The Online Discernmentalist Mafia Strikes Again!

From Brannon Howse, and I've seen the type of people who take him seriously first-hand, flowsdoody aplenty.

Enjoy.

HJ

Howse and Chuck Baldwin Gear Up for CiViL WaR!!!111#32

Shithead Chuck Baldwin (I presume that's what it says on his business card) is peeing himself ninnily (I presume that's a word) over a report in the prestigious European Union Times that Obama is preparing for a new civil war.

This particular pieces of dirty ass-floss appeared in Worldview Times, where Brannon Howse sells his own idiocy.

Wait a second. I was just surfing around eutimes.net and came across their traffic page. Motherfucker. They've been around since...maybe mid-November! Now that's experience I can trust. Fuck.

I mean, hell it's hardly worth going on about, it's so goofy. Well, one bit warrants comment, and it is this new media outlet's "about us" page:

About

The European Union Times also known as The EU Times is an online copyrighted newspaper founded in October 2009.

Most articles have external “credible” sources cited at the end of each article with the click-able word “Source”. If you click on “Source” you will end-up to an external source.

Feel free to reproduce our articles or to add our link on your website, or even to advertise for it as long as its not defamatory for us.

Welcome to the wide wide world of web, fuckheads. You are not immune to criticism, no matter what copyright you claim. This is going to be a painful experience for you until you learn that.

And they are anti-Semitic, apparently. It is sort of like the "conspiracy times." I looked at their criticism page, for instance, and here are some of their articles:

A Protocols for the next century, apparently: "The Complete Guide to Killing Non-Jews" (I'm so sick of those Complete Idiot's Guides, but they do have one for everything, don't they?)
American Army morale is very low, because they fight for Israel's interests only
And then this shocker: "Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate (2004 article from AP reveals that Obama is Kenyan-born)" (Actually, if you follow the links, there is no source. Way to violate your policy in the first few months. You have lots of integrity.)

For anti-Semites, they sure kvetch a lot!

So, the hell with them. I have enough goofy things to worry about; I don't need to pick on a new group of anti-Semitic loserwanks. Way to exploit anti-Semitism, Howse! You rule!

(For more on Howse and anti-Semitism, see my old podcast: Brannon Howse and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.)

Brannon Howse, by the way, positively shit his scaredy pants earlier today when he saw how the Army was preparing to deal with PreMillenialism. By savagely and ruthlessly destroying Christianity!

This is an emergency that we all must act on and right now. I was sent this article by a follower of the blog and want to thank him.

This posting is an United States Army report about the literal believers of the Bible and how they affect American foreign policy. It is the most dangerous document to believers that I have ever read in my entire life. After reading this document, it is easy to see the next step would be to eliminate our Constitutional rights and herd us into concentration camps.

It was in an official Army report, and will become doctrine...oh, wait, I'm looking at it and...
Degree candidate? This is someone's dissertation, you twit! And it's a year and a half old. So, technically, Bush is preparing to go to war with the Premees.

I look forward to seeing your correction appearing on your website, you botch.

HJ

Atheist Experience Discusses Howse, Undercover Sister Sarah Palin

No! Not Sarah too!

For those of you who don't keep up with Ed Brayton's enjoyable blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, he has a funny post today featuring an excerpt from Sarah Palin's new book that does a pretty fair job of illustrating why the lady hasn't got what it takes to be elected dogcatcher let alone leader of the free world, followed by some hearty criticisms. Go read and enjoy. But I thought I'd just mention that I couldn't help being struck by one passage from the book in particular. Here's Sarah kvetching about how incredibly controlling Nicolle Wallace, Sarah's official minder on the McCain campaign, supposedly was.

But something always struck me as peculiar about the way [Wallace] recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House's homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn't do it.

ZOMG! Oh noes! Did Sarah actually use the phrase...shudder..."shout-out"!?!? Dear Lord in Hebbin, she must be an inner-city gangbanger! Somebody quick...alert Brannon Howse!

More over at The Atheist Experience. I just knew that Sarah Palin was a secret ghetto negress.

I will be writing about the abject, bald and unmistakable racism of Brannon Howse in a few days. Yes, this time I'm afraid that I'm going to have to revise my previous statements and say that Brannon Howse is a racist. An awful racist shitheel. He is steadily becoming increasingly unhinged.

HJ

The Atheist Experience: Brannon Howse is a racist...

Sure Brannon's entire ideology stems from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but does he have to be hating on a brother too?

From The Atheist Experience:

Back to the loonybin otherwise known as the Christian Worldview Network. Bask in the unapologetically racist language Brannon Howse uses to distort Barack Obama's reaction to the Fort Hood shootings.

This is something I had hoped to do a podcast segment on, and likely will. Stay tuned!

HJ

Brannon Howse: Making the Devil's Hand Gesture

It's shocking and undeniable. Brannon Howse can now be said to have ties to Scientology:

http://donjobson.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/brannon-howse-caught-making-anti-christian-hand-signals-and-gestures/

See how it feels to be the subject of sloppy thought, Howse?

HJ

Worldview Weekend publishes joke: Sean McDowell on Dawkins' New Book

Sean McDowell has an almost boundless capacity to humiliate himself and not realize it. It's a comic golden goose! Anyway, showing his typical lack of discernment, Brannon Howse ran McDowell's review of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. (Warning: do not drink milk while reading the review, lest you want to make cheese in your keyboard.)

I love a good challenge.

Remember that line, folks.

I would much rather read a difficult book that makes me think deeply about my convictions than one that provokes little thought. This is why I eagerly anticipated the release of The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins.

With The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, River Out of Eden, and many more, Dawkins has established himself as one of the foremost contemporary defenders of Darwinian evolution. As soon as a copy of his book arrived at my doorstep, I enthusiastically opened the Amazon.com box and jumped right into the book, hoping to be challenged to take another hard look at the evidence for evolution.

With this background information in mind, it's difficult to express how disappointed I was at the demeaning rhetoric and lack of substance that characterizes The Greatest Show on Earth.

Lack of substance? Were you reading the same book that I was?

First off, Dawkins utterly refuses to engage with any serious evolution skeptics.

Oh, I see. By "substance" you mean "wallowing in my own personal intellectual cesspool." That's the thing. This was not a book about you or your weird, intellectually bankrupt religious movement. If you had read and understood the book, you might have encountered the explanation of how the book got its title. A reader sent Dawkins a T-shirt that says: "Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth, The Only Game in Town." You are not playing that game, and therefore do not reside in said town, by which I mean his book. Your side has amply failed to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. Do you really think that a social historian of Germany in the 20th Century should refer to Holocaust deniers or take them at all seriously? That's the magnitude of the concession you seem to be demanding from the onset. Or to use Dawkins' example, should a teacher of classics seriously have to consider the opinion of someone who says that the Roman Empire never existed? Heck no.

He ignores the work of Jonathan Wells (Ph.D. from UC Berkeley)

Your first superstar is the guy who said this at the Kansas monkey trial?

I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence...I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence...There are already scientists-- respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.

It turns out that Wells is the bozo who came up with the weird syllogism identified by Jerry Coyne (who McDowell cites favorably below) in his review of Wells's book:

Wells's book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: hence, textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction. The second premise is not generally true, and even if it were, the conclusion would not follow.

Now where did I first hear about this particularly weird idea that evolutionary biologists teaching from examples is evidence of evolution's fabrication? DAWKINS' BOOK! The example he gives is the "ascent of man" series, and while I can't find it right now, it's the only evolution thing I've been reading for the last week or so. That's where it came from. So he doesn't cite Wells by name. So what? I don't name the pig that became my bacon.

Stephen Meyer (Ph.D. from Cambridge)

The only person to publish Meyer's asinine "information theory" article lost his job after it was published because this editor had circumvented his journal's standards of review. Also, the paper was retracted by the journal. Strike two.

and William Dembski (double Ph.D. in math and philosophy).

Dembski? The guy who has no published research in peer-reviewed biology journals? None? None? None? The guy who stole Harvard's animations and redubbed the voice-over? Go for it. Dembski garners no respect from any biologist.

