House of Eratosthenes

It is said that the truth has a well-known liberal bias. I agree with this. At least, within the provision that seems to be accepted all-too-quickly by the feeble-minded about truth, that it is nothing more than an aggregate of whatever is spoken most forcefully and most often.

Consider for a moment what the “truth” says about liberal democrats, when they get their own asses handed to them in an election. Do you hear a great deal about how they need to move their positions closer to the center, drop the most fringe-kook beliefs from their platform? I didn’t hear about that in 1988, or 1994, or 2000 or 2004. No, I hear, instead, of the need to find a new and better spokesman. The need to “repackage.” To make things “more easily understood.”

Reassemble? That is not what we’re hearing now, when it is the conservatives and Republicans who got their own butt cheeks extended to them upon a silver platter. Now, things are different. No need to repackage anything; it is the contents within that have to be filtered out, organized, purified…purged.

This difference is all the more bizarre when one considers the extreme imbalance within the wreckage of landscape that is our legislation — on the national level, as well as within several states. Quoth Randall Hoven in the American Thinker (Hat tip to Phil):

The most obvious point to me is that it is the do-gooding liberals who are telling us all what we can and can’t do. The religious right usually just wants to be left alone, either to home school, pray in public or not get their children vaccinated with who-knows-what. Inasmuch as the “religious right” wants some things outlawed, they have failed miserably for at least the last 50 years. Abortion, sodomy, and pornography are now all Constitutional rights. However, praying in public school is outlawed, based on that same Constitution.

Just think for a moment about the things you are actually forced to do or are prevented from doing. Seat belts. Motorcycle helmets. Bicycle helmets. Smoking. Gun purchase and ownership restrictions. Mandatory vaccines for your children. Car emissions inspections. Campaign ad and contribution restrictions. Saying a prayer at a public school graduation or football game. Trash separation and recycling. Keeping the money you earned. Gas tax. Telephone tax. Income tax. FICA withholding. Fill in this form. Provide ID.

For the most part, the list just cited is post-1960. Neither Pat Robertson nor James Dobson ever forced any of that on us.

I can get pornography right at my keyboard, or drive a mile and get all the sex toys I can fit into my car. I can walk to the nearest casino to gamble (but can no longer smoke there). I do need to travel to Nevada for a legal prostitute. If my teenage daughters had wanted abortions, they could have had them free and without even notifying me. (However, had they taken Advil to school, we’d all be in trouble.)

This is reason number…I lost count…of why I’m convinced His Holiness’ Administration is going to be a serious disappointment for everyone, not the least for those who supported Him most ardently. The foundation upon which His ideas are built, is a philosophy that conservatism has bogged us down too much with “lost freedoms” and an injured economy, and we need His Divine Eminence to bring about “change.” Now, read the above paragraphs again. A change from that means what, exactly? The iPresident Man-God is going to bring this about?

Have you ever taken a minute or two to indulge in a fantasy that is the opposite of what’s jotted down above…to entertain what, exactly, would be different about our nation’s political landscape if the country really was in imminent danger of being placed under the iron fist of a theocracy? The way I figure it, the very first thing that would have to happen, would be some kind of a white-hot blistering inter-creed feud. We would have to figure out, don’t you see, which religion was going to be enshrined as our official state faith once the shredding of the First Amendment was finished and the revolution declared a success. Who is it to be? Methodists? Pentacostals? Baptists? The Catholics do not seem to be that interested, nor is anyone terribly worried about them, so it must be something Protestant.

We haven’t even seen the question raised, let alone anyone try to answer it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think overall paranoia can be a good thing. As Andrew Grove said, “only the paranoid survive.” But for paranoia to be beneficial, it has to be somewhat aligned with…truth. And I don’t mean, by that, the feeble-mind’s version of truth. I mean truth as it measurably exists.

And so far, as Hoven points out, Dr. James Dobson and all the rest of ’em haven’t stopped me from doing a damn thing. That’s the truth.

Update: Image swiped from Space Invaders, via Gerard.

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