AGGreen
2006-06-11 18:16:17 UTC
Godless by Ann Coulter
Review By Ben Shapiro
Jun 9, 2006
"Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one
would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion," writes Ann Coulter
at the beginning of her new tour de force, Godless: The Church of
Liberalism.
Coulter backs up her provocative thesis with her usual biting wit and
cutting humor. Instead of focusing on the presence of leftist bias in the
media (Slander) or the left's rewriting of history in pursuit of its
oft-treacherous ends (Treason), Coulter hones in on the basic ideals
inspiring the ideology of liberalism. As Coulter strips liberalism down to
its bare essentials, it becomes evident that, as she puts it, liberalism "is
no longer susceptible to reduction ad absurdum arguments. Before you can
come up with a comical take on their worldview, some college professor has
already written an article advancing the idea." Liberalism is indeed a
Godless religion-and, as Coulter demonstrates, the secular religion of the
left is a religion bereft of moral fiber.
It's not that the atheism of the secular left makes Coulter unhappy. It's
that they lie about their religion. Jews don't pretend that Judaism is a
scientific theory; Christians don't pretend that Christianity is provable in
a laboratory. Liberals, however, pretend that their religion is provable and
intellectually superior, while at the same time labeling the traditionally
religious backwards buffoons. "I don't particularly care if liberals believe
in God," she writes. "In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any
liberals in heaven. So fine, rage against God, but how about being honest
about it?"
Coulter jumps into her expose with alacrity. Her second chapter, "The
Passion of the Liberal: Thou Shalt Not Punish The Perp," reminds us that
Coulter isn't simply a terrific writer who makes it impossible to drink
while reading her work (this produces the famed "Coulter milk-out-the-nose
phenomenon"). She's also a legal scholar.
Coulter gives a brief and compelling history of Supreme Court idiocy with
regard to criminal law. The absurd 1961 Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio,
announcing that the "exclusionary rule" barring evidence obtained
"illegally" by police had to be applied on the state level, is one
well-deserved target of her pen: "In order to vindicate the right to be free
from unreasonable searches and seizures, the criminal goes free . This would
be like a rule intended to reduce noise during an opera that mandated
shooting the soprano whenever anyone in the audience coughed," Coulter
writes.
Coulter continues her devastating evaluation of liberalism's cult of
criminality with her in-depth discussion of the Willie Horton case. Willie
Horton, as all political science majors know, is trotted out routinely by
leftists in order to show that Republicans are truly racists. (I was treated
to a showing of the famed "Willie Horton" commercials by Professor Lynn
Vavreck, Political Science 40, UCLA, February 26, 2002.)
The real story is somewhat different.
Willie Horton was a convicted first degree murderer sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole (known as LWOP in legal circles).
Michael Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts, "lustily" backed the
weekend furlough program designed to re-introduce criminals to society. As
Coulter points out, LWOP convicts have no need for such re-introduction,
since they should never re-enter society. Dukakis felt differently, and
under his watch, 82 first degree murderers were furloughed, including
Horton.
Horton took off to Maryland, where he proceeded to sadistically torture
Maryland resident Cliff Barnes and rape and torture Barnes' fiancée Angela
Miller.
Naturally, this became a campaign issue (first raised by Al Gore) in the
1988 presidential election. Liberals, however, insisted that this issue was
only an issue because Horton happened to be black. "The only reason the
Democrats cried racism over the Willie Horton ads was that it was one of the
greatest campaign issues of all time," Coulter writes. "Horton was the
essence, the heart, the alpha and omega of liberal ideas about crime and
punishment, to wit: Release the guilty. Willie Horton showed the American
people exactly what was wrong with liberal theories about crime."
Then there's the liberal theory about life: it only matters if we're talking
about convicted murders (no, please don't fry them!), not if we're talking
about unborn innocents (suck 'em into a sink). Abortion for liberals, as
Coulter explains, is "The Holiest Sacrament." "No matter what else they
pretend to care about from time to time-undermining national security,
aiding terrorists, oppressing the middle class, freeing violent
criminals-the single most important item on the Democrats' agenda is
abortion," she avers.
