Crazy Republicans.

On the other hand, you get some crazy amateur political talk from some amateur polticians like GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden who says "violent overthrow of government is 'on the table.'"

In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising "is not the first option," but it is "on the table." That drew a quick denunciation from the head of the Dallas County GOP, who called the remarks "inappropriate."


Broden, a first-time candidate, is challenging veteran incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in Dallas' heavily Democratic 30th Congressional District. Johnson's campaign declined to comment on Broden.

In the interview, Brad Watson, political reporter for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), asked Broden about a tea party event last year in Fort Worth in which he described the nation's government as tyrannical.

"We have a constitutional remedy," Broden said then. "And the Framers say if that don't work, revolution."

Watson asked if his definition of revolution included violent overthrow of the government. In a prolonged back-and-forth, Broden at first declined to explicitly address insurrection, saying the first way to deal with a repressive government is to "alter it or abolish it."

The comment is made by a sacrificial lamb who is never going to get elected and doesn't represent the official views of anyone but himself, and, yet, this is just nutty talk.

Mark Shea has been doing Yeoman's work of pointing out the hypocrisy of not condemning this kind of talk from the Right if we are going to condemn it on the Left:

The more these people gaze upon the terror of the Nazis under the bed that haunt their Beck-filled dreams, the more they slowiy turn into that which they fear most. Aristotle is right: we become like that which we contemplate. The Thing that Used to Be Conservatism is transmogrifying into the fascist it fears.

Sauce for the Gander alert.

The National Rifle Association's log-rolling to defeat the free market that might charge gun owners a higher premium for having a gun in their houses is outrageous, as any such log-rolling is.  Jonathon Chait in The New Republic writes:

A huge portion of the conservative backlash against health care reform was premised on the notion that reform would force people who choose to lead healthy, responsible lives to subsidize bad decisions by fat, lazy slobs. In reality, our health or lack thereof lies mostly outside our own control. But here is a way that the Affordable Care Act really is forcing responsible people to subsidize the irresponsible decisions of others:

In the health care debate this year, for instance, the N.R.A.’s lobbyists worked with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to include a little-noticed provision banning insurance companies from charging higher premiums for people with guns in their homes.

Of course, people who keep guns in their home are choosing to run the risk of incurring injury or death. (Gun owners are eleven times more likely to have a household member attempt suicide, and four times more likely to suffer an accidental homicide or shooting injury, as to successfully use the gun in self-defense.) But now those of us who choose not to run this risk have to pay to subsidize their risky lifestyle. Let's see some conservative outrage!

If owning a gun results in higher risks, then gun owners should pay higher premiums. They shouldn't use politically clout in order to be bought off and transfer the cost to non-gun owners.

How about a little freakin' principle for a change.

How to contrive a best seller.

Recycling a ghost-writer's leftover plot seems to be the key to Glen Beck's novel.

So, that's how it's done.

Fighting Pseudo-Knowledge - Right-wing Dan Brown/Mormon Division.

Francis Beckwith points out that Glenn Beck's appraisal of history needs to be taken with a grain of salt, particularly after listening to this:



So, according to Beck, Constantine put together the bible and persecuted dissenting Christians which caused the Essene Jewish community to hide the Dead Sea scrolls in a cave 300 years before Constantine was born.

Eh????

Pseudo-knowledge is dangerous because it caters to our sense of "truthiness," i.e., it confirms things that we already know. Beck is a Mormon - and there's nothing wrong with that - and Mormons are taught that the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm Joseph Smith's story of finding tablets containing the Books of Mormon and that Christianity fell into apostasy with the death of the last apostle and that this apostasy was institutionalized by the Emperor Constantine. 

Mark Shea explains why Glenn Beck's version of early Christian history is embarrassingly wrong.  For example, the Apostle's Creed pre-existed Constantine as did the canon of the New Testament.  The Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved by the First Century Essene community that pre-dated Constantine by nearly 300 years.  Neither Constantine or Nicea instituted a death penalty against dissenting Christians.

Protestant blog Razorkiss offers this:

Now, I listen to Beck for a simple reason. He’s a Mormon, and his worldview “bleeds through” quite frequently – and I find it interesting. Especially when, as is more common lately, he speaks about faith and religion. He frequently refers to himself as “Christian” – when he is nothing of the sort. For instance:


Glenn Beck – Satan vs Jesus

The section I’m most interested in is here:

“The enemy of Jesus is not a government. It is the capping of individuals. It is the stopping of people understand what the power inside of you is. The ability to choose between right and wrong. Jesus never took anybody and waterboarded them and told them ‘accept me, accept me, accept me’. He never did that. Religions, when they became about politics, did that. Jesus said ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’. Jesus said ‘do you not yet understand all this and more you can do’. It’s individual rights. It’s a war that has been going since before time. I’ll save em. I’ll save em all. Just give me the credit, I’ll save em all. I’ll make the choices for them so no one can fail. No, no, no. Let men fail – and I will send a Savior, and He will redeem them for the price that they cannot pay. But let them fail.”

An observer who isn’t familiar with Mormonism might miss this. Check out Moses 4:1 in the LDS scripture. Sound familiar? Look at their teaching on this subject in “The Pearl of Great Price“.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Note: Lucifer’s plan has often been compared, negatively, to Calvinism – which, ironically, is what a Presbyterian is. Like… the Presbyterian author (and seminary president at WTS) he approvingly endorsed earlier in that same show!

So, we’ve established two things.

While Glenn might consider himself a good historian on the founding fathers, he should stick to things he has actually studied.

Glenn’s Mormon presuppositions slip through, and color his viewing of history as well his statements about faith.

Presuppositions are like that - they quickly form into pseudo-knowledge, particularly when they strike a cultural chord.