conservative values

Primary voters just gave former Speaker Newt Gingrich the win in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, "America's most conservative state." Reddest of the red. Buckle of the Bible Belt. CNN welcomed viewers to the Charleston debate this week with “Welcome to the South,” a place “where values matter.”

More there than anywhere else? What values mattered most to South Carolinians who gave Gingrich his win?

Not trust. Why should they trust Newt Gingrich? His three wives can’t.

We've all gotten them ... the conservative propaganda emails on various subjects. For me, they're like small windows into an unmerciful, ungracious, ugly place that I would never voluntary choose to enter.

However, when my face is forced to this window and I can't help but look at the ugliness, my reaction is primal and visceral. I have to close my eyes and turn away before the scene makes me puke.

I got an especially disturbing anti-immigrant email recently.

After I read it, "I did NOT want to see that," was the brightest thought that ran through my mind. Next was, "But now that I have see it, what do I do, what do I say, what do I write? This cannot go unanswered."

You may have noticed the "Contraception Is Not The Answer?" ad running here. If not, let me direct your attention to the right side of your screen. I don't usually plug advertisers, but then advertisers aren't always doing such good work. A group at RHRealityCheck.org (the RH stands for "reproductive health") sent a sane person undercover to a fundie anti-contraception conference. RH Reality Check has been posting rebuttals to the conference nonsense in a special series on their blog. The quote in the title comes from something one of the speakers had to say, quoted in this post. (The pills are little airplanes and your uterus is one or both of the twin towers, get it? I guess that makes your friendly Target pharmacist something of a Mohammed Atta!)

Anyway, props to RHRC for keeping an eye on the kooky right.