Posted on 06/14/2006 8:22:58 PM PDT by HighWheeler
Ann will be on in a few minutes. We hope that the group of FReepers were able to make the audience and cheer on Ann.
Sorry, I didn't mean to be so obtuse.
I was just trying to be humorous.
My point is just that whether people behave properly towards others comes comes down to the mechanism that control their behavior.
Using your principle, it seems to me that ultimately it comes down to a question of fear of what the other person will do to me; that is the motivation for my good behavior.
My concern is what if my neighbor isn't worried about what I'll do to him, because he is 6'8", 280, has LOTS of weapons (that is, more and bigger ones than me) and belongs to a motorcycle club? I don't think his concern for what I can do to him will necessarily be enough to deter him from treating me badly, if it is in his interest or desire to do so.
Yes, the police and civil law are a deterrant, but judging from our prisons, not a completely effective one for many people.
I would argue that what prevents more abuse of weaker neighbors by stronger ones is something more than just sheer deterrence. I think it is the fact that so many people people believe that there is such a thing as right and wrong, apart from the law. And this sense, I would argue, is where 'religion' comes in, although not necessarily in the form of organized religions or churches.
Let me leave it at that.
I hope my post hasn't offended you. It was not my intention to, in the slightest. The points you made intrigued me, and I felt compelled to respond.
BTW, you don't REALLY think a fundamentalist Christian is as dangerous as a fundamentalist muslim, do you?
Check. You feel.
BTW, you don't REALLY think a fundamentalist Christian is as dangerous as a fundamentalist muslim, do you?
Well, if you were a child in David Koresh's ranch or a woman with child in Jim Jones congregation? Perhaps.
And then there's Henry the VIII. So yes, it's possible.
Anybody have the transcript?From mediamatters.org:
From the June 14 edition of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, on which Coulter appeared with comedian George Carlin: LENO: All righty. My next guest is a best-selling author. Her latest book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, has debuted at Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Also started a huge controversy, which we'll talk about. Please welcome Ann Coulter. OK. Thanks for coming. Do you know George? You haven't met him. COULTER: No, but he was just very funny. I like "the Catholics don't have the nuke." CARLIN: I never thought when Ann Coulter came out I would have to move to the right. LENO: Now, news junkies know this story. A lot of people don't. Explain. You're on the Today show. I think this is where this all sort of started. Explain what happened. COULTER: Well, I wrote a book, and liberals were hysterical. It's getting to be kind of kabuki theater. I write a book, they're hysterical. It happens all the time. LENO: All right. COULTER: My perspective on it is -- I understand you had an Ann Coulter joke last night, Jay. LENO: Oh, I have a bunch of Ann Coulter jokes all the time. COULTER: That I was worried about Dorothy's house falling on me. LENO: I think that was the joke, yeah. And then, I had the -- the other joke was I liked you fighting Sigourney Weaver in the Alien. I think that was the other movie I did. COULTER: Well, see, in my perspective I'm Dorothy -- LENO: Really? COULTER: -- and I've just dropped my house on the mainstream media. LENO: I think probably -- probably the most controversial remark, and this is the quote from the book, I think this is the one that's got everyone upset. Do you want me to read it? Would you rather read it? COULTER: Oh, you go ahead. I love to hear my words. LENO: This is talking about the 9-11 widows. Correct? COULTER: Yeah. LENO: It says, "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." It seems harsh to me. COULTER: Yes, well, I was wrong about one thing. This is the infallibility chapter: How liberals send out victims to make their points for them so that we can't respond. And I said, you know, you can't respond to these four women because everyone will get mad at you. But I went on the Today show and criticized them, and there hasn't been a peep about it as far as I can tell. LENO: Do you have any regrets about it? COULTER: So apparently, you can attack them. LENO: See, you know -- this is what fascinates me, because you're a very good writer. COULTER: Thank you. LENO: It's so different than the way I work. Maybe because I'm a comic. See, my thing is, it's sort of more flies with honey. You make your point even if you get a couple of digs in, you make your point. Whereas it seems to me, the words you've used have overshadowed the point what you were trying to make, to the point where people are upset about you attacking the widows, they don't understand the point you were trying to make. And I think most people still don't understand the point you were trying to make. COULTER: Well, I suppose I'm not really trying to attract people. If I wanted to attract people, you know, I'd wear sexy dresses, grow my hair long. LENO: No, I got you. COULTER: Oh, wait, no. No, I think that is not true, actually. I mean, other people have written acerbic little remarks about Democrats sending out victims, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, these four women from New