Our occasional Look into the World of Whackjobs: #4 - Andy Schlafly (Loooong)
Last edited Wed May 27, 2015, 03:57 PM - Edit history (1)
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[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]"Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears?
Now it's time for the Conservatives to get our voice out on the internet!! " [/font] [/center][/center]
[center] http://www.conservapedia.com/
Conservative Bible Project
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[center] [font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]Andrew Layton Schlafly: [/font]
Lawyer, Education Expert, Bible Scholar, American Exceptionalist, Scientist, Mathematician, Psychologist etc. etc. etc. etc.....[/center]
We're not really concerned with Andy Schlafly's life before he was considered old enough to go out into the Great Wide World without anyone holding his hand (other than Jesus, of course). His early life seems to have been typical of the average American Conservative Catholic family - five siblings, homechooled at first and then a private Catholic boys' school and then onto Princeton. After Princeton, Harvard Law. Nothing to really shake the silver spoon loose from his mouth. Then things started to get interesting.
Andy was on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review at the same time that Barack Obama was its Editor-In-Chief but I would guess that they weren't great buddies. I don't suppose they ever shared a smoke and a George Carlin video at the end of a hard day's lawyering. Here they are with the rest of the Law Review in 1990. There's the future POTUS down there in the bottom right of the gathering and there's Andy at the far left of the second row down, just about as far away as he can get from the black guy with the big stick and still be in the picture. Perhaps Andy thinks that Obama's British. Or a Muslim. A British Muslim.
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Nevertheless, each has gone on to Greater Things. Obama of course became President but Andy, not one to aim low, went on to become not only a spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement but also head counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' ongoing legal challenge to "Obamacare", an Act which, he insists, violates the Fifth Amendment. (Admittedly I am just an atheistic un-American Brit who can't even spell "apologise" properly but I have absolutely no idea what this means. But you can trust Andy, he's a lawyer).
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[font size="1"]Brave Andy protects ultra-conservative medical professionals from the threat of socialized medicine[/font][/center]
Like Obama, Andy is now taking the opportunity to celebrate his good fortune by paying some of it back to help his fellow Conservative man. Andy is now a self-employed attorney and Homeschool Teacher.
[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." [font size="1"]( Victor Hugo)[/font] [/font]
We may well wonder what kind of a parent you would have to be to pay someone like Andy to mold the malleable minds of your beloved children. Let me give you some clues:
You are probably, like Andy, a Roman Catholic. You believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. You're a Young Earth Creationist who believes in an interventionist God who influences everyday life in every way from deciding football scores to the timetables of tsunamis to whether or not Mulder ever gets it on with Scully (*Spoiler: he doesn't, the fool!). Noah's flood happened about 5,300 years ago and the two kangaroos managed to walk, swim, leap and box their way from Turkey to Australia before the two dinosaurs could rip them apart.
So far, so good, right? But you really need to know some of Andy's beliefs about education. What views would you have in common?
Well, first of all you have to be happy with the idea of placing your children's educational development in the hands of someone who has absolutely no training or certification in the field of education. That's probably OK, though, certificates are just a liberal invention, right? A Real Man has a Bible, all you need to know is in there.
You won't mind that Andy's class is not AP-certified and will agree with his decision not to seek certification for it because the board would "censor" him. Can't be too careful with these liberals, right? They'll do anything to stop a righteous man speaking The Truth.
You agree with Andy that the idea that liberals have been spreading around that, the smaller the class size, the better (allowing the teacher to spend more time with each individual child), is a lie. In fact, Andy says, the bigger the class size, the better. He wrote an essay on it in, well of course, in Conservapedia in which he points out: "Maybe liberals like smaller classes (in addition to the political benefit to the Left of more teachers for the unions) because the students' minds become easier to control and mislead in smaller groups." As public schools are of course Liberal Hell Holes and the only Godly American way is to homeschool, you can be grateful that you can afford a home big enough to fit those bloody huge classes in.
You agree with Andy that spelling and grammar aren't important (as long as it's American spelling) even though he says he's an expert in these disciplines. Andy's own writing shows poor punctuation, spelling and grammar and it hasn't held him back; as he says, "I do teaching writing." Can't argue with that.
You're happy for Andy to mark your children's homework online. In public. Where anyone can see it. Where everyone can see it. You can see it on Conservapedia. None of that namby-pamby private and confidential teaching for Andy.
