Hmm... I thought it happened more recently, with the Southern Strategy?

Slaves really weren't that expensive, that was why the South in the United States was literally the wealthiest society in the world right up before the civil war

Well, that and the fact that slaves probably didn't count in the "per capita" part of "GDP per capita."

No, it's not an exaggeration. Rather than rehash arguments from the previous thread, I'll just link to some of them.

(Note that that is far from an exhaustive list of the arguments explaining how that politician is indeed trying to ban teaching science in general. I just can't be bothered to go re-read through and pick out all the good ones.)

Social Conservatives are less than 25% of Republicans and are probably less than 20% of the total.

Then why do they get more than 50% of the vote in the primaries?

Being religious does not equal being a social conservative.

Sure, some people are religious but not socially conservative... but they're usually Democrats.

But Gary Johnson and others are/were pretty damn close to "coming out."

Sure, Gary Johnson was pretty great (I voted for him)... which is why he lost the Republican primary by a landslide. The Republicans are incapable of electing a reasonable candidate like Johnson precisely because they're overrun with authoritarian theocrats!

It's too bad, too, because unlike the rest of the Republican candidates, he was socially-liberal enough to have a chance of beating Obama in the general election (had he run as a Republican instead of a Libertarian).

Go to Red State and Legal Insurrection and you'll see that many are opposed to the leviathan state.

Maybe some people on those sites say that, but they are either A) a vocal minority, B) fail to actually vote, or C) claim to be for small government, until they realize such a position is a detriment to their pet special interest (usually Social Security or one of the talk-radio "rile up the dumbasses" issues, such as any involving religion, race, evolution or climate change) whereupon they vote for the authoritarian candidate anyway.

most republicans are not social conservatives

This hasn't been true for at least a couple of decades, especially when you consider which Republicans are capable of actually getting elected (rather than losing the primary due to lack of support from the social conservative faction of their party -- clear evidence that it constitutes a majority).

If you can show me an atheist Republican in Congress, then I'll show you a flying pig. We can hold the show-and-tell in Hell (but make sure you bundle up, because it'll have frozen over)!

The key divides between republicans and democrats is over the size and scope and purpose of the Federal government.

No it isn't; they're both in complete agreement that the Federal government should be huge and authoritarian. They only differ in which departments they prefer the bloat to occur (e.g. war vs. welfare). Even the Tea Partyists who claim to be fiscally conservative hypocritically support Social Security, just like the Democrats.

Well, let's see... just a few weeks ago, we discussed how they want to (effectively) ban teaching science by gutting all the actual scientific reasoning from it and doing only rote memorization. (And even then, omitting the rote memorization of certain theories deemed inconvenient to their religion.)

For the Arabs, the middle ages were great!

Well, at least until the Crusaders showed up and took all the Arabs' discoveries so they could jump-start the Renaissance....

...these 12th century throw backs!

You might want to re-think that characterization, since these ISIS fools are pretty much the polar opposite of 12th century Arabs! In fact, they're much more similar to medieval Europeans, or modern Republicans.

if your "society" is being propped up via funding and arms, and you have no need to actually produce anything yourself or even produce engineers at all, then it isn't as much of a problem.

Math isn't just used by engineers; it's also needed to operate pretty much any business -- even low-tech ones. Even a damn goat-herder needs to be able to multiply, assuming he wants to be able to sell X goats for $Y each, and end up with the correct number of $ afterwards!

Yes, mostly because "University" could refer to any of the following:

1. world-famous elite research institutions (e.g. Harvard University)
2. public state colleges that do significant research (e.g. University of Georgia)
3. regional colleges (e.g. University of West Georgia), which offer bachelor's degrees, but more commonly have students do their first two years there then transfer to the state research uni
4. for-profit diploma mills (e.g. University of Phoenix).

Some places calling themselves "Universities" might be nationally accredited instead of regionally accredited, or even not accredited at all.

My Nexus 5 is pretty thin. I don't use a case with it. The screen has not broken. I haven't gone out of my way to be especially careful with it, either.

It's just not that damn hard to use a phone without breaking it, unless you're ridiculously careless.

It depends where the degree is from. If it's from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) then it means a lot. If it's from "CMU" (Central Michigan University) then less so. If it's from "CMU" (Certificate Mill University) then it isn't worth shit.

The difference used to be, that they operated outside the law.

Not quite. The difference used to be that the USA's spies broke other countries' laws for our (the American public's) benefit, whereas now they break our laws for their own benefit!

the day they catch a jihadist with a nuke backpack right before he enters Manhattan, we will both be glad they were spying on whoever it took.

Speak for yourself. I, for one, think our civil liberties are so important that preserving them even at the cost of failing to prevent some city from being nuked (including my city, killing me) would be worth it.

'Twas gallows humor. In reality, I'm not stupid enough to buy a Kindle, and I do use Project Gutenberg.

On one hand, of course we see a problem with this! But on the other hand, if you decided to use Apple products, you should have known what you signed up for...