Ann Coulter

"Too much negativity, too much like Rush."

I love Ann. And I love Rush. But I would never say that HE'S negative. She can be, but he's generally optimistic.

Some of her stuff can be quite cutting - but most of it hits the mark. I read all the way through her most recent book, "Godless, The Church of Liberalism" and it gave the best explanation for why liberals believe and act the way they do that I have ever read. I have read and heard much about liberals but I never understood the "why" behind their actions until Ann made the connection with Darwinism.

I am quite sure that what she writes is written with the purpose of getting maximum outraged publicity from the liberal press, which they are stupid enough to give her.

And I cannot believe that someone as intelligent as she is doesn't believe in evolution.

Doug:

I don't pretend to know much about the current debate on evolution v. intelligent design v. creationism, but I think a blanket characterization that anyone who "doesn't believe in evolution" is not intelligent is a little much. That pretty much shuts off any thoughtful discussion before it starts.

Read the book. Then you'll wonder how anyone with a spark of intelligence could believe in evolution. Seriously.

I will grant that I haven't read her book yet, although I will. I did read some extracts from it regarding evolution, and I recall that they struck me as stupid, and not in the same league at all as the arguments of the scientists who endorse ID. I do happen to think that the ID people have made a case to answer -- whatever the merit of their proposed solution -- and I thought this after reading Behe's Darwin's Black Box a few years ago. Of course, putting it as I did was provocative and I am sorry I was not more diplomatic.

I deleted my posts because I thought I was too tough on Ann. I want this forum to remain civil. I will try my best.

As soon as I start apologizing for Ann, all I have to do is listen to Keith Olberman or Chris Matthews or Al Franken for a few minutes. At that point, I take back my apology and am glad that someone like Ann is on our side.

>7 RoseCityReader: & >8 persingd:

Could anyone please explain why evolutionism is called evolution in here? Is either of them a belief or rather a dogma or even an axioma?

Usage.

RE: #11

Personally, I'm not offended by calling Ann Coulter "Ann" on a bulliten board like this, because it is casual writing and it is a second reference to her name (after the title of the topic). It's shorter and faster to type.

But never refer to O'Reilly as Bill or Franken as Al. "Bill" was the 42d President and "Al" was his sidekick. :)

To object to my use of "Ann" is to make something out of nothing. But I'll try to refrain from doing so in the future.

There's a casualness about her (like Rush) that seemed to make the first name more appropriate, but the truth is I never thought much about it. If I met her, I doubt she would want me to call her "Ms. Coulter."

One of the things I like about conservatives is that even if they have no political differences, they will find something to argue about. This keeps them mentally sharp. The contrast to the great blob of contemporary liberalism is striking.

A tangent: one of my great objections to the over-democratization of contemporary life is to be called by my first name by someone I have never met and with whom I have nothing in common: I absolutely hate being called "Douglas" by some kid trying to sell me shares over the telephone, or, for example, by a clerk in a driver's licence bureau. I have not yet figured out a good comeback for this sort of behavior.

I'm with you on that one, Douglas! :) I have a confusing and easily mispronounced first name, so people I don't know try to talk to me like they know me, but end up stumbling over and mangling my name so badly all I can do is laugh. Or hang up.

When Godless first came out, I was reading a liberal site which discussed it. The mysogeny was amazing! I had thought that liberals were too PC to spew anti-female insults, but there was a whole string of posts from obviously male liberals calling her every sexually-abusive name under the sun, for which they would have been lynched twenty years ago on most campuses.

I think perhaps there is a new generation of liberals, who may be the equivalent of "South Park conservatives". These are probably the same people who saw nothing wrong with some of the racist anti-Condoleeza Rice cartoons.

This is one of many reasons that I am a conservative. Because the people who preach free speech, compassion, and tolerance display none of those things in their relations with others. They are just abstract ideas given lip service.

It makes me wonder which side is truly tolerant and compassionate.

Those should be matters of how we treat those closest to us, who we interact with daily or weekly. It's not about legislation. I shouldn't be called greedy or mean-spirited because of how I vote. I am neither of those thing and I get sick of the libs trying to take the moral high ground by attacking me personally.

There is no doubt that most heterosexual American males are, at one level of consciousness or another, homophobes. John Derbyshire called himself a "mild, tolerant homophobe" and that probably describes most educated heterosexual males. I know I have various prejudices and biases and arbitrary preferences which are the result of my upbringing, and which are there, even if I suppress them under a layer of strictures about how a gentleman is supposed to behave, and control them via my intellect.

Liberals don't like to admit this -- since for them human nature is infinitely malleable, they must pretend that they have malleablized theirs into Kind, Non-Judgemental, Universal Citizen of the Planet, and don't like to acknowledge that however beautiful they think they are, the Beast is still chained up (or not) down there somewhere.

So they probably exult when they get the chance to turn it loose against an Approved Target, for instance, a gay conservative.

Part of the liberals' problem is that, with the exception of their rank-and-file Black and Hispanic voters, they have no workingclass base. Since People of Color are above criticism, this means they do not have to deal with the issue of supporters who have unpleasant prejudices. Fortunately, we do have this problem.

RE: #22

Stephen Hayward always says that politics is Hollywood for unattractive people.

RE: Calling her "Ann" or "Ms Coulter" - I don't think it's a sexist thing. It's an interesting intellectual exercise, though - why do we call some people by "Mr So-and-So" and others by their first names?