It will help if you're not very fond of books. Andy isn't fond of books. After all, he says, "Most books (other than the Bible) are liberal claptrap anyway...". But then, he's not really in favour of academia in general; he believes that, "the process of inducing people to rely on 'the perceived view of experts' is a misleading one." People learn better by ignoring experienced, qualified researchers and "thinking for oneself".
As you're thinking of paying Andy to indoctrinate teach your children, You probably agree with his opinion that experts are useless and that what he calls "best of the public" is better than a library full of experts. By "best of the public", I think Andy means himself. Now you may think that by "experts" he means all the people who disagree with his opinions - and you could be right. There sure are a lot of them though. I guess they must be Liberals or something. Andy has some convincing arguments to back up his point of view, such as: "The Beatles were experts, yet no song they produced was as good or as appreciated as the one-hit wonders." (Checkmate, academics!)
Although you agree with Andy that experts with credentials are, at best, useless and, at worst, dangerous you're secretly glad that Andy has claimed that he has expertise in such areas as Anthropology, Biblical scholarship, Constitutional Law, Great Works of Mankind, Immunology, Microbiology, Nutrition, Oncology, Linguistics, Psychiatry/psychology, Pure mathematics, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Statistics, Humor Humour (Screw you, Bible-Boy!), History of the US, The Entertainment Industry and World History (Hell, I wish he'd taught my kids!)
If you could manage to shoehorn yourself into one of Andy's massive World History classes in your home, you might hear him solving some of his famous list of the "Mysteries Or Unresolved Issues About World History". You should, you'll learn some vital things about "World History" that they wouldn't cover in liberal public schools, including:
and so on...
But don't worry that with all this worldwide history mystery being solved Andy won't have time to being things a little closer to God's Own Country, the USA (I mean, who cares about the bloody dead Brits and French weirdos, right?). Don't panic; Andy says that he teaches "the largest pre-college American History class in the world"
Find yourself worrying that the qualifications your children might get from Andy's non-accredited classes won't get them into a university? Don't. Doesn't he himself say, "There is no place on earth so close-minded as the modern University. The lack of diversity of thought is unmatched anywhere on earth."? Your kids are better off in one of those Christian colleges - they seem to be thrilled to accept Andy's graduates.
Like Andy, you will believe that girls are less intelligent than boys. Admittedly, this will not be important to you unless you're one of them "Feminists" that Andy has been taught to hate so much. And you're not likely to be if you believe that every word of the Bible is true. As he says, "Think girls can excel in math as well as boys can? Liberals teach they can, which is teaching a falsehood." Got that? Girls are just dumber and, being the understanding, caring educator that he is, Andy allowances for this in his own examination for his American History course, in which girls are given 15% fewer questions than boys but the same amount of time to finish it. Like any reputable professional Andy has looked into the findings and concludes that any research which finds that there is no difference in educational ability between the genders is just "politically correct"
[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]The Nut Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree [/font]
It may be that Andy inherited his misogyny from his mother the notorious Phyllis Schlafly ("for many the symbol of the conservative movement"), Ann Coulter's heroine and author of such screeds as:
A word of warning - anyone approaching Phyllis' volume "Feminist Fantasies" expecting a Nancy Friday "My Secret Garden" kind of thing is going to be disappointed. As for "Kissinger on the Couch"? - not autobiographical.
(I'm sure there are some interesting questions to be asked about Phyllis. Like: How does a woman whose great concern in life is the survival of the Traditional American Family justify spending enough time away from her own husband and six children to write about twenty books explaining how a woman's place is In The Home and that Evil Feminists are breaking down society by insisting on working for a living instead of being Good Christian Women? Dang, shouldn't she be in the kitchen wearing blinders, baking Virgin Mary cookies or whatever it is that these people's children are allowed to eat without being sent to Hell? Just who was being housekeeper for the Schlaflys while Phyllis was out manning the barricades and screaming on the picket lines so that her fellow woman wouldn't have equal rights with their Lords and Masters? I'm sure that Andy can't spell "Cognitive Dissonance", but do you think he knows what it means? How about "Hypocrisy"?)
