Looking at this video of GOP members running away (in one case literally) from questions about Birtherism it struck me that rather than looking at the vast majority of GOP types who consistently trade in delusion, it would be more interesting to see if there is even one prominent GOP figure certifiably sane. By “certifiably sane”, I mean someone who has clearly and publicly rejected all the main forms of delusion propounded by the majority of Repugs. These include:
AGW delusionism (an explicit statement of support for mainstream science is required)
Birtherism
Creationism (must reject both creationism /ID and “teach the controversy’)
9/11 Trutherism (not, in most cases, the “Bush knew” version, but the “Saddam organised it, via meetings in Prague” version)
Crank medical theories: on passive smoking, the Terri Schiavo case, abortion-breast cancer link, AIDS reappraisal, claims about stem cells (to make it easy, getting any of these right will suffice)
Rejection of plate tectonics: According to the same poll that found most Republicans to be Birthers/sceptics, the majority also deny or doubt that America and Africa were once part of the same continent (brand new, so I’ll take absence of evidence on this one).
Bonus points if we can find one who’s not from Maine.
John Quiggin 
TerjeP (say tay-a), so you are one of the libertarians supporting the American bounty hunter who illegally detained and tortured Afghan prisoners.
The libertarians may not have but the republicans overwhelmingly got behind GW and supported Iraq Terje.
I would bet private bounty hunters shot JFK Terje.
Monkey’s Uncle August 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 #34
A nice example of the kind of pig-headed partisanship that, presumably, we should all be trying to get away from.
Heres a test for Left-liberal equanimity, if not sanity. Which politician, over the past generation or two, did more practical good for African-American people: Martin Luther King or Pat Buchanan?
Hint: “three strikes and you’re out” tough on crime laws helped African-American victims of crime more than any other ethnic group, “ending welfare as we know it” welfare-to-work laws greatly improved the integrity of African-American households and political resistance to immigration amnesty has, at least for a while, put a floor under the tendency for African American wages to go into free-fall under the impact of the flood of illegal immigrants.
These are all social scientific facts, realised in no small measure due to the tireless efforts of Pat Buchanan in trying to bring some sanity to US social policy. But studiously avoided by anti-scientific Left-liberals.
and his brother…and that isnt democracy
TerjeP (say tay-a), I have a problem with people like Ron Paul etc for all the evidence tend to contradict what they believe. Insane.
@Jack Strocchi
Simply astonishing. Three strikes and you’re out saw radical increases in the proportion of balcks in prison for minor offences, including kids being locked up for 25 years for stealing pizza. “Workfare” disadvantfaged minorioty children by ensuring that their mothers left them unattended as they went miules for work. In one case in LA a five year old left unattended – Patrick mason by name, was shot dead by a cop who, breaking into the flat, thought the kid with a water pistol was an intruder. And falling African American (and other wages) are the result of poor labor standards not Operation Light up the Border. What that did was intensify the exploitation of Latinos and lead to serious morbidity in the Rio Grande.
Simply disgusting …
So did the Democrats.
Whoever did it they probably drove to the seen using a public road … and that isn’t democratic. This is largely irrelevant but so is your point.
Just in case people have forgotten:-
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/
The current US president, a Democrat, made this woman Secretary of State. He should have given her a job in the mail room instead. I’d happily see the entire war brigade, on both sides, take an early retirement.
What do you mean?
TerjeP (say tay-a), Timothy McVeigh is your typical libertarian Richard Cranium.
Fran Barlow says August 3rd, 2009 at 17:56 #7
Fran Barlow’s archeo-liberalism reminds me of a classic riposte by Jerry Pournelle, on the general incompetence and perversity of Left-liberal attempts to improve the lot of colored people:
Left-liberals never ever learn from their catastrophic blunders in the Culture War. Which is why they constantly wage war on Science to cover up inconvenient facts.
Notice how back in mid-2007 there was a storm of political protest about Howards Intervention and how it was another example of whitey oppression. But now the scientific evidence is coming in that the Intervention is working so the Left-liberal critics have gone strangely quiet.
