By contributing author, E. Henry Schoenberger
Smart is not good enough when you can’t think straight! Ted Kosinski, the Unabomber, was a child prodigy, who went to Harvard at 16. By the time he was 25 had a PhD from the University of Michigan and was an assistant mathematics professor at Berkeley. Smart yes, but to what end?
Cruz has great credentials too (for all the Ivy worshippers), Brown, Harvard Law, and is considered the Intellectual of the Tea Party. Wow, what an honor and great achievement if you think about it! Ted is leading thinker in the Teapublican Party of Idiots Gone Wild; and Ryan is the House Teapublican intellectual, whatta crew!
Cruz is imbued with a closet creationist’s zealot religious posture toward reality which inhibits his ability to think straight, as it has for so many others for thousands of years. Teapublican staunchly rigid social conservatives can’t get enough of zealot right (wrong) wing Christianity, which is almost 180 degrees opposite the reported teachings of their Jewish Orthodox hero.
Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century Brit philosopher said it best: “Religion is the last refuge of all scoundrels and liars.”
Cruz has already distinguished himself by grilling Chuck Hagel in a manner only befitting Joe McCarthy. And Florida Senator Bill Nelson objectively, with brutal candor, shared this fact with Cruz and America. Nelson went to Yale and UVA Law School, and as a former astronaut is also thought of as pretty smart. However, from Nelson’s lifelong record of human concerns and extensive personal experience in all the overlapping concerns Cruz seems ignorant of – apparently Bill Nelson felt responsible to vehemently compare Cruz’s obvious debating skills with McCarthy’s knack for raising lies and innuendos to discredit anyone in front of his committee. Cruz’s performance was clearly born-again McCarthyism.
Hagel’s actual crime in the eyes of the GOP, per John McCain in a rare moment of candor, was to have not gone along with his party on some major issues (that Hagel wisely knew were wrong). So the GOP/Teapublicans hate Hagel for not voting in lockstep, and for putting America’s best interests ahead of GOP interests. GOP interests have not often coincided with the best interests of “we the people.” Especially since the religious right infiltrated the Republican Party and became the Teapublican Party.
Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” who was called “Mr. Conservative” and voted against the Civil Rights Act, was right about one thing:
Present day conservatives take many of their marching orders from the Christian right, also known as social conservatives, but Barry Goldwater refused to march lockstep with the Christian right as conservatives do today. The Republican Party of today has surrendered to the Christian right and ignored the real issues facing the country as a result. Goldwater knew how dangerous this would be. He said,
Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know I’ve tried to deal with them.
Alan Greenspan, like Cruz, has stellar credentials too. Do credentials confer any ability to think straight? Does religious right wing fundamentalism get in the way?
For more of Henry’s work, check his blog The 5th Estate
Buy Henry’s brilliant book from Amazon, which David Satterfield, former Business Editor of the Miami Herald, 2 times Pulitzer Prize Winner, said this about:
“This should be must-reading for every policy maker in Washington and every student of economics and finance.”
