The more I consider Glenn Reynolds’s comment that those gay marriage advocates “pushing the ‘bigotry’ meme are in fact more interested in calling others bigots than in accomplishing anything,” the more it appears to define more than just the attitude of politically correct “journalists” and pundits toward gay marriage opponents.  It also defines an entire mind-set of all too many left-of-center bloggers, pundits, journalists and even Democratic politicians.

And yes, there are some on the right who prefer labeling their adversaries on the left to addressing the legitimate points they do raise from time to time.

When I first start blogging, I would get regular hate mails from left-of-center gay people, lambasting me, usually with the standard refrain that I was hypocritical or otherwise self-loathing.  They rarely took the time to address specific points I had made on the blog.  When they did, they regularly misrepresented them.

They seemed to have some “need” to lash out at me, much as we Angelenos lash out at the one driver who seems to cut us off in traffic when we have been stuck on the freeway for three times as long as our journey was supposed to take.  That guy did what we probably would have done in the same situation.  And even if he was in the wrong, he wasn’t to blame for all of our traffic woes.

It doesn’t seem matter to some of our critics how we address the objections they raise to our arguments, they will never be satisfied.  We remain narrow-minded, beholden to an intolerant right wing and self-hating.  Like the frustrated man in traffic, they “need” a target for their frustration.  They “need” to vent.  They “need” to lash out.

Let me illustrate with an example.

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When President Barack Obama ordered his Cabinet to find ways to cut spending by $100 million (as point of reference*, that’s about .01% of his “stimulus”), he told reporters, “We also have a deficit — a confidence gap — when it comes to the American people. . . . And we’ve got to earn their trust.”

Mr. President, if you’d just compare your campaign rhetoric to your budgets, you might better understand why that gap exists.  Let me remind you of your words during the campaign when you made your case to the American people why you were the one to lead us:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Now, let’s look at how, with your budgets, we’ll live ever further beyond our means than we ever did in the Bush era:

(Created by Washington Post via Heritage Foundation.)

Mr. President, if you want to close that “confidence gap,” cut those deficits back.  And you can do that be delivering on your campaign promise of a “net spending cut.”

UPDATE: Others provide additional points of reference: “Obama’s latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime’s worth of difference.” In a post which blogger Teh Resistance calls, a “brilliant way to put it,” economist Greg Mankiw puts that $100 million into perspective:

. . . imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks.

Referencing a post on the Corner where Maggie Gallagher takes New York Times columnist Frank Rich to task for calling gay marriage opponents “bigots”, Glenn Reynolds echoes a point I’ve been making about the rhetoric of some gay marriage supporters:

Unlike Maggie Gallagher, I favor gay marriage. But it seems to me that in this — as in other areas — those pushing the “bigotry” meme are in fact more interested in calling others bigots than in accomplishing anything.

Emphasis added.

This goes to something Dale Carpenter has said about how gay activists see gay marriage as a “trophy in the cultural wars.“  While gay activists see it as a trophy, liberal pundits use it as a club with which to attack social conservatives.

Why do so many refuse to acknowledge the legitimate objections some people have to state recognition of gay marriage and hesitate to challenge them on the level of ideas?  Why do they resort to name-calling as a means of discourse?

Their preference for slurring gay marriage opponents parallels the way they and their peers respond to the Tea Parties.  Instead of listening to their adversaries’ arguments and acknowledging the sincerity of their concerns, they treat them as a bully treats the defenseless kid on the playground.

They think they can get away with it because the MSM encourages their insults.  And doesn’t hold them to account for their mean-spirited attempts to demean their adversaries.

Our society could gain by a serious discussion of gay marriage.  Gay people in particular would benefit from such a conversation.  Yet, the supposed advocates of this change would rather score points in some imaginary contest with conservatives than make a point about the social benefits of extending the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples.

