Monday, April 10, 2006

Godless

Drudge Report is reporting that Ann Coulter's new book is entitled, "Godless." It's meant, of course, as a slur. And the problem with Democrats is that that's how they'll take it. They'll respond defensively. Because they haven't learned a thing from the last two elections.

President Bush won by not apologizing for what he was. But Democrats will sputter and insist, "We're not godless! We love God! Almost as much as you do!"

Which, of course, is precisely the wrong way for them to reply. What they should say is, "Yes, some of us are godless. Some of us aren't sure about God. Some of us believe in God with all their hearts. Our politics don't impose anyone's god on anyone else. Our politics are true to the Constitution of the United States, not someone's personal idea of what god wants. If our politics are godless, if our party is godless, it's because our party has room for everyone's idea of god, whatever it might be."

The way to beat the Christian Right is to marginalize it, to claim everyone (you know: The MAJORITY OF AMERICA) who doesn't self-identify as Christian Right. Making a blatantly disingenuous play for Christian votes is the one thing guaranteed to fail.

4 comments:

Doctorboogaloo said...

In a dozen years (if were haven't been vaporized by Bush's dick-thrust at rapture), Ann Coulter will resemble that crazy broad from 'Trading Spouses'... screaming about 'dark siders', satan, and Jesus' army.
She is a total loon. She is without skill. And she is a liar.

Still, if Annie wants to work on me -- to save me, say -- I will sacrifice an hour or so for the cause. Hear that, Ann? (I maintain a cabin in the Ozarks for puposes such as these.)

Anonymous said...

"Jonathan wrote: But Democrats will sputter and insist, "We're not godless! We love God! Almost as much as you do!"

I fear you are right and that the Dems will make this foolish argument. Neither party grasps what Garry Wills wrote in a NY Times editorial this past Sunday, "There is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian."

Both the Dems and the GOP forget that Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here."

Jesus brought no political message or program.

When Democrats fear that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, they always want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He's not on either side.

He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, "Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him."

He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Those who want the state to engage in public worship, or even to have prayer in schools, are defying his injunction: "When you pray, be not like the pretenders, who prefer to pray in the synagogues and in the public square, in the sight of others. In truth I tell you, that is all the profit they will have. But you, when you pray, go into your inner chamber and, locking the door, pray there in hiding to your Father, and your Father who sees you in hiding will reward you."

Jesus' emphasis was always that one's relationship with God was not external, but rather an internal matter of the heart.

Those who want to display and honor the Ten Commandments as a political commitment are defying the very God they claim to believe in by violating the First and Second Commandments.

By erecting a false religion — imposing a reign of Jesus in this order — they are worshiping a false god and committing idolatry.

Jesus was the victim of every institutional authority in his life and death.

If Democrats want to fight Republicans for the support of this false Jesus, they will have to give up the Jesus revealed by His own words.

Let Ann Coulter use this God or Jesus she has made in her own image. That's all her God is. The one she and the politicians have created bears no resemblance to the One in the Gospels.

Unknown said...

If Coulter didn't look and posture like a fat cat Republican's wet dream, she wouldn't be making any money.

I.e., if she looked like Bella Abzug, would anyone care?

Anonymous said...

July 2, 2006 -- Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.
John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

Barrie, CEO of iParadigms, told The Post that one 25-word passage from the "Godless" chapter titled "The Holiest Sacrament: Abortion" appears to have been lifted nearly word for word from Planned Parenthood literature published at least 18 months before Coulter's 281-page book was released.

A separate, 24-word string from the chapter "The Creation Myth" appeared about a year earlier in the San Francisco Chronicle with just one word change - "stacked" was changed to "piled."

Another 33-word passage that appears five pages into "Godless" allegedly comes from a 1999 article in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald.

Meanwhile, many of the 344 citations Coulter includes in "Godless" "are very misleading," said Barrie, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in pattern recognition.

"They're used purely to try and give the book a higher level of credibility - as if it's an academic work. But her sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits," he told The Post.

Barrie says he also ran Coulter's Universal Press columns from the past 12 months through iThenticate and found similar patterns of cribbing.

Her Aug. 3, 2005, column, "Read My Lips: No New Liberals," about U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, includes six passages, ranging from 10 to 48 words each, that appeared 15 years earlier in the same order in an L.A. Times article, headlined "Liberals Leery as New Clues Surface on Souter's Views."

But nowhere in that column does she mention the L.A. Times or the story's writer, David G. Savage.

Her June 29, 2005, column, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Religion," incorporates 10 facts on National Endowment for the Arts-funded work that originally appeared in the same order in a 1991 Heritage Foundation report, "The National Endowment for the Arts: Misusing Taxpayers' Money." But again, the Heritage Foundation isn't credited.

"Just as Coulter plays free and loose with her citations in 'Godless,' she obviously does the same in her columns," Barrie said.

Coulter did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Susannah Cahalan

philip.recchia@nypost.com

Newer Post Older Post Home