Joseph Farah vs Ann Coulter

Farah's website is WorldNetDaily. Ace posted an email that Farah wrote to Coulter about her acceptance of an invitation to speak at Homocon:

Whether you believe it or not, or whether or not it is your intent, your acceptance of this speaking engagement is affirming GOProud, which is, I'm sure you've noticed, winning the hearts and minds in the conservative movement – with CPAC, Grover Norquist and others who don't necessarily bring a Judeo-Christian worldview to the party. GOProud is having a field day marketing you and legitimizing itself further in the conservative movement through its association with you.

It's a very big deal, Ann, and it's bigger than you. Glenn Beck threw in the towel last week on same-sex marriage, saying since it doesn't affect him, it doesn't matter. Materialistic utilitarianism – much of the conservative movement is moving in that direction.

I believe this is a time when God is calling his people to stand up for what's right.

Ace comments:

Here's what I think of Farah's position: It's poison. It's not merely political poison, it is moral poison.
...
The GOP cannot be an overtly, officially religious party charged with monitoring everyone's personal sins. It cannot be. Ever. I view the party on morality as I view it on economics. A government cannot create wealth; it can only, and should only endeavor to, foster a wealth-friendly environment in which wealth-creation is likely.

Similarly, a government cannot mandate what sort of sex is legal and what sex is illegal. It can only foster a morality-friendly environment win which moral behavior is likely.
...
Farah's position is essentially that gays simply cannot be conservatives at all and must be purged from the party. He does not seem to be an opponent of a policy, but an opponent of specific people. That doesn't strike me as fair, conservative, or keeping with the American way of doing things.

I can't help but notice that homosexuality is elevated to rather higher position on the food-pyramid of sins than seems necessary. I note that in my every day life, I wrestle with all sorts of sins: Sloth, probably at the top, then Lust, then Envy, then Wrath.... actually, all four of those are separated only by the slightest titches; it's nearly a four-way tie. Pride and Gluttony aren't far behind, either.

And other sins too. Premarital sex? Sex only for lustful purposes and not procreation? Yeah, I'm all about that.

I presume Joseph Farah is as well -- on that last point. I am not prepared to believe that he only engages in sex for purposes of creating children. I do not believe that is true of nearly anyone.

I'll tell you one sin I never have to wrestle with: the sin of homosexual fornication. Why? Because I'm straight. It never even occurs to me that gee, maybe if I'm not scoring with the ladies lately I should change up my game and try for a dude.

Never. Not once has it even crossed my mind.

And I submit that this is true for 99.9% of straight men, which in turn means it's true of 97.7% of men, period.

So Farah is essentially elevating to the position of Worst Sin the one sin he has absolutely zero chance of committing, zero chance of even being tempted by.

I find this breathtakingly convenient. According to Farah's priorities, hell, I'm a pretty moral guy -- never had gay sex, never wanted to have gay sex, never even thought about gay sex. So I'm pretty pure, right?

Of course I'm not. I'm just not guilty of that sin, but I'm not free of that sin due to devotion to God or exercise of willpower or the strengthening power of faith: I'm free of that sin for the same reason I'm free of the sin (were it a sin) of eating tarantulas. Because I don't want to.

...

By the way: Ann Coulter's been unmarried her whole life. And yet, at her age (I assume she's 29, like me; I mean, I will be 29, in November), she has dated a bunch of guys.

I don't want to invade her privacy: But am I to understand that Joseph Farah believes she was celibate throughout this time period? That her various boyfriends were content with some hand-holding and maybe some light necking?

Am I to understand he is that childishly naive?

So my question is: What was he doing keeping this shameless wanton hedonist whore on his payroll in the first place?

Ace is always a bit emphatic. I'm not sure if Farah's views are political and moral "poison." All I know is that he is entitled to his opinion but I don't like anyone telling me what God's opinion is. It's stuff like that that puts me off religion, churches and especially preachers. As soon as someone tells me that he knows what God thinks, I start thinking about the voodoo, witch-doctors and other primitive superstitious mumbo-jumbo that I saw growing up among the Zulus.

I see that Coulter has accused Farah of being a ‘publicity whore’:

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter responded today to the announcement that WorldNetDaily was dropping her as a speaker for one of their events, calling WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah a “publicity whore” and a “swine.”

Coulter was bumped from the speakers list of WND’s September “Taking America Back National Conference ”after it was announced that she had accepted a speaking gig at a New York City party hosted by GOProud, a Washington-based group that represents gay conservatives.