They have raised substantive questions for the mechanism of Darwinian evolution. Rather than responding to their critiques, Dawkins sets up countless straw man arguments and focuses solely on young-earth creationists (and not even the leaders among them!).

Why would you say that he sets up straw men (presumably about the intelligent design advocates, about whom he has been speaking) and then, in the same breath, say that he focuses only on young-earthers? (Anyway, they are mostly the same people--two words: cdesign proponentsists".)

Now, either Dawkins is unaware of their work, or he chooses to ignore it. The charitable response would be to assume he's simply unaware of the revolution in Christian philosophy, and the intelligent design movement. But this is hard to believe. Dawkins has refused to debate William Lane Craig, Stephen Meyer and many other leading Protestant thinkers.

Oh, that's just because it would look better on their resume than on his. They can go to any of his talks and ask a question, just like everyone else.

Dawkins is content to pick on arguments from decades ago rather than dealing with the current state of the debate. He is banking that most of his readers will not catch on. Sadly, he's probably right.

Are you going to talk about the book, the variety of arguments that he lays out, back by evidence and the research of numerous scholars? Heck, are you going to cite even a single example in support of the point that you think you are making?

This is especially ironic since he castigates evolution skeptics for not fully understanding evolutionary theory: "It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing" (155). It's a shame Dawkins ignores his own advice.

Dawkins claims the evidence is so strong for evolution that doubters are "ignoramuses" that can be compared to Holocaust-deniers. On page 9, Dawkins says, "No reputable scientist disputes it." How can he say this? Since 2001, over 800 Ph.D. scientists have signed the "Dissent from Darwin" list, agreeing with the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Why don't these scientists count?

Read carefully. No reputable scientist disputes it. These, Sean, must not be reputable scientists.
After all, some are from institutions such as MIT, Cambridge, Princeton, UCLA and many more.
What is with your academic name-dropping? It's sad. Lots of morons graduate from everywhere. Your assertion only means anything if you can say, "Everyone who graduates from X University is smart or capable of producing useful scholarship." Having been at some of these institutions for the last decade and a half, I can say without the slightest possibility of contradiction that this is total balls. I'm perpetually surrounded by idiots. In my new, top ranked institution, for instance, a new friend of mine was indignant when I pointed out that homeopathic medicine has no possible therapeutic effect besides placebo and no plausible mechanism by which to have any sort of effect. The fact that the day before I had taken 60 homeopathic sleeping pills in front of my class and made it to my meeting for him to be indignant at me seems to have made no impact on his perspective of the whole argument.

But let's pretend that every good school is populated by good students and excellent instructors, none of whom hold aberrant beliefs, and that everyone's boneheaded assertions must be given equal consideration, no matter how frequently or thoroughly they have been debunked. Have you heard of Project Steve? Do you see the people who are on there? Vets? Dentists? Professors of aviation? Philosophers of psychology? 800 people was all you could muster? The NCSE has almost 1200 scientists named Steve who agree that evolution is the best explanation and Project Steve has a higher proportion of people in the biological sciences than the Discovery Insitute has on their list! Your appeals to false authority are daft and pathetic. When you consider that Steves are about 1 percent of the scientific community, the degree of marginalization you enjoy is vast, yet you would have Dawkins waste time looking at the opinion of this insignificant sample of wierdos.

This example is indicative of what seems to be Dawkins approach in the book: state your views as strongly as you can and completely ignore substantive challenges.

What are they, Sean? Seriously. Name one that is substantive. Seriously.

My second criticism of Dawkins book is that he fails to advance any new evidence for evolution. He points to poor design (dysteleology), biogeography, vestigial structures, the fossil record, homology, and more of the same old arguments evolutionists have been proclaiming for years (William Dembski and I respond to most of these in our book Understanding Intelligent Design). I realize this may not be his point, since he is aiming for a lay audience, but it needs to be pointed out, especially in light of how strong he says the evidence for evolution really is. Consider one example of how his case is remarkably one-sided.

Dawkins approvingly cites Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution is True), who says that the evidence for biogeography so strongly favors evolution that he has never even seen a creationist attempt to answer it (p. 283). He obviously hasn't actually read many creationist books.

Of course not. His time is worth something. But do you honestly doubt that he has not heard every tired alternative explanation presented from religious folks in the crowds of people who have heard him speak over the decades?

As always, there is another side to the story. The biogeographical evidence does seem to indicate that organisms (finches, mockingbirds, etc.) have adapted to their unique environments. But this provides little substantive proof for Darwin's grand claim that ALL organisms trace back to a common ancestor through a process of natural selection acting on random mutation. Most evolution skeptics accept the biogeographical evidence; they just question its significance.

The biogeographical evidence indicates that organisms experience a loss of genetic mutation from populations that were isolated through migration or some other natural circumstance. Thus, the biogeographical distribution of species is not the result of new biological information appearing in a particular species (which is what macroevolution requires), but the shuffling or elimination of pre-existing genetic information. While Darwin's theory can explain minor biological adaptations within existing organisms, it cannot explain how mockingbirds-or any other organism-first appeared.

You miss the point and don't understand mutation. This is why he calls you evolution deniers. You refuse to recognize that novel mutations arise. This just misses...all biology. Just saying that additive mutations don't occur, or that somehow they don't accumulate over time as they are passed down from generation to generation, doesn't make them not occur or make anyone take you seriously at all! You are looking away from the glaring larger patterns and the genetic evidence. For instance, why are all the monotremes, all of them, including platypuses and echidnae, in Australia and New Guinea? These are mammals with multipurpose bird-like vents, through which eggs and waste are passed. Did Noah drop them off there? You have to resort to, "Well, it's just like that," which is not good enough. Common descent explains it. Are you saying that the monotremes are an example of "microevolution" (which is not really any different from evolution proper, but you folks somehow fail to see that lots of what you call microevolution directly results in what you call macroevolution--it's all evolution to us).

Much more could be said about The Greatest Show on Earth. Overall, it felt like Dawkins could have cut the book (437 pages) down by about two-thirds without losing any key material. He goes on multiple tangents that, at times, made it hard to follow his reasoning. Overall, I can't really recommend his book to anyone.

So, you didn't understand it? Or your criteria for a good book is that it is not challenging? This would go far to explain why your side has not made any headway or, indeed, shown any capacity to learn. Real science is hard, Sean.

Look, you address none of his arguments, just bitch about how your crackpot theory is treated. Tough, leathery ta-tas. You don't challenge a single point about the various methods by which the age of the universe has been determined, the many and diverse ways in which evolution has been demonstrated. The genetics, for crying out loud, which had the potential to deep-six the whole evolutionary project and only confirmed it spectacularly! You fail to engage with a single piece of evidence or line of argument. I thought you liked a challenge?

Overall, I can't really recommend your review to anyone.

HJ

Brannon Howse and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The following is a transcript of a podcast that I produced this summer. In it, I trace the roots of Brannon Howse's peculiar brand of conspiracism and find it rooted in some pretty dark precedents. As far as I have been able to determine, Howse has been unwilling or unable to answer the very, very simple challenge I set forward: "Why is the same bogus logic used to demonize the Jews in the 20th Century valid when you set it upon other groups?" It is his silence and unwillingness to confront the sources of his conspiracism that prompted me to devote a website to the issue. It is that important to me.


Hello. This is Bing.

I want to discuss something that I think is deadly serious, and I really hope that Brannon Howse hears this. I have been studying conspiracy theories for some time now, and recently as I went through a report by Chip Berlet, his Toxic to Democracy, which was recently released by a progressive think-tank that tracks racist groups and conspiracist movements, I was struck by Berlet's description of the similarities between the various editions of the notoriously fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion. During a class about American conspiracism, I made a point of taking a week out to talk about this European document because it is one of the most successful and stubborn forgeries in history and was incorporated into the Nazi philosophy and educational curriculum, which even Howse and I can agree had pretty bad consequences. Berlet finds 14 points shared in all the variations of this truly incoherent tome.