Not to worry, they are re-grouping and working to politically undermine the good thats been done so that they can get back in control of the rackets. Still blithely assuming that all the scientific obfuscation, not to mention straight out ideological insanity, is lumped over on the Right.
Gimme a break.
I think I like Fran.
@Jack Strocchi
White man’s burden on one side, stockholm syndrome on the other. Never question the context but merely adapt to the usages of the system.
This is the kind of bigotry that is fashionable in rightwing circles. Telling it is that it affirms power and privilege and argues for people to accept their place in the greater scheme of things.
You don’t need a break Jack. You’ve already taken more than your share.
Listen Jack – unless youb havent noticed…the tide is turning away from BS right wing fallacies and embracing left wing liberals aka – right now we are damn well winning the culture wars. You had your chance …and it was only a matter of time and time has caught up with the lot of you, Joe Ordinary isnt a bad bloke…it may take a while given the storm of media crap the right wing nachine has heaped on his head…but you made the mistake of thinking that was enough to snow him….and in the end, the truth gets there and you people with your fanatic views, are in your rightful place, in the dustbin of disccredited hirtory and false theories.
You see Jack, time corrects all ills (even in the market for ideas).
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
My point was Terje – that the republicans in the US have always been financially well resourced by a filthy lot of plotters and schemers who are so hungry for power they give jack about real democracy or liberty and will lie, dig dirt or kill just to get themselves in the seat of power, and you are a fool, for believing otherwise…just follow the filthy lucre slime trail they leave behind themselves.
Say it isnt so Terje…. say it isnt so every damn election for the past twenty years..people like you never change their mind or their viting habits.
You think you beleive in liberty but in reality you have made yourself a slave to the whims of people wealthier than you. Thats all you have done with your libertarianism. Followed false idols nicely modelled for you…
I yield to no one in my contempt for Republican disdain for science. But I have trouble keeping a straight face when listening to the never-ending series of Left-wing denunciations of Right-winger anti-science. There is more than a little of pot-calling-kettle-black disingenuity here.
A large fraction of Left-liberals are grotesquely anti-science, particularly on their home ground of “cultural studies” (the very phrase leaves a funny taste in my mouth). They cling to an unscientific social constructivist Blank Slate philosophy which makes them averse to the use of evolutionary genetics in the analysis of human nature.
The more honest kind of critic does acknowledge the Left-liberal Culture War on science. Chris Mooney, in an excerpt from his The Republican War on Science, concedes that Left-liberals are plenty guilty of waging war on science, mainly in areas related to cultural behaviour:
Left-liberals, in order to dampen the cognitive dissonance caused by the contradiction between their ethical ideals and epistemic reality, employ the tools of political correctness to chill free speech when science gets too close to the bone of their sacred cows. Just the other day we see Steven Rose, the most prominent Left-wing geneticist in the world, publicly calling for the shut-down of research on the genetics of race and intelligence.
But Left-wing antipathy to the scientific analysis of culture can’t dam this flooding river of knowledge forever. As John Derbyshire remarked:
– AGW delusionism
– Birtherism
– Creationism (must reject both creationism /ID and “teach the controversy’)
– 9/11 Trutherism
– Crank medical theories
– Rejection of plate tectonics
Some additions:
– Inability to say when life begins (above their pay grade);
– Belief that Americans watched television in 1929 (poster boy for no-nonsense intellectuality, Joe Biden);
– Belief that anything Australia does vis-a-vis carbon will alter the temperature of the planet (it won’t);
– Belief that Moqtada al-Sadr is winning the Iraq War (see Quiggin, J, 2008).
Jack, this stuff isn’t science, it’s the worst kind of pop science. Pinker’s Blank Slate is a poorly argued polemic and Derbyshire is not an authority on anything. On free speech grounds I disagree with Rose, but he’s right to say that “race” is not a biologically meaningful construct, particularly in a country like the US, where social divisions based on assigned race mask centuries of genetic mixing (or, as the racists would call it miscegenation). And, whatever the theoretical possibilities, he’s right that the vast majority of research on gender differences has been rubbish.
