The blogosphere is positively throbbing with indignation over Kathleen Parker’s column in the post where she coined a lively new phrase for the branch of the Republican party that most troubles the rest of us:

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

A lot of type has moved over what exactly she meant by oogedy-boogedy. Those looking to be offended thought she was just being rude about religious beliefs and superstition but I think Publius explained her best:

Personally, I think the oogedy-boogedyness stems from fear – on some level, liberals are simply afraid of social conservatives. Fairly or no, liberals perceive them as a direct and credible threat to their own personal liberties.

Interestingly, this same fear is precisely why social conservatives loathe liberals – on some level, they are afraid of us.

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Social conservatives aren’t merely a group with which liberals disagree – they’re a group perceived to threaten our lives in tangible ways.

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This perceived sense of attack is especially strong on sexual privacy issues. It’s not so much the substantive disagreement that is driving liberals’ loathing. It’s the perception that the Christian Right would intrude on – and dictate – the most intimate decisions of people’s lives. For many women (and men), the idea of forced pregnancy and contraception bans aren’t abstract arguments – they’re pretty terrifying.

Same deal with Terri Schiavo. Again, what was so oogedy about l’affaire Schiavo is not the abstract philosophical debate about “life.” It was that a group of frenzied social conservatives decided to intrude on the Schiavos’ privacy, publicizing and overruling a private and wrenching family decision. Even worse, they actually convinced Congress – in the midst of two wars – to intervene.

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Anyway, the larger point is that there actually are substantive explanations for people’s hostility to social conservatives. It’s not that people are snobs or bigots. It’s that they see the social conservative agenda as a direct threat to some of their most cherished and intimate rights.

Remember the Iraq War? Now that Bush and Maliki have agreed on the timetable for withdrawal that amounted to surrender back when democrats supported it, Andy McCarthy, in the Nation Review, suddenly notices that

INCONVENIENT FACT: THE IRAQIS DON’T LIKE US
This last point is the one that gnaws. Thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds have been expended to provide Iraqis the opportunity to live freely. And this despite the facts that (a) the U.S. interest in Iraqi democracy remains tenuous (our interest was the elimination of Saddam’s terror-mongering, weapons-proliferating regime), and (b) Americans were assured, when the nation-building enterprise commenced, that oil-rich Iraq would underwrite our sacrifices on its behalf. Yet, to be blunt, the Iraqis remain ingrates. That stubborn fact complicates everything.

Yesterday, speaking about the SOFA on condition of anonymity, a senior administration official acknowledged as much: “We’re still not popular with the Iraqis.” That’s putting it mildly.

It’s almost as if they don’t think of us as liberators.

McCarthy ends by wondering whether Iraq would be an ally in a future war with Iran. Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings answers

First, the question of the allegiance of Iraq’s governemt answers itself: We have overseen the ascendance of political parties that were either formed in Iran by the Iranians, or had been housed in Iran for decades prior to the invasion.  These parties have, naturally, very close ties to Iran.  They will not, absent Iranian aggression or extreme overreach, go to war with Iran at our behest, or permit us to do the same from their soil.  Nor do large segments of the Iraqi population, who have had the benefit of an up close view of the splendors of shock and awe, wish to visit such a fate on neighboring Iran.

Second, if victory in Iraq means an Iraq that is both free of al-Qaeda and an ally against Iran, then we had already won before we invaded, and then squandered our winnings through the invasion itself.  By invading, we allowed a previously non-existent AQI to emerge while greatly empowering Iran by removing its longtime regional adversary and replacing Saddam with extremely Iran-friendly political parties like ISCI and Maliki’s Dawa.

Skepticblog is usually pretty good. Like this post about the Shermer’s trip to a TED-alike conference in Mexico.

Then the evolutionary biologist David Barash spoke about redirected aggression, recounting a story about how when his horse kicked his dog, his dog bit the horse. That’s directed aggression. More often than not, however, when A kicks B, B kicks C. Why? Reputation. If B does not kick C then others will start kicking him. (This assumes that if you kick A back, he’ll kick your butt for good.) Bush’s invasion of Iraq was redirected aggression from 9/11, says Barash, because there is no definitive state of Al Qaeda to kick back.

This one matches my expectations - and I like his conclusion:

why in the world did Proposition 8 — banning gay marriage — pass in my hyper-liberal state of California? I put the question to Hamer. His answer: a lot of liberals, especially in the African-American community, consider marriage to be a separate issue from other civil rights, and thus we’ve got a ways to go for gays to achieve equal standing under the law. Hamer cited one study in which people were asked “Do you think homosexuality is a choice or are people born that way?” Americans were split 50/50. But when asked “Should gays be allowed to marry?” the answer was an overwhelming “No” for those who think homosexuality is a choice, and “Yes” for those who think gays are born that way. Since the science shows that homosexuality is not a choice, one solution to the political civil liberties issue is more science research and better science education.