Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Flotsam & Jetsam

Megan McArdle has been busy, but there is precious little wisdom to glean from her little jottings. Megan quotes Felix, Ross, Clive and Alex, as well as Robert, Terry, Hilzoy, and her dear friends Matt and Ezra. She discusses the big Democrat scandal at length, and generously permits everyone to speculate about the origins, history and effect of the scandal. She is not nearly so giving towards Wall Street scandals, but one must make allowances for class identification. Finally, there is also a remarkably unimaginative post on automobiles, that does not even consider the effects of possible wild swings in prices and periodic shortages, as well as alternate methods of transportation. Fortunately there are other bloggers who discuss these things; we go to McArdle for the gossip and slap-downs she loves to administer to her adversaries for prestige.

Shining like a diamond in the slop, however, is a precious post about Chuck Colson, whom she piously declares deserves credit for what he's done since being released from prison for Watergate crimes.

In his Christianity Today columns, for example, Colson has opposed same-sex marriage,[24] argued that Darwinism is used to attack Christianity,[25] and
claimed that the Enron accounting scandals were a consequence of secularism.[citation needed] He has also argued against Darwinism and in favor of intelligent design,[26] saying Darwinism helped cause forced sterilizations by eugenicists.[27]
Colson has been an outspoken critic of postmodernism, believing that, as a cultural worldview, it is incompatible with the Christian tradition. He has debated prominent Post-evangelicals, such as Brian McLaren, on the best response for the Evangelical church in dealing with the postmodern cultural shift.

In the early 1980s, Colson was invited to New York by David Frost's
variety program on NBC for an open debate with Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the famous atheist who, in 1963, brought the court case (Murray v. Curlett) that eliminated official public school prayers.[28] More recently, Colson has been a strong proponent of the Bible Literacy Project's curriculum The Bible and Its Influence for public high school literature courses.


In other words, he has spent his time since release trying to turn the US into a theocracy instead of a republic. He was given a second chance, and used it to continue his drive for power and control.

Someone who used to call herself Jane Gault Galt should be a little more careful about her alliances. People might begin to think she is authoritarian.

9 comments:

bjkeefe said...

I've been enjoying your Megan-watching for a couple of weeks now, ever since clicking your sig over at Roy's place.

In case you haven't heard, there's more than an hour's worth of meandering comedy gold available for your viewing or listening pleasure, over at Bloggingheads.tv.

And don't miss some of the comments in the associated forum. I give you, for example, Tara Davis:

God bless you, Megan. I never thought I would find myself saying this about anybody, but you might be too good for The Atlantic.

Bring extra ammunition. There's a lot of fish in those barrels.

bjkeefe said...

P.S. Yes, she talks about her iPhone. Right at the beginning.

CMike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Those Bloggingheads segments are too painful for me to watch, though Megan writing that she and that guy talking with her "discussed ever so many things" probably hurt more. "Ever so many things." Who is she? Queen Victoria?

Susan of Texas said...

Thanks, Brendan. That bloggingheads is painful. She had to move in with a friend because she can't get into her house until January?

And the UAW wants to milk their companies until they die. Because all the workers want to be out of work. And "They [the union] try, they deliberately try to keep jobs from being done in more productive ways because that means fewer union member in employment making cars." She know all this about union workers because her father worked on the side of management negotiating union contracts.

I listened to half, but I became as impatient as Wright looks.

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged for (basically) the first time. It's as wrong-headed as everyone says.

CP, as a person of mostly British (English, Welsh and Irish) descent I think the culture's pretty cool, but anyone who goes around with a fake accent or vocabulary needs a pie in the face.

CMike said...

There's no "u" in Jane Galt.

Anonymous said...

Today she wrote a post that started with the sentence "I am in receipt of an email yesterday..."

That is painfully bad. At least she was merciful enough to stop using British spelling.

bjkeefe said...

Susan:

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged for (basically) the first time. It's as wrong-headed as everyone says.

You're to be commended, or something. I tried several times to get through that book a while back when a good friend gave to me. With insistence.

I don't remember anything about it except a sense that life is too short and too filled with other minor annoyances to want to spend any time subjecting myself to prose that dreadful.

We will expect a full book report, of course. ;^)

bjkeefe said...

lol @ c.p. Great catches!