Krauthammer: It’s Mitt versus Newt!

…by Charles Krauthammer at the Washington Post:

“It’s Iowa minus 32 days, and barring yet another resurrection (or event of similar improbability), it’s Mitt Romney vs. Newt Gingrich. In a match race, here’s the scorecard:

Romney has managed to weather the debates unscathed. However, the brittleness he showed when confronted with the kind of informed follow-up questions that Bret Baier tossed his way Tuesday on Fox’s “Special Report” — the kind of scrutiny one doesn’t get in multiplayer debates — suggests that Romney may become increasingly vulnerable as the field narrows.

Moreover, Romney has profited from the temporary rise and spontaneous combustion of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. No exertion required on Romney’s part.

Enter Gingrich, the current vessel for anti-Romney forces — and likely the final one. Gingrich’s obvious weakness is a history of flip-flops, zigzags and mind changes even more extensive than Romney’s — on climate change, the health-care mandate, cap-and-trade, Libya, the Ryan Medicare plan, etc.

The list is long. But what distinguishes Gingrich from Romney — and mitigates these heresies in the eyes of conservatives — is that he authored a historic conservative triumph: the 1994 Republican takeover of the House after 40 years of Democratic control.

Which means that Gingrich’s apostasies are seen as deviations from his conservative core — while Romney’s flip-flops are seen as deviations from . . . nothing. Romney has no signature achievement, legislation or manifesto that identifies him as a core conservative.

So what is he? A center-right, classic Northeastern Republican who, over time, has adopted a specific, quite bold, thoroughly conservative platform. His entitlement reform, for example, is more courageous than that of any candidate, including Barack Obama. Nevertheless, the party base, ostentatiously pursuing serial suitors-of-the-month, considers him ideologically unreliable. Hence the current ardor for Gingrich.

Gingrich has his own vulnerabilities. The first is often overlooked because it is characterological rather than ideological: his own unreliability. Gingrich has a self-regard so immense that it rivals Obama’s — but, unlike Obama’s, is untamed by self-discipline.

Take that ad Gingrich did with Nancy Pelosi on global warming, advocating urgent government action. He laughs it off today with “that is probably the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years. It is inexplicable.”

This will not do. He was obviously thinking something. What was it? Thinking of himself as a grand world-historical figure, attuned to the latest intellectual trend (preferably one with a tinge of futurism and science, like global warming), demonstrating his own incomparable depth and farsightedness. Made even more profound and fundamental — his favorite adjectives — if done in collaboration with a Nancy Pelosi, Patrick Kennedy or even Al Sharpton, offering yet more evidence of transcendent, trans-partisan uniqueness.

Two ideologically problematic finalists: One is a man of center-right temperament who has of late adopted a conservative agenda. The other is a man more conservative by nature but possessed of an unbounded need for grand display that has already led him to unconservative places even he is at a loss to explain, and that as president would leave him in constant search of the out-of-box experience — the confoundedly brilliant Nixon-to-China flipperoo regarding his fancy of the day, be it health care, taxes, energy, foreign policy, whatever.

The second, more obvious, Gingrich vulnerability is electability. Given his considerable service to the movement, many conservatives seem quite prepared to overlook his baggage, ideological and otherwise. This is understandable. But the independents and disaffected Democrats upon whom the general election will hinge will not be so forgiving.

They will find it harder to overlook the fact that the man who denounces Freddie Mac to the point of suggesting that those in Congress who aided and abetted it be imprisoned, took $30,000 a month from that very same parasitic federal creation. Nor will independents be so willing to believe that more than $1.5 million was paid for Gingrich’s advice as “a historian” rather than for services as an influence peddler.

Obama’s approval rating among independents is a catastrophically low 30 percent. This is a constituency disappointed in Obama but also deeply offended by the corrupt culture of the Washington insider — a distaste in no way attenuated by fond memories of the 1994 Contract with America

My own view is that Republicans would have been better served by the candidacies of Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie. Unfortunately, none is running. You play the hand you’re dealt. This is a weak Republican field with two significantly flawed front-runners contesting an immensely important election. If Obama wins, he will take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return (which is precisely his own objective for a second term).