For me, it kind of depends on the subject's personality and what others call them. For instance, both Hannity and Colmes call her "Ann," and that's how she's addressed by most hosts for whom she does appearances or interviews. Ditto Laura, who refers to herself as simply "Laura" when she's doing promotions. Greta van Susteren is "Greta" (probably because her last name is somewhat unwieldy).

Whereas, someone like Mona Charen or Phyllis Schlafly tend to be referred to by both names, and would be addressed with title and surname. Michelle Malkin is almost always referred to as "Michelle Malkin," because (to me, at least), her identity is not well-known enough (yet) for a reference to "Michelle" to be easily identified with her, but "Malkin" or "Ms Malkin" seem too formal for her.

On the masculine side, Rush is Rush, Hannity gets either his last name or just "Sean." O'Reilly is "O'Reilly" because that's how he refers to himself. It's not "The Bill Factor." Michael Medved is "Medved." But I tend to refer to Brit Hume as "Brit." Chris Wallace is "Chris Wallace," (to avoid confusion with his father, who is and has always been "Mike Wallace" to me), but Dan Rather was "Rather," or, sometimes, "Gunga Dan." :-)

I think the idea is that there's a tremendous wealth of explanatory evidence about evolution. Creationists simply repeating the same arguments despite their disproof doesn't help this. Also, anyone curious about these claims can go to the very useful archive maintained by talk.origins. (Many of these appear as footnotes in the criticism section of the Wikipedia page on "Godless".)

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/

The conclusion reached after reviewing the evidence is that anyone who can claim that the earth is six thousand years old, that organisms aren't descended from common ancestors, and so forth, is either (a) not very bright, (b) willfully ignorant or deceptive, or (c) ideologically prevented from considering certain possibilites. There is also (d) poorly educated, of course, but we're all on the internet here, and how can people *not* just look it up?

Please understand that I'm not saying that you're any of these things, but for many in the scientific community, it's aggravating to see the same hobby horses trotted out year after year, the same smears, the same distortions, and to see people getting taken in by them. You can kind of see where they're coming from, can't you?

Unfortunately, I rather agree with grendelkhan in 27 above ... I used to be a huge fan of Ann Coulter (well, I still am, but she's become a "guilty pleasure"), until she started spewing that Creationist drivel ... I have to assume that she falls under (c), because I'd hate to think of her as (a), (b), or (d).

While I typically self-identify more as a Libertarian than a Conservative, I'm constantly horrified at the concept (held by both the Left and Right) that to be a "conservative", one has to be in a delusive relationship with an Imaginary Friend. I truly wish that Religion was banished to the inner reaches of the human heart, never to sully the marketplace of Reason!

I think if the ID people had simply limited themselves to a critique of the current state of evolutionary theory, and had not posited an (albeit hidden) Creator as the alternative explanation to randomness, that they would have been taken more seriously. It is quite plausible to me that there are aspects of the universe which we are a long way from understanding, and these might be relevant to the problems raised by the ID people.

Of course, as some here have pointed out, sophisticated ID is a long way from Young Earth Creationist my-granddaddy-weren't-no-monkey ravings.

The threading in the boards leaves much to be desired; it provides indenting, but not much else. In response to message 29:

1. Indeed, Coulter is not a young-earth creationist, and I was implying that common descent and the age of the earth have similar standing in the scientific community. By common descent, I was referring to the idea that currently dissimilar organisms are descended from common ancestors through purely materialistic processes, which I don't think Denton, Behe and Coulter accept. When these ID advocates claim to accept common descent, they're changing the meaning of the phrase.

2. I'm not claiming that it's impossible to have an intelligent and informed disagreement with evolutionary theory. I'm claiming that the oft-noted exasperation on the part of the scientific community is due to the repeating of claims which aren't meaningful to scientists: to scientists, ID is not science for a number of reasons; no objections have been raised which fit the description of intelligent and informed disagreement.

Also, I am not in the scientific community. I regret taking physics instead of biology in school, as I find myself enjoying learning about it now. But in my day job, I'm not a scientist; I just read about them.

And I absolutely did not claim that people should shut up and agree with me. Enumerating arguments against someone's position doesn't preclude a response.

3. As in the above paragraphs, I state that the reason that ID advocates get no respect from the scientific community is that by their standards, they haven't earned it. Who was I supposed to be smearing here?

4. The "you" referred to the original poster... but now I'm fuzzy on exactly who that was; I think it may have been one of the now-deleted comments. Again, I'm not stating any of this as being backed up by my own expertise; I'm just some guy on the internet. As I remember it (and again, apologies if I've gotten this backwards; I'm trying to remember the contents of the post), someone asked why there seemed to be such intolerance among scientists for ID advocates. I am outlining the reasons for the perceived intolerance, and pointing to a more authoritative source (the ICC that I keep linking to) than my own postings.

Also, you may not believe this, but I didn't know I was paraphrasing Dawkins. Honest.

5. Thank you. Still I was probably asking for it; I have a tendency to leap in with keys a-blazin'.

Mr. 1943, I have the solution.

Let's assume for the moment that your last name is Adams, mostly because I like Douglas Adams.

When the DPS clerk or the phone kid calls you Douglas, you say, "Mr. Adams." Every time. Eventually, either they'll get the hint and do it themselves, or they'll question you, in which case you inform them politely that your name is Mr. Adams to all but your close friends.