"For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights….."

Traditional Democrat Party soiree in Pennsylvania 

From Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator:

The DNC's Bold Lies

By JEFFREY LORD on 9.4.12 @ 6:09AM

DNC website caught lying about party's civil rights record: Wasserman Schultz, Virginia Senate nominee Kaine involved.

The lies are big, bold and prominent.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been caught. And the website scandal may also impact the Virginia U.S. Senate race that has former Governor Tim Kaine as the Democrats' nominee against ex-Senator and Governor George Allen. Why?

As reported in all manner of media outlets in September of 2010 (here at the Huffington Post, here on The Today Show and here in a 25-minute presentation at George Washington University posted on YouTube) it was then-DNC Chairman Kaine on whose watch the new DNC website was launched.

Now the fibs are the centerpiece of the Democratic National Committee's revamped Obama-saluting website as the Democrats gather for their Charlotte convention. And Wasserman Schultz, of course, is the DNC chair -- succeeding Kaine --by the grace of the Obama White House. Which certainly had the ability to block or change the contents -- and hasn't.

What are the lies?

Lie Number One: Check the "Our History" section, found here of the DNC's website. See it? The history section -- now written to reflect the history of the Obama administration -- begins with this breathtakingly bold lie:

For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights…..

Lie Number Two: Then check here to see the DNC's "Issues" section on civil rights. That section begins with a second bold lie. This one:

Democrats have a long and proud history of defending Civil Rights and expanding opportunity for all Americans.

The DNC website in both its history and issues sections is literally wiped clean of any reference that this is the party that spent platform after platform after platform building a culture of racism.

Playing the race card, as it is politely called today.

There is zero indication on the revamped DNC website that not only are those first lines in each section blatant untruths, but that in those "more than 200 years" the party was a ferocious supporter of every race-judging idea imaginable, including slavery, segregation, and lynching.

Kaine even agreed to a short video version that begins by briefly saying:

Democrats are the party of Jefferson, who declared that we are all created equal. And we worked long and hard to make that real.

...[N]either the new history and issues sections of the Obama-controlled, Wasserman-Schultz-run DNC website, not to mention the video, ever whispers a hint that the Democrats:

· Supported slavery in 6 platforms from 1840-1860.

· Opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution that successively wiped out slavery and gave both legal rights and voting rights to black Americans.

· Supported segregation actively or by silence in 20 platforms from 1868-1948.

· Opposed anti-lynching laws, specifically supported by the GOP in four platforms between 1912 and 1928.

· Opposed the GOP-sponsored Civil Rights Acts of 1866, which focused on legal equality for blacks.

· Opposed the GOP on giving voting rights to blacks in the District of Columbia in 1867. The legislation was passed over the Democrats' objection..

· Nominated an 1868 presidential ticket of New York Governor Horatio Seymour and ex-Missouri Congressman Francis Blair. The Democrats pledged they would declare the Civil Rights laws passed by the GOP "null and void" and would refuse to enforce them. They lost to Ulysses Grant.

· Opposed the Enforcement Acts, three laws passed by the GOP between 1870 and 1871 targeting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and making it a federal crime to block the right of blacks to vote, hold office, serve on juries and have equal protection of the laws with whites.

· Opposed the GOP Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination of blacks in public accommodations.

· Used the Ku Klux Klan as what Columbia University historian Eric Foner calls "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party." Nor is there mention of the infamous 1924 Democratic Convention -- the "Klanbake" as it is known to history because hundreds of the delegates were Klan members. The Klan-written platform mixed the traditional Democratic message of progressivism and racism in the Klan-written platform.

· Repealed the Civil Rights laws enacted by GOP Congresses and presidents, already damaged by the Supreme Court. When Democrats gained control of both Congress and the White House in 1892, the Democrats' President Grover Cleveland signed the repeal on February 8, 1894.

None of this stark, vicious and frequently violent racial history, much of it detailed in Bruce Bartlett's Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past, is mentioned on the new website.

There is no polite way to put it. This DNC website presentation is a lie.

A deliberate, willful and very big lie. Hiding from the young, the innocent and the unwary the cold, hard and true facts of the Democratic Party's horrific racial history.

