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Posted on 06/21/2006 9:17:55 AM PDT by RonDog
MARK STEYN MARK STEYN Ann Coulter's new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism is a rollicking read very tightly reasoned and hard to argue with. After all, the progressive mind regards it as backward and primitive to let religion determine every aspect of your life, but takes it as advanced and enlightened to have the state determine every aspect of your life. Lest you doubt the left's pieties are now a religion, try this experiment: go up to an environmental activist and say "Hey, how about that ozone hole closing up?" or "Wow! The global warming peaked in 1998 and it's been getting cooler for almost a decade. Isn't that great?" and then look at the faces. As with all millenarian doomsday cults, good news is a bummer. But nobody's talking too much about the finer points of Miss Coulter's argument. Instead, everyone -- from Hillary Rodham Clinton down -- is going bananas about a couple of paragraphs on page 103 and 112 in which the author savages the 9/11 widows. Not all of them. Just the quartet led by Kristen Breitweiser and known as "the Jersey Girls." These four widows have been regular fixtures in the New York TV studios since they first emerged to complain that the average $1.6 million-per-family compensation was insufficient. The 9/11 commission, in all its ghastly second-guessing showboating, was largely their project. As Miss Coulter writes: "These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. The whole nation was wounded, all of our lives reduced. But they believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process. These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." And at that point Senator Clinton jumped in to denounce the incendiary blond commentatrix as (dread word) "mean-spirited." Maybe so. But in 2004, the Jersey Girls publicly endorsed John Kerry's campaign for president: they inserted themselves into the political arena and chose sides. That being so, to demand that they be insulated from the normal rough 'n' tumble of partisan politics merely because of their biography seems absurd. There are any number of 9/11 widows. A few are big George W. Bush supporters, many are apolitical. I was honoured to receive an email the other day from Deena Gilbey, a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center and remained in the building to help evacuate his colleagues. A few days later, U.S. Immigration sent Mrs. Gilbey a letter informing her that, as she was now a widow, her residence status had changed and they were enclosing a deportation order. Having legally admitted to the country the men who killed her husband, the U.S. government's first act after having enabled his murder is to further traumatize the bereaved. The heartless brain-dead bonehead penpusher who sent out that letter is far more "mean-spirited" than Miss Coulter at full throttle. Yet Mrs. Gilbey isn't courted by the TV bookers the way the Jersey Girls are. Hundreds of soldiers' moms believe their sons died in a noble and just cause in Iraq, but it's Cindy Sheehan, who calls Bush "the biggest terrorist in the world," who gets speaking engagements across America, Canada, Britain, Europe and Australia. When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi winds up pushing up daisy cutters, the media don't go to Paul Bigley, who rejoiced that the man who decapitated his brother would now "rot in hell," nor the splendid Aussie Douglas Wood, who called his kidnappers "arseholes," nor his fellow hostage Ulf Hjertstrom, a Swede who's invested 50,000 bucks or so in trying to track down the men who kidnapped him and visit a little reciprocal justice on them. No, instead, the media rush to get the reaction of Michael Berg, who thinks Bush is "the real terrorist" rather than the man who beheaded his son. But it wasn't until Ann Coulter pointed it out that you realize how heavily the Democratic party is invested in irreproachable biography. For example, John Kerry's pretzel-twist of a war straddle in the 2004 campaign relied mainly on former senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from a Vietnam grenade accident whom the campaign dispatched to stake out Bush's Crawford ranch that summer. Maybe he's still down there. It's gotten kinda crowded on the perimeter since then, what with Cindy Sheehan et al. But the idea is that you can't attack what Max Cleland says about war because, after all, you've got most of your arms and legs and he hasn't. This would normally be regarded as the unworthy tactic of snake-oil-peddling shyster evangelists and, indeed, the Dems eventually scored their perfect Elmer Gantry moment. In 2004, in the gym of Newton High School in Iowa, Senator John Edwards skipped the dreary Kerry-as-foreign-policy-genius pitch and cut straight to the Second