One of the most ubiquitous (and my most favorite to pick apart) argumentative fallacies is that of the Straw Man. The Straw Man Fallacy is a cop-out in a debate wherein if an arguer has no (or insufficient) defense of his own position, he’ll simply argue against a point that nobody is making. In doing so, he can claim victory without ever having to face an actual intellectual challenge.

A favorite example of this from the Left is that of questioning someone’s patriotism. Although we hear from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden about how patriotic it is to pay higher taxes, never have I heard a prominant Republican raise the issue of anybody else’s patriotism. Never. Nonetheless, it is a constant theme of the Left when the efficacy of their policies are questioned to resort to the Straw Man argument that their opponent is “questioning the patriotism” of said Leftist politician.

But then something curious usually happens: in so defending himself, ironically, the Leftist in question actually does raise the question of his own patriotism where otherwise it wouldn’t even be a thought in a voter’s mind. I remember first hearing this bizarre line of accusation during a presidential election several cycles ago and thinking to myself, “Yea, well nobody’s questioning your patriotism. But come to think of it, isn’t it a good idea that we elect someone president who is patriotic? That’s not asking too much, is it? To have a president who’s patriotic? Maybe we should ask candidates about their patriotism. I’d kinda like to have a president who loves America.”

Comes along Barack Obama (who, in spite of his constant drumbeat of anti-American rhetoric as he tours the world, I believe really does love America after all), who’s turned straw man-building into a way of political life. His latest is brought to us from (once again) foreign soil. Not content to simply diss us as “disengaged” and selfish, now we’re bullies.

The quote from The One was: “We’re not simply going to lecture you, but we’re rather going to show through how we operate the benefits of these values and ideals.” The straw man here is obvious. Who, Mr. President, has been lecturing? And who suggested we should?

More importantly, this kind of raises the question: Perhaps Americans don’t want a president who “lecture”s other nations or their leaders about liberty and freedom. But is it asking too much for a president to embrace these ideals at least? To advocate them? We have a president whose reply to those who feel he’s gone too far toward nationalizing the banking system and the automotive industry, who feel his forrays into nationalizing a private health industry, whose profligate spending and borrowing will only further weaken an already hobbled US (and world) economy, is “we won”.

“Lecture,” Mr. Obama? No. We wouldn’t expect you (nor even consider asking you, with the track record you have) to “lecture” other nations or their leaders. But how about if you showed us you believe in American principles in the first place?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from Undisclosed Alternate HQ

Reminding us of the spendthrift ways of President Bush and the Republican Congresses of the early 2000s, Democratic officials and liberal bloggers attempt to deny the sincerity of Tea Party protesters and conservative Republicans decrying the excessive government spending proposed by President Obama and passed by a Democratic Congress.  Their line of attack shows they would rather dwell on our alleged hypocrisy than defend their excessive spending.

It is shocking that some of the very people who attacked then-President Bush for increasing the debt burden we are passing onto the younger generation support his successor’s plan to increase that debt far quickly than W ever dreamed possible.

Now, I do agree that our critics have a point when they wonder why we take to the streets to protest increased spending in the Bush era.  To be sure, we did speak out against his profligacy, but not to the extent we are doing so now.

I think that’s because it takes time for a movement to coalesce.

The roots of this one lay in the TARP bailouts last fall.  Back then, some of the conservative bloggers most strongly supportive of the Tea Party movement (notably Michelle Malkin) spoke out against such multi-hundred billion dollar plans.  Those bailouts sparked the outrage at government profligacy which would coalesce in the tea parties.

Perhaps, some who opposed the bailouts found solace in Obama’s election, believing that he, being of a different party than the then-incumbent President represented a real change.  I mean, it was a Republican Treasury Secretary who proposed such bailouts.

But, when they saw that that change was just more of the same, only on steroids, with a spendthrift “stimulus,” followed by excessive increases in government spending (i.e., as advanced in Obama’s budget), the outrage began to grow.

