"The Devils of Darwin Party is therefore dedicated to rooting out hypocrisy, myth, appeal to faith and bigotry in political discourse."

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COMMENTS: 
*  Are there any open-minded conservatives that would read or be swayed by the logic of this piece? To be conservative is to automatically reject, ignore, demean, or refute with psuedo science any bit of contrary evidence. One cannot change a closed mind. But a delightful essay, nevertheless!
   *  If you could reason with conservatives, there would not be any, to coin a phrase
*  Carson was a brillant neurosurgeon, but his comments teach us an important lesson: Never confuse intelligence with wisdom.
*  Therein, we discover the main problem with conservatism: Truth is nothing more than an option, nothing more valid than fantasy. Truth carries no more weight than the random musings of a madman. Faith trumps fact, religious conviction supersedes civic duty, and ignorance becomes a celebrated worldview.  Nailed it!
*  Too much rationallity! Too much rationality! You need to throw some bat$#@t crazy in there to get their attention.
*  No one fears your religion, we don;t give a rats behind about your religion. All we want is for you to keep your religion out of the secular government, the secular laws and Constitution of America. The problem is you meddling busybodies can not live your life and or religion without trying to force it on other people. THAT is what we object to. Never mistake annoyance and in some cases down right pissed off for fear. DUH!!!
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The Devils of Darwin: Satan Takes on the Tea Party
By Jeff Schweitzer, October 8, 2015

Ben Carson is interesting as a Republican candidate for the presidency, not because he could ever win, but because he embodies in one person the very worst of conservative thought. In spite of his intellectual prowess as a neurosurgeon, Carson celebrates ignorance, relishes anti-science sentiment and ignores the fundamentals of history. This describes depressingly well the right wing of the Republican Party.

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Carson's tenuous grip on reality is embarrassing, but typical of the far right. He rejects well-established facts of biology, is terribly confused about entropy and the order of the universe, dismisses fundamental claims of physics, and of course denies the reality of climate change. Carson claims the theory of evolution was inspired by Satan. Carson invokes Einstein to bolster the view that Darwin was a dupe of the devil because someone as smart as Einstein believed in god. Well, like most of what Carson says, that is untrue. Einstein unsurprisingly held complex and subtle views on theology, but the bottom line could not be clearer, when he said:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

Therein, we discover the main problem with conservatism: Truth is nothing more than an option, nothing more valid than fantasy. Truth carries no more weight than the random musings of a madman. Faith trumps fact, religious conviction supersedes civic duty, and ignorance becomes a celebrated worldview.

Democrats do not seem up to the task of taking on this new breed of crazy. With the freak show called the GOP primary season in full swing, the time has come to offer up a political counterbalance to dangerous right wing extremism -- beyond what traditional Democrats can muster. The right created the Tea Party; we will call our new movement the Devils of Darwin (DOD) Party. Hopefully the DOD acronym will confuse the unaware into thinking we are associated with the one branch of government so favored by the right. The GOP conned the poor into voting for the rich, so this misdirection is the least we can do.

Devils of Darwin: A New Party of Reason and Rationalism is Born

We the people of rational thought and sound mind in middle America, in order to establish a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the benefits of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Devils of Darwin Party of the United States of America.

Self-evident Truths

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The Devils of Darwin Party is committed to the development and adoption of policies, programs and laws that will help guide humankind toward a just future in which we celebrate our deep connection to all things living as a minor twig on the vast four billion year old ever-branching bush of life.

To secure the inherent rights consistent with our biology and evolutionary history, governments are created as human institutions that derive their just powers solely from the consent of the governed. No government so formed can claim to be favored by gods of its own making. The mythical god of Abraham is not Republican, Democrat, Independent, Progressive or American. Holding office requires no litmus test of faith.

A government formed by the people for the people can survive only through open debate, free exchange of ideas and reliance on verifiable facts to arbitrate disputes. The Devils of Darwin Party is therefore dedicated to rooting out hypocrisy, myth, appeal to faith and bigotry in political discourse. We vigorously reject pious calls: to balance the budget, but only when a Democrat holds the nation's highest office; to protect the Constitution while advocating to alter the document for trivial purpose; to end "runaway government spending" when the party making that demand is responsible for the nation's greatest debts and deficits; to repeal "government-run" health care while reaping the benefits of Medicare; to stop tax hikes that are in fact nothing but repealing temporary cuts that led to record deficits and debts; to promote energy reform that is a cloak to hide continued subsidies for the fossil fuel industry; to agitate to "take back America" without articulating who exactly America is being taken back from; to get "government off the people's back" while advocating government intrusion into our most personal and intimate choices, including who we marry and a woman's right to choose her own reproductive destiny; to promote limited government while urging the federal government to "do more" whenever a crisis or natural disaster occurs; to promote education while foisting upon our children superstitions and myths appropriate to the 15th century; to promote the inherent advantages of capitalism while legislating "free market" regulations that subsidize and foster corruption, harm individual investors and squeeze small businesses. Conservatives privatize profit but socialize loss. Business leaders reap all the profits and rewards of risk and claim brilliant acumen when successful, but burden taxpayers when business fails. This hypocrisy must end.