As we noted in this space four years ago when the Democrats were preparing to nominate then-Senator Obama, America's liberal party was ruthless then when it came to concealing the long, ghastly tale of their culture of racism.

Here's the party's history section as preserved on their website in 2008. Alas for the DNC, this fancy-tale is still findable on the webhere.

As we wrote at the time, the 2008 party history skips neatly from pre-Civil War 1848 and picks up again when "the 19th Century came to a close." Effectively skipping all the history noted above. This is the same formula adopted by the 2010 video, except the video moves the clock further back to Jefferson's presidency before performing the same trick of skipping to the dawn of the 20th century.

The party made another version of this same lie when redoing their website for 2010, saying, as captured by the Romantic Poet's Weblog:

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we've worked to pass every one of our nation's Civil Rights laws…."

Now.

Given the sheer boldness of the lie -- literally akin to writing a history of Germany that ends in 1933 and resumes in 1946, neatly skipping those historic trivialities of Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the mass murder of six million Jews (not to mention that small skirmish called World War II) -- why is there any surprise, any surprise at all, at the recent repeated surfacing of the culture of racism -- judging others by skin color -- by Obama media allies and politicians?

This cultural rot has been the backbone of American liberalism and its political party the Democrats -- for 212 years.

Lord doesn't even mention that the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960's was fought entirely against Democrats-- every Southern bigot who was excluding/terrifying/assaulting/murdering blacks was a Democrat.

The Democrat Party is the party of race-baiting. It uses racism as a political strategy. And Democrats have no scruples whatsoever about telling astonishing lies about the history of their party. 

How could the party of slavery and the KKK and Jim Crow and Bull Connor get away with lying so shamelessly? Democrats know that the people to whom they are lying have been educated in a Democrat-monopolized public school system and are informed by a Democrat-fawning mainstream media. 

Their lies are safe, and they know it.

                                                           ***

We have a dear family friend who is a retired teacher. She's a very intelligent and well-informed woman, and she's a passionate Democrat. One evening after dinner our discussion ran to Republicans and Democrats, and of course I defended Republicans from bizarre charges of racism. 

I pointed out to her that slavery was a Democrat institution, that Jim Crow laws were Democrat laws, that the KKK was an arm of the Democratic Party. She was incredulous. She was sure that slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK were Republican in origin. (!) The Democrat Party is always against racism!

I had to google it to show her. 

Keep in mind that she is a very well-educated Democrat. Imagine what the dumb ones believe.

Jeff Shallit's and Larry Moran's missing argument on the evolutionary argument against naturalism

Atheists Jeff Shallit and Larry Moran take exception to my post on Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. Professor Shallit, on his blog, sneers:

Michael Egnor Fails Intelligence Test 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Alvin Plantinga's EAAN (evolutionary argument against naturalism) is so mind-bogglingly flawed, that if you meet anyone at a party who claims to believe it has merit, you should immediately find someone more interesting to talk to, because it's really unlikely you're going to have a good conversation 

Any bright high school student can see the flaws in a few minutes. In this way, it functions as a sort of intelligence test for the philosophically inclined. The fact that some philosophers actually took the argument seriously and a few collaborated on a volume entitled Naturalism Defeated? illustrates the sad state of modern philosophy. It's the philosophical equivalent of taking a bogus proof that 2 = 1 and writing an entire book explaining why it is wrong. Yes, you can do it, but why bother? 

So guess who accepts it and thinks it is "obviously valid"? Why, that paragon of ignorance and arrogance, Michael Egnor. 

It's not surprising, since commenters at his site have tried over and over again to explain to Egnor what the theory of evolution says, but he just can't get it.

And Professor Moran, in the comments, writes:

I've just finished reading Plantiga's latest book and I had the same impression you did. If this guy is a highly respected philosopher the what does that say about philosophy? 

As for Egnor, well, he's an IDiot, so why are we surprised?

Note, good readers, that both august professors neglected the most important ingredient in this discussion: they made no argument. They gave no reasons whatsoever for their disagreement with Plantinga's argument.

