tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199632662024-03-14T05:40:27.006-04:00The Cybernetic AtheistPositronic ruminations of a Cybernaut.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.comBlogger487125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-9487150213846223982017-09-03T17:11:00.000-04:002017-09-03T17:11:46.363-04:00The Process of Morality?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
A question that is often in the social consciousness recently is the Question being asked of Atheists: </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“How do you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”</div>
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Of course, the “pat” answer is the one always pushed by theistic overlords, which says that atheists don’t know, so they feel free to act immorally. Thus, to be an atheist is to be immoral and evil. Naturally, atheists disagree, as we all do actually have morals, and many of us feel our morals are superior to those of religious people, in the main because we actually have to go through a process of decision making to get there, while theists don’t. (Theoretically. As I will note later, people are complicated, and none of us are usually that dogmatic about this.)</div>
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But just HOW do we get there? How to explain to theists who do not know (and to new atheists as well) what that process is? What are the issues, and how does one make up one’s mind? Let’s step through the process, talking about those issues as we go. Be aware, this is a complicated issue, and to do this in any manageable manner, I’m going to have to simplify things a bit.</div>
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First, I am NOT a philosopher. I am not trained in any professional sense in either the field of philosophy nor logic. I was exposed at one time (high school) to both in my studies in Latin (because I had an awesome Latin teacher), but I can in no wise claim any expertise in either field. So, the following is just me. If you have such training, and see any obvious errors as a result of that lack, feel free to jump in. I won’t be insulted, unless you intend to insult me, and it’s obvious. Otherwise, I’ll be glad to discuss that problem.</div>
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To simply this a bit, I’m going to look at four subgroups of people.</div>
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Theists who make a decision that something is good.</div>
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Theists who make a decision that something is bad.</div>
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Atheists who make a decision that something is good.</div>
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Atheists who make a decision that something is bad.</div>
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Obviously, the category of “theists” is a very broad one. Their morals are often different in particular ways. But, mostly, their beliefs are bound by some sort of Scripture. It may be something dictated by a deity, it may be something dictated by past masters (or clerics) in that particular religious practice. The commonality is broadly the idea that morals are dictated by some authority. It may be centralized, it may not. But generally, people are guided by that authority, and not primarily by their own thought processes.</div>
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Also, with Atheism, naturally, that definition is one that encompasses mainly the belief that there are no deities. Note here that atheists may have a widely differing spectrum of political thought and practices, and come from virtually every culture in the world. Thus, the cultural influences will be broadly different. We’ll get to that later. But, the fact that atheists may have differing POLITICAL ideals certainly shows that other influences on their morals are as widely varied as the cultural influences. So, keep these in mind as we examine these processes.</div>
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One last thing. This is examining a process. I’m not saying that any of these four subcategories are about a lifestyle of good or bad, either as theists or atheists. People are complicated, and any or all of us are capable of making a decision about what to do in a particular instance that may, objectively, seem good or bad at any one time. The NEXT time we are in a position to make such a decision, we might make the completely opposite one. So, be aware that I am not making any value judgements here about lifestyles. This is about how people determine morality - the decision PROCESS, and how that determines our actions. On THAT, I reserve the right to make value judgements.</div>
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- Theists who make a decision that something is good.</div>
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Now, in the popular paradigm of the Question, “How do you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”, obviously, the implication is that people who believe in God are guided by His hand as revealed in the Bible. (Or, possibly, in a wider context, by a holy Scripture not Christian). This presupposes that all such believers take their morals from that Scripture, and ONLY from that Scripture. I would contend that this is false, at least in general. Everybody lives in the cultural environment in which they live. (For the purposes of this essay, I’ll assume that is where they were born, and that as theists, their upbringing raised them in the most popular religion of their birthplace.)</div>
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As an example, let us look at Female Genital Mutilation. FGM, as it is known, is a horrible practice that involves the mutilation of the female outer genitals - the Vulva, with terrible results. (You can look this up, as the details are not relevant to this essay). It is practiced across Northern Africa and into parts of the Middle East. It is NOT a religious requirement at all, as it is practiced by both Christians and Muslims in the countries where it is generally allowed, and neither religion addresses the practice at all.</div>
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But, it is considered not only common, but REQUIRED by the cultures in which it is practiced, in order to make women obey the sexual restrictions of those cultures. It is considered “good”. And not at all by Scripture, although some clerics in those areas may fall back on that excuse. It is a strong influence, not from Scripture, but by culture.</div>
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Other cultures consider that practice anathema and forbid it, but, again, not as a religious practice, but as a cultural one. In both cases, the resulting practice, either to do it or to forbid it, is very strong. But, in actual practice, religious scripture is irrelevant to those decisions.</div>
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So, we see that even theists make decisions about morality based on things that are not “revealed” by their deity, but also on cultural traditions. This is ignored by those who ask the above Question. One can reinforce this point when one sees how Scripture often condones practices once considered “good” in ancient societies but “bad” in modern ones, such as slavery, or even genocide. These formerly condoned practices are today illegal in virtually every society in the world, yet, at least in Christian Scripture, neither one has been removed or noted as currently discouraged. Thus the waters are muddied considerably when asking people to use Holy Scripture as a guide. Cultural influences in modern societies rarely coincide well with ancient writings.</div>
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- Theists who make a decision that something is bad.</div>
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Making a decision about what is bad is equally fraught with a minefield of such problems, if one is trying to use Holy Scripture as a guide. Taking the Bible as an example (mainly because I am writing this in the context of a largely Christian controlled culture), there are some hard restrictions that do not match modern cultural influences, in which those modern cultural influences overshadow the biblical pronouncements of “badness”.</div>
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The most popular ones are the biblical restrictions on eating shellfish or wearing mixed fabrics. Not being a Biblical scholar any more than I am a philosopher, I can’t tell you what the purposes of those restrictions may have been when the Hebrew priests wrote down those verses over two thousand years ago. There may have been some very good reasons, perhaps having to do with either keeping shellfish fresh or with class restrictions on who could wear different fabrics. Who knows today? Biblical scholars or historians, perhaps. Not me.</div>
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But the point is that in today’s Western societies, neither of these things are considered “bad”. One is perfectly free to wear mixed fabrics, as much as one is free to eat shellfish or not, in spite of the very firm restrictions on them in holy scripture. Oh, some clerics will tell you that the “laws” in the “Old” Testament are no longer valid, because of some verses in the “New” Testament. But, those same clerics will turn the other cheek and tell you out of the OTHER side of their mouths that the Old Testament prohibition against homosexuality is still perfectly valid!</div>
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Which also muddies the water when good and well intentioned people try to use Holy Scripture to decide what to do or not to do.</div>
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- Atheists who make a decision that something is good.</div>
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One cannot pretend that atheists live free of religious influences. All across the globe, in all cultures and in all religious places, there are those who do not believe the offerings of those who tout invisible magical beings for moral guides. Unfortunately, in most places, those religions are the major influences on the legal and moral sets of values that the cultures they exist in require their people to live by. In the US, it is relatively easy to camouflage one’s lack of religious belief and appear to conform to the common cultural practices of the locality in which one lives, at least in general.</div>
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In many places around the world, that is infinitely more difficult, as in some places being an atheist will get you seriously dead. So, let’s just pretend for a moment that we are talking about those who, publicly, have the ability to choose their own moral values with which to guide one’s actions. After all, having to camouflage one’s existence by copying the actions of one’s neighbors and family as they obey the strictures of their holy works isn’t having the freedom to choose one’s morals, is it? Thus, for these poor atheists, the Question above is irrelevant.</div>
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But, in general, as one is free to choose, there are many ways in which one can reach out for information to guide one’s decisions. One can look at history to get an idea of how one’s actions can work out in the context of one’s culture. What works? What generally turns out well? What are, for example, the results of common practice on, say, marriage? What is legal, what isn’t? How do other people deal with a cheating spouse? If it is legal, can I justify an affair? What may that affair do to the welfare of my kids? Or to the attitudes of my parents, or in-laws? My boss?</div>
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One is free to look at all the data and decide that a course of action is perfectly fine - one may have married with an agreement together that an open marriage allows for sexual freedom, as long as certain rules are followed. This may not conform with traditional ideas of marriage, but then American culture decided several decades ago that the government has no business poking its nose into people’s private lives, thus laws restricting sexual activity outside of marriage were done away with. The same generally true in most Western societies.</div>
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Of course, cultural influences don’t always allow an atheist to perfectly follow their own ideals, as living in a more religious locality can restrict one’s ability to take free action similar to more restrictive countries in which religion is a major reflector of the law. Social constraints are often harsh. Just because the law says you can do something and the government cannot stop you doesn’t mean you don’t have social consequences to deal with if you violate social restrictions. Of course, inside the US, those consequences rarely involve death. For many, however, they can be severe on a personal level.</div>
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But even if mild, they are something atheists will probably take into account in some ways. Generally, however, other considerations are paramount. Who does this hurt? Does this benefit me without hurting someone else, or will it come back to bite me on the ass someday? (Or perhaps someone close to me?) Is this something that could help others while being good for me? Or, how can I do this and mitigate the possible negative consequences for someone else?</div>
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The questions one asks will be consistent with one’s life philosophy. Or, one’s political beliefs, alternatively. There are atheists who are decidedly Libertarian in belief, and the questions they will ask are fundamentally different from the questions a Liberal atheist will ask. Which will also be different from the questions a Conservative atheist might consider.</div>
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Believe it or not, it is entirely possible that an atheist could conform quite closely to the values of his/her community if their political philosophy is similar to the religious folks living in that locality. In many US cities and States, one can see social values that are probably more due to political values than religious ones, and often, those values are diametrically opposed to “traditional” conservative Christian values. The rapid rise of the acceptance of marriage equality around the US is an excellent example of this.</div>
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- Atheists who make a decision that something is bad.</div>
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Again, political values are often more important to this process than pure cultural values. After all, in many families, that political culture is more important than religion in a growing segment of the public. As the sheer numbers of people to whom religion is not relevant enough to matter to their lives (even if they nominally identify as theist) grows to an even greater percentage of the American public, one has seen a growing divide in relative values in political discourse.</div>
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At one time, one could count fairly well on the proposition that Christian values would be politically important to a wide segment of the public. Religious leaders of Christian denominations enjoyed (and in some cases still do) wide acclaim and respect, and often influence a significant percentage of the voters.</div>
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In what I think is a significant development, the Conservative movement in the US has been reduced in percentage considerably in recent decades, to the point that the Republican Party has collectively decided that it is necessary for them to begin to depend on subterfuge such as gerrymandering and denial of voting rights to minorities likely to vote Democratic to remain in power. More and more Americans seem to have decided that the dependency of the conservatives on the Religious Right is not a good thing, and this seems to have had a remarkable affect on the numbers of Americans abandoning religion and/or religious organizations in recent decades. It is generally agreed that the majority of the category of “nones” have tended to move towards a liberal political set of values.</div>
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As with atheists who decide that something is good, those who decide something is bad are also using those influences of culture and politics to come to their conclusions. Nobody lives in a vacuum, and atheists are no exception. In fact, I believe atheists are increasingly becoming more influential in the body politic. Not publicly, of course. It is still politically wise to mimic a Christian while running for office, but that doesn’t mean that closely held secular values aren’t beginning to be felt. It is remarkable that even after the Republican Party has successfully managed to gain control of all three Branches of government, their failure to enact more than a handful of Conservatively leaning policies is so obvious. The failure of the Republicans to repeal “ObamaCare” is only the tip of that iceberg, but is the poster child of their failure to force their values into policy.</div>
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It is my opinion that this is due to secular people in disguise acting secretly to confound and frustrate the right wing religious fanatics. In other words, atheists (or nones) deciding that Conservatism is bad, combined with weaker believing theists using modern cultural influences to counter traditional Christian values in the public sphere.</div>
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In Conclusion</div>
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Life is complicated. Nothing is ever simple, and the emotions, opinions, values, and actions of people are no exception. While every person has something outside of themselves they hold to be most important in its influence on them (whether they know it or not), there are still multiple influences which combine to water down that larger element.</div>
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Yes, even religious people. In fact, I would argue that there really isn’t a lot of difference between the religious folks and unbelievers in how they set the values they hold closest in influencing their actions. One set of folks may hold one source more important, the existence of the others are often more important than they might realize.</div>
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However, the existence of those who are adamantly holding to written scriptures to make those decisions (and want to force ALL of us to do the same) is hugely influential in the world, and is a major threat to the ability of future generations to make better decisions about life, death, and how to live moving forward. Any source of values that does not change and react logically to a changing population and cultural environments is a continuing threat to the future of mankind and its development.</div>
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So, “How DO you know what is right or wrong if you don’t believe in God?”</div>
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Think.</div>
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Question.</div>
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Get answers.</div>
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Decide for YOURSELF.</div>
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"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of someone else's thinking." (Steve Jobs, at Stanford University, June, 2005) </blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-92037595549962770312017-02-18T22:27:00.000-05:002017-02-18T22:27:42.124-05:00Keeping it simple<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">
The other day, I saw in a comment thread someone mention the following quote:</div>
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“The world always makes sense. If something doesn't make sense, you don't have enough information. “</blockquote>
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I did a quick search and couldn’t find who the author might have been. But this comment brings to mind something that doesn’t make sense to me.</div>
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Yesterday, DT & Co. made a comment that the American Media is the “Enemy of the American People”. Bill Maher made a video wherein he lamented over the nonsensical fact that the GOP, the Party of Patriotism, once the Defender of America, has flipped into the Party of Critics of America, who now support our once arch nemesis, Russia. And all without so much as a mention or a bit of regret or so much as a facial tic.</div>
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DT & Co.’s remark is a slap in the face of the Constitution and one of the most important rights enshrined in that document - so important it was placed into the First Amendment alongside the guarantees of religious freedom and the freedom to petition the government and the right to gather with like minded people - the guarantee of a free press.</div>
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“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” </blockquote>
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There it is, right there. Enshrined in the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, a document supposedly sacred to the Right Wing and Republicans. Yet, when DT & Co. denigrate the press, calling it the Enemy of the American People, do we hear a peep? A gasp? Something of a facial tic? Nope. Nothing, nada, nichts, not even the slightest of peeps.</div>
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None of this makes sense. </div>
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Here we have a man whose entire life is a stain on the American business world, whose tactics are the epitome of capitalist greed that sparked the 19th century limitations on the worst of those peoples’ practices, such as the laws against monopolies, who both woos the press on one hand yet calls them Enemy of the American People on the other. A man whose personal life has been a prime example of the evil that christianity and Jesus’ teachings have railed against for centuries.</div>
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And yet both the GOP, as the party of the Defense of the Constitution, has voted for and backed this man fully, even as he begins the process of dismantling the democracy the Republicans have supposedly devoted its life to protecting, and a huge percentage of Evangelicals - those devotees of Christ - not only voted for, but still enthusiastically support and defend. In spite of his flagrant violation of the values Christ supposedly preached, thus destroying Evangelical credibility in moral issues.</div>
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Forever.</div>
