#613: Bradlee Dean

We are not completely convinced that Tony Davis of the International Legal Services counts as a loon, despite his assurations to clients that due to technicalities every conviction in the last 60 years is null and void (a theory rejected outright at every level of the legal system). There are other explanations for his behavior than craziness.

You can’t fake being Bradlee Dean, however. Dean is not a fraud. He is one of the most aggressively insane persons to spread his breathtaking mindrot in the US at the moment, challenging Fred Phelps himself for hatred and Ray Comfort for density. Dean is the founder of the Taliban satellite organization You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International. The Ministry has made itself famous for using bait-and-switch tactics to push a hardcore fundamentalist Christian agenda in American public schools by claiming to teach kids about how to fight drugs (that’s his gateway to public schools) but instead turning the sessions into frothingly insane Jesus events accompanied by psychotic gay-bashing – though it should be mentioned that his bait-and-switch technique did not go over particularly well in Dunkerton, Iowa.

Dean’s most frequently appreciated pastime, bashing gays, desevers a few words, starting with pointing out that when engaged in the activity Dean does not always observe the strictures of common decency or coherence. For instance, he supports castration of gays for the not entirely coherent or accurate reason that the Founding Fathers wanted that (he may actually believe that himself, or he may be lying; Dean has a well-established problem with that truth-thing). This should presumably be part of the legal punishment gays should face for their dirty thoughts and inclinations. In fact, jailing and castration are merely just punishment for the past sins of homosexuals; after all – according to Dean (who has jumped onto the Scott Lively bandwagon) – homosexuals were responsible for the Holocaust. Apparently they must have collaborated with the evolutionists (or the “religion of evolution”), given that Dean thinks the evolutionists are responsible for the holocaust as well.

In one of the most ridiculous displays of fatwa envy ever, Dean also praised Muslims for executing gays: “Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do.” (His subsequent attempt at backpedalling was rather feeble). Nevertheless, Dean is of course virulently anti-Islam, since there is “a correlation between the Muslims and the homosexual agenda.” Though he doesn’t say it in so many words, coherence is apparently an enemy of Dean’s as well. It is probably a gay-Muslim-liberal conspiracy. Here he argues that Muslims have infiltrated our schools and are teaching kids to be jihadists.

In 2011 Dean filed a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for defamation after Maddow reported on Dean’s anti-gay stance, presumably targeting her in particular because she is herself openly lesbian. In fact, Dean has a history of completely baseless lawsuits, which he tends to lose badly. He has indeed also been noticed for trying to censor his critics on youtube. It is less clear that censoring his critics really matters when his own screeds are so batshit insane that even the most hardcore wingnut would hesitate over them to begin with (here, though, is Dean arguing that negative reactions to his offensive bigotry are offensive). If you want to access any of said screeds, you can go here – we don’t feel particularly comfortable linking directly to any of it, though here is his rant at the 2013 Awakening conference, where he argued that the Supreme Court has “opened the door to Satanism” by ruling that the government can’t force kids to pray and that Obama is just like Chairman Mao. (And not only Mao – apparently the American government is “emulating many similarities” with Nazi Germany, such as freedom of religion, equality, tolerance and liberty; the similarity ostensibly being that the government, like the Nazis, is “setting itself at war with God”).

A particularly notable event in Dean’s career occurred when the Minnesota Republican Party invited him to lead the ceremonial prayer at the start of the Minnesota House's legislative session. Dean's prayer turned out to be, shall we say, controversial; he would only recognize Christian members of the legislature and, for good measure, accused Obama of being a Muslim. It was in fact sufficiently appalling for the Speaker of the House to order a full re-start of the session and issue an official apology for the event. Dean later lambasted the Republicans for not endorsing his ridiculously insane, incoherent piece of fuming rage. As indicated, Dean is of course also a hardcore dominionist, who calls liberals “criminals” and urges the right to take up weapons against a liberal government (his association with the Sovereign Citizen movement is discussed here). You can imagine he was upset when Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. Apparently they did it “covert-like” so as not to draw unwanted attention, because apparently elected officials passing a bill with the attention of the whole state is being “covert” when Dean disagrees with the bill’s content.

In his daily life, Dean is the drummer for the band The Junkyard Prophet, a hardline Christian conservative band promoting and promoted by his front organization. They are evil, and the other members, Rene Benton (guitar/vocals) and Massey “Mass Dogg” Campos (bass/vocals), have voiced their share of crazy as well.