Federal Budget

We call for a government that is as big as necessary, but no bigger. The ideals of small government, balanced budgets and lower taxes are shared by all in theory but diverge in implementation. While conservative agitators attempt to paint of a picture of stark differences in fiscal ideology between the left and right, the facts tell a different story. We call on the Congress to debate federal spending on facts rather than ideological fiction. To promote such a debate, we note the following facts about the 2014 federal budget:

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National Security

The Devils of Darwin Party believes that we can and must protect American citizens against terrorism without sacrificing the very rights we are fighting to protect. We have faith in the strength of our Constitution, and believe that we can work within the constraints of our founding document to protect the Republic and secure a prosperous future.

Republicans scoff at the idea that "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" (multiple variations, usually attributed to Ben Franklin). Instead, conservatives believe that our safety can only be secured by sacrificing our rights; the same ones our founders thought were inalienable. In the name of national security, conservatives advocate that the government (which they distrust in all other arenas) be given the extraordinary power to detain any American citizen and that the suspect be denied the right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus, denied access by families and denied legal representation. In condoning torture, disdaining Miranda rights, and dismissing the right of the accused to meet his accuser, conservative ideology has become one of the greatest threats to liberty. None of that dangerous legacy of the Bush years has ever been acknowledged by right wing ideologues. War crimes were committed but never prosecuted. Conservatives want to give unlimited power to arrest and detain to the very government they hate. The irony is lost on them.

Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Recovery

Faced with the choice of a catastrophic depression or federal debt, President Obama prudently even if reluctantly chose the latter. We applaud his precipitous actions to prevent an economic calamity with emergency stimulus money. As with health care, we acknowledge as well his leadership in getting the Congress to pass meaningful if imperfect Wall Street reform. Reform has been horribly inadequate but at least a step away from the chaos of conservative leadership.

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Education

Our educational system is in shambles, and our children lag far behind by every international standard. But we dither, focusing on "vouchers" instead of underlying problems. In the meantime in states where tested 75% of our kids do not know that George Washington was our first president or that the east coast of our country borders the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than face the real issues, conservatives simply attack the Department of Education as a favorite foil. We are dooming entire generations to second class status in the world. While the rest of the world eagerly provides children with a sophisticated curriculum of science and technology, the United States lags behind under the weight of antiquated debates forced upon us by the religious right. We need to stop fighting battles appropriate to the dark ages; we need to teach basic science to all kids.

Health Care

We fully endorse the Affordable Care Act, passed in the face of unyielding right wing opposition. In doing so we recognize that the president of the United States has limited power, and must work with a divided Congress, and therefore any legislation will be less than perfect. We applaud President Obama for his success even if a single-payer system would have been more desirable. He acted in the face of a growing crisis: our health care system is an embarrassment, but is defended by the right wing through gross ignorance as "the best in the world." We spend twice as much per capita as any other wealthy democracy but get a poor return on that investment. The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not offer universal health care. In the industrial world we are ranked 25th in infant mortality. We are 26th in healthy life expectancy, behind Slovenia. Behind Slovenia. This is the health care system John Boehner claim is the best in the world. Another case of conservatives losing touch with reality, where faith trumps fact. Overall our health care system is ranked 37th globally, behind third-world countries like Oman. Only the United States has the embarrassment of medical bankruptcies. Obamacare is an important first step in bringing the United States back up to the standards of a developed country. We must build and expand on this new foundation.

Clean Energy

Now is the time to create the renewable energy equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. We need to push our transition to green energy technologies quickly, massively, with unwavering commitment. This is our opportunity.

[snipped]

Climate Change

Climate change is real, exceeding natural background rates, and caused by human activity. We have run out of time for debate, and need to act quickly now. Cap and trade is a flawed mechanism to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but better than doing nothing and certainly a reasonable intermediate step. We call on the Congress to overcome conservative resistance and re-introduce this legislation. Obama made important progress when signing the recent agreement with Chinese president Xi Jinping on a protocol for reducing greenhouse gases.

Conservative denials of climate change are tragic on many levels. We are condemning millions to an unfortunate future of coastal flooding, mass migrations, agricultural disruptions, exposure to the northward march of tropical diseases, and inevitable wars over shifting and scarce resources. When these tragic events unfold, we will face of millions of unnecessary deaths and the preventable disruption of hundreds of millions of lives: a direct consequence of conservative ignorance.

Environment

The world every year is losing 40 million acres of tropical forests, which now cover only 6% of the globe's surface, down from 14 percent. Humans have depleted 90 percent of all large fish from the world's oceans. We are losing up to 50,000 species each year to extinction, a rate 1000 times natural background levels. More than half of all coral reefs are dead, dying or endangered; all coral reefs may be extinct by 2100. If you don't care, consider that 500 million people depend directly on coral reefs for survival.

We have no luxury in time as we ponder a response. The false dichotomy between growth and the environment is an anachronism born from the failures of conservative thought. Conservatives believe that growth is only possible at the expense of the environment, and that any and all efforts to protect our resources impede growth and cost jobs. That philosophy is wrong on every count and has proven so by history repeatedly. Environmentalism is not the ideology of socialists, but instead the true engine of all future economic growth.

[snipped]

Declaration

We, therefore, the representatives of the rational electorate of United States of America, appealing to natural law and reason, do by authority of the good people of the United States, solemnly publish and declare that the Devils of Darwin Party is hereby established. For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of human dignity, we mutually pledge to each other our fortunes and sacred honor.
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