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Yet, why? What makes that support for Trump worth it? Worth in fact, condoning violations of the Constitution either group would have condemned outright not two years ago. There may be some answers, and none of it will make you feel good.</div>
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John Podesta, Hilary Clinton’s chief of staff, said this today:</div>
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“Trump is deploying a strategy, used by autocrats, designed to completely disorient public perception,” Podesta wrote. “He’s not just trying to spin the bad news of the day; all politicians do that. He seeks nothing less than to undermine the public’s belief that any news can be trusted, that any news is true, that there is any fixed reality.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Podesta compared Trump’s aggressive stance toward the media to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the autocratic strongman whose government U.S. intelligence officials believe ordered the hack into Podesta’s email account during the campaign. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“He is emulating the successful strategy of Vladimir Putin,” Podesta wrote, cautioning that Trump’s behavior puts the U.S. “in danger of experiencing an information void like Russia,” where people are so cynical that they “hear something on TV and assume it’s a lie.”</blockquote>
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In the op-ed, Podesta urged Americans to “maintain a heightened vigilance” and be wary of things they read on social media, but also “be wary of any effort, particularly from the White House, to disorient or discredit reliable information.”</div>
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Journalists, in turn, must continue to fact-check the White House, he wrote.”</div>
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Trump has been accused of mental illness, as well as being incompetent. This view makes the assumption that he is neither, but is working a plan.</div>
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Does the Republican party have a plan?</div>
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I don’t think so, but somebody else does. Back on November 18th, I posted an article entitled <a href="http://thecyberneticatheist.blogspot.com/2016/11/once-more-into-breech.html">“Once more into the breech!”</a> in which I first noted this idea that our true enemy is the Corporatists, who are members of the 1% engaged in a long term conspiracy to turn this country into an Oligarchy. One of the techniques in getting there is exactly what Trump is engaging in, according to Podesta.</div>
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Remember the first rule in examining something and looking for an answer: the KISS Principle, also expressed as Occam's razor. No need for long, complicated conspiracies, or convoluted multi-level plans. The simplest is most likely to work, hence is more likely to be the best explanation. The more complexity, the more likely points of failure there are.</div>
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In this atmosphere today, when the Chief Executive is doing his best to confuse, confound and create chaos, it is perfectly normal to be exactly that - its’ the intent, after all! That;’s why we need to be alert, be aware, and on the lookout for clues to what makes all this make sense.</div>
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In the meantime, keep your other eye on the ball - the corporatist ball!</div>
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Once we have enough information, it’ll make sense.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-66617888829337244812017-02-13T21:27:00.000-05:002017-02-13T21:27:16.320-05:00All we have to fear is fear itself.<div class="_1dwg _1w_m _2ph_" style="padding: 12px 12px 0px;">
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There are a lot of alarming things coming out of the White House this month. It is particularly alarming that this will go on the another 200+ weeks!</div>
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But today my focus is on fear.</div>
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There once was a time when Americans were born and bred into a form of national bravery. Bravery in some fashion was almost a national religion. We admired frontiersmen/women for their bravery in setting out to explore the unknown, we admired our military for their bravery in facing our enemies, and we built a national image of ourselves based on that admiration.</div>
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We faced down adversaries who were bigger than ourselves, who had bigger militaries and stronger national presences abroad. We invoked the Monroe Doctrine, which dared the much stronger and older European powers to face our ire if they meddled in the Western Hemisphere, and we did it at a time when we were not exactly a match for any of them.</div>
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We fought in WWI, sending our bravest into a war which literally changed the face of the world.</div>
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We used our tremendous industrial base, secure from foreign invasion by two immense oceans, as a powerhouse to allow us to fight and WIN against two opposing coalitions on the opposite sides of the globe, mobilizing the entire population to do so.</div>
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"Home of the Brave". That's what our national anthem calls it, this United States of America. We have made a national icon out of this.</div>
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We bolster our courage every 4th of July by parading this picture of ourselves through our streets and across our computer screens, patting ourselves on the backs for facing down our enemies.</div>
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Not any more.</div>
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For over thirty years, especially since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has capitalized on our fears. Fear of Big Government, fear of the different, fear of this, fear of that. Fear of anybody whose culture we don't understand.</div>
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Their constant mantra has been to stir fear about anything they could imagine that might in some way, change our country, or make something different happen. It is all touted as dangers to America, and threats to our Democracy, to The American Way of Life. Brown people, black people, yellow people, people with long hair, people who dress different. People who (gasp!) speak a different language! (GOD forbid we should have to select English with a tap of a button...)</div>
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Fear.</div>
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We spend more money, combined, than the next 7 highest spending countries on our military (including both Russia and China), and we brag about having the largest and strongest military in the world. We imagine that we are still capable of taking on two wars at once. We have seven aircraft carriers to project American power anywhere in the world in mere days, if not a week or so.</div>
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Our machinations around the world have resulted in our development and establishment of hundreds of military bases around the world, which we can use to project our air power and often, special forces power, just about anywhere we need to.</div>
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Those machinations have changed history.</div>
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...and yet, fear.</div>
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The Republican Party has managed to turn us into a nation of fearful little mice, scurrying to hide behind any convenient excuse - a wall, a blanket ban, an ocean or two, anything to protect ourselves from these foreign horrors. We hold our military in front of us, like a shield, anytime we feel challenged (which is almost constantly) in our Supreme Position of the Defenders of Pax Americana. We shake those sabers at those who frighten us, and at those who even seem to be thinking about challenging our Supremacy.</div>
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What, what has become of the Home of the Brave? Land of the Free?</div>
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What has allowed us to let this happen to us? Why are we afraid? Our parents weren't afraid. Neither were our grandparents.</div>
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Why us, why now?</div>
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Why do we let nasty little men cower behind the White House doors and under the Capitol dome and pronounce unAmerican edicts and orders that violate the very values and principles that this country was founded on?</div>
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Is this OUR country, or are we going to let these nasty little men undercut everything we stand for?</div>
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We should be standing tall, beside each other, Democrats, Republicans and Independents, opposing all who would undermine our democracy. All who would violate the principles of democracy and fairness.</div>
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Those who bring fascism to our shores. Those who wrap themselves in the flag and lift up that cross in an effort to DESTROY the freedoms that really made this country great.</div>
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That cross didn't make this country great. Neither did the flag.</div>
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The PEOPLE did. People from virtually every ethnic group on the planet. People from every corner of the globe, almost literally. </div>
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Immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. If we allow these nasty little men to dictate to us who can come and who can go based on their nasty little prejudices and hatreds, we disgrace the memory of every person of every ethnic group who died to make this country what it is today. We disgrace the work and the blood, sweat and tears of the entire lives' work that went into what we have today.</div>
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Let's not let that happen.</div>
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Shed your fear.</div>
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Stand up. Face down the tyrants, those nasty little men.</div>
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Let's show them what real Americans are made of.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-90146164957698936882017-02-13T19:36:00.000-05:002017-02-13T19:36:34.562-05:00What a government is all about, including what public employees do and think.<div style="color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
This post was first posted a couple of days ago on my personal Facebook page. At this writing, it has been shared 21 times, which I am honored to see. I thought since Ophelia Benson had shared this also on her blog <a href="http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2017/guest-post-because-governments-dont-exist-to-make-a-profit/#comment-2687605" target="_blank">Butterflies and Wheels</a>, I should probably put it up on mine, too! (Thanks, Ophelia! I appreciate it!)</div>
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So, (hopefully) enjoy.</div>
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A remark made on one of my posts, last night I think it was, caused me to stop and think about what your average American knows about being a government employee.</div>
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To start out, for those who don't know me or haven't checked my profile yet, I was a Federal employee for 42 years and 4 months. I served the US Army for four years, and the Food and Drug Administration the rest of the time, starting out as a mail & file clerk and ending up as a senior IT tech overseeing a group of contractors who kept the FDA desktops updated and secure.</div>
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Along the way, I worked with scientists, lab people, investigators, inspectors, medical personnel, lawyers, contracting officers, instructors, administrators, and in one capacity or another, others from almost every Center in FDA.</div>
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Many of those people had worked in other major Departments, including a supervisor who had once worked for the Justice Department, and a Branch chief whose former intelligence agency employer was so classified, he still was prevented by law from disclosing that to us.</div>
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As many of you know from the private sector, each organization, private or public, has its own culture. Much of that culture comes from the top down and is informed by its mission - what it does as a primary function.</div>
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But governments, whether local, State or Federal, are different than private companies, large or small.</div>
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Why? Because governments don't exist to make a profit.</div>
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Private companies do. That is the very reason they exist! If they cannot make a profit, eventually, they are forced to close and have their assets sold off to satisfy their debts.</div>
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Governments don't go bankrupt. At the worst, they have their credit ratings cut to nothing, forcing them to "live" and operate from cash receipts obtained through statutory incomes, like taxes or receipts from licensing activities, fines, etc.</div>
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Their mission is to provide for the safety, welfare, public peace and security of the American people.</div>
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That's a whole lot different from making filthy lucre to fill the bosses' pockets. That's why they operate differently, and that's why Republicans are wrong to try and make the US Government run like a business.</div>
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Because it isn't one.</div>
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That's why the culture of each governmental Department is different, and why each has its own take on transparency.</div>
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Yeah, Transparency. Believe me, that's a tightrope each and every supervisor in the government has to weigh on a regular basis.</div>
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Some agencies, by their mission's demands, cannot be transparent. Intelligence agencies are a good example. We cannot allow foreign governments to know if, when, or how we may or may not be spying on them. We want them to be guessing, constantly, and we want them to guess wrong, every time.</div>
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Others, like the military, have inherent activities and equipment that by their nature, need to be secret. Otherwise, their effectiveness in combat is greatly lessened. Enemies who have to guess about what you may bring to the table in a conflict will be cautious and very careful before committing themselves.</div>
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Civilian agencies which are by nature enforcing various Federal laws are bound to be secretive in some ways for two reasons: First, they are bound by law to protect proprietary information belonging to the companies they need to inspect as part of that law enforcement activity. Second, they don't want their enforcement activities to be publicly revealed, because sometimes a surprise inspection is what you need to catch someone who is willfully violating the law. Give them a chance to clean up, and you've got nothing for your efforts!</div>
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But other agencies have a tougher row to hoe regarding that word transparency. They have to balance letting the public know how they are operating in making policy vs. allowing either political opponents or foreign opponents know secrets that may allow them to counter those policies in ways harmful to the public.</div>
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Sometimes, getting that balance right is hard.</div>
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One of the things that turned me aside from being a republican early in my government career was their constant ragging on us for being lazy, or corrupt, or leaches sucking at the "government teat".</div>
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I've known hundreds if not thousands of people in my career, and with the exception of one or two, not a damn one of them was lazy, or corrupt or anything approaching the description of a leach. They all worked hard for their paychecks. Many of them could have gone outside and gotten much bigger paychecks working for large corporations.</div>
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But they stayed, most of them, and they do because they CARE. The mission of the FDA is, among other things similar, to keep your food, your drugs, your cosmetics, your radiation emitting devices, your medical devices, safe, effective and the best American companies can make them to be. Every single FDA employee I've worked with cared about that single mission, cared about how their job, whether it was leading a Center, running a computer, or inspecting Mexican produce crossing the border, and how their job impacted the primary mission of the Agency.</div>
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I cannot imagine anyone in any other governmental agency feeling any less, whether they are working for the Federal government or a State or local government.</div>
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So, folks, when you hear the Republicans continuing to belittle public employees, whether they are US Park Service Rangers, or EPA scientists, or federal Judges, remember this post. Remember that these people CARE - they care about you, me, and their neighbors. They are there, doing their jobs, probably making less money than they could on the outside, because they give a damn about OUR COUNTRY.</div>
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They each took an oath, which is very similar to the one Trump just took, to protect and defend the Constitution. Not an oath of loyalty to a President, or to an Agency, or to a boss. To the Constitution of the United States of America.</div>
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To serve YOU. That also includes Congress, by the way.</div>
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It's up to you to determine which of those public servants are upholding that oath.</div>
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And which are, very publicly, not.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-56732702234047764672016-11-18T18:08:00.000-05:002016-11-18T18:14:40.707-05:00Once more into the breech!<div style="margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I know this election has a lot of people on both sides upset. Either over the results, or other people’s reactions to the results. Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to determine who will run their party going forward, and so are the Republicans, especially now that they’ve got a President elect who they are fearful will be both unpredictable and uncontrollable.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Politically, this country is looking more and more like a third world country. The only thing missing is the entry onto the stage of armed militias shooting at each other.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Give it time, though, I’m sure that’s part of the plan.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I’ll bet a whole bunch of folks are wondering why. Why can’t our politicians get it together? They’re smart people, can’t they understand what the REAL problems facing this country are? Sure, they may have differences of opinion as to how to deal with them, but it’s always been that way. Why the chaos NOW? What’s changed?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">One word: money.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">No, not bribes, although there is certainly enough of that floating around the system.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">No, this money is coming from people Bernie Sanders has warned us about. The 1%. The wealthiest people in this country, who control the Corporations that basically OWN most of the politicians that run this country.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">You see, the 1% didn’t get there because they’re stupid. They got there because they were largely born into it. There may be a few, like Bill Gates, who wasn’t, but he doesn’t count, since he’s guiltily giving most of it away. The 1% know that if we all knew who was behind this, that they wouldn’t last past the next election, and they are determined not to give up that power. In fact, they want ALL the power.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">So, how are they doing that? Simple, they’ve got you and I fighting EACH OTHER, and mostly unaware that we are fighting the wrong people. Our opponents aren’t Republicans or Democrats. Take a good long look at the policies both parties have been implementing. (forget abortion, that’s not in their playbook) Haven’t you seen and heard a lot of folks expound that both parties are “the same”? If you’re Democrat, you respond that of course not, Democrats care about the little people. If you are Republican, you respond, no, we’re nothing like those Socialist bastards!</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But, if you sit back and dispassionately look at what both parties have been DOING, you can get past the rhetoric.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Years ago, Republicans began to target unions. Democrats resisted at first, but eventually gave up. Today, fewer than 15% of American workers are covered by union contracts. Republicans targeted Welfare, and in Bill Clinton’s years, they succeeded in drastically reforming that, to the dismay of a lot of Democrats who simply had failed to fight it. Then they targeted labor through NAFTA, again, with Bill’s help. Since then, jobs have fled overseas at alarming rates, thanks to that and other trade agreements that have slashed the protections for American jobs. Democrats have either failed to fight those, or actively joined in.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Don’t even get me started on tax cuts, or slashed budgets which have crippled the Federal (and State) governments’ ability to provide services.