Every conservative has thus to ask himself two questions: Who is more likely to prevent that second term? And who, if elected, is less likely to unpleasantly surprise?”

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

 

The Most Beautiful Collection of Words Ever Published…..the King James Version of the Bible

The Good Book

How the King James Version came to be.

Joseph Bottum

December 5, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 12

 

 The King James Bible—the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture, dedicated to James I as “principal mover and author”—is not really a triumph of translation. Not, at least, if perfect accuracy and re-creation of the original narrative voice are the proper goals of translation.

The examples typically seem minor, but they’ve nagged at scholars for the past 400 years. The King James Version always had a little trouble with Hebrew verb tenses, for instance, and the problem shows up as early as the Bible’s second verse, famously translated as “And the earth was without form, and void.” The verb form there is hayah, which the King James correctly gives as became just a few pages later in Genesis: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” More theologically significant are such stumbles as perpetuating the misreading of ’azazel as ’ez ozel in Leviticus 16—the proper name of a demon transformed into the word for an innocent scapegoat, punished for sins not his own.

For that matter, the publication of the King James Bible in 1611 was not an unalloyed triumph of religion. A narrow set of Puritan and Roman Catholic scholars have always insisted that the Church of England was established primarily by force, imposed on a mostly reluctant nation by the government’s power of pikes and scaffolds. But only over the past 20 years—particularly since the publication of Eamon Duffy’s magisterial study The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (1992)—has popular awareness gained much sense of just how extreme the exercise of that power
really was.

When James VI came down from Scotland at the death of Elizabeth in 1603, there was considerable relief at the lack of violence in his succession to the English throne and a reasonable expectation that the harsher elements of the Elizabethan religious settlement would be eased for Catholic and nonjuror Protestants. Unfortunately, early agitation against James, from the Bye and Main plots to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, embittered him. He quickly settled into the coercive mode of his predecessors, and the King James translation became a key element of that mandatory nationalizing of religion: the only Bible that churches were allowed to purchase.

And yet, if it wasn’t the best translation, or a genuine high point of Christian faith, the book was a triumph of rhetoric. In fact, the King James Bible remains the single greatest monument of the English language ever constructed. More than Milton, more than Shakespeare, more than Spenser, more than Chaucer, the 47 scholars who worked from 1604 to 1611 managed a feat unrivaled in English literature. They gave reality to the idea of a unified Great Britain by drawing together in a single tongue the separate nations of the islands. They gave America the vocabulary that would become the sole public idiom of the Protestants’ new world. And they established, once and for all, the rhythms of English rhetoric: the way the language wants to go, the repetitions and patterns into which, like traps, it always falls.

The first copy is thought to have been printed on May 5, 1611, and publishers have been pouring out commemorative editions of the translation and popular studies of its effect. In Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, for example, the British scholar David Crystal documents 257 idioms, from “salt of the earth” to “two-edged sword,” that derive solely from the King James. In Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, the American Robert Alter argues that the book’s way of “imagining man, God, and history” infested the nation’s “Bible-steeped, Bible-quoting folk” and thereby created American literature.

Meanwhile, here in Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611–2011, Gordon Campbell provides an “affectionate biography” of the translation’s origins, printings, and effects. Six groups undertook the work at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, and Campbell argues that even today it would be difficult to assemble as literate a set of translators:

The population from which scholars can now be drawn is much larger than that of the seventeenth century, but it would be difficult now to bring together a group of more than fifty scholars with the range of languages and knowledge of other disciplines that characterized the KJV translators.