My point was Terje – that the republicans in the US have always been financially well resourced by a filthy lot of plotters and schemers who are so hungry for power they give jack about real democracy or liberty…
Mmmyes. I guess you mean financially well resourced Republicans like John F. Kennedy, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and, not least, the man who single-handedly trashed campaign finance reform for a generation in order to accumulate the largest war chest in the history of politics – the George Soros-backed Barack H. Obama. And Barry was thereby able to refuse to have his finances audited. We still don’t know where the money came from. So much for real democracy and liberty.
CL, life began in the pre-Cambrian era, and all current life (including us, and any gametes and children we produce) is an unbroken continuation of that pre-Cambrian beginning (not a hard one).
As regards my own predictive accuracy, given the number of times you have pointed out this one error, I take it you agree that I got the Iraq war right in almost every other respect, unlike those who believed the Bush Administration’s lies about WMD, claims of “mission accomplished” etc.
But I’m glad to see you reject all the delusions I listed (unless “additions” means something different in your private language). I had the impression you went along with AGW delusionism at least.
Jack Strocchi, here is a simple test for you. The Grand Canyon was created in the biblical flood. True or False
As far as predictive abilities go, hands up anyone who stated in the latter half of 2008 that Australia that there was a significant chance Australia might not experience a recession in 2009.
fortunately there was no item:
Never predicted an imminent race war in the United States and did not not urge whites to stockpile arms in preparation.
Jack Strocchi I asked you on an earlier thread on this blog to cite evidence that the so-called intervention in the NT is having beneficial effects. Amongst other things you claimed that ‘children are being removed in great numbers under the Intervention’ and that it has ‘brought under control’ … ‘in-migration to cities, collapse in family structure and a massive substance abuse infliction’. You ignored the request to cite sources of evidence yet continue to make the claim here that it was a success.
One could be forgiven for believing you are just making stuff up.
The question Barack “Beyond My Pay Grade” Obama was asked had to with conception, John, not the pre-Cambrian era. Life begins at conception. Apparently he didn’t know this.
I take it you agree that I got the Iraq war right in almost every other respect.
No, you got almost everything wrong.
On “AGW”, my point was that nothing we do will make any difference whatsoever – contrary to what local warmenist truthers say.
As far as predictive abilities go, hands up anyone who stated in the latter half of 2008 that Australia that there was a significant chance Australia might not experience a recession in 2009.
Latter HALF of 2008? My hand is up and I’m hardly on my Pat Malone.
Old story from the 1980s. Ugly racist stuff was said in Ron Pauls name but not by him personally. He has always renounced the text when asked about it but still accepted moral responsibility for allowed others to publish such things under his name. In my book it was a personal failing but not of the sort you imply.
I don’t see how this answers my question. Are you just trying to be annoying?
Alice – politics everywhere is laden with power hungry people that lie, scheme and plot for narrow self interest. It is why I think the range of things in life to which political means should be applicable should be small. Are you so naive as to believe that one side of politics is free of human foibles?
That you assume I am a fool is noted. Not a particularily constructive comment but I suppose it helps to lower the tone of this place.
“As far as predictive abilities go, hands up anyone who stated in the latter half of 2008 that Australia that there was a significant chance Australia might not experience a recession in 2009.”
Maybe you’ve got a double negative in there somewhere, IG, or maybe you subscribe to the widespread but baseless belief that there exists a “technical definition” of a recession as constituting two consecutive quarters of negative growth. But to state some facts:
(a) We are in a recession right now, a fact that is obvious to those experiencing its impact
(b) Lots of people well into the second half of 2008 denied that the US was in a recession – NBER dated the start at Dec 2007
(s) Most economists in the Age survey predicted positive growth for 2009. I predicted -1.0, which was second lowest ahead only of Steve Keen
(d) The RBA gave the same estimate in May, though, it now looks as if things might be marginally better
(e) Policy makes a difference. The main reason things look a little better in Australia than they did at the end of 2008, rather than a lot worse, is expansionary macro policy.