1. "Jews are behind a plan for global conquest"
2. "Jews work through Masonic Lodges."
3. "Jews use liberalism to weaken church and state."
4. "Jews control the press"
5. "Jews work through radicals and revolutionaries."
6. "Jews manipulate the economy, especially through banking monopolies and the power of gold.”
7. "Jews issue paper currency not tied to the gold standard.”
8. "Jews promote financial speculation and use of credit.”
9. "Jews replace traditional educational curriculum to discourage independent thinking.”
10. "Jews encourage immorality among Christian youth.”
11. "Jews use intellectuals to confuse people."
12. "Jews control puppet governments through secret alliances and blackmailing public officials."
13. "Jews weaken laws through liberal interpretations."
14. "Jews will suspend civil liberties during an emergency and then make the measures permanent."

The shared features of the various editions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion invest Jews with an all-pervasive, insatiable lust for power and an improbable influence over human affairs. It is my contention that the underlying political philosophy behind the Protocols and the image of the world that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion promotes is virtually indistinguishable from that of Brannon Howse. I would go so far as to suggest that Howse's worldview is the direct descendant and heir of the most vicious and destructive antisemitic conspiracy theories.

I want to make it absolutely and emphatically clear that I am not arguing that Brannon Howse is an antisemite. I do believe, on the basis of numerous articles and interviews, that Brannon in fact almost fetishizes Israel. What I am arguing is that the form of his arguments and the underlying philosophy are in almost every respect identical to those endorsed by the anonymous plagiarists responsible for the Protocols. The version of conspiracism that Howse has adopted (and peddles at every opportunity) merely substitutes one scapegoat for another. I intend to prove this in this essay, and I demand that Howse own up to the roots of his beliefs and answer the question: "Why are the same bogus arguments used to demonize the Jews more legitimate when you direct them at other people, Brannon?" I refuse to accept the answer, "Well, because these people really are like that." Such an answer has all the authority of someone saying, "I can't verify the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but that's what Jews are like."

I think that the best proof that Howse's beliefs are merely variations on a theme composed by racist predecessors is to be found in the explanation that they offer for some of Howse's strangely incongruous beliefs. These peculiarities make sense if they are merely inherited and parroted rather than rationally derived. I will refer most often to the writings that Howse showcases at christianworldviewnetwork.com, and his own radio show.

Point 1: Jews are behind a plan for global conquest

Howse is obsessed with "global conquest" in all the manifestations of what he calls globalism. Unlike the usual use of the term, Howse's version of globalism includes worldwide economic, military, political and spiritual unification. Take for instance his selection of "news stories" on a December 2008 episode of WorldviewTubeNewsTopics, "Is World Government Plausible? Kennedy/Obama Medicine" (http://www.worldviewtube.com/video.php/videoid-4348/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse), wherein he highlights a story about plans for a regional mideast security coalition (http://euobserver.com/9/27277), gives a dramatic reading of Gideon Rachman's blog post at the Financial Times "And Now for One World Government" (http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2008/12/and-now-for-a-world-government/), and reads Dick Morris's November blog entry "Bush’ Legacy: European socialism" (http://thehill.com/dick-morris/bushs-legacy-european-socialism-2008-11-18.html), which opens:

"The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy. In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in toto, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation and excessive government regulation. Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union."

Perhaps the most totalizing expression of Howse's obsession with the globalization of, well, everything, comes in a Code Blue Rally speech he gave, listed at worldviewtube.com as "Three Worldviews Merge: Understanding One-World Spirituality" (http://www.worldviewtube.com/video.php/videoid-4244/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse, see time 00:00-1:48).

But who is behind this dastardly series of unifications--who is the scapegoat? On worldviewtimes.com, Cliff Kincaid (who is singled out in the Berlet report), a regular correspondent whose weekly articles have appeared on Brannon's website since at least December of last year (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/bio.php/authorid-353/Cliff%20Kincaid) suspects in his "Who Will Investigate the UN-Vatican Connection?" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5157/Brannon-Howse/Cliff-Kincaid) that the conspiracy is a little bit Catholic a little bit United Nations, with a subtle hint of Alger Hiss-style communism:

"[T]he Pope explicitly endorsed the Responsibility to Protect, known by the acronym R2P, a doctrine endorsed by the U.N. in 2005 and designed to help the world body assume the powers of a world government. The World Federalist Movement, which has promoted world government, global taxes and a United Nations Army, has cultivated international acceptance of the concept."

Brannon’s friend Jan Markel, a broadcaster with Olive Tree Ministries, also seems to think that the Pope is somehow involved with the New World Order. And even though the description of one of her radio shows on Howse’ site clearly misquotes the Pope (see image), Howse runs the show anyway. In a recent episode, as I reported in an earlier podcast, two successive callers contacted Howse’ show and offered anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, one about “the Black Pope”(a Jesuit conspiracy) and another stressing the ties between Nazi Germany and the Vatican. To Howse’ discredit, he did not attempt to correct them. Here we see that one of the substitutions that is made in this community of conspiracy finds Catholics at fault instead of Jews. How, Brannon, is this any better?

Point 2: Jews work through Masonic Lodges.

When Howse brought Ron Carlson onto his July 5th radio show (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-12912/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse), Howse's concern about the Masons initially confused me (http://www.4shared.com/file/117819922/b5415635/HJHOPPodcast9.html). Indeed, it is the indictment of Masonic lodges that stands as one of the most direct pieces of evidence that directly links Howse's beliefs back to its antisemitic roots. A little background first, and this comes directly from the mouth of Chip Berlet. A few weeks ago, Berlet answered Terry Gross' question, "Who were the Illuminati?" and his answer is an excellent, concise account of the intricacies of the supposed Illuminati/Masonic/Jewish conspiracy (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105531867). [Listen to the audio clip]

I feel it is important to add one more level to the conspiracy. As progressive ideals swept through Europe in the wake of Napoleon's conquests, and the Jews were no longer ghettoized, well, since clearly the Jews benefited from progressive reform, they must have been the ones who orchestrated the French Revolution through the Masons, so went the thought. I feel the need to add one more level to this account. Since the medieval period, Jews have been considered Christ-killing agents of the devil, and the nefarious purposes of the devil-worshiping Jews have been grafted onto Masonic lodges. Recently, the Baptists officially fretted about the presence of Masons in their ranks--I am not aware what the outcome of that deliberation was--but the whole issue stems (initially) from the fears of the Jews who were supposed to be controlling the Masons. In Carlson's version, he has cut out the Jewish/Illuminatus middle man and gone straight to the pagan-Satanist source of all evil.

Freemasonry is a very strange thing for Brannon to worry about, but it makes perfect sense if it is a holdover from the historical roots of his ill-thought out conspiracism.

Brannon, however, has not managed to completely shed his fear of the Illuminati. Once a week, Brannon fills some airtime by phone on Ron Meyer's show, which airs in Mississippi. In his most recent segment on the 23rd of July (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php?EpisodeID=13189&FileID=7109), Brannon discussed the Illuminati and their connection to paganism. Alice Bailey was a spiritualist and proto-new-ager who was a student of Madame Blavatsky, a fraudulent psychic and plagiarist, who was exposed in 1883 by the mostly rigorous British Society for Psychical Research (of which William James was a member) to be little more than a crude parlor magician who nonetheless gathered an immense following (http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/theosophy.html). That Bailey, to whom Howse makes reference, was a student of a fraud makes it unlikely that she ever, as Howse claims, talked to a demon:

[Audio clip: HowseandtheIlluminati]

Howse's attempt to link the Illuminati to paganism is interesting if only for its inaccuracies, as the Illuminati were freethinkers who embraced Enlightenment ideals.

Point 3: Jews use liberalism to weaken church and state

Howse's most recent discovery has been the inflammatory Linda Hinkel, who, as far as I can determine, is barely tethered to reality. Her July 7th "The Treachery of America's Church Leaders" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5150/Brannon-Howse), in the tradition of paranoid literature like The Protocols, is rambling, nearly incoherent and unified only by an unjustified emotion. As such, she is a fair representative of the tone of Worldview Weekend when it comes to liberals having their filthy ways with Church and State. She scapegoats communists:

What happened to the strict separation of church and state policy? Apparently, the elite Marxists now think it is acceptable to have church members politicking on holy grounds. These elites sure like to exploit this policy to further their destructive ideology. Oh, of course, since the Global Elites are ignoring the laws, why would we expect some holy community organizers to follow them? These radicals hide, lie, cheat, misinform, and deceive because their Alinsky Manifesto dictates that it is only the ends that count, not the means.