Of course, they didn’t start from scratch. Officially, the King James was a revision of the Bishops’ Bible, which was a reworking of the Great Bible, which drew on Miles Coverdale’s efforts and John Roger’s editions—both of which came out of William Tyndale’s translations. David Crystal found only 257 common English idioms born in the King James because he excludes the ones that the translators simply took over from the burst of scholars, from Erasmus on, working in the century before.

Nor was the text strictly defined. As Campbell notes, even the first year of this official Bible “appointed to be read in churches” saw two editions: the He Bible and the She Bible, which vary the ambiguous pronoun in Ruth 3:15, uncertain whether Ruth or Boaz has entered the city. Innumerable small and unannounced changes in wording, spelling, and punctuation followed over the years, until Oxford’s Benjamin Blayney established the modern text in 1769. “Printers have persecuted me,” declared one edition, misprinting “princes,” and readers could well believe it. Although the typos were surprisingly few for a 1,400-page book at that stage in the history of printing, the early editions were famous for their (sometimes intentional?) misprints. “Let the children first be killed,” one edition explained, instead of “filled.” “The Lord our God hath shewed us his glory and his great asse,” in place of “greatness.” “The unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom.” And of course, the Wicked Bible of 1631, which commands, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

Nonetheless, the King James Version won. It arrived at the right moment of political history in England, enforced by law during James’s 22-year reign, and acceptable enough that it eased the worries of Protestants from the highest of high-church Anglicans to the lowest of low-church Puritans.

It arrived, for that matter, at the right moment of linguistic history. Here’s an example: English would shortly undergo its transformation into what’s known as a “polite language,” the formal use of the second-person plural (the “vous” constructions) driving out the familiar use of second-person singular (the “tu” constructions). The King James correctly uses thou, thy, thine—all the singular forms of you, particularly to refer to God. It preserved them, in fact, far beyond the disappearance of those constructions from general speech, with the curious consequence that modern readers often hear thou not as familiar but as formal: a more ceremonial and polite way of speaking to God.

Which is surely a major part of what a translation of the Bible is supposed to provide. Looking back on the efforts, from the 1952 Revised Standard Version onward, to provide a text for modern readers, one has to say that they were profoundly misguided. The text of the King James was stable enough for over 300 years that biblical phrases could enter common speech and biblical rhythms shape literary prose.

Whether it should have dominated or not—the Douay-Rheims Bible, completed in 1610, may have been a better translation—the King James provided the language both a rich connection to the past and a general seriousness of reference. It was English, the living root. And it was public Christianity, the perpetual flower. What could possibly have possessed us to abandon it?

Joseph Bottum, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, is the author, most recently, of The Second Spring: Words into Music, Music into Words.

(Thanks go to Mark Waldeland whom I have known for over 45 years as a teaching colleague and friend, and more recently a fellow conservative for sending me this article.    He knows many of my favors for beauty especially in this American world of our day  where beauty  is less and less recognizable by what our universities  produce.   It is a wanting and therefore handicapped  population they create  void and  ignorant of  Beethoven for the ear and the King James Version of the Bible…dare I write, the Holy Bible? for the word, mouth and mind.   

Beauty is politically discounted in  Marxist societies.    If something is beautiful, then something is less beautiful, defiling its religious devotion requiring  equality throughout  their realms.    Our  universities have become factories to mass produce equality throughout the arts,   particulary in painting, music, and language.)

 

A Secret Service Review of the Nation’s First Families in the White House Since IKE

The following observations about the most modern of America’s first families were sent  by Bruce Taber.   They  are reviews from an American ‘secret service’ point of view from those in the White  House Secret Service Corps.  

I believe the reviews to be quite accurate despite my great distance from their goings on.   I have paid close attention to the White House world since Harry, Bess, and Margaret occupied the place on Pennsylvania Avenue.   And it is much easier in modern life to review the idiocyncracies and the less obvious truths about Mr. and Mrs. of the White House.

