I finally got a little bit of national notice coming out of a phone interview with Marc Fisher of the Washington Post a few days ago. The article published yesterday on the Post web site is, “As inauguration approaches, Obama’s most virulent foes want the celebration stopped.”
I have one quibble with the article, where it says:
hardcore anti-Obama agitation [is], driven, [Davidson] believes, by anti-black sentiment…
If I recall correctly, I said it was about 70% race, to which I added other factors including pro-Israel bias and the usual right-wing hatred of the left-wing. Remember, some of the early birthers were anti-abortion activists and Hillary Clinton supporters.
It seems that every time I go on vacation, something happens so that I wish I were in full swing publishing articles here on the site. For anyone who arrived here from the link in the Washington Post article, I suggest you start with “The Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories,” or look at our “Featured Articles.”
I would say that another major factor is a misplaced anti-Muslim sentiment / fear… and I mean that on multiple levels, as Obama is NOT a Muslim… yet some of his detractors are too simple in their gut-level tribalistic fears and simply hear a funny sounding name and limited info about his father & step-father and jump to insisting upon irrational and irrelevant conclusions…
I have a hunch that a fair number of birthers were lurking in the weeds the past couple of years, convinced that there was no way that Obama would be re-elected. There was no need to come out as birthers if Obama was going to be voted out.
Alas for them, Obama was re-elected, and that apparently has caused some of them be become unhinged. Now Obama can’t be voted out of office, so they might as well jump into the birther fray. One unpleasant side effect is that we have to listen to people such as Hermie resurrect long-debunked birther fantasies.
The worm turns when the facts are introduced to a tribunal that can have free reign to investigate facts presented to the tribunal’s members by plaintiffs.
Dr Conspiracy’s warped views of what is occurring with the “liar in chief” can be equated to another person’s history with regard to evaluating facts that are evident to any casual viewer, but not the expert
Dr. Conspiracy a.k.a. Dr Chamberlain who has to be the epidemy of ignorance concerning Americanism as Chamberlain was to the U.K.
Chamberlain perpetrated a hoax on the British people when he defended Hitler’s activities by representing Hitler’s actions as peaceful actions to the British, and it’s as Dr. Chamberlain is doing now to Americans shown by his comments in the Washington Post, they are no less than Chamberlains ignorant utterances abut Hitler’s so called “peaceful” activities.
Dr. Chamberlain has chosen to “appease” the ILLEGAL ALIEN in America’s White House. Dr. Chamberlain hasn’t yet learned that when something; sounds like a duck, smells like a duck, quacks like a duck, flys like a duck, then it is NOT a duck. The ILLEGAL ALIEN in the White House has; forged BC, forged Selective Service, Forge SSN, by his own words can’t be a Christian when he sayus he is a muslim, lied under oath, is a perjurious person, BUT is NOT a criminal as Hitler was NOT a war monger according to Chamberlain.
“Arthur Neville Chamberlain PC FRS[1] (18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940), usually known as Neville Chamberlain, was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/on-inaugural-eve-obamas-most-virulent-foes-want-the-celebration-stopped/2013/01/14/2050f75e-54f6-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html
OBAMA SAYS HE IS A MUSLIM OVER AND OVER AGAIN… DID YOU KNOW THIS “CHAMBERLAIN”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY
Oh, that wacky beer-brewing-and-drinking, pork-eating, non-praying-to-Mecca-five-times-a-daying, baptized-and-daughter-baptizing, Christian-church-attending Muslim we’ve got in the White House! Worst. Mooslem. Evarr.
Well, when a theocratic autocracy takes over the United States, throws out the Constitution, and introduces birther law, you can have that tribunal. Until then, the worm is going to stay where it is, and you’re going to be out of luck . . . for the rest of your natural born life.
“The epidemy of ignorance” would signal the epitome of ignorance during an epidemic. Ignore rants.
Methinks you forgot the gauntlets when handling the worm,
Herms goes way back; to him, they were never dead. He’s not ‘resurrecting’ them, he’s keeping the unfortunate vegetables plugged into the wall.
