Trigger Warning! Taboo Subject! Run for Your Life!

Today, I am going to talk about a subject that immediately puts most Americans in a cold sweat.  No, I said cold sweat, not a hot one, I’m not going to talk about sex!  Not today, anyway.

Death.  The Long Sleep.  The Great Equalizer.  Nirvana, Valhalla, The Eysian Fields.  Heaven, Hell and The Wheel of Life.

Nothing is more guaranteed to put your average American in a state of the jitters.  It makes us nervous, it puts us on edge and causes our eyes to wander helplessly, anywhere but in the eyes of the speaker.

There is nothing in the field of the supernatural (which of course, includes religion) with a wider field of possibilities or a longer list of crazy, wacko and nonsense beliefs.  Ghosts, goblins, devils & demons, somewhere in America, somebody thinks they’re real.

As an atheist, I think it’s all a bunch of wacko, crazy far out strangeness.  Yes, including all of the major religions.  Why?  It’s simple.  We live in the 21st century, we’ve been studying the human body for over two hundred years now, seriously, in a scientific manner.  With modern electronic sensors and equipment, we can see inside the body as it works, we can learn from the now huge body of scientific study that clearly shows us that the seat of the human mind is in the frontal lobes of the brain.  Right behind the forehead.

Remember Terri Schiavo?  Her case ignited a battle royal over long term care and when it is appropriate to shut off life support.  Some folks wanted to shut it off, her defenders said she was still alive.

An autopsy after her death shows clearly that her brain had deteriorated to almost a third of its proper size, and there was nothing of that part of her brain left which would have housed the essential Terri - she’d really been dead for quite a while, even if her body had still breathed.

My own experiences with death, accounts of death by accident, disaster or combat clearly show that once the brain is gone, so is the person.  

Life...ends.  There is nothing left but what we Americans call the “remains”.  As if using the term dead body jinxes you or something.

Yeah, that’s a bit morbid.  But, life ends.  It does.  Death is only a part of life.  Living means that one day, you will die.  None of us are getting off this rock alive!   

Aaaaahhhh!!  Run!  Hide!  Zombies!

No, levity won’t prolong life by much, but they say laughter is the best medicine, so maybe it will after all.  Consider yourself medicated!

The American attitude about death is curious, at least to an atheist.  Christians claim that this is a Christian country, but when death is mentioned or after a terrible event like Newtown, things get somber, people get afraid and fill up the churches.  Not to celebrate the transition of a faithful adherent to the arms of Jesus, but to pray for salvation, to pray for the soul of the dead and for the violence to end.

Why?  Why do we preach one thing but act out another?

Christianity is, culturally speaking, fairly new.  Humans have lived on this earth, as humans, for over a hundred thousand years, even as much as half a million years, developing culture, language, and religion all the while.  Archeologists have even found evidence that Neanderthals might have believed in an afterlife.

One of the oldest cultural customs is hospitality.  The belief that a stranger, come to your door in need and hunger, had the right to food, shelter and sanctuary while under your roof is so old and so strong, that the story of Lot in Sodom, as he offered his daughters to the mob if they’d only leave the angels alone is illustrative of how powerful that stricture is.  That custom was old then, and is probably one of the oldest human customs to survive to this day.  A lot of other customs survive, too. 

Most so called “christian” customs are older pagan customs taken and repurposed by the Church as christian holidays and celebrations, both to keep local populations happy by not taking away their long loved holidays and to introduce christian stories and traditions into a newly “converted” culture.

Christmas is a wonderful example of this, with most of the “traditional” emblems of Christmas being older customs of pagan cultures in Europe that have survived to this day.

In Mediterranean culture of the First Century, christianity was unusual.  It was one of what the Greeks called “Mystery religions”, so called because there were mysteries of the theology which were only given to the inner circles to know and were not widely disseminated to the public.  Most of these mystery religions had as a central tenet the idea that a “savior” deity, somehow killed ritually by supernatural enemies, had returned triumphantly to life and any of that deity’s adherents who underwent certain rituals reminiscent of that triumphant rebirth would benefit from eternal life in a happy, wonderful existence in the company of that deity.

Prior to that time, most religions didn’t have a very happy afterlife.  Vikings believed in Valhalla, where vikings went after death in battle to be served by the men they’d killed in an eternal drinking and feasting binge ended only by a final battle between their gods and their supernatural enemies.  Greeks and Romans believed in an underworld, where the shades of the dead spent eternity in a ghostly existence ruled over by the eternally jealous Hades.  Not exactly heaven, was it?

it was, however, life of a sort, and if one was very lucky, one could actually meet up with a loved one there, maybe.  No promises, since the gods were fickle and actually a pretty nasty bunch.  Religious rituals consisted of ceremonies meant to propitiate the gods into either favoring you or, at the very least, ignoring you.  Some rituals could be counted on to, perhaps, persuade the gods to smite one of your enemies, but, these could backfire if your enemy was better at wooing the gods than you were!

