The GOP's nazi problem

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/1...

No, this doesn't surprise me anymore. It just disappoints me.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002, an explosive allegation that first surfaced Sunday on a Louisiana blog.

Scalise’s office acknowledged that he was making lots of speeches during that time period, as he built his political career, and it was “likely” he appeared before the group, an aide said.

White supremacists are constituents, too.

Is Jindal the best guy they can get to vouch for white people in racially compromising situations now?

Also - I'd be curious to see the content. Maybe it was "hey cut out all the racist crap, clean up your act, and then vote for me."

Hell, David Duke was the disturbingly popular GOP candidate for governor back in the early 90's when I was in middle school. That the GOP would continue to court unofficial white supremacist groups in Louisiana is of no surprise to me at all.

Is there any data on how large a constituency this is? I'm thinking less of the folks parading down the street in the funny outfits, and more of the people who think/vote racist, but are less/not vocal in public. Is this just a small noisy fringe, or is it the visible part of a significant minority?

It's fringe, but in a country of 300 million, that's a lot of people. The SPLC believes there are around a thousand organized groups (figure from 2012), so I'd say, maybe a quarter million to half a million or so hard core types associated with declared white supremacist groups.

Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd was reportedly spinning in his grave, right up until his hood got all tangled

From those with more historical knowledge than me, since we seemed to have the big flip-flop between the stances of Rs and Ds a few decades back where the Rs stopped being the party of minorities, did the Ds openly court these supremacist groups "way back when"?

MyBrainHz wrote:

Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd was reportedly spinning in his grave, right up until his hood got all tangled :D

Best comment ever.

Kehama wrote:

From those with more historical knowledge than me, since we seemed to have the big flip-flop between the stances of Rs and Ds a few decades back where the Rs stopped being the party of minorities, did the Ds openly court these supremacist groups "way back when"?

I'd say the big change happened when LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act in 1964, at which point people in the deep South who had been staunchly Democrat largely as a middle finger to Lincoln and the Republicans since the Civil War then flipped around and started voting Republican instead. I don't think either party was really vaguely the party of minorities from the Civil War up to about that point; both were perfectly happy to be as racist as could be to either side. The rise of the civil rights movements in the 50s and 60s is what really started to polarize things, and when Kennedy and then LBJ really made it a point to make even basic racial equality the law of the land, that's when big chunks of the South that had traditionally been Democrat go fleeing to the other side.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
Kehama wrote:

From those with more historical knowledge than me, since we seemed to have the big flip-flop between the stances of Rs and Ds a few decades back where the Rs stopped being the party of minorities, did the Ds openly court these supremacist groups "way back when"?

I'd say the big change happened when LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act in 1964, at which point people in the deep South who had been staunchly Democrat largely as a middle finger to Lincoln and the Republicans since the Civil War then flipped around and started voting Republican instead. I don't think either party was really vaguely the party of minorities from the Civil War up to about that point; both were perfectly happy to be as racist as could be to either side. The rise of the civil rights movements in the 50s and 60s is what really started to polarize things, and when Kennedy and then LBJ really made it a point to make even basic racial equality the law of the land, that's when big chunks of the South that had traditionally been Democrat go fleeing to the other side.

Pretty much.

The dixiecrats fled the dnc in drives once lbj signed the civil rights act. And when Nixon welcomed klansmen with his "southern strategy" (and later Reagan with his "big tent") the party of southern racists was officially pen for business.

Kehama wrote:

From those with more historical knowledge than me, since we seemed to have the big flip-flop between the stances of Rs and Ds a few decades back where the Rs stopped being the party of minorities, did the Ds openly court these supremacist groups "way back when"?

The short answer is yes.