No one has exposed himself to the public as completely as Barack Hussein Obama.   His self love and evangelistic  snobbery  dominate his entire being  and is repeated every time he ‘meets’ his public.   His fatherlessness is constantly apparent as is the preachings of his ‘father figure’ Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright, Mr. Obama’s racist mentor.

The Lady Michelle has made enough appearances for public scrutiny which help verify the truths of the Secret Service recorded observations.  

Mr. G.W. Bush was a classy guy with a classy wife, a real ‘Marian the Librarian’….winsome, elegant, they both carried themselves well despite 21st Century societal ugliness.    In addition  the ‘cowboy’ Bush was in every way thinkable, a guy’s guy.

It is not surprising that the conservative pairs  on this list are viewed more favorably  by the Secret Service collective who worked at the White House.   Secret Service folk are those more likely to idealize generally both their country and those in the Whtie House they are paid to protect.    Conservatives are a better fit for their liking.    They are for mine, as well.

I also think Liberal Democrats are generally uglier in their cultural behavior than conservatives.   It’s the atheist vs. Christian meaningful  background sort of thing.   Although not mentioned on this list below, I’d bet that the Service  did like JFK very much, and chuckled often about the generally likeable Billy Clinton when he was not in a temper tantrum.    Nothing was mentioned about Barbara Bush’ salty language, which came,  if not to public ear, at least to public eye when she occupied her space in the White House.

Secret Service views of Presidents and First Ladies

 

 

 

*Here are snippets from a book of “Impressions & Observations” of Secret Service personnel assigned to guard U.S. Presidents/First Ladies, and Vice Presidents.

JOHN & JACQUELINE KENNEDY: *A philanderer of the highest order. *
*She ordered the kitchen help to save all the left-over wine during State dinners, which was mixed with fresh wine and served again during the next White House occasion.**LYNDON & LADYBIRD JOHNSON *Another philanderer of the highest order. In addition, LBJ was as crude as the day is long.*
*Both JFK and LBJ kept a lot of women in the White House for extramarital affairs, and both had set up “early warning systems” to alert them if/when their wives were nearby. Both Kennedy & Johnson were promiscuous and oversexed men. *
*She was either naive or just pretended to “not know” about her husband’s many liaisons. *
*RICHARD & PAT NIXON ** *
*A “moral” man but very odd and weird, paranoid, etc. He had a horrible relationship with his family, and in a way, was almost a recluse.*
*She was quiet most of the time.*

*SPIRO AGNEW:** Nice, decent man, everyone in the Secret Service was surprised about his downfall.

*GERALD & BETTY FORD: ** *
*A true gentlemen who treated the Secret Service with respect and dignity. He had a great sense of humor.. *
*She drank a lot.*

*JIMMY & ROSALYN CARTER: ** *
*A complete phony who would portray one picture of himself to public and very different in private, e..g., would be shown carrying his own luggage, but the suit cases were always empty; he kept empty ones just for photo op’s. Wanted the people to see him as pious and a non-drinker, but he and his family drank alcohol a lot. He had disdain for the Secret Service, and was very irresponsible with the “football” nuclear codes. He didn’t think it was a big deal and would keep military aides at a great distance. Often did not acknowledge the presence of Secret Service personnel assigned to serve him.*
*She mostly did her own thing.

*RONALD & NANCY REAGAN: ** *
*The real deal — moral, honest, respectful, and dignified. They treated Secret Service and everyone else with respect and honor. Thanked everyone all the time. He took the time to know everyone on a personal level. *
*One “favorite” story which has circulated among the Secret Service personnel was an incident early in his Presidency, when he came out of his room with a pistol tucked on his hip. The agent in charge asked: “Why the pistol, Mr. President?” He replied, “In case you boys can’t get the job done, I can help.” It was common for him to carry a pistol. When he met with Gorbachev, he had a pistol in his briefcase. Upon learning that Gary Hart was caught with Donna Rice, Reagan said, “Boys will be boys, but boys will not be Presidents.” [He obviously either did not know or forgot JFK's and LBJ's sexcapades!]*
*She was very nice but very protective of the President; and the Secret Service was often caught in the middle. She tried hard to control what the President ate, and he would say to the agent “Come on, you gotta help me out.”
The Reagans drank wine during State dinners and special occasions only; otherwise, they shunned alcohol; the Secret Service could count on one hand the times they were served wine during their “family dinner”. For all the fake bluster of the Carters, the Reagans were the ones who lived life as genuinely moral people.*