There is no doubt that she is correct. Democratic politicians have abandoned
every group they purport to support at one time or another-except for
feminists who proclaim that abortion-on-demand is a godless-given-right. The
Democrats' undying and unwavering support for abortion-on-demand would
condemn them to electoral damnation time after time, so Democrats simply lie
about their policy positions.
That's why liberals require that every single judge pay homage to the "holy
writ" of Roe v. Wade, the most ridiculous legal decision in American
history. Here's Coulter: "There's no there there-there's nothing to talk
about in Roe. Denounce, laugh at, ridicule, attack-yes. Discuss-no."
Chapter 6 discusses the left's worship of public school teachers. "Attack
the Boy Scouts, boycott Mel Gibson, put Christ in a jar of urine-but don't
dare say anything bad about teachers," writes Coulter. Coulter concisely
explains the salary structure for public school teachers, who make more per
hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians .
and the list goes on. At the same time, the quality of our public education
system has been consistently declining for decades. "With public schools
like this, students are going to learn, if they are going to learn, because
of their parents, not because of any inspiration they get from schools,"
Coulter rightly states. But because public school teachers' unions are
sacrosanct, the education system must not be reworked; to even suggest
reworking the system would imply criticism of public school teachers.
The remainder of the book is dedicated to Coulter's refutation of the left's
ad hominem and utterly hypocritical attack on the "non-science" of religion.
Religion isn't science, Coulter says, but neither is liberalism. Liberalism
is a religion, pure and simple: "Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity
of 'science' to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling
as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. Who are they kidding? Liberals
hate science. Science might produce facts impervious to their crying and
hysterics."
Measuring IQ (except when liberals have high IQs), mentioning that AIDS
almost primarily affects homosexuals and bisexuals (and their spouses),
preventing frivolous lawsuits based on junk science (see Edwards, John), DDT
use; using adult stem cells (embryonic stem cells are favored, though);
breast implants are (well, except for use in pornography)-all are
nonsensically opposed by liberals.
Most dear to me, as a Harvard Law student, is Coulter's take on the bizarre
liberal attack on deposed Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who had the
audacity to suggest that differences between men and women might not be
caused by society, but rather-gasp!-by nature: "These delicate hothouse
flowers [female Harvard professors] have a completely neurotic response to
something someone else says-and then act like it's Summers's fault. Only a
woman could shift the blame this way. If I hit you with a sledgehammer, that
is my fault. But if I propose a scientific idea and you vomit, I think that's
really more your fault." Hear, hear!
After compiling the evidence of liberal catechism, Coulter finally turns her
bazooka on the foundation of liberalism itself: Darwinism. Coulter
systematically picks apart the studies cited in support of
species-to-species evolution, which are often religiously-adhered-to
forgeries or speculative exercises. "These aren't chalk-covered scientists
toiling away with their test tubes and Bunsen burners," she writes. "They
are religious fanatics for whom evolution must be true and any evidence to
the contrary-including, for example, the entire fossil record-is something
that must be explained away with a fanciful excuse, like 'our evidence didn't
fossilize.'"
But evolution isn't just a religious theory, Coulter states. There's a
reason that Marx and Hitler relied on Darwinism to bolster their horrific
worldviews. Coulter quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf, in which he proclaimed that
his goal was "to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to
demand the submission of the worse and the weaker . [in accordance with] the
eternal will that rules this universe." When you take God out of the
picture, says Coulter, man becomes just another animal, fighting for
survival of the fittest.
Naturally, Godless has provoked liberals to the point of apoplexy. Instead
of fighting the main argument of Coulter's book, liberals (and some
conservatives) have latched onto page 103, in Coulter's fifth chapter. The
basic point of the chapter is that Democrats cannot win the battle of ideas,
and so have chosen to send "only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply
to. That's why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical
women."
Coulter specifically takes to task the so-called "Jersey Girls," four
liberal partisan widows whose husbands were murdered on 9/11. Here's the
inflammatory passage, in relevant part: "These self-obsessed women seemed
genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the
terrorist attacks happened only to them . These broads are millionaires,
lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as
celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying
their husbands' deaths so much."
