Vox Popoli

Stanley Kurtz writes on NRO:

According to Harper’s, conservative Christians are making “war on America.” Can you imagine the reaction to a cover story about a “war on America” by blacks, gays, Hispanics, or Jews? Then there’s Frank Rich’s April 24 New York Times op-ed comparing conservative Christians to George Wallace, segregationists, and lynch mobs….

Conservative Christians have good reason to fear cultural ostracism. The mere expression of their core religious views is being legislated against. The courts have banned traditional morality as a basis for law and have turned instead to secular Europe for guidance. Traditional Christians can’t even set up a college in New York City. And now Harper’s is calling them evil fascists.

It is a common tactic, when one is engaged in offensive warfare, to proclaim that one is merely acting in defense against a dangerous threat. This threat is almost always manufactured, and yet it has been used successfully on many occasions, by the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany and even the United States.

That is the only possible way to interpret this Harper’s article, as an anti-christian secularist Sudentenland. It is not Christianity that is encroaching on America, rather, it is modern secularism attempting to destroy the last strongholds of Christianity in America.

They are foolish to do so, of course, because secularism, like socialism, is a negative, parasitical force which cannot live without a positive host on which to feed off and survive.

What a scary thought. Some prominent Republicans are actually dumb enough to believe that the economy is in decent shape:

Aside from energy, there has been no increase in inflation for at least three years. Take out energy, and CPI inflation over the past 12 months was just 2.4 percent — lower than the 2.5 percent average of 1998-2002. Yet that 2.4 percent rate still overstates inflation, as the Boskin Commission explained in 1996….

Other indicators of incipient inflation are benign. The price of gold, a classic hedge against inflation, is the same as a year ago.

Right, 12.5 percent yearly increases in housing prices is simply due to an increase in their inherent value, right? This guy is such a bozo that he doesn’t even realize that the price of gold is not the same as a year ago, it is 9.19 percent higher.

No inflation, 9 percent inflation, what’s the difference, right? Look, I realize that the mere fact of having a Republican President, House, Senate and Supreme Court makes some people believe that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, but this joker makes the strumpets in the financial media look downright responsible.

The New York Post reports on hands-on sex education:

Three female teachers busted for allegedly molesting students this week shocked the city — but not experts, who say one in 10 students will be sexually abused by an educator. And the problem in New York City appears to be surging, with the number of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students projected to double this year compared to last, reports from Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon show….

Exposing these offenders has never been a priority for the school system.

Shakeshaft analyzed 225 cases of teacher sexual abuse in New York in 1994 in which all of the staffers had admitted they committed the crime. None of the perpetrators was reported to police or school investigators, and only 1 percent lost their license to teach.

And Shakeshaft said Mayor Bloomberg’s comment that the latest spate of teacher student sexual incidents is “business as usual” hinders child advocates’ push for better training and reporting.

At least these kids are getting prepared for the real world, where they’ll be fully prepared to go down on their boss when he demands it.

Soup illustrates a failure to grasp basic addition:

“a vote for [anyone but the Republican candidate] is really a vote for [the Democratic candidate]” is revived.”

This is a fine tactic since it’s certifiably true. Your next president will be a Republican or a Democrat. Get used to it.

Since Soup appears to have missed last October’s math lesson, we’ll repeat it.

Candidate D has 99 votes.
Candidate R has 99 votes.

The next voter votes for candidate Z. How many votes does Candidate D have?

a) 99
b) 100
c) what?
d) fiver

If you answered (a), you are correct. If you answered (b), you are likely a National Democrat. If you answered (c), you are likely a Democrat. If you answered d), you are probably a rabbit.

The only thing certifiable about Soup’s statement is that it is mathematically crazy. And there is no error more obvious than assuming that present trends will continue indefinitely. The only thing that is certain is that one day, the next president will not be a Republican or Democrat.

Even Bane has finally given up on the National Democrats:

My Tipping Moment… Despite all of the good GW has done, including Iraq and Afghanistan, all the above bullshit, coupled with his insane and calculated complicity in the assault on our borders (and thusly on you and I) I can no longer support him.