But, in general, there was no dogma of heaven or hell, no eternal reward or punishment for one’s behavior on earth.  In the end, unless you were a viking and died in battle, you were just kind of out of luck.  Some religions believed that one’s shades wandered the earth and religious ceremonies were meant to just keep these poor wandering souls away, lest they steal away your life energy or something equally nasty.

In other words, for the first few hundred thousand years of man’s existence, life was short, brutal and nasty, and the afterlife wasn’t much better.

Being so new, christianity (and Islam, which also has a happier heaven), had to borrow a lot of rituals, symbols and traditional holiday customs to get any traction to grow, even with the lure of a happier afterlife.  After all, the christian and Islamic dogma require you to enslave yourself to god (yes, they do, just read the words, people, you can quibble about the meanings today, but back when things were newer, slavery is just what they meant), so the afterlife had to have compensations to make it attractive.

Today, many of these customs survive as customs and values which transcend christian belief.  A fractured, widely differing conglomeration of beliefs in differing kinds of afterlife is the result, I believe.   Even christianity differs in some very basic ways.

Some denominations think one must be buried intact, so when the Second Coming is here, you will “rise up” out of your grave to join Jesus.  Others teach that we will receive new bodies, and still others teach that our new bodies will be spiritual bodies and not physical at all!

I call bull pucky.

I mean, come on, after hundreds of thousand of years, billions of deaths, with death and an afterlife being a central, obsessive focus of human attention for almost all of that time, one would think that nature would screw up at least once.

Come on, just once!  One single guy or gal to actually, provably and verifiably die and return to tell us all about it.

But no.  Nothing, nada, zip, bupkis!  Not so much as a fairtheewell or a single solitary postcard.

Lots of charlatans, though.  Lots of so called mediums who say they can talk to the dead.  Lots of people who say they almost died, but were sent back to tell us all about it!

Funny thing is, these things happen all over the world.  And just about every one tells us about the afterlife in a manner which tracks almost exactly with the religion that person was born into!  You’d think that if there was a real afterlife, and each religion had a piece of it right, that all of the stories would mesh together into some sort of common idea, a picture of what the real heaven looks like.

But they don’t.

Which is why the bull pucky.

I waited to write this until after the tragedy in Newtown had been past for a while.  When it wasn’t so new and raw.  I waited because this really is a subject that many of us are close to because we have recently lost a loved one, or may be about to - or just can’t get past the long ago death of a parent or spouse.

It is painful, and it is why so many people cannot let go of the comfort of believing that the loved one lost, or the one about to be, will be again before you, smiling and holding out their arms for that hug.   Just like old times, after you die and are reunited, in heaven.

But I can’t believe it.  I am an evidence kind of guy.  I am that doubting Thomas who must be shown to believe.  If it can’t be proven or demonstrated through scientific methodology, it can’t be real.

I sat there, watching the body of my mother, finally gone after several years of slowly wasting away just like her beloved aunt, of Myasthenia Gravis, laid out in her bed at the nursing home.  Like so many people in a similar position, both sad to see her gone, yet glad to see the pain, the suffering, finally at an end.

She’s gone.  Like all of the others, and like I will be some day.  It is hard to contemplate that some day, you will also be gone.  That you will no longer be here, that you will not wake up and just carry on as if you’d been asleep.  

But there was a time when I wasn’t here once before - before I was born.  It didn’t hurt.  There was no pain, and the world carried on just fine.  

My post from yesterday came before this one on purpose.  If you’ve not read it go read it now.  Because deep inside you, you have the resources which will allow you to go on, to move forward after the death of that loved one.  You have the strength, and you don’t need to pray for it from an outside source.

You are human.  You are strong.  Humans have been carrying on after the deaths of loved ones for as much as a half million years since we became human.   Billions of us, billions of deaths, billions of lives.  We have been building our civilization, year after year, decade after decade, century and millennium after millennium, during good times and bad, feast and famine.

Your ancestors, in a line unbroken from Africa to wherever you are now, lived, died and carried on, gathering that inner strength which all humans have in great unmeasured amounts.

They did it, you can do it, because in the end, life is what we make it out to be.  Life is of the purpose we give to it, by how we live, by how we love and by how we teach the next generation to do the same.  It has to be, because this life, here, now, on this earth, is all we’ve got.  No second chances, no rehearsals, no curtain calls.

