I missed Afton earlier. While his (her?) horse is dead, and his presence is no longer welcome, his post bears a little response. Sharmuta, Pawn of the Oppressor, and JCM addressed the fallacy he committed, but even that only speaks to his method. The real problem is his goal. Either he is a bit ignorant, or a bit deceptive, and I think it is the latter. We should repulse these attacks for what they are, and in order to do that, we have to recognize the content.

His post is three paragraphs each consisting of one sentence, each of which repeats his fallacious argument in varying degrees of completeness. The third and most complete is:

And as we bask in the glory of knowing that The One has successfully been elected to his Third Term as President we can all huddle around the corn burner at night and tell the children of the great Revolution of 2011 when the Keepers of the Constitution were defeated and the Workers Party of America (WPA) prevailed - science had been protected and the evangelicals had been banished to their catacombs never to see the light of day again. Hallelujah!

Folks have rightly pointed out that there is little to no connection between teaching ID nonsense and protecting America from Socialism. Either Afton is ignorant and feels that by defending the teaching of science from the idiotic precepts of ID and its fellow-travelers, we weaken the right and allow Socialism, or Afton is not actually concerned with Socialism one way or another, as long as he gets his creationism in the classroom.

It is this second possibility that alarms me more, as we are well-equipped to educate the ignorant, but we operate at a disadvantage in resisting the propaganda of a motivated, subtle opponent. On the right, we have not usually acquitted ourselves well in countering creeping socialism. We’re more of the “bankrupt your whole half of the planet if we have to in order to smash communism” type of operators. Not so much with the pop-culture and media.

Either he’s a little confused, or he has an agenda other than the obvious moronic screed. I think that this is another seminar caller, in radio terms, whose key issue is not socialism at all, but ID—and he is trying to recruit the opponents of socialism by default into a pro-ID stance.

Note the “branding” and associations in his third paragraph (reproduced above). Despite gutting the first amendment with ID nonsense, he calls his side the “Keepers of the Constitution” (K of C reference maybe?), and laments their banishment to the catacombs: just add lions.
Meanwhile the other side is the Workers Party of America (WPA was Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, or Work Projects Administration after 1939). The WPA has us all in grey coats, long lines (Soviet), huddled around corn burners (global warming, eco-fuels nonsense, and an agrarian dystopian image to boot), and all of this in President Obama’s third term, with FDR of course being the only three-term President to date.

His later comments and logical fallacies notwithstanding, Afton is either a good writer or knows where to cut and paste from one. So when I see a guy like this, I ask myself: Why is he posting this at LGF?

The reason I bring all of this up is to stress the importance of responding to him and his kind not as if they are confused, but as if they are hostile. The conflation of teaching ID and defending our Republican system of government is not a mistake—this is the wedge, prying apart the right.