The first comes from an MTV special in 1996 when O’Donnell spoke as the founder of the Christian group SALT (Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth), promoting chastity before marriage. She even spoke out against masturbation, since lust in the heart is adultery (Matthew 5:28). She added:

You’re gonna be pleasing each other…and if he all ready knows what pleases him, and if he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?

There’s been a lot of snickering about this, but I can only see it as—for lack of a better word—cute. It’s hard to believe that at the age of 26, someone can be so naive about sex. Some people think this makes her kooky, but to me, it just makes her look hopelessly sheltered.

The second video is from Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, when she confessed to “dabbling into witchcraft” when she was in high school.

One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

This only completes the image of Christine O’Donnell as a Christian who’s been sheltered from the real world. I have to wonder if her date was a Wiccan. Once you get to know some Wiccans, you realize they’re pretty harmless. The big story here isn’t that she hung out with Wiccans, it’s that she thought it was a big deal. But when you’re a sheltered Christian teenager, a New Age religion looks satanic, not eccentric.

On the Daily Show just after the primary, Jon Stewart asked how Democrats could screw up winning an election against Christine O’Donnell. Jason Jones replied that Democrats would screw up “by just simply missing the point.”

O’Donnell is running to restore fiscal responsibility to Washington yet leaves behind her a trail of unpaid bills and legal issues. Yet the Democrats will probably spend all their time arrogantly ridiculing her for opposing masturbation. I assume hoping for a high turnout of the pro-masturbation crowd.

So far, this seems to be the case. These have been the main stories I’ve seen about O’Donnell on ThinkProgress and Media Matters since last Tuesday, despite charges that she lived off campaign funds then lied about it on her taxes.

O’Donnell’s remarks about masturbation and witchcraft are based on her religious beliefs; Americans have a right to be concerned about a candidate’s religious beliefs, but only as far as they affect her politics. Making fun of her religious beliefs to score political points should be off limits. And it could backfire: Christian voters will rally around O’Donnell if they think the media and “liberal elite” are attacking their religion, just like they did for Sarah Palin.

But the story has taken a strange turn. I thought her “dabbling into witchcraft” would get a few laughs and then disappear, especially after conservatives rally to defend her. But they seem to be taking her confession seriously. Representative Mike Pence (R-Indiana) said O’Donnell has some explaining to do, while Glenn Beck focused on the “satanic altar”.

Republicans have been fighting a sort of civil war over O’Donnell. The “establishment” called her unelectable (with even her former campaign manager making robocalls against her), while the “insurgency” thought it was more important to vote for true conservatives even if it means losing the election. Since the primary, the insurgents have been calling for the establishment to rally around O’Donnell, but so far they’ve been reluctant. The fact that O’Donnell cancelled all her Sunday media appearances after the witchcraft comments came out probably didn’t help.

So the question is, does infighting over Christine O’Donnell reveal a growing rift between the Tea Party and other Republicans? And if it does, will it derail their plans for the 2012 elections?

As I look at pictures of the still empty World Trade Center grounds, I have to wonder: why haven’t we rebuilt it yet? I remember in 2002 when people were talking about building the “Freedom Towers”. They would be bigger, better, and a monument to our perseverance. Yet the ground remains empty.

We invaded Afghanistan to take down the Taliban and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. But bin Laden slipped through our fingers at Tora Bora and has never been captured. Ayman al-Zawahiri, his Number 2, is also free and still delivering tapes to the media. Al Qaeda’s Number 3 has been killed several times over.

We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years, and we still cannot guarantee the safety of ordinary Afghans as they vote for their leaders. The government we’ve installed has proven itself corrupt and inept. And we dare not leave, or the whole country might once again fall into the hands of the Taliban.

We invaded Iraq to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, except, once we got there, we couldn’t find them. We freed the Iraqi people from Saddam’s tyranny only to watch them turn on each other. The government we’ve installed has proven itself dysfunctional. And we dare not leave, or the whole country might once again fall into civil war.

It’s been nine years since we declared war on terror, and we have no great victory to show for it. Our smaller victories seem hallow next to our failures. And we’ve paid for these failures with not only a soaring government debt, but the lives of thousands of American soldiers, over ten thousand Afghans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. We’ve allowed our government to tap our phones, hold people prisoner without charge or trial, and transport them outside the country so they can be interrogated through methods forbidden by the laws of both God and men.