Dean’s local wingnut radio show, The Sons of Liberty, has also established itself as a legend of untarnished lunacy. Rick Santorum has appeared on the show praising Dean for his stance on homosexuality and voicing his support for criminalizing sodomy. He also occasionally writes columns for WND, primarily for promoting shit he has to sell you (check out the Ray Comfort quote in that link, by the way.

Oh, and he is of course a hardcore conspiracty theorist. In fact, Dean is a Sandy Hook truther; that is, he claims that the (Aurora and) Sandy Hook shootings were orchestrated by the government (I suppose disagreeing with him is still considered “offensive”). Public schools are also part of a conspiracy – the rigorous International Baccalaureate program is, according to Dean, part of a global scheme to disarm Americans and indoctrinate students in a homosexual agenda (as well as Islam). Dean himself, on the other hand, apparently learns the stuff he should have learned at school from David Barton, with predictably disastrous results.

It is probably little surprise that Dean is a supporter of – and is endorsed by – Michele Bachmann. I don’t know who comes off worse by that association. More here.

Diagnosis: His level of crazy is only matched by his malice and bigotry. A rather unsavory fellow, in other words.

#605: Charlie Daniels

Ted Nugent is not alone. Indeed, Charlie Daniels has in many ways had an even more impressive career as a musician, and he promotes the same kind of inane wingnuttery, bigotry and denialism. Daniels’s views of life and politics, in all their erudition, are detailed for instance in his 2003 Open Letter to the Hollywood Bunch in defense of President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy against many other artists and celebrities, and his book (same year) Ain’t No Rag: Freedom, Family, and the Flag, which espouses more or less precisely the kinds of views, bigotry and fallacious reasoning you would expect from a book of that title. Around the same time, during the 2004 presidential election campaigns, Daniels was also a staunch promoter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth manufactroversy strategy against John Kerry (the 2004 counterpart to birtherism).

Daniels is of course also a creationist, having predicted – on the basis of his expertise in the field – that “[i]n the future Darwinism will be looked upon as we now look upon the flat earth theory.” To elaborate: “Darwin’s theory is just that, an unproven idea written by a very fallible human being. Now I don’t expect these learned scholars to give any credence to what someone like me says [oh, how humble of you], but now there are imminent [sic] scientists who say that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is fatally flawed and should not be taught in our schools as fact [no names provided]. This world was created by Almighty God and no amount of theories or college professors can change that fact [damn all you elitists who know stuff]. The truth of the matter is that evolution cannot be proven. It never has and it never will because you can’t prove a lie.” Good to hear it from an ol’ common sense Southern guy whose musicianship has awarded him with great scientific insights. In 2008 Daniels was also nominated for a Creamy Baileys Nobel Peace Prize for Science for his work on global warming, which Daniels dismissed as “a yankee conspiracy.”

The WND, being predictably interested in Daniels’s informed opinions on matters politics and science, could report his characteristic positions on society and politics as “[t]here’s a move afoot to change life in America into a totally European – I’ve heard that so much I’m getting sick of it: ‘European’ – socialist thing; but it’s the dag-blamed truth [sic], and it don’t work, it never has worked, and if America goes that way, America will never be America again.” There is a certain disconnect between the strands in that observation, but Daniels or the WND would of course never notice.

Diagnosis: Stupid and proud of it, and standard denialist, but Daniels does admittedly have a way of rejecting truth that is intermittently fascinating.

#589: Josh Craddock

Josh Craddock rose to fame when he, as a 19 year old student, got his first rant published in the WND. Unfortunately the rant didn’t really put Craddock in the best possible light. The contribution is discussed here. The screed in question was primarily a rant about how Focus on the Family and James Dobson have betrayed conservative Christian values and ”3,500 years of Judeo-Christian history” (over half the age of the earth!) by not being sufficiently anti-gay. I mean, officially Focus on the Family doesn’t want to throw gays in jail, and won’t deny them the right to hold public positions. Craddock’s article is also discussed here. Apart from that, Craddock is for the most part a rabid anti-abortionist who argues that Planned Parenthood and ”evolutionary racism” (i.e. eugenics) are two sides of the same coin.

Diagnosis: Full of youthful energy, and at the moment he is using it in the service of crazy. May still end up on the side of sanity, I suppose, but prospects seem currently rather bleak.

