Here Come the Intimidators
I've been feeling poorly this week, and not up to any real challenges- so I guess I'll just do something easy and demolish another John Brummett column. This time it's his "Here Come the Converters" piece. In it, he takes a couple of straw men, puts David Barton and Jerry Cox's names on them, and then starts hacking away. Barton runs Wallbuilders, a group dedicated to advancing knowledge of America's Christian heritage. Cox runs Arkansas Family Council, a pro-family group.
Brummett even took the likeness of the Taliban and of cult leader and convicted child molester Tony Alamo and added them to the lineup- in other words lumping Barton and Cox together with them as "religious extremists". It's absurd to put Christianity in the same box with Wahabbism. It's like saying aspirin and meth are both drugs.
It's even more absurd to put Cox and Barton in a box along with people who behead women in soccer stadiums and fly passenger airplanes into skyscrapers full of civilians. It's hysterical nonsense, and it is unfathomable to me as a serious person how John Brummett retains even a shred of credibility amongst the general public.
This is character assassination of the lowest sort, and it's what John Brummett does for a living on behalf of the establishment. Powerful people tend to resent the idea that there is any higher power over them to whom they will be held accountable. The idea that God has placed limits on the role of government is irksome to those who control government. After all, they sought government work because they enjoy gaining and holding power over people like you. Is there something so bad about telling legislators that there are limits to what they should do, and that God is watching them?
While Brummett slimes the people he calls "converters", he and his ilk are intimidators, and that is much worse. Why shouldn't Cox, Barton or anyone else have a perfect right to make the case for their position in the hopes that the listeners will convert to it? That is a lot better than using libel, character assassination, and smear to intimidate people who hold contrary views to yours into being silent about it. One is a matter for rational debate, the other is an attempt to silence it through bullying.
So when one goes into histrionics telling people that someone is like Al-Quida and like Tony Alamo, one had better have some specific examples of the kind of terrible things they want to become law. Brummett cited two as the most "frightful": "The Family Council’s view of the traditional family’s responsibility in child care led the group to oppose gay adoption and gay foster care and thus limit arbitrarily the available homes for our neediest children."
Yep. Trying to protect disadvantaged children from being turned over to homosexuals was one of the two most "frightful" things he could think of. Some of us, even if we don't want adults arrested for what they chose to do in their own homes, still don't want the power of the state to be used to turn other people's kids over to homosexuals. While they may have a right to screw up their own lives, that does not entitle them to state assistance in screwing up helpless kids. John Brummett here compares anyone opposed to homosexuals getting state assistance in obtaining access to other people's children as being like Al-Quida.
His second "frightful" policy is about of the same quality. "To say it is the church’s responsibility to care for the needy is to put at risk Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment compensation, sacrificing them to some vague notion that independent churches could somehow fill the gaps in a timely and coordinated way."
No John, what's putting those things at risk is that we have aborted too many of the next generation to keep them funded. It's your secular Taliban that has brought this nation the rivers of innocent blood, not the Christian church. And those programs are going to fail, the mathematics are irrefutable. They will fail at a time that people will be most dependent on them- unless non-government safety nets are in place.
Brummett even took the likeness of the Taliban and of cult leader and convicted child molester Tony Alamo and added them to the lineup- in other words lumping Barton and Cox together with them as "religious extremists". It's absurd to put Christianity in the same box with Wahabbism. It's like saying aspirin and meth are both drugs.
It's even more absurd to put Cox and Barton in a box along with people who behead women in soccer stadiums and fly passenger airplanes into skyscrapers full of civilians. It's hysterical nonsense, and it is unfathomable to me as a serious person how John Brummett retains even a shred of credibility amongst the general public.
This is character assassination of the lowest sort, and it's what John Brummett does for a living on behalf of the establishment. Powerful people tend to resent the idea that there is any higher power over them to whom they will be held accountable. The idea that God has placed limits on the role of government is irksome to those who control government. After all, they sought government work because they enjoy gaining and holding power over people like you. Is there something so bad about telling legislators that there are limits to what they should do, and that God is watching them?
While Brummett slimes the people he calls "converters", he and his ilk are intimidators, and that is much worse. Why shouldn't Cox, Barton or anyone else have a perfect right to make the case for their position in the hopes that the listeners will convert to it? That is a lot better than using libel, character assassination, and smear to intimidate people who hold contrary views to yours into being silent about it. One is a matter for rational debate, the other is an attempt to silence it through bullying.
So when one goes into histrionics telling people that someone is like Al-Quida and like Tony Alamo, one had better have some specific examples of the kind of terrible things they want to become law. Brummett cited two as the most "frightful": "The Family Council’s view of the traditional family’s responsibility in child care led the group to oppose gay adoption and gay foster care and thus limit arbitrarily the available homes for our neediest children."
Yep. Trying to protect disadvantaged children from being turned over to homosexuals was one of the two most "frightful" things he could think of. Some of us, even if we don't want adults arrested for what they chose to do in their own homes, still don't want the power of the state to be used to turn other people's kids over to homosexuals. While they may have a right to screw up their own lives, that does not entitle them to state assistance in screwing up helpless kids. John Brummett here compares anyone opposed to homosexuals getting state assistance in obtaining access to other people's children as being like Al-Quida.
His second "frightful" policy is about of the same quality. "To say it is the church’s responsibility to care for the needy is to put at risk Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment compensation, sacrificing them to some vague notion that independent churches could somehow fill the gaps in a timely and coordinated way."
No John, what's putting those things at risk is that we have aborted too many of the next generation to keep them funded. It's your secular Taliban that has brought this nation the rivers of innocent blood, not the Christian church. And those programs are going to fail, the mathematics are irrefutable. They will fail at a time that people will be most dependent on them- unless non-government safety nets are in place.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Friday, January 07, 2011
3 Comments:
Uhmm... You're way out of your depth here. Not being bright is not a transgression. Not knowing it is. Brummet has at least 50 i.q. points on you and he can write too! He'll also have more readership for yesterday's column than you will have in a lifetime. It's called the "marketplace", a term I now just bedevils you 'conservatives. and you simply are not competitive.
Hi John. Thanks for making this a better blog by being such a perfect foil.
It appears that you are the one out of depth here. I have only been tracking unique visitors since early 2008, or about half the time I've been doing this hobby, but I've got over 150,000 absolutely unique visitors since that time.
Of course those numbers don't include the readership I get when I do something for other people's sites, such as the recent piece on Progressive Arkansas.
Do you honestly think that one Brummett column will have more readers? To give some perspective, the Springdale Morning News has a circulation of about 30,000. Of course, many of the buyers of the paper do not bother to read Brummett. A good chunk of them will just read the front page and the sports section.
What is even more amazing about those numbers is the amount of resources that the money boys have pumped into propping Brummett up verses the complete lack of resources I have invested. This is a free blogspot! I do it as a hobby.
If this is the market, Brummett is like a company with a million dollar market share because it has spent two million on promotion. I am like a business with a smaller market share that has spent NOTHING on promotion. If this is the market, which business is of more value?
But of course, the real value of Brummett is as an enforcer. They are not trying to make money off of the papers as much as use the papers to control politicians, then make the money off of the government.
I'm not trying to get market share, because I am not doing this to make money. I'm trying to tell the truth, and sometimes that drives people off for a while. Still, I think you are wrong on the numbers (including the IQ numbers) ;)
Now doesn't that sound just like something Jerry Cox and David Barton would say? No wonder Brummett lumps them together.
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