Not only are liberals supposed to be operating on the churches, but Howse argues that liberal members of the Church are inviting the liberal devil into their houses of worship. See, for instance, his November 30th, 2006 "Can Butts, Obama, Dybul and Rick Warren Save the World?" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-1313):

Rick Warren's conference is this coming Friday, December 2006 at his church. To this day, I don't have a clue what Pastor Warren thinks can be accomplished by gathering together a group of non-believers that are hostile to Christianity to discuss the world's problems. Promotion of a social gospel will not save one soul.

As you know by now, Rick has invited United States Senator Barack Obama to speak at his church conference. Senator Obama is described by many as left of Hillary Clinton. Now that is really left. You are aware of Obama's radical support of abortion and same-sex marriage aren't you?

Did you know that Rick will also have Mark Dybul at his conference? Ingrid Schlueter writing on her website www.sliceoflaodicea.com describes exactly who Mark Dybul is for those that may not know:

With his gay lover watching, Mark Dybul was recently sworn in by Condoleeza Rice as global AIDS coordinator. Here's the story from the Washington Blade of the swearing in ceremony where Dybul's gay lover Jason held the Bible while Dybul was sworn in as "Ambassador" to AIDS. Now Rick Warren thinks he has answers for Christians at his Global Summit on AIDS and the Church. It is the homosexual rebellion against God's Law that started the AIDS crisis in America over 20 years ago in San Fransisco.

Perhaps it is Howse's definition of authority that leads him to make ill-advised statements about the coming together of global forces; after all, he feels free to quote someone whose position is indistinguishable from that of Fred Phelps.

Point 4-- Jews control the press

In this area, Brannon gives free reign to Cliff Kincaid, who, according to his bio, "serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report." Kincaid finds the media influenced by the shenanigans of liberal masters. For instance, see his January 22nd, "Liberal Media Anxious to Get Geithner Confirmed" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4491/Brannon-Howse/Cliff-Kincaid). In this article, he claims that the headline "Geithner Gets Grilled as Financial Sector Wobbles" (http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Economy/idUSTRE4B70ME20090121) suggests that:

"merely questioning Geithner somehow undermines economic health and a market rebound. [...] Such coverage," he goes on to say, "is designed to panic Senators into approving Geithner, who supposedly knows so much about so many important financial things that his confirmation alone will inspire market confidence and possibly turn the economic situation around. Some of this coverage comes from some of the same media outlets tied to firms getting some of the Wall Street bailout money."

So, the media and the banks are controlled by the same people? Where have I head that before? Oh, yeah. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Again, I ask Howse why this type of logic is more valid when applied to liberals than to Jews?

Kincaid's most recent indictment on WorldviewWeekend.com targeted the late Walter Cronkite, and I encourage you to read the July 19th article, "The Terrible Truth about Walter Cronkite" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com//article.php/articleid-5178/Brannon-Howse/Cliff-Kincaid), wherein he claims:

"The terrible truth is that Walter Cronkite symbolized liberal media bias and used that bias with disastrous consequences for our nation and the world. His latest cause was world government and the destruction of American sovereignty."

Howse more recently merely repeated Kincaid's assertions in his July 24th radio show(http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php?EpisodeID=13205&FileID=7122). Again, the almost incomprehensibly bonkers Linda Henkel, in her "Teachers, Judges, Radical Islam, Acorn, Activists: The Treachery of America's Fifth Columns" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5119/Brannon-Howse) claims:

“Most of our television, radio, and newspapers have become successful propaganda tools of the Communists, who love to brainwash We the People with their anti-American propaganda. In my family, we've gotten rid of most of these "news" sources in our home and now go to the Internet and to each other for our news. The path to Communism is easy if our minds are under the control of others. Is this why Jay Rockefeller has introduced legislation to tamper with our freedom of speech through the Internet? How ironic that his family began one of the most corrupt foundations in this country –the Rockefeller Foundation –that promotes the New Global Order of Communism by spreading their tax-free monies with stealth to all their totalitarian causes.”

A recent example of Howse's own slamming of the so-called "liberal media" came in a rather ill-informed conversation between Howse and Answers in Genesis founder, Ken Ham. For a breathtaking appropriation of antisemitism as an assault on Christians, their June 12th exchange over the news coverage of the Holocaust shooter James W. Von Brunn cannot be matched. See the description of the show (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-12524/Brannon-Howse/Program-With-Brannon-Howse):

Brannon’ guest is Ken Ham: Topic One: The Holocaust Museum shooter was not a Christian as some liberal media are reporting. The man’ website attacks Jews and Christians and calls Christianity a Jewish birthed religion. The liberal media will not be confused by the facts as many will seek to use these horrible crimes to attempt to portray Christians as a threat to society. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Also, in his May 5th love letter to America, "26 Similarities Between America and Nazi Germany," (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4881/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse), Howse says:

Hitler prevented dissenters from using radio to challenge his worldview. Many powerful liberals in America have made clear their intent to reintroduce the "Fairness Doctrine" that would require conservative and religious radio stations to offer equal time to anti-Christian, anti-conservative worldviews.

Howse seems not to process the fact that even if the Fairness Doctrine were reinstated, Christians would be allowed to have their own TV shows and as many of them as they like. How allowing Christians to continue to say whatever they please amounts to preventing dissenters from using radio to challenge a particular worldview Howse never explains.

Point 5: “Jews work through radicals and revolutionaries.”

Howse dedicated some time during his July 14th show to the French book, The Coming Insurrection, a topic I believe he picked up on from professional conspiracist and Obama birth certificate denier Glenn Beck. On his website, Howse describes the book as “nothing less than a manual for domestic terrorism by the far left”(http://www.worldviewradio.com/episas in classic conspiracist form, traditional enemies become either allies or servents to a common master.

Perhaps the most odious example of Howse's assertion that radicals and revolutionaries are being used by liberal masters appears his comments about Public Allies, the group that looked for leaders who were already in places where leaders were needed (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-11967/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse). I take this clip from my May 15th podcast (http://www.clickcaster.com/items/hjhoppod1).

[AUDIO CLIP]

Howse claims that radical welfare mothers, former prisoners, and ex-gang members are going to be used by the Obamas and ACORN to, and he says this later in the broadcast (and you can hear it in my podcast), pit the races against one another. This is simply recasting the Obamas and ACORN in the role of the Jew puppet master, stirring up dissent among the poor. This fear of the poor reminds me of the fears of slave rebellions of Southern plantation owners and the paranoia that the underclass was secretly organizing to revolt. Notice that Howse did not criticize the presence of Harvard graduates in Michelle Obama's first class for Public Allies, but the inclusion of people from the inner city. This thinly veiled reference to poor minorities is no more acceptable than when an antisemite blames "international bankers" for what he believes are the crimes of international Jewry.

Points 6, 7, 8: “Jews manipulate the economy, especially through banking monopolies and the power of gold;” “Jews issue paper currency not tied to the gold standard,”and "Jews promote financial speculation and use of credit.”

I have long wondered why a preacher like Howse is perennially concerned with the economy, the Federal Reserve Bank, and a preference for the gold standard to a floating currency. His amateurish preoccupation with financial matters runs throughout his website. The depressing reality is that bigots have traditionally implicated wealthy Jews with financial manipulation and unscrupulous business practices. Until the modern era, Christians have generally considered loaning on credit a sin. The Jews, as far back as Jesus' rampage through the Temple, have attached no taboo to the practice. When Jewish communities were sequestered and relegated to European ghettos, they established what might be called parallel economies. They had their own social structures and business leaders and, per force of exclusion, encountered less competition with outside businesses. When the ghettos opened up, these wealthy Jews started competing, like good capitalists, with Christians' businesses. This new source of competition was, of course, not really welcome, and many Gentiles painted their new Jewish competitors in racist terms.