It takes time to awaken a sleeping giant.  In under six months time, the American people saw our elected leaders propose successive increases in federal spending.  As we watched deficits increases, we just wondered if thought the federal treasury was a never-ending source for their largesse.

Yeah, maybe we should have been awakened sooner.  But, just because we didn’t react more strongly earlier doesn’t mean we are wrong to address it now.  It takes some gall for those on the left to fault Republicans for deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars and then question the sincerity of those who get upset at deficits twice and three times that number.

Instapundit links.  Thanks, Glenn, much appreciated. He builds on my point with perhaps the perfect analogy (perhaps more on this anon):  ”But you know Al Gore’s story about the slowly-boiling frog? Obama’s turned the stove up to 11, and the frog has started to kick.“

UPDATE: Commenting on this post, Jehuda at Rhetorican offers, “Hypocrisy has nothing to do with the Left’s gripe about the Tea Parties.” Exactly. They’ll just use whatever club they can to attack us.

Last month, former McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt advised Republicans to “steer clear” of divisive social issues.  This month a headline in USA Today suggested he had gone a step further, calling on the GOP to back gay marriage.

That headline, however, did not accurately reflect the content of his remarks.  Schmidt merely urged that Republicans, in the words of a Washington Post headline writer, “rethink gay marriage:”

For the party to be seen as anti-gay, that is injurious to its candidates in places like California and Washington. . . . Republicans should reexamine the extent to which we are defined by positions on issues that I don’t believe are among our values and that put us at odds with what I expect will [be] over time, if not a consensus view, then the view of a substantial majority of voters.

Given the support Republicans enjoy with social conservatives, it would be folly for the party to back gay marriage (heck, even the Democrats don’t back gay marriage), but given the need for the GOP to win back suburbanites and reach out to young voters, it would be an even greater folly to let the party be defined by such social conservatives.

The perception that the party’s focus is social issues is a killer to building a broad-based coalition that can win elections.  And the GOP seems to gain that perception when it loses sight of the fiscal conservative principles which drove its success in the 1980s and 1994.

When we lose sight of those principles, for example when President George H.W. Bush raised taxes despite pledging not to do so, then the party’s social conservative principles seem to dominate as they did at the 1992 convention and in that fall’s election.

So, Steve Schmidt is spot on.  We can’t let the party be seen as anti-gay.  We need to better articulate our common principles and develop an agenda based on them as House Republicans did in 1994 with the Contract with America.

Something struck me as incredibly self-serving, narcissistic even, when I read than in response to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s lengthy and angry tirade against the United States at the Summit of the Americas, the President of the United States responded, “You can’t blame the U.S. for every problem in this hemisphere. . . . I am very grateful that President Ortega didn’t blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.a’  (Emphasis added.)

Well, Law Professor William Jacobson, referencing the times the President attempted to use his youth to excuse the behavior of a terrorist associate, helped me find the words to express why Obama’s response to Ortega was so off-putting:

There is something truly bizarre about this reasoning. If something happened when Obama was not of a certain age (we know it is at least eight years old, although we don’t know where the line is drawn) then he accepts no responsibility. That is fine if one is talking about personal responsibility only. Obama is no more responsible on a personal level for what others did, be it yesterday or 30 years ago, than anyone else.

But Obama no longer is “anyone else.” Obama is the President and bears the burden of dealing with accusations and attacks on this country related to events which did not take place on his watch.

Exactly.  Obama is no longer “anyone else.”  He speaks for the nation, for all of us.  Not just himself.

Perhaps the most accurate description of the tea parties in one of Andrew Sullivan’s tirades against this grassroots phenomenon was his use of the adjective “amorphous” to slur the rallies  To be sure, he used that word to modify our “rage.” (Wonder if, after February 24, 2004, he ever found “rage” to be a defining quality of the anti-Iraq War protests.)

