Talk:John Scopes
This article needs to be rewritten, probably from scratch. Bryan and FDR were very different people with very different policies, and Bryan's presidential campaign was a disaster. Also the writing seems strangely informal, as becomes apparent in the first sentence. Again, a general re-write appears in order. --WOVcenter 01:49, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
Barrow "crafty as day is long...armed with bag of tricks"!!
Now really, I am just about lost for words, and that's unusual for me. For an encyclopedia that was born amidst the clarion call of the repudiation of "bias" and trivia, here is an insulting, banal and gratuitous characterization that would be rejected as propaganda too crude by a KGB party apparatchik. Or am I been guilty of being a pinko fellow-traveller? Have we come to such a pass that the most subjective and overt prejudice is welcome as long as it is directed at the Liberals? There was a time when it was the Conservatives who were the champions of the Academy, the Sciences, of fine writing and meditations, of sophisticated discourse and wit. Then, it was the provincials who were sullen and narrow, suspicious of art and intellectualism. What has happened in the interim? How is it that those who lived in the bogs now live in the Capital, and vice-versa? Can it really be that this is the quality of biography and analysis of themes that we would wish upon our home-schooled hot-house orchids?
Further, if but 40% of Americans are liberals, then, on my back-of-envelope calculations you have 100 million conservative, born-againers. So with all the literacy one would expect of the most educated country on God's Earth, any one of those 100 million could surely knock up a half-decent thumb-nail bio that doesn’t read like the blathering of some barefoot Uncy Clem who knows more of Tennessee moonshine than he does of its law. Here is what he says of Clarence Barrow: “As crafty as the day is long, he arrived in Tennessee armed with his bag of tricks.” And when, I wondered, do Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox make an appearance.
So why does this article continue to languish in its sorry state, a pitiful naked bastard who points to Conservapedia and calls “Father, father, am I not your very own?” before the forum of an amused and scandalized world. Clothe your mewling brats, conservative editors, and for Pity’s sake, FEED them! As it is, Wikipedia may have articles too long and fat, but these here look like the fly-blown and diseased victims of a famine! The entries present as the ejaculations of an overheated contestant on a quiz show. I have hardly begun my musings here, and already I have written more words than can be found in Conservapedia on half the countries of Europe combined. Am I prolix, or do you simply, in reality, after all is said and done, have little to say and less wit to say it with, just like those damn bleeding-heart liberals been saying all along. Surely not?
God’s servants – I abjure you! Stop jawboning and moaning, and gird up your loins and fill the space under this entry and all the others with some reasonable attempt at scholarship and even-handedness! Lest this sacred project remain not a global resource but a laughing-stock and an accusation. As it stands, if a pinko wished to argue for the ascendancy of the Liberal Left over God’s people, then in Zen monk style he need only gesture mutely toward the Scopes article here and to its counterpart in Wikipedia as if to say: “Choose then, which would you rather for your child, fathers and mothers, this or the other?” And such an accuser could repeat the same with entry after entry, page after page, theme after theme. Is there a single item in Conservapedia, as it stands at the moment, of which it could fairly be claimed that the material therein would provide more intellectual and spiritual nourishment for a young mind on the quest for knowledge than would its counterpart in Wikipedia? And how comes such a thing to pass? Who is pouring sand down our throats that we cannot speak, and who is cursing our hand with palsy that it cannot write? Is it the Evil One? How is it that Satan’s people dance like dervishes in the wind, while we move like molasses in the snow? And why is this holy barque, the Good Ship Conservapedia, marooned in the Saragossa, where her rigging creaks, and the mates are all below, and they do not write, nor talk, but only grumble?
Yet we had taken up our Cross when no one commanded it but it was freely given of ourselves, and we set our hand not to rest until we had builded Conservapedia to be a town built on the rock, and surrounded by sweet meadows, bearing fruits of knowledge from all over the World, and not struck by the fly of secularism, nor blasted by the worm of scepticism. Nay, here we had purposed it should grow, to feed the little ones and to be a monument to Learning consistent with the wishes of the Lord, that the Nations may rejoice and see that Scholarship and the Love of Truth is not some franchise vouchsafed only to the Liberal Left. But now we sit and gnash our teeth at an intersection, writing more in Talk pages than we do in that for the entries thereof, and then precious little in full total. And we have amassed entries on the great nations of the world, all as abrupt as telegrams but none so pithy, and the world laughs at us, hardly believing their luck, and their laughter is as the sting of a scorpion. For to date, the sacred Conservapedia project has helped the cause of the Christian Right just as much as Hillary Clinton walking naked down Broadway carrying photos of Abu Ghraib Prison on her head while drinking goats’ blood out of a golden goblet would have helped the cause of the Christian Left. And we have none to blame but ourselves, for verily, it was we ourselves who divested us of our own pantaloons, and we who handed the paddle to them that they may whale us and then some. Myles Paulsen myles325@yahoo.com.au - march 14, 2007 AD
THE ABOVE SHOULD BE ON THE FRONT PAGE. This site in its current form I'm afraid to say is a joke I as a conservative am angered by the small minded bigotry and bikering that goes on in these pages. Coupled with the laughable lack of fact's and the immediate deamonising of anyone who disagrees even slightly with views expressed on the pages. This site could be a advertisment for modern conservatism to the world. However it is not, it will just reinforce the stereotype of fire spitting angry white men full of hate. For example calling circumcision "genital mutilation" on judaism's pages is deeply offensive to 75% of american men. Of course the attached article is childish the writer should at least rewrite it if not completly delete it.
Copyed text from wikipedia
Well, read that this article is now going to front page. Before that, some one might want to remove the last two paragraphs or atleast rewrite them, because currently those are copyes from the wikipedia article. Allso there is several really biased statements (towards the conservative view point) on this article, but not even going to mention those as i think those are the very reason this is going to the frontpage. Timppeli 22:45, 4 May 2007 (EDT)
Innaccuracies
I've noticed that no one here seems to obey the Second Conservapedia Commandment, but when did WJB see "the horrors of World War I"? That seems to imply that he fought, even though he was 58 by the time America entered the war, not to mention a staunch pacifist. Also, Inherit the Wind was a play first, then a movie five years later. It was premiered on Broadway on April 21, 1955. The only reason for making a claim about Hollywood can be to try to discredit the play by its association with Hollywood liberals.Smedricksman24 02:22, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
I think the content of this article goes way beyond some "inaccuracies".
If some people want to live in the dark-ages that's fine by me, as long as they don't condemn others to it.
- Sorry, folks, I'm just getting to this now. Two paragraphs copied from Wikipedia? Not me. Let's find out who did it and block 'em. That's priority number one.
- The style is a little more colorful but let's not confine our writing style to a straightjacket here. Now does anyone claim a specific inaccuracy, or simply displeasure at the facts?--Aschlafly 19:43, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
A page history and check on other edits by the culprit reveals that it was an enemy of Conservapedia, whom I assume is a liberal, who inserted the paragraphs apparently copied from Wikipedia. Bizarre. I'll block him.--Aschlafly 20:09, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
Sort Order (sysop assistance requested)
Could a sysop please add {{DEFAULTSORT: Scopes, John}} to the article before the categories, usually at the end of the article. Please see Conservapedia:Manual_of_Style#Persons for information regarding this request. HeartOfGoldtalk 17:35, 20 May 2007 (EDT)