We’ve compromised so many of our values to make ourselves safer, but we have little to show for it. We don’t have the satisfaction of a democratic Iraq, a free Afghanistan, a captured bin Laden, or even a rebuilt World Trade Center to show the world our resilience. Nine years have passed, and as far as we know, we are no safer than we were on 9/11.

And that is the real problem with the Park51 mosque. Without an obvious victory, too many Americans think we are still under siege. They tell us all our extraordinary measures are necessary, but no one can prove that they work. And now a recession has wiped out ten years of economic growth, along with the livelihoods of millions of Americans. We have never known such a thorough psychological defeat, and we are searching for some way to explain it. And so we’ve begun to look for enemies within.

—

Listen to it here.

One thing I’ve always noticed when talking to Tea Partiers or seeing them on TV is the way they all seem to use the same words and phrases.  “Socialism” is the most obvious example. The phrase I remember from the health care debate is “shoved down our throats”. I can understand opposing the health care reform package or even how it made its way through Congress, but it seems odd that so many Americans would all choose exactly the same words.

Shortly after the health care bill passed, I tried to debate one bartender about Wall Street reform and a number of other issues. He told me that the reform bill would give the Treasury Department the power to nationalize any bank without any sort of congressional oversight or judicial review, if it deems it necessary.  He managed to outmaneuver me on all my counter-arguments, but his own arguments seemed suspect. They lacked the kind of nuance that I expect from a cogent argument, but they were filled with more facts than I could dispute. His arguments felt wrong, but my feelings do not make a good rebuttal.

When I got home, I researched his arguments and found a video of Dick Morris on Hannity making the exact same points, using almost the exact same words.

Ever since then, I’ve kept an eye on what people say on Fox News. And I’ve noticed that a lot of Tea Partiers use the same tactic: repeat what they heard on television. When I press them for details or to recast the argument in their own words, they get stuck. Without a basic understanding of how bills become law, of how courts and regulatory agencies work, or even how Democrats frame their own policies, they are powerless to debate cause and effect, benefits and harms. While this makes for bad debate, it’s excellent media/political strategy:

• It lets viewers feel well-informed about the issues even though their understanding lacks real depth.
• The lack of depth allows extensive breadth; they may not be able to discuss any policy issue in fine detail, but they have something to say about every issue. This breadth only deepens the illusion that they are well informed.
• This breadth allows these viewers to “successfully” debate experts. Experts worry about checking their facts for accuracy and making sure one point logically leads to the next; they are also honest enough not to speak on subjects they don’t know anything about. Fox News viewers have no such concern. They’ve outsourced their critical thinking to the television. They have dozens of ready-made arguments they can fire-off faster than experts can react. Eventually, they will manage to trip up the expert, because the expert has sacrificed quantity for quality. It’s impossible to know enough facts about every issue in order to debunk every myth and falsehood.
• This only reinforces the Fox News viewers’ belief that they are well-informed. After all, they’ve outmaneuvered the experts.
• The talking points also create a jargon that allows true believers to recognize each other and to reinforce each other. Arguing against opponents is a lot easier when you feel like your side is in the majority. Their agreement washes away doubt. It’s hard to be the lone dissident: you either adjust your beliefs to win acceptance or hold on to them with all your strength — and go a little insane. The jargon makes sure true believers will never have to make that choice.

And here is where the jargon begins to hurt our country. The jargon isn’t about finding the best solutions for the problems our nation faces, but about cultivating and maintaining a set of emotions: the feeling that we are right and they are wrong, that they are few and we are many, and that they have taken power because we were asleep, but we are now waking up to oppose them.

To maintain these feelings, the Tea Party must cling to a number of illusions. It tries to portray itself as a non-partisan movement that has attracted concerned Americans from all over the political spectrum; they need to believe that they are mainstream and not a fringe minority of radical conservatives. That’s also why it inflates the numbers at its rallies: it must be on the verge of victory.

But these feelings will not translate into effective policy if they somehow manage to elect their candidates. And considering how many of them believe that Obama stole the 2008 election, I wonder how the feeling of imminent victory would translate into action if their fringe rhetoric leads to defeat.

Isn’t it interesting that even the conservative media are using the Bush presidency as the gold standard of foolish mistakes?

Christians celebrate Good Friday to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ. What I have to wonder is: what do Fox & Friends want to see when they open up their browsers? A cartoon of Jesus nailed to the Google logo?

What makes this even more ridiculous: the family of Google co-founder Sergey Brin fled the Soviet Union in 1979 to escape anti-Jewish persecution.