The Democratic Party actually ran supremacist groups like the KKK, White League, Red Shirts, and many others in post-Reconstruction South. Those groups functioned as the military arm of the Democratic Party and disrupted--violently sometimes--Republican candidates and efforts to organize black voters. These groups and their attitudes became embedded in Southern culture and politics (for example, the White League was absorbed into Louisiana state militias and National Guard).

and when Kennedy and then LBJ really made it a point to make even basic racial equality the law of the land, that's when big chunks of the South that had traditionally been Democrat go fleeing to the other side.

Which I find amusing, in a very tragic way: the Democrats have always been about trying to equalize the playing field, at giving the working men (and, these days, women) a better chance at a good life, and the South has the greatest concentration of low-income people in the country.

Yet, those Southerners, en masse, decided that, rather than trying to make their own lives better, they much preferred making black people's lives worse.

Malor wrote:

Yet, those Southerners, en masse, decided that, rather than trying to make their own lives better, they much preferred making black people's lives worse.

Groupism causes some really interesting effects. Take for example prop 8 in California which I have seen claims passed largely because the Black voters that came out for Obama voted for prop 8 en masse.

I recommend giving this Diane Rhem episode a listen. But, basically, knowing they can get the white supremacist vote, the GOP has been providing aid and succor to them for a while:

Michael Greenberger wrote:

Well, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report which said the greatest threat, in terms of domestic terrorism, was the growth of these white supremacist groups that is the greatest threat to stability within the United States. And it was an analytical framework of how the department and other law enforcement agencies should focus on these white supremacist groups, militia groups and hate groups. When it was issued, there was an uproar from the conservative community.

And House Minority leader John Boehner, House minority leader at the time, now speaker, said the Department of Homeland Security owes the American people an explanation for why they have abandoned the term terrorist to describe those such as al-Qaida, who are plotting overseas to kill Americans, while our own department is using the same term to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking. In fact, faced with the siege of criticism, the secretary withdrew the report -- it actually had been published -- and she apologized. So...

And so there is a debate right now about the analytical force of the Department of Homeland Security. There's a lot of information that they dropped from six analysts who were looking at this problem there to one analyst. Now, I saw yesterday at the department challenges that fact, but, nevertheless, it's in the year that this has not been a priority.

burglebup wrote:
Malor wrote:

Yet, those Southerners, en masse, decided that, rather than trying to make their own lives better, they much preferred making black people's lives worse.

Groupism causes some really interesting effects. Take for example prop 8 in California which I have seen claims passed largely because the Black voters that came out for Obama voted for prop 8 en masse.

It's also how Bush Jr. got a bit of a swing from Black and Hispanic voters during his reelection, appealing to their religious beliefs on gay marriage. Sadly, for GOP politicians and voters who vote solely on their evangelism anyway (great for the rest of us), that strategy now has some pretty hard blowback with younger Republicans who might have voted for them if they weren't displaying intolerance on this issue, so it is a bit of a double-edged sword.

Demosthenes wrote:
burglebup wrote:
Malor wrote:

Yet, those Southerners, en masse, decided that, rather than trying to make their own lives better, they much preferred making black people's lives worse.

Groupism causes some really interesting effects. Take for example prop 8 in California which I have seen claims passed largely because the Black voters that came out for Obama voted for prop 8 en masse.

It's also how Bush Jr. got a bit of a swing from Black and Hispanic voters during his reelection, appealing to their religious beliefs on gay marriage. Sadly, for GOP politicians and voters who vote solely on their evangelism anyway (great for the rest of us), that strategy now has some pretty hard blowback with younger Republicans who might have voted for them if they weren't displaying intolerance on this issue, so it is a bit of a double-edged sword.

This also turns out to be the primary driver behind why organized Christianity has taken a face plant with younger Americans. The concerted effort of the whackbar right wing to equate piety with medieval anti-science and misogynist and racist viewpoints has pretty much laid a wet, sticky dump in the offering plate.

