Thomas Paine Blog Posts | Comedy Central Indecision

Quote Unquote: Evolutionary War

Tweet

Jun 10, 2011 01:54 PM by Dennis DiClaudio | Comments:

Christian historian David Barton on how much the Founding Fathers hated the theory of evolution…

"The Founding Fathers… already had the entire debate on creation/evolution… and you've got Thomas Paine, the least religious of the Founding Fathers, saying you got to teach creation science in the public school classroom. The scientific method demands it!"

Wow! Those Founding Fathers, they really had it all together didn't they? Not only did they create the greatest nation that has ever existed in the universe, but they also invented the theory of evolution by means of natural selection decades before Charles Darwin just so they could tell it to go fuck itself!

You've got to admire that kind of proactive demagoguery.

Tags: Christianity, David Barton, Education, Evolution, Founding Fathers, Quote Unquote, Religion, Science & Technology, Thomas Paine

The Obligatory Glenn Beck 8/28 Rally Post

Tweet

Aug 30, 2010 12:24 PM by Dennis DiClaudio | Comments:

So, that just happened, and I guess there should be a post about it. And this post seems a fitting choice, given the title I already wrote out. So, what the hey.

On Saturday, a bunch of white people and a smattering of not-white people — 87,000 by conservative accounts, a million billion by teabagging accounts — converged on the Lincoln Memorial to honor a fictional version of Martin Luther King that Glenn Beck and the other speakers of the 8/28 Rally invented specifically for the occasion. This Martin Luther King, for example, was a total war hawk who preached against the evils of social justice , urged the institutional disenfranchisement of some minorities and beseeched Americans to be satisfied with what they've got. (Bizarro Martin Luther King is presumably chillin' with Bizarro Thomas Paine up in Tea Bag Heaven right now.)

Beck seems to think that this moment will live forever in the American psyche, and maybe he's right, but I've seen no evidence of that. To me, it just looked like a bunch of angry old people spewing a lot of unprovable platitudes about God and Country, trying to sound calm and reasonable but seething with anger and intolerance just below the surface, and growing increasingly agitated that people are listening to their rants. This'll probably get wiped over in the American psyche the next time the country is forced to go to another family BBQ. At least there'll probably be some good pie at that thing.

And that, more than anything that happened at this event, is something I'd imagine Martin Luther King could have gotten behind.

(Photo via Little Green Footballs)

Tags: 8/28 Rally, Civil Rights, Glenn Beck, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Sarah Palin, Thomas Paine, Washington DC

Only Thomas Paine Can Fight the United Nations of Bono

Tweet

Oct 19, 2009 09:13 AM by Mary Phillips-Sandy | Comments:

Oh boy, Glenn Beck's nightmare dream come true: over the weekend the New York Times published a very special episode of its editorial page in which Bono defended Barack Obama's Nobel prize, the United Nations and the warm fuzzy spirit of international cooperation. Gag me with a hammer and/or sickle! It's the news media equivalent of a grande arugula latte served with Prius-shaped biscotti made from Karl Marx's family recipe!

If only we could find a palate cleanser, something to scrub our tongues of this foul European taste… well, well, what have we here: remember when Mr. Beck introduced us to the spirit of his great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Paine? Tom's back, and he's ready to serve up a heapin' helpin' of common sense:

Amazing stuff! I think my favorite part is at 3:10, when Tom tells us to "get on the phone" and demand "excellence" instead of "bilingual education" in schools — see how he plays it off real cool, like he's been using those magic talk-throwing boxes forever?