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A report from the Cato Institute has concluded that the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan has been financed not by oil interests but by a wealthy remnant of Carthaginians, and must be defeated at all costs. This report, titled “The Fourth Punic War”, has been based on a study by the Bulwarks Of Liberty Foundation, which concluded that the insurgents were using women’s hair in the construction of IEDs.

The Public Interest Foundation, an organization with links to Media Monitors, the East River Institute and the Committee For National Immigration Policy, is demanding that Congress pass a law restricting new immigration by establishing new and rigorous quotas, the purpose of which is to hold down the number of educated immigrants. “We don’t want people coming here with sophisticated ideas from other countries. We want people coming here who[m] we can educate to our own ideas.”

A white paper, just issued by Save The Constitution.org makes a strong case for the creation of vast underground bunkers for the confinement of political dissenters. The hope expressed in the paper is that not only will society be cleansed by their absence, society will be further benefited by the piped-out emanations of methane gas, to be converted to fuel, and carbon dioxide, which can be converted to dry ice for storage of America’s founding documents.

A spokesman for the Wave The Flag Committee, in an recent interview on the Christian Television Network, pointed out that Christians wave the flag from left to right, while Jews wave the flag from right to left. Pat Robertson expressed the view that Christians, as they mature, move from the left to the right, while Jews generally end up on the left. Hebrews For Humanity, a militant Jewish organization, has protested to the FCC.

We’re More Patriotic Than You, a think tank in northern Virginia, has issued a clarion call for a Constitutional Amendment which would in fact overturn the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment passed in a groundswell of resentment–mostly Republican–against the four consecutive terms of the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, and has thereafter limited the Presidency to two consecutive terms. The Harry Truman Presidential Library wishes it understood that President Truman was specifically exempted from the provisions of the 22nd Amendment but declined a try for a third term. Mrs. Truman, it has been rumored, was the reason. And in a legal brief filed in the 11th Federal District Court of Southern Florida, the Electoral Justice Reform Committee has petitioned for a ruling that George W. Bush, because he had not been elected but appointed to the Presidency in 2000, did not actually begin his first term until after the election of 2004 and remains eligible for another term in 2008.

The American Congregation Of Scientists For God has announced that Darwin was an old man with only a rudimentary knowledge of Astral Physics and thus could have no credible viewpoint on the existence of a Higher Being. His “Theory of Evolution” could be nothing more than a hallucination, or a spell woven by Satan. The Society of Concerned Baptists, in a similar statement, has proposed moving the National Capital to Kansas.

Finally, the Freedom For All Committee is recommending that martial law be imposed on all West Coast and North Atlantic states. The statement by the FFAC ends with this summation: “Until the coastal States of this great country, excepting the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, learn to abide by the Conservative values of America’s heartland, they should be set apart and denied the privileges of full citizenship.”

News from the non-profits is updated every hour on the hour.

The Luddites Are In Charge

The Common-Nonsense Guide to Politics

The average Republican, ethical and hard-working, must feel that the political leaders of the party of his choice are equally so. Many Republicans see themselves as foot-soldiers in a cultural battle against the forces of the Liberal Left, a large but purposely ill-defined group. And the Liberal Left must remain ill-defined, in order that the term can serve as a weapon rather than as the definition of a specific policy. And all the stories of unethical, mendacious, dishonest or lethal behavior by Republican Leaders can thus either be dismissed as propaganda or overlooked as merely collateral damage, perfectly acceptable in the larger war for the soul of the Nation.

Yes, Republican policies may favor the rich, may seem to fellate the corporate giants and pander to the religious extremists who seen the battle less in terms of culture and more in terms of Armageddon, but the essential common-sensibility of the Republican character will bring us to a better world, a better place. So they must believe.

What must be pondered by the foot-soldiers is something more destructive of this nation than the military adventurism and Constitutional subversion of the current Republican leadership is the rampant anti-intellectualism which underlies their political posturing. Beginning with the “egghead” charges against Adlai Stevenson which propelled Dwight Eisenhower into office, Republican campaigns have targeted the better educated, particularly those from the most prestigious schools, the faculties, the writers, the readers, the historians, the scientists. Those groups within the population who have been most responsible for the technological advances in industry, in the standard of living, of health care, of agriculture, of exploration and of preservation of the environment, have all been treated either with outright hostility or with condescending neglect.

While no responsible Republican leader has yet advocated renouncing all the advances and creature comforts these targeted groups have provided, the steady drumbeat of anti-science is having its effect. The Luddites are in charge and growing bolder. This then is more than a culture war, it is a war of the worlds.

Of course, politicians of all parties campaign on “common-sense” platforms, deriding all ideas and ideals that conflict with quotidian observation. Up to a point. We haven’t seen serious claims that the earth is flat, that the sun and moon are in orbit around us, or that public policy can best be determined by examining the entrails of goats. But we are now being victimized by the unprecedented (since Gallileo) Republican assault on Science; our children’s education is compromised and the essential concept that Knowledge brings Enlightenment is now being overthrown by assaults on Freedom of Thought and Expression and on Constitutional safeguards for those very necessary ingredients of a Free Society.

It is the responsibility of every citizen and voter of this country to consider what this policy will bring to us. An Oligarchy? We’ve already become that. A Theocracy? We’re well on the way. A Democracy? Never.