Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Came across the Conservapedia article on Judicial Activism. You gotta love this kind of rigorous, scholarly thinking:

There are two major types of judicial activism practiced in the United States’ court system:

1. Liberal judges striking down laws that uphold core conservative American values
2. Liberal judges refusing to strike down laws that subvert core conservative American values

The most famous example of this is Roe v. Wade

Look, kid, there’s only two problems: when you don’t do what we tell you to do, and when you do what we tell you not to do. If you just stop doing those things, we’d like ya just fine. But it is nice to see them being honest and admitting that there is no objective meaning to “judicial activism” and it only really means “outcomes we don’t like.”

Comments

#1 Chuck C
February 23, 2007

I wonder if that isn’t one of the parody articles: folks from all over the blogsphere, especially science blogs, are having a lot of fun with those folks right now.

It’s hard to tell, tho: you read some of the stuff Schlafley’s put in there, and you’d easily overlook intentional parody.
#2 Dave S.
February 23, 2007

Gotta be a joke. Nobody can be that dense and write that with a straight face. Can they?
#3 Russell
February 23, 2007

Alas, I don’t think that is parody.
#4 Kim
February 23, 2007

I fear it is not a parody, just dig a bit longer around, and especially to the debate pages and you can see it is dead serious. This are not conservatives, but christian extremists.
#5 GP
February 23, 2007

A poster over at Pharyngula (“DrShaffopolis”) is claiming credit for that posting, and identifies it as a parody. The thread is http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/im_assuming_many_conservatives.php comment #146.
#6 Christian
February 23, 2007

Yes, the Pharyngulans have been having a bit of fun with the Conservapedia.
#7 386sx
February 23, 2007

This are not conservatives, but christian extremists.

Lol, now they’re citing FOX News for references. You guys better watch it with the parody stuff. You might start some new religions or messiahs something like that. Maybe even some new sciences.

I’d be careful because it really is a stupid religion. (Oops, sorry don’t mean to offend, whoops.) Half the country thinks Jesus is coming back real soon. Just ask FOX News analyst John Hagee. I’m not kidding. John Hagee is a FOX News analyst. We’re all doomed.
#8 386sx
February 23, 2007

See the Good Math, Bad Math article on Conservapedia for some more science stuff. (Especially the comments, too.) I guess the homeschooled Christian values people don’t like the theory of relativity very much. Imaginary numbers are really bad for moral decency too, I guess. Somebody in another thread said that “And, for the most part, Aschlafly, the Jimbo Wales of Conservapedia, has been reasonably fair, reasonably intellectually honest, and reasonable welcome to dissenting opinion.” Well, okay but he really should do some better monitoring of some of those articles over there.
#9 Blake Stacey
February 23, 2007

Their server is so ScienceBlogged I can’t get the page to load. Anyway, if you want to check if a particular piece of nonsense is genuine, you can hunt down the author by clicking the “history” tab. The page history of “Judicial Activism” follows:

* (cur) (last) 10:33, 23 February 2007 Conservinator (Talk | contribs) (more clearly referenced earlier point)

* (cur) (last) 02:20, 23 February 2007 Aschlafly (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by Conservinator (Talk); changed back to last version by Earwig)

* (cur) (last) 23:27, 22 February 2007 Conservinator (Talk | contribs) (adding another court case)

* (cur) (last) 19:46, 22 February 2007 Earwig (Talk | contribs)

* (cur) (last) 19:42, 22 February 2007 Earwig (Talk | contribs)

* (cur) (last) 19:35, 22 February 2007 Earwig (Talk | contribs)

* (cur) (last) 19:33, 22 February 2007 Earwig (Talk | contribs)

* (cur) (last) 17:53, 21 February 2007 DrShaffopolis (Talk | contribs) m

* (cur) (last) 17:52, 21 February 2007 DrShaffopolis (Talk | contribs) m

* (cur) (last) 17:20, 21 February 2007 DrShaffopolis (Talk | contribs)

“DrShaffopolis” is, as noted above, the satirist who confessed over at Pharyngula. “Earwig” added the following text, including references to FOX News:

Other examples include Brown v Board of Education which stripped state powers of control over education and put them in the hands of the federal government, McCreary County v. ACLU in which judges stripped free speech and religious freedom from McCreary County and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the Supreme Court sided with terrorists over the protection of the United States of America.

“Conservinator” then added a blurb at the end, “and that case where the judge decided to murder poor Terry Schiavo, just because she was in a wheelchair.” The project’s Fearless Leader, Andrew Schlafly, then reverted the article to its previous state, keeping all the additions of DrShaffopolis and Earwig.

In other words, yeah, the stuff Ed Brayton quoted is a joke — but it sure looks like Schlafly is taking it seriously.
#10 386sx
February 23, 2007

In other words, yeah, the stuff Ed Brayton quoted is a joke — but it sure looks like Schlafly is taking it seriously.