Just let’em go, Herms! Let’em go toward the light! 😀
Dr. C— You got a mention in an article at Mediaite too.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/birther-conspiracy-theorists-still-believe-inauguration-wont-proceed/#comment-769285095
Kevin Davidson runs a website which monitors conspiracy theories about the president. “Dr. Conspiracy,” as he is known, says the rhetoric since the election has become “more vicious.” He believed that the anti-Obama sentiment would die down after the election but says he’s seen even more “openly racist” remarks since then.
Should be good for a few birfers comments soon.
🙂
Interestingly, some of the far right “Christians” act in ways that most decidedly, un-Christian. Their Obama is a Mooslem meme must be some warped projection.
My guess is you have no idea how accurate you are with this one.
Ah…I see you’ve brought your own invisible chair to shout at aimlessly…
What is an “epidemy?”
If any of the regulars are reading this, I’m guessing it’s a new word on the Fogbow vocab list.
Actually it’s a real word. Like I said he (she/it) probably has no idea how accurate it was in describing them and their post.
epidemy
an epidemic disease, especially the plague, late 15c., ipedemye, impedyme, from O.Fr. ypidime (Mod.Fr. épidemie), from L.L. epidemia (see epidemic).
Epidemy: the epitome of an epidemic. Alternatively, an epidemic of epitomes.
While invoking Godwin’s law to lambast you as an epidemy (an epitome of an epidemic) of ignorance, he solidified his ranking as one in the ongoing birther epidemy (an epidemic of epitomes) of antipathy and anti-epiphany.
You’re a liar, a racist, and a piece of poop. And Obama is President, and you’re nothing.
Perhaps an MRI could help. Perhaps a train…
Hear, hear!
Pretty odd usage from this one. Is it posting from the US, or the UK?
From the context, I think he misspelled “epitome” and his Autocorrect chimed in.
Dr. Conspiracy wrote: If I recall correctly, I said it was about 70% race, to which I added other factors including pro-Israel bias and the usual right-wing hatred of the left-wing. Remember, some of the early birthers were anti-abortion activists and Hillary Clinton supporters.
I’ve said several times that it’s mostly about race, but have come to think recently that the most accurate description of birthers is that they are xenophobic. They fear and hate things that they see as strange or foreign.
Xenophobia would explain why birthers make comments about Mr. Obama otherness – his (supposedly) being Muslim; being the child of an unwed mother; his having lived in exotic Indonesia; that he is (supposedly) gay, that his real father is so-and-so (always someone seen as an extremist), etc.
If it were just about whether or not Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii or not, none of the rest would matter. But his supposed “otherness” always crops up. Xenophobia extends far beyond politics, too, which explains why some birthers were Hillary Clinton supporters.
Xenophobia explains why birthers flip out when Mr. Obama does what they see themselves doing. He can’t be a good father or husband without an ulterior motive. He can’t be a Christian, because they’re Christian. He can’t be a good son or grandson – many think he probably killed his grandmother. And so on. He’s got to be other, because he can’t be like them.
Xenophobia certainly can include racism, and many birthers are overtly racist. In addition to the racism, most seem convinced that he is something much different than they are, and because of that, they will grasp at anything to get rid of him.
Can you be xenophobic and not racist? Maybe in contrived examples (for example, you could fear an extraterrestrial without actually thinking he/she/it is inferior to you), but in everyday life?
Which starts with his name. Among those who don’t use childish modifications of his name, try to find a birther who says “Barack Obama” and leaves out the “Hussein” part.
And as far as race is concerned, I’m convinced that the racist birthers hate him even more than they would hate a “pure” black person. After all, he is not just “black”, he’s the product of a mixed relationship. And the only thing a racist hates more than black people are black people who dare to have white partners, and the other way around.
One year ago, most racist birther comments were not directed at Obama himself but at his mother for daring to have a black husband at a time when segregation was still commonplace.
And projection explains why birthers attribute to Obama what they themselves dream of doing – imprisoning everyone who dares disagree with them, installing a “one party rule”, ignoring the Constitution and the law when it gets in the way of what they want etc.
I think they could care less if he were the janitor of the local school. What infuriates them is the fact that “the other” (or “the black guy”) is what they used to believe he could never be – a successful person, a good father, a likeable guy, someone with power etc.
It’s like Jesse Owens winning his gold medals in Berlin 1936, rubbing in the Nazis’ faces that a “non-Aryan” outperformed their precious blue-eyed blond-haired athletes in front of the entire world.