Sadly, the good he has done, has usually been forced by coercion, and under duress and compromise.

He is evil, his family is evil, and any woman or child who would stand for and with him is evil.

Thus, the people he has surrounded himself with are evil, and not to be trusted. I dearly love and miss John Ashcroft, and he got out just in time.

I will not support any other Republican who has GW’s taint on them in any way. I will actively vote against them, or just not vote, should their alternative be equally repugnant to me.

I am going to change my Republican registration to Independent, and tell them why they have lost the five votes I directly control.

I will actively work, here and elsewhere, to undermine this Presidency in any way I can.

Yeah, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I hope every former Three Monkey will try to keep their disgust and disenchantment in mind in 2008, when the hypnotic mantra of “a vote for [anyone but the Republican candidate] is really a vote for [the Democratic candidate]” is revived.

The NYT considers a genuine Conservative meltdown:

At a time when American conservatives are ascendant, the British Conservative Party is adrift, troubled by internal feuding, casting about for a defining theme and struggling to defeat a relatively unpopular incumbent, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an election nine days away.

Most polls and analysts say the Conservative Party, led by Michael Howard, is heading for a historic third consecutive defeat against Labor on May 5. This prospect is all the more noteworthy given how vulnerable Mr. Blair is on issues of trust and leadership after his insistent assertions that prohibited weapons would be found in Iraq in the American-led war that he so strongly supported and that remains unpopular in Britain.

Putting aside the ridiculous idea that conservatives – as opposed to Republicans – are ascendant, the Conservative party’s problems seem likely foreshadow the Republican Party’s problems in the coming decade, because what is killing the Tories is their allegience of their politicians to the European Union. While there is a Euroskeptical majority in England, both major parties as well as the Liberal Democrats are officially EU-enthusiasts, leaving the majorit with no one to support on the issue except the marginal parties dismissed by the media as neo-nazi right-wing extremists.

Sound familiar? Because once the American Union is unveiled, this is precisely where the Republican party is likely to find itself, especially if a popular Democrat willing to triangulate to the center and co-opt Republican cultural issues is elected in 2008.

When considering the future, most people tend to extrapolate current conditions ad infinitum, which is why most people lose money in the stock markets. The point of maximum apparent power is the very turning point at which that power begins to recede, for after Margaret Thatcher’s economic revival and a victorious war, who would have thought to find the Conservative Party in such complete disarray only eight years later?

but VD runs the show.* Two more tendrils reach out into the cold, cruel realm of the Blogosphere with the hirsute circus of ZZ’s Big Top

and a card-carrying member of VP’s left-wing varsity, the chunder from Down Under, Sharpening Stones, Walking on Coals.

*I estimate the chances of anyone but Jaime hitting that without resorting to a search engine at approximately a Googleplex to one.

craigp spends too much time under the blow dryer:

Like Bill O’reilly Vox feels that it is somehow a good thing that the left emails him.

That is fine

BUt…

if that is the case, if like Bill Oreilly, Vox feels that he is more “fair and balanced” becuase he has an audeicen from both the left and the right. Vox cannot then attack Delay and any republicans for not coming out with more ferocity agaiinst the left, many of whom are apparently Vox’s email buddies.

It is true that I have friends across the political spectrum. It is also true that I have friendly relationships with individuals in the media that many people would probably find surprising, including editors at major newspapers, left-wing columnists and even NPR reporters. Many of them enjoy my writing style and take-no-prisoners approach even though they believe my ideology is frighteningly alien.

But unlike Bill O’Reilly, my commentary is not constrained by these relationships because I am not building a media career and because I am not likely to waste much time with anyone who is incapable of understanding the difference between an attack on an idea to which they subscribe and a personal attack. And unlike most people, my relationships are not constrained by my ideology because I am more rationally than emotionally attached to it.

Most leftists are truly misguided. They are blind and almost always fail to follow the logic of their beliefs to the inevitable end. Thus, they are often horrified when the evils that those more clear-eyed predict come to pass. This is why I stated even before George Delano’s reelection that I felt a modicum of pity for craigp and other Three Monkey Republicans, because I was pretty sure that by the end of President Bush’s second term, their faith in the Republican party would be shaken, if not shattered entirely.