It's not an uncommon strategy among atheists and Darwinists. They sneer, insult, name-call, dismiss, but rarely offer genuine reasoned rebuttals to arguments against their ideology.

So to make it easier for Drs. Shallit and Moran to join the fray with their intellects rather than their spittle, I'll recap Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism here. To make it fair for my atheist interlocutors, I won't use many big philosophy words.

First, two definitions:

We define naturalism as the belief that there is no God and there are no supernatural entities. The natural world is all that exists. 

We define evolution as the process described by modern evolutionary theory-- that man is explicable totally by random heritable variation and natural selection, as well as non-adaptive changes (random genetic drift).

The evolutionary argument against naturalism is this:

If naturalism and evolution are true, then our beliefs are evolved by natural selection. (We will ignore non-adaptive genetic drift).

Beliefs have two types of content. 

One type of belief is abstract thought-- the belief that God doesn't exist, or that pi is an irrrational number, etc. 

The other type of belief is motivation to behavior. If I believe that watering my crops will make them grow better, I'll water them. 

Evolution can only act on "motivation to behavior" beliefs. "Abstract thought" beliefs are invisible to evolution.  Natural selection doesn't read minds. The correlation of abstract beliefs to actual truth cannot be shaped by selection. 

The only way that abstract beliefs can evolve is if the abstract belief bears an incidental relation to motivation to behavior. That is, the abstract belief can evolve only if it is a spandrel. A spandrel is a incidental non-adaptive trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of another trait that is adaptive.

A mental spandrel such as abstract reasoning need have no necessary or consistent relation to the truth about the natural world. 

Thus, if evolution and naturalism are true, our beliefs evolve for mating, not for abstract reasoning. The belief in evolution and naturalism itself has no warrant. In the evolutionary/naturalist scheme, abstract reasoning of any sort is either meaningless or it's just incidental to a mating strategy.  

The belief that evolution and naturalism are true is self-refuting.  

So to Dr. Shallit and Dr. Moran, here's my challenge:

I challenge you to rebut Plantinga's argument. Demonstrate how abstract beliefs evolved by natural selection are trustworthy, and are not just incidental to a mating strategy.

Show us that belief in evolution and naturalism isn't just self-refuting gibberish.

Egyptian Candid Camera

A delightful Egyptian TV program, in which the hosts play little tricks on the guests.

In this episode, the guests (prominent members of the Egyptian arts community) are invited to be on television, and are then told, on the air, that their interviewers are... Jews!

Zaniness ensues! One burly male guest punches the female (Jew) interviewer (4:50 in the video), and each of the guests violently freaks out at the realization that they are being spoken to by... Jews.

Alas, it is all a hilarious practical joke. There's not a Jew in sight. They're Muslims all. All hug in the end, even the punched female interviewer. I mean, who can blame the guy. He thought she was a... Jew. He gets a round of applause.

From Jonathan Tobin at Commentary:

... the Egyptian version of this [Candid Camera] genre found a way of freaking out their victims that seems to be straight out of a Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Al-Nahar TV tricked three Egyptian celebrities into coming in for an Arabic-language interview that they were told was for German television. But once the cameras were rolling, the interviewer and the staff on the set let it slip that they were really Israelis. As they say in the world of comedy, complications ensued.

All three of the prominent victims of this stunt were outraged at the thought of even being in the same room with people they presumed to be Jews, let alone appearing on an Israeli program. Two grew violent, with one burly male even assaulting the young female interviewer. The prank speaks volumes not only about the level of hatred for Jews and Israelis in Egyptian popular culture but about what is considered acceptable behavior in the Muslim world.

Viewing the invective about Jews and Israel being spewed on the show by three apparently prominent members of the Egyptian arts community is damning by itself. It says a lot that the show’s producers thought one of the most outrageous things they could do to Egyptians was to trick them into sitting down with Jews. Nor is it surprising that the response generated hate speech about the character of the Jewish people and the authenticity of the Holocaust.