Having now attended three tea parties (one back in February), I agree that the movement is kind of amorphous.  The rally in Santa Monica was a particularly “haphazard” affair.

But, this is how grassroots movements begin, as amorphous affairs, gatherings of a diverse array of individuals with a common concern, but lacking a set agenda on how to address that concern.  So, we take the streets, meeting others who share that concern, in this case about an ever-growing federal government.  Once together, we start working on means to improve our amorphous movement so we might better reach our goals.

If they were astroturf, they would have had been better organized, had more structure.  A platform would have preceded the protests.  And now, let’s hope the protests lead to a platform.

Those who criticize us are welcome to do so.  It’s their right as Americans.  But, when they let their rage define our activism, they become blind to the legitimacy of our movement.

This past week I’ve been working my way through a Clint Eastwood collection I bought on sale last week at Best Buy, so movies haven’t provided the source of humor they normally do.  But, I haven’t needed turn to the silver screen to find a source of laughter.  I just needed follow an “Incoming Link” on our dashboard to a left-wing blogger who tried to pillory a post of mine.

I don’t think his goal was to elicit peals of laughter from me.  But, if it was, then, my hat’s off to him.  He did a swell job.  A Mr. Oliver Willis accused me of sounding “that old conservative woe-is-me song” for pointing out that “all too many [but fortunately not all] on the left seek to insult and otherwise strive to discredit conservatives rather than engage them on the level of ideas.”

While comparing conservatives to simians who hurl excrement, Willis called our ideas “the crazed rantings of lunatics” and defined conservatives by our most extreme elements.  I won’t make the mistake of defining all liberals by Mr. Willis’s angry rant.

But, it’s that “woe-is-me” thing that’s kind of sticking in my craw.  You see, it sounds kind of similar to an accusation a reader hurled against me in the comments section not even a week ago, accusing me of playing the victim.  It’s something I got a lot when a left-wing blog linked a post I wrote about the intolerance some gay people harbor for gay conservatives.

What was funny was that, in that post, I wasn’t complaining about the intolerance of a man who proposed marriage to me on learning of my love for mythology, but refused to deal with me after learning of my politics.  I was just using his intolerance as an example of a phenomenon in the gay community:  the animus so many left-leaning gay people harbor against their conservative fellows.

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Well, he didn’t take long to prove me right. Today in his opening remarks to the Summit of the Americas, President Obama was quick to point out that we as a nation have been “disengaged” and obstinate.

This makes the total six countries to which he’s traveled to bad-mouth or otherwise denigrate the country of which his wife only recently became proud for the first time in her adult life. You’d think at least for her sake he’d go a little easy on the US. Perhaps he’s just trying to bring her back down to earth?

For those keeping track, the six, in chronological order are:

Canada
Great Britain
France
Saudi Arabia
Mexico
Trinidad and Tobago

(It’s seven if you include the US.) That’s a lot for only 89 days.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from Undisclosed Alternate HQ

It’s not just lesbians who are being open about their sexuality at Tea Parties. A reader sends this picture from Philadelphia where he protested excessive government spending at the Tea Party there.

We’re out, we’re proud and we’re agitating against spendthrift budgets and for freedom!

Back in October 2007, when I met then-Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon in Washington, D.C., I became convinced that the organization had started to reverse its decline.  As I offered my criticisms, Patrick listened, took notes, responded to my points and showed respect for my arguments.  His manner stood in stark contrast to the reaction club presidents received in the late 1990s and this blog received in the middle of the current decade when we took issue with his predecessors.

I’ve always believed that one way to determine the strength of an organization is to see how its leaders react to sincere criticism honestly expressed.

It now appears I was wrong about the organization rebounding under Patrick’s leadership.  I don’t think he’s to blame for its continuing decline.  It was beyond his power–or perhaps anyone’s–to arrest the forces long since in motion which have been driving Log Cabin down.

