The bizarre agenda of the "Minnesota Majority"

Michael Koppelman

A Right Wing group was recently brought to my attention, the Minnesota Majority. They have an agenda just like the now defunct Moral Majority, as the name would suggest. It’s rich in idiocy, homophobia, xenophobia and irony. This is from their About Us page:

Are you tired of allowing a well-funded vocal minority:

[1] Dictating what we can say, do or think?
[2] Suppressing our freedoms of religion and speech?
[3] Having more rights than the rest of us?
[4] Telling us that they are offended by what we say or do?
[5] Preaching tolerance while demonstrating utter contempt for anyone with a different view than their own?
[6] Exploiting our legal system to advance their agendas at the expense of our rights?
[7] Destroying our nation’s traditional values?

Then do something about it by joining Minnesota Majority. We are a non-partisan issue advocacy group seeking to restore traditional values to Minnesota’s public policy.

I added the numbers so I could address the sins of the “well-funded vocal minority” in order.

1. Dictating what we can say, do or think?

Give me one example of this, anybody. The only examples I can think of are related to things like hate crimes. I doubt they are pro-hate crime. So WTF are they talking about? Laws? Are they against laws? Yes, we have laws that say you can’t ejaculate into someone’s milkshake. Do they have a problem with that?

2. Suppressing our freedoms of religion and speech?

Again, one example please. The Right has always been too stupid shallow to realize that the separation of church and state is there to protect the religious! The fundamental issue that the founders were trying to protect was the freedom of religion. They were wise enough to understand that this meant a hard, bright line between the state and religions.

3. Having more rights than the rest of us?

Who can they be thinking of here? The only people I can think of with “more rights than the rest of us” are ridiculously rich people who buy influence in our government.

4. Telling us that they are offended by what we say or do?

So they are pro-freedom of speech but anti-freedom of speech?

5. Preaching tolerance while demonstrating utter contempt for anyone with a different view than their own?

I’m definitely sensing some contempt here. To me this is the ol’ “why aren’t you tolerant of bigots” argument. If you hate homosexuals, want to destroy the separation of church and state and seek to enforce your personal morality on me, you should expect some contempt and intolerance.

6. Exploiting our legal system to advance their agendas at the expense of our rights?

Again, the only people I know who have the resources to exploit our legal system are rich people. The fact that there is a independent judiciary was a stroke of brilliance by our founders and it is an important part of the balance of power with the executive and legislative branches of government. This point is major evidence of the bankruptcy of the Right Wing agenda — they don’t like the independent judiciary, something they share philosophically with fascists and dictators.

And if you want to talk about protecting our rights I assume you are a strong supporter of the ACLU and the EFF? Those are the organizations out there protecting our rights.

7. Destroying our nation’s traditional values?

I prefer to judge values today. I think the gains that minorities have made in the last century are a sign of the maturation of the USA. Ben Franklin warned us about the “tyranny of the majority“. That’s why our constitution was so carefully crafted with a balance of power and a fundamental right to equal opportunity. The implication that traditional values are better or more moral or more natural has never been proven. Why does a group that has as #1 on the list a disdain for people “dictating what we can say, do or think” also have on their list a desire to dictate what we can say, do or think!

Look — these people are probably nice, well-meaning and smart people. It’s not them I am attacking, it’s their ideas. Their agenda is misguided on virtually every count. I’ve tackled only their “About Us” page. On every page they reveal a nonsensical misinterpretation of the issues. It’s an agenda of the 1950’s, ridiculously out of place in 2008.

The bizarre agenda of the "Minnesota Majority"

8 thoughts on “The bizarre agenda of the "Minnesota Majority"”

  1. brad says:

    Very well stated Chuck!!

    Whoever stands to gain the most or loose the most will lie the most.

    We have one world. I think we should take every precaution to not fuck it up.

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  2. Chuck H. says:

    Let’s return to the globalclimatescam again for a second.

    B2B cited the following link for new NASA data which has been taken out of context and presented as a cooling trend. His words were spun by Drudge and the DailyTech. The author has demanded a correction from DailyTech.

    http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/

    “I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine:

    “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”

    There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.”

    “One cool year does not erase decades of climate data, nor does it more than minimally change the long-term climate trend. Long-term climate change is just that “long term” and 12 months of data are little more than a blip on the screen.”

    The globalclimatescam site has a new feature article pointing to a comment by NASA scientist John Willis’ statement during an interview on NPR that the conservatives are again taking out of context.

    In fact, “there has been a very slight cooling,” according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

    Later in the inteview:

    “It may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming,” Dr. Willis told NPR.

    Which is presented this way by the NationalPost.com:

    Yeah, you know, like when you put your car into reverse you are causing it to enter a period of less rapid forward motion. Or when I gain a few pounds I am in a period of less rapid weight loss.

    The skeptics fail to report the following information that is easily accessible on the JPL website:

    Recent analyses have revealed that results from some of the ocean float and shipboard sensor data used in this study were incorrect. As a result, the study’s conclusion that the oceans cooled between 2003 and 2005 can not be substantiated at this time. The study authors are currently working to correct these data errors and recompute ocean temperature changes.

    and from Willis himself:

    “This research suggests global warming isn’t always steady, but happens with occasional ‘speed bumps’,” said Dr. Josh Willis, a co-author of the study at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “This cooling is probably natural climate variability. The oceans today are still warmer than they were during the 1980s, and most scientists expect the oceans will eventually continue to warm in response to human-induced climate change.”