The greatest waste is a human life.  Don’t waste yours waiting for the second life which will never come.  Pursue a hobby.  Travel to someplace you’ve never been.  Eat escargot!  Dance like you’ve never danced and love like there’s no tomorrow.

Because, for any of us, there may not be.

Your Inner Strength - of Divine Origin or Completely and Magnificently Human?

Today, I read a very interesting post at FreeThought Blogs, entitled, “Jesus, the First Responder? I Don’t Think So!”, which made the point that:

Throughout history, it is not imaginary beings who respond to human suffering, rather it is and it always has been the actual presence of freedom fighters, real, live human beings, who have taught us what means to be human and thus humane.  Jesus, or any other spiritual deity does not deserve this credit!  The credit goes to those of us who are willing and able to struggle for justice and human dignity in the face of cold-blooded killers.  It is we, not Jesus, who are the first responders!

While I agree completely with this sentiment, that isn’t exactly the point of my post today.  I want to take that a bit further and approach it from another direction.

One of the hardest things for many christians (and thus, I’d guess, the adherents to other religions as well) to give up is the comfort and security of knowing that there is this all powerful, loving god who, basically, has your back.  Someone you can turn to for strength and comfort when things get a bit rough.  After all, one of the most reliable predictions you can make about the people of this country is that when disaster strikes, especially something like the Newtown massacre, the churches fill up fast.

One of the biggest beefs I have with modern American idioms is the one where someone says, “Thank God!” whenever they hear that a family member or someone famous recovers from an illness or has a successful surgery - or is rescued from a burning building or sinking boat.

I want to shake them and say, “No!  It wasn’t god, it was that great doctor and his surgical team that did it!” or tell them that they should be thanking the Firemen/women or the Coastguard for rescuing their friends or family.

Which is the point of the old joke.  You know, the one where the guy trapped in his house during a flood and refuses rescue from an SUV, a boat and a helicopter, telling the rescuers that “god will save me”, but drowns anyway.  Upon confronting god in heaven, he is told that of course, god provided - an SUV, a boat and a helicopter!

God doesn’t do rescues.  He doesn’t do surgery.  He doesn’t magically put the answers to that tough test in your head after you failed to study last night.  If those answers are there, it is because YOU studied and remembered them!

People do these things.  Doctors go to school for almost a decade, including working extremely tough schedules in residencies and incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loans to learn how to perform surgery on that cancer that got removed from Aunt Sally’s throat.  God didn’t do that, the doctor did, supported by an entire team of highly trained, professional and very dedicated specialists without whom no doctor could succeed.  Firefighters go through a tough training school which takes a very special very tough person to succeed in.  Not everybody has the guts to enter a burning house to rescue a dog or a child or an old person unable to exit themselves.  But they do it every day - let’s start giving them the credit, instead of this invisible guy that, if he’s even there, stays pretty invisible.

How do these remarkable people do what they do?  Is it the hand of god which guides their footsteps or their hands?  No.  It is hours and hours of training, practice and experience which allow these remarkable people to save your life.  It is an internal fortitude and strength that keeps them going and helps them to do things the rest of us marvel over.

Is that strength rare?  In some cases, perhaps.  But in most of us, that strength is always there, and we can tap it at will if we but try.

You can do it too.  Have you ever prayed before an especially tough experience, like a board examination or a test or perhaps before running a marathon for the strength to make it across the finish line? To get through without cracking up under pressure?

Somehow, you made it, didn’t you?  And at the end, you said, “Thank god!”, right?

Did it never occur to you that the strength you tapped that time was always there, you just needed a way to tap into it?  That prayer did it.  God didn’t give it to you, you looked way down deep inside of yourself and tapped an inner wellspring of strength and came through in the end, because somehow, you knew you could.  The prayer was just a way of expressing yourself and your determination.

One of the most terrible and demeaning ways that christianity harms people is its dogmatic teaching that human beings are all sinners.  That we are weak, susceptible to temptation, with no will power to resist wrongdoing.  That we need the strength that god or Jesus can give us, if only we ask.  I am always with you, the bible says he tells us.

It is a classic method of, believe it or not, the abuser making their victim dependent on him/her.  One of the telltale signs of an abusive relationship is that the abuser tells his victim, constantly, how weak they are.  How they are stupid, weak and helpless.   He/she then constantly berates their attempts to prove themselves, putting them down, rejecting their overtures unless the victim accepts their abuse and characterization of them.

Sound familiar?  “None shall reach the kingdom of heaven except through me”  “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”.

