I was tempted to go the FJM route when I laid eyes upon "Christian conservatism just getting started" by Star Parker. The more I looked at it, however, I realized that if an undergraduate student submitted this in class I would not even be able to muster the strength to give it a pity D. Star Parker, wealthy author and syndicated columnist, is not nearly as good of a writer as a college freshman. I am about to prove it.
There are some today who suggest that Christian conservatism as a political force is over.
Star, it's a good idea to avoid generalized attributions like "Some people say." These usually are thinly-veiled attempts by an author to insert his or her own opinion. It is unpersuasive and lazy.
Those who make this claim point to the fact that liberal Democrats now control the White House and both houses of congress, that the number of Americans self identifying as Democrats compared to Republicans has increased, that the direction of public opinion, particularly among young people, on social issues is liberal, and that the Republican Party itself has been divided over the conservative agenda.
This is a run-on sentence. "Congress" is a proper noun. The evidence you have cited here severely undermines your own argument. You are missing the purpose of a persuasive essay.
But those who write off Christian conservatism as a political force have underestimated the driving compulsion behind traditional faith and American freedom.
This is an appeal to emotion, not an argument. Citing empirical evidence that disproves your argument and then refuting it with your opinion – and a vague one at that – is a poor strategy.
Just looking at who is in power does not reveal the depth of division in the country today and for the reasons that the nation is so deeply divided, may I suggest that Christian conservatism will not only survive but will thrive.
After reading this six or seven times I came to the conclusion that it is a sentence fragment at best, and incomprehensible at worst. Did you proofread this? Your rhetorical style seems to be to present contradictory evidence and then tell the reader that you think it is wrong.
For although the Pew Research Center reports
"For although" is redundant.
For although the Pew Research Center reports that the partisan gap in approval for President Obama is the widest this gap has been in modern times with the difference between Democrat approval of Obama, 88 percent, and Republican approval, 27 percent, the "values" gap reflected in Pew and other studies is far too significant for some to suggest that conservative Christians take their voting rights home to be buried.
Ms. Parker, I do not appreciate it when students waste my time. Papers that have not been proofread and do not adhere to the basic rules of English grammar do just that.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 76 percent of Republicans say that religion is an "important part" of their life, compared to 57 percent of Democrats. And 55 percent of Republicans go to religious services at least once per week compared to 34 percent of Democrats.
What does this prove? All I see is evidence that Republicans may tell survey researchers that they go to church more often.
online pharmacy https://www.clarksvillesmilestn.com/wp-content/themes/bella-child/assets/jss/orlistat.html no prescription pharmacyWhether or not they do, or what this means, is unclear.
Some 59 percent of Democrats
What does "some 59 percent" mean?
say out of wedlock births are morally acceptable, compared to 39 percent of Republicans. And with recent data showing 40 percent out of wedlock birth rates, what if any public policy should regulate this behavior?
The purpose of this assignment is to be persuasive by presenting evidence, not by asking rhetorical questions. You have offered no evidence to support the assumption that public policy should regulate the behavior in question.
Abortion is morally acceptable to 51 percent of Democrats compared to 25 percent of Republicans. And with 48 million abortion deaths since Roe v Wade, should no political concern address the societal costs of this law?
Star, you've had four abortions. Four! I hope you are prepared to defend your position in light of your own behavior.
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Homosexuality is morally acceptable to 55 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans. And 52 percent of Democrats are ready to legalize same sex marriage compared to 22 percent of Republicans. We only need to look at 30 years of inner city data and see the impact of coupling government social engineering with unbridled sexual impulse.
I am at a loss to figure out what this means. What is the connection between homosexuality and…whatever it is to which you're linking it in the second sentence?
Without a moral compass in politics and law, where do we go to answer the hard questions?
Your conclusions do not match your data. 55% of Democrats supporting gay marriage = no moral compass. 30% of Republicans supporting gay marriage = moral compass. Where's the break point? I estimate 37.8%.
The Christian right has interjected itself into the political world because the political world came into their world.
This is non-sequitur and confusing.
The public schools that are educating the majority of America's children have been increasingly secularized and politicized.
Do you know what "public" means?
online pharmacy https://www.clarksvillesmilestn.com/wp-content/themes/bella-child/assets/jss/clomiphene.html no prescription pharmacyPublic schools are by definition "secular." Christian conservatives have done much to politicize them, though, so your second point is valid.
The work place has been purged of biblical ethics. All public space is darkened by lawless and vulgar lasciviousness and becoming increasingly intolerant of practicing Christians.
We are not on Larry King. The assignment was not to submit a moral diatribe on what you consider "lawless and vulgar." You seriously misunderstand what "persuasion" means.
The result is that secular Americans have had a disproportionate impact on our country over recent years and biblical Americans are now fighting back with their voting rights.
"on our country over recent years" is poor syntax. Who are "biblical Americans?" If they are now fighting back with their voting rights, explain the November election results. And 2006. Do these examples mesh with your "argument?