When I was a Log Cabin club president, I kept hearing from gay Republicans who wanted a gay group to challenge the liberal agenda and anti-Republican rhetoric of the national gay organizations.  The national office rarely did that, if at all.  Indeed, while eager to take on his fellow Republicans, Sammon’s predecessor Patrick Guerriero

. . . dedicated himself to stopping “the infighting with other LGBT groups.”  So concerned he is with this goal that he “instituted a new policy inside Log Cabin: If you speak ill of another LGBT group, that is grounds for dismissal.”

In short, the organization did its best to avoid distinguishing itself from the national gay groups, particularly HRC, which even some liberal bloggers have noted, has become little more than a gay front for the Democratic National Committee.

That failure to offer a different approach to gay issues cost it the support of numerous gay and lesbian Republicans who would otherwise readily support a gay conservative or Republican organization.  That failure become magnified when we learned that the group got substantial funding from a leading left-wing philanthropist.  Its credibility was shot.

There are other reasons for the decline.  Until Sammon took over, the national leadership had developed quite a flair for antagonizing activists and contributors who dared voice their opposition to this or that policy of the national office or posed a threat (in the eyes of the national office) to the standing of the-then Executive Director or President.

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Welcome Powerline Readers!!

One of the themes I have been addressing with great regularity almost since the moment I started blogging is how all too many on the left seek to insult and otherwise strive to discredit conservatives rather than engage them on the level of ideas.  Indeed, this is something I have witnessed since my undergraduate days when I regularly defended the Gipper.

I always found it such a delight (perhaps because it seemed all too infrequent) when someone on the left would recognize the sincerity of my support for that good man–even when they disagreed with my ideas or his policies.

Well, it would be nice if we could see more people the left –and in the mainstream media–who would show similar respect for the sincerity of this past week’s “Tea Party” protesters.  With as many as a half-million people protesting against bigger government (over one million if you count the way Democrats do), this represents a pretty significant movement, especially given that most rallies were held in the afternoon on a weekday when many who would otherwise attend them had to work (at least four of my readers contacted me personally to say they wished they could attend, but they couldn’t get off work).

Instead of acknowledging the significance of this growing grassroots phenomenon, all too many on the left, including at least one who calls himself conservative, prefer to mock the protests with sexual references rather than consider the sincerity of the protests.  I mean, c’mon, doesn’t it even occur to them as they wonder why we weren’t doing this during the Bush era that one reason the Republicans lost –and the Democrats won–last fall was because people rejected their spendthrift ways.  They were hoping for change.  And yet the change we got was more of the same, only on steroids.

No wonder people are upset.

What drove many Republican, Republican-leaning independents and libertarians to vote for Obama last fall, and what kept many fiscal conservatives home on election day is the exact same thing which spurred hundreds of thousands of people across the nation to take to the streets last Wednesday–concern about an ever-expanding federal government

Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson details (with a great variety of links) how “journalists” at MSNBC and CNN as well as an agitated blogger “used the rallies as an occasion for childish sexual innuendoes“:

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Where other gay groups in America dare to tread, GOProud barrels ahead at full steam.

In the wake of a series of murders of gay Iraqis in the stronghold of radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud, a registered 527 for gay conservatives and their allies, issued the following statement.

“Instead of unilaterally surrendering the global war on terror, now is the time for the Obama administration to recommit to fighting global extremism. It is intolerable for the U.S. government to turn a blind eye to the type of human rights abuses occurring at the hands of Islamic extremists in Iraq and indeed throughout the Middle East. If the United States is to maintain its position of moral leadership in the world, then this administration must make it clear that basic human rights for all should be respected.

It is shameful that so many on the left have made excuses for the human rights abuses carried out by tyrannical extremist regimes from Cuba to Venezuela to Iran. It is time for the blame America first crowd to recognize the real threats to peace and freedom that exist across the globe.”