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) responded to this passage thusly: "Perhaps
her book should have been called 'Heartless.'" 2004 Democratic presidential
candidate (and Jersey Girl-endorsed nominee) Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
likewise stated, "we owe all the 9/11 families Ann Coulter slandered so much
more than just outrage. We owe them thanks. And we also owe it to them to
put the focus where they originally put it when, in the middle of their
grieving, they stood up to demand answers and action from a government that
invoked their husbands' memories for political reasons ."
Really, now. I understand that Hillary doesn't want to read Godless, and I
understand that John Kerry owes a debt of gratitude to the Jersey Girls for
cutting him some campaign commercials. Nonetheless, reading the context of
the quote might be worthwhile. Clearly Coulter isn't claiming that the
Jersey Girls popped champagne as the planes hit the Twin Towers - she's
claiming that they have taken advantage of every available microphone to
pose as national security experts, then claimed the sanctuary of victimhood
when attacked politically. There is no doubt that this is absolutely true.
Kerry proves Coulter's point when he blabbers on about the debt of gratitude
we owe to the Jersey Girls for selflessly subsuming their grief to rip the
Bush Administration. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal has made
the exact same point as Coulter (OpinionJournal.com, April 14, 2004): "Nor
can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows,
awash in their sense of victims' entitlement, as they press ahead with ever
more strident claims about the way the government failed them." Yes, Coulter's
language is more direct than Rabinowitz's. But that's why Coulter is
Coulter. And that's why Godless is so deliciously good.
Liberalism has run out of ideas, so it seeks to shut down debate. Criminals
must be freed because the courts say so. Abortion on demand must be provided
because (1) women say so, and you're not a woman, or if you are, shut up,
you haven't had an abortion and (2) the courts say so. Public education may
not be fixed because if you want to fix it, you hate teachers. With regard
to AIDS, the environment, stem cell research, and the origins of life,
liberals label their own views "science" and those of their opponents
"religious bigotry." And with regard to national security, liberals trot out
victims who agree with their point of view - and if you don't agree, you
need to shut up. Ann Coulter won't shut up. Thank God.
Copyright © 2006 Creators
Find this story at:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/books_entertainment/reviews/benshapiro/200642.html
Review By Ben Shapiro
Jun 9, 2006
"Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one
would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion," writes Ann Coulter
at the beginning of her new tour de force, Godless: The Church of
Liberalism.
Coulter backs up her provocative thesis with her usual biting wit and
cutting humor. Instead of focusing on the presence of leftist bias in the
media (Slander) or the left's rewriting of history in pursuit of its
oft-treacherous ends (Treason), Coulter hones in on the basic ideals
inspiring the ideology of liberalism. As Coulter strips liberalism down to
its bare essentials, it becomes evident that, as she puts it, liberalism "is
no longer susceptible to reduction ad absurdum arguments. Before you can
come up with a comical take on their worldview, some college professor has
already written an article advancing the idea." Liberalism is indeed a
Godless religion-and, as Coulter demonstrates, the secular religion of the
left is a religion bereft of moral fiber.
It's not that the atheism of the secular left makes Coulter unhappy. It's
that they lie about their religion. Jews don't pretend that Judaism is a
scientific theory; Christians don't pretend that Christianity is provable in
a laboratory. Liberals, however, pretend that their religion is provable and
intellectually superior, while at the same time labeling the traditionally
religious backwards buffoons. "I don't particularly care if liberals believe
in God," she writes. "In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any
liberals in heaven. So fine, rage against God, but how about being honest
about it?"
Coulter jumps into her expose with alacrity. Her second chapter, "The
Passion of the Liberal: Thou Shalt Not Punish The Perp," reminds us that
Coulter isn't simply a terrific writer who makes it impossible to drink
while reading her work (this produces the famed "Coulter milk-out-the-nose
phenomenon"). She's also a legal scholar.
Coulter gives a brief and compelling history of Supreme Court idiocy with
regard to criminal law. The absurd 1961 Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio,
announcing that the "exclusionary rule" barring evidence obtained
"illegally" by police had to be applied on the state level, is one
well-deserved target of her pen: "In order to vindicate the right to be free
from unreasonable searches and seizures, the criminal goes free . This would
be like a rule intended to reduce noise during an opera that mandated
shooting the soprano whenever anyone in the audience coughed," Coulter
writes.