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Abraham Lincoln said that a "house divided against itself cannot stand."
Trite, but accurately quoted. Cite, please. When and where was this said? In what context?
He recognized that when points of contention have to do with basic values on common ground, we've got to decide who we are going to be.
What does "have to do with basic values on common ground" mean? This sentence does not make any sense. This clearly was not proofread and it reads like you slapped it together 20 minutes before class.
He knew the country couldn't continue half slave and half free and would have to become all of one or all of the other.
I fail to see how this is in any way related to your argument, or what your argument is for that matter. Only in the context of a paper with no argument is this sentence acceptable.
The divisions in America today have gotten beyond the political class and the talking heads.
Do you mean 'have gone beyond'? This appears to be your thesis, but no part of your paper has supported it.
It requires voting action to thread one worldview or the other into our rule of law and the Christian right has chosen the Republican Party as its needle.
"It requires voting action" sounds like this was written in Ukranian and translated into English – using a free, bad online translator. Your argument continues to damage itself. Having chosen the GOP as its needle, how does the party's failure support your point?
America is in a crisis because the wrong people have been making the wrong decisions for too many years.
Do you honestly not understand how badly this undercuts the entire point of your essay? Regardless, I am happy to see something true in this paper, even if it took 600 words.
Christian conservatives have an obligation to help lead America to it founding principles of traditional values and limited government. Christians must actively shape public policy in the country and inject our values into every part of our shared space.
It sounds like a conclusion, but it has little to do with what I just read.
So I would suggest that the naysayer put away their shovels
This kind of grammatical error insults the reader's intelligence.
because the religious right is not dead nor in a coma.
This should either read "or in a" or "nor is it in a." Two examples of grammatical butchery in one sentence.
Christian conservatives are not and never will withdraw. In fact, we are just getting started.
Read this sentence and tell me what grade you would give a paper that included it. What do you think? Here's what I think: I think your mother used a lot of powerful cleaning solvents without adequate ventilation while carrying you in utero. I feel like I have just watched Caddyshack 2 on peyote. This was so bad that it has to be a joke; if not, it is indicative of a complete disregard of the basic tenets of English composition and rhetoric. My first reaction was to ink "50/100. F" on this paper, but the more I thought about it I couldn't figure out what exactly you did to earn the 50 points. This is of a level of quality that I would not accept from a high school sophomore. You're in college. Act like it. There is no way that you will be able to get away with such poor writing in the real world beyond graduation, nor will you make it that far without a committment to improvement.
Jeff says:
And yet she -is- paid for writing this. There is no justice in the world.
Mark says:
This is typical of most opinion pieces spoken or written by the conservative pundits these days (or found in your typical Facebook discussion board). It's also one of the reasons why I enjoy this blog so much.
Virginia S. Wood, Psy.D. says:
It is also, unfortunately, typical of the papers submitted at my university. I often fantasize writing notes like these in the margins.
Michael says:
The scariest part is that her audience would lap that up like kittens with a saucer of cream. They completely get her point, however poorly articulated. I am surrounded by people that would love to see a Christian Theocracy imposed on this country – with laws that would make the Taliban say, "Wow those motherfuckers are crazy."
John says:
Well, to be fair Ed, in context the piece does have a point that is 'supported' — just a horrifying point and 'support' that only someone of its target audience would accept. Parker's suggestion is that it is time for the Christian right to rise up and vote their will on the rest of the "lawless and vulgar" populace. A populace that her numbers show is composed of godless, baby-murdering, homosexual heathens. And it is the objective of the far Christian right to impose their religion on those godless heathens by making it law.
Her assertion that they are "just getting started" is her trying to rationalize their self-rightous belief that *they are the only true way* in the face of their nigh-total failure to succeed in their goals.
But true, in a more professional arena — one that isn't just writing opinion pieces to rile up the hard-right base that doesn't require well-formed arguments — it fails hard.
D.N. Nation says:
Parker has always been a two-bit hack who can barely hide how much of an outrageous bigot she is. So…
"I am at a loss to figure out what this means. What is the connection between homosexuality and…whatever it is to which you’re linking it in the second sentence?"
See, this is what Super Star always does. Something something something homosexuality = something something something poverty/lawlessness/broken homes/slavery/whatever. It's easy to think she's just a moron, but there's something more at work here. YouTube some Parker clips and you'll see her true point; the woman actually wants gays put into work camps. Not kidding. Writing hacky columns for wingnut welfare dollars is, to Star, a means to an end. Too bad she's so lousy at it.