*GEORGE H. & BARBARA BUSH: *Extremely kind and considerate Always respectful. Took great care in making sure the agents’ comforts were taken care of. They even brought them meals, etc.
*One time Barbara Bush brought warm clothes to agents standing outside at Kennebunkport; one agent who was given a warm hat, and when he tried to nicely say “no thanks” even though he was obviously freezing, President Bush said “Son, don’t argue with the First Lady, put the hat on..” He was the most prompt of the Presidents. He ran the White House like a well-oiled machine.*
She ruled the house and spoke her mind.*

BILL & HILLARY CLINTON:**Presidency was one giant party. Not trustworthy — he was nice because he wanted everyone to like him, but to him life is just one big game and party. Everyone knows of his sexuality.*
She is another phony. Her personality would change the instant cameras were near. She hated with open disdain the military and Secret Service. She was another one who felt people are there to serve her. She was always trying to keep tabs on Bill Clinton.*ALBERT GORE: An egotistical ass, who was once overheard by his Secret Service detail lecturing his only son that he needed to do better in school or he “would end up like these guys” — pointing to the agents.*GEORGE W. & LAURA BUSH: The Secret Service loved him and Laura Bush.
He was also the most physically “in shape” who had a very strict workout regimen. The Bushes made sure their entire administrative and household staff understood to respect and be considerate of the Secret Service. KARL ROVE was the one who was the most caring of the Secret Service in the administration.*
*She was one of the nicest First Ladies, if not the nicest; she never had any harsh word to say about anyone.*

BARACK & MICHELLE OBAMA: ” Clinton all over again” – hates the military and looks down on the Secret Service. He is egotistical and cunning; looks you in the eye and appears to agree with you, but turns around and does the opposite—untrustworthy. He has temper tantrums.*
She is a complete witch, who hates anybody who is not black; hates the military; and looks at the Secret Service as servants.*

 

 

Roger Kimball on “of Mice in Man” and the like

                          TECHNOPHOBIA VS. TECHNOPHILIA

                             by Roger Kimball    at   Pajamas Media

“According to National Geographic, Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University “successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs.” The story also reports that in Minnesota, researchers at the Mayo Clinic “created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies,” while at Stanford University an experiment is being contemplated “to create mice with human brains.”

These are the sorts of developments that make many people worry about the ethical implications of genetic engineering. They read about cloning or “harvesting” embryos for genetic material, about fusing human with rabbit cells, and they wonder whether we have not started firmly down the path described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Today we cull certain biological material from so-called “dispensable” embryos; tomorrow might we not have factories for the production of children carefully segregated according to genetic endowment?

But if many people worry about what genetic engineering portends, others worry primarily about what misplaced public anxiety about such scientific research will mean for the progress of science. Such people are not necessarily insensitive to ethical issues; but for them the search for scientific truth is ineluctable. Public opinion might delay the march of progress. It will never entirely derail it. So (they argue) it behooves us to pursue science wherever it leads. If we don’t, someone else will, and we in the West are better equipped than anyone to deploy new technologies wisely and humanely than. To oppose the application of genetic engineering (the argument goes) is to be a latter-day Luddite, railing impotently against a technology whose effects might be painful at first but ultimately liberating.