Shall I have nothing to do with my many Republican friends as well, because they are complicit in destroying the nation, repeatedly violating the Constitution and building the neo-socialist American Union? I don’t think so. Nor do I disown my more openly socialist friends simply because they are incapable of understanding even the most basic applications of the Law of Supply and Demand. You can like someone without respecting their ability to think clearly… just ask any engineer.

Finally, I have never made any claim of being fair and balanced. And my criticism of cowardly Republicans was not directed at Tom DeLay, who is a big boy and can defend himself, but at Republicans like Rich Lowry, who prefer to cry about the left-wing media’s name-calling in the futile hope that they’ll stop instead of forcing them to knock it off by hitting back harder.

From Yahoo:

For a growing number of students, the easiest way to make a couple of hundred dollars has nothing to do with chores or after-school jobs, and everything to do with informing on classmates.

Tragedies like last month’s deadly shooting at a Red Lake, Minn., school have prompted more schools to offer cash and other prizes — including pizza and premium parking spots — to students who report classmates who carry guns, drugs or alcohol, commit vandalism or otherwise break school rules.

Everyone considers me a political pessimist, and yet even my blacker than black shades can’t completely foresee the myriad of ways in which the nation is being vivisected. You’d think state spies and internal travel documents would be as unacceptably unamerican as the Holocaust combined with the mythologized form of the Spanish Inquisition, and yet the American people are being prepared for them today.

Nor does it escape my notice that, again, the public schools are the vehicle through which this schoolyard Stasi is being trained. The likely tattlers will be noted, hired, and continue their ways, only they’ll be spying on neighbors for the IRS, potsmokers for the DEA and Christians for whatever the Department of Religious Persecution will be called.

I’m beginning to hope that plans for US-Mexican integration fall through… for the Mexicans’ sake.

Another sad, socially challenged individual thinks women get turned on by voting:

Yeah … you’re really persuading people with your half-assed immature polemics preached to the choir there, Vox. I’m sure you get all the girls with that haircut. Nothing turns a girl on like telling her she shouldn’t vote.

I have to be honest, when I first saw this exchange, I was tempted to tell Orac to ignore this moron. But then I decided, screw it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about free speech, but do we really have to suffer fools like this by taking the polite high road? I, for one, have decided to take a stand by describing how unbelievably stupid this sort of trash-talk is. If they have the freedom to criticize others for criticizing them, then I should well have the right to criticize him as well.

In that spirit, I’d like to leave this message for Vox Day: You can rant and justify and justify it all you want, the fact is you will never be a journalist. You will never have the intelligence, ethics, and above all veracity to make it as anything more than vile bile-spewing columnist in a fringe ultra-religious right-wing website, so enjoy this moment because this is as good as it’s ever going to get for you.

I certainly hope I’ll never be a journalist, because I’d have to take a serious paycut. And given that I have the respect of both right- and left-wing journalists who exchange email with me on a regular basis, I’m not exactly concerned about the advice of a low-wattage slug on a Snickers-and-Pepsi diet on how to score chicks.

You see, mon cher Natalie, as you should know, women like the following things, in order: 1) Fame. 2) Power. 3) Money. 4) Looks. 5) Charm. You’ll note that politically correct opinions are nowhere on the list. I could walk into Saint Kate’s, give a speech on how women should not be allowed to vote and exit with a fistful of phone numbers from starry-eyed liberal women, although the lovely Spacebunny is unlikely to grant me permission to do so simply to prove a point.

If WorldNetDaily is fringe, then what does that make Salon? WND has far more readers and, interestingly enough, doesn’t go bankrupt every six months. And when has any left-liberal, anywhere, EVER taken the high road. I’ve got hundreds of emails proving rather conclusively that they don’t.

So, my dear Atkins candidate, go hit the weight room. Go on a few dates. Learn how to interact with worthwhile women, not the ugly, incipient lesbian fag-hags that inhabit collegiate activist circles. Then, get back to me and tell me where you went so horribly wrong.