D.N. Nation says:
Also, sadly, Star doesn't return e-mails. So you can't get her to admit to her whackadoodle view of the universe. Unlike, for example, Scripps Howard hack Jay Ambrose, who once let loose with the Obama-is-Muslim silliness in an e-mail convo. Good stuff.
blogenfreude says:
Ed – ever read the American Thinker? It's a goldmine. Stand back:
The Middle Ages, by which people mean the Christian Middle Ages, the European Middle Ages, had their faults, like any other epoch, but to call Islamofascism medieval is to equate medieval Christendom and the medieval Islamic world, a religion that gained adherents through persuasion and a religion spread almost entirely by the sword, a civilization that abolished slavery and a civilization that propagates it, a society that began poor and ended rich and a society that began rich and ended poor, a culture that was backward in the beginning and enlightened in the end and a culture that was enlightened in the beginning and backward in the end, a polity that was weak and divided and became strong and, well, divided, and a polity that was strong and relatively united and became weak and divided.
Wow.
John says:
Remember: The Crusades don't count. Neither does the Inquisition. Or any of the other events in Christian history (all denominations are, at their core, the same religion of Christianity) that make it fairly epic when the hard right mocks Islam as "the religion of 'peace'".
Ecks says:
Nor does it count that the Christendom of the middle ages did not end slavery, it managed to propagate it forward till the 19th century. Also, to be fair, Christianity really didn't use their swords very much, other than, say, the crusades, the war of the roses, the English civil war, the thirty years war, the hundred year war, the Anglo-Scottish wars, the Ottoman-Hungarian wars, the siege of Belgrade, 732, 1066… y'know, a few times, up to and including "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, in which christian neighbors spent much of the 20th century murdering each other in cold blood for the heinous crime of being the wrong brand of Christians. Which reminds me that even in the middle ages, it wasn't just by the sword, as Christianity also got pretty good mileage out of burning heretics, drowning them on ducking stools, hanging them up in gibbets, etc.
And to think, all those heathen Muslims were doing was converting people by the sword, and hanging on to all the mathematics that Europeans were busy forgetting from antiquity. Thank God for Christianity, woot!
BTW, the actual argument behind the Parker article is that the Christian right's recent disappearance from the halls of elected political power doesn't mean all the angry Christianist whackjobs aren't still seething quietly that they being allowed to run the show any more. Her arguments all make a lot more sense if you realize this, and much of the evidence listed as "undercutting" her argument isn't actually so. It is interesting, though, to see her transition from "we've been elected, so that makes us right" to "we're right and we're a commin' back, no matter what happens in them elections thar."
Ayezur says:
College freshmen, hell. I wrote better as a high school freshman.
And as a dedicated procrastinator, I take umbrage with you comparing it to something slapped together twenty minutes before class. Some of my best papers were finished mere minutes before I had to leave for class.
Shane says:
"Christian conservatives have an obligation to help lead America to it founding principles of traditional values and limited government. Christians must actively shape public policy in the country and inject our values into every part of our shared space."
I love how she is able to be an advocate for limited government in the same breath as demanding that they "inject" their values into "every part" of our lives. Of course she is not anywhere near the first to openly embrace this obvious contradiction.
J. A. Baker says:
Ahh, the wonders of Wingnut Welfare.
Mike Q says:
my. soul. hurts. so. bad.
Evan says:
This deconstruction brought me great joy. Many thanks!
BK says:
Hey folks –
As an athiest, I appreciate all the anti-Christian, look at the Crusades, and this war and that war, and this and that atrocity associated with some form of resurrection cult belief structure as evidence supporting a belief that Christianity is bad.
However, I would caution those who quickly fall into that line of arguing to take a deep breath.
The problem with religion is that while it can be used as a tool for positive change and social justice by 'good people;' it can also be used by wicked, clever people to accomplish horrible things.
The problem isn't necessarily the belief strucutre, it's the people who mis-use it.
Pointing out that it was Christians who lead the Crusades to label all Christians today as bad people – is about the same as saying all white people in America suck because of how we treated the native Americans and people of color. It's over-simplistic and actually, IMHO, a pretty weak argument.
Ecks says:
BK, my rant was purely in refutation to the notion held by far too many Americans, that Christianity has been a faultless religion of peace. You're right to raise the warning flag, though, because there are people out there who use this same reasoning to say "ah ha, Christianity / religion-in-general is/are evil, down with the lot of them."
The truth is you could have taken that same rant and inserted any other major religion or ideology, and come up with a similar list of nasty acts. Y'know, there were some pretty heinous Buddhist war lords, communism as practiced by the soviets was an explicitly atheistic form of government…
Clearly the only ideology that is even close to untrammeled purity and virtue is mine, which is why you heretics should convert before I have you all put to death, ah-ha-ha-haaaa!
John says:
The point of that line of reasoning is not to say that all Christians are bad, BK. It's to say that Christian-Conservatives pushing the idea of all Muslims being bad because of the actions of a few extremist individuals is highly faulty, given their own religion's history of precisely the same. It is to show the glass house they live in while they're busy throwing stones.
John Lofton, Recovering Republican says:
Forget, please, "conservatism." It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.
daelm says:
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……HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Nothing you say can improve on that.
Fritz says:
Just found the site (thanks to huffingtonpost for crediting your teabegger photo), and this article is a great intro, I think. Smart, funny, and spot-on.
Thank you!!