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Today, one can reasonably point to the Democratic Party and call them “Republican light”. Which was a legitimate complaint about Hillary Clinton.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But stop and think about it. Why? Why would Democrats ignore and abandon their core constituencies (labor, the working class, the middle class) in favor of Republican policies which have so harmed those groups that almost all of them had enough people angry that Hillary Clinton couldn’t get enough Electoral College votes to win? Why would they abandon their core ideology?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The answer is relatively simple, but because we’ve been lied to and mislead and misinformed for decades, we don’t know who the real enemy is, or even, what to call that enemy! You see, in order to understand anything about someone - especially if that someone is an enemy of yours - you’ve got to know who he/she is, and key to that is knowing what the characteristics are that bring them together into a group.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Then you’ve got to know what to call them so you can TALK about them. It’s gotta be catchy and short and descriptive.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Bernie Sanders calls them the 1%. That’s both short and descriptive, but it isn’t enough, because it fails to lump together the groups that are on their side and doing their bidding. Folks who follow their “ideology”, if you will.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I use the term “Corporatists”, because it describes the corporations the 1% owns and use as their primary tools. They are the entities who support with cash the PACS and SuperPACs which contribute so much cash that has corrupted the political system. It describes the politicians, of either Party, who also support them and gladly accept all that cash just to stay in power.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Since the 1% actually control the Corporations, even the publicly “owned” ones, it describes the people who are behind all this chaos.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Is Trump a Corporatist? Nope. Don’t make those rich folks laugh. He’s a tool, hoping to be allowed into the lowest echelons of the club by playing his role. He has fooled the Republican leadership. He has fooled the Republican rank and file. Hell, he was describing himself as a Democrat less than five years ago. He is neither. He is a tool of the Corporatists.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">His function is to contribute further chaos and confusion into the system, in order to advance the old Republican accusation that “Government doesn’t work!” by getting in there and throwing as many wrenches into the system as he can. That will frustrate Americans even worse than they are, and eventually, the Corporatists - not the Republicans, although you may be fooled into thinking the guys who declare that are - will be able to declare government to be so bad, so non-functional, that it will be the duty of the Corporations to step in and “lend a hand” to put things back in order.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">By then, we’ll all be so angry and frustrated by our representatives’ failures that we’ll grasp at any straws which promise to fix the problem.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Kinda like Republicans did with Trump.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">No, Republicans and Democrats, at least the rank and file of each Party, are most certainly not enemies. We should be out there starting a third party by lending so much support, the two major Parties collapse by the sheer weight of all the folks who abandon them. We should be supporting anyone who is willing to set the goals of such a Party as fighting the corporatists in favor of the American people.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Forget all the current catchwords of our past. Forget the term conservative, or liberal, or Independent. Forget Socialism or Capitalism. None of those describe the fight we should be fighting.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">We need to toss out the Corporatists, elect Representatives who will represent US, the People and not them, the Corporatists. If we manage that, then we can discuss the best ways to advance OUR welfare, OUR economic success. The best ways to fix our infrastructure, our healthcare system, our political structure for determining who best represents The People. To fix the Economy to ensure that all people will be paid enough to live on, and eventually, to retire on.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">If WE can manage to define the fight, then the other side is automatically on the defense, and we have the advantage.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">That should be our goal. Not letting our real enemy continue to put us at each others’ throats.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">That’s the way to Oligarchy. Dictatorship. The rule of the many by the few.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Don’t let them divide us. That helps them, not us.</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-83613962987149811752015-07-23T13:35:00.001-04:002015-07-23T17:51:06.694-04:00More evidence of how religion harms mankind.<div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">A friend of mine, Don Wharton, the coordinator of my monthly discussion group from WASH, the Washington Area Secular Humanists group, posted in an email thread on Meetup a link to a video of Neal DeGrasse Tyson demonstrating how Islam turned a progressive and successful Arab culture into "an abyss of intellectual darkness", as my other friend Lance, put it.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl1nJC3lvFs">Here is the video.</a></div>
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His methodology involved an examination of two things:</div>
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The scientific principle of naming rights.</div>
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The numbers of various nationalities/ethnicities with Nobel Prizes for scientific advancements.</div>
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First, he noted how the naming rights thing works, that whomever first works on something or discovers it has the rights to name that thing. Which is why so many heavy metals are named after parts of the U.S.- cause the people who discovered them were working here in this country. He noted that the constellations are largely named in Greek, because the Greeks were the first to really do that (at least in western civilization).</div>
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Yet, the stars themselves largely have Arab names. Why? Because the period in which they were discovered and named was during a period when Baghdad was the cultural center of the world.</div>
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Which ended when a fundamentalist form of Islam took over that culture and shut down the scientific inquiry.</div>
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He also notes the fact (which some have tried to call Islamophobic) there are only about two Nobel Prize winners of Muslim belief, while the rest are either Christian or (a full 25%) Jewish.</div>
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All of which he uses to drive home the point of Islam's tendency to harm the cultures in which it holds power.</div>
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I would like to expand on that thought, lest people think that this applies only to Islam. Some may point out that almost 75% of Nobel Prize winners are Christian, and the founder of that prize was too. Yep, no argument about that.</div>
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But I would counter that some politicians in this country, who are being courted by the Republican Party, have made statements to the affect of denigrating science, and in fact, have promulgated laws which are decidedly anti-science in their affect and intent. Every one of those politicians identify themselves as devout Christians, and use that anti-science attitude to pander to a fundamentalist audience.</div>
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Remember that Arab culture? How they named a huge percentage of the stars we now know? How they invented advanced forms of mathematics, including the concept of zero? Tyson's point was that they haven't done that for a thousand years.</div>
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Over a THOUSAND years. Until Islam killed that culture's scientific progress, it was the one culture that was preserving mankind's scientific knowledge, after the fall of the Romans. Think for a moment, how much scientific progress was lost. How many advances in science were NOT made over that thousand years? What might we now know, scientifically, had that progress a thousand years ago not halted? Would we have invented chemistry over half a millennium earlier than we actually did? Imagine for a moment if the Industrial Age had begun over five hundred years earlier. How many medical advancements would have occurred, how many diseases defeated? Would we now have a cure for cancer?</div>
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All of these things are now little what-ifs, because a fundamentalist form of Islam shut that all down.</div>
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Do we really want to do that here, today? Do we really want to take the wealthiest country on earth, where the resources abound and we have already done so much, and make it an intellectual desert? Do we want to allow a few (less than 20%) Americans to dictate to the rest of us what kind of a culture we will have going forward? Do we really want to take the scientific community of which we have been so rightfully proud and set it back a thousand years?</div>
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Do the Christians of this country want their religion to be the cause of that disaster? For history to record such shame?</div>
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Somehow, I doubt that.</div>
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But without a concerted effort, a minority of Christians in this country will use their religion's written tenets to do just that.</div>
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Which is why I have written about how harmful religion is and can be. It doesn't have to be that way, but sooner or later, because the words are written in their holy books, someone somewhere will take those words and act them out, which will cause untold harm to individuals as well as the entire human race.</div>
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It isn't because religion is always used that way that is the problem, it is a problem because it always CAN be. At any time, by anyone, anywhere. And because those words are written in their holy book, people will take them seriously.</div>
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And the rest of us will suffer for it.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-59147246687384889872015-07-15T20:42:00.003-04:002015-07-15T20:52:27.534-04:00There's a hidden cancer infecting AmericaI've been doing some genealogical work off and on for decades. I've managed to find ancestors (in concert with others on Ancestry.com) going back to the 15th century, at least on the German side. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of biographical info to be found going that far back, but given that the earliest I can find that do, my folks in that country were farmers. I've got others in Britain, Ireland and Scotland, and the DNA says also in the Scandinavian countries. (Given the history, they were probably viking settlers in England. Yay, Vikings!)<br />
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So far, there isn't anything that indicates that very many, if any, of my ancestors had much education, nor that any may have been aristocrats. There are a few pics of some Scottish folks going back into the 19th century who were wearing what appears to be suits, so they may have been fairly well off merchants. One guy living in Ohio around the Civil War was a printer, and well known for starting a newspaper in Oklahoma before he moved back east again. His brother was an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, according to his obit. Probably the most successful of my ancestral line in this country anyway.<br />
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But, no evidence any of them got a University education.<br />
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I do.<br />
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So, I may be the first of my family in who knows how many generations to actually graduate from a University with a degree. Yay, me! (Thank you, again American taxpayers, who, through the GI Bill, financed that education. I mean that sincerely. It was a fair trade, I gave you four years of my life standing tall against the USSR, and you gave me a four year education. Kudos all around!)<br />
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But. (Isn't there always a "but"?)<br />
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There are those in the Republican party (and I ran into one earlier this week) who would have you think I am some kind of "elite". That a University education will turn you into some kind of liberal (as if that is an insult - go figure...) atheist brat that is somehow a kind of moocher. (??? I can't figure that out, if a degree gets you a higher paying job...?) Maybe they're jealous or something.<br />
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Their accusations are even more wacky, given that the very politicians who are pushing that "elitist" bullshit are, themselves, grads of such places like Harvard or other Ivy League institutions. Talk about elitist!<br />
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But, I want to address this crap.<br />
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I, and most of the people who graduate today, especially on the GI Bill, are not elitists. We are your average American, trying to get ahead.<br />
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I worked hard, for over eight years, for that degree, and went to two institutions. I worked during the day at a full time job (which did not meet all the bills by any means, and we had NO credit card debt) and went to school after work, evenings, and often on Saturdays.<br />
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I missed a lot of watching my kids grow up. I spent a lot of time hitting the books when I could have spent it with my wife or playing with the kids. <br />
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And you DARE to call me an elitist? Elite compared to whom? What elite "club" do I belong to? Oh, yeah, maybe you're talking about the alumni groups. Well, the one (if there is one) for the community college I went to has never contacted me. Some "club".<br />
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The alumni folks at the University of Texas (Dallas) where I got the degree have contacted me over the years, and I am probably listed in the alumni book. But that never got me a job, it never resulted in any other advantages, save an opportunity to tour the CIA HQ facility at Langley. Which was fun, but it didn't pay any bills.<br />
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So I am at a loss to tell exactly what that "elitist" tag is supposed to mean, except to try to set me apart from your average American. It's the newest cancer infecting the body politic in this country, this distain and almost outright hatred for people with an education. The funniest thing is, what sets me apart isn't my education - although it helped me get this job. It's the nice pension I plan on cashing in on in the not to distant future.<br />
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You see, I worked for that too. Forty-two years and four months when I finally walk out the door, to be exact. Yeah, what sets me apart is that work ethic! You know, that work ethic Republicans claim that only REAL Americans have.<br />
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But not liberals. Nope, not liberals, at all. We're "elitists", we're lazy as Federal workers, with no work ethic.<br />
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Well, screw you folks. I'm voting for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic Primary, and if he wins, I will PROUDLY cast my vote for the first real LIBERAL to grace an American national ballot in decades. If he doesn't, I'll vote for Hillary, and I'll spit in the general direction of the Republican National Committee Headquarters. <br />
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Twice.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-71372789869058489112015-07-13T19:57:00.000-04:002015-07-13T19:57:43.578-04:00The Second Amendment Solution: Searching for the Right ProblemI could provide links to all kinds of places where the toll of firearm deaths in America are recorded and listed, sadness heaped upon tragedy. I won’t, though, because this isn’t about the tragedy; plenty of folks have written about that, and I doubt I could add much to that heap o’ words.<br />
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What I do want to do is to talk about my own feelings regarding the Second Amendment and the state of firearm ownership in America today.<br />
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When I grew up in Texas, starting in the 1950’s, private gun ownership was unchallenged. Our TVs were filled with the Westerns in which every citizen carried a firearm; my dad owned one with which he taught me the basics of firearm safety and how to shoot. (bolt action 22) His lessons on safety started out with, “Don’t ever point a weapon at someone unless you intend to shoot them. If you DO point it at someone with the intent to shoot, don’t hesitate. Do it.” There were other details, including the same thing my Drill Instructors in the Army taught us, “There is no such thing as an unloaded weapon. They don’t exist.”<br />
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If every firearm owner in the US followed just those two precepts, the numbers of firearm deaths in this country would be much lower. Unfortunately, there isn’t an IQ test for buying a firearm in America. Or, probably, anywhere.<br />
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Ok, that said, on to the Second Amendment. So, yeah, I grew up with the assumption that firearms were the unchallenged right of every American to personally own. Then I went to college and got educated, and in that Constitutional Law course, I learned that there were some wrinkles to that assumption. Since, of course, serious constitutional Scholars have written online articles noting that many scholars had felt and understood that Amendment to mean exactly what it said about militias, and seeing the real, actual history about the Revolution, I can see the point.<br />
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Unfortunately for those folks, the SCOTUS ruled a few years ago that people DO have a personal right to own a firearm, while still leaving in place the rulings which give States and Cities the right to regulate firearms in the name of public safety. This is, of course, an ongoing struggle to define what public safety means, requires, and what the Constitution allows. It may never be decided.<br />
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Which isn’t a bad thing. Unlike the most conservative of the right wing, it is obvious when reading the writings of the Founders that they intended the Constitution to be a living document (sorry, Scalia), and therefor provided a method for amending it. They even made statements like Thomas Jefferson’s in which he hoped future generations would alter it regularly to stay updated with current political and social realities. The man wasn’t stupid, he was a radical of his day, not a conservative. He wanted us to keep it real, and relevant to our own time and reality.<br />
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Times change, people change. When the Constitution was written and ratified, the Revolution was the biggest story, that and creating a new country. The Founders wrote that document based on their experiences and based on how they felt about what they had just done. The frontier of 19th century America wasn’t on their radar yet. As time went on, the frontier got more and more important, and people’s experiences with pushing the natives off of their land made it apparent that anyone attempting the move west was going to need some kind of weapon to just feed themselves, not to mention protecting themselves from resentful natives.<br />
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I suspect that if that experience had been more on the minds of the Founders, the Second Amendment would have looked very different.<br />
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But wait about 50 or 60 years past the turn of the century, and things began to look different. As the frontier States moved west, and the easternmost territories began to civilize, settle and become States, one thing became very clear. Folks in settled towns and cities didn’t want a bunch of nutbags running around with firearms on their belts. Most of them, as they became settled, enacted laws forbidding the open carrying of firearms, and I imagine concealed carry wasn’t far behind. Even towns on the active frontier like Dodge City had laws forbidding open carry beyond certain limits. They kept the riffraff on the other side of town to safeguard their homes.<br />
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It is a lesson apparently forgotten by today’s Republican Party and the NRA.<br />
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I won’t go over the stats about how many people we kill every year. I don’t need to, they are well known. The obvious conundrum we have today is how to satisfy the very large and politically influential gun lobby while still fulfilling the requirement for safeguarding public safety. Now that the SCOTUS has ruled we can all own one, until that gets overturned (if it ever does) our task is to balance that right with the public’s rights to be safe and secure in their persons, homes and workplaces. The problem we have is that the right wing doesn’t see it that way. The NRA and other right wing interests have so stirred up their base that their only and main fear isn’t public safety, it’s preventing the government from taking their guns.<br />
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A problem that obviously doesn’t really exist.<br />
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Personally, I am torn on this one. I do think people should have the right to own firearms, that right has been assumed for so long, it may as well be chiseled in stone somewhere. But on the other hand, we MUST do something to stem the tide of murder, mayhem and negligence ridden deaths that annually top 25,000 people.<br />