Though some of those may just have suffered from bad loser disease and would’ve demonized anyone who dared surpass their beloved Hillary. Those would’ve found something to complain about a Southern male WASP as well.
> to which I added other factors including pro-Israel bias
I don’t see how that would directly relate to an anti-Obama stance, at least not to a birtheresque extent. Those who believe the current President is not pro-Israel enough would have opposed him, but not necessarily embarked on conspiracy theories that “far out”. After all, they probably had similar gripes about previous Presidents but did not jump on a crank bandwagon of such proportions.
Sure. Your country and France fought numerous wars prior to 1945, yet Germans and French are both white and even the ethnic lines are blurred. Irish and Brits are both Celtic, but that didn’t stop conflict. There are ethnic tensions between Chinese and Vietnamese, Koreans and Japanese, various tribal groups in Africa, all of whom are of the same race. In the case of the Tutsis and Hutus, despite mass genocide, many anthropologists aren’t even sure they are truly ethnically different, rather than a product of divide and conquer by the Belgians.
So to the Mr. Chamberlain poster, one minor question in response to your “OBAMA IS A MUSLIM BOOGA BOOGA” at the end of your post….
The Constitution clearly spells out that there is to be no religious test for public office in the United States. While I believe you are wrong in your insistence that the President is Muslim – after all, he attended a Christian church for years in Illinois (you know, the one conservatives like to attack him about while simultaneously calling him a Muslim), his children were baptized, etc. – I’d ask instead, given there is freedom of religion and thought in this country, why does it matter?
Muslim, Christian, Hindu, atheist, Jewish, Taoist, Church of Satan, whatever floats your boat, the voters chose him, and religion is not a disqualifier for office.
But that wasn’t because of xenophobia but rather because of “ordinary” power politics. Even during the Third Reich, xenophobia wasn’t directed towards other white Western Europeans (if you disregard anti-semitism, but nobody was afraid of Christian French people). And I’m still not sure if xenophobia was the prime motive of the Third Reich aggressions or just a vehicle to sell it to the masses (again leaving out the Holocaust which was clearly both xenophobia and racism and a prime motive, not just scapegoat propaganda).
But as long as the people involved *believed* they were different, that counts as racism in my book.
Yes, you can. As an example, Irish isn’t a race, but historically, the Irish have been discriminated against as “others”. They were seen as people who had a foreign culture, who were dirty, who carried diseases, who were uneducated, bred like rabbits, etc. Virtually every group which has immigrated to the US has been subject to this sort of thing, even when they looked like the majority of Americans.
I don’t get the name calling. It damages them in the eyes of rational people. I am with young children all day and they manage to control themselves better than birthers. Birthers are so horrified by the president’s name that they would rather be seen as less mature than first graders.
Agreed. It’s part of his “otherness”. They like to make a big deal about his mother dating/marrying inter-racially, too, and the possibility that her marriage to Mr. Obama Senior was never one where they lived together.
Note that they don’t do the same with so-called conservatives who fit their mold, though. For example, I have never seen birthers trashing Virginia Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Thomas’ wife, even though she is white. Notice that they also don’t make fun of Justice Thomas’ son’s named Jamal, an Arabic name.
They don’t make fun or Sarah Palin or either of her children who were pregnant/got their partner pregnant before marriage, either. Three people in one family, all of whom conceived out of wedlock, and somehow they’re models of piety.
A friend of mine told me before the election that the President Reagan of 1980, were he alive today, would recognize a fellow conservative in many of President Obama’s positions and would be comfortable with him. I agree. Of course, the GOP has moved hard-right since Reagan, and there’s a good chance they wouldn’t like Reagan all that much, either. Still, it remains that a lot of what they don’t like about Mr. Obama is his “otherness”.
Absolutely true. Because if he were a janitor, he wouldn’t be shaking their world view of African Americans, or of the children of single moms who date black men, or of minorities in general, or children of broken homes, or whatever they are hanging their hats on.
As a woman, I can tell you that some of my female friends thought that 2008 was finally “our year”. I think it shocked a lot of people, many of whom thought that a white woman would have been more acceptable than a black man. I don’t think that is necessarily racist thinking, just an observation that people made. When that didn’t turn out to be the case, many people were pleased to then think that perhaps African Americans had made more progress than they’d previously thought. It was a cause for celebration. A few were angry that the “year of the woman” had been eclipsed. Those few are the “PUMAs”, and yes, they’d have been angry no matter what.
