Be Fruitful and Multiply ... or Else
Oops. Michael Landauer made the mistake of using the occasion of the birth of a baby to some friends to poke fun at Rod Dreher's "child birth sky is falling" schtick. That gave Dreher an opening to rant again about how ... the sky is falling. He doesn't come right out and say it, but he considers Muslim population growth in Western Europe to be the equivalent of barbarians sacking Rome. Those poor Turks probably thought they were just looking for work and a chance to provide food and shelter for their families. Dreher would have you think they really want to rape and pillage and burn the libraries. Dreher sees Kosovo independence not as simply another case of one people dissolving the political bands which have connected them with another, but as a case of the Serbs running out of ammunition, babies, in a war with the invading Albanian Muslim hordes.
Dreher denies any racism in his thinking. He says he'd be just as happy for blacks or browns or yellows to uphold the civilization bequeathed him by dead white Europeans. He thinks the way to do that is to outbreed everyone else. He longs for social pressure on the right kind of people to marry early and procreate often. It sounds like, if not racism, then at least cultural chauvinism.
Rod, a simple, "Best wishes to the new parents, Michael" would have sufficed.
"Hope and Change and Whoop-de-do"
Anytime two of Dallas Blog's biggest guns take aim at the same target on the same day, you know the wingnuts are worried about something. Today the phenomenon known as Barack Obama is the prey that brings Scott Bennett and William Murchison both out of their caves.
Scott Bennett gives us the dictionary definition of hope, then makes up his own - magical thinking - in order to support the Clinton/McCain talking point that Barack Obama is mere empty eloquence. Bennett omits any discussion of Obama's own definition and explanation of hope. Obama spells it out in his stump speech. He wrote a book about it, putting the word in the title even. You'd think Scott Bennett would read the book or at least listen to the stump speech before hitting the keyboard. Hell, Bennett cannot even spell the man's name right. It's Barack Obama, not Barak.
William Murchison takes a similar tack. He accuses the Obama campaign of being fueled by "hope and change and whoop-de-do". Murchison does begrudgingly admit that Obama does have a detailed program. Murchison just doesn't happen to like Obama's ideas, calling them "semi-socialism", "anti-growth" and merely "self-exhibition". Murchison appears irritated mainly by Obama's skill at energizing and inspiring.
Murchison says he isn't pointing to the "perfection of John McCain's economic program," but then gives John McCain a free pass, detailing nothing of McCain's program nor any analysis of it. You can almost imagine John McCain sitting on the porch with Murchison as Murchison yells at Obama, "Get the hell off my lawn."
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