WASHINGTON, District of Columbia (FNS) The Republican-dominated Conservative Political Action Conspiracy, or CPAC (pronounced see-pack) held its annual jamboree here March 14 – 16. All the usual suspects were there in a festival of denial and resentment. The theme of the gathering, while not explicitly stated, was that the nation’s electorate misspoke last November, electing that horrible liberal, socialist, communist tree hugger Obama almost by mistake. Over and over, speakers who sounded like they slept through the Presidential campaign, railed and ranted that failed candidate Mitt Romney simply wasn’t conservative enough, that veering even further to the right would have pulled in all those left-leaning voters. But the real head-scratcher came on the second day.
Led by such intellectual luminaries as half-Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Governor Rick “Ooops” Perry, chief NRA crazy Wayne LaPierre and world-class self-promoter Donald Trump, the science hating group doubled down on its paleo-positions regarding modern thought.
The CPAC’s dogmata include the belief that homosexuality and lesbianism are curable lifestyle choices that can be reversed by prayer and will power. There was never a Big Bang, as that theory describes the sudden destabilization of a singularity. Rather, the great Everything began with a call for luminosity by a deity (“Let there be light”). The Earth, generally believed by scientists to be approximately 4.5 billion years old, is really only a little over 6,000 years old. This means dinosaurs and humans coexisted at one time, a sort of Flintstones vision of early Earth. Evolution? Don’t be ridiculous. How could humans and all other species be the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution if the world is only 6,000 years old? Besides, the Bible says that the first man was made from dust, and the first woman was made from one of his ribs. You know, “From dust thou art; to dust thou shalt return.” Which, of course, begs the question, “Why don’t dead women return to being ribs?”
Speaker after speaker also charged that global warming, the gradual but inexorable and measurable trend toward higher and higher average global temperatures, is not caused by human activity, does not really exist at all, and is, in fact, nothing more than a giant conspiracy by the world’s leading scientists for some sinister but unspecified purpose. It is a card-carrying member of this conservative bunch that recently claimed that the bodies of raped women automatically shut down the possibility of pregnancy.
Second day speaker Sarah Palin received an enormous standing ovation when she pulled out her Big Gulp cup, an apparent homage to sugar and a poke in the eye to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Trying to cut down on obesity and diabetes, Mr. Mayor?” she seemed to be saying, “Well, take that!” She then went on to speak on the rights of the unborn, presenting the opinion that life begins at Last Call.
But wait; there’s more.

     There was the Donald. This conspiracy-crazy model-marrying wingnut offered a new plank for the science-denying platform that forms the bedrock of conservative wisdom. “Don’t let anyone fool you,” he ranted, “the world is not round. It is flat. If it were round, stuff would roll all around, wouldn’t it,” shouted the Trumpster, “Here’s a challenge: put a ball on the ground. Does it roll or does it stay where you put it? It stays, of course, because the world is flat. But Obama doesn’t want you to know that.” Wild applause arose from the exhilarated assembly. And by acclimation, the world was declared flat. Who knew?