Romney may possibly have been marginally more “pro-Israel” than Mr. Obama, but as an American, that isn’t my only concern unless I am also an evangelical. It’s a losing argument with most Americans and even most Jewish-Americans, but birthers and social/religious conservatives have to make it anyway because it is part of who they are.
The “anti-Israel” thing the birthers and others go on about is deeply rooted in religion, specifically in the evangelical/born again denominations who claim to support Israel more than anyone else. Whenever you hear a conservative talk about how liberals/Democrats don’t support Israel, you are listening to a political and religious plea to other evangelicals, and to Jewish people specifically. Every election year, conservatives try to convince themselves that “this will be the year Jewish people vote conservative in large numbers”. But it never happens.
Evangelicals and others believe that Israel has to exist for the events in the Book of Revelations to come to pass. The Israeli government knows this, of course, and counts on evangelicals in the US to apply pressure and do all they can to further the Israeli cause from the US. There is nothing wrong with groups working together for mutual goals, but no matter what the birthers and other conservatives claim, it will probably never gain much traction with most Jewish people. Everyone knows that the other side wants something, and Jewish people in general seem to seek candidates who value scholarship, support science, support more liberal humanitarian concerns, and various other things that arch conservatives reject.
So, the calls of, “Obama doesn’t love Israel enough” is mostly a rallying cry for other conservatives. Their pleas probably won’t have any sort of effect on much of the rest of the political world.
In fact, studies have shown that many Jewish people feel more closely aligned with American Muslims than with evangelicals/the Christian Right: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/14/romney-lost-the-american-jewish-vote-by-picking-paul-ryan.html
Read the comments in that link to see conservatives parroting the “Obama hates Israel” line, wondering why the GOP doesn’t have the Jewish vote, and making every excuse for why it hasn’t happened yet.
Mr. Conspiracy
Please post the data from your scientific poll where you concluded that 70% of Birthers are biggots.
At least we’re not stupid enough to buy deceptively edited video.
We (the French) tend to be 180-degree equal-opportunity xenophobes. We fought the Dutch, the Germans, the Italians, the Spaniards and the Brits. If we had a border with Finland, I’m sure we would have fought the Finns too.
I’m a specialist in 19th / early 20th century French popular literature which is of course chock-full of racist/xenophobic cliches (e.g. Captain Danrit’s screeds), and yet nothing I’ve seen is as bad as the grotesque distortions put out by the American birthers.
Thanks, lots of valuable info there. 🙂
Indeed you almost exclusively hear the nutjobs talk about “supporting Israel” but very little about “supporting Jews” or “support Israeli”. They seem to be more interested in their own religious zeal than actually supporting people fighting for their right to exist in a hostile environment (some of them could even be regarded as anti-semites as they could care less about the people as long as the state exists whereas actual support of the state means support of the people).
When watching many RWNJ sites close to the elections, I saw a lot of claims along the lines of “American Jews are evil, they don’t care about Israel” simply for them daring not to follow the ultra right-wing party line. In other words, they are thrown under the bus for disagreeing. (Whereas a true supporter of Israel’s right to exist does not care what the political views of the majority, or a minority, of Israeli or Jews are.)
hey you forgot the Russkies! With us! Tho’ I do forget what the Crimean War was about (not the Crimea, I know) And of course the Chinese, again allied with us in the 1850s – IIRC, that one was in the interests of capitalism. Anyone’s money would do.
We in Britain of course used to fight anybody. Americans, Argentinians, Chinese, Sudanese, Afrikaaners….very easy to (dis)please we were, and it wasn’t racial at all!
360 you mean? Throw in the actions in North Africa, and you’re almost there … 300 or so.
Have the French ever found anything to attack out in the Bay of Biscay ? That would complete the circle. There’s been plenty of naval action off Brest and Nantes, hasn’t there? Why, yes, yes there has. “The Glorious First of June” was out that way, several other engagements over the centuries. Throw in all the colonial actions 360, both near and far.
You guys do get around … with 1200+ years of history (What does modern France point to as its founding?), it’s bound to happen.