Coming. "We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases . . . When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." Mr. Reeve had died the previous weekend, but he wouldn't have had Kerry and Edwards been in the White House. Read his lips: no new crutches. The healing balm of the Massachusetts Messiah will bring the crippled and stricken to their feet, which is more than Kerry's speeches ever do for the able-bodied. As the author remarks, "If one wanted to cure the lame, one could reasonably start with John Edwards." "What crackpot argument can't be immunized by the Left's invocation of infallibility based on personal experience?" wonders Miss Coulter of Cleland, Sheehan, the Jersey Girls and Co. "If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we're allowed to respond to?" Now that's a point worth making. As it is, thanks to Coulter cracks like "Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy," even chaps on the right are doing the more-in-sorrow shtick and saying that they've been making the same basic argument as Ann and it's such a shame she had to go too far with her cheap shots because that's discredited the entire argument, etc. The trouble with this line is that hardly anyone was objecting to the professional widow routine pre-Coulter. Well, that's not strictly true. Yours truly objected. After the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, I wrote: "The first reaction of the news shows to the verdict was to book some relative of the 9/11 families and ask whether they were satisfied with the result, as if the prosecution of the war on terror is some kind of national-security Megan's Law on which they have inviolable proprietorial rights. Sorry, but that's not what happened that Tuesday morning. The thousands who died were not targeted as individuals: they were killed because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to murder Mrs. Smith. . . It's not about 'closure' for the victims; it's about victory for the nation." But nobody paid the slightest heed to this line. For all the impact my column had, I might as well have done house calls. Then Coulter comes in and yuks it up with the Playboy-spread gags, and suddenly the Jersey Girls only want to do the super-extra-fluffy puffball interviews. So two paragraphs in Ann Coulter's book have succeeded in repositioning these ladies: they may still be effective Democrat hackettes, but I think TV shows will have a harder time passing them off as non-partisan representatives of the 9/11 dead. So, on balance, hooray for Miss Coulter. If I were to go all sanctimonious and priggish, I might add that, in rendering their "human shield" strategy more problematic, she may be doing Democrats a favour. There's no evidence the American people fall for this shtick: in 2002, the party's star Senate candidates all ran on biography -- Max Cleland, Jean Carnahan (the widow of a deceased governor), and Walter Mondale (the old lion pressed into service after Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash). All lost. Using "messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to" doesn't solve the Democrats' biggest problem: their message. The Dems, says the author, have "become the 'Lifetime' TV network of political parties." But, except within the Democrat-media self-reinforcing cocoon, it's not that popular. A political party with a statistically improbable reliance on the bereaved shouldn't be surprised that it spends a lot of time in mourning -- especially on Wednesday mornings every other November. To comment, email letters@macleans.ca
Ann Coulter: America's fiery, blond commentatrix
June 21, 2006 One crack about 9/11 widows and the author of Godless loses her audience. Too bad.
Copyright by Rogers Media Inc.
May not be reprinted or republished without permission.
This story can be found at:
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/article.jsp?content=20060626_129699_129699
no, but nice strawman. I have no ill will towards the faithful. I do, however, have a well-justified distrust of creationist proponents. The two do not equate.
all you need to do is define your requirements concretely.
I do not require you to accept evolution, but I do require you to concretely state the number of examples of Coulter's errors and the degree of refutation which will force you to admit that she has in fact erred.
The information I sent along to Chances Are has roughly ten examples of Coulter's errors, all from a span of a mere three pages of "Godless". It has significant rebuttal of her assertions, including corrections of fact, presentation, and citation/source.
Now, AGAIN:
Is the number OF ERRORS sufficient for you?
If you find the refutation OF THOSE ERRORS compelling, will you be man enough to publicly admit it?
If you find the refutation OF THOSE ERRORS insufficient, will you CONCRETELY explain EXACTLY what flaws you find in them?