But the punch lines of each segment in which the subjects are informed they are on a candid camera show, which was required in two cases to avert more violence if not bloodshed, is also illustrative. There were no reproaches from the hosts for the violent behavior that followed when the guests were told they were on Israeli TV. It was only when they were pretending to be Israelis that they tried to push back against the slanders. Once they were back in their own identities, all was forgiven. The host only had praise for her dupes — even the one who slugged her — for demonstrating what she described as “patriotism” by their anger about being set up to talk with Jews. 

To be fair to the Egyptian actors who were subjected to this prank, had they really been tricked into appearing on Israeli TV, there would have been serious consequences for their careers. Egyptians who appear to be friendly with Israel or with Jews are often blacklisted from their professions. 

Nevertheless, the show tells us all we need to know about the depth of Egyptian and Muslim anti-Semitism. Those who believe peace with the Arab world can be bought by territory or by Israeli concessions continue to ignore the current of hatred that runs through the political and arts culture of the Muslim world, even in a country supposedly at peace with the Jewish state.

Nice to know The Religion of Peace ™ has a lighter side.

The New Atheist civil war

The battle of the logos is joined.

Ever fissiparous, the newest iteration of atheism appears to be cracking up. It began with some frat-boy (or worse) behavior on the part of male atheist attendees directed at female atheist attendees at recent atheist soirees. No doubt some of the male attendees took the "Religion Spoils Everything" breakout session too seriously and decided to break a commandment or two. Alas Freedom from Religion doesn't bring moral utopia with the celerity that many had hoped.

While the traditional atheist spats have been a bit hematic, New Atheist kerfuffles have thus far been less acrimonious-- whether to call themselves "Brights", whether accomodationism is a Betrayal of the Revolution, or who gets to wear the Spock ears at the plenary session.

Now atheists are at fisticuffs over this:

Should atheism align itself with explicitly leftist causes, or remain politically neutral?

The New Leftie Atheists split from the New Undecided Atheists and as first order of business drew up a new logo-- "A+"(above). Atheists are very serious about logos. Many of us thought Leftie Atheists already had a logo, but there seems to be a move to rebrand. One suspects that the original New Leftie Atheist logo was going to be "A+ 95 years", but they shortened it to make the tattoos less of an ordeal.

Anyway, PZ Myers and Nelson Jones weigh in on the revolution. Expect soon that we will have competing conclaves-- The Amazing Meeting vrs. The Meeting That Is Amazing, and "Brights" vrs. "Brighters", and all of the rumpus that goes along with fracturing cults. 

My apology to Mr.Akin

I recently called for congressman Todd Akin to quit his Senate race in Missouri because of comments he made regarding the likelihood of conception during rape.

Commentor Ilion took me to task for my abandonment of a man of obvious integrity and a pro-life stalwart:

... when the leftists turn their well-oiled hoot-machine against a presumptive conservative, the Republicans abondom him, post haste. But, no matter what a Democrat does, so long as he is useful to the furtherance of the leftist agenda, the Democrats turn their hoot-machine against those trying to bring his misdeeds to light.

Even if what you'd seaid were actually true, don't you think it odd that you cannot see the self-defeating flaw in the pattern?...

if conservative are going to oppose Akin, it should be for solidly conservative reasons, not because the hysterics and histrionics of the leftists and their "liberal" puppets, who have no intention of allowing a rational (and charitable) examination of what he said … and meant.

It would be like me or you worrying about – and conforming ourselves to – the lies and intellectual dishonesty of that ‘anonymouse’ troll immediately above...

is the fact that a (presumptively conservative) politician did not speak with the careful precision with which some persons (me, for example) habitually write, such that the imprecise and non-felicitous thing he said is dishonestly used by the leftists, of all people, to make it sound as though he said something wicked, a solidly conservative reason for conservatives to demand he commit sepukku?

Ilion had a point. So I thought about it, a lot actually.

Then I read this fine essay by Mike Huckabee (excerpt):

Since Todd Akin made his infamous remark in what was an unfortunate and awkward attempt to explain his strong pro-life position, I have openly spoken out about what was a disproportionately harsh reaction from party officials and elected officials, all of whom didn’t merely distance themselves from Akin’s statement (understandable), but distanced themselves from him personally and politically and proceeded to publicly call for his head on a platter as surely as Herod demanded the head of John the Baptist. Both John the Baptist and Todd Akin said things that the institutional power structure didn’t like. Todd Akin admitted his error, publicly apologized for his comment, and asked for forgiveness. John the Baptist recanted nothing he said and shouldn’t have since it was the truth. I talked to Todd Akin on my daily radio show as he made his first public statements following his comments. He was contrite, he sincerely stated that he was factually incorrect in his statement, and apologized for having said it. He didn’t excuse his comments, justify, or rationalize them.