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In case you have’t been paying attention, that is more than five times the numbers of soldiers we lost in Iraq. EVERY YEAR. Not in ten years, like Iraq. Every. Fucking. Year.<br />
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Somehow, someway, we must find a way to stop murderous, crazy and incompetent people from getting their hands on firearms. Not being an expert on making laws, nor law enforcement, I cannot really make any reasonable suggestions.<br />
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But it MUST be done. Somehow.<br />
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I will leave you with a thought. I follow a blog called Stonekettle Station. Jim Wright has a very interesting suggestion for how to at least begin to control our issue while at the same time changing the gun culture we have. <a href="http://www.stonekettle.com/2015/06/bang-bang-sanity.html">I recommend his solution</a> to your perusal.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-17799792262642548452015-07-10T19:31:00.000-04:002015-07-10T23:00:37.069-04:00A Gentle Piece of AdviceAs many of you know from my many articles about the harm religion causes our society, I'm not exactly a fan of religion.<br />
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I do, however, respect your right to believe whatever crazy things you might think appropriate. Even if I do my best to debunk it.<br />
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However.<br />
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I am a realist. I do realize that Atheists' dream of a religion free world is at best, centuries away, and at worst, a pipe dream. So, there will be, for the foreseeable near future, some form of religion to deal with.<br />
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So believe me when I say that I've got some advice for American Christians in light of both the SCOTUS' ruling on marriage equality and the new Pew Research poll released a while back, which noted that not only are Americans deserting their religion in droves (Pew's words!), but the trend isn't slowing down.<br />
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Back off from the extremism. Forget the mythical miracles, the unproven Resurrection, the ghastly, bloody crucifixion, the misogynistic paternalism. None of that is a winning ticket in today's America, and especially not to the new Millennials. If you keep that stuff up, in less than a generation's time from today, your churches will stand empty, foreclosed on by either banks or local governments once your tax exempt status is revoked.<br />
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Which it will be.<br />
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At least some of the "nones" still do believe in some form of spiritualism and are probably actively searching for something - anything - that can replace that old comforting feeling they got sitting in your sanctuary, listening to the music and knowing that all was right with the world.<br />
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So, if you still crave that old fashioned secular power tug, enhanced by plenty of donated cash, you can still reinvent yourself into something the younger generation will buy into.<br />
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Literally, of course. What good is popularity with no money? I'd be careful, though. Many of them are a bit more discerning, what with all the online scams they're used to dealing with.<br />
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I'd read a few Science Fiction stories. Those folks know how to invent religion! (After all, look what L. Ron Hubbard did with Scientology!). I'm sure there are some real good ideas floating around the genre these days. Hey, and those Millennials do read that stuff!<br />
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You can't do any worse than Paul did 2000 years ago.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-27584060119457371852015-07-10T18:54:00.001-04:002015-07-10T18:57:01.991-04:00Everybody has an ideology, right?I think by now, anyone who has spent any time reading my timeline and stuff I post on Facebook (much less my blog “The Cybernetic Atheist”) is aware that I am an unapologetic, out-and-out atheist. No surprise there. As I’ve explained before, I’m an atheist because of what I’ve learned about the Bible, and from the lack of any real evidence of the existence of God. (From which I surmise that Christ cannot exist - no Father, no Son, right? So, Christianity is man-made.)<br />
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But, as so many people have noted, and I myself have also said, atheism is not a belief, it is the LACK of a belief. Over 8,000 gods/goddesses which mankind has invented over the millennia, and I don’t believe in any of them. For much the same reasons, in fact.<br />
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But, isn’t it true that everybody has to have something which guides them? Some moral compass? Some (for lack of a better term) ideology? I think that’s true, and mankind has come up with literally hundreds of such ideologies, if not thousands, in the course of our becoming humankind designing all of the myriads of civilizations (and accompanying gods) which have come and gone since.<br />
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Oh, what was that? What do <i>I</i> believe?<br />
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Funny you should ask, I was just about to get to that.<br />
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For starters, it also isn’t a surprise to my Facebook friends to note that I seem to be a liberal. I used to call myself an Independent, but the Republicans have managed to push me much further to the left over the last ten years (though mostly over the last six for obvious reasons).<br />
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But there’s more than that, a political ideology isn’t a moral one, as moral as it may be possible for political ideologies to be.<br />
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Morally, I like to identify myself with Secular Humanism. The basic ideals of that group of people resonate with me closely. Just to make it easier, here is one example of their beliefs:<br />
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<i>* A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.</i><i> * Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.</i><i> * A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.</i><i> * A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.</i><i> * A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.</i><i> * A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.</i><i> * A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.</i></blockquote>
Obviously, there are other interpretations and versions of these, Secular Humanism is not a religion and has no universally recognized tenets or principles, though these are a good example of the general direction most Humanists tend to go.<br />
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Another principle I admire is one contained in the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm”. If there is one overriding idea which intertwines itself into virtually all of the above principles, that would be it. As a human being, into whose DNA the very urge of being a socialist animal is cooked, that seems to be the best guide to living one’s life, if one had to boil it all down to its basic elements.<br />
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That, I think, is one of the major differences between Humanism and religion - Christianity being my focus because of where I live. Why? Well, just look at the Ten Commandments, which Christians tend to look at (at least the Fundies here do) as the basic guidance provided by their God.<br />
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Without belaboring the point, look at the second commandment:<br />
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<i>“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. <u>For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me</u>, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”</i></blockquote>
Look at the passage I underlined. That is the very opposite of “do no harm”. To punish the innocent? For the neglect and disobedience of their ancestors? (I always kind of thought the jealousy was a sin.) <br />
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On the other hand, There is no example of jealousy or hatred in the Humanist principles above. Quite the opposite, in fact.<br />
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Another reason why I think Humanism is better than Christianity (as well as others) is because of longevity.<br />
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Yeah, yeah, I know, Secular humanism is merely a couple of hundred years old at the most. So, what gives?<br />
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As a movement, that’s true. But the principles above are based on literally hundreds of thousands of years of human experience. While our intellectual experience giving us the ability to express them well is fairly recent comparatively speaking, the basic experiences themselves derive from the totality of human experience going back over two hundred thousand years, fading back into our evolutionary past. These principles are so well understood that they were expressed, discussed and argued over in various ways even as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, who debated many of these very ideas well over two thousand years ago, predating christianity!<br />
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Yet, Christianity is only around two thousand years old, its Jewish antecedents go back perhaps another two thousand or so, and the developmental periods for both religions are rife with violence, tribalism, slavery and misogyny. Hardly an atmosphere to encourage humanistic principles! Granted, the Greeks weren’t a prime example of being a hotbed of modern liberal ideals either, but their philosophers fought for the idea of trying to make humanity better than we were, at least some of them did, and their example resonated with the fathers of the Enlightenment thousands of years later!<br />
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I firmly believe that religion is, to a general degree, concerned with one thing: Its own survival. For an excellent example, look at the first five of the Ten Commandments. Every one of them are devoted to the preservation of the authority of God and his earthly representatives. Keeping people in the fold, under the pain of death. (Perhaps not an earthly one, but if hell isn’t a kind of eternal death, I don’t know what is.)<br />
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Certainly the fact that most if not all of His other dozens of commandments/laws in Leviticus command death as a punishment qualify as antithetical to Humanist principles.<br />
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Yet, Humanism is not. Not a single principle above is devoted to ensuring the survival of a “Humanist religion”, mainly because there isn’t one! The closest one can come is where it says, “<i>A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.</i>” Which does not at all entail a self serving principle of survival.<br />
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As you might have guessed by now, another focus of mine is that of anti-theism. I am, admittedly, an anti-theist. I believe strongly that religion, as a belief system(s) which encourages people to believe things which are false and contrary to reality, is harmful to not only individual humans, but humanity as a whole. Much of my writing is focused on struggling to spread the truth about false beliefs and their harmful affects.<br />
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But even that is an outgrowth of my Humanist principles - see the next to last one above. Religion is not a good introduction to ethical conduct - quite the opposite, in fact, as it encourages a plethora of unethical conduct, mainly by example, which precisely undermines its attempts at ethics through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus. There may be millions of Christians who defy this, by being good - but that happens because they adhere to the Enlightenment principles expressed by our Founding Fathers, ignoring the more harmful and violent examples and verses of the Old Testament. (One can see that, because of the various examples of Christians who do the opposite - adhere to the Old Testament’s more intolerant and violent prescriptions of conduct, and do all they can to undermine and violate the egalitarian principles contained in our Constitution.)<br />
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So, to make a long story shorter, while my focus may be on the harmfulness of religion and my attempts to explain how I arrive at those conclusions, my very positive beliefs are what informs that fight, wishing with all my heart that more people could see how much better America and the world would be without the falsehoods of faith.<br />
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I hope this helps to make my efforts more understandable.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-52692556292906115962015-06-30T23:23:00.000-04:002015-06-30T23:23:59.822-04:00Society in Transition - from Religious America to a Post-Religious America?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Last week was a bummer for Conservatives.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Including today’s ruling by Colorado’s Supreme Court allowing citizen committees the delegated power to set voting districts (thus setting the stage for more battles over gerrymandering), the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) led the parade by granting petitioners’ suit for the right for gays to wed, on top of the ruling that saved the Affordable Care Act, as well as upholding a critical piece of the Fair Housing Act.</span></div>
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Any one of these would have been enough to set conservative teeth to grinding, but it was the victory over gay marriage that set off the fireworks.</div>
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First in the lineup is Rick Santorum, who says <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/rick-santorum-redirect-global-warming-effort-to-fighting-gay-marriage-for-the-survival-of-our-country/">Supreme Court judges should face retention elections </a>every few years.</div>
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Or on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/29/1397842/-It-just-gets-sillier-Pastor-says-gays-will-demand-you-participate-in-sex-with-us#">Tim Barton’s Wallbuilders</a>: </div>
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<i>Tim Brooks: Here is the only thing that will satisfy this agenda, and it's very clear — participation. We want you to come out of your house and participate with us. Now as I read this story, Lot was not forcing his lifestyle on them. Lot never tried to force his lifestyle on them, he never even brought that up. They are trying to force their lifestyle on him.</i></div>
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<i>Rick Green: And so that goes even beyond "you have to celebrate with us. You have to actually participate with us."</i></div>
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<i>Tim Barton: Yes, come out and have sex with us — have to participate. They're going to force participation and that's what we're seeing around the country.</i></div>
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<i>It's unsafe in a city where the homosexual agenda has control.</i></div>
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Or on, of all places, Time, Inc., where <a href="http://time.com/3938050/orthodox-christians-must-now-learn-to-live-as-exiles-in-our-own-country/">Rod Dreher opined</a> (in my favorite of the selection):</div>
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<i>Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order.</i></div>
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<i>We live in interesting times.</i></div>
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I’m assuming he meant that in the sense of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”</div>
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No, that ruling doesn’t mean the decline and fall of the “traditional” American orders he mentioned, but it certainly does mean the decline and fall of the “Conservative” orders of both social and political influence as they’ve enjoyed them in the past. </div>
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It has been well documented for some time now that the demographics of the American population is dictating at least two things conservatives loathe:</div>
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A growing number/percentage of young Americans are moving away from and actively rejecting the conservative set of ideals.</div>
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A similarly large percentage and number of young Americans are moving away from and rejecting religion.</div>
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Both of these herald the decline and fall of conservatism as we know it today. It won’t happen before this next election, probably not within the next five years, but certainly in the next ten years, many conservative institutions now seen as bastions of conservative thought will fall, losing sufficient financial support to keep them going. As the numbers of Americans willing to donate their hard earned dollars to the cause diminish, so will the institutions they now support. Eventually even the wealthiest of conservative supporters will realize that throwing good money after bad is not a good investment as the numbers of politicians willing to pay homage to their money falls to unsustainable levels.</div>
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On what do I base these predictions? Well, numbers help. The US Census is part pof it, the PEW polls of recent weeks are there too, and I’ve posted <a href="http://ww.theamericanchurch.org/facts/1.htm">this link</a> before, which is a slide show from a site that is trying hard to alert American Christians to the dire future their religion has unless they take desperate measures.</div>
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Much like Mr. Dreher, above.</div>
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He tries to sound reasonable. He uses a calm, collected tone, yet asserts the most ridiculous claims.</div>
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<i>“One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities.”</i></div>
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Of course, what he is talking about is the loss of the “traditional” privileges Christianity and its adherents have enjoyed in this country.</div>
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You know, the ability to know that every elected official is Christian.</div>
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That every legislative session is opened with a Christian prayer.</div>
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That every school day was begun with a Christian prayer.</div>
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That (as he mentions) Christian churches enjoy a decided economic advantage through their tax exempt status, even for their profit making entities.</div>
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That every hamlet, town, city and State can erect Christmas displays with Christian themes at the public’s expense.</div>
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That our currency reflects a Christian themed motto, which is emblazoned in every courthouse in the country, even in the Supreme Court.</div>
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That every one of our 44 Presidents have been (at least publicly) Christian.</div>
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There’s more, but I should link to a few sites that have extensive lists:</div>
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<a href="https://humanities.asu.edu/christian-privilege-checklist">Christian Privilege Checklist</a>. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><a href="http://beyond-the-wand.tumblr.com/post/12838861990/christian-privilege-checklist-laying-down-the">Beyond the Wand</a>. </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.christianforums.com/threads/straight-christian-privilege-checklist.7449228/">Christian Forums</a>. </div>
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Here’s one on <a href="http://dunx.tumblr.com/post/5973144798/christian-privilege-checklist">Tumblr</a>: </div>
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<a href="http://amptoons.com/blog/2009/01/26/a-gentile-privilege-checklist/">Alas! A blog</a></div>
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Whew! That’s a lot! Sure, quite a few are repeated in one way or another from site to site, but still, the list is extensive.</div>
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My problem with Mr. Dreher’s article is that once you look at a list like these, you realize that many of these aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. It ill take a major shift in social norms before many of these fade into the woodwork so that being Christian isn’t so normal any longer.</div>
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Now, it IS true that the major ones which I listed first are likely to be the first to disappear, since they depend upon the ubiquitousness of Conservatives in government to maintain them, and a few elections going the other way will easily allow Progressives to turn those corners. In fact, several of those items have already come under fire, and at times fairly effectively, too, through rulings by the SCOTUS. School prayer and publicly funded Christmas displays, for instance.</div>
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But, given these things, how likely is it that Christians will see his dire predictions come about?</div>
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Some will, some are clearly bogus. The claims of future persecution, for instance are pure unadulterated bunk. Obviously, he is conflating a loss of privilege with persecution. A common scare tactic.</div>
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His claim that, <i>“Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.” </i>is obvious bullshit, as the First Amendment will protect pure religious practice.</div>