    I have one burning question for the people behind “globalclimatescam”. The interests of climate change skeptics is clear – loss of profits. If someone has devised this global climate “scam”, what do they stand to gain? Is Gore lying simply to sell some DVDs and Books? Has he successfully fleeced the Nobel judging panel? Is he really that smart?

    Also, the “I invented the internet” jab hit the wired “tired” list nearly a decade ago. We all know that was another case of spinning a quote out of context.

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  3. And to get back on topic, lolife, which of the Minnesota Majority’s principles do you disagree with?

    I didn’t even start picking on them on their issues pages (yet). I disagree with them on virtually every issue.

    But I thought their About Us page was hilarious. Those items are all code words for the same old, tired religious Right agenda. I was picking on them because they concoct this phantom enemy, the “well-funded vocal minority”, and then give us a big list of all the ways this phantom enemy is harming us. It’s vague, contradictory and ironic — all of it. Just like the “I support our troops” stickers that people put on their cars. That’s like saying “I breathe air”. It’s a retarded distillation of the issues.

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  5. brad says:

    I think you need to join this group and start attending meetings. See how long it takes before they kick you out or beat you up.

    The problem with idiot groups like this is that we ignore them until they become president of the United States.

    Michael, I fervently believe this is your new calling. Infiltrate, educate or castigate.

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  6. b2b says:

    http://www.globalclimatescam.com/

    I went, I saw, I would probably believe true a great deal of what is there. We are all dangerously ignorant, when it comes to a big thing like the evolution of the global climate, but some are arrogantly stupid as well, and think we should try and control it.

    I began to investigate global warming (more particularly the possibility that it wasn’t) more seriously when I found out they were showing Gore’s movie to my kids and calling it science. I happen to know he did not invent the Internet, and I had been taught as a child to expect the coming ice age (seriously, it was common knowledge, just as CO2-induced global warming is today), so I was suspicious.

    I believe anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 is being revealed to have less and less causal effect on global temperature. I also believe that the latest measurements from NASA (some earlier of which were used as IPCC fodder, and have since been revised downwards by NASA) and others are showing some recent global cooling, not warming. It’s all quite embarrassing for an awful lot of people, if true. I believe NASA has new data from both satellite and oceanographic measurement using new submersible resurfacing/reporting technology. I have yet to go try and find recent data…wait…here is something that looks quite credible for a start…
    http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/

    The site you mention is not alone, you could also go to http://www.climateaudit.org, which has an interesting history I’ll not bore you with here, and here is a random link I found just now while searching for stuff on the more plausible cause, the interaction of solar activity with the earth’s magnetosphere: http://irishspy.typepad.com/public_secrets/2008/02/about-that-glob.html

    Check the links there, I had read the National Post’s article on paper, and chased it around the Internet a bit. Do your own research.

    I hope you both can see the hypocrisy of your statements if you are unwilling to at least do some more serious investigation, and accommodate the possibility that Gore and many others are likely wrong, or else start trying to refute all these more recent data and studies of it. I don’t think very many of the initial IPCC scientists were willing to put their name on the result when the report was finally released, and many if not all of Gore’s claims in his movie have been debunked. I have given you some links to start with, and if you look around, I think you will find a large and growing consensus opinion emerging that there is either no consensus, or the old consensus is just wrong. I am quite happy Canada caused a bit of a fuss at the last Kyoto meeting. It’s a hell of a good racket, though.

    I doubt anyone reading this will live to see us be able to predict global climate with any accuracy whatsoever over anything but the shortest time-scales. It is a highly non-linear dynamic system, and they are known to have literally unpredictable modes of behaviour.

    I think the climate debate is far from over (unfortunately, since I personally believe we can do nothing about it anyway), so we need to recognize how tiny we are in all this, and that it is premature to take action on CO2 that would likely have quite negative economic impact if imposed on society.

    By the way, since making this point almost always leads here next, I am quite happy we have cleaned up our environment of pollutants in many ways, and have witnessed the positive impact on the species diversity around me, many of which were almost wiped out by sulphuric acid, DDT etc. CO2 just happens to be much more of an aerosol fertilizer than it is a pollutant. Then there is the “just in case” argument, which ignores cost for taking action on CO2, with no provable benefit.

    And to get back on topic, lolife, which of the Minnesota Majority’s principles do you disagree with?
    b2b

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  8. Chuck H. says:

    I became aware of the Minnesota Majority after passing a ridiculous billboard on I94 near Rogers MN. “Gore Lies and Wins a Nobel Prize – http://www.globalclimatescam.com“. The Minn Majority is the group behind this idiotic and irresponsible campaign. The group refers to the current global science communities concencus on climate change as “junk science” and cites their own research as being more credible. Who, but fools would not realize that temperature fluctuations are just a normal part of the earth’s cycle? But, just in case there is a human element to climate change, we should privatize the solution.

    “At the root of the global climate change debate is an intractable claim on the part of those who would readily cripple our economy with new regulations and attack our personal freedoms with intrusion into our homes, automobiles and offices.”

    Go see for yourself. These people are dangerously ignorant.

    http://www.globalclimatescam.com/

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