Despite that, calls were swift, public and brutal not merely suggesting, but demanding that he just up and quit. I was shocked. I’ve seen fellow Republicans get caught in scandals of adultery, drunkenness, corruption, and other forms of shocking behavior and never recall seeing such a systematic and orchestrated attempt to destroy a man’s candidacy and his life from HIS OWN PARTY! I wrote a strong rebuttal to the curious actions of party officials and suggested that someone had called a “code red” to take down Todd Akin. I was called and had numerous messages from current and former Senators and Congressmen, and from party officials and political operatives who all but begged me to “get Akin out of the race.” Some of them surprised me and disappointed me. It was as if all were reading from the same talking points as a carefully contrived script that had been handed out. I asked one of them if he had spent 2 years risking all to get a nomination for his Senate seat for which he had received ZERO party support and had a verbal gaffe and then the very people who didn’t want him in demanded that he get out, would HE do it? Silence at the other end of the phone and then the subject was changed.

There is no question that Akin is an excellent conservative and an excellent candidate. I still disagree with his comment on rape and conception-- he has repudiated it, in fact-- but I was wrong to demand that he resign. The hyaenas on the left deserve no homage. A party that idolizes woman-killer Ted Kennedy and elected serial sexual abuser Bill Clinton and nominated "silky pony" John Edwards has no business dictating rules on public discussion of rape and sexual morality.

Mr. Akin will make an outstanding Senator from Missouri. He has my support, and my apology.  

Alvin Plantinga on warrant for belief, naturalism, and evolution

Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga is one of the most prominent living Christian philosophers. Perhaps his most famous argument against naturalism/atheism is his evolutionary argument against naturalism.

He argues that if naturalism and evolution are true-- if man is a mere material creature evolved by Darwinian mechanisms-- then our rational faculties are evolved for adaptation, not for truth-finding. Our beliefs are evolved in such a way that they help us reproduce more successfully. There is no inherent link in the evolutionary scheme between our ability to reason and our ability to ascertain truth. Evolution cares not at all about abstract truth. Therefore, if we believe that naturalism and evolution are true, we have no warrant to assert that our belief is true. We merely have warrant to assert that our belief in naturalism and evolution are adaptive.

Belief in naturalism and evolution is self-defeating. If naturalism and evolution are true, you have no warrant to believe they're true.

The argument is simple and is obviously valid. Here's Plantinga explaining it. He discusses it at about 2:50 into the interview. He also discusses his own belief in God, and he discusses the meagre arguments put forth by the New Atheists.

H.T. Jerry Coyne

Today's Civic Atheism quiz

I love pop quizzes. Let's see how well you've studied your First Amendment jurisprudence. Get out your pencils.

Question # 1:

The following four photos depict government-sponsored publicly displayed Christian artifacts:

Ten Commandments on public property

Prayer mural in public school encouraging students to be good citizens

"Piss Christ". Photo by artist Andres Serrano depicting Jesus on crucifix
immersed in artist's own urine, paid for by National Endowment for the Arts publicly-funded grant

"The Holy Virgin Mary" A painting by artist Chris Ofili depicting the Blessed Virgin
smeared with actual elephant dung and
adorned with photos of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines
displayed in publicly-funded Brooklyn Museum of Art

Each of the four is a government-sponsored public display of a religious artifact.

Two of the displays are deemed by federal courts to be intrinsically offensive and unconstitutional government-sponsored religious expression, and have been ordered removed.

The other two are protected by the Constitution.

Please identify the offensive unconstitutional government-sponsored artifacts, and the Constitutionally-protected government-sponsored artifacts.

10 points extra credit:

Bring to class a note signed by your parents confirming that you refrained from punching your computer screen during this assignment.