More recently, people who either prefer to not think of themselves as racists or who are racists but do not want to appear to be racists, have substituted "international Jews" with "international bankers." In the context of modern conspiracies, it is perhaps impossible to miss the anti-Semitic roots of these particular concerns. This is not to say one may never speak critically about "international business" of any type, even banking, but when one posits a cabal of unreasonably powerful international money-grubbers manipulating world markets because they can, it is hard to avoid that this role was originally was assigned to Jews. Again, I need to stress that I am not saying that Howse is an antisemite. He just applies the perceived social structures described in the Protocols and reassigns responsibility to another agent.

In an article from March 25, 2008 called "Past Presidents Have Warned Us About the Danger and Corruption of a Central Bank (The Federal Reserve)" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-3264/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse), Howse is pretty explicit about his fear of a central banking system in his opening lines:

Few Americans know the truth about the Federal Reserve. The reality is it is no more a part of the federal government than is Federal Express. The Federal Reserve is a private corporation run by private bankers.

Why should you care? Because as President Thomas Jefferson, President Andrew Jackson and President Woodrow Wilson all understood, a private central bank has the power to destroy our lives and steal our freedoms.

OK, so that's not exactly true. The people who are running the Fed are a council of 12 people. 7 of these are appointed by the President. The other ones are rotating regional Reserve Bank chairs. The appointments are staggered and nobody owns it. The composition of the Central Board is such that an appointment spans administrations. They aren't the Rothschilds. The Fed is hardly in the hands of private bankers who work for their own personal gain. We'll meet the Rothschilds in a moment.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson opposed the idea of a national bank, but relying on their advice to set modern information-age monetary policy makes as much sense as asking the last century's revolutionary genius Albert Einstein for a haircut. That is to say, it is an appeal to a false authority. At any rate, have you seen Einstein's hair? I mean, really, what were you thinking?

So, what is the Fed and what does it do? I generally take little notice of the day-to-day functioning of the Federal Reserve Bank. Arthur MacEwan, economics professor at U Mass, however, spends a good deal of time worrying about it professionally. In his Spring 2007 Dollars & Sense column (http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2007/0507drdollar.html), MacEwan sorts out some of the confusion of right-wing conspiracists with respect to the Federal Reserve. First, he patiently explains that there are a number of powerful sectors in the encomony, for instance, the energy, communication and transportation sectors, so while the Fed is important, it by no means has a monopoly on economic activity. Second, these sectors have competing and often directly contradictory interests; one example MacEwan cites is bankers' desire to be free of government regulation while reaping the benefits of the stability that is brought by regulation. Third, the Fed simply is not omnipotent; it exerts heavy influence over short term lending rates. It has no control over long-term interest rates, which heavily influence major investment planning. MacEwan explains what the Fed does:

The Fed has a variety of functions involving regulation of the banking system, including influencing the amount of money in circulation and interest rates (the price people pay to use other people's money). Of special importance, the Fed can influence the amount of loans that banks issue. When a bank issues a loan, this creates more spending power. This spending power (usually in the form of increasing the amount in the borrower's checking account) is the same thing as more money in circulation. So by influencing banks' loan actions, the Fed influences the money supp government to engage in excessive spending: the government can borrow from the public, but then, because of inflation, can repay in dollars that have less worth.

This fascination of some right-wingers with inflation and the debasement of the currency is ironic because, in fact, the Fed often (although not always) acts in exactly the opposite manner—limiting the growth of the money supply and restricting inflation.

When I came across this column, specifically looking for information about the functioning of the Federal Reserve, I was looking for a baseline understanding of the Federal banking system. But MacEwan gets to where I was going first:

Finally, while I am sure that there are many decent people who see the Fed and the bankers as the source of the world's problems, this view is often part of a larger anti-Semitism. The focus on "Jewish financiers" (the Rothschilds, for example) as the source of our economic and other problems is as old as it is wrong and offensive.

Luckily, Howse's site has never taken issue with the Rothschild family, I mean, except on May 26th of this year, when it printed James Quinn's article, "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4964/Brannon-Howse/James-Quinn). Oh, and another Quinn article, "Grand Illusion-The Federal Reserve" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4717/Brannon-Howse/James-Quinn). In "Ain't no Rest for the Wicked," Quinn says that we can identify the historical roots of the current financial crisis, and he opens the section with a quote from Mayer Amschel Rothschild:

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws."

Quinn goes on:

When the banking cartel succeeded in creating the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, control of money in the United States was put into the hands of bankers whose sole purpose is to enrich themselves at the expense of the citizens of the country. Their relentless printing of money has resulted in the dollar losing 96% of its value since 1913. The printing of dollars has allowed politicians to spend money today and make unfunded commitments decades into the future. The systematic inflation created by the Federal Reserve is immoral as it impoverishes the middle class and senior citizens for the benefit of bankers, the elite rich and entrenched politicians. Much of the moral decay in our nation can be traced to the manipulation of money in the last 8 decades.

In "The Grand Illusion--The Federal Reserve," Quinn exposes himself really to be a barenaked anti-Semite at heart. He quotes a letter said to be authored by the Rothschilds:

"Those few who can understand the system (check book money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on it favors, that there will be little opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."

I was unable to trace the source of the letter to a date earlier than 1933, when it was published by Father Coughlin, a virulent and open antisemite and, in a bitter irony, a founding founder of shock- and hate-radio. I was able to find the quote on page 88 of Coughlin's 1933 The New Deal in Money. In it, Coughlin writes: "In an unfortunate letter which was never intended to fall into hostile hands, the Rothschilds on June 25, 1863, confided the following admission to a firm of bankers by the name of Ikleheimer, resident of 3 Wall Street. In part," Coughlin says, "the letter reads as follows: 'the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.' The quote was picked up by the fascist poet Ezra Pound, who said the lines came from a letter in the 1860s and referred to the Jews staging the American Civil War. I personally find that hard to believe. The murky source of these dubious lines aside (I mean, really, who signs their letters “The Rothschilds?"), there can be no doubt that the anti-Semite Coughlin was the one who injected that phrase into American popular conspiracy culture.

But at least Quinn goes on to see a Jewish conspiracy in the establishment of the Fed, and what is not explicitly stated in "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" is glaringly obvious in "The Grand Illusion":

The House of Rothschild had been the dominant banking family in Europe for two centuries. They were known for making fortunes during Panics and War. Some claimed that they would cause Panics in order to take advantage of those who panicked. The Panic of 1907 was the used as the reason for creating the Federal Reserve.

There is a logical error here, actually it is a 200-hectare logical error farm, but I'm going to let most of them rot on the vine. Let me pick two. First is that Quinn fails to point out that the Rothschild family were also making oodles of cash during the peace as well. At the same time, the Fed was created in part to alleviate some the risk of having crashes, so Jews pushing for something that would stop profitable panics seems to be something of a charity on their part. How everyone taking their money away from the banks benefits the banks, I won't understand. In this case, yes, Jews are clearly the scapegoats, and Howse should remove this disgusting antisemite from his website.

Howse has often lamented the floating currency and expresses a naive and whimsical nostalgia for the gold standard. While Howse is clearly just a pitchman for this sponsor, it seems to be in line with most of his previous statements:

[AUDIO: HOWSE AND GOLD]

Now wasn't that awful?

As I've said, Howse's interest in banking and gold makes little to no sense on its own. Like his suspicion of Masons, however, its historical antecedents are racist. Let me stress again that I am not asserting that that Howse is a racist; this facet of his worldview, however, in conjunction with these other points, clearly reflects the anti-Semitic sources of the ideology he espouses.

On a separate note, I would like to point out that buying gold now is probably a really, really bad idea. Lots of people who are selling their greatly depreciated stocks and reinvesting in gold, which is (consequentially) vastly overvaluated, are perfectly violating the most basic principle of capitalist investing, "Buy low, sell high." Don’t do it.

