Brain Food (Amazingthing about Godless is the amount of intellectual meat Ann Coulter has packed...)

The American Prowler ^ | 6/30/2006 | Richard Kirk

[nickcarraway]

The most amazing thing about Godless is the amount of intellectual meat Ann Coulter has packed into its pages.

Godless: The Church of Liberalism
by Ann Coulter
(Crown Forum, 310 pages, $27.95)

What's most amazing about Ann Coulter's book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is the amount of intellectual meat she packs into 281 breezy, barb-filled pages. Among the topics the blonde bomb-thrower discusses in some depth are the following: liberal jurisprudence, privacy rights and abortion, Joe Wilson's modest career and inflated ego, and the solid record of failure in American public schools. The topics of Intelligent Design and Darwinism, to which the last eighty pages of text are devoted, are analyzed in even greater detail.

As one would expect from an author with a legal background, Supreme Court cases are high on Coulter's hit-list -- especially the idea of a "living Constitution." Citing various cases-in-point, Coulter shows that this popular doctrine is nothing more than a paralegal pretext for making the Constitution say whatever liberal judges want it to say. Though such a philosophy grants to the nation's founding document all the integrity of a bound and gagged assault victim, it at least has the virtue of mirroring liberals' self-referential view of morality.

Another dogma that Coulter skewers is the liberal commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Punish the Perp." This counterintuitive principle not only rejects the link between incarceration and lower crime rates, it also permits benevolent judges (like Clinton federal court nominee Frederica Massiah-Jackson) to shorten the sentence of child rapists so that other innocent children can pay the price for society's sins.

An unexpected bonus in this chapter is the author's extended sidebar on Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of Boston who, as his own correspondence shows, knew Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty but chose, for ideological and financial reasons, to portray them as innocent victims. In a related chapter, "The Martyr: Willie Horton," Coulter provides detailed information about Horton's crimes, Michael Dukakis' furlough program, and the precise nature of the Horton ads aired in the 1988 presidential campaign

CONTINUING THE RELIGIOUS IMAGERY, Coulter asserts in chapter five that abortion is the "holiest sacrament" of the "church of liberalism." For women this sacrament secures their "right to have sex with men they don't want to have children with." A corollary of this less-than-exalted principle is the right to suck the brains out of partially born infants. How far liberal politicians will go to safeguard this sacrament whose name must not be spoken (euphemisms are "choice," "reproductive freedom," and "family planning") is shown by an amendment offered by Senator Chuck Schumer that would exclude anti-abortion protestors from bankruptcy protection. How low these same pols will go is illustrated by the character assassination of Judge Charles Pickering -- a man honored by the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers but slimed by liberals at his confirmation hearing as racially insensitive. Coulter notes that the unspoken reason for this "Borking" of Pickering was the judge's prior criticism of Roe v. Wade.

The single chapter that Coulter's critics have honed in on is the one that exposes the liberal "Doctrine of Infallibility." This religiously resonant phrase applies to individuals who promote the Left's partisan agenda while immunizing themselves from criticism by touting their victim-status. In addition to the 9/11 "Jersey Girls," Coulter identifies Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, and John Murtha as persons who possess, at least by Maureen Dowd's lights, "absolute moral authority." Curiously, this exalted status isn't accorded victims who don't push liberal agendas. Perhaps the fact that Republican veterans outnumber their Democrat counterparts in Congress, 87 to 62, has something to do with this inconsistency.

Coulter's next chapter, "The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher," focuses on the partisanship, compensation, and incompetence level of American teachers. A crucial statistic in these pages concerns the "correlation [that exists] between poor student achievement and time spent in U.S. public schools." In this regard, comments by Thomas Sowell and Al Shanker stand out. Sowell notes that college students with low SAT and ACT scores are more likely to major in education and that "teachers who have the lowest scores are the most likely to remain in the profession." From a different perspective, the late President of the American Federation of Teachers stated, with refreshing bluntness, "When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." The words of John Dewey, a founder of America's public education system, also fit nicely into Coulter's state-of-the-classroom address: "You can't make Socialists out of individualists -- children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent." Coulter responds, "You also can't make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection."

