Submitted to a Candid World

A founding premise of this blog is the idea that political symbols have value - “myth, power, value,” as a professor of mine used to say - both as campaign tools and as methods of molding the national consciousness. As a result, political symbols are worth fighting over, not just as a battle in [...]

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Several years back, Bill O’Reilly unfortunately discovered that, for certain subsets of the population, conflict and persecution sell better than love and inclusion. In a sad attempt to pander to this demographic, O’Reilly invented the “war on Christmas,” the central theory of which is that the religious pluralism inflicted upon America by (God help us) [...]

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At Conservapedia, the un-thinking man’s answer to Wikipedia, you’ll recall that founder Andy Schlafly doubles as a teacher for homeschooled children, whose homework is submitted to and graded on the wiki. Setting aside the student’s privacy interests, which Schlafly apparently considers waivable, we’ve once before taken the opportunity to analyze Schlafly’s objective efficacy as a [...]

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Although I have steadfastly defended Obama’s transition decisions, even and especially when they suggested a slight veer rightward, I must disclaim Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to offer a prayer at his inauguration.
Not, though, because he’s a Christian who will offer a Christian prayer. Popular among some of my ideological peers seems to be the [...]

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Most of you will have heard of the theory of the “War on Christmas,” popularized by such conservative luminaries as Bill O’Reilly, that Christian religiosity and holiday celebrations are increasingly marginalized in modern America, as stores exchange “Merry Christmas” for greetings like “Happy Holidays,” and Christmas specials get pushed off the air.
I don’t buy it. [...]

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They had a good run. But this past week, Romania decided to abandon the teaching of evolution in its public schools, and formally adopt creationism as a key component of the curriculum.
This is big news. After years of merely hypothesizing what great divine gifts would inure to a country that adopted creationism as its official [...]

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Per PZ Myers and Greg Laden, an idea is circulating on the Obama transition team’s website - change.org - to institute national science standards on the issue of evolution. Specifically, the “cause” supporter calls for:
National standards on the teaching of Evolution and the origins of life, decided on and created by top scientists from significant [...]

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Ray Comfort - a webevangelist bent on showing those durn atheists a thing or two, and debunking evolution along the way - is a strange little man. He also - it seems - is quite the fan of dishonestly mischaracterizing the debate between evolution and creation. Per one of his later posts:
The contention between Darwin’s [...]

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With poetic license regarding what constitutes “this week”…
Another year, another Supreme Court term: on November 12th, the Court heard oral arguments in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum,  in a case that promises to define the law of “public fora.” Stated simply, a minority religious sect (Summum) argues that, because the majority-Mormon Utah town allowed the [...]

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Perhaps it’s a sign of the times - of the utter paucity of novel and well-reasoned culture warriors on the right - but somewhere between launching a thousand internet memes and advising Mike Huckabee, Chuck Norris became a conservative luminary. Sadly but unsurprisingly, Chuck has little or nothing to add to American politican discourse: joining [...]

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