Jersey, making the exact same points Howard Dean could be making, but we can attack Howard Dean. But in this case, their husbands died, their son died, we can't respond. And I don't think the nation's attention has ever been riveted on this victim as spokesman as it has in the last week. I don't think that trick's going to work anymore. LENO: I mean, why use the term -- because I noticed, I saw you on a show the other day. You said "these women." Yet in the book you use the word "these broads." I mean, why -- COULTER: Men use the word broads all the time to talk about women. If we're getting to that level of parsing my language, there will be no end to this. LENO: See, it's just confusing. Because I say -- is the point -- now I don't say this sarcastically -- is the point of the book to move forth your conservative ideas, what you think, or is it to sell books? COULTER: Well, it is to make a point, and now that it is the number one book in the country I think that point will be made. I must say. I mean, I had a lot of my friends read the book before it came out, and I gave it to my smartest liberal friends, and I told them you're smarter than any liberal I'm going to be on TV with. I didn't know I was going to be on with you [Carlin]. And I said, I want you to attack this book. You go through it with a fine-toothed comb. And I got to tell you, not my friends, not my editors, not the lawyer, not the liberal pulled out the chapter on the Jersey Girls. I mean, I think if you read that chapter -- I mean, the funny thing about this is I'm calling liberals godless. Oh, they're cool with that. Just don't attack the Jersey Girls. LENO: Now, you said your liberal friend. Is there only one? COULTER: Yes. LENO: Have you ever had sex with a liberal? COULTER: No. LENO: Really? COULTER: No. LENO: You should try it, see what it's like. COULTER: I read about it in Esquire, and it does not sound good. LENO: Have your editors or anybody ever suggested that you that change anything, and would you if they did? COULTER: A few changes here and there. But not much on this one. This one -- this one was the least edited of my books. LENO: I mean, does -- COULTER: I didn't say. LENO: The one thing that sort of bothers me about politics, and I enjoy politics, but I really don't enjoy the civility -- you know, I have friends -- I really do have friends on both sides. Because I'm one of those people -- COULTER: You seem like that. LENO: I'm fiscally conservative, but I'm probably socially liberal. So, I have friends on both sides, and we have very nice discussions. Lately everything is so nasty. And this would qualify as nasty, wouldn't you think? COULTER: I think it's not nasty. LENO: No? You don't think so? COULTER: And the other thing is, I mean, yeah, we hear this all the time about how civil things were back when there were only three TV stations. Well, they were really civil in the Soviet Union that had only one TV station. I mean, this alleged disruption of civility is conservatives being able to talk back now through talk radio, through the Internet, through Fox News. Through your audience. LENO: Have you ever been hurt by something someone said? COULTER: I was wounded when I wrote my "Attack France" column and even liberals didn't mind that one. LENO: See, you put up a good front. But you know what I'm saying. COULTER: Um, no. LENO: You know what I'm saying, seriously. I mean, have you ever went, "Ooh, that person went a little bit too far attacking me," or whatever? COULTER: No. I'm -- to quote Dan Quayle, one of your other targets -- I wear their contempt as a badge of honor. LENO: Now, do you travel, like, with a bodyguard now? Do you find -- COULTER: Well, I travel with conservative men. They're -- they're pretty fearsome. Unlike the liberals you showed the last time I was on when I spoke on a college campus. We got the nuanced liberals throwing food, and they missed. Yeah, unlike them, I think my male friends can take 'em. LENO: All right. The book's title -- COULTER: Godless. Which liberals don't mind. LENO: Explain what you mean by that. Explain what you mean -- COULTER: I mean, no one's complained. I think if somebody called me godless, I'd take notice of it. No, they're obsessed with this one section of one chapter. But the point of the book is that liberalism has become like a religion. All the bad things associated with religions, which I don't think you see that much from the God-based religions, by the way. [Turns to Carlin] Though I think you do. [Turns back to Leno] But the self-righteousness, the intolerance, the refusal to countenance differing beliefs. And by denying that it's a religion, I mean, they have their own cosmology, their own world view, their own belief in miracles. They promote themselves through the schools, through the government, the children are baptized in the religion of global warming, of recycling, of safe sex, but you can't even have a moment of silence. I mean, that is preferring one religion over another, and they advance themselves by denying their religion. And this is describing the religion of liberalism. LENO: Well, the book is called The Church of Liberalism, godlessness. Ann, thank you. Always fascinating to have you here. — Media Matters staff Posted to the web on Thursday June 15, 2006 at 7:06 PM EST
Islam practiced to the extreme results in... Islam. Catholicism practiced to the extreme results in Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II.