I certainly found it weird that Rationalism in Civ5 boosts Science (science is empirical) while being mutually exclusive with Piety (theology is a rationalist endeavor!). It's often forgotten that while the Church leadership condemned Galileo for being outspoken about ideas considered heretical at the time, Galileo himself was a devout Catholic. Squelching new ideas presented by upstart scientists isn't just a Catholic Church thing, either. Even scientists of all persuasions do it all the time. Einstein was famously intolerant of the Uncertainty Principle and quantum entanglement.

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

LarryC wrote:

I certainly found it weird that Rationalism in Civ5 boosts Science (science is empirical) while being mutually exclusive with Piety (theology is a rationalist endeavor!). It's often forgotten that while the Church leadership condemned Galileo for being outspoken about ideas considered heretical at the time, Galileo himself was a devout Catholic. Squelching new ideas presented by upstart scientists isn't just a Catholic Church thing, either. Even scientists of all persuasions do it all the time. Einstein was famously intolerant of the Uncertainty Principle and quantum entanglement.

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

It is, perhaps, weird to you, but it is de rigueur in just about the rest of the world.

When the legitimacy of a religious hierarchy depends on answers that must not be questioned, an intellectual philosophy that demands that ALL things must be questioned is deeply and intolerably subversive.

Einstein and others may have individually been intolerant of new ideas, but those were personal failings and deviations from the principles of the Scientific Method. In sharp contrast, there is nothing at all inconsistent with a pastor or ayatollah stating that evolution is the tool of his fictional devil.

Malor wrote:

Well, it's also worth pointing out that Einstein didn't try to suppress the ideas, he just said he didn't like them. He found that fundamental uncertainty that appears to be at the bottom of things to be rather strange and upsetting, and didn't think it could really be the truth, that we were missing something more mechanistic and predictable.

AFAIK, that's all he ever did, express an opinion. He certainly didn't burn anyone at the stake for heresy.

Scientists are free to like or dislike theories as they choose: this is only a failing when that dislike prevents them from acknowledging the best existing theory as the probable explanation. Note, however, that sometimes this isn't a failing... it doesn't happen very often anymore, but once in a great while, the iconoclast is right, and the existing explanation is incorrect.

Even at that, the great majority of the time, the existing explanation is shown to be insufficient, rather than outright incorrect.

Agreed. Being skeptical of an idea until presented with compelling evidence is perfectly okay.

Well, it's also worth pointing out that Einstein didn't try to suppress the ideas, he just said he didn't like them. He found that fundamental uncertainty that appears to be at the bottom of things to be rather strange and upsetting, and didn't think it could really be the truth, that we were missing something more mechanistic and predictable.

AFAIK, that's all he ever did, express an opinion. He certainly didn't burn anyone at the stake for heresy.

Scientists are free to like or dislike theories as they choose: this is only a failing when that dislike prevents them from acknowledging the best existing theory as the probable explanation. Note, however, that sometimes this isn't a failing... it doesn't happen very often anymore, but once in a great while, the iconoclast is right, and the existing explanation is incorrect.

Even at that, the great majority of the time, the existing explanation is shown to be insufficient, rather than outright wrong.

Scientists quash ideas - it's not just disagreement. Many of my own mentors are resistant to new ideas about medicine because it doesn't square with what they've been taught and how they practiced medicine. That occurs on both a clinical and an experimental level.

By "resistant," I mean they sabotage your progress, block your proposals with every influence they have, and hurt your chances for employment. It's not burning at the stake, but science is very personal and very human. The reason all the safeguards are present is because scientists and organizations of scientists are often all too human. The conflict is understandably vicious when you're pursuing work that threatens to render their expertise superfluous, or junks their preferred or signature interventions.

I've met very few scientists who'll turn on a dime and junk decades of their own work if another scientist's work shows it to be wrong. Most often, they get right back to it and try to get their own ideas back on top. It's kind of like an internet forum activity sometimes.

Paleocon:

When the legitimacy of a religious hierarchy depends on answers that must not be questioned, an intellectual philosophy that demands that ALL things must be questioned is deeply and intolerably subversive.