In sum: DO you have the spine I'd expect of a conservative, or instead, grotesquely like the "Bush LIED!!!" crowd, do you NOT?
Once again, for the umteenth time, the choice is and ever has been entirely yours to make.
SO MAKE IT.
no, you quote a statement of mine that there is no COMPLETE record of evidence, not that there is no evidence at all.
try again.
Defining the meaning of "complete" will take forever. You win!
in this context:
a COMPLETE record of life containing at least one example of each organism in chronological sequence during the 10-40 million year explosion.
that certainly didn't take "forever"
Where is it?
Nowhere to be found.
Why?
Because he isn't man enough to put his work out in the public domain for open criticism--as did the object of his angst, Ann Coulter.
Why don't I just take his stupid pledge?
Why should I? I haven't put any requirements on him in this debate, why should I be the only one constrained. He goes into the debate with a pledge of capitulation from me... where's his? Frankly, I think his "belief system" is every bit open for scrutiny as is mine. I tire of explaining the same things over and over as I'm sure he does... that's life. He might be even surprised at the debate (since he keeps ascribing attributes to someone he knows nearly nothing about).
Also, I want him to post it here not in my FReepmail box.
Does EVERYONE have to take the pledge before it can see the light of day?
Either...
No. Then why is it just me?
or
Yes... Then we'll never see it (as I suspect is the goal).
If we are to debate, the terms of that debate must be defined by all participants exactly, precisely, and agreed to by all. Only then can the emerging debate be of any consequence.
This has nothing to do with throwing down the gauntlet and/or picking it up. It's the terms that are elemental. I've been in debates where the 2 sides have been using apples and oranges for debating terms, and the outcome is predictable - utter chaos and nothing of import brought to the table.
If we do this, we have to do it right.
Now, as to the URL in question, it is a straightforward attempt at addressing some of the claims in Coulter's book. On this site, the topic in question revolves around the peppered moth section of "Godless". The effort is honest and quite good, but still demonstrative of polemics not unknown to comparable sites.
The poster in question on this particular URL is an Aussie, and a whiff of anti-Conservatism can be discerned.
There is a comments section that follows, and the vitriol is at least the equal of what sometimes appears on this board.
As I've cautioned the King, I have not read Ms. Coulter's book yet, so I am not in a position yet to authoritatively comment on what King Prout offers.
However, he has told me that a more extensive rebuttal is in the works, and perhaps by that time I'll have read the book myself.
I thank King Prout for engaging me in this, and the research he has expended on my behalf. It's something I wouldn't have done on my own, so I am grateful.
As per his request, I will not release the result of his efforts until he deems it appropriate.
As for me, I'd really rather, at this point, just sit back and enjoy the show as it might unfold. I hope that's OK with you, Prout?
CA....
You say scientists deal in evidence.
You say there is not Complete Evidence of the missing links, so you and scientists must have Some Evidence from the millenia in question.
Can you share a bit of that Evidence with us?
We, who have stayed with this thread are really trying to understand your evidence upon which you base your position that Ann Coulter's remarks in "Godless" are wrong.
Ah. Are you dead certain that is your position?
s'ok. honesty and integrity go a very long way with me.
Have you ever considered that sometimes it's the terms themselves that are at issue? I won't concede the argument before it even begins.
try to be honest: You will not commit to concede the debate if the requirements YOU set are met.
That you have thus far consistently refused to so commit suggests that you realise, a priori, that you WILL HAVE TO concede the debate.
It should be obvious to even the casual observer of this thread that you have no interest in honest discussion. You simply want to be a verbal bully. I enjoy a good debate and admit when I'm wrong. I don't require prior agreements and contracts to carry on a conversation. Those that do... well, let's just say I'm not impressed.
Why don't you try to be honest: you're a posting black hole. Ideas might go in... but they'll never be back.