You have a seriously incorrect idea of who and what a fundamentalist Christian is and is not. Koresh and Jim Jones were no more fundamentalist Christians than I am a Buddhist monk. In fact, it would be hard to find two more perfect examples of religious charlatans who claimed to be Christian ministers or leaders of some sort but whose actions showed them to be disciples and servants of Satan.
A fundamentalist Christian is nothing more or less than a Christian who believes in the same fundamentals of the Christian faith that the early Christians received directly from the Apostles who had seen and conversed with Jesus in his resurrected body. (The great Apostle Paul who was the human channel for so much of the New Testament described himself as an Apostle "born out of due time" because his personal interaction with Jesus came after Jesus' ascension back to Heaven)
The early Christians often paid for their allegiance to Jesus and his Gospel with their lives. We "fundies" in America today pay the mere pittance of being hated, reviled, insulted, and thoroughly misrepresented by the secular humanist media and the present day mainline denominations' apostate version of Christianity. I fully expect that verbal persecution to evolve into real physical persecution as the world comes more fully under the Satanic influence of false demonic religions such as Islam, and the hatred of the secular world for Jesus Christ and his church grows more intense as the prophesied end of this present age of grace and the emergence of the global dominion of AntiChrist draws nearer.
My point was that an extreme belief system in any religious faith...extreme meaning that it smothers the secular part of life...is dangerous.
OK, I can accept that. If I mischaracterized your comment please accept my apology.
Ann Coulter has always said she was a devout Christian. By that I mean to take her at her word. Lesbian sex is not a Christian virtue. It is an anathema.
Unless someone conclusively proves otherwise, or unless Ann says it's so, I don't believe the rumor. And I believe that she is a devout Christian.
Doc,
I respect your opinion.
This is mine.
As another author wrote, how did Conservative leaders over the past years cede power and control of academia, the media, the cities, Hollywood, to the anti-American left?
Culminating in the Clintonian Dark Ages (CDA), we almost lost America.
We, as Americans, and Conservatives, did so by gross neglect. By Trent Lott-style appeasement. By William F. Buckley Marquis of Queensbury pious civility.
We are today winning the War On Terror right here at home in America PRECISELY because of Free Republic, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Mark Steyn, et. al.
We are war with an enemy that would use human shields like Cindy Sheehan and the Jersey Girls in battle.
Ann Coulter has outed them, and this important tactic now dies with her release of Godless.
She is as important as anyone could possibly be in the Conservative movement.
I am not a very good communicator in this type of venue.
That 'post' about Ann and the comments of some AIR AMERICA female radio host is just ridiculous.
It's obvious if you read the transcript from Tucker Carlson's show that this woman just threw out a throw-away line for a cheap laugh, and it wasn't that funny. Tucker Carlson just ignored what she said, it was so bad.
Someone posted that link, I believe in this thread; read the transcript and you'll see.
Don't fall for the favorite leftist tactic of attacking the personal lives of conservatives; funny how it is liberals who like to 'out' people, even those that CAN'T be outed!
DC Patriot,
Thanks for responding and being open and willing to discuss this topic, because I believe it needs to the be the subject of her next book: the big failure of most christians to truly live out their faith, as opposed to simply having a nominal faith.
The examples you cited were all of people who, I would suggest, rather than following Christianity to an extreme, hijacked the term Christianity, and misused it for their own personal ends.
Koresh and Jones were obviously on power trips. They broke every single commandment of the New Testament, and disregarded (sadly, so did their followers) all of Paul's, Peter's and John's warnings to be on the guard against false prophets and spreaders of evil teachings.
As for Henry VIII, he was just into having a lot of wives, supposedly so he could get a son, and the Catholic Church stood in the way. I suppose he also liked the idea of having all that church income go to HIM rather than to Rome.
I think that's the key: when evil things have been done in the name of Christianity, it is by people who are most definitely NOT 'extreme' or fundamentalist Christians, but who are people seeking after some worldly and decidedly un-christian goal.
Whereas, as my coptic friends have told me, a good muslim is one who neglects his religion; a devoutly religious muslim IS a terrorist, by definition, and in practice.
It is strange isn't it, that those who demand that we accept "alternate lifestyles" are so vicious when they "out" someone else? (Or try to) In reading the transcript I also got the impression that it was a throw away comment, and evidently Tucker didn't take it seriously.
Cheers! };^)
Probably helps make meet-and-greets shorter!
I bet you're looking forward to her next book cover: "Strapless!" ;-)
Yeah, we are. May your tribe increase, Ann Coulter. So tired of being afraid of a man's fearsomeness.
should read: "so tired of people being afraid of a man's fearsomeness."
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