The last third of Godless focuses on matters scientific. Chapter seven, "The Left's War on Science," serves as an appetizer for Coulter's evolutionary piece de resistance. Prior to that main course, Coulter provides a litany of examples that illustrate the left's contempt for scientific data that doesn't comport with its worldview. Exhibits include the mendacious marketing of AIDS as an equal opportunity disease, the hysterical use of anecdotal evidence to ban silicon breast implants, and the firestorm arising from Lawrence Summers's heretical speculation about male and female brain differences.

THE REMAINING CHAPTERS OF GODLESS all deal with Darwinism. Nowhere else can one find a tart-tongued compendium of information that not only presents a major argument for Intelligent Design but also exposes the blatant dishonesty of "Darwiniacs" who continue to employ evidence (such as the Miller-Urey experiment, Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings, and the famous peppered moth experiment) that they know is outdated or fraudulent.

Within this bracing analysis, Coulter employs the observations of such biological and philosophical heavyweights as Stephen Gould, Richard Dawkins, Michael Behe, and Karl Popper. The price of the whole book is worth the information contained in these chapters about the statistical improbability of random evolution, the embarrassing absence of "transitional" fossils, and the inquisitorial attitude that prevails among many scientists (and most liberals) when discussing these matters. Unlike biologist Richard Lewontin, who candidly admits that a prior commitment to materialism informs his allegiance to evolution, most of his colleagues (and certainly most of the liberal scribblers Coulter sets on the road to extinction) won't concede that Darwinism is a corollary, rather than a premise, of their godlessness.

Coulter's final chapter serves as a thought-provoking addendum to her searing cross-examination of evolution's star witnesses. "The Aped Crusader" displays the devastating social consequences that have thus far attended Darwinism. From German and American eugenicists (including Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger), to Aryan racists, to the infanticidal musings of Princeton's Peter Singer, Darwinian evolution boasts a political and philosophical heritage that could only be envied by the likes of Charles Manson. Yet it is a history ignored by liberals for whom Darwin's theory provides what they want above all else -- a creation myth that sanctifies their sexual urges, sanctions abortion, and disposes of God.

Coulter's book is clearly not a systematic argument for the idea that liberalism is a godless religion. Indeed, prior to the material on evolution, the concept is treated more as a clever theme for chapter headings than as a serious intellectual proposition. In those final chapters, however, Coulter manages to present a cogent, sustained argument that actually begins to link modern liberalism (or more specifically, leftism) to an atheistic perspective. At the very least Coulter succeeds in raising an important issue -- namely, that American courts currently ignore the religious or quasi-religious character of a philosophy that pervades public institutions and is propagated with public funds. This fact, if honestly recognized, would render contemporary church-state jurisprudence untenable. A Court taking these arguments seriously would have to recognize that all philosophies, including "liberalism," swim in the same intellectual current as religion.

THUS FAR, THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA have focused almost all their attention on Coulter's take-no-prisoners rhetorical style -- and particularly on the "heartless" remarks about those 9/11 widows who seem to be "enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Clearly, diplomatic language is not Coulter's forte, as one would also gather from this representative zinger: "I don't particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven."

What undercuts the liberals' case against Coulter on this score, however, is their own (not always tacit) endorsement of vile epithets that are regularly directed against President Bush and his supporters by the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and a gaggle of celebrity politicos. Coulter employs the same linguistic standard against liberals (with a touch of humor) that they regularly use (with somber faces and dogmatic conviction) when they accuse conservatives of being racist homophobes who gladly send youngsters to war under false pretences to line the pockets of Halliburton executives. Hate-speech of this stripe is old-hat for leftists.

Until Air America, Helen Thomas, and most Democrat constituencies alter their rhetoric, I see no reason for conservatives to denounce Coulter for using, more truthfully, the same harsh language that leftists have employed, with no regard for accuracy, since the time of Lenin. When liberals denounce communist tyrants as fervently as they do real Nazis, then it will be time for Coulter to cool the rhetoric. Until that time her "verbal reprisals" serve a useful function within an intellectual marketplace that resembles a commodities pit more than a debating society.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer who lives in Oceanside, California. He is a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times. His book reviews have also appeared in the American Enterprise Magazine, First Things, and Touchstone.

[hail to the chief]

At any rate, your answer is a sidestep. At issue was whether God should send his creations to hell, and you still haven't explained from where he derives that authority.

[OmahaFields]

Let me clarify: If you can do a thing, it is, by definition, a God given right to choose to do it and carry out the act.

But somewhere on here I read that taking away our god-given rights was reason for overthrowing our government? Is this your perception?

[RobRoy]

>>and you still haven't explained from where he derives that authority.<<

He created them. If I create a thing out of clay, I can pretty much do whatever I want with it. If a bowl leaks, I can throw it away if I so choose. Heck, even if it is a GREAT bowl I could throw it away. Good thing I'm not God. ;)

[OmahaFields]

#602?

[RobRoy]

>>But somewhere on here I read that taking away our judging rights was reason for overthrowing our government? Is this your perception?<<

It absolutely CAN be! And I get that directly from the declaration of independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies As you probably already know, the bill of rights doesn't list the rights the government gives us. It lists the God given rights the government shall not take away. In that sentence is the concept that obviously some God given rights will be taken away by the state, even in our country - The right to murder, for example - and rightly so. It is one of the main reasons government exists: Protect our borders from invasion; protect us from each other.

[RobRoy]

Bad formatting. The declaration ends where the italics end... Sorry...

[RobRoy]

see 605.

[OmahaFields]

It absolutely CAN be!That is the DofI, not our constitution. It does not give legal authority but may give moral authority. In that context, should we overthrow our government if they take away or God-given rights?

[jennyp]

God gave man the ability to make choices, even bad ones. But He did not give us the right to do anything. For example, so far it appears that he did not give us the right to travel backwards in time.

That's like saying "670,616,629.384 miles per hour. It's not just a good idea - it's the law!"

Here is a simple test to see if God gave you the right to choose to do a thing. Try to do it. If you can, He gave you that right. Of course, your actions may have negative consequences.

So yes, God gave Hitler the right to kill jews, otherwise he would have been incapable of such action. He gives parents the right to kill their children, otherwise abortions would not be possible.

However, acting on that right may be as devastating as when Adam and Eve acted on their rights by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Saying someone CAN do a thing is not the same as saying they SHOULD do it.

Um, up top you said, "God gave man the ability to make choices, even bad ones. But He did not give us the right to do anything." Then the rest of your post you directly contradicted yourself.

Overall, you're doing some serious conflating of concepts here. What you call a "right" is what everyone else on the planet would call "ability". Whether we have a right to do something depends on the consequences. Whether I have a right to fly my jet around the world is true or false regardless of the fact that I don't actually own a jet. (I'm blanking out on better analogies at the moment.)

Being physically able to do something is a prerequisite for acting on something you have a right to do - but it's also a prerequisite for doing something you don't have a right to do. Ability is not the same thing as the right itself. That's just silly. A right answers the question, "is a proposed act morally acceptable?" Which means: "Would we be justified if we physically stopped this person from carrying out the act that they're contemplating?" The answer depends on the consequences of the action, and whether the person asking the question thinks that a world in which the contemplated act was allowed would be a good one or not. Whether someone actually has the ability to do something hardly prevents us from discussing whether something would be right.

When you conflate such basic concepts so badly, it's not surprising that you end up with bizarre conclusions such as agreeing with Leviticus about parents killing their "incorrigible" children. But when you take a basic premise and work out its consequences, and they turn out to be bizarre & palpably evil, don't you think it's a signal that you should rethink your premises?

[jennyp]

In that context, should we overthrow our government if they take away or God-given rights?

Omaha, you're not getting RobRoy's argument. If we are successful, then we had the ability, so we had the right by definition. If we're not successful, then we didn't have the ability, so we didn't have the right by definition.

(The mind boggles, I know.)

[RobRoy]

>>That is the DofI, not our constitution.<<

Yes. I believe I said that before I posted it.

