Ann Coulter sometimes steps over the line of civil discourse, but she is always provocative and never, ever concerned about being politically correct. Here are some quotes, courtesy of Human Events (no link available), from her new book Godless to illustrate the point:
Coulter on the Supreme Court: In 1992, the Court ruled it "unconstitutional" for a Reform rabbi to give a nonsectarian invocation at a high school graduation ceremony on the perfectly plausible grounds that Rhode Island was trying to establish Reform Judaism as the official state religion. (Opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy.) Yes, those scheming Jews have had their eyes on the Ocean State for as long as I can remember.
On crime: Whether it is building prisons, mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws, or the death penalty, if it has to do with punishing criminals, Democrats are against it. Liberals prefer treatment, rehabilitation, alternatives to prison, even creative alternatives to prison -- but not prison! That would be "blaming the perpetrator."
On prisons: Between 1995 and 2005, the prison population grew by 30 percent, meaning an additional half million criminals were behind bars, rather than lurking in dark alleys with switchblades. You can well imagine liberals' surprise when the crime rate went down as more criminals were put in prison. The New York Times was reduced to running querulous articles with headlines like "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" and "As Crime Rate Drops, the Prison Rate Rises and the Debate Rages."
On public schools: Public schools are forbidden from mentioning religion not because of the Constitution, but because public schools are the Left's madrassas... At least the crazy Muslims get funding from Saudi Arabia for their madrassas. Liberals force normal Americans to pay for their religious schools.
On the media's ignorance of religion: In another interview, [the Rev. Richard John] Neuhaus told a reporter that political corruption had "been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden." The reporter mulled it over before asking, "What garden was that?" In defense of the American educational system, every single one of these reporters knew how to put on a condom.
On abortion: No matter what else they pretend to care about from time to time - undermining national security, aiding terrorists, oppressing the middle class, freeing violent criminals - the single most important item on the Democrats' agenda is abortion. Indeed, abortion is the one issue the Democratic Party is willing to go to war over - except in the Muslim world, which is jam-packed with prohibitions on abortion, because going to war against a Muslim nation might also serve America's national security objectives.
On liberals' obsession with Fox News: Fox News isn't even particularly conservative, though it is recognizably American. I believe the one verified atrocity committed by Fox News was the wearing of American flag lapel pins after 9/11. Assuming - against all evidence - that Fox News is every bit as conservative as CBS is liberal, it is still just a small beachhead in a universe of liberal-speak. But the mere existence of one solitary network that doesn't toe the party line has driven the Left insane.
On Cindy Sheehan: Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on Entertainment Tonight, you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show. At that point, you're no longer mourning, you're "branding."
On public school teachers: We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?
On Darwinism: Liberals creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record - and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.
On the fossil record: The preposterous conceit that the fossil record has produced a mosaic of organisms consistent with evolution except for the occasional "gap" is absurd. Evolution is nothing but a gap. It's a conjecture about how species might have arisen that is contradicted by the fossil record and by nearly everything we have learned about molecular biology since Darwin's day.
On religion "vs." evolution: The only religious belief driving opinions about evolution is atheism. God can do anything, including evolution. But the value of Darwinism for atheists is that it is the only way they can explain why we are here. (It's an accident!) If evolution doesn't work out for them, they'll have to expand on theories about extraterrestrials or comets bringing life to earth.
On Darwinism and Nazism: Hitler's embrace of Darwinism is not a random fact, unrelated to the reason we know his name. It is impossible to understand Hitler's monstrous views apart from his belief in natural selection applied to races. He believed Darwin's theory of natural selection showed that "science" justified the extermination of the Jews.
On Darwinism's appeal to liberals: Liberals subscribe to Darwinism not because it's "science," which they hate, but out of wishful thinking. Darwinism lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing - screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child - Darwin says it will benefit humanity! Nothing is ever wrong as long as you follow your instincts. Just do it - and let Mother Earth sort out the winners and losers.
I haven't read her book, but people I've talked to who have say that, aside from one or two instances where she is needlessly offensive, it's difficult to disagree with much of what she writes.