It is a mistake to dismiss out of hand either side of the argument: those who worry about genetic engineering, or those who worry about the worriers. Consider the plus side. The therapeutic promise of genetic engineering is more than enormous: it is staggering. No one who has seen somebody suffer from cancer or Parkinson’s disease or any of the many other horrific ills that the flesh is heir to can be deaf to that promise. Of course, any powerful technology can be put to evil purposes as well as good ones. In this sense, one might say that technology is like fire. It is neither good nor bad in itself. It is good when used appropriately for good purposes, bad when used inappropriately or for evil purposes.

It would be pleasing to think that we could apply some such calculus to determine the moral complexion of a particular application of genetic engineering. It is not at all clear, however, that the moral quandaries with which genetic engineering confronts us can be solved by such a calculus.

Part of the problem is that the creed — familiar to us from Marxism — that “the end justifies the means” seems particularly barbarous when applied directly to human reality, as it is in genetic engineering. True, the end often does justify the means.  But not always. Knowing when it does and when it does involves not moral formulas but sound judgment, a much subtler commodity.  Are all embryos potential candidates for “harvesting,” or only certain embryos? And what about newborns, another good source of genetic material? Are certain infants to be regarded as potential “raw material” for genetic experimentation? Which infants?

It is easy to conjure up a nightmare world in which some human beings are raised for spare parts. Already in certain parts of the world, the bodies of executed criminals are raided for kidneys, corneas and other body parts. Why not extend the practice?

My own belief is that humanity is on the threshold of an awesome moral divide. Recent advances in the technologies of genetic engineering — cloning, stem-cell research, and the like — confront us with moral problems for which we have no solution. Perhaps the biggest problem concerns the nature of the technologies involved.

When we look back over the course of technological development, especially in the last couple hundred years, it is easy to be a technological optimist. Science and technology have brought us so many extraordinary advances that one is tempted to close one’s eyes take a leap of faith when it comes to technology. No doubt science and technology have brought us many destructive things, but who except the hermits among us would willing do without the conveniences — including life-saving conveniences — they have bequeathed us? It is impossible, I think, for any rational person to say “No” to science and technology. The benefits are simply too compelling.

But can we afford to acquiesce and simply say “Yes”? Are there lines to be drawn, limits to be respected? If so, where do we find the criteria for drawing those lines and limits? There is no simple or pat answer to such questions. Perhaps the one thing that is certain is that we are operating here in a realm beyond certainty. No one will come up with a formula that can be successfully applied to all cases.

There are two dangers. One is the danger of technophobia: retreating from science and technology because of the moral enormities it makes possible.

The other, more prevalent danger, is technophilia, best summed up in the belief that “if it can be done, it may be done. There are many things that we can do that we ought not to do. As science and technology develop, we find ourselves wielding ever greater power: but what values guide the exercise of that power?

The dark side of power is the temptation to forget its limitations. Lord Acton was right to warn that “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” None of us, of course, really commands absolute power. Our mortality assures that for all of us — rich and poor, brilliant and obscure — life will end in the absolute weakness of death.

But the exercise of power can be a like a drug, dulling us to the fact of our ultimate impotence. It is when we forget our impotence that we do most damage with the power we wield. At the end of magisterial book Main Currents of Marxism, the Polish philosopher Lezsek Kolakowski observed that “The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage.” It would be a mistake to think that Marxism has a monopoly on the project of self-deification. It is a temptation as old as mankind itself. The Greeks called it hubris, which was followed inevitable by nemesis. And the book of Genesis warns us about hubris with the story of the serpent’s promise to Eve: “Ye shall be as gods.” We all know how that story ended.

Modern technology has upped the ante on hubris. Our amazing technological prowess seduces many people into thinking that we are or, with just a bit more tinkering, that might become gods. The first step in that process is to believe that one is exempt from normal moral limits: that “if it can be done, it may be done.” It is a foolish thought, a dangerous thought. But it is one with which we will all find ourselves having to contend as we continue to surprise ourselves with our strange cleverness.”