Points 9 and 11: “Jews replace traditional educational curriculum to discourage independent thinking;” and "Jews use intellectuals to confuse people"

There is no shortage of evildoers who are waiting to corrupt your children at every opportunity and cast your child's soul into perdition, and Howse probably has reprinted an article about every single one of them. The "corrupter of children" motif is an especially effective appeal to a primal fear that sets off all sorts of evolutionary klaxons and alarms, and therefore it is an attractive target for fear-mongering alarmist ninnies and conspiracy theorists. If you were to ask Howse, "Who wants your children?" I suspect his answer is, "Who doesn't?" The UN, occultists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, homosexuals, communists and the godless all want to grab hold of your children's minds, at least according to Howse. That the solution of Howse and his ilk is to make sure that children never even encounter these other points of view is, ironically, an example of the type of coersion that they fear from the outside world.

The clear threat to all children, everywhere, comes in a listener email that Howse reads aloud on his July 17th show, when Worldview Weekend columnist Tom DeWeese was his guest (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-13079/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse):

[AUDIO CLIP PRIMARYEDUCATIONCLIPDEWEESE07-16]

In his description of the show you just heard, Howse says: "Students are often asked to stand on one side of the room if they agree with liberal ideas and the other side of the room if they agree with Biblical or conservative ideas." He basis this sweeping statement on an anecdote of a person who was not there. Heck, she could write a gospel, at least by Howse's standards!

The problem with this is that the goals of America 2000 are available on the web (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/22/f1/db.pdf). I could find no mention of communism, the United Nations, or lopsided debate techniques in the proposed educational strategy. How did this become a totalizing globalist conpiracy in the mind of Brannon Howse? I can only guess. On page 53 of the document, we find the statement: "Working closely with the Governors, we will define new World Class Standards for schools, teachers and students in the five core subjects: math and science, English, history and geography." Did Howse mistake the phrase "new world class standards" for "the standards of the new world order"? I cannot presume to read his mind, but I can read the goals of America 2000, and Howse's characterization of the strategy is dead wrong. For instance, in his June 6, 2006, "U.S.A. Schooling the Communist Way, Part 1" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-2420), Howse says:

It's a prediction I hoped Americans would be wise enough to stop before it came to pass. As the education reporter and often the guest host of Michael Reagan's program I had spend countless hours warning Mike's listeners about Goals 2000, School-to-Work, Outcome-Based Education, HR6, No Child Left Behind, and other federal plans that have the goal of merging education with industrial production, thus turning our schools into vocational centers where students are "trained" rather than educated.

Republicans and Democrats alike are to blame for nailing this tenth plank of the Communist Manifesto into the educational foundation of schools right here in the good old U.S. of A. Lest you think I exaggerate, the tenth principle of the Communist Manifesto states that the goal of schooling for society's children should be the "combination of education with industrial production."

In the next installment, “U.S.A. Schooling the Communist Way, Part 2,” posted 20 days later (http://www.eagleforumofsacramento.com/?p=104), Howse says:

“the fact that so many Americans don't even know this communistic education reform is sweeping our nation is perilous. What is even more alarming are the ones who know it yet believe it is a good thing. Liberal Republicans and Democrats alike have succeeded in achieving the goals that Secular Humanists and Communists have long sought for America's children. And there, as they say, goes the future.

My understanding of education, and please understand that I am only an educator, is that with the arrival of the GI Bill following the Second World War, a new type of student has enrolled at college, and higher education has become much more open. No longer was college something that only the moneyed could aspire to. An older model of higher education, the type that you see in Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, in which students jocky for prestigious positions and editorships of undergraduate journals, yielded to a more practical, work-centered model that the new student population demanded. In all honesty, I suspect that college has, conceptually, become more career-oriented. The fragmentation of the disciplines (I mean, even "English" and "Communication" departments have been cut in two) is another example of this type of specialization, though there are institutional pressures at work as well, not just social and economic pressures. As a result, I would be absolutely stunned if the structures designed to prepare students to move into those institutions had not adjusted to meet those goals.

Back to Linda Hinkel, who, despite her relatively few appearances on Howse's website has had expressed the weirdness of an entire TrilateralCommission's worth of conspiracy theorists. Back in her article, "Teachers, Judges, Radical Islam, Acorn, Activists: The Treachery of America's Fifth Columns" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5119/Brannon-Howse):

Parents [are] not taking their jobs seriously and fail to give their kids a solid moral compass. Schools have so declined in the last 20 years that it is now clear We the Parents are the best teachers for our children. The Communists would love to steal our parental rights. They encourage us to put our children in government-sponsored daycare and all-day kindergartens. They tell us we ALL need that expensive college education, when the school of hard knocks is all you need for some careers. Because government schools are a successful vehicle to brainwash our children, they are given preferential treatment when school laws are made, while vouchers and charter schools are threats to their monopolistic ambitions. Steal our parental rights and brainwash our children, then the path to Communism will be easy.

When it comes to intellectuals being used to confuse people, I would refer gain to Howse's comparison of modern America and Nazi Germany (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4881/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse), in which he says:

Hitler was fascinated with Friedrich Nietzsche and distributed his writings to his inner circle. Nietzsche promoted Nihilism, the belief that life has no meaning, and he is best known for his position that "God is dead". Nietzsche is presently one of the most widely read authors by American college students.

Despite the fact that this has elements of numerous logical fallacies, including the non-sequitor, poisoning the well, the ad naziam, and the gigantic fib that Nietzsche is one of the most read authors on college campuses (outside of introductory philosophy classes). I have never once ever had to tell a student to put away their copy of Nietzchse and pay attention in class. Or any other book, for that matter. Indeed, in March, the Washington Post reported on college students' reading habits (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030501541.html):

Last year Meyer [author of the Twilight series] sold more books than any other author -- 22 million -- and those copies weren't all bought by middle-schoolers. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the best-selling titles on college campuses are mostly about hunky vampires or Barack Obama. Recently, Meyer and the president held six of the 10 top spots. In January, the most subversive book on the college bestseller list was Our Dumb World, a collection of gags from The Onion. The top title that month was The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. College kids' favorite nonfiction book was Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, about what makes successful individuals. And the only title that stakes a claim as a real novel for adults was Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, the choice of a million splendid book clubs.

In only one sense could I find anything like agreement with Howse and that would be that if my students were ever confronted with a bit of Nietszche, they would almost certainly be confused.

In the same article comparing America to Nazi Germany, Howse says:

“Private schools were abolished by Hitler and all education placed under Nazi control. There is constant pressure from federal and many state education authorities to require that Christian schools use state-mandated, humanistic textbooks. The Home School Legal Defense Association is fighting numerous battles at any given time to prevent parents from loosing the right to educate their children as they see fit. In August 2008, a federal district court ruled that the state of California university system may choose not to recognize the diplomas-and thereby deny college entrance to-students who attended a school using textbooks that express a Biblical worldview in the areas of history and science (i.e., Christian schools).”

I once ghost wrote the memoir of a Catholic schoolgirl in Nazi Germany, and I once had a Holocaust survivor speak to my class when we were talking about Holocaust deniers (she was in fact a Kindertransport rescue). In both cases, it seems that private schools were not "shut down." I would have to ask for evidence of this. All kids were shunted into Nazi extracurriculars and party loyalists were often given control of the schools, but that is not exactly the same thing. In the memoir I wrote, the Schwesternhaus (convent school) was open long into the war.

Most people agree that is in the interest not only of our constitutional republic, but also of the children themselves, to see that kids receive the best education. That standard, however, has as many definitions as there are citizens. However, one thing that most would endorse would be that an important component of "the best education" is that students learn, either literally or figuratively, at the feet of people who are expert in their subjects, either by reading the best books on the subjects or studying with the best teachers. There is nothing about getting pregnant that makes you qualified to teach an academic subject. Well, "life experience" is often a justification at diploma mills, but we're talking about legitimate educational institutions. Parents need to stop mistaking their capacity to assemble small people rather cheaply with either intelligence or wisdom or expertise. Of Pandas and People is simply not a science textbook, and it would be disingenuous for the UC system to pretend that a student taught from that textbook has had a real biology class. It would be a positive disservice to students to take their tuition money if they were not prepared for college, wouldn't it? Howse then makes the following statement about evolution:

“Calling upon Darwinian evolution, Hitler convinced the German people that purging millions of people was acceptable because of the need to create a pure race; also referred to as eugenics. American students across the board have been educated in Darwinian evolution because the Supreme Court has ruled that creation cannot be taught in our schools-even if both creation and evolution are taught side by side.”