Actually, science as an intellectual philosophy doesn't question everything. In fact, it is completely and unquestioningly accepting of any legitimate observation. Scientific facts are king. They are never questioned. You never question clear, valid, and compelling data.

Religious theology and scientific inquiry merely demonstrate the classic pre-Kantian conflict between Rationalism and Empiricism. One is founded on ideas, the other on sense data. The reason they conflict when they do is ultimately based on that fundamental difference.

All that said, this is the GOP=Nazi thread. I think we've gone on about this tangent long enough, right? I'll be seeing you around the forums, gentlemen.

larryc wrote:

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

Then you'll be pleased to hear that Creationism is the scientific doctrine fully supported by both Biblical sources and observational science. (IE, one can be both pious and accept scientific evidence about the world IF one operates in a Creationist worldview.)

It's hard to make a counter-argument to that which cannot be characterized (unfairly, by literalists) as "if you are pious, you are a Creationist; if you are not a Creationist, you are impious". It's equally hard to prevent non-Creationists from looking at literalists and dismissing them as anti-science because of their associations with Creationism.

The take-away is that this is a highly charged topic in the US, with the assumptions already in place. For many Americans - tens of millions - piety is the belief in the infallibility and literal truth of the Bible.

"We observe things in the present, and we're assuming that has always happened in the past," Ham explained. But he noted a significant weakness in using modern science to explain the past – "You've got a problem, because you weren't there."

Ham argued that there are different kinds of science: observational science, which involves the world as it is, and historical science, which attempts to understand the world that came before. "I claim there's only one infallible dating method – a witness who was there and who knows everything and who told us – that's the Word of God."
....
Ham also argued that science relies on a Christian worldview. "If the universe came about by natural processes, where did the laws of logic come from?" the creationist asked. He claimed that Christianity gives a basis for the rules of logic and the order of nature, both of which are necessary for science. "There's a book out there that does document where consciousness comes from – God made man in His own image," Ham explained. Christians believe in logic and natural laws because of the mental framework God gave men in creation.

Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a very popular website which is part of his Christian Apologetics ministry focused on Biblical literalism and Creationism. It's mainstream enough that it's been cited here in previous discussions. It's the second most popular Creationism organization after the Discovery Institute, I believe.

LarryC wrote:

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

Historically, at least in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East (my African and Pacific-East Asian history knowledge is admittedly weaker), the groups that have opposed scientific, cultural, and thus rational advancement have nearly always been organized religions. So at least half the world's history fits into the mold that's weird to you.

Farscry wrote:
LarryC wrote:

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

Historically, at least in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East (my African and Pacific-East Asian history knowledge is admittedly weaker), the groups that have opposed scientific, cultural, and thus rational advancement have nearly always been organized religions. So at least half the world's history fits into the mold that's weird to you. :)

Of course, given the history of the West, the statement "the groups that have (opposed/supported/been indifferent to) X,Y, and thus Z have nearly always been organized religions" is nearly always true! LarryC is right about this getting us back into the Post A Picture, Argue With Me Territory! so I'll just say that when it comes (ironically, especially in cases like Galileo) to the West: (spoiler of the ending!)

Ham's suggestion there is so weird to me. "You didn't see it, so you can't know it's true. You can only trust God (who told this guy, who told that guy, who wrote it down, where it was read by this guy, who told that guy, who wrote it down again, where it was copied by that guy, etc, etc), so you know this book is right."

By his logic, can't you only know something absolutely if God personally tells you?

If it was a legitimate corruption of the message then the god has a way of shutting it down.

LarryC wrote:

I certainly found it weird that Rationalism in Civ5 boosts Science (science is empirical) while being mutually exclusive with Piety (theology is a rationalist endeavor!). It's often forgotten that while the Church leadership condemned Galileo for being outspoken about ideas considered heretical at the time, Galileo himself was a devout Catholic. Squelching new ideas presented by upstart scientists isn't just a Catholic Church thing, either. Even scientists of all persuasions do it all the time. Einstein was famously intolerant of the Uncertainty Principle and quantum entanglement.