Atheists and Rapists appear to be equally low in the world of the Believer

Atheists versus the  Rapists in the Eyes of Believers

Introductory comment:   I confess there was a time I dilly-dallied about the possibility I could become an atheist.   My wife and I were married in a Unitarian Church.   We both thought it important that we would bring up our children in a Christian environment.    After a few sermons, we decided not to bother.

I loved my own Protestant religious background.   As a chld I was fascinated by Bible studies, especially the Old Testament’s  collection of horrors, sins, and adventure.   I was thrilled that there was a God, and that I had a soul.   My Mother made certain I’d never forget.   

The music at Easter was enspiriting.   Could there be some kind of after life?   But nothing could beat singing the Christmas hymns and carols in Church during  Christmas as background to the Story according to St. Luke, the King James Version.   I was so glad and fortunate, I thought to be a Christian.   That feeling has never passed.   Most of my great fortune in life, none of it financial, has been from the great memories of my childhood learnings and a religion so vital in the history of my country.   I wanted to know all I could about mankind.    Both at Church and at public school , I was taught that the more I could learn and understand about God’s world around me, the closer I would be to God.    

I don’t think my mind and soul have ever been empty of this upbringing.    As I learned more and more about the natural sciences, especially those involving  plants, geology, anthropology,  and biochemistry, the more I was certain there was a miracle of miracles to have caused life and its surroundings.   

When I entered the College of Education at the University of Minnesota after my moment n the Army, I met my first bragging atheists.    None could teach any subject matter, so they advertised their atheism.   I had been unchurched since I was 16  and perhaps vulnerable.   Their main weapon was ridicule  mostly against the mental weakness of believers  as they described it, who never graduated from elementary school and nursery rhymes.    I bit a bit.   I then allowed myself to be described as an atheist for a few years after  I entered publc school teaching.

I was working on my graduate degree n Soviet Studies at Middlebury College.   And then I became a father.

Some of the ugliest people I have ever known are atheists.   There is a snot stream running through  them.   Most are single.   I cast them off as charlatons.   Theirs is a religion which usually works with lefties who are left enough to be Marxists.    No one in the world as yet can attest to what happens to the human soul after death.   Only atheists are dumb yet  arrogant enough to claim the knowledge.

I am a strong believer that most everyone has a soul……at least we were all  born with one.    And then their is the old adage, I believe from ancient Greece, “There is neither good nor bad.   Only thinking makes it so.”

Life and existence are a miracle.   There can be no mind without a search for God.

Most societies incarcerate rapists for their misdeeds.   With the exception of most Marxist dictatorships  since the beginning of the twentieth century, most modern societies don’t burn or cut the heads off of atheists.    Marxists who by definition ar atheists, however,   have been the world’s champion  executors of   their  unbelievers, numbering around 120,000,000 dead    Perhaps this has some effect on Believer equating  atheists at the level of rapists.    

An  argument could be made by Communist and Religious Believer alike, that more damage is done to ones culture by atheists than all the rapists’ activity  known and unknown.   What do you think?

The following article was found at HotAir and is attributed to the National Post:

Study: Religious people find

atheists as trustworthy as rapists

The second study recruited 105 UBC undergrads —they purposely targeted a more liberal sample from a less-religious nation — to test whether distrust of atheists is more pronounced than distrust of other groups, including Muslims. The students read a description of an untrustworthy man who pretended to leave insurance information after backing his car into a parked vehicle and were asked to say whether it was more likely the man was either a Christian, Muslim, rapist or an atheist. People were far more likely to say he was either an atheist or a rapist and not part of a religious group. They did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists, something Mr. Gervais found disconcerting.

“It’s pretty shocking that we get the same magnitude of distrust towards atheists simply because they don’t believe [in God],” said the researcher, who is himself an atheist. “With rapists, they’re distrusted because they rape people. Atheists are viewed as sort of a moral wild card.”

Another among the six studies found people are more likely to hire someone for a job that requires high levels of trust, such as a daycare worker, if they believe they are religious. They would hire atheists for a low trust job, such as a waitress, the study found.