Rant on.<\/p>\n
I am a liberal-minded person.\u00a0 This is no secret; my political rants here have demonstrated that over and over again.\u00a0 I am a registered Democrat.\u00a0 This should not come as a surprise either, as the politicians I rant in favor of are Democrats.\u00a0 My posts, rants and otherwise, have also demonstrated I am not a fan of absolutes, but the Republican party has, of lately, absolutely gone off the deep end.\u00a0 I have not found a recent Republican candidate I could have any respect for.<\/p>\n
Some are worse than others.\u00a0 When Bush was in office, I thought he was the dumbest thing in politics.\u00a0 Then John McCain introduced us to Sarah Palin, and I thought she was surely a low that no other politician could possibly reach.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 There’s a woman running for the senate in Delaware by the name of Christine O’Donnell.\u00a0 I was amused by the comments she made about dabbling in witchcraft<\/a> and how masturbation is wrong<\/a>.\u00a0 The comments were, well, pretty stupid, but nothing compared to her ignorance of evolutionary theory and the constitution<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let’s break this down.\u00a0 I’ll do this in reverse order simply because the second part, the constitution, is more relevant than evolution.\u00a0 The first amendment says:<\/p>\n Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s the whole of it.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell’s opponent, Chris Coons, specifically quoted the first part of the first amendment and Ms. O’Donnell replied, “That’s in the first amendment?”\u00a0 After the debate, her campaign workers tried to do some damage control by saying she was simply pointing out the phrase “separation of church and state” is not actually in the constitution.\u00a0 To their credit, she does at one point specifically question that, but for the most part she is generally questioning this doctrine and, as noted above, she questions the existence of the phrasing which led to the policy of separation of church and state.<\/p>\n Also in this debate, the candidates are asked about recent movements to repeal the fourteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth Amendments.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell didn’t know what the fourteenth and sixteenth Amendments were and had to have them described.\u00a0 The sixteenth Amendment establishes the federal government’s ability to tax citizens.\u00a0 She said she didn’t think this Amendment should be repealed and then went into a diatribe about how the government taxes too much.\u00a0 The fourteenth Amendment establishes citizenship in the U.S.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell stated her support for keeping the Amendment and then jumped into a discussion about illegal immigrants.\u00a0 The sixteenth amendment does not establish what<\/em> taxes should be, and so a discussion of how taxes are too high isn’t relevant to its retention or repealing.\u00a0 Same with her comments on the fourteenth amendment; it has nothing to do with illegal immigration, per se.<\/p>\n Then there’s the evolution thing.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell claims Mr. Coons is trying to “force his will” on schools by not allowing Intelligent Design to be taught.\u00a0 Mr. Coons states Intelligent Design is Creationism and Creationism is religious doctrine and as such should not be in public schools.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell said that Creationism and Intelligent Design were two different things.\u00a0 She suggested ID is scientific theory (I don’t think she directly said so, but I am certain she would say so if asked).\u00a0 Mr. Coons stated evolution is “widely accepted scientific fact” and Ms. O’Donnell replied to this by saying evolution wasn’t fact, only theory.<\/p>\n Taking it from the top, Intelligent Design is<\/em> Creationism.\u00a0 It is a non-scientific theory which states life was designed by an intelligence of some sort.\u00a0 In other words, by a Creator.\u00a0 It is mostly careful to avoid pointing to a Christian Creator, but the founders of this theory are Christian and trying, quite frankly, to push their bullshit into schools at any cost.\u00a0 That aside, to claim Intelligent Design is anything other than Creationism is ignorant.\u00a0 Its very premise is that there is a Creator “Intelligently Designing” life.\u00a0 This makes it at least generically religious and thus has no place in a science classroom.\u00a0 Intelligent Design is not<\/em> widely accepted by the scientific community and only those ignorant about what science is (or who lie about what it is) will claim it is science at all.<\/p>\n Speaking of wide acceptance, Ms. O’Donnell glossed over this part of Mr. Coons’ comments.\u00a0 Evolution is, in fact, widely accepted as fact by those whose job it is to accept or deny it.\u00a0 Stating it is a “theory” in the context that it is not a fact shows Ms. O’Donnell’s ignorance of what a scientific theory is.\u00a0 Gravity is also a theory, but one would have to be pretty foolish to say this meant it was not a fact.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell, however, refuses to acknowledge this.<\/p>\n I don’t live in Delaware, but I am still concerned.\u00a0 Ms. O’Donnell has allied herself with the Tea Party, a group of conservative extremists.\u00a0 Her ignorance of evolution, intelligent design and particularly of the Constitution shows she has no business being in politics.\u00a0 Yet there she is, along with a number of other Tea Party candidates.\u00a0 Sarah Palin is a big Tea Party fan as well.\u00a0 The Republican party seems to be attracting more of these Tea Party types who want to change the country to fit their extreme religious doctrine whether the country wants to be changed or not.\u00a0 This is my problem with them:\u00a0 This is still a constitutional democracy, one where the minority is legally entitled to some respect.\u00a0 The Tea Party doesn’t want to grant that respect as is demonstrated in their anti-gay attitudes.\u00a0 For that matter, they aren’t terribly concerned about the majority, as their abortion stance demonstrates.\u00a0 (Opinion on abortion fluctuates a bit, so it can be argued they are sometimes representing the majority opinion, but it’s a slim majority at best when that is the case.)<\/p>\n So although I live in Colorado this kind of ignorance in politics greatly disturbs me.\u00a0 If there is anybody in Delaware actually reading my blog, please vote for Mr. Coons.\u00a0 I am not always a fan of lawyers, but he has his facts straight and seems interested in upholding the constitution says, not what he thinks it should <\/em>say.<\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. I am a liberal-minded person.\u00a0 This is no secret; my political rants here have demonstrated that over and over again.\u00a0 I am a registered Democrat.\u00a0 This should not come as a surprise either, as the politicians I rant in favor of are Democrats.\u00a0 My posts, rants and otherwise, have also demonstrated I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}