am I writing? Those who love truth and freedom. Those who are open to new ideas. Those who are willing to read and weigh the evidence before dismissing what is written. I’m not particularly interested in preaching to the choir nor in earnestly trying to convince those who think differently than I do – I’m well aware that most people think very differently, and that’s been the case for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t bother me in the least.

On a daily and weekly basis, I simply write about what interests me and is at least vaguely related to the topics of the day. I don’t have a plan, and I don’t write to show off. My friends are often amused by the assumptions made by people who believe they know much about me, much less understand me. Writing is my amusement, not my work, and I consider myself truly fortunate to have achieved a small measure of success at something I very much enjoy. This is why you will probably never see me running from news show to news show, trying to build my career and literary fame by becoming a talking head. It’s not of zero interest to me, but my interest level in it is just slightly ahead of the notion of acquiring a coaching license and becoming a professional soccer coach. I probably won’t do either.

Is that crazy? Perhaps, by modern standards. But I am happy and I am content, which in this age of envy, dissatisfaction and rage, is more than many can honestly say.

13:06 ARI – TD, STEVE BUSH 2 YD PASS FROM JOSH MCCOWN (TWO-POINT PASS CONVERSION FAILED)

Drive:15 plays, 60 yards in 4:54

Key Plays: McCown 6-yard pass to Boldin on 4th-and-6 to midfield; McCown 15-yard pass to B Johnson to Minnesota 35; McCown 37-yard pass to Poole on 3rd-and-13 to Minnesota 11; MINNESOTA 17-12

15:00 ARI – TD, NATHAN POOLE 28 YD PASS FROM JOSH MCCOWN (TWO-POINT CONVERSION FAILED)

Drive:6 plays, 61 yards in 1:54

Key Plays: D Anderson recovery of onside kick at Arizona 39; 30-yard pass interference penalty on Vikings’ Walker to Minnesota 31; McCown 13-yard pass to Poole to Minnesota 13; ARIZONA 18-17

How do you let this happen? How? And how do you lose to Arizona, San Diego, Oakland AND New York this year? That’s four of Dr Z’s bottom five in his power rankings for the last week of the season! My mother could throw for 200 and 2 against Arizona’s secondary. Who are Steve Bush and Nathan Poole?

I hate our defense. And I’m not too fond of the offense or the special teams right now.

Skol Vikings.

UPDATE: “Fifty-one teams have started 6-0 or better, and only three failed to make the playoffs: 1963 Browns, 1978 Redskins and the 2003 Vikings.” – Sports Illustrated

Tim Graham writes in NRO’s Corner: Al Franken’s boast in his book that he challenged Rich Lowry to a fistfight gains a little bit of perspective in today’s Washington Post magazine. Humor columnist Gene Weingarten wanted to parody a moment of right-left civility, but guess who was too “busy” to even get in an e-mail sandbox with one of his hate objects, the Ann Coulter doll:

“I decided to invite an arch-liberal and an arch-conservative to meet in this column and constructively discuss their differences, with me as moderator. I wanted the liberal to be Al Franken, the author of the best-selling Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and the conservative to be Ann Coulter, author of the best-selling Traitor: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Ann agreed right away. But Al begged off, saying he was too ‘busy,’ even for a worthy cause like helping combat the plague of name-calling. What a milksoppy, pantywaist, jellyfish, weasel-out wuss he turned out to be.” Weingarten reports that Michael Kinsley and Molly Ivins also rejected the challenge. So Gene and Ann have a typically Weingartenesque exchange on toilet paper and the merits of dogs vs. cats.

I still haven’t heard back from Al about my challenge. So, obviously he’s just as much of a coward as he claims Rich Lowry to be. I have to admit, I’d never considered making the same offer to Mr. Kinsley or Ms Ivins – I imagine Molly probably packs an okay punch, but she’s surely about as quick as molasses. I am, of course, far too much of a elite university-neutered, gender bias-free, sensitive New Age 90’s male to harbor any compunction about beating down a woman, even one who is old, fat and slow. We’re all equal, right?