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Here's Phyllis back in the '70s, campaigning against equality for women.[/center]
So young Andy grew up terrified of people with breasts and brains (this obviously doesn't include his mother. I wonder if he thinks that her many books are "liberal claptrap"?).
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[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]"God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal." [font size="1"](Samuel Butler)[/font] [/font]
You would think that life for Mr. Schlafly would be pretty fulfilling: There he was leading the charge against people being vaccinated and all seemed to be going well; parents were free to let their children die if that's what God wanted, rather than being dictated to by liberal scientists and so-called "doctors". Good old familiar natural Godly things that the liberals and feminists had done away with - like measles - were back on the scene at last, and Andy was pushing back against the spread of affordable healthcare in the US.
His massive-class homeschool project was a huge success - little Catholic boys everywhere were being taught that they already know more than all the world's experts put together and little girls were being trained to be mothers and home-makers and you could be forgiven for concluding that Andy must have allowed himself a period of quiet self-satisfaction when he looked around and Saw that It Was Good.
But Andy had a dream. (Well, two dreams but let's take them one at a time).
You see, Andy knows what's wrong with American society - his mother taught him and God backed her up. I say "American" society because to Andy anything not-American is, by definition, Un-American and therefore to be shunned and ignored. The British for example; we spell things differently. This, says Andy, is because Brits are atheistic and therefore liberal and therefore poor at maths and spelling.
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[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]A digression[/font]
Andy is concerned by atheism and knows a lot about it, including things that even atheists don't know. Were you aware, for example, that there is a correlation between atheism and obesity? Admit it, you missed that one, didn't you? But Andy didn't. You may protest that there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim but that's just you being liberal and Andy doesn't listen to Liberals. If you can bear the range of bigotry, prejudice, ignorance, and sheer stupidity on display at the site, Conservapedia will tell you all about atheism including many things you didn't realise including "The atheist philosopher Peter Singer defends the practice of bestiality", "Atheists have a low retention rate compared to other worldviews", "Creation scientists tend to win debates with evolutionists" and "Stephen Fry is an atheist and a homosexual". (Actually, I knew that one). In fact a visit there might be just what you need to cure your atheism, once you read about what absolute vicious bastards atheists are. "Atheism and bestiality"? "Atheism and hypocrisy"? "Atheism and abortion"? "Atheism and mental health"? "Atheism and alcoholism"? - it's all there, and much, much more.
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Back to [font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]Andy's Big Dream: [/font]
What [b ]is[/b ] wrong with American Society?
Well actually - and there's no easy way to put this - YOU[/b ] are. Yes, you, all you Liberal, atheist, "evolutionist", anti-Zionist, God-hating, Obama- and Muslim-loving, family-destroying, gay-hugging degenerates. You control the courts, the entertainment industry, the education system, the television, the newspapers, the internet...
Andy knew that all over America innocent Conservative kids were typing the styles of porno they were looking for innocent questions into Google and being directed to that bastion of Liberal propaganda, Wikipedia, for answers. Thus ruining their minds for ever. Something was needed - urgently! - to rectify this situation! But who would step forward to Put Things Right?
Here's Andy, in an interview with The Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2010:
[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#deedfc; color:#00000 0; margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em; padding-left:15px; border:1px dashed #7a7b7d ; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:4px 4px 4px #999999;"]"I was teaching a world-history class to a group of home-schoolers, and one of them submitted answers that used B.C.E. and C.E. to describe dates instead of B.C. and A.D. I asked where she had gotten that, and she said she got it from Wikipedia. I realized that more and more people are getting their information from Wikipedia, which is an atheistic and very liberal resource. I decided that we needed an Internet encyclopedia that was free of liberal bias and also gave clear and concise answers."
In November 2006 Andy and a group of his homeschooled teenagers (aka "The Panel"
started up Conservapedia, a place to house his homeschool empire and an attempt to give the Conservative viewpoint and cancel out all the horrible lies spread by Wikipedia. Because there's no-one more qualified to speak the truth about everything than a sad loon and a bunch of barely-educated Jesus-freaks. It would tell the truth about the world and put Jesus where he belonged - right at the top of everything.
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[font size="1"](Creative Commons)[/font] [/center]
Together they would steer Conservapedia through the liberal-infested oceans of the internet until they reached that mystical, magical land where only conservatives were allowed to have an opinion. The American Family would be restored to its former glory with the man sitting at the head of the table, right between Jesus and Phyllis.