Where is the Human Rights Campaign on Islamic extremists & gays?  And the NGLTF?  Or even Log Cabin (Republicans) ?  We all know the answer:  *crickets chirping*

Here at GayPatriot and GOProud — we will not ignore the brutal gay purges being systematically carried out by Islamists around the globe.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Buried in heavy wet snow at HQ this evening (and almost trapped at SOUTHCOM today), I took some time and caught up with our Dear Leader and his backpacking trips throughout the world as of late.

Fresh off his stop south of the border where he blamed the drug mafia’s overrunning of a clearly impotent and/or corrupt Mexican government inexplicably on US gun laws, he followed on to the Carribian to attend the Summit of the Americas.

As an aside, by the way, the photo of him greeting yet another America-hater, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is an interesting juxtaposition, don’t you think, with that of our then-First Lady cum Senate candidate and now Secretary of State with her gal-pal?

And let’s not forget the words of Chavez from less than two years ago:

The United States empire is on its way down and it will be finished in the near future, inshallah.

No doubt we’ll hear the president soon saying that “these words do not reflect the Hugo Chavez I know.”

But anyway…

Reading Obama’s words in Mexico, I got to thinking: Those who spend time on social networking sites are familiar with the “Countries I’ve Visited”-type applications that allow jet-setters (and humble military deployers) to show off all the fantastic places they’ve been. I decided to start one for the Big O. Below is a map of the world showing all the places President Obama has visited and trashed the United States. While he didn’t explicitly trash the USA in Saudi Arabia, the way he, as the leader of our Nation, subjugated himself in public to the throne of that kingdom, I’m going to count it. I’ll be back tomorrow if I need to add Trinidad and Tobago (which, unfortunately desipte its name only counts as one).

Please feel free to correct me if I’ve missed any.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from HQ

UPDATE!
A very helpful commenter reminds me of The One’s trip in February to Canada where he indeed did badmouth us. I’ve also had a couple requests to improve the quality of the map. Given that the Dear Leader is currently in Trinidad and Tobago, I know I’ll have to update it pretty soon anyway, so I’ll hold off for now on those improvements and just post a brand new one once he insults us all at the Summit. As for the concern about Germany, I don’t think I’ll count that as he was merely a Senator (do you remember when he was just a Senator?). It would be impossible to include his trips before being inagurated president since his destinations and words weren’t always in the public record back then.
Fear not, though. I’m sure he’ll be back to visit his constituency our friends in Europe soon enough. And when he does, he’ll be packing his disdain for us with him.

The various national (and some local) gay and lesbian groups have promoted a great variety of silly gimmicks to get their message across that it becomes hard to determine which is the silliest.

Well, today the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is sponsoring a Day of Silence where at schools across the country, “students take a day-long vow of silence to symbolically represent the silencing of LGBTQ students and their supporters.”  That certainly ranks up there.

I just don’t see what these stunts accomplish in a day when gay students are free to organize and speak out in favor of openness and inclusion and against discrimination.

I know that some social conservatives overreact to this Day, with one promoting a video about the project which “exposes how our children are being indoctrinated, held captive and forced to accept an unproven and dangerous ideology while Biblical Truth is undermined” (via Althouse).  Silly the stunt but be, but indoctrination it’s not.

I just wonder though at the need of gay groups to promote events where people go out of their way to advertise their difference and to make a statement.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to encourage students to come out and live their lives openly and telling them to be unafraid to report any harassment by their peers?

Such stunts seemed geared to a different time when people were less open about their sexuality than they are today.

(It seems I had something else to add–and may at a later time–but am drawing a blank right now.  Maybe it will come out in response to the comments.)

Does anybody have any news about this shindig?  The Log Cabin Convention is taking place in our nation’s capital this weekend.

I have a sense turnout is way down.  The only news I’ve been able to find on the web is the report that former McCain consultant Steve Schmidt gave a speech there saying he backed gay marriage.

At the San Diego convention last year, a presidential election year (when interest in politics tend to peak), turnout was down from the convention I had attended ten years previously in Dallas.  The organization didn’t seem to be growing, but contracting.

With the report in February that Log Cabin got most of the funds it used for ads slamming fellow Republicans from left-wing fund-raiser Tim Gill, the ostensibly Republican organization lost any credibility among gay conservatives and within Republican circles it had gained during the tenure of immediate past president Patrick Sammon.

Now with the launch of GOProud, Log Cabin is not longer the only group for gay Republicans around.  We have an alternative.

If you have any news from the convention, let me know and I’ll post it here.

Sometimes you come up with a better title after having already posted a piece and, well, since I liked this one so much I thought I’d devote a separate post to to it.

Blogger’s prerogative, you know.

Since Democrats multiplied the number of petitions their outfit Organizing for America gathered to support the president’s budget by three, let’s use their system to determine the number who attended tea parties.  With a party turnout estimates ranging from 341,472 to 551,000, looks like we’re at somewhere betweeen one and one-and-one-half millions participants in the rallies.

That ain’t no astroturf.

With tea party turnout estimates ranging from 341,472 to 551,000 (I even saw one on Bruce’s twitter feed at 750,000), it’s clear this grassroots movement is really catching fire across the nation.  And we did it without either a central command or the resources of groups which organized rallies for more liberal causes and candidates.

Even if we go with that lower number, using the math of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), that’s over million people pledging their opposition to bloated budgets.

You see, Organizing for America, President Obama’s political organization, now run out of the DNC

. . . boasted in a series of press releases that 642,000 “pledges” [supporting the president's budget] had been collected during a highly publicized national canvassing effort. The pledges were then printed out at Democratic National Committee headquarters and taken over to congressional offices.

But do 642,000 pieces of paper mean that 642,000 actual people signed up to back the president’s budget? Not quite.

Democrats got to 642,000 by tripling the number of people who signed the petitions:

Each American has three representatives in Congress — their two Senators and their Representative. Well, the DNC didn’t want anyone to be missed, so they made three copies of each signature and delivered them to each member. And it was that total (642,000) that was reported as supporting the budget, not the 214,000 unique signatures.

So, using the Democrats’ math, we multiple the number of participants by three to get the number of people pledging their opposition to higher government spending.

According to Zarathushtra, the great prophet of Zoroastrianism, “the world is divided into good and evil“, with Angra Manyu, “the spirit of darkness and lies,” ruling the forces of evil.  While today’s left doesn’t have a Zarathushtra, they do have their Angra Manyu, George W. Bush.

Even now, nearly three months after that good man has left the White House, the left is still obsessed with him; some acolytes of that faith eager to prove that we (and others who have defended him) are remain the devil’s W’s disciples.  Even after taking the time to provide several examples of the times we here at GayPatriot (despite our defenses) did take issue with then then-President, it will not alter the creed of those adherents to this new faith.

Despite evidence of our criticism (even a whole category devoted to where he went wrong) of that decent, but flawed man, they refuse to alter their conviction that we are “unquestioning defenders of George Bush and his policies.”  The abundant evidence to the contrary is irrelevant.  Thy do not let facts get in the way of their faith.

To do so would mean departure from their doctrine.  Bush is the devil.  And those who defended him were are devout devotees of him and his dangerous dogma.

I posted a piece this morning to address our critics’ contention that we never faulted Bush or the Republican for overspending when the Republicans were in charge.  But, to some, the evidence of our mixed feelings for the past president matters little.  They so want to see us not as we are, but as they’d like us to be, so that they may more easily dismiss our ideas more readily hold firm to their faith.

As they repeat their mantra over and over and over again, they further reveal the tenets of that faith. It’s amazing how Manichean is their world view.  Just like the Zoroastrianism, but without its nuance and appreciation for the potetial blending of the cosmic division in the real world.

Bush Derangement isn’t just a psychiatrist‘s term.  It’s a religious creed.