I don’t think Obama beat Hillary in the primaries for any reason other than that he ran a better campaign and had a brilliant bunch of strategists, like Axelrod and Plouffe (as they proved again in 2012). In particuar, Hillary’s people failed to recognize the importance of the smaller caucus states. They won almost all the big states and still lost. I also have no doubt that had she gotten the nomination, Hillary would have beaten McCain.
The Finns woud have beaten you, just like they did the Russians.
Maybe a better example would be the wars beween city states, like those in renaissance Italy between Genoa, Pisa, Florence and Venice. I don’t think you could call a Genoese who hated Pisans a racist, because they are the same race and ethnicity. But they would be a xenophobe.
Excellent post! My position on this issue has always been pretty much what you just stated.
Dr. Conspiracy, our host, wrote:
You offer considered analysis to modern reporters? No, no, wrong.. They need sound bites. Here’s an example:
Birthers are racists largely; bigots mostly; kooks all.
Sure it’s simple-minded, but it’s true and it’s four seconds long. It’s what the media want and what the birthers deserve. Dr. C, your attempt the raise the level of discourse is naive. You fail to appreciated the lack of depth of the issue.
I personally thing bigotry and a “tribalism mentality” are better overall term than xenophobia, to describe this gut fear/hate reaction from the ODS crowd. But as personal terms can be somewhat fluid, I consider Zixi’s explanation to be spot on, as she clarifies in the rest of her post, explaining it as a broader “fear of the other”, which goes way beyond just race-based concerns.
I would also argue that classic xenophobia itself is also broader than the classic definition and implication of mere racism, as racism is just directed against one of a different perceived “race”, where true xenophobia can consider someone of even the same perceived racial background as “foreign”, as long as they are considered to have “allegiances” to another nation or entity, other than what the accuser considers to be their “patriotic home base”.
That is why we see so much of this faux patriotism” and “allegiance” language from the ODS crowd…
So yeah, in that context, I certainly see a broader distinction between actual xenophobia and racism and while they certainly have a lot of general overlap, they are merely similar but not congruent.
Well said! That certainly includes many of my immigrant ancestors here: especially the Polish, German, and Hungarian ones. The Italians and Irish (which you already mentioned) are prominent examples as well… as just about every Caucasian immigrant group from outside of the original colonial settlers of an area has found to be the case…
Agreed. Well said. That really is the heart of it here: No matter how cruddy and messed up their own lives are, these bigots like to have the “binky of otherness” to cling to, so they can pretend in their own mind that they are at least “inherently” superior to “others”, based on their mere “birthright” existence of being born into a “superior clan”…
That is because a strict religious-based identity worldview is often an even stronger motivator of “my tribe vs your tribe” for many of these folks. Plus, they like to have “tokens”…and they don’t let them really obtain true powers or dominant numbers.
…But rest assured, that tribalistic attitude would not hold up long term, if these specific types of “conservative” folks could get their way in “purifying” the “others” among them. The “tokens” often become the first to then be kicked out and targeted …I think you all can grasp that and where it leads.
Bravo! I think that is one of the best summarized evaluations and assessments of that aspect that I’ve EVER seen presented!!! I completely concur with you on this.
Rest assured, America will eventually see a talented and strong woman achieve the Presidency here. When that happens, it will be a proud moment of accomplishment for that symbolic “breaking of the glass ceiling”, but more importantly, it will be because she was seen as the best qualified candidate of the bunch regardless, and not merely because she was a woman. I view Obama’s election the same way.
Agreed. These are simply extreme right religious memes being played out…often at the expense of caring about the well being of actual Jewish people or even their nation’s future…
Yes, sadly the American political variety of this is really dominated more by the cynical Evangelical “Book of Revelations” crowd…
I consider the political allegiance between the ultra-right conservative Jews and the Evangelicals to be one of the most twistedly cynical and unhealthy ones that exists in all of geopolitics today…
To just touch on this particular statement of your argument, I would argue that evidence from the screeds and posts of many of these extreme “pro-Israel” advocates show a lot of paranoid conspiracy thinking going on…and many seem to believe in a whole host of other either interrelated or even not-so related crazy stuff.
It is something we’ve seen among many Birthers as well – people who CAN think in these weird and rigid ways in the first place are simply susceptible and perhaps even predispositioned to a paranoid conspiracy mindset…
…regardless of which meme is their driving gateway drug to it…an interconnected pattern of paranoid overlaps seem to follow, more often than not.
