The Good Fight
September 22nd, 2005 - 2:25 pm
This looks like it could be a worthy effort. I’m interested to see what happens when the site goes “live” next week.
This looks like it could be a worthy effort. I’m interested to see what happens when the site goes “live” next week.
Deaf Con? A con who is deaf?
Def Con? Definitely Conscious?
Def Jam-Con? For those late-nite viewers…?
Yeah, nothing like tilting at windmills. The religious right has much more to fear from the rest of America than America has to fear from them.
Ooga Booga
We radical right-wing fundamentalist Christian creationist gay-bashers are verrry scarrry! And we’ve got the rest of America shaking in its boots!
Just look! These Defcon guys want to foil our evil plans for “achieving absolute power ov…
Kelly hit the nail on the head.
I concede that teaching creationism in public schools is absurd, but it’s equally silly to be scared of Ten Commandments displays, even in public buildings.
And as an agnostic firmly opposed to abortion, both in and out of the context of medical research, I fail to see how that’s a religious issue in the first place. Is it just because “Thou shalt not kill” is in the Bible?
The idea that the abolition of the filibuster is a religious idea is even weirder.
The Religious Right as bete noir? How disappointing. Somehow, I thought you were more of a man than that.
Perhaps all that vain preening has gone to your head.
Yup. As an athiest who is agnostic on abortion, (ba-dum-bum!), this looks like a partisan front.
The impression I get is that they’re not looking to defend the constitution, they’re looking to cram their interpetation of it down everyone else’s throat…. which, amusingly enough, it pretty much the same thing the religious right wants to do with a different document.
They’re billing themselves as “The Campaign to Defend the Constitution” and want to do it by ensuring that the federal government funds stem cell research.
Excuse me? If stem cells really were that great, private money would be flooding the field.
…and the line about “Fighting to prevent the religious right from… [...]
…making your end-of-life decisions for you, just as they sought to make Terry Schiavo’s.
Is risable. Regardless of how that was resolved, it wasn’t going to be Terry Schiavo’s decision, and that’s a call I don’t wany anyone else- including my family- making on my behalf. Period.
They are going to defend the constitution? Really? I’d love to see their opinion of the 2nd and the 10th…
Outfits like this are just fund-raising centers for the Democrats.
From the website:
We will fight to uphold cherished constitutional and national values including separation of church and state, individual freedom, scientific progress, pluralism, and tolerance.
Funny, my copy of the constitution mentions none of this.
Fred,
The Ninth and Tenth amendments may have some application to individual freedom. And the patent section does mention “the progress of science and the useful arts.” I do agree, however, that none of these things are within the legitimate province of a government, no matter what the Constitution does or doesn’t say. Governments exist only to defend their citizens from physical violence, foreign or domestic.
Agree with most of what’s been said, but I’ll add this for fred: one may translate “individual freedom” to liberty, which (while not mentioned specifically in the Constitution) certainly is a core American value.
I don’t doubt the “religious right” wishes it had the power and influence the moonbats think it does…
The religious right’s effort to push these issues represents a squandering of it’s political capital. While there is certainly damage caused by impeding medical research and teaching kids to confuse fantasy and science, there are really no commensurate benefits to their political movement.
This defcon site has the look and feel of a site that will hold the religious right up as a polarizing bugbear to push an agenda. To me, it does not look like a particularly worthy or promising effort. So I agree with the most of the comments above, except for the one by the jerk who accused Stephen of vain preening (WTF did that come from?).
Robert Speirs,
You should have quoted the whole passage. Here’s what the Constitution really says in Article 1, Section 8:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
That’s the establishment of the patent system, not federally funded research grants.
As for the rest, I agree with most of the commenters here. This group appears to be rabidly liberal and supposes to defend ‘rights’ that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.