Here, you see, I want to quote articles and statements from Conservapedia, just for comic value. But the problem is that just about everything on Conservapedia reads like a parody. If you didn't know that Andrew Layton Schlafly actually is a barely-literate, ignorant, self-aggrandizing halfwit, you would conclude as some have that Conservapedia is a giant joke. If I were to quote it you'd think I'd made it up. Everything from the rules ("Commandments" to the ridiculous articles to mad Andy's reasons for banning people leave one with the uncomfortable feeling that there is no hope for humanity.
Like many people with nothing rational to say, Andy says a lot of it. Here's a selection of choice quotes from the man:
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Andy's dream was that Conservapedia would grow and grow until its power and influence and authority couldn't be ignored. It would become the place to go for the truth about everything. No more would young minds be perverted by Liberal propaganda and lies. Anyone searching for anything on the internet would automatically be directed to Conservapedia where Jesus and his little helpers waited to tell them what to think. The Truth would be Out There and as any good Jesus-freak knows, "...the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). America (and by definition, The World) would be saved. Andy and his Conservative band of teenage saviours would have pushed back the surging tide of Liberal lies. Society itself would be changed, fundamentally. As Andy himself said:
"One day, TV will be gone and all that will remain is Conservapedia"
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[font size="1"]Ever-vigilent Andy checks Conservapedia for signs of Communist infiltration and British spelling[/font][/center]
But Andy's Dream, born in the hot-house Eden of homeschooled ignorance was destined, like so many before it, to wither and die in the harsh daylight of reality. At first Andy had "The Panel" to help him rewrite World History along Creationist lines but, gradually, they fell away until it was mostly just him and Jesus. And a few drunk-with-the-power colleagues. With probably a few undercover parodists mixed in with them. Who could tell? I imagine that even Andy couldn't tell the difference between a genuine misogynistic xenophobic, vile loudmouth like his colleague Theodore Beale ("Vox Day", the Bigot's Bigot), and a sneaky Liberal infiltrator pretending to be a white-supremist moron in order to point out how dumb those people are.
Andy and the people he still hasn't banned continue to update Conservapedia and, indeed, the place does serve a purpose.
Granted, it's not adding significantly to the store of World Knowledge;
- admittedly, the only people who seem to refer to it are the people who write for it;
- naturally, if you wanted to be taken seriously you wouldn't ever quote it as a source;
- sadly, not even Conservatives seem to have any praise for it.
But - it gives the average person who may never otherwise have the opportunity to encounter madness close-up the chance to watch someone go bonkers from the safety of their own keyboards.
Let's leave the last word on Andy and Conservapedia to Phyllis:
[center] “He has started this thing on the Internet. I don't know what to call it.”[/center]
(We feel your pain, Phyllis)
As you know, we like to end our reports on an upbeat note so here's one thing actually in Andy's favour: he has what has been described as "The most amazingly annoying laugh in the history of television". Here it is:
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[font style="font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;" size=2 color="#b83c34" ]Previous Whackjobs: [/font]
#1 Rapture Ready
#2 No Greater Joy Ministries
#3 David J. Stewart
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for the laughs, that was a great article. And we should all borrow your VNN logo for future dispatches.
I'm still trying to figure out how the World's Smartest Person uses the Fifth Amendment to find Obamacare illegal.
As just about everybody knows, even atheist foreigners, that Amendment is a summary of legal rights: no arrest without indictment, no double jeopardy, no self-incrimination.
The Schlafly legal team is probably referring to the last 2 clauses, about taking of private property.
Which means Andy is just stealing from our anti-tax/anti-govt. nuts, who have been screaming that for years.
They conveniently forget that legislation passed by Congress meets the "due process of law" requirement. Jebus, that's practically the very definition of "due process."
The anti-government loons were a lot more fun back in the 1990s. Especially when they discovered that most American courtrooms displayed the illegal "Admiralty Flag," not the real U.S. Jesus-approved American flag. (The difference being the fringe around the flag, IIRC.) And therefore all legal proceedings in such courtrooms were illegal and non-binding on American citizens.
Anyway, for atheist foreigners and the curious, here's the exact text of the Fifth Amendment. Which is strangely silent on the topic of Kenyan Muslim dictators stealing hard-earned tax money to finance public health care: