Posted on 06/14/2006 9:48:34 AM PDT by suspects
I know, I know. Ann Coulter is Satan.
She's vicious. She's outrageous. She is not to be tolerated. I understand.
But I have a quick question for you: Have you actually read her book?
I mean, as you're gathering your ropes and lighting your torches and looking for a well-placed tree limb, don't you think you should take an hour or two and, you know, read what Coulter actually said?
"But Michael, who would ever read such filth? Such hateful extremism! She's a witch! Burn! Burn!"
And so goes the debate with the American Left...
Call me crazy, but before I joined prominent Democratic lawmakers around the country demanding that Godless be banned from book stores (the dunking stool and public stocks will be waiting for Coulter at the Paramus, N.J., Barnes & Noble next week), I'd want to know what is in the darn thing. Based on their writings and public statements, it appears that not one of the would-be book banners has done so.
"Why waste our time, Michael? She's just a bomb-thrower. A name-caller!"
True, it's hard to take seriously people who describe their political opponents as "stupid," "ugly" "vile," "viperous," "rabidly hateful," "foaming-at-the-mouth," "sub-human," or who suggest they go kill themselves. But Ann Coulter didn't say any of these things. No, these are comments from media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Ad Age magazine about Ann Coulter.
The London Times even labeled her the "Bitch Goddess of American conservatives." I guess they were offended by all that name-calling.
The editorial invective rolls across Coulter like a muddy river from the maw of the mainstream media. However, what the London Times and New York Times and, alas, the Charleston City Paper are unlikely to do is actually review Coulter's book. And the one thing the hair-pulling liberals shaking with rage on talk TV refuse to do is confront the actual arguments Ann Coulter presents.
The Coulter cranks scream over two sentences in Godless about the "Jersey Girls," those four hyper-political, media-hungry 9/11 widows Coulter shames by quoting them accurately. Meanwhile, there are 281 pages of arguments, insults, and outrageous-but-on-point invective that raise issues worth debating. Plus footnotes.
Did angry Democrats join forces with the "Witches of East Brunswick" to politicize the 9/11 Commission for personal satisfaction and political gain? Shouldn't people spreading the idiotic fallacy that George W. Bush was responsible for the World Trade Center attack be criticized, even if they lost loved ones on that horrific day? Did these women cheapen the legacy of 9/11 as they appeared in Democratic campaign ads and pushed Democratic talking points on Larry King?
Ann Coulter says "yes." She's got pages of arguments and cheap shots to back it up. Whatta you got?
Oh, sorry, I forgot. You're a liberal. You don't read books you disagree with. You ban them. That's why you're so much better than those mouth-breathing evangelical morons who elected Bush.
Reading Godless means no longer being able to declare sainthood for pseudo-spy Valerie Plame or her hapless, fourth-rate hack of a husband, "Ambassador" Joe Wilson. (Coulter's recounting of Wilson's failed foreign service career, culminating in his post as Ambassador to Gabon, is hilarious.)
Reading Godless means facing the fact that the American Left has abandoned the principle of self-government and now opposes the very idea of democracy when it comes to abortion, the definition of marriage, and the operation of "public" (insert ironic laugh here) schools. She also reminds us that, before 1860, Democrats were also proudly "pro-choice" on the issue of slavery, too.
Coulter's opponents avoid all this by simply refusing to fight. She comes out swinging, they come out whining. Unfortunately for them, the facts aren't going to change, the arguments won't go away, and 500,000 people are going to read her book. When they're done, they'll be smarter, she'll be richer, and you — my book-banning, name-calling, debate-avoiding liberal friends — will have done more than Coulter ever could to prove her point.
Is Ann Coulter mean? Is she nasty? Maybe, maybe not. But the question normal people will be asking is "Is she right?" My advice to you would-be "Ann"-nihilators would be to stop whining and start reading.
I have the audios of all three - Slander, Treason, and Godless. Hearing her read it just emphasizes her dry wit..
And as for ADD, whyh such a mundane, and over-used diagnosis? Can't you at least credit me with, say, Schizoaffective Disorder?
Of course, the Academy will continue to inflicted by Darwinists even as the Academy is contaminated with Marxists, but, as Saint Robert Dylan sang, You've got to serve somebody...
As to you pinging me, not so much...
* Attempts to intellectually bully others is a distinctive trait of those unsure of their ideas.
Dan Rather's advice might be helpful, Courage
It's disgusting that the leftists everywhere are writing letters and articles condemning Coulter, and are saying that the killing of Zarqawi wasn't a good thing! I've come to the conclusion that in contemporary PC-dominated America words are worse than actions. There is no such thing as a bad action but one's words are a reason for outrage.
It doesn't matter if what Ann said is true. Most people in the country, who are not politically aware, don't perceive it that way. They view the comment as mean spirited.
Practically all of the materials I use now were either not available then or otherwise unknown to me. Heck, a lot of the interesting finds I use had not even been discovered yet.
I was rather frequently flummoxed by this or that talking point. From the first, I refused to ignore or evade any such data presented. I developed the habit of rethinking out loud.
It would read something like: "OK, from the info available, I have no answer to how the woodpecker's tongue got all mushed around like that. That's a point for you of a sort. If there's a well-known scientific explanation, it's not on the web and I don't know it. But gaps in my personal knowledge aren't proof of much. Does this change the preponderance of evidence a single iota?" Etc.
Ann has butchered fact and logic in her shrill assault on evolution. Dembski, whatever he did do, seems to have done nothing to prevent the disaster. From what I have seen excerpted, it's all risible retreaded creationist talking points. I have substantiated this in at least some detail for you, in addition to critiquing your ID references.