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Now, to be fair, it is true that those who insist on discriminating openly against gays will eventually (and to an extent will now) be shunned by more progressive folk. But that is a cultural consequence, which the Constitution does not guarantee you any protections from, and is something a lot of folk from groups who have been badly treated by Christians in the past can hardly be blamed for participating in.</div>
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This brings up, <i>“For another, LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. After today, all religious conservatives are Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla who was chased out of that company for supporting California’s Proposition 8.”</i></div>
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Again, his warning is probably a good one here. There is already a movement to eliminate the tax exempt status of churches, but that would apply to ALL religions, not just Christianity. Shunning and persecuting? Well, the shunning we’ll hardly have to worry about needing to do, given his suggestion for how they should deal with all this, but I’ll get to that. Persecution? Again, we’ll not go down that rabbit hole. This is till, despite his protestations, America, and the Constitutional protections of religion will still remain in affect, though folks like him will consider having to live by the same rules as everybody else as persecution.</div>
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The reference to Mr. Eich is an example of the kind of social shunning and negative affects that non-Christians have been suffering for years. Let an atheist in many parts of the country let that be known, and they’ll lose their jobs faster than you can say “lickety-split”.</div>
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It’s kinda tough to feel sorry for folks facing the realization that such things are no longer something they’re protected from, although I would bet that a future progressive society will prevent such things from happening. It is, after all, unfair.</div>
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His third complaint about the future as he sees it, <i>“Third, the Court majority wrote that gays and lesbians do not want to change the institution of marriage, but rather want to benefit from it. This is hard to believe, given more recent writing from gay activists like Dan Savage expressing a desire to loosen the strictures of monogamy in all marriages. Besides, if marriage can be redefined according to what we desire — that is, if there is no essential nature to marriage, or to gender — then there are no boundaries on marriage. Marriage inevitably loses its power.”</i></div>
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Again, I see this as something else he is probably right about. There is a growing movement in this country for something called Polyamory, which has as a central theme the freedom of avery person to love and be loved by multiple people at once, and specifically teaches about marriage under such conditions. Others do push the idea of marriages with multiple partners, either male of female, with strong protections against underage abuse and coerced conditions.</div>
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I don’t see this, myself as a problem, since my moral outlook is a bit more liberal than his. I do envision definite legal changes to our system to account for new types of marriage for the protection of minors and to protect against scams. But this is a problem only to those whose moral ideals cling to the one-man-one-woman theme. To those with newer ideas, these complaints fall on deaf ears, and even may elicit cries of joy.</div>
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Will marriage lose its power? Of course not. Marriage, by definition, as it is known today, is a legal state joining two people for the purposes of simplifying the legal, financial, inheritance, and property affairs which may arise in the course of their lives together and any eventual ending of the marriage, either by divorce or death. The change of the allowed sex of the parties or the addition of more numbers to the marriage don’t make it “lose its power’, but actually continues to enhance society’s ability to order the affairs of its citizens.</div>
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Which, of course, was its initial purpose for becoming a legal state of affairs in the first place.</div>
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So, are we beginning a period of Post-Chrisitanity? Is Derher right?</div>
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Yes, and no. Yes, we are entering a period in which more and more folks are challenging Christian privilege. More and more folks are jumping ship in favor of more open and inclusive values, rejecting the intolerance and the false teachings Christianity offers. The support which marriage equality gained in the last ten years is a good marker for how quickly the country is shifting gears and becoming more progressive.</div>
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The Religioustoerance.org website from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, has a page on <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm">How Many North Americans Go Regularly to Church</a>. On that page, they conclude, among other things:</div>
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<i>How many people lie about going to religious services? </i></div>
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<i>Various studies in recent years have cast a grave doubt on the 40% value. </i></div>
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<i>Public opinion polls generally do not report real opinions and events. They report only the information that the individuals choose to tell the pollsters. Quite often, their answers will be distorted by a phenomenon called "social desirability bias." Pollees answer questions according to what they think they should be doing, rather than what they are doing. For example, a poll by Barna Research showed that 17% of American adults say that they tithe -- i.e. they give 10 to 13% of their income to their church. Only 3% actually do. </i></div>
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<i>The gap between what they do and what they say they do is closer in the case of religious attendance. It is "only" about 2 to 1.</i></div>
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Gallup has been telling us for 60 years that upwards of 80% of Americans are Christian. In light of these results, I would conclude that we are closer to that post-Christian culture than we might think.</div>
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All this seems to indicate that the days of political and social influence of the religious right in this country are close to being numbered. For the sake of the disadvantaged and minority groups, I sincerely hope that is true.</div>
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But when I look at the long lists of Christian privilege I linked to earlier, I have my doubts about who long it may be able to hang in there.</div>
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But, on the other hand, Dreher’s solution is quite different from what other Conservatives are bleating over.</div>
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<i>It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue, the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us. We who want to live by the traditional virtues, MacIntyre said, have to pioneer new ways of doing so in community. We await, he said “a new — and doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”</i></div>
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<i>Throughout the early Middle Ages, Benedict’s communities formed monasteries, and kept the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness. Eventually, the Benedictine monks helped refound civilization.</i></div>
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<i>I believe that orthodox Christians today are called to be those new and very different St. Benedicts. How do we take the Benedict Option, and build resilient communities within our condition of internal exile, and under increasingly hostile conditions? I don’t know. But we had better figure this out together, and soon, while there is time.</i></div>
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Sounds like his solution is for Christians to come together and for their own little enclaves, like the Quakers or the Amish, both of whom have survived for a very long time as small close-knit groups within American culture.</div>
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Could that work? Can what are literally thousands of denominations of Christianity within the US ever come together to form such a group? Could they resolve their dogmatic differences for the sake of saving the faith? Or would a few be able to get together, forsaking the others and letting the rest die out?</div>
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I’m not a sociologist, nor a political scientist. Nor am I a seer with the power to peer into the future. (If I did, I wouldn’t be working for a living.)</div>
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What I do know is that a growing number of Americans (and indeed people around the world) are leaving both religion and conservatism behind. A greater percentage of the newest generation are also, and that trend shows no signs of stopping or slowing down. This does seem to be part of a transition, or at least the beginnings of one. Christianity isn’t dead yet, nor has it given up its overly large share of political power.</div>
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But the wrestling of that power from the grasp of religion, in the US at least, begun so long ago in Europe with the Enlightening, is bearing fruit today. Rod Dreher, despite his alarmist rhetoric and his over the top predictions, at least has that much right.</div>
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Someday, we may see Christians living in their own little enclave, selling handmade furniture and doilies.</div>
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I think I’ll pass.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-54388380987614302112015-06-21T16:29:00.002-04:002015-06-21T16:29:27.825-04:00Ssshhh!! It’s a Secret…<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
It’s a hard thing to do, exposing people’s secrets. It’s rude, tasteless, obnoxious, and utterly necessary.</div>
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In this case, the secret at hand is the answer to a question many folks I know on the left side of the political divide are asking themselves: Why is it that otherwise respectable, educated and intelligent people are spouting the most extreme, batshit crazy opinions in increasingly painful amounts? What could they possibly get from it? Could they really believe it?</div>
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Of course they don’t. Don’t be silly. (Before going any further, <a href="http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44745_After_the_Discovery_of_Dylann_Roofs_Website_the_Council_of_Conservative_Citizens_Is_Running_Scared">read this</a>.)</div>
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The secret is this: All that batshit crazy nonsense does one thing, it keeps the racial, political and religious tension in this country at a fever pitch. It keeps the extremist right wingers at a constant high pitch of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).</div>
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FUD is useful stuff. It keeps the faithful (this is NOT a slap at Christians - this one is about right wing crazy fundies) in the fold, ready and willing to donate their money and their political votes to the right wing “in” crowd.</div>
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The inner ingredients to the secret include one essential element - their sacred persecution complex.</div>
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Right wing Evangelists consider themselves to be the only “true” Christians. All the others are either “watered down” Christians, or affected in varying degrees by Satan or one of his subordinate demons. (Yes, really) This results in the numbers of “true” Christians being down to an alarming (to them) 15% or so of the population. Think about that for a moment. This is why they talk so much about persecution, and “taking back” this country. When you think the percentage of “real” Christians has shrunk from a majority of over 80% to less than 15%, you are talking about a truly alarming and horrifying trend of the country away from what they see as “the arms of God.” In their little fantasy world, God cares about these things, and acts to destroy a country that He thinks has “turned away” from His true path. The very idea frightens them to no end.</div>
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But, never mind, the Bible has a solution!</div>
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Fundamentalist Christianity has as a central element the idea that when a Christian is persecuted for his/her faith and does not waver, admission to heaven is almost guaranteed. You become one of the favored few Christ will admit in the final days.</div>
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So, in order for them to be admitted to heaven in spite of their sinful ways, it is required for them to be persecuted so that their many shortcomings (which they are painfully aware of) can be overlooked. Being a big fish in a very small pond is much better than being a small fish in a considerably bigger pond.</div>
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So, it is necessary to keep things going inside their own little echo chamber, where nobody dissents, everybody admires them for their strength in opposing the heathen, and are willing to donate money and votes to keep things rolling right along. For somebody like Dylann Roof to suddenly come along and take their words seriously is a tremendous threat, believe it or not.</div>
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Remember, to themselves, they are good decent people. They are (my generation of conservatives) living in a safe secure world where, in reality, they have little fear of personal violence, which is why their tactic of FUD is so effective. When someone like Roof blows nine people away (after spending an hour talking to them) they are, once they wake up to the rest of society’s responses to it, quite horrified. Not because of the violence done to innocents, but to the possibility that the violence will wake up the rest of the very liberal population, which might then take action conservatives do not have the will or power to prevent.</div>
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The possibility of being made personally responsible for the consequences of their own words is horrifying, not because it is consequential to themselves, but because it would end this neat little political gravy train they are riding. The tension keeps the country off balance and prevents us from seeing the Conservatives’ lack of answers and inability to fix the country’s problems. It keeps the faithful donating and voting them into office, and distracts the rest of us. Remember, they LIKE having the rest of us so liberal, because it gives them a legitimate reason to claim persecution. But we have to be distracted, so their fan base is able to gain the traction to get them elected to office. Since they have no real solutions to the problems they would face, the prospect of actually being in charge and expected to perform is frightening. Being a minority and persecuted is much better.</div>
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That’s the entire secret. Obfuscation, distraction, projection all are tools of the Conservative mindset. But don’t you dare upset the neat little scheme, the money is rolling in as planned…</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-3589321113773037752015-06-13T18:33:00.000-04:002015-06-13T18:33:35.718-04:00What is at the heart of religion's harmfulness to society?I’ve written a lot about the harm I feel religion causes in society. And, to be clear, there is a lot, familial strains and breakups, rejected children over LBGTQ issues, laws reflecting specific religious practices that not all citizens agree with, forced chipping away of the rights of certain classes of folks over biblically prohibited things of one type or another, especially sex, and a hundred other things.<br />
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But, in the end, I think there is one over-riding element of religion that makes all the other stuff happen. One thing it does to us all, regardless of the specific religion, that creates the canvas upon which all the other harm is painted.<br />
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You see, Christian preachers proudly tell their congregations that all they need to believe, and thus be saved for, is to have faith. Faith is the rock upon which belief is founded, or so they will say.<br />
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In reality, what is faith? Some will say that it is the proclivity to believe something without evidence. And, to en extent, so it is.<br />
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But really? <br />
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Faith is the training you receive from childhood that teaches you to believe whatever you are told by some authority is the truth. No questions, no skepticism, just faith. Shear, unadulterated gullibility, in other words. From your childhood, you are taught that these authorities know what in truth, it is impossible to know, or so common sense would tell you. But you are trained to ignore common sense. You are taught that you cannot question these things. They are simply taken as truth, by faith.<br />
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This allows those authorities to replace your own worldview with one of their choosing. Like wiping a hard drive clean and replacing it with a flawed image of a brand new operating system - but one which includes some special programing. Programming which allows you to live your life thinking you are doing good, even when you are not. Programming which tells you that up is down, right is left, good is bad, and bad is good.<br />
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It is, in short, the programming that will allow a good person to do bad things, thinking that all of it is, instead, quite good.<br />
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Things like rejecting a family member, like a child, because they are gay.<br />
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Things like supporting a foreign war because god told the President to invade an otherwise innocent country. Or so he said.<br />
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Or things like curbing the reproductive rights of women because god says women should be under the authority of men.<br />
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I could go on. I could go on because this learning of faith is the basis for what society otherwise calls gullibility. It allows you to believe all kinds of things without evidence, things like astrology. Or ghosts, or ancient aliens. Conspiracy theories like how Jews are supposed to have control over the world using some secret cabal. Or the Illuminati.<br />
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Instead of children being taught to think for themselves, we are teaching them WHAT to think. Not how, not how to be skeptical or to ask the proper questions, not how to verify something someone tells them.<br />
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Think of how much different our political system would be if we taught our kids to be skeptical of what they hear! If we taught them how to verify things they’ve been told. If we taught them how to use the Internet to scan the things politicians tell them to check for lies and prevarications.<br />
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How much different would our system work? How different our elections would be!<br />
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That is the harm religion is doing to us. It is teaching us to be gullible, to believe nonsense on faith. To accept the authority of those preachers, to leave our kids in the tender care of clergy who often goes on to hurt them and sexually molest them. To surrender the responsibility we have as adult human beings to examine the world around us to those who would instead harm us by teaching us harmful things, untrue things.<br />
<br />
And, in the end, it teaches us to pass that harmful lesson on to our kids, keeping alive for one more generation the lesson of gullibility.<br />
<br />
We don’t have to be gullible to be good. We can let life teach us to be kind to others, to share our good fortune with those who have suffered the unkind hand of fate. There are thousands, millions of good people whose examples serve to urge us to follow their good works with our own.<br />
<br />
We don’t need superstition and fantasy tales to do that.<br />
<br />
Let’s teach our kids to think for themselves. Teach them to be skeptical. Teach them how to ask questions and how to determine the right questions to ask. Teach them that every claim of truth needs to be verified, then teach them how to verify those claims on their own.<br />
<br />
In other words, let’s stop teaching our kids to be gullible, and teach them how to be strong and independent.<br />
<br />
I think the world would be a better place for it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-7734793247284241342015-05-31T22:02:00.000-04:002015-05-31T22:02:08.830-04:00No True ChristianHow many times have you heard he claim that "no true" Christian would claim X Y Z? <br />
<br />
People from almost very denomination of Christianity have their own special little list of stuff that, according to them, no "true" christian would EVER say.<br />
<br />
Some folks claim Jesus is all about love.<br />
<br />
Others point to special favorite verses in the Old Testament that prove people who are members of their most feared group of "others" are going straight to hell. Oddly enough, that group probably would include the people who say Jesus is all about love!<br />
<br />
The folks from Westboro Baptist probably wish both groups would drop straight into Hell from where ever they're standing...<br />
<br />
This kind of thinking is called the No True Scotsman fallacy, and this is what Wikipedia has to say about it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><b>No true Scotsman</b> is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing").</i></blockquote>
<br />
The use of this fallacy is the result of the universal requirement in most religions that faith is required to believe whatever dogma that specific religion pushes. Because faith is basically the belief of something without proof or evidence, a debate or argument between two or more people about matters of faithful belief is unending and pointless.<br />
