How To Be a Dick
15 April 2008 by Bob
Ugh.
If you want to get pissed off first thing in the morning and read something stupid from a meat puppet, here you go:
Americans Are Right To Resist An Atheist As President
Actually, there’s little chance that atheists will succeed in placing one of their own in the White House at any time in the foreseeable future, and it continues to make powerful sense for voters to shun potential presidents who deny the existence of God. An atheist may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a publicly proclaimed non-believer as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.
Oh yes, we’re bad for the country. (I wonder if we’re also bad just by being in and walking around the country.)
Anyhoo, P.Z. Myers has an excellent spanky-spank that can be found here. A taste, if you prefer:
His first excuse is that an atheist president couldn’t exercise ceremonial functions, like saying the pledge of allegiance, without being hypocritical. You heard that right: a right-wing water carrier for the Republicans considers hypocrisy to be a disqualifying offense. Further, a president who doesn’t say “under god” in the pledge is “a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency”. Isn’t it nice to know that a tanking economy and a catastrophic failure of a war aren’t quite as damaging to a presidency as refusal to say a loyalty oath to an invisible man?
15 April 2008, on 11:32 am
That last comment from P.Z. is particularly observant. Why are Americans more concerned with a president’s faith than how that president is going to carry out public policy?
“a president who doesn’t say ‘under god’ in the pledge is ‘a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency’.”
Oh, you mean like an approval rating as low as our current gawd-loving president?
15 April 2008, on 12:19 pm
Why are Americans more concerned with a president’s faith than how that president is going to carry out public policy?
Because it keeps us from making any real changes in the way our government and economy is run, which is the way the ruling class in this country likes it. As long as the President believes in God, can shoot a gun and is the type of guy you want to have a beer with, who cares if he fucks over the Constitution and the economy.
15 April 2008, on 1:06 pm
“a president who doesn’t say ‘under god’ in the pledge is ‘a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency’.”
Yeah, like every presidency we had before “under God” was put in the pledge was a disaster.
Medved is the same clown who wrote a piece claiming that slavery in the South wasn’t all that bad.
15 April 2008, on 1:08 pm
Interesting comment. What happened to the standard argument that the words “Under God” aren’t exclusionary. This is the first time I’ve heard somebody on the right-of-center argue that belief in God was a requirement to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Sounds like a definite violation of the establishment clause to me.
15 April 2008, on 1:36 pm
Hey Tommy,
Medved was probably right about slavery. I’m sure it wasn’t too bad - as long as you were the one who owned the slaves!
15 April 2008, on 1:44 pm
Naww! It was hard work Brooklyn Boy! It ain’t easy trying to get a bunch of surly Africans to do all the work that needed doing on the plantation in a timely and efficient manner!
15 April 2008, on 2:27 pm
Tommy: “A president who doesn’t say ‘under god’ in the pledge is ‘a formula for a disastrously unpopular presidency’.”
Yeah, like every presidency we had before “under God” was put in the pledge was a disaster.
Not to mention every presidency before the pledge itself was even written (Washington’s, Adams’s, and Jefferson’s, oh my!). These fucktards really shoot themselves in the foot, don’t they?
And yet sadly, the sheeple still refuse to wake up and smell the slaughterhouse…
15 April 2008, on 3:25 pm
Gee, maybe we should change the pledge to “one nation under Billy Graham”? No wonder poor Georgie has had such a tough time as prez. He’s had to fit in the pledge each day, and honoring BG, and think about new ways to say “thanks for the turkey, god”, (cos you know he can’t come up with that stuff on the spot on Turkey Day). His 2 functioning neuron transmitters in his brain must need a nap every 10 minutes or so. I mean, thank cheezitz that the words Sunni and Shite are only two syllables and not three, like nuclear! Or atheist. That’s it. The real reason we’re bad for the nation: too polysyllabic.
15 April 2008, on 3:28 pm
God, he’s a fucking retard.
Our enemies insist that God plays the central role in the current war and that they affirm and defend him, while we reject and ignore him. The proper response to such assertions involves the citation of our religious traditions and commitments
I’m sorry, but do you really think the jihadists give a fuck? Does it really matter just how proudly infidelist we are?
then how could he honor a great American for a lifetime of work in promulgating a silly and destructive myth?
You’re right, Michael, he couldn’t. Because to do so would be stupid. That’s like honoring Adolf Hitler for being a great uniter of the people.
15 April 2008, on 3:31 pm
Y’know, he does not actually say anything to justify his title, “Americans are right to resist an atheist for president”. He explains why an atheist president would have a steep uphill climb. But he does not in any way actually justify the reactions of the people that he predicts.
Bringing us down to the same old saw: good Christian Americans do not need justification; but Atheist Americans do.
15 April 2008, on 3:38 pm
The “slavery wasn’t that bad” argument would nomrally disqualify Michael Dead-Head (apologies, Jerry) from my consideration, but this is a man who listed Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia as one of the 50 Worst Films of All Time.
Up yours Mike.
15 April 2008, on 8:40 pm
Michael Medved is a regular fixture on Focus on the Family…James Dobson’s hatemongering spit-wad of a radio show. Funny…Medved is an Orthodox Jew on the radio with a guy (Dobson) who believes that he, Medved, is going to hell for not accepting Jesucristo as his personal savior. I have heard Medved spew such irrational rage against homosexuals that it made me wonder if he would also be willing to deny the Holocaust in exchange for being the bearded lady on Dobson’s Caligari Carnival. Medved is an all-around sycophant.
15 April 2008, on 11:10 pm
Totally Barbie!
The title of his column is also stupid. Americans are not resisting an atheist for president because there is no atheist trying to become president.
16 April 2008, on 1:22 am
Medved needs to stick to what he knows; writing really bad reviews of movies.
His argument about the appropriate way to contend with “Islamo-Nazis” (what ever the hell those are)–by appealing to their “reason” by showing that we are not godless materialists and an atheist’s supposed inability to pull this off is about the most fatuous argument I have heard on any topic in quite some time. How does one label a group as “dangerous extremists” in one breath, and then, without a hint of irony, suggest in the next breath that these extremists can be reasoned with in any manner–particularly by a Christian president? (remember, these folks don’t hate us because we are secular materialists, they hate us because we are not Islamists–they hate Christians just as much as the godless and Medved knows this). And why should we even try to shed our secular image in some vain attempt to “protect” ourselves from islamic terrorists? Our secular nature is what makes our culture more advanced than theirs–no amount of obsequiousness is going to make relations better with the muslim world.
Sorry for that rant. Medved is a dick.
16 April 2008, on 3:35 am
Oh, it’s Michael Medved. He’s an idiot. He’s been an idiot for a long time.
What I note is that he feels obligated to write about an atheist President. No one bothered to do that sort of thing before because it was both unnecessary as it was unthinkable. But now people are thinking about it - and largely in fearful tones.
The article to me bespeaks terror. Look at the pathetic justifications he comes up with! OHMYGOD, what would the President say at Thanksgiving Day?! He might actually THANK MASSACHUSSETTS INDIANS. The horror. And then he invents some “church of state” of which the President is the head of? So, in addition to be irrelevant, bizarre. I mean, if this is the best they can come up for justifications to keep atheists out of the White House, all I can say is “Pete Stark 2012″.
Sure, it’ll be an uphill struggle, but it’ll get easier every day. The more than are worried about it, the more there’s to be worried about, right? And it seems to me that, these days, religious folks are doing a lot of worrying about atheists.