>>In that context, should we overthrow our government if they take away or God-given rights?<<

My quoting the specific section of the Declaration of Independence IS my answer. It is the only answer to that question you will get from me.

[RobRoy]

You are mincing words. My post was not a thesis. It was a post.

I admit that when I used the word "anything" I actually should have added "you want".

And in the context of my post I was intentionally using the word "right" as synonymy's with "ability", for that IS how God grants you the right to do a thing - like have children, for instance.

There is a big difference between rights granted by God and rights granted by man. For example, if man says you cannot cross the street when the light is red, I'll bet if you look both ways and try, you'll be able to do it. And if there are no cops around, you'll even get away with it.

If the physical law (established by God) says that if your body is exposed, naked, to the vacuum of outer space, certain icky things will happen to the gasses and liquids within you, I would highly advise against it, no matter how fast you think you are.

And if you wear a space suit, you are no longer naked and, therefore, not violating the law.

Then, of course, there are moral laws which, by definition, come from your creator. One would be that you cannot murder. Yet people murder people every day. So what about that. The answer is that there will be consequences. You exercised your right to choose to do something that God gave you the ability to do. God doesn't micromanage like Allah does. He let's you make choices, even bad ones, by giving you the authority (and right) to carry out wrong activities - like murder - and then the penalty is paid for such actions.

If you did not have that ability/right, you would not have a free will.

[RobRoy]

Thank you Jenny. You got my point exactly.

It is basic, I know, but I find that discussing these issues we must often strip away all the "learning" we have piled onto the original basic concepts and see if we can or should rebuild our paradigms as they currently exist.

Sometimes in doing so it is discovered that we do not share a common foundational belief at all. We only think we do, which is the root of the misscommunication.

[jennyp]

Thank you Jenny. You got my point exactly.

So if a robber robs a bank and gets away with it, that's proof that he had the right to do it.

This actually resolves to: Might makes right. Interesting.

[RobRoy]

>>So if a robber robs a bank and gets away with it, that's proof that he had the right to do it. <<

No.

If a robber robs a bank, the act alone is proof he had the God given right to do so. That is, btw, one of the "God given" rights that the state takes away.

Further, even if the state never caught him, he would not "get away with it". As I told my children, when a man breaks into your home and steals your stereo, the only person he is hurting is himself. You can replace your stereo, he has become something he was not before he stole it. It impacts who he is. It makes him morally "sick".

And in one way or another, we have all exercised our "right" to do the wrong thing almost constantly. As I said in a previous post to someone else: We are all morally sick. Christians simply KNOW they are sick and have accepted their creators freely offered forgiveness and healing - which they/we need on an hourly basis. There is a reason he is called the bread/water of life - SPIRITUAL life.

But it goes far deeper than that.

[RobRoy]

>>This actually resolves to: Might makes right. Interesting.<<

Actually, in a true "we evolved without a creator" society, that would be absolutely correct.

[jennyp]

Your whole concept of morality is as an arbitrary demand by a dictator. I know this is a common moral framework that animates creationists, but I just can't see how you can accept that and at the same time support the concept of individual freedom and the promise of America.

(I'm sure you support America and what it stands for. I'm just baffled as how you could with your concept of morality.)

[RobRoy]

>>Your whole concept of morality is as an arbitrary demand by a dictator.<<

That really is one way of looking at it. Except in this case the dictator is my creator, not another flawed man.

And His personality compels me to want to live in His "dictatorship". It is the Father-son relationship.

The problem with earthly dictatorships is the quality of the dictator - they are always human, and all that that implies. When God is the "dictator" it is a completely different thing.

[hail to the chief]

That's a ridiculous analogy. Of course you can do what you want with a piece of clay, but it is a different thing entirely to bring harm on a conscious being.

[Varmint Al]

I agree completely with post #43. I am a conservative through and through, but I just don’t "believe" in the Creationism. I believe in evolution, but that doesn't make me a bleeding heart liberal. Beliefs are beliefs and should be exempt from debate. One doesn’t change beliefs with facts, one way or the other. BTW, Ann’s book is great. I have it on the coffee table for any liberal bold enough to visit this conservative household. Good Hunting... from Varmint Al