I don't think that a fallacy has been described that accounts for this strange statement. I would call it "a juxtaposition of unrelated ideas." Creationism and evolution, of course, would be as properly paired in a science classroom as sections on the construction of the pyramidshese last two examples? We'll get to them in a second.

Linda Hinkel, who clearly gets her news from either the prestigious Internet or family members, invokes the Academic Boogieman, Saul Alinsky, as an example of the type of public intellectual confusing and misleading others in her article on American "fifth columnists"

The young teachers graduating from the Bill Ayer's teaching schools who are taught to bring political activism into the classrooms. He and his ilk advocate a silent revolution from within by indoctrinating the hearts and souls of our young. So far, he has done a good job of brainwashing our children to embrace the political paradise of Communism propounded by radical Saul Alinsky and others.

She goes on to say:

And the last, but certainly not the least Fifth Column is the college and university environments. At public colleges, anyone from off the street can go sell their activism to these students: pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, pro-radical Islam, pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, and any other activism they want. What a cesspool they have become by polluting the young minds in our country. Freedom of speech is a problem for conservative students in many of these "learning" environments. My advice to prospective parents of college students is that you think very carefully where you drop your precious offspring off. Do not let them hang out at these campuses any longer than is needed to obtain a marketable degree. "Obama's Poison Ivy," by Joan Swirsky is a great article about these irresponsible Ivy League schools that have graduated the incompetents who are currently running our government. These poisonous eggheads were obviously taught to embrace the political paradise of Communism. They learned how to destroy our country in the most efficient ways at their colleges. The Communists know they can take advantage of their students because these young adults have not been appropriately educated in American and world history. Brainwashed students can be taught just about anything, including Communism 101!

Hinkel's fear of...everything...and her demand that we seal children in plastic culture bubbles bespeaks ill of her and any philosophy that could possibly endorse it. Indeed, I have been able to find exactly no examples of anything that one might call a "Bill Ayers teaching school." Also, everyone knows that Communism 101 is an elective. (Linda, that was a joke. Put down the canister of sarin gas and step away from the train station.)

Point 10: “Jews encourage immorality among Christian youth”

Closely aligned with the supposed cabal of naughty liberals who have hijacked the education system are those who are actively subverting the moral purity of the Christian young people, who otherwise would never ever sin at all ever. Linda Hinkel, of course, thinks that the media communists are the ones making kids immoral. Back to her "Teachers, Judges, Radical Islam, Acorn, Activists: The Treachery of America's Fifth Columns” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-5119/Brannon-Howse):

The "fashion" designers and Hollywood "stars" who sell pornographic styles that are more fitting for prostitutes than for our children. The media now dictate to our children that it is fashionable to show it all with tattoos and earrings everywhere. Brainwashing our children weakens family unity, and destroying our families makes the path to Communism easier

To corrupt your older kids, you should look to liberal university professors. For an example of this, see Marsha West's article, “More Dangerous On College Campuses Than You Thought" (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-2306), which Howse reran on his website in July of last year:

Soon thousands of teens and twentysomethings will be going off to "institutions of higher learning." Young people who've been raised with moral values will go behind the fortified walls of Babylon, pretty much unarmed. And the barbarians are prepared to chew them up and spit them out.

Barbarians, you say? OK, liberals. Liberals on college campuses want your son and daughter to have the freedom to have sex (hetro or homo), to binge drink, and to do drugs. Most liberals have little or no respect for faith-based parents and their and their annoying moral values.

Before you pack your child's personal possessions into your SUV and whisk him or her off to a secular humanist indoctrination center, read on.

Yes, your students may learn something new in college. No, they don't need instructors' help to sin like crazy. Indeed, most of the faculty I know, by whom I mean "pretty much all of my friends," would rather not be involved with their students' extracurricular decisions. Why? Profound, almost utter disinterest--we think about them all day at school and the last thing we want to do is obsess over them in our free time. Kevin McCullough's principle claim to fame is that he has an opinion, not that he is a source for facts. And, at any rate, a fact without thinking is completely useless. However, I will agree with you that liberals think that they know better than you do what's best for your child. If you are feeding them a steady diet of conspiracy, fear, irrationality, misinformation and hate, I think it is fair to say that most lobotomized sea slugs are better equipped to show your children how the world works. Just because children are yours doesn't make you any better a parent.

Point 12: Jews control puppet governments through secret alliances and blackmailing public officials.

The tactics of coercion and collusion feature heavily in Howse's view of the world. Take two instances of coercion in the America and Nazi Germany article:

Pastors who spoke against Hitler's worldview and his murderous regime found themselves on trial and frequently imprisoned for "Abuse of Pulpit." In America, hate-crime legislation has the potential to criminalize Christians and pastors who speak out against the homosexual agenda.

I should mention here that Howse fails to note that Hitler put everyone on trial who opposed his murderous regime. Of course this is a symptom of his highly selective survey of history.

Hitler controlled the church using intimidation and threats. A half-century ago, U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, promoted a bill that included an amendment to use the Internal Revenue Service to remove the non-profit status of a church that speaks against the election of any specific political candidate.

Well, the reasons for this prohibition is clear. In keeping with the traditional separation of church and state and refusing to fund partisan polticial groups, it is the practice to tax such institutions when they violate their contract with the people, the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. It is hard to pin down who pulls the strings, at least in the terrestrial realm. The UN is often put forward as the ultimate puppet master of governments. Sometimes it seems that Fabian Socialists are seen to be infecting the world with gradualist policies. Sometimes it is the Masons. Sometimes it is the Catholic Church. Sometimes it is Radical Environmentalists. The only shared characteristic of these various evildoers is that they are not buying stuff from Howse's site. They encompass "the entire rest of the world." "If you are not one of us," Howse's worldview cries out, "you are one of them." This completely polarizing, absolutely simplistic and utterly irresponsible and unthinking demonization of everyone else is the ultimate extension of paranoid political conspiracism. A more totalizing view is not possible.

Now, I have held back on this final analysis while writing, but we are getting to the source of all the evil in the world. Who is pulling the strings? Of course it is Satan. The Devil. Lucifer. According to Howse, the devil is placing all of his chess pieces in strategic places around the world, and he is just waiting to strike to bring about the end times. But how does Howse describe this to his listeners?

[Clip HowseWorldDevil]

Ultimately, Howse's view of the world depends on something that he can't prove. Placing blame on the devil for what Howse finds to be the universally unacceptable state of the world has a few direct consequences for him and his listeners. First, it gives his strange movement an excuse not to negotiate with, well, anyone. Why should he? Everyone else, in his view of the world, is in the thrall of the devil or is his willing agent. This unwillingness to engage with others effectively neuters his own movement as a significant political force. By seeing the devil everywhere, instead of inciting curiousity about how the world works and directing energy into productive channels of reform, he and his listeners tilt at windmills. It also, to Howse's mind, allows him to stir up hate without pricking his conscience, and he clearly hates a lot of people. This includes majority of his fellow man who do not worship his god, politicians, elites, Catholics, slightly ridiculous and wishy-washy new agers, teachers, communists, socialists, foreigners, and so on. Howse never goes so far as to suggest this, but put yourself in the head of a conscientious patriot and loyal listener of Howse. If the devil is maneuvering his agents into place all over the world for a coming battle, it seems almost a natural extension for a person who feels persecuted to take matters into his own hands. The problem is that a number of Howse's listeners clearly are paranoid. Take for instance this listener, who recently called in to Howse's show on the 23rd of July.

[Audio Clip Howse'sCaller]

Kip from Sioux Falls is clearly mentally ill. He says that citi-bankers "tilt" things, office supplies, in a definite pattern. This man sees agency where there can be no agency. I have a strong fear that things won't end well for this caller, since he feels that everyone in 3 buildings is part of a coordinated effort. One of the curious and unintentional effects of the rise of social media, including youtube, is that high functioning paranoid schizophrenics can find each other and agree that, yes, everybody they see is out to get them. I encourage you to look up the phrase "gang stalking," on youtube. In the clip that follows, a woman with a handi-cam and basic video editing software goes out and sits in her car, filming people on the street, all of whom, she believes, are stalking her.