<br />
Virtually any holy book of scripture is written so ambiguously that nailing down a specific meaning is often hard to do, and many people do (and have) interpreted them so differently that history is littered (literally) with the remains of the wars and struggles resulting from those differences.<br />
<br />
This makes it impossible for anyone to truly nail down a meaning that would actually hold up to the "No True Christian" statements. Mainly because each of 40,000 differing denominations of Christianity each have their own private definition of what a "true" Christian should be!<br />
<br />
As a result, any outsider, like me as an atheist, cannot possibly trust anything that comes after the words "No True Christian..." as pertaining to that statement, one man's truth is another man's belly laugh.<br />
<br />
Or howl of outrage.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-86908608777378184472015-05-12T20:34:00.001-04:002015-05-12T20:34:47.944-04:00A Gentle Piece of Advice<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">As many of you know from my many articles about the harm religion causes our society, I'm not exactly a fan of religion.</span></div><div><br></div><div>I do, however, respect your right to believe whatever crazy things you might think appropriate. Even if I do my best to debunk it.</div><div><br></div><div>However.</div><div><br></div><div>I am a realist. I do realize that Atheists' dream of a religion free world is at best, centuries away, and at worst, a pipe dream. So, there will be, for the foreseeable near future, some form of religion to deal with.</div><div><br></div><div>So believe me when I say that I've got some advice for American Christians in light of the new Pew Research poll released this week, which noted that not only are Americans deserting their religion in droves (Pew's words!), but the trend isn't slowing down.</div><div><br></div><div>Back off from the extremism. Forget the mythical miracles, the unproven Resurrection, the ghastly, bloody crucifixion, the misogynistic paternalism. None of that is a winning ticket in today's America, and especially not to the new Millennials. If you keep that stuff up, in less than a generation's time from today, your churches will stand empty, foreclosed on by either banks or local governments once your tax exempt status is revoked.</div><div><br></div><div>Which it will be.</div><div><br></div><div>At least some of the "nones" still do believe in some form of spiritualism and are probably actively searching for something - anything - that can replace that old comforting feeling they got sitting in your sanctuary, listening to the music and knowing that all was right with the world.</div><div><br></div><div>So, if you still crave that old fashioned secular power tug, enhanced by plenty of donated cash, you can still reinvent yourself into something the younger generation will buy into.</div><div><br></div><div>Literally, of course. What good is popularity with no money? I'd be careful, though. Many of them are a bit more discerning, what with all the online scams they're used to dealing with.</div><div><br></div><div>I'd read a few Science Fiction stories. Those folks know how to invent religion! (After all, look what L. Ron Hubbard did with Scientology!). I'm sure there are some real good ideas floating around the genre these days. Hey, and those Millennials do read that stuff!</div><div><br></div><div>You can't do any worse than Paul did 2000 years ago. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-66576798655064441032015-04-05T22:09:00.000-04:002015-04-05T22:09:52.702-04:00The Death Penalty, a Broken Justice System and the Constitution.<div class="tr_bq">
I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and ran across a post sharing an article about some folks testifying before a Congressional committee about the Justice system, and was struck by a statement by (I think) a Justice Department official which basically admitted that he agreed that our system of justice is "broken".</div>
<br />
Now, thinking about that for a while brought up the question: If our system of justice is pretty much the same organizationally today as it has been for the last century at least, why are we just now recognizing it as being "broken"?<br />
<br />
What has changed?<br />
<br />
A century ago, few Americans would have said, or noticed, such a thing. So why now? What's different?<br />
<br />
I think most of us might answer that (of course) it is really American culture that has changed. A hundred years ago, women couldn't vote, we lived in a heavily segregated culture, the US was hardly a world power (and was barely a regional one), and a significant number of Civil War vets were still alive - and few American soldiers had ever fought in a foreign war, save the Spanish American War just a decade before.<br />
<br />
The automobile was in its infancy, the airplane was barely off the ground, the telephone was still a novelty in many communities, neither radio nor TV were even a sparkle in an engineer's eye, and the American monetary system was primitive by comparison to today's standards.<br />
<br />
If it weren't for the railroads, it would still take longer to take a horse and/or wagon from New York to California than by boat.<br />
<br />
And the number of Americans in this country who had been born in slavery was still a depressingly large number. In fact, America was still oppressing its minorities (not only blacks) to a very high degree.<br />
<br />
A glimpse of why we are today beginning to talk about our justice system as being broken is perhaps illustrated by the state of the death penalty in this country.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Leigh Bienen, JD, Senior Lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law, provided the following response to the question </i>“Is the death penalty an area of our criminal justice system that, today, can be called racist or discriminatory?”<i> published in the Spring 1997 issue of Focus on Law Studies:</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i></i><i>"The criminal justice system is controlled and dominated by whites, although the recipients of punishment, including the death penalty, are disproportionately black. The death penalty is a symbol of state control and white control over blacks. Black males who present a threatening and defiant personae are the favorites of those administering the punishment, including the overwhelmingly middle-aged white, male prosecutors who - in running for election or re-election - find nothing gets them more votes than demonizing young black men."</i></blockquote>
(<a href="http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001187">http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001187http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001187</a>)<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote the following in its release </i>“Talking Points: Suspend the Death Penalty,”<i> published on www.naacp.org (accessed Aug. 4, 2008):</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i></i><i>“The death penalty is the most lethal form of social injustice in the United States. The race and class bias which permeates the American justice system result in this most extreme punishment being handed out almost exclusively to the poor…</i><i>Nearly all of the 3,500 Americans awaiting execution on death row today have low-income backgrounds…</i><i>The justice system is biased against those without the money to hire adequate legal defense. Nearly all death row inmates are poor and most are racial minorities. Temporary moratoriums are a temporary solution. There is only one fair resolution: the death penalty must be immediately and permanently suspended.”</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i><a href="http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=006720">Aug. 4, 2008<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)</a> </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"...Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed. When the consequences are life and death, we need to demand the same standard for our system of justice as we would for our airlines... It is a central pillar of our criminal justice system that it is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent should suffer... Let us reflect to ensure that we are being just. Let us pause to be certain we do not kill a single innocent person. This is really not too much to ask for a civilized society."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i></i><i>Russ Feingold, JD </i><i>US Senator (D-WI)</i><i>introducing the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000"</i><i>April 26, 2000</i></blockquote>
<br />
Since the year 2000, dozens more people have been released from death row across the United States due to improved DNA analysis - and this is ONLY for cases where there is DNA available for analysis, AND where judges or prosecutors have allowed that evidence to be re-examined.<br />
<br />
It is obvious from these results that among cases where DNA isn't available, innocent people are very probably being executed for crimes they did not commit.<br />
<br />
And it is likely that a majority of those cases are probably minorities.<br />
<br />
So, what has this shown us? What has changed?<br />
<br />
The nation has gone through some very rough and profound changes in the last hundred years, especially those having to do with race. Today, the general society is more concerned with how minorities are treated, and there is a growing trend to focus on the justice system and how it is biased against minorities, especially since a majority of Americans now carry smartphones with cameras. This has resulted in a swarm of videos illustrating the horrific rate at which police departments are killing minorities for offenses which are often simply made up to cover the killing. The overwhelming number of these videos depict minority killings, not whites.<br />
<br />
Today, capital punishment is legal in 32 U.S. states.<br />
<br />
Connecticut and New Mexico have abolished the death penalty, but it is not retroactive. Prisoners on death row in those states will still be executed.<br />
<br />
As of October 2014 there were 3,035 inmates awaiting execution.<br />
<br />
Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, 1,394 people have been executed. (as of December 2014)<br />
<br />
Japan is the only industrial democracy besides the United States that has the death penalty. In Japan, the 2013 per capita execution rate was 1 execution per 15,809,458 persons.<br />
<br />
Since 1973, over 140 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.<br />
<br />
My own opinion of the death penalty has changed. Just ten years ago, I was solidly in favor of it.<br />
<br />
Today, as a result of these and other facts, I oppose the imposition of the death penalty because of the racial and economic biases inherent in its imposition. Due to the horrific misconduct of justice system officials, from the cop on the beat to the prosecutors to the District Attorneys across the country, I feel that an immediate halt to our use of the death penalty is needed, and indeed, is the only moral path open to a modern industrial society. That includes everything from charging people with capital crimes to the actual imposition of the executions themselves.<br />
<br />
Certainly until we fix our broken system. Then, perhaps we can discuss and debate the moralities of the State taking the lives of its citizens.<br />
<br />
So, it must be fixed, and all evidence of racial and economic bias eliminated. This is necessary, not only for fixing the death penalty, but for the fair administration of justice everywhere. <br />
<br />
The evidence of a growing movement for this is endemic in the radical changes in our society in recent decades. The rate of acceptance of LBGTQ people along with marriage equality across the country in just the last ten years alone is astonishing. The percentages of people calling themselves out and out atheists has more than doubled, and the numbers of people no longer associated with organized religion has reached astonishing percentages and numbers. A growing and changing feminist movement has gained ground, evidenced by the front and center fight for women's rights from equal pay to reproductive rights and the right to health care - all of which are faced with a huge backlash from conservative circles due to the success of past generations of that movement.<br />
<br />
So, you ask, why did I tack the Constitution onto the title of this article?<br />
<br />
Because all of this illustrates why the idea of Original Intent is defunct and devoid of meaning.<br />
<br />
More than once, the Founders noted in numerous writings and articles at the time of its creation and ratification that their hope and intent for the Constitution and its future was that each succeeding generation would examine that document in light of their new and changed views of the world and the country and make what changes they thought necessary. The Constitution was not engraved in stone with no method of amendment. It was written on parchment and included a clear and important manner of changing that document as future generations wished.<br />
<br />
That has been done 27 times, with three proposed amendments still pending. Obviously, the idea that the Constitution was intended to be limited to eighteenth century thinking is wrong and completely the opposite of what those people intended.<br />
<br />
It should be noted that most of our Founders were NOT conservatives, as such were seen in their time. They were radicals, and would have been treated as such if the British Crown could have caught them before the Revolution was successful. Benjamin Franklin had a nice clear picture of what that meant when he chided his contemporaries that if they "did not hang together" they would definitely "hang separately"!<br />
<br />
Given the spoken desires of the more radical conservatives (in California of all places) to ensure the deaths of those opposed to them, I would remind my fellow Liberals that Franklin's statement is as true today as it was over three hundred years ago!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-64365742547697667932015-02-18T18:39:00.000-05:002015-02-18T18:39:08.711-05:00What year is this, anyway?I can't decide if I'm living in the USSR, Czarist Russia, North Korea, Medieval Europe, or some combination thereof. Or at least in a developing something the designers can't make up their minds where they're going with it all.<br />
<br />
It's bad enough that Dominionists have been trying to remake American History to show the US as a Christian country. But now, Oklahoma's legislature is trying to ban AP American History and replace it with some crackpot version of a perfect Christian America.<br />
<br />
It seems they object to the technique of learning from the past by pointing out where we went wrong so future generations won't make the same mistakes.<br />
<br />
I can understand how seeing your most cherished values being pointed out in school as mistakes and wrong might be upsetting. But as a past (but reformed) Republican, I can testify from personal experience that one can learn from one's past and one can move on to a better way of thinking.<br />
<br />
It really doesn't hurt at all. It's kind of liberating, in fact. Oh, sure, one does get the odd pang of regret if current events smack you in the face with something you used to think was cool but was really harmful. But I see those as reinforcing the initial lesson. Kind of like reminders: "See? Weren't you stupid then? But you're smarter now!" In the end, they remind you that you've come a long way, baby!<br />
<br />
But I guess some folks just can't get past it.<br />
<br />
I can understand that, really I can.<br />
<br />
What I can't understand is why you'd want to paint over those past mistakes by turning our lovely country into a totalitarian nightmare. Remaking the past is something we accused the Soviets and the Maoists of doing. You know, those dirty commies who painted out the totalitarian rulers of their countries' past and replaced them with monsters to contrast with their own "perfect" replacement?<br />
<br />
In our case, the Dominionists want to replace the very real monsters on our own past with visions of lollypops, candy canes and unicorns farting rainbows so their kids will never question Jesus.<br />
<br />
Probably because they want to keep making the same mistakes and call them "family values". Or whatever.<br />
<br />
But in so doing, they are destroying what they claim to love about our country. Its liberty. Its freedom. Whatever happened to "Truth, Justice, and the American way"? Somewhere, on the way to the forum, it got lost. Or waylaid, or mugged or something. Probably something, because it sure ain't what I was taught it was supposed to be when I went to school.<br />
<br />
Nobody taught me that it was Ok to lie, cheat, and steal your way into office, and when we learned about politicians who did, it was never presented as an honorable way to act.<br />
<br />
The one thing Conservatives always forget in their zeal to protect their way of life is that all things come to an end. People change. Countries change. Societies change, often rapidly. The one thing about American Destiny that Conservatives always are proud of (and justifiably so) is the huge number of technological changes America was responsible for in the 19th century. We were instrumental in an extremely rapid advancement of humanity out of the horse and buggy days and the days of direct fire based energy into the 20th century where our transportation methods were advanced by hundreds of years in just a few decades, and we marched into the age of electricity almost overnight.<br />
<br />
The problem for Conservatives is that such technological changes always - always - bring social changes as well. Old technologies die. Remember the old buggy whipmaker example? As I typed that, Autocorrect wanted to change it to "chipmaker". So old professions die, too.<br />
<br />
A few hundred years ago, the very best swords you could ask for were made with Damascus steel. A decade or so ago, some guys trying to relearn the old ways of the blacksmiths realized that the techniques for making Damascus steel had been lost. Nobody knows today how those swords were made. We have made guesses, but we don't <i>know</i>. Not for sure. We may never know for sure.<br />
<br />
That's because we can kill people faster, better and from farther away with weapons using gunpowder. You don't win a war by showing up with Damascus steel swords. That's how you die.<br />
<br />
These changes are not made in a vacuum. The social changes that come from dying professions, new classifications of devices, better and faster ways of doing things are and have been immense and have caused the old comfortable Patriarchy to be shaken to its foundations.<br />
<br />
Young people in America today are overwhelmingly progressive. They accept and think little about the homosexual issues of the day and are accepting a more equal role for women in jobs, marriage, and politics. Demographically, the old Conservative way of thinking is dying, and probably won't survive more than another decade or two.<br />
<br />
Dominionists and Conservatives (especially the ones who are both) know this, and are doing all they can to stretch out the days before they lose power. Education of one of their best efforts.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, their efforts are unAmerican and damaging to our democracy to an extreme degree.<br />
<br />
We shouldn't really let them get away with it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-25065110189110576822015-01-08T18:19:00.001-05:002015-01-08T18:19:13.619-05:00Freedom of Speech and ReligionBy now, the world has had time to digest the horrific attacks on the Paris newspaper which has resulted in the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie in social media. Twelve people dead, four of them journalists and one the founder of the paper.<br />
<br />
Sure, the paper was known for its harsh graphic criticism of Islam in the past, and had been firebombed last fall over previous drawings of Mohammed. But did you know that it is also known for some pretty harsh stuff criticizing ALL religions?<br />
<br />
I want to make my stance here perfectly clear.<br />
<br />
In EVERY case, freedom of speech trumps anyone's heartfelt beliefs, whether religious or secular. No belief system is sacrosanct against criticism.<br />
<br />
None.<br />
<br />
Not yours, not mine. <br />
<br />
Criticism helps us grow, it points out our weaknesses, exposes our flaws. Responding to criticism helps us sharpen our debating techniques, correct the flaws in our thinking and brings us back down to a human level, instead of existing in the clouds of our own perceived perfection.<br />
<br />
I know, it's hard. It often hurts. Believe me, I am no angel when it comes to receiving criticism. <br />
<br />
Ask my wife. She knows!<br />
<br />
But, really, at no time should criticism deserve a violent response. Not a punch to the nose, not a pistol shot, not a firebomb.<br />
<br />
Surely not a barrage of AK-47 bullets resulting in multiple deaths.<br />
<br />
Any ideology or theology which requires, or even allows, the penalty of death for criticism neither deserves such protection nor can, obviously, tolerate it.<br />
<br />
Our response should be to post the offending images, everywhere, spreading them as far and wide as possible, with the reason why posted prominently therewith.<br />
<br />
Therefor, here is my contribution to that:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bngNhQnwD-Q/VK7_4JuldRI/AAAAAAAADfk/FswElorn8Cs/s1600/hebdo%2Bcover%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bngNhQnwD-Q/VK7_4JuldRI/AAAAAAAADfk/FswElorn8Cs/s1600/hebdo%2Bcover%2B1.jpg" height="320" width="245" /></a></div>
<br />
The Muslim world <a href="https://playingintheworldgame.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/commentary-question-to-the-islamic-terrorist/">isn't sitting back silently</a>, no matter what Fox News may want you to think. To quote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“What have you really accomplished?”</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Yesterday you killed 12 people and freedom of expression. You say that you avenged the Prophet. You were violated because caricatures were drawn. Charlie Hebdo had a circulation of 50,000. You changed this yesterday. Those caricatures you thought were worth killing for, so that no one would ever again dare to caricature our prophet? Those cartoons had a circulation of 500 million yesterday. At the very least.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Newspapers worldwide have the cartoons on the front pagte today, online, on paper. Millions have changed their profile picture to a caricature of Muhammad . You said “Charlie Hebdo is dead.” The world responded by saying “Je suis Charlie,” “I’m Charlie.” You’ve made Charlie Hebdo immortal. And freedom of speech has reemerged stronger than ever. And did you know that many Muslims, who in 2005 and 2006 were hurt and depressed over the Mohammed cartoons, yesterday wrote that they have changed their minds? They say that the killing of the defenseless is a far greater insult against Muslims than caricatures will ever be. They say: “Draw, draw, draw.” This is what you have achieved.</i></blockquote>