Which is why people should be careful with the sarcasm over there. Everybody stop with the parodies already -it’s only making them stronger!!1! Good lord…
#11 Ed Brayton
February 23, 2007

I agree with 386sx completely.
#12 Tom
February 23, 2007

I think the sarcasm attack is the perfect response to Conservapaedia. It shows that these people cannot tell the difference between their own beliefs and mockery of their beliefs.
#13 Chuck C
February 23, 2007

386sx wrote:

Which is why people should be careful with the sarcasm over there. Everybody stop with the parodies already -it’s only making them stronger!!1! Good lord…

Maybe if we keep at it, they’ll reach some kind of critical mass and be spontaneously raptured? Then at least they’ll be out of everyone’s hair…
#14 Prup aka Jim Benton
February 23, 2007

I agree with Tom. It reminds me of the anti-evolution Blog Carnival that had to suspend because they were getting more articles from satirists (including the brilliant Jon Swift) than serious ones, and they too couldn’t tell which was which.
#15 Djinna
February 23, 2007

For those who haven’t checked the Bill Clinton entry, or haven’t been able to get into it today, it now contains this beautiful gem:

Bill Clinton managed to serve two terms without botching the prosecution of two wars, manipulating intelligence, engaging in a systematic program of torture, or mishandling the federal response to flooding of a major American city. Obviously, he is the devil incarnate. Clinton also attempted to use the American military to kill Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, an action which was properly seen as a mere attempt to distract the nation from the Monica Lewisnky scandal.

It may be hard sometimes to tell the parodies from the, er, serious entries, but I think this one is pretty obvious. Thankfully, it seems to have not just survived the last couple edits, but been improved upon. Strange, though, that Hillary doesn’t seem to have her own entry.
#16 Dr X
February 23, 2007

How the hell is anyone getting in? I must have had a half million windows open at once, all trying to get in at the same time and I couldn’t reach them.
#17 anonymous
February 23, 2007

There’s been a lot of this parodying lately. About half the commenters at Dembski’s site are fakes, and you’d never guess which ones.
#18 tacitus
February 23, 2007

Most of the Conservapedia entries read like they are written by grade-schoolers for good reason–they are! I posted a comment on one of the discussion pages about it, and the response was that the initial push for the project was mostly done by home-schooled kids taking Andrew Schafley’s economics class. As you can see from this link, they are even using some of the pages to communicate over homework assignments:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Economics (click on the discussion page — can’t get the direct link since the site is down again at the moment).

Of course, the kids aren’t to blame for this idiotic mess. Somewhere along the way Schafley was suddenly struck by delusions of grandeur, believing he and his kids could somehow seriously compete with the Wikipedia behemoth. Frankly it’s sad how things are turning out, and I’m not terribly impressed by the wanton vandalism going on now at the site. Better to let the whole sorry episode slide back into oblivion and irrelevancy.
#19 Russel
February 23, 2007

Tacitus’ posting would explain the articles on Copernicus and Descartes.
#20 Sastra
February 23, 2007

One of the effects of sneaking in satire is that sooner or later the powers at Conservapedia are going to get better at cracking down — and in the process they are probably going to refuse a lot of sincere contributions. That may do more to educate the home-schooled than lectures from outside the system. “Your views are so silly we think you’re mocking us.” If I were a kid, I’d be thinking “uh-oh.”
#21 Leni
February 23, 2007

Russel wrote:

Tacitus’ posting would explain the articles on Copernicus and Descartes.

No kidding. It would also explain the Turkey entry.

Which was just bizarre.
#22 Russel
February 23, 2007

The Turkey entry is not simply bizarre. It has all the earmarks of a school child and I must confess my initial enjoyment of the rediculousness of the site has soured considerably because of it. This site is useful in that it gives me an idea of the degree of reality warp that exists on the far right but, wow, that entry was something else.
#23 tacitus
February 24, 2007

Yeah, the fact that most of the contributors are fundamentalist home-schooled kids explains much of the terrible quality of the content, but it also make Andrew Schafley’s insistence upon adding his own whacked out conspiracy theories to the site (e.g. Roosevelt allowing the attack on Pearl Harbor) and then refusing to post references to back up his claims, brings things uncomfortably close to exploitation.
#24 Todd Larason
February 24, 2007

The Turkey entry is by OrelP., whom appears to be real-ish, but is definitely an odd duck. He (?)’s also the author of the 1984 entry, which claims it’s utopian. I can’t decide whether OrelP is younger than most of the other contributors, a little slow, or a free-thinking guerilla parodist hiding in their midst.
#25 Russel
February 24, 2007

On a more positive/humorous note, and I will try to make this my final entry on this subject, take a gander at “scientist.”
#26 DrShaffopolis
March 20, 2007

Looks like I’m way past the discussion, but I did originally post this as a parody article.

I thought it was hilarious that people took it seriously.
#27 DrShaffopolis
March 20, 2007

PS: I’m glad some people figured out that that definition was just a wordy way of saying “decision a conservative doesn’t like”.