Coulter continues her devastating evaluation of liberalism's cult of
criminality with her in-depth discussion of the Willie Horton case. Willie
Horton, as all political science majors know, is trotted out routinely by
leftists in order to show that Republicans are truly racists. (I was treated
to a showing of the famed "Willie Horton" commercials by Professor Lynn
Vavreck, Political Science 40, UCLA, February 26, 2002.)
The real story is somewhat different.
Willie Horton was a convicted first degree murderer sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole (known as LWOP in legal circles).
Michael Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts, "lustily" backed the
weekend furlough program designed to re-introduce criminals to society. As
Coulter points out, LWOP convicts have no need for such re-introduction,
since they should never re-enter society. Dukakis felt differently, and
under his watch, 82 first degree murderers were furloughed, including
Horton.
Horton took off to Maryland, where he proceeded to sadistically torture
Maryland resident Cliff Barnes and rape and torture Barnes' fiancée Angela
Miller.
Naturally, this became a campaign issue (first raised by Al Gore) in the
1988 presidential election. Liberals, however, insisted that this issue was
only an issue because Horton happened to be black. "The only reason the
Democrats cried racism over the Willie Horton ads was that it was one of the
greatest campaign issues of all time," Coulter writes. "Horton was the
essence, the heart, the alpha and omega of liberal ideas about crime and
punishment, to wit: Release the guilty. Willie Horton showed the American
people exactly what was wrong with liberal theories about crime."
Then there's the liberal theory about life: it only matters if we're talking
about convicted murders (no, please don't fry them!), not if we're talking
about unborn innocents (suck 'em into a sink). Abortion for liberals, as
Coulter explains, is "The Holiest Sacrament." "No matter what else they
pretend to care about from time to time-undermining national security,
aiding terrorists, oppressing the middle class, freeing violent
criminals-the single most important item on the Democrats' agenda is
abortion," she avers.
There is no doubt that she is correct. Democratic politicians have abandoned
every group they purport to support at one time or another-except for
feminists who proclaim that abortion-on-demand is a godless-given-right. The
Democrats' undying and unwavering support for abortion-on-demand would
condemn them to electoral damnation time after time, so Democrats simply lie
about their policy positions.
That's why liberals require that every single judge pay homage to the "holy
writ" of Roe v. Wade, the most ridiculous legal decision in American
history. Here's Coulter: "There's no there there-there's nothing to talk
about in Roe. Denounce, laugh at, ridicule, attack-yes. Discuss-no."
Chapter 6 discusses the left's worship of public school teachers. "Attack
the Boy Scouts, boycott Mel Gibson, put Christ in a jar of urine-but don't
dare say anything bad about teachers," writes Coulter. Coulter concisely
explains the salary structure for public school teachers, who make more per
hour than architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians .
and the list goes on. At the same time, the quality of our public education
system has been consistently declining for decades. "With public schools
like this, students are going to learn, if they are going to learn, because
of their parents, not because of any inspiration they get from schools,"
Coulter rightly states. But because public school teachers' unions are
sacrosanct, the education system must not be reworked; to even suggest
reworking the system would imply criticism of public school teachers.
The remainder of the book is dedicated to Coulter's refutation of the left's
ad hominem and utterly hypocritical attack on the "non-science" of religion.
Religion isn't science, Coulter says, but neither is liberalism. Liberalism
is a religion, pure and simple: "Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity
of 'science' to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling
as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. Who are they kidding? Liberals
hate science. Science might produce facts impervious to their crying and
hysterics."
Measuring IQ (except when liberals have high IQs), mentioning that AIDS
almost primarily affects homosexuals and bisexuals (and their spouses),
preventing frivolous lawsuits based on junk science (see Edwards, John), DDT
use; using adult stem cells (embryonic stem cells are favored, though);
breast implants are (well, except for use in pornography)-all are
nonsensically opposed by liberals.
