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I think the world of Sarah Palin but Mad Magazine has been making fun of Pols, actors, and everybody else for half a century.
Sarah Palin is certainly not above parody or ridicule and Newsbusters should certainly know better.
Anyone who going all ape over a Mad magazine article really has to get things in perspective. A cult is a cult and to paraphrase one of my favorite presidents Grover Cleveland a Palincult is just as bad an Obama one.
One of the things that I find interesting about the meltdown concerning “global warming” and the climate change e-mails is how it symbolizes the cultural divide.
Not so much Red vs Blue, Conservative vs liberal, Robert Stacy McCain vs Charles Johnson (great timing changing sides btw Charles) but really in terms of how people look at things and why.
Way back in my HiWired blog days I wrote this to Glenn Reynolds concerning the Haditha debate.
Since the 60’s two unifying forces, for good or ill, were removed from the country: the removal of Judeo/Christian values as the semi-official moral code of the public schools) and the death of the draft/aka Vietnam. (actually ending in the 70’s). These two changes had one thing in common, it took two generations for them to have the following effect:
It is now unlikely that a student going to school today, had a teacher or parent who 1. Served in the military or 2. Was taught that moral code in school. To a whole generation now being born these are things that belong to outsiders. This makes the military and religious people outsiders and strange to one group and vice versa.
One important part of that moral code is truth and honor. Judeo/Christian values stress truth, lies are the work of the Devil. That is why contrary to the pop culture the Church’s role in the promotion and advancement of science and the University system looms large. It is a search for truth and as I’ve said before the only reason to be a Christian in general or a Catholic in particular is because it is true.
The concept of honor comes from the base of truth and is why it is so prominent in the military and also explains why the vast majority of people in the military come from Judeo/Christian backgrounds. The concepts of truth and honor are significant and the shame of violating those concepts are dreadful to a believer. Even if one didn’t believe in the religion itself the shared VALUES of truth and honor of the the Judeo/Christian system applied with great benefit to the culture as a whole.
One of the glories of Science is the reliance on truth. The best science consists of the gathering and measuring of data and the constant testing of it. The whole process of hypothesis, test and conclusion is a relentless search to confirm the known and discover the unknown truths of existence. This relentless search has improved the human condition beyond measure. When Christ says:
“you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
he is pronouncing the first commandment of science. The truth of knowledge frees the potential of the mind in as sure as the truth of Christ frees the soul.
What does this all have to do with the Climate Change e-mails? Just this: In two generations relativism and secular humanism rejection of Judeo/Christan values led to the idea that “truth” is relative and that one need to accept and even celebrate relative “truths” for the sake of various causes. This has been pushed culturally and politically with disastrous (and sometimes comical) results, but when that becomes the case in the sciences then bad things happen.
Would you want to be behind the wheel of a car who’s designer decided that he has his own different standard for how breaking and acceleration should work? Would you want to have him withhold his calculations or defend his actions by calling you a “friction denier”? How would you like to finance his production and have to drive your car under those same rules even if you don’t own one?
The subordination of truth for the sake of a cause and the abandonment of honor as a virtue is bad in any field, in science it leads to societal stagnation and decay. It is why daylight needs to be shined on this fraud and on the elites that decided they were going to protect it for the sake of money, stature and power. If it is rewarded or defended and or ignored then we condemn ourselves and our children to a world of superstition worse than any we have yet experienced.
Update: Nameless? Click on the link to the Glenn Reynolds letter I included in this post or on my amazon reviews and you will find my name very easily.
Update 2: Hey reputable scientists always throw away basic data, and people say Christianity is something taken by faith. Over to you Mahablog is there a climate gate now?.
…to this I cite a comment left on my review:
Even your title indicates lack of understanding: “Normal.” What’s normal? Labeling the motives and stimuli of “liberals” and the “elite,” something you’re incapable of understanding? Rationalizing Sarah’s kids’ behavior, when you’d have slammed Obama if his kids approached the Palin kids’ behavior?
Commenting on PETA, as if that has anything to do with the book or Palin?
I’m not even convinced you read the screed. You could easily have written what you did whether you’d read it or not.
As to the screed’s sales, I’ve already commented here where those numbers are coming from. If you’re literate, look it up.
Apparently I haven’t read the book now, and “I’m rationalizing her kids behavior”. What is really amazing is this comes from a top 500 reviewer who apparently has earned respect at Amazon.
I had a funny thought and started to check the other 4 star reviews, he seems to be commenting on quite a few of them. I wonder why the need to go after people?
As I replied in the comments there, if it makes him happy then go for it, but it sounds like a case of Sullivan’s Syndrome to me. This goes to show it affects ordinary people (Look at his reviews, he seems at least as ordinary as I am) as well as pundits.
It brings to mind the School Superintendent in NH that was leading a group of about of a dozen vulgar screaming students outside the school where I saw her during the campaign. Long on angst and judgment but short on answers screaming at Palin, the bus and the thousands of average people in line waiting to see her.
For their own sake they’d better get over it, she could credibly run in any election from now till 2032 so this is going to be years and no politics is worth decades of worry and misery.
…today’s Worcester Telegram had a cartoon making fun of the credibility of the global warming alarmists. They sit on a shrinking iceflow and the person with them says the problem is the sunlight (referring the to the e-mails).
If a newspaper owned by the New York Times is running cartoons like that in central Massachusetts then the jig is up, no matter what kind of silly stuff is running in Politico:
“In the climate change sense, it’s not that every other retail day isn’t bad. This just happens to be the worst day for the environment,
The worm is turning.