Equating piety with anti-science is weird to me.

Saying Galileo was a devout Catholic isn't much of an argument, LarryC. In Galileo's day everyone Europe was a devout Catholic (or a devout Protestant upstart). You simply didn't have people who openly did not believe in religion back then.

The Catholic Church dominated everything: culture, politics, and, especially, all things knowledge. For a good millenia and a half the Church effectively had a stranglehold on all knowledge. Pre-Renaissance if you were literate it was a virtual certainty that you were a priest. That's because the Church was the only organization that could allow men to take years to do nothing but acquire knowledge. They didn't need to toil in the fields because the peasants would do that and then tithe the fruits of their labor to the Church.

All the first schools and universities were founded by the Catholic Church. Heck, the university that Galileo studied at, the University of Pisa, was founded by Catholic monks and Pope Clement VI issued a papal bull in 1343 attesting to high quality of education the school provided.

Were piety actually compatible with science you wouldn't have seen the relatively rapid split of scientists away from the Catholic Church that happened during the Renaissance. Luckily, we had new technology, like the printing press, to help break the Church's stranglehold on knowledge.

But even your own example shows why the two are incompatible: Galileo was threatened by the Church because his scientific observations clashed with Church dogma. The idea that the Earth rotated around the sun--that it wasn't the center of all things like the Bible said--threatened the power and authority of the Church. That's how piety became equated with anti-science.

If you want to get a sense of how this plays out in modern times, you might want to read up on the Scopes Trial here in America. When you hear about people saying erroneously that man evolved directly from monkeys, they picked up the idea from the Scopes Trial. It also shows you how deeply the idea that piety is anti-science is here in America (or, from their perspective, that science is anti-god).

And all this relates back to this thread because it's the grandchildren of the folks who turned out for the Scopes Trial who are voting solidly Republican these days. They have plenty of faith that Jesus is going to magick them up to heaven in their lifetime, but they don't believe scientists about climate change.

They have plenty of faith that Jesus is going to magick them up to heaven in their lifetime, but they don't believe scientists about climate change.

Or they don't care about anything further away than the next couple decades in terms of consequences because the rapture will whisk them all away before they really have to worry about it. The only ones who will have to deal with the consequences are those that weren't raptured, and they're not one of God's chosen anyway, so who gives a sh*t what happens to them because while Jesus said to treat everyone well, he clearly meant everyone who believes exactly as you do and lives their life in accordance with your beliefs and f*** the rest of them.

Demosthenes wrote:
They have plenty of faith that Jesus is going to magick them up to heaven in their lifetime, but they don't believe scientists about climate change.

Or they don't care about anything further away than the next couple decades in terms of consequences because the rapture will whisk them all away before they really have to worry about it. The only ones who will have to deal with the consequences are those that weren't raptured, and they're not one of God's chosen anyway, so who gives a sh*t what happens to them because while Jesus said to treat everyone well, he clearly meant everyone who believes exactly as you do and lives their life in accordance with your beliefs and f*** the rest of them. :D

I think the best way of understanding the Right Wing fundamentalist way of thinking regarding climate change is summed up in the completely inadvertently appropriate Jack Handy deep thought:

Jack Handy wrote:

I believe in making a better world for our children, but not our children's children. Because I don't think our children should be having sex.

OG_Slinger wrote:

But even your own example shows why the two are incompatible: Galileo was threatened by the Church because his scientific observations clashed with Church dogma. The idea that the Earth rotated around the sun--that it wasn't the center of all things like the Bible said--threatened the power and authority of the Church. That's how piety became equated with anti-science.

Just as a note, remember that the Greeks actually had serious conflicts between the natural philosophers and the religious philosophers. So I'd say the conflict between religion as an explanation of the physical world and observation goes back even further.