Oooh! That was a good example! KUDOS!!!
The disgusting members participating in this blog need to be tried under the “Alien and Sedition Acts” used in the past to keep the newly formed American “REPUBLIC” intact.
The “racist” who continually participate in this blog need to kneel and pray for guidance from above to know that they are not able to separate their profound ‘racist’ views from the known facts showing that the ‘reprobate’ in the WH is imprinted in their ‘racist’ mind set as being an ‘innocent’ when he truly is a criminal. BAH!
That White House “reprobate” has brought a ‘racist’ blemish on the minority community who are willing to degrade the “rule of law” to enhance the rule of elections by color. There are better qualified minority individuals in America that would have brought huge accolades to their group had they been able to elect a “legal” and honest POTUS. As it turns out the minorities were ‘defrauded’ out of their “unalienable right’ to have an eligible POTUS by the lying, stinking, disgusting, ‘reprobate’ now usurping American law.
The many qualified minority American citizens like: colonel West, Herman Cain, Condoleeza Rice, Star Parker, Walter Williams, and more could’ve raised the minorities image to the highest levels ever seen in America. As it is now, the minorities image in America is now at a severe low, because the ‘sold’ their “unalienable rights” to the ‘reprobate’ who promised them their “freebees”; freebees that will make their free largess disappear in a very short time as the freebees in other countries like Cuba have disappeared.
Some other disgusting ‘reverend’ made a comment that the WH ‘reprobate’ should be placed on Mt. Rushmore, and one can agree with this comment “provided the ‘reprobate’ is pictured with jail bars over and around his head…with the term “usurper” placed in huge letters across his mouth.
In order to preserve the “rule of law” in America, it’s more than certain that the True American minorities should work to jail the one who literally has taken a “RIGHT” from them.
Any ‘reprobate’ who would allow a person seeking the truth, and working to uphold the “American Supreme Law”, to be jailed has to be brought to account for their illegal actions, it’s the minority community that needs to clean their house to re-affirm the ‘rule of law’ in America.
A commander in chief of America’s military who would allow the patriotic American military personnel to be jailed because of his lack of integrity, honesty, and eligibility needs to be jailed for life, put in solitary confinement for life, on a bread and water meal a day, and never again to be allowed to be heard of again in American society.
Finally the lying hypocrite, reprobate will swear on a Christian bible to uphold the American citizens law which is known as America’s constitution. The reprobate has lied to the Chicago blacks who hate him for defrauding them out of their homes.
The White House “reprobate” has again gained office with “false promises” to the freebee oriented voters… voters who now have to pay for their freebees at a tune of 90 to 100’s of dollars a month of increased taxes and medical cost. The ‘reprobate” simply stole 500 billion of funds from the pot of money placed in the fund by the young to care for citizens who have reached old age, and are paying mortgages, college fees for their kids, etc. Now the citizens who will reach their senior years won’t have any ample funds to care for their miserable lives brought on by aging.
He will lie under oath again to be sworn in as a usurper to be POTUS when he isn’t qualified or eligible for the office, so says this RACIST BIGOT who literally hates the usurper, reprobate, evil bastard that is in the White House now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrSpOWXaNzE
I don’t always get lectured on my “libtard stupidity,” but when I do, I prefer to be lectured to by someone who’s recording a freaking podcast while freaking driving his freaking car.
I sure hope he’s using this: http://www.amazon.com/Wheelmate-Laptop-Steering-Wheel-Desk/dp/B000IZGIA8
Yes, we can see from your deranged rant that you are a racist bigot. You didn’t really need to spell it out for us. You certainly are hung up on the issue, that’s for sure.
Thanks for proving the points we’ve already made in the intelligent discussion on the topic so far. Now we can easily make reference to your post as a living example…
There, there….do you feel better now?
Got all of that bile off of your chest?
Happy to find a place where you can rant without the neighbors calling the authorities?
LOL- the remaining Birthers sound more and more deranged. I didn’t even know that was possible.
A legal point — if you want to prosecute us under the Alien and Sedition Acts, you’ll have to deal with the issue that those acts either expired or were repealed over two hundred years ago. Perhaps you can get the Tea Party Congressmen to work on passing them again. Another issue is that in the interim we’ve had Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established that the Supreme Court can rule laws unconstitutional, which in this case they surely would.