I'm not bothering with you anymore. I truly was interested in what you have. I've lost even that level of interest.
there's no debate, at present, because YOU WILL NOT STATE THE REQUIREMENTS I MUST SATISFY, NOR AGREE TO CONCEDE THE DAEBATE IF I SUCCEED IN MEETING YOUR REQUIREMENTS.
once again, for what appears to be a succession of infinite length: THE CHOICE IS ENTIRELY YOURS.
Placemarker
Yes, that was the very point of those 2 paragraphs. I stated that it's the terms being defined that is elemental to all debates, not just this one.
Actually, in my estimation, in doing battle with the Left in the Culture Wars, this point is essential to our success. The point is, The Left cannot be allowed to define the terms of a given debate in an uncontested manner! If they define the terms of the debate, they ipso facto define it's scope.
We would do well to remember this.
And remember, you don't have to concede a thing going in to a debate!
CA....
Good Luck with that!
ROTFLMAO!!!
Sure. Figured that out long ago. Here are some terms as scientists, as opposed to laymen, might use them.
Definitions (from a google search, with additions from this thread):
Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses." Addendum: "Theories do not grow up to be laws. Theories explain laws." (Courtesy of VadeRetro.)
Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]
When a scientific theory has a long history of being supported by verifiable evidence, it is appropriate to speak about "acceptance" of (not "belief" in) the theory; or we can say that we have "confidence" (not "faith") in the theory. It is the dependence on verifiable data and the capability of testing that distinguish scientific theories from matters of faith.
Hypothesis: a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices."
Proof: Except for math and geometry, there is little that is actually proved. Even well-established scientific theories can't be conclusively proved, because--at least in principle--a counter-example might be discovered. Scientific theories are always accepted provisionally, and are regarded as reliable only because they are supported (not proved) by the verifiable facts they purport to explain and by the predictions which they successfully make. All scientific theories are subject to revision (or even rejection) if new data are discovered which necessitates this.
Law: a generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature; "the laws of thermodynamics."
Model: a simplified representation designed to illuminate complex processes; a hypothetical description of a complex entity or process; a physical or mathematical representation of a process that can be used to predict some aspect of the process.
Speculation: a hypothesis that has been formed by speculating or conjecturing (usually with little hard evidence). When a scientist speculates he is drawing on experience, patterns and somewhat unrelated things that are known or appear to be likely. This becomes a very informed guess.
Guess: an opinion or estimate based on incomplete evidence, or on little or no information.
Assumption: premise: a statement that is assumed to be true and from which a conclusion can be drawn; "on the assumption that he has been injured we can infer that he will not to play"
Impression: a vague or subjective idea in which some confidence is placed; "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying."
Opinion: a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty.
Observation: any information collected with the senses.
Data: factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions.
Fact: when an observation is confirmed repeatedly and by many independent and competent observers, it can become a fact.
Science: a method of learning about the world by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways; also refers to the organized body of knowledge that results from scientific study.
Religion: Theistic: 1. the belief in a superhuman controlling power, esp. in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. 2. the expression of this in worship. 3. a particular system of faith and worship.
Religion: Non-Theistic: The word religion has many definitions, all of which can embrace sacred lore and wisdom and knowledge of God or gods, souls and spirits. Religion deals with the spirit in relation to itself, the universe and other life. Essentially, religion is belief in spiritual beings. As it relates to the world, religion is a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life.
Belief: any cognitive content (perception) held as true; religious faith.
Faith: the belief in something for which there is no material evidence or empirical proof; acceptance of ideals, beliefs, etc., which are not necessarily demonstrable through experimentation or observation. A strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.
Dogma: a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without evidence.
Based on these, evolution is a theory. CS and ID are beliefs.
[Last revised 6/20/06]
not so, my friend.
Chances Are has a spine.
We must respect our opponents when they earn respect, no?
Ann Coulter is a national treasure.
She decimates Libs, the mouth-breathing vermin, with every delicious zinger.
Ridicule is Kryptonite to Democrats.
Finally, someone gets it.
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