So think out loud a bit for us. Please lose the la-de-dah airy wave-aways, evasions, and changes of subject. Will you be back again on some other thread with the same points I have answered here? If not, have you changed your mind? If so, how do you justify that?
Agreed, brother. If she had rewritten that sentence she could have saved herself a lot of grief. We all know conservatives are held to higher standards
Proverbs 15...A mild answer breaketh wrath: but a harsh word stirreth up fury
Will you be back again on some other thread with the same points I have answered here?
* You appear to think your answers are some sort of scientific dogma rather than darwinian polemics and that if anyone disagrees about these disputed points then they have revealed themselves as less than human...pig ignorant if you will.
*It appears to me you don't understand you are a particpant in polemics. It does appear to me you think yourself qualified to pose as an authoritative referee in scientific disputes. And I find that an arrogant and amusing conceit.
If not, have you changed your mind?
* You and inch have helped me change my weltanschauung vis a vis darwinists. I find you both thin-skinned, haughty, nasty and obstreperous. You approach, imo, tends to call into question anything you post. Those confident in the quality and accuracy of their arguements tend to be a lot less confrontational and insulting. They let the facts speak for themselves.
*You and inch marry insult and information and you expect us to joyously attend the wedding. I hope you don't think that approach is convincing. It is just the opposite.
I'm not going to skip the rest of your post, but this coming from someone singing paeans to Ann Coulter's Godless, needs to be highlited up front as an irony-meter roaster par excellence.
It's going to be hard to settle down and write analytically with you tossing me knee-slappers, but I'll try.
The putative irony is as non-existent as Stevie Gould's hopeful monsters.
Now, as O'Reilly says, I'll let youi have the last word. Have a good weekend, brother.
You don't understand - if you had long blonde hair, were six foot seven or so, and weighed 75 pounds, those would be good things. But, since you're none of those things, those qualities in you are bad. Don't ask me how that works, but it's true - I've seen it over and over again for the past week or so.
[Please lose the la-de-dah airy wave-aways, evasions, and changes of subject.]
Proverbs 15...A mild answer breaketh wrath: but a harsh word stirreth up fury
I've been explaining that Ann's work has deficiencies which you have thus far ignored. Your answers have not been so much mild as simply squirmy. You may not like hardball, but you love dodge-ball.
* You appear to think your answers are some sort of scientific dogma rather than darwinian polemics and that if anyone disagrees about these disputed points then they have revealed themselves as less than human...pig ignorant if you will.
Yes, I think my answers are totally factual. Ann's point, never mind how she argues it, is that the accumulated science of the last 150 years is wrong. While so arguing, she also seriously misstates what the science of the last 150 years has even taught us. Thus, in rebutting her, I not only reaffirm the factual and logical basis for what science IS saying but I have to correct her on the TEXT of what science is saying. She gets that much wrong.
If you think it's all simply polemics, you're lost in a world of your own. There's real evidence and it tells a very clear story.
So you're basically saying you're not wrong because THERE ARE NO FACTS. Even Ann doesn't go there. She seems to accept that evidence does mean something, only somehow all of biology and paleontology have messed it up for the entire 20th century and well into the 21st. Luckily, she and Dembski are here to lead us to the truth.
*It appears to me you don't understand you are a particpant in polemics. It does appear to me you think yourself qualified to pose as an authoritative referee in scientific disputes. And I find that an arrogant and amusing conceit.
I write almost nothing of the materials that I cite and at no point rely on my own credentials. This is the ultimate in airy wave-aways. Please select a point of fact and dispute it.
I mean, you've got the nerve to imply that what I have posted is all fantasy. If you can prove any part of it wrong, you've got a Nobel coming.
So stop being so squirmily evasive and get to work.
* You and inch have helped me change my weltanschauung vis a vis darwinists. I find you both thin-skinned, haughty, nasty and obstreperous. You approach, imo, tends to call into question anything you post. Those confident in the quality and accuracy of their arguements tend to be a lot less confrontational and insulting. They let the facts speak for themselves.
Dealt with. If I were tall, leggy, and blonde, could you forgive me being as foaming-at-the-mouth mean, dumb, and wrong as Ann?
I think the main thing Ichneumon and I have done which bothers you is point out that Ann's claims (and yours regarding hers) don't hold water. If you're having a bad time, that's it.
*You and inch marry insult and information and you expect us to joyously attend the wedding. I hope you don't think that approach is convincing. It is just the opposite.
You know, Ann hates people who play the victim game. I don't think you're her type. Try dealing with the text of the arguments presented.
Thus far, all you have as a justification for coming back dumb as a stump on another thread with answered material is that 1) "Evos are all meanies," and 2) "It's all polemics and there are no facts."
That will keep you pretty safe from factual rebutall, yes. It also renders your opinion pretty irrelevant. I invite you to rethink that along with the details we've discussed already.
I continue to recommend doing your rethinking out loud. Gets you away from polemics / apologetics, whatever you call stupid Holy Warrior lawyer games these days. It is possible to explain with some honesty why you think as you think and do as you do, assuming you aren't doing a scummy thing and you know it.
But I am tall-ish.
Inigo -- I killed your father.
Ah, but are your hands as manly as Ann's?
I was ready to criticize this as more militantly ineducable nonsense (and I remain pretty sure you meant it that way), but it occurs to me that "Stevie" Gould's hopeful monsters indeed do not exist.
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