Most dear to me, as a Harvard Law student, is Coulter's take on the bizarre
liberal attack on deposed Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who had the
audacity to suggest that differences between men and women might not be
caused by society, but rather-gasp!-by nature: "These delicate hothouse
flowers [female Harvard professors] have a completely neurotic response to
something someone else says-and then act like it's Summers's fault. Only a
woman could shift the blame this way. If I hit you with a sledgehammer, that
is my fault. But if I propose a scientific idea and you vomit, I think that's
really more your fault." Hear, hear!
After compiling the evidence of liberal catechism, Coulter finally turns her
bazooka on the foundation of liberalism itself: Darwinism. Coulter
systematically picks apart the studies cited in support of
species-to-species evolution, which are often religiously-adhered-to
forgeries or speculative exercises. "These aren't chalk-covered scientists
toiling away with their test tubes and Bunsen burners," she writes. "They
are religious fanatics for whom evolution must be true and any evidence to
the contrary-including, for example, the entire fossil record-is something
that must be explained away with a fanciful excuse, like 'our evidence didn't
fossilize.'"
But evolution isn't just a religious theory, Coulter states. There's a
reason that Marx and Hitler relied on Darwinism to bolster their horrific
worldviews. Coulter quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf, in which he proclaimed that
his goal was "to promote the victory of the better, the stronger, and to
demand the submission of the worse and the weaker . [in accordance with] the
eternal will that rules this universe." When you take God out of the
picture, says Coulter, man becomes just another animal, fighting for
survival of the fittest.
Naturally, Godless has provoked liberals to the point of apoplexy. Instead
of fighting the main argument of Coulter's book, liberals (and some
conservatives) have latched onto page 103, in Coulter's fifth chapter. The
basic point of the chapter is that Democrats cannot win the battle of ideas,
and so have chosen to send "only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply
to. That's why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical
women."
Coulter specifically takes to task the so-called "Jersey Girls," four
liberal partisan widows whose husbands were murdered on 9/11. Here's the
inflammatory passage, in relevant part: "These self-obsessed women seemed
genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the
terrorist attacks happened only to them . These broads are millionaires,
lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as
celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying
their husbands' deaths so much."
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) responded to this passage thusly: "Perhaps
her book should have been called 'Heartless.'" 2004 Democratic presidential
candidate (and Jersey Girl-endorsed nominee) Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
likewise stated, "we owe all the 9/11 families Ann Coulter slandered so much
more than just outrage. We owe them thanks. And we also owe it to them to
put the focus where they originally put it when, in the middle of their
grieving, they stood up to demand answers and action from a government that
invoked their husbands' memories for political reasons ."
Really, now. I understand that Hillary doesn't want to read Godless, and I
understand that John Kerry owes a debt of gratitude to the Jersey Girls for
cutting him some campaign commercials. Nonetheless, reading the context of
the quote might be worthwhile. Clearly Coulter isn't claiming that the
Jersey Girls popped champagne as the planes hit the Twin Towers - she's
claiming that they have taken advantage of every available microphone to
pose as national security experts, then claimed the sanctuary of victimhood
when attacked politically. There is no doubt that this is absolutely true.
Kerry proves Coulter's point when he blabbers on about the debt of gratitude
we owe to the Jersey Girls for selflessly subsuming their grief to rip the
Bush Administration. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal has made
the exact same point as Coulter (OpinionJournal.com, April 14, 2004): "Nor
can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows,
awash in their sense of victims' entitlement, as they press ahead with ever
more strident claims about the way the government failed them." Yes, Coulter's
language is more direct than Rabinowitz's. But that's why Coulter is
Coulter. And that's why Godless is so deliciously good.
Liberalism has run out of ideas, so it seeks to shut down debate. Criminals
must be freed because the courts say so. Abortion on demand must be provided
because (1) women say so, and you're not a woman, or if you are, shut up,
you haven't had an abortion and (2) the courts say so. Public education may
not be fixed because if you want to fix it, you hate teachers. With regard
to AIDS, the environment, stem cell research, and the origins of life,
liberals label their own views "science" and those of their opponents
"religious bigotry." And with regard to national security, liberals trot out
victims who agree with their point of view - and if you don't agree, you
need to shut up. Ann Coulter won't shut up. Thank God.
Copyright © 2006 Creators
Find this story at:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/books_entertainment/reviews/benshapiro/200642.html