#564: Jane Chastain

Honorable mention to bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman, Sr. for claiming, in 2003, to have “mastered the new art of Neruological Visual Profiling or N.V.P. The criminal or Predator puts off a certain ore about themselves. By using N.V.P Dog can predict the ’Danger’ before it happens.” (There is reason to think that “ore” is Dog’s version of what others call “aura”, although it makes just about as much sense in either case).

But Dog’s antics pale in comparison with Jane Chastain, who has a rather long story of ardent promotion of loon. Chastain is a former nationally-known sports announcer turned conservative political writer and commentator, in particular for WorldNetDaily. To give you a sense of Chastain’s connection to reality, one of her WND commentaries argued that “President Bush has done more than any president in history to advance gay rights.” One supposes that the comment should be understood in light of the fact that Chastain doesn’t seem to fancy the existence of domestic partnerships or gay marriage.

She has also peddled some of David Barton’s fake Founding Father quotes. The crazy is taken to dizzying levels of nonsense, however, when she later tried to defend her use of the quote. During the 2008 elections, Chastain favored McCain, and tried to convince her readers to vote McCain because Biblical law told us to and because God would otherwise destroy America.

She also thinks climate change is a conspiracy by the scientific community to “to scare us out of our hard-earned cash,” and has repeatedly pointed out that climate alarmist scientists are securing shitloads of money for their universities. She is also a staunch creationist, offering “There is no evidence (only theory) to prove that man came from the apes,” continuing with the always impressive gotcha “why are the apes still with us?” to clinch the matter.

Perhaps most famous, however, is her struggle with a deep moral dilemma described thusly: “[B]uying that box of cookies now presents a moral dilemma, as the Girl Scouts have become a training ground for the left-wing feminist agenda.” Or perhaps her (despite her general anti-abortion stance) suggestion that we should sterilize everyone who applies for guest-worker status to prevent them from having anchor babies. No wonder she struggles with some moral dilemmas.

Diagnosis: Although her devastating challenges to science should leave scientists working hard to revise their theories from the very foundations of those theories, we know that they really won’t since they are in a conspiracy to take your money. Fortunately Jane Chastain is there to reveal the nefarious points. Thank you, Jane.

#537: Walt Brown

Walter T. Brown is an engineer, young earth creationist Kent Hovind-style, and director of his own ministry with the Orwellian name Center for Scientific Creation (which seems to consist of Walt Brown), for which he works full time as a ”researcher”, writer, and speaker. According to his self-published book ”Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood”, Brown has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, and he may be considered one of the leaders of the creation science movement (this excellent overview over the creation movement at least awards him a relatively prominent place).

In 1998, Brown was appointed to a committee reviewing Arizona's state science standards, but despite his attempts he failed to remove evolution from the Arizona state science standards.

His main publication is his already mentioned book ”In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,” in which he argues for flood geology, claims that the works of other scientists does not support evolution (which, as expected, is primarily based on misrepresenting them), and attempts to explain parts of reality that fits poorly with the Bible (astronomy, for instance). His general strategy is to argue that moderen science cannot explain these astronomical and geological phenomena, even though it can, and that therefore goddidit. Some criticism can be found here. His ”20 questions for evolutionists” are dealt with here, and his own claim that evolutionists refuse to debate him, therefore he is right, is dealt with here.

Brown’s primary positive contribution is his hydroplate theory – according to his bio he learnt some geology after(!) developing the theory – which is remarkably silly.

Brown apparently maintains rather contentious relations with other creationist organizations; Answers in Genesis has a standing offer to Brown to publish some of his material in their ”journals”, though Brown has thus far declined; the old earth creationist organization Answers in Creation has published material rebutting Brown's hydroplate theory, on the other hand, and The Christian American Scientific Affiliation (which doesn’t seem to be creationist) has debunked Brown’s video ”God's Power and Scriptures Authority”.

Bob Enyart’s bulldog, the incredibly dense and dishonest Will Duffy, thinks Walt Brown is one of the greatest scientists ever, and Brown is taken to be an authority on evolution by Conservapedia despite his complete lack of competence or training in the field, and anauthority on astronomy by others, despite his rather startling lack of even minimal understanding of the field. The WND has uncritically published some of his nonsense, such as his claims that Noah’s flood created the asteroids and comets in the solar system (discussed here).

Diagnosis: Babbling beefhead and denialist whose main techniques are, as one would expect, ignorance, misrepresentation, goddidit, and – if everything else fails – appeal to ”worldviews”. He may not be the most influential creationist out there, but is often pulled out by the densest members of the creationist movement and probably does have some negative impact on the world.