[Audio clip: Gang Stalking]

Cheap technology offers us an opportunity to see the world from the point of view of the paranoiac, and it is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. Consider the following woman:

[Audio Clip: RainbowLady]

The rainbow lady is of the two schizophrenics most like Howse's caller, seeing hostile agency where there can be none. I hear that she also believes that condensation trails behind airplanes are actually chemical sprays. Howse does not challenge Kip. Instead, he encourages such conspiracist thinking. Many of these schizophrenics--and I am using the word as a layman--experience harassment because they feel that their stuff has been touched. Not that it has, but they feel that people are moving stuff very slightly in their apartments, opening their mail, and generally making their lives uncomfortable. This sounds almost exactly like the imaginary pattern that Kip is seeing. And Kip is not the only one. I could do an entire podcast series just on the people who call in to Howse's show, the people who he does not correct, and the people to whom he is trying to sell confirmation of their paranoid delusions. I hold Howse responsible in much the same way I would regard a parlor psychic--one who genuinely believes that she is helping someone. He reinforces these unfounded beliefs and directly profits from them. Worse yet is that Kip and people like him who see agency everywhere often feel like they are being tortured and become either self-destructive or lash out. When Howse, who is a symptom of a larger pattern in the media of demonization and scapegoating, over and over identifies the same targets, partial responsibility lies on the shoulders of those who were in a position to do something, yet did nothing. Howse's metaphor of the devil on a leash seems to be appropriate. But instead of absolving god of crimes against man committed by the devil, who is given limited free reign, I would argue that if a dog owner allows their leashed animal to do the biting, the owner, even though he never sunk his own teeth into the victim, is still partly responsible for the damage.

13. " Jews weaken laws through liberal interpretations."

Ah, the endlessly trumpeted and utterly inane screed about activist judges. This is perhaps the most mainstream of the paraniod beliefs that have captivated the extremely unstable religious right. Instead of going into all of the endless ways in which liberal activist judges are supposed to be overturning all things American, I simply refer you to a very abbreviated list of just some of the articles Howse has reprinted that talk about activist judges:

• J. Matt Barber: “Unmasking the ‘Gay’ Agenda” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-3098)
  
• William Federer: “Tyranny of the Atheist Minority” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-3540)
  
• David Barton: “Congress, the Culture and Christian Voting” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4102/Brannon-Howse/David-Barton)
  
• Donald Hank in the improbably titled “Thank God for the ACLU” (http://hjhop.blogspot.com/2007/05/thank-god-for-aclu.html)
  
• Tim Wildmon: “Filibusters –A Life and Death Issue? Absolutely” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/new/article.php/articleid-24/Brannon-Howse/Tim-Wildmon)
  Tom DeWeese: “Protecting the Republic from Federal Judges” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-788/Brannon-Howse/Tom-DeWeese)
  
• Even the Reverand Jesse, well, ok, Patterson in “Black Preachers Worshipping the Wrong Messiah” (http://www.worldviewtimes.com/article.php/articleid-4190)
  

Point 14: Jews will suspend civil liberties during an emergency and then make the measures permanent.

This final point, patient listener, is classic conspiracism. The ones who are really in charge will manufacture crises and will somehow sweep in and take over, having created such chaos that they will somehow make people demand to be taken over for the sake of stability. Howse clearly sees the current recession as an opportunity in his "America and Nazi Germany” article:

Hitler exploited the economic collapse of Germany to take over as dictator and usher in his brand of socialism. America's financial crisis has given liberals in both political parties the opportunity to grow the size of government and implement freedom-robbing socialism at lightning speed.

I would like to point out that Hitler was not a socialist, but don't take my word for it. Take Chip Berlet's! Here he is speaking on Fresh Air about the Holocaust Museum shooter, but the point and strange logic is identical to that of Howse.

[AudioClip: BerletSocialism]

So, this coming seizure of power that will result in the overthrow of American soveriegnty and deliver us all into the hands of the Antichrist...what will it be like? I covered this in my first podcast on May 14th. Howse has just reported that a person from the Census Bureau has taken the GPS coordinates of his home, something that will allow statisticians and demographers to analyze the data collected to craft better social policy, social policy that reflects reality. But Howse interprets the visit differently. He is reading from a blogger's website, describing one possible purpose for this "GPSing":

[Audio Clip: HowseGPSing]

I think that it is just an unfortunate coincidence that Rahm Emmanuel is, as Howse reports, is overseeing this project. Emmanuel's reputation as being crafty and bullish, however, certainly has led many people to conclude that he is the Jewish puppet master behind Obama. So, the UN is going to invade. Howse is a heartbeat away from black helicopters and soldiers in blue helmets dropping down in church parking lots.

Or is he? Sometimes, it seems like our own military should fall under suspicion. Part of the allure of conspiracism is that you can spin multiple nightmare scenarios, This reveals that it is the emotion, not the factual content, of conspiracies that is important. I read from the description of Howse's July 21st radio show (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-13159/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse):

Can we count on the U.S. military to stand up and refuse to go along with tyranny, with unconstitutional orders, to not become a police force against the American people? Will our military refuse to swear allegiance to the United Nations if asked to do so? Description: 1,000 of 4,000 prisoners of war from the Korean War were studied on their return home. As John Stormer writes, "Investigators found that some Americans had broadcast anti-American propaganda, informed on other prisoners, wrote articles, letters and stories praising life under communism, confessed to 'germ warfare' and other atrocities and generally cooperated with their captors in every way." All this happened without "drugs, physical torture, or highly developed hypnotic techniques--just subtle pressures for conformity." The communists brainwashed our POWs with anti-American propaganda written by a communist group in America. Our POWs did not have the knowledge, understanding of history, economics or powers of reason and logic to withstand the pro-communist agenda. If these men of the early 1950s were so easily controlled and brainwashed by the communists outside the U.S. then what about our young soldiers of today that were educated in collectivism, socialism, group think, anti-American history, tolerance and postmodernism right here in our nation's schools?

It is at this point, just the other day, long after I started writing this podcast, that Howse clearly flirts with classic and direct anti-Semitism (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-13159/Brannon-Howse/Brannon-Howse):

[AUDIO CLIP: HOWSE_BANKSTERS]

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Howse's project, it seems to me, is to dull the sense of reason and to set fire to emotions, while adding nothing to listener's knowledge base. Indeed, a large part of his project is to redirect their energies away from political engagement. He is misdirecting the attention of his readers to insubstantial, elusive and unvanquishable enemies, and in doing so, he degrades their ability to respond usefully to the crises of the day and effectively promote their own political views. He is disempowering them and, if you have any doubt visit his online store, clearly profiting from their disempowerment.

Conclusion:

I am issuing a challenge to Brannon Howse—you need to come clean to your listeners and address the dangerous historical parrallels of your worldview. No, I’m not full of myself. Howse loves to issue challenges—he did it to a Focus on the Family spokesperson the other day when he hosted the July 17th episode of Cross-Talk (http://www.worldviewradio.com/episode.php/episodeid-13105/Brannon-Howse/Crosstalk). I think that if he were a man whose word was worth a flying biscuit and whose pontifications were true he would not be afraid to address the historical roots of his worldview, or to at least explain to me how I am wrong. Otherwise, to paraphrase Brannon’s description of the Focus on the Family representative, I think we would find out Howse is an empty suit who is really nothing more than "a conspiracy guy." I close with another quote from Howse's America and Nazi Germany article, which fairly demands that he account publicly for the anti-Semitic roots of his perverse worldview, and I quote it here in full and without editing:

Please understand that I'm not sensationalizing when making these observations. First Chronicles 12:32 says men of the tribe of Issachar were called wise because they "understood the times and knew what God would have them to do." To help you make your own assessment of the situation, I've distinguished […] the intensity of the tempest that is nearly upon us. And yes, there are obvious comparisons with the growth of Nazism in Germany. I will point them out unabashedly because it's only reasonable to say so if something that looks similar to an earlier, dangerous historical parallel actually is similar. After all, storm warnings, by nature, foretell bad news.

HJ