The Hubris of Conservapedia

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Who polluted the Bible with liberalism? Masoretes? Council of Trent? King James I? My money's on Jesus. #conservativebible (Malacandra)

I say unto you, when an interlocutor uses bedeviling facts and history to fool you, Call him a pinko and plug thine ears. #conservativebible (hyperlocavore)

This has become a genuine phenom.  There's a general, non-partisan agreement this is a stupidity that transcends even that of Glenn Beck. The Schlafly based, Eagle-Forum derived Conservapedia Bible Paraphrase is misrepresented as a "translation," glossing over all the required evidence, fact, scholarship and other stuff that's hard and requires critical thinking skills. That's irrelevant to the entire concept that is Conservapedia.

There's an object lesson in here somewhere. I suppose I could liken it to the arrogance of Pharaoh in the face of the ten plagues - but there's an easier cite. "Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make proud."

And of course, it's also an object lesson regarding the danger of believing your own propaganda. And why would they not believe it? After all, powerful men and women of influence have been quietly, living and working by quite a similar code.

But the "Christians" of C-Street are smart enough to realize that they need to be secretive. Why? Well, they probably have a rational appreciation of what actual Christians might think of statements such as this:

If the Family men who stood over John Ensign as he wrote a baldly insincere breakup letter to his mistress were naive about hearts that want what they want, they don't claim ignorance about the strongmen with whom they build bonds of prayer and foreign aid. They admire them. Counseling Rep. Tiahrt, Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ's words, he says, "You know Jesus said 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom."

I can only guess that the strange folks at Conservative thought that the difficulties in reconciling free-market conservatism with The Words in Red could be reconciled by simply restating the words of Jesus and ... well, everyone else ... in such a way as to make it clear what "He really meant."

Let us know how that works out for you.