“[F]arah is doing this for PUBLICITY and publicity alone,” Coulter wrote in an email to The Daily Caller on Wednesday afternoon.

WND posted an email exchange between Coulter and Farah in their public announcement that she would be removed from the list of speakers. Coulter expressed anger that he quoted her from their private email on the issue.

“[T]his was an email exchange [between] friends and even though I didn’t expressly say “OFF THE RECORD” and I believe everything I said, he’s a swine for using my private emails politely answering him.” Coulter wrote in the email to TheDC. “[W]hy would he do such a despicable thing? … for PUBLICITY.”

The conservative pundit said that WND is well known for making decisions just to get attention, citing the conspiracist site’s regular articles about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“I will say that [Farah] could give less than two sh-ts about the conservative movement — as demonstrated by his promotion of the birther nonsense (long ago disproved by my newspaper, human events, also sweetness & light, american spectator and national review etc, etc etc). He’s the only allegedly serious conservative pushing the birther thing. for ONE reason: to get hits on his website.”

Coulter added that she would not be losing anything from the dropped speaking engagement since WND had not been able to come up with the money to pay her anyway.

Ann may not be the "perfect conservative" but she's a damn good capitalist sow.

Ray Bradbury hates big government

Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama:

“He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week's worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events. “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."

The man who wrote "Fahrenheit 451," "Something Wicked This Way Comes," "The Martian Chronicles," "Dandelion Wine"and "The Illustrated Man" has been called one of America's great dreamers, but his imagination takes him to some dark places when it comes to contemporary politics.

“I think our country is in need of a revolution,” Bradbury said. “There is too much government today. We've got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people and for the people.”

The native of Waukegan, Ill., has never been shy about expressing himself -- he described President Clinton with a word that rhymes with "knithead" back in 2001 -- nor is he timid about correcting people when it comes to his own perceived legacy. Bradbury chafes, for instance, at the description of his work as science fiction -- in the past he has pointed out that, to his mind, "Fahrenheit 451"is the only sci-fi book in his vast body of work -- and despite his passion for more national space projects, he is not technology obsessive by any means.

“We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

John Miller at The Corner quotes Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451:

If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him: give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn grew in Iowa last year. Cram them full on noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.

Bradbury is one of those novelists who changed my life when I was a kid. I'm glad to see that he is still sharp at the age of 90.

Tammy Bruce comments:

Ray Bradbury is the author whose work helped shape me through what would have otherwise been a rather hopeless childhood. At first you receive his work as a pleasure, an escape, and yet eventually you realize the imperative messages in all his stories about personal responsibility, the importance of imagination, freedom and individualism, while reinforcing in each scenario issues of judgment, truth, fairness, and the generosity and power of the human spirit. He has been, ever since I can remember being able to pick up a book, my hero, and a man whose values, through his work, shaped my own. Many of you had parents who did that for you. I did not. Without his knowing it, Mr. Bradbury became that influential adult for me, and I am forever grateful. His 90th birthday is August 22nd, and Los Angeles has a week of activities celebrating his life and work.

Western liberalism vs communism, fascism,terrorism and illegal immigration

Whether you call yourself conservative or progressive in the West, you're still an old-fashioned classical liberal. Until American communists stole the word liberal in the 1930s, the West was culturally liberal; meaning that we were basically easy-going, tolerant, live and let live and relied on the free market aka lassez-faire capitalism to provide for us.

The West tolerated the rise of the USSR which was an obviously intolerant and totalitarian regime mostly because Fifth Columnist communists in the West were already in control of the MSM by the time of Lenin. And we not only tolerated Stalin but Hitler and Hirohito - only until it became obvious that they were a danger to our freedom. We also tolerated the rise of Islamofascism for decades before they finally used terrorism on US soil.

The lassez-faire attitude to immigration never seemed to cause any problems until recently - there were no bombs. So we tolerated illegal immigration for decades. The US/Mexico border has pretty much always been porous.

When I arrived in the USA, I was surprised at the great of number of illegal immigrants; mostly Mexican but plenty of other Latinos as well as Irish, Russian and Chinese. I figured that Americans tolerated such "informal immigration" because that had been the way since the first settlers.

It's not easy being a classical liberal. You know your tolerance can be mistaken for weakness. But there is a balance. That's why I call myself a conservative liberal not a libertarian or progressive liberal. I don't like authoritarianism but I do like a bit of law and order.

And the border is becoming a war zone.