It's called the Streisand Effect, folks. Try to suppress something today, especially on the Internet, and that WILL backfire. So many more people will hear about it, you'll be sorry.<br />
<br />
Instead of loading that AK-47, try sitting down and looking at yourself. There is a reason millions of your co-religionists are also lambasting you on various Arab TV networks, including Al Jazerra. Engage them, talk to them, learn from them.<br />
<br />
By shooting your critics, you merely multiply them. You hurt your cause, you do not help it.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
Changing course a bit here, and bringing up the criticism some have brought up against those who are pursuing what they claim is "Islamaphobia", I will only say this:<br />
<br />
The suffix -phobia is intended to indicate a fear of something. I do not "fear" Islam. I abhor it and all religions. Religion condones, teaches, and advances non-critical thinking, subjection to unquestioned authority and adherence to non-scientific, superstitious beliefs which do not advance our knowledge of the material world. Such beliefs cause us to advance solutions to problems which do not exist and stop us from pursuing solutions to real problems.<br />
<br />
This has real and extremely harmful consequences to real people, billions of them, worldwide, which deserves the full and most scathing criticism and/or satire possible. Wherever we can, however we can.<br />
<br />
Harmful theologies, as with harmful ideologies, deserve no respite from criticism, nor protection from satire.<br />
<br />
If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-11166451663819638122014-12-26T09:21:00.000-05:002014-12-26T09:21:00.627-05:00The True Genius of Steve JobsToday's topic has nothing to do with religion - unless you see the popularity of Apple, Inc. as being somewhat akin to a religion.<br />
<br />
Which for some, of course, it is.<br />
<br />
One of the biggest disappointments - regarding Apple - of the decade, was the death of Steve Jobs. Millions of us were dismayed that such a genius could be so stupid as to fail to use his significant fortune to get the best medical care possible, and instead allow quack science to delay that treatment to the point that a very treatable cancer could kill him. Goes to show that genius has its limitations.<br />
<br />
Since then, Apple, Inc. has been watched closely by both detractors and investors with one question in mind. Could Apple repeat its success after the death of its genius founder? Steve Jobs was seen as the architect of that success - the man whose vision informed and pushed for the creation of some truly world changing devices - devices that have reworked our world into patterns that were comic book sci-fi just decades ago.<br />
<br />
Now, lots of words - billions, probably, have been written about this, many of them by people smarter or more educated than I in business and psychology. I am not under the mistaken impression that I am unique or smarter than any of these folks. But I have been watching Apple for over twenty years, and I've got some observations about that company that many have not noticed.<br />
<br />
So I wonder sometimes. Most of the articles I have read about Jobs focus on his product genius. The creation of the products Apple has released and his part in that creation. How he pushed people to and beyond their limits in making things they never could have imagined they'd produce otherwise. Products that have been attributed to that genius.<br />
<br />
Then, this morning, I read a VERY short article in which the author had been asked one question: What was the most surprising thing about 2014 to you?<br />
<br />
His answer: Apple has survived, and even thrived, after Jobs' death.<br />
<br />
I'm sorry, but my response?<br />
<br />
Moron.<br />
<br />
I've never seen such a stupid, uninformed, pitiful excuse for an answer - EVER.<br />
<br />
So, you ask me, what WAS Jobs' true genius, genius?<br />
<br />
It wasn't in making insanely great products, although he was pretty darn good at it.<br />
<br />
His real genius was in building the company he built. He built a company that has survived his death and in fact, is STILL turing out insanely great products. Without his guidance, apparently.<br />
<br />
I say "apparently", because that guidance is really still there. His genius was in institutionalizing that vision. Building teams of people and infusing in those teams the vision of how to make insanely great products.<br />
<br />
Thats why they made such great products when he was alive - HE didn't make them, his company did - because he infused his vision and his methods into the teams and the people who made them work. It is the people - the employees - of Apple, who made the products - who designed them, tested them, redesigned them, retested them until they met the insanely tight and high standards Steve helped them set for themselves and their output.<br />
<br />
That company - those teams - are Apple, Inc. As long as management at Apple continues to follow that vision and maintains the institutionalized vision Steve Jobs gave them, they will continue to make insanely great products. At least until economic or cultural conditions change that challenge Apple's management to alter that vision in order to keep up.<br />
<br />
Then we'll see if that vision stands up. If Apple's management at the time is flexible enough to see whatever handwriting is on the wall at the time.<br />
<br />
But for now, continue looking to Apple, Inc. to continue to make insanely great products - it is what Steve Jobs built that company to do. <br />
<br />
Thanks, Steve.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-79835203257862624982014-12-15T18:40:00.001-05:002014-12-15T18:40:31.745-05:00On Police BrutalityMore and more lately, the subject of police brutality and killings is becoming something the bought and paid for media cannot ignore. Millions of people around the country are constantly marching in protest over the almost constant din of what are often out and out murder cases in which police are almost universally absolved of criminal liability.<br />
<br />
Mostly against blacks, but let's be clear - there are others being killed who are not black as well.<br />
<br />
It would also be good to note that the issue of police brutality isn't just about killings, although those are the most egregious. Remember the lady in California whose beating by a CHP officer went viral? There are whole websites devoted to documenting these incidents.<br />
<br />
And that isn't the most alarming thing about this whole thing.<br />
<br />
What is the most alarming is the strengthening of the "thin blue line". The police have tended, even in the past to have this "us vs. them" kind of attitude, that exists to protect each other from what they consider unfair punishment.<br />
<br />
To an extent, that is understandable. They exist in an ordered and very structured environment. They are trained in discipline, the better for their bosses to control them. After all, they are, each and every one, out in the community for eight or more hours a day, exposed to the possibility of having to confront the very worst elements of society. People who are often armed and prepared to use those weapons at any time they feel threatened. <br />
<br />
And police officers around the country die every year because of that exposure. Such an environment tends to bond people together. I understand that.<br />
<br />
But in recent years, there is a sickness that has invaded that environment.<br />
<br />
Militarization. Arming and training our police with the arms and the attitudes of soldiers. <br />
<br />
There is a meme that is making the rounds occasionally on Facebook. It says, basically, that a country's military exists to defend it from enemies of the State. And when the police and the military begin to blend together, the people tend to start looking like enemies of the State.<br />
<br />
That sounds kinda familiar.<br />
<br />
We need to remind ourselves, and our police, of the ways in which our government was designed and empowered by the Constitution to provide (as the constitution says) for the General Welfare.<br />
<br />
First, the military is an arm of the Federal government, and is authorized by the Constitution under the authority of the President. It is for the protection of the country from enemies of the State, generally protection from invasion.<br />
<br />
Our police departments, of whatever level, are authorized under both the General Welfare clause for the Federal government and the "reserved powers' clause for the States.<br />
<br />
Separately, all levels of the government are authorized a judiciary. It is considered a separate branch of government at the Federal level. Most States are generally designed the same way, so that judges and courts are their own authority and not under the executive power of the President or a Governor.<br />
<br />
This is important, because the Constitution makes it fairly clear (and subsequent SCOTUS rulings further clarify this) that the Court system is supposed to be a defender and a protectorate of the people.<br />
<br />
Police are, too, since their authority is generally under the authority of the General Welfare clause.<br />
<br />
And when the police act against their authority and hurt members of the public, the courts are supposed to protect us, not side with the police.<br />
<br />
Our Constitution is a document that sets forth the powers of the Federal government and allows for those powers not explicitly given to the Federal level to be reserved for the States or "the people". This pretty clearly shows that the powers so delineated are delegated directly from the people. <br />
<br />
WE, the people of this country, delegate those powers for OUR benefit. Those powers are not there for the benefit of the officials so empowered. They are there to provide for US. For the general welfare - for everybody.<br />
<br />
In spite of the original version having clauses respecting slavery, none of those clauses noted color of skin nor ethnicity as a condition of that status, and most certainly did not separate "the people" into differing classes based on ethnicity, skin color, sex, sexual orientation, social classes, or economic status. It merely uses the term "We, the people".<br />
<br />
In short, if a person works for a government entity at any level from city to State to Federal, they work for US. They have their jobs for the purpose of providing for the General Welfare of the people of these United States. Their jobs are there for OUR benefit, not theirs.<br />
<br />
The police are not there to protect the government. They are there to protect us from threats to society. They are not there to force us into submission, they are there to protect us.<br />
<br />
Not to shoot us, nor beat us nor subjugate us. Their paychecks come from the taxes we pay. WE are their bosses, ultimately. All of us, regardless of economic status, color of our skin or ethnicity.<br />
<br />
They should not be thinking of "us vs. them". They should be thinking about policing their own, about getting rid of officers who make them look bad, who are not worthy of wearing the uniform.<br />
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Their "us" should include "we" the people.<br />
<br />
Unlike in many totalitarian countries, our police do not live in guarded compounds. They live among us, they ARE us, they are part of "the people". They live next door to us, they marry our daughters and our sons, they eat at our backyard barbecues. They shop at the same stores we do, they vote in the same elections we do.<br />
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It is time they rejoined us. It is time they stop thinking of us as the problem, and realize that it is their attitude that is the problem.<br />
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They work for us, and it is time they started acting, again, like they do.<br />
<br />
They should be our defenders, not our oppressors.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-60204897233806858222014-12-02T15:12:00.001-05:002014-12-02T15:12:27.883-05:00Racism<div>Today, in a FaceBook posting, someone made a statement that made me rock back on my heals and think hard about something. It is a subject America has been struggling with since it's very founding, and before.</div><div><br></div><div>Racism. Racial prejudice. Ethnic hatred, or however you wish to term it.</div><div><br></div><div>The statement went something like "us whiteys who aren't racist...", and something about it stuck in my craw, as we say in Texas. It took me a bit to realize what it was, but once it did, it brought back an incident when I lived in Texas that truly did change the way I see other people and how our words - no matter how innocently we might see them - can hurt and wound others very deeply.</div><div><br></div><div>I was working at the FDA District office in the mail and file room, and there was an older black fellow that I knew from up in the lab I liked quite a bit. He was always friendly, and we'd struck up somewhat of a gentle kidding around kind of relationship.</div><div><br></div><div>At one point, he came down to the file room, and said something I can't remember, kidding me, and I turned around, and in a kidding and jaunty kind of tone, said, "Hey, ni**er, how ya doin'?"</div><div><br></div><div>Instantly, his face turned ugly, and he growled at me in a furious tone of voice, "Don't EVER call me that again!" And stalked away.</div><div><br></div><div>Apart from that being completely different from the reaction I'd expected, I was quite simply devastated. I'd never thought I'd cause someone such hurt or ignite such anger, and I was just blown away once I realized what I'd done.</div><div><br></div><div>Fortunately, the man who oversaw the file room was not only black, but knew me, and the other fellow as well, and being also a minister, was able to (after I abjectly crawled virtually on hands and knees begging forgiveness) managed to help me to repair that relationship somewhat.</div><div><br></div><div>But it never was quite the same after that, and this is the first time I have ever mentioned it since that time.</div><div><br></div><div>But it illustrates exactly my point here.</div><div><br></div><div>Which is that once you've been introduced to an "education" that includes ethnic racism, you can NEVER quite wipe it out of your head. You can become educated in a more enlightened point of view, you can meet, befriend and work with lots of people you were educated as a child to despise for their ethnicity, and you can very successfully train yourself to hide all that crap deep inside where it will never show its ugly face again.</div><div><br></div><div>But, try as you might, it will not ever go away completely, and for the rest of your life, you will fight it, inside. You will hear that quiet little ugly voice say horribly nasty things, and you will cringe and dismiss it back to the garbage it came from, but the echo will still resonate silently in your head.</div><div><br></div><div>And you will keep on struggling to keep your ears from still hearing it. You will successfully turn the snide little ugly thing back into the muck and replace it with a proper and more realistic reality, and over the years, that will get easier. The more you practice, the better you'll get at it, and the fewer chances that you'll let the wrong thing outta your yap and embarrass yourself.</div><div><br></div><div>But you have to be careful, or you'll say stupid things like "us whiteys who aren't racist".</div><div><br></div><div>Fact is, every human being on the planet is to a degree, racist, of one manner or another. It may take the form of tribalism, or clanishness, or nationalism, but we all are infected with one form of it or another. It is, as they say, fed to us in our mothers' milk. We grow up exposed to it in the society around us, and we absorb it as we do lessons about the difference between cousins and aunts vs. the milkman.</div><div><br></div><div>It's just something we don't notice, until one day, we get our noses rubbed in it. One day, you open your eyes and see how the other guy feels.</div><div><br></div><div>Which, really, is the key. It's why racist attitudes are so ingrained in the South.</div><div><br></div><div>The different races live in enclaves, which, for whites, are usually, bigger, nicer and protected from the incursions of the "others" unless they have sanctioned business there, as, perhaps, a house maid or a gardener.</div><div><br></div><div>Places where they are rarely exposed to the other side as anything but servants. As not humans. Not being exposed to blacks as humans allows the old stereotypes to be engrained and not exposed as the racist bullshit they are. Old hatreds can be allowed to fester.</div><div><br></div><div>On both sides.</div><div><br></div><div>Don't get me wrong. America has come a long way, even if it is largely a thin veneer of legally protected rights and public behavior.</div><div><br></div><div>But, underneath, yeah, the old racism is alive and well, and the only way we'll ever get rid of it is to actually live side by side. To be exposed to each other as human beings, with loves, hates, preferences and cultural differences. To be forced to make public concessions to public behavior which allows us to interact with dignity and grace, even if we all will have that internal demon to fight every step of the way.</div><div><br></div><div>Because the real proof of civility and adulthood is the ability to win that internal battle, EVERY DAY. To see clearly that racism, tribalism and such artificial divisions are no longer needed in civilized society and are the wrong way to see other human beings. To be able to move forward into adulthood with dignity and resolve in defeating the demons of our childhood.</div><div><br></div><div>As they say, the first step towards solving a problem is to realize that there is one.</div><div><br></div><div>After that, it takes resolve, courage, and stamina. Only the weak fail, only the mentally lazy trapped in the mesh of childhood trauma or propaganda fail to see what everybody else takes for granted.</div><div><br></div><div>Don't be weak. Don't be lazy. Fight your own internal battle, and strive to win! Know yourself, understand where the ugly impulses come from, and fight to put them back into the muck they slid so stealthily from.</div><div><br></div><div>But above all, be aware. Understand yourself, and understand others. It really isn't so hard to do. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-45392491627106765802014-11-19T08:04:00.001-05:002014-11-19T08:04:26.638-05:00Of shirts and comets.<div>It's been a week since the European Space Agency landed their probe on the surface of a comet for the first time ever in human history. A proud day for the Agency, a proud day for Europe and a milestone for human space flight.</div><div><br></div><div>Which will forever be tainted by the image of a team member wearing a wildly inappropriate shirt emblazoned with images of scantily clad women while being interviewed by the international media.</div><div><br></div><div>Almost instantly, social media picked up that image and noted its inappropriate nature, criticizing the man for his insensitivity. Within a day, the scientist, Dr. Matt Taylor, had apologized profusely, even breaking down in tears on camera. For many people, that ended the incident. </div><div><br></div><div>But not for the apologists.</div><div><br></div><div>Social media exploded with apologies for his behavior, some even going to far as to weigh in with their opinions as to how innocent that shirt was, because the depictions of women were cartoonish instead of photography. They opined that feminists were overblowing the incident, eclipsing the accomplishments of Dr. Taylor and his team.</div><div><br></div><div>And so today, a week after he appeared on camera, the argument still rages on social media.</div><div><br></div><div>More and more, louder and louder, the argument rages. But, wait! That loud sound you hear? That roar? The one that sounds like a hundred airliners going over?</div><div><br></div><div>That's not a fleet of 747's. That is the sound of the entire point missing your heads.</div><div><br></div><div>Yesterday, a comment was made on a post on Facebook I have been following. Here's the important part of it:</div><div><br></div><div><b><i>The only thing that strikes me as sexist in this is the fact that men don't seem to be expected to consider the implications of what they wear to the office, while women have to take the rest of the office into consideration. Take a look at your company policy on dress and lateness.</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>This. This is the point. Somehow, someway, Matt Taylor managed to appear in front of a major media outlet's camera wearing a shirt that should have been considered inappropriate in any professional setting. And yet, EVERYBODY, from his fellow team members to his team leader, to the head of the ESA (and don't fool yourself, that control room was literally crawling with management before those cameras ever got in the room.) completely missed the fact that he was wearing it.</div><div><br></div><div>Even at the last minute, somebody could have tossed the guy a lab coat to cover up The Shirt. It would have been that easy.</div><div><br></div><div>Instead, the ESA missed numerous opportunities to notice The Shirt. His team leader. His team leader's boss. HIS boss. The ESA Public Relations Office. Upper management on that morning's walk through.</div><div><br></div><div>So, what does that say about the ESA and its policies towards professionalism, given that literally nobody even noticed? Anybody want to bet how quickly a female team member would have been counseled on her dress if she'd tried to wear something even mildly provocative on camera? At the very least, she'd have been forced to wear that lab coat.</div><div><br></div><div>But not DOCTOR Taylor. No, apparently The Shirt is so much a part of the environment in that team's space that nobody thought it was important. That millions of women around the world would be put off by it, and that it might send a message to girls everywhere considering a career in the European Space Agency that sexism is such a normal part of life that a team member can appear on camera, representing the ENTIRE Agency, wearing The Shirt and nobody cares enough to even make him wear a lab coat. </div><div><br></div><div>This isn't just a problem with Dr. Matt Taylor. It isn't just a problem with the ESA. It is a problem within the entire world of science, wherever this kind of thing can happen. It is pervasive and part of the culture, so much so that an entire chain of management can miss something that simple.</div><div><br></div><div>This very public conversation we are having is important. You apologists out there, pay attention.</div><div><br></div><div>We aren't blaming the good Doctor. Not now, he apologized and is moving on.</div><div><br></div><div>It's the rest of us who need to understand that the issue isn't just an ugly shirt. The issue is an environment where that ugly shirt is allowed on a guy, ON CAMERA, while women are still judged by the clothing they wear and not on their professional abilities.</div><div><br></div><div>That needs to change. Not only do we need to be more aware of things like The Shirt, but we need to change the atmosphere where men aren't judged by their clothing but women are. We need for people to see how corrosive sexism can be and just how invisibly invasive it can get.</div><div><br></div><div>How unnoticed. So badly unnoticed that a man can get away with representing his team and his Agency on camera while wearing a wildly inappropriate shirt and it takes someone from outside to see it.</div><div><br></div><div>We've got a lot of work to do. This conversation is important, which is why we are having it a week later.</div><div><br></div><div>Got the message?</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-54097246477410022692014-11-02T19:14:00.002-05:002014-11-02T19:14:59.483-05:00Why Democrats might lose this election, and why they shouldn't.If the Democrats lose this election, I'm going to be pissed.<br />
