Ms. Dowd, do you actually research your columns before you unleash them on the world? Or think, for that matter?
‘God’s Word is true, or evolution is true. No millions of years. There’s no room for compromise.’
Nice try with the sarcasm, but you’re right, there isn’t, based on a simple logical premise (which I’ll elaborate on if requested to). If you’d actually read the first few chapters of Genesis you might understand. But I think I’m overestimating your capacity for logical thought.
On eBay, you can even find replicas of the stickers that a Georgia county put on science textbooks to warn that evolution is ‘a theory, not a fact.’
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that you’re railing against the kneejerk, afterthought nature of the stickers in response to well-meaning parents’ protests. Because you’ll certainly agree that since the period of time evolution purports to explain is of course unobservable, being in the past and all, one of the clearly necessary pillars for its acceptance into the realm of fact is missing. Let’s not even mention that among much of the scientific community nowadays, the theory of evolution is seriously on the outs. But I suppose impressing upon the youngsters that evolution is the gospel truth is safer than an open-minded admission that golly, there might be another way to explain this whole deal, and here are even-handed explanations of all the theories in existence.
The White House seems to think Social Security was corrupt from the moment it was enacted in 1935.
No clue, lady. Let’s think about the institution of Social Security from the viewpoint of an economic conservative, the category into which the vast majority of Republicans fall. When we get down to brass tacks, the institution takes money away from you and gives it to someone else without your having any say about it. This is called coerced redistribution of wealth. Being big believers in a free-market economy and one of the core tenets of that viewpoint, that people should have the final say as far as where their money goes, it’s more than a little understandable that Republicans (or Libertarians like yours truly, for that matter) would have an objection or two to the concept of Social Security from the get-go. And yes, corrupt might even be a plausible adjective.
Mr. Bush and his crew not only want to scrap the New Deal. By weakening environmental and safety protections and trying to flatten the progressive income tax, they’re trying to eradicate not just one Roosevelt but two, going after the progressive legacy of Theodore.
With their brutal assault on history and their sanctimonious manner, they give a whole new meaning to Teddy’s philosophy of the presidency. Bully pulpit, indeed.
So the best that you can come up with is that Bush’s economic policies are hurting a legacy? Not even the poor, not the disenfranchised, not hard-working blue-collar types that should be allowed to take home more of what they earn (all worthy demographics, and bastions of liberal concern), but a “philosophy of the presidency?” I mean, there’s no way on earth that those men could have been wrong in their policies and assumptions about economics. Perish the thought in a liberal’s mind.
As far as I can tell, this woman is completely incapable of independent, original thought. She seems to pick up on the standard progressive rhetoric, chew it up a little bit, and regurgitate it in a new, more stilted guise.