Tennessee Lt. Gov. suggests Islam is not really a religion

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 1 Comment

Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey of Tennessee, explaining to children "the other kind of book."

Republican senatorial candidate and Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee Ron Ramsey told a constituent in Chattanooga this month that it was arguable “whether being a Muslim is actually a religion or is it a nationality, way of life or cult, whatever you want to call it.” Hint: it’s not a nationality.* Ramsey, who is currently running third in his primary as the favored Tea Party candidate, made the statement in response to a question about “the threat that’s invading our country from the Muslims.” This atmosphere of sense and syntax seems to have coalesced around plans to build an Islamic center in nearby Murfreesboro—something you may have heard about on ABC. You know the country is upholding its stated ideal of religious tolerance when a plan to build  new mosque is national news.

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Close readings: Michele Bachmann warns of “nation of slaves”

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 3 Comments

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*pop*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

It’s technically unfair that I have used this picture, since today’s Combat! is not an edition of Meanwhile, inside Michele Bachmann’s head, which series is explicitly devoted to things that Michele Bachmann did not say. It’s a terrifyingly confusing system developed by a probably incompetent man, but we’re stuck with it. Today is an edition of Close readings, in which we analyze in detail one particular public statement made by one particular individual—in this case, that most particular of US congresspeople, Michele Bachmann. Speaking to the Western Conservative Summit in Denver on Friday, Representative Bachmann warned that President Obama, the Democratic Party and health care reform were turning the United States into “a nation of slaves.”* It’s possible she was taking a page from Rick Barber. It’s possible she was connecting her remarks to the writings of the Founding Fathers. It’s possible she’s a crazy person whom we have inadvertently vested with the power to make laws. Only the skills we learned as English majors can tell us for sure, and the time has come for us to perform a close reading. Won’t you join me in the study?

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Tea Party wants to repeal 17th amendment

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 7 Comments

Dog demands bag of M&Ms.

As the actual policy agenda of the Tea Party slowly condenses—like fog on a mirror held up to Joe McCarthy’s unconscious mouth—opposition to the 17th amendment is emerging as a bizarrely signature issue. If you’re like me, your visceral position on this matter can best be described as, “the what?” The 17th amendment provides for the direct, popular election of US Senators. Prior to 1913, Senators were chosen by state legislators, on the theory that the higher house of Congress would thereby be made more deliberative and less responsive to the whims of the mob. Ironic that, since at least two Republican congressional candidates swept to primary victories by Tea Party support—Steve Stivers in Ohio and Vaughan Ward in Idaho—have recently changed their position on the issue so as to appear less, um, insane. In the annals of things to say that will endear you to undecided voters, pledging to reduce the number of things they get to vote on ranks low. So we come to our usual Tea Party question: Why?

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Friday links! Disjointed assemblage of unrelated elements edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 3 Comments

As David Hume reminds us, what often appear to be fundamental connections joining the elements of experience—causality, the consistent self, the unity of objects—prove little more than illusions when we examine them closely. Sure, we like to think that the component parts of our culture cohere into a sensible whole. The nomination of Elena Kagan seems to say something about the tension between a youthful, tolerant United States and an old, angry America, just as the laxity of our federal regulators appears vaguely connected to the popular belief in an omnipotent supervisory force that abides in space, but who knows if that’s really true? When you get right down to it, our most urgent attempts at sense-making amount to, as Emily Dickinson put it, “a bunch of bullshit.” It’s Friday, it’s 73 degrees and sunny in Montana, and Combat! blog has embraced nihilism. Sure, I could tie together this week’s links into some sort of totalizing theory, as I am generally wont to do, but that would rob you of half the fun. Like an undiagnosed schizophrenic alone in his studio apartment filed with pictures of Kennedy, painstakingly circling the first letter of each sentence in the New York Post, it’s more fun when we figure it out for ourselves. This week, Combat! blog presents a bunch of stuff that happened. Something is going to happen tomorrow, and we don’t know what.

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Rhetoric watch: Krugman on the disintegration of government

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric 6 Comments

"Allowing our mascot to be hunted to near-extinction since 1849."

In the course of last Friday’s Link Roundup, we mentioned that members of the Department of the Interior tasked with regulating the oil industry were revealed to have “[taken] bribes and engaged in drug use and sex with oil industry officials” in 2008. That was awesome. In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman promises more cops-‘n-robbers-get-together-to-do-coke-and-shout-out-the-window-of-the-squad-car frivolity with the headline, “Sex & Drugs & the Spill.” It turns out that’s just a come on, though, for a column about how anti-government sentiment can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the kind of thing you need to do when you’re competing for eyes with Freakonomics. It’s like when Maureen Dowd wrote about the hot, throbbing need for derivatives regulation.*

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