Still, I suppose you could decide that everything I just said is a bunch of liberal lies, and just go for it.
Well, I never! Really, I’m just devastated by your critique; oh, how it has wounded me.
Stay thirsty, my friend.
Fixed it for you coward. You got NOTHING. : D
Sounds like another master-reprobater.
“… what they wish they were doing.” I would have said.
It’s petty jealousy. And the grass is always greener; especially when a President is on the other side!
An intriguing—and revealing—take on that particular legislation … the demise of which was America’s confirmation as a politically free society.
Good gods, it really is all inverted in wingerworld.
Maybe after Zullo publishes the names of those 1000 Japanese kids with Hawaiian birth certificates. In the mean time, to quote you, “prove me wrong.”
By the way, “bigot” only has one “g.”
You are aware that the Sedition Act made criticizing the GOVERNMENT a crime? If that act were still in force, every birther who filed a lawsuit against the President, or called him a usurper or ineligible or a Muslim or a socialist, would be in jail now.
Be careful what you wish for.
The Herbert Hoover campaign coined the phrase “a chicken in every pot.”
There is at least one birther who argued that women are ineligible to become President.
Well, if the level of discourse was to be raised, the reporter should have interviewed Michael Shermer (whose name I mentioned) rather than me. I’m just a blogger.
I just answered the questions. I had no expectations or intentions.
So why do you believe nonsense? I’m open to hear your reasons, as long as you don’t say it is because the President is ineligible or a forger or such nonsense. The question is not what are your personal lists of logical pretzels. The question is why do you believe nonsense?
Yes I meant 360 degrees. Apologies for getting it wrong.
Oceans don’t count, of course! 🙂
I think the crowning of Clovis in 500 AD or thereabout is usually taken as the beginning of “modern” France.
Is it possible that they borrowed it from French King Henri IV who made the exact same promise?
Worse yet: some of us here are already aliens!
In effect, the Vattelist birthers, at least, are ALL saying that. When you strip their argument down to its essence, it is: “The Founding Fathers would not have wanted someone like Barack Obama to be President”. If we follow the logic that what the Founding Fathers “wanted” (as if such a thing could ever be known with certainty, since the true desires of even llving people are not so simple to discern) is determinative, then they likely did not want women to be President. Nor blacks. Nor Asians, Muslims, Hindus, etc. Perhaps not Catholics or Eastern or Southern Europeans. Nor Native Americans. That is where the Vattelist arguments lead, no matter how many denials Mario et al might make.
One also has to note their veneration of one court deision above all others, a decision which ruled women had no right to vote.
And also, as I have repeatedly try to point out to birthers, to the notion that every country in the world can control who can/cannot be US President – because according to them, Britain claiming someone’s father as one of their own is enough.
And of course, if the situation had been the other way around – foreign mother, US citizen father -, you can be sure that birthers would totally forget the “the father decides” part of Saint Vattel.
My direct ancestor, Matthew Lyon, was jailed for criticising John Adams under the Sedition Laws, but to the dismay of the Federalists, this only made him more popular… so much so that he was re-elected to represent Vermont in Congress while still in jail.
The Law was repealed, Lyon was freed, and later he went on to serve another term representing Kentucky.
Acts 23-5 ”You shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people”
Well, I guess that makes you an enemy of the Bible, too, huh?
Spot on Scientist. Political rights were very limited, and the limitations pretty much taken for granted. Generally, landed white males 21yrs and older, though there was some variation from one colony-cum-state to the next.
The extension of political rights was an active discussion, has been throughout American history. Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband suggesting women might demand their political rights. His response was, from a modern perspective, embarrassing, essentially treating it as a joke.
The long-term trend in this country has been the expansion of civil rights (way back when, women, aliens could not own property), followed by the expansion of political rights to nearly all who enjoy civil rights. Which explains why so many take it for granted that they are one and the same. Which they are not.
Thanks, Lupin!
Well said!
Agreed. I’m a Michael Shermer fan, even though his pigeon-drop technique sucked.
I was trying to by ironic and funny.
Come on… “Fail to appreciated the lack of depth of the issue” was clever. Or so I thought. Maybe my act needs work. I’m here all week.