TerjeP (say tay-a), your the one claiming libertarians are sane. I find the likes of Timothy McVeigh a nutter and a mass murderer.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
No I am not that naive either Terje – but conservative parties for the past twenty years in the US and here have been overweight in plotters, schemers and liars..but Ill make one concession to you – I think NSW Labor is also overweight in plotters, schemers and liars – but none of this is an excuse to shrink governments to the point od total disarray Terje which is what you appear to advocate more often than not. That is also foolish. The solution to corruption or unethical behaviour in governments is not to do away with their presence altogether or to shrink them to the point of a bumbling inadequate committee with insufficient skills or manpower to get the job of our social capital delivered. What systems we do have need proper controls in place against unethical behaviour and the power of vested interests. The public funding of election campaigns would be a very healthy place to start.
CL, I misunderstood “in addition”, as it appears you meant to say you endorse all the delusional beliefs I listed and wanted to add some of your own.
Of these I’ll take “gametes are not alive” as emblematic.
Michael of SH, please cool down a bit – you’re getting close to Godwin territory. Also, euphemisms for coarse language (like Richard Cranium) are strongly discouraged.
OK TerjeP (say tay-a), the reason I raised the above issues were that the Libertarian Party in the USA forbids anyone from advocating the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals. John is wright I apologise if I offended anyone by telling the truth.
“As far as predictive abilities go, hands up anyone who stated in the latter half of 2008 that Australia that there was a significant chance Australia might not experience a recession in 2009.”
At that time I seem to remember some discussion about the merits of being in or out of the stockmarket – when the consensus was to stay out as it was too risky I started to buy in ASX listed stocks – currently up about 67%.
Alice – I believe in smaller government and stronger society. Not smaller government to weaken society. I think discouraging personal responsibility weakens society. You appear to believe that collective responsibility is the way to strengthen it. I do understand the raw emotional appeal of collective responsibility however I still think it is the root cause of a myriad number of social and economic ills. As a result we clearly disagree over the impact of specific reforms.
I think politics is less corrupt where it’s role in economic and social affairs is minimal and it does a well defined set of basic tasks. Not that the same degree of corruption is merely focused on a smaller segment. Having said that I think Australian politics is pretty clean and the major benefits of smaller government lay in the impact on incentives and long term dynamic effects.
I enjoy sparing with you on these issues. I know you sometimes despair at the gulf between our view points. However please try avoid the personal remarks because they don’t ultimately foster the exchange of ideas.
MoSH – I’m going to try and ignore you for a few days. You appear to be a bitter person. Try smiling at people as you walk down the street and see if your mood improves.
TerjeP (say tay-a), tell me why am I a bitter person. I’m sure sure other bloggers would like to know.
John, I don’t believe for today they are still reporting that Godwin Grech may have breached the Public Service code of conduct when in fact Godwin was involved in the commission of a crime.
@Michael of Summer Hill
Nope … I don’t care. I’m more curious as to why you keep harping on about the NSW ALP, which is a political carcass, and using that inane catchphrase “two thumbs up”.
Mind you, I don’t speak for everyone.
Michael, it’s just journos being inaccurate. They aren’t aware of the difference between “breaching the public service code of conduct” (a disciplinary offence which his Departmental Secretary can sack him for) and “breaching the Public Service Act” (a crime by definition and a matter for the courts). You’re right that on the facts as claimed his offence falls in the latter category.
MoSH,
Perhaps one way we can tell you are a bitter person is that you forget that, in our system of justice at least, there is a presumption of innocence.
Andrew Reynolds, you 100% correct but when you engage in the commission of a crime and admit it. God help you.
Yeah Ian an economy on life support, very healthy.
Sorry, Ian Gould @24.
Jack, some even-handed disdain free of false equivalence as to importance of subject matter would be welcome.
I’m not holding my breath.
Terje, I agree that discouraging personal responsibility weakens society. But do you encourage the personal responsibility of a Murdoch or Pratt by lessening regulation of their proclivities?
Alphonse – a fair question but one which entails a discussion of the particual regulation in question. And also a discussion of responsibility to whom for what. And no doubt some discussion of things such as utilitarian consequences and principles of natural justice. The devil is in the detail.
Thumbs up TerjeP (say tay-a), now your making sense ‘principles of natural justice’.
MoSH,
That presumption survives, whatever confessions may be made, right up to the point where a properly constituted court finds you guilty.