<br />
Not at Republicans, they're doing what any stupid animal does - what comes naturally.<br />
<br />
No, I'm going to be pissed at the Democratic Party, because this (and every election going forward from now) are theirs to lose. The Republican Party is so reactionary, so blindly stupidly conservative, pushing so many of the fear buttons, you've got to be an idiot not to notice. They've managed to piss off so many different voting blocks, it's a wonder even white males are willing to vote for them.<br />
<br />
Unless you've been propagandized, like so many Americans have. The Republicans may not be able to govern their way out of a wet paper bag, but they are masters at obfuscating the truth and making everybody think up is down and right is left.<br />
<br />
Along those lines, there is one truth about the Republicans' long and well trod road over the last 40 years nobody can argue against - they've managed to make the word "liberal" into a cuss word. They've made everybody think that government is incompetent and constantly conspiring against us, both at the same time, all the while convincing us that it should be small enough to drown in a bathtub, and that it SHOULD be drowned in a bathtub.<br />
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How they've managed to claim that government is incompetent by gaining power in government and PROVING it is without the entire population of this country noticing that it has been Republicans' incompetence and not that of Democrats, I'll never know.<br />
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Republicans have managed to make almost every liberal position seem like evil incarnate. Socialism is now a dirty word even though most Americans wouldn't know a Socialist if one bit them on the ass, and have almost no clue what they stand for.<br />
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If we lose this election, it will be because The Democratic Party has given up.<br />
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They have not even tried to call Republicans out on their stupidity or their lies or even the obvious hypocrisy on display almost every time a Republican politician opens his/her mouth.<br />
<br />
Most egregiously, they have failed utterly to defend liberal, progressive ideas and principles. They have stood by silently while the Republican Party and conservative Democrats have dragged the political discourse in this country so far to the right that there isn't so much as a dogcatcher who can be elected on a true liberal ticket.<br />
<br />
Every single time Obama has managed to get a law passed in his Administration, you'll notice that they all were originally proposed by conservative Think Tanks! Even the ACA, Obama's signature accomplishment, is based on the Massachusetts law, which came straight out of the Heritage Foundation!<br />
<br />
Ya wanna know why the Democrats are losing?<br />
<br />
Because liberals are staying home. In droves, because there isn't a single solitary politician who is representing the true liberal position and principles in this country.<br />
<br />
Not one. Even Independent Senator Barney Sanders of Vermont can't manage to defend liberalism, no matter how hard he tries.<br />
<br />
It is time to stop letting the Republicans set the agenda. To stop letting them define who liberals are and what liberalism is. It is time to explain to the American public what liberals stand for and why.<br />
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It is time for LIBERALS to set the talking agenda. It is time for Liberals to define Republicans so that America and the world can see what they truly are and what they truly stand for.<br />
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Politicians today are afraid to stand up and defend their principles. Poor things, they might lose and have to sit out a few years away from Washington!<br />
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NO!<br />
<br />
Stand up! Defend yourself, defend your principles. DEFINE yourself, DEFINE the principles you stand for, the values you love. Do it passionately, do it with feeling. Shake your fist, pound the table, rouse the crowd with passionate, earth rattling rhetoric!<br />
<br />
Emotions are the key, and Republicans know that. They are masters of the fear signal. They can push their constituents' fear buttons and get the reaction they want immediately.<br />
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But passion and excitement can overcome fear. Talk about the future! Extol our scientific advances! paint visions of the very real utopia we can advance towards, if only we can give up our addiction to war and violence. Describe the world we can build together if only we can cooperate together, and bring every American up to a better standard of living. How much growth we can bring to our country by educating ALL of our children, and making this country a leader in science and industry again.<br />
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There is a lot to defend, and a lot to look forward to, if only we will get together and COMMUNICATE these things to our fellow Americans, who are sick and tired of hearing the negative and the fearful. People want to hear about the positive things, the good things we can do, so let's tap into that and help them see what a wonderful future we can bring to this country together!<br />
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The Party which can bring a positive vision of the future can and will win. Let's stop enabling the Republicans in their sick, negative picture of America. Let's show America and the world what LIBERALS can do to bring us a bright and shining future!<br />
<br />
The first step is for every liberal and every independent who cares for this country to get out and vote. VOTE BLUE! VOTE DEMOCRAT!<br />
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I mean, hey, it's only the welfare of our kids and grandkids at stake.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-89140560295481939512014-11-01T21:01:00.001-04:002014-11-01T21:01:12.884-04:00But which core values? Yours, or...yours?<div class="tr_bq">
Hermant Mehta, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/">The Friendly Atheist</a>, had a fascinating take on an incident that occurred a while back. It seems that <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/11/01/8th-grader-gets-biblical-literalist-to-admit-that-when-god-says-hell-is-forever-he-doesnt-really-mean-it/">in a recent debate</a>, a young man, Chad, challenged Mr. Marcellino (the Christian debater) about the fate of people who do not know Christ.</div>
<br />
You know, the question of Hell, and god sending those unfortunates straight there for eternity.<br />
<br />
First, though, Mr. Clifton had asserted earlier in the debate that he didn't think Hell was forever.<br />
<br />
Then, later, he admitted, at Chad's questioning, that he is a believer that the bible is literally true.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Chad followed that up by questioning Marcellino’s claim from earlier in the debate that Hell wasn’t really forever — doesn’t the Bible say it is?</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i><b>Marcellino</b>: … Forever doesn’t really mean forever.</i><i><b>Chad</b>: … you said it was all literally true.</i><i><b>Marcellino</b>: Well, yeah, it’s not literally English true. It’s Hebrew and Greek. So you have to get into the Hebrew and Greek.</i></blockquote>
Apparently, Chad has done this before, challenging Christian debaters and flummoxing them into stumbling and making idiots out of themselves. The Friendly Atheist has covered these debates, so if you want to actually see the video, go to the link above and watch. It's cool!<br />
<br />
Go, Chad!<br />
<br />
Great stuff!<br />
<br />
But that's not exactly what this post is about, though it did spark the old noggin a bit.<br />
<br />
I've seen a lot of debate lately about whether the Progressive agenda, including Atheism, is really progressing (pardon the pun), or whether the right wing backlash has got us on the run. Certainly, the narrow polls in this election are cause for concern, as there is a very real possibility the Republicans could win the Senate.<br />
<br />
Or so the pundits say. I do remember that the last election surprised a lot of pundits and pollsters alike. Anybody remember the epic meltdown of Carl Rove on Fox? It was, truly, something to watch!<br />
<br />
I am, quite naturally, an optimist, even though I do take the engineer's position about that proverbial glass of water - I still insist the damn thing is just not the right size... but I digress.<br />
<br />
One needs to take the long view in these things. Cultural changes do not take place overnight, even though we did manage to upend things in the 60's pretty quickly. Today's backlash is a direct result of the 60's, and it is a doozy! But, it isn't the end of the struggle. Not by a long shot.<br />
<br />
227 years ago, the United States Constitution was ratified. That is, arguably, the greatest success for the men of the day in their struggle for the spread and the social acceptance of the principles of The Enlightenment. But the road leading to that day was long and bloody. Historically, the enlightenment began with the Crusades, believe it or not.<br />
<br />
Before that time, Europeans were pretty much (except for merchants, mostly) confined to Europe, and didn't do much traveling. Travel was hard, dirty, and dangerous, and getting anywhere really interesting took months, and often years. The nobility of Europe were mostly interested in warfare, politics and religion, pretty much in that order. Few of them were literate, as most of their time was spent in the practice of martial arts, if not actively engaged in real fighting. The rest was often politics and such. There was a day when learning to read was actually discouraged for the nobility, as it was considered beneath their position. That's why they hired monks and learned priests to do their paperwork.<br />
<br />
Much of that was the Church's fault, because really, they wanted the ability to read strictly in their purview, which allowed them to interpret Scripture. If you couldn't read, you had to take the priest's word for what was even written there! In fact, in the earlier centuries of what we call the Dark Ages, learning to read was actually forbidden by the church.<br />
<br />
But when the nobles who answered the Pope's call for the Crusades got to the Holy Land, they didn't find barbarous savages as the Church taught, but very learned Muslim nobility, who had safeguarded many ancient writings over the centuries. Documents in Greek and Latin, often predating the Church, many of which were long lost writings of Greek philosophers. Histories, too, in both Greek and Latin; a lot of these men learned those languages, and took some of these documents to Europe when they went home.<br />
<br />
The principles they learned, the ideas the Greeks had struggled over and debated about changed European thought and culture forever.<br />
<br />
Looking at European history since those times, one can clearly see the slow but long term steady change from a society dominated by the Church and theocratic rule to one ruled by secular authorities which eventually denied the Church any secular authority at all.<br />
<br />
Today, Europe is even more secular than the US, with some countries boasting fewer than 20% of their populations claiming religious belief.<br />
<br />
I am not going to dive into the whys and the wherefores of how this took place, I'm not an historian. But it is sufficient to this discussion that it HAS taken place, and the progression of western culture from the conservative and the intolerant to a newer more liberal set of principles is easy to see.<br />
<br />
It wasn't an easy road, and it wasn't a straight one. There was much backsliding and a lot of blood was spilled along the way.<br />
<br />
But as of today, the culture wars (as Ed Brayton puts it) are still slowly and jerkily moving us forward, even if it is like clawing your way up a steep hill in the mud, fighting gravity every inch of the way.<br />
<br />
American culture has moved through the 18th and 19th centuries, forging a new set of unique values. Values built on the movement of millions of Americans across this continent which has cemented our belief in the worth of the individual. Past migrations across places like Asia were based on mass population movement. Entire cultures were displaced and forced to move into other parts of the world, but they moved as a people, in groups.<br />
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In the US, we did it often as individual families or small groups. Sometimes one by one, these brave people made names for themselves and the stories of their travels are legend. They depended, though, on each other. On the frontier, the old traditions of breaking bread together around a fire were rediscovered, and the ideals of helping those in trouble were there to ensure that everybody had help when they needed it.<br />
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Individualism tempered by tolerance and charitable assistance where trouble struck has always been an American value. We are, therefor, a proud people. We pride ourselves on being independent. On not being led around like sheep. The watchword for early America was Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.<br />
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We have a sense of fairness, of balance. American frontier justice was swift, but fair, mostly. It had to be. Early communities depended on that. Religion was an individual thing. Preachers were rare, priests even more so. With so few to preach at them and so much to do simply to survive, religion just wasn't very important in large part, until civilization caught up.<br />
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But by then, the principles were set, spread by the media and popular books and newspapers, extolling the "Manifest Destiny" of this country to spread west. The exploits of the pioneers were read voraciously throughout the US and even overseas. The principles of individualism and their liberty from authoritarianism were well set by the middle of the 19th century.<br />
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So, you say, just what does all this have to do with a young man named Chad and an embarrassed Christian debater?<br />
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Plenty.<br />
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The modern American Evangelistic movement likes to pretend it is a monolithic movement, spreading like wildfire and taking souls from Satan daily.<br />
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But it isn't. There are at least three types of evangelicals.<br />
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The Fundies - committed believers. Literal bible believers, they are the soul, if you will, of that movement. They set the tone.<br />
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The Moderates - they talk the talk, but rarely walk that walk. They make all the right noises, but really? All they do is check the right boxes on those national polls, so jesus will win. But they either stay at home Sunday or just pretend.<br />
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Then you've got The Cognitively Screwed. Guys like the debater, Mr. Marcellino. He knows the Scriptures by heart, he is admired by his peers and his fellow congregants. He talks with Jesus!<br />
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But, deep in his heart, he is still imbued with those core American values. The sense of fairness, the core belief in an individual's rights to his own mind, without being forced into a mold. He is, in short, uncomfortable with the idea that anybody should be tortured forever for a short term sin. Particularly if they never knew what a sin was!<br />
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His values aren't biblical. His values are informed by The Enlightenment, as formulated by the American Revolution and forged in the heat of the American Frontier.<br />
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But he can't admit it. He is also an Evangelical. He MUST believe in the infallibility of the Scripture. It is pounded into his mind every Sunday, but his American values are in his mother's milk. His culture insists that America is the greatest country in the world, with the greatest values.<br />
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But those American values conflict with his Evangelical values.<br />
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So, when he gets confronted by someone like Chad, his mind cannot deal with that conflict.<br />
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There are millions of people like Mr. Marcellino. Hard core fundies, until their core values are conflicted with their religion. Then, they are confounded as to where to turn, what to think.<br />
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To me, that is encouraging. The more we see people who are supposed to be very religious being confronted and failing to even reconcile basic beliefs, the more we will see those reconciliations being resolved in a way we will think of as favorable. Many people doubt their religion.<br />
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It is our job to confront them and help them resolve those conflicts reasonably. That way, Progressivism WILL win.<br />
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Just don't expect it to be overnight.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19963266.post-58029087430906732962014-10-28T07:22:00.001-04:002014-10-28T07:22:54.942-04:00Shattered feet of clay.<div>It is always unsettling - and a bit sad - to see an icon fall. Our society so badly needs its heroes and icons, and when one's feet of clay are finally exposed, a lot of people are often terribly disappointed.</div><div><br></div><div>But some icons need to be exposed, because the things they represent are so sordid and harmful to society, yet have been touted as being good.</div><div><br></div><div>Mother Teresa is one such icon.</div><div><br></div><div>Her public figure has always been a saintly one, so loving, so giving, the head of an order (which she established) devoted to caring for the poverty stricken in need of medical attention, and possessing over 400 missions around the world. Such goodness, such devotion to poverty, she was depicted as living as poorly as her charges.</div><div><br></div><div>Christopher Hitchens exposed her for what she really was - a hollow figure, callously sequestering millions of donated dollars, refusing to provide the medication and care her charges so badly needed, she essentially forced them into the suffering she felt was so central to her public faith. But when she needed care, she got it at an American hospital. One of the best, at that! Flew first class, was feted by the high and mighty. Especially by dictators and warlords, who lavished her with donations, which she gladly took and often funneled directly to the Vatican.</div><div><br></div><div>And talking about her public faith; privately, she agonized over a disbelief she admitted in letters and private writings, one which could never be made public. In reality, she admitted she never heard Jesus or God speak to her, and wondered if they even existed.</div><div><br></div><div>Now, in a peer reviewed study, two Canadian researchers have revealed new information, corroborating Hitchens completely, and totally exposing the raw truth of her perfidy at allowing a media campaign which twisted her into a public saint.</div><div><br></div><div>What is worse is that the Roman Catholic Church not only allowed that campaign, but probably orchestrated it in a callous and deliberate attempt to create another saint. A figure meant to illustrate and illuminate the church's dogma of poverty and suffering, which it claims brings its adherents closer to God.</div><div><br></div><div>A dogma which, in actuality, simply controls its members by helping them to be happy in their poverty, fooling them into complacence and compliance.</div><div><br></div><div>When I write about harm from religion, this is what I am talking about. Policies and actions which take a true shameful condition of millions of people around the world - one which could be alleviated - and turns it into a control measure to avoid those unhappy people from upsetting the current political order.</div><div><br></div><div>While the current Pope talks about how terrible secular capitalists are about hoarding money and perpetuating poverty by paying poverty level wages, the organization of which he is the absolute monarch is busy propagandizing those unhappy poverty stricken millions into believing that their plight is a blessed one to be embraced instead of improved upon.</div><div><br></div><div>In the meantime, the world marches on, pouring billions and billions of monetary units around the world into military capabilities with which to grind those unhappy millions into human paste.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you, Mother Teresa. On behalf of a frustrated world population which yearns for a world at peace, thank you for helping to perpetuate a world at war. A world which encourages poverty and suffering.</div><div><br></div><div>Like you did.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05578145425454731854noreply@blogger.com1