If you experience this training through out childhood, its no wonder you turn to someone else for strength!

The toughest thing about becoming an atheist is realizing that, in reality, there’s nobody home when you send out that prayer.  That there’s nobody “with you” when you are asking for strength.  (Except, of course, friends and family)

But, slowly, you also realize that, on the other hand, in spite of there being nobody there, somehow, you got through anyway.  You passed that test, you were accepted by the board, you made the finish line.  You begin to see that the strength to persevere, to keep going, to win, was there all along.  Inside you.  Just waiting to be tapped, to be used and recognized.

Just like those brave firefighters, cops and Coastguardsmen/women, you too, have the strength which you can tap and call upon in times of need.  That intestinal fortitude, the guts, it’s there, it’s all yours!

Everybody has it, but not everybody knows how to tap into it and call upon it at need.  That takes effort.  That takes the confident knowledge that the strength is there and requires the ability to reach down and call upon it.  That strength is there and is demonstrated every day.

Remember that young teacher who concealed her class in closets and cabinets, then sat down to wait for the shooter?  The courage that young woman displayed was equal to, even superior to, that displayed by even the bravest Medal of Honor winner.  Usually, they are armed, she was not.  But sit she did, to ensure that she could fool the shooter into thinking her class was somewhere else and she was alone.  Knowing that she would most likely be shot herself.

That took tremendous courage!  The strength she showed was remarkable.  But utterly, entirely human.  Magnificently human!  God didn't stop the shooter from killing her children, she did.  She reached deep down inside and drew out the strength she needed to sit there and wait for certain death.  She had a purpose, and she knew how to succeed at that purpose.

People do that every day.  Unremarkable people, perfectly normal people save friends and neighbors from burning buildings, auto accidents, sinking ships, and just about any other dangerous situation you might imagine.  Every day, perfectly average people pass tests, sit through board examinations, endure imaginable hardships - and do it purely on their own, without the slightest help from invisible beings.  They do it by tapping on that internal strength, and often through knowing that they are supported by family, or friends or a professional network of associates and coworkers.

It’s called being human.  Magnificently human!

Is it really possible to get any stupider?

I am happy to inform you, dear cyber-readers, that the Conservatives in America have finally allowed their crazy feminine side to show!  Yes, folks, the crazy, nut bag idiotic statements made by right wing male idiots has been topped - not simply equalled, but topped - by a woman!

National Review, whose in-house editorial suggested Newtown was the price of the Second Amendment, published a piece on Wednesday from anti-feminist Charlotte Allen suggesting the reason the shooter was able to kill so many students was because Newtown was a “feminized setting:” 

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

(emphasis mine)

So, of course, to make up for their slip at allowing a woman to publish anything of note, it had to be an anti-female screed.

Regardless, this is simply beyond ridiculous.  In shooting after shooting, males died as quickly and as easily as women.  They were, quite honestly, unarmed.  Even if they had been armed, they likely would never have been able to have gotten to their firearms in time.  What school teacher, in today's atmosphere, would walk around in school with a loaded piece on his/her belt?

Ignoring the stupidly obvious bad example it would set in inner city classrooms, or in any classroom, why would you want to carry a weapon that could be taken from you and used against you or anyone else in your classroom?  Statistically, weapons bought for protection are more likely to be used against the owner than against an intruder.  Teachers are not trained security guards.  They have other, more pressing duties which would distract them from being able to use that weapon in an emergency.

If you absolutely, positively must have an armed guard in your school, PAY FOR A POLICE OFFICER TO BE THERE FULL TIME!!  Don't be chintzy, don't be cheap, if you are that alarmed by the danger to your kids, do it right.  Stop this crap about teaching teachers to handle guns and making them carry in class.

You'd simply be giving the next mass murderer free access to his tool.

Old School Shootings prove the utility of modern assault weapons

The battle of words rages:  "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!"  vs.  "Ban guns!"

Well, I thought that perhaps a bit of historical perspective would shed a bit of light on the subject.  Of course, who did I turn to for that historical perspective?

Chris Rodda, of course!  Her work on debunking the christian lies and hypocrisy of David Barton is legendary, so I thought that her post on this at FreeThought Blogs might be informative.

Boy, was I right!  (I love it when I'm right...)

In her post entitled, "No, Mr. Huckabee, It’s Not Because God Has Been Removed From Schools", she provides an interesting perspective on his remarks.  But, more importantly, she also provides a detailed list of past school shootings - going back to 1840!

The list ends in 1962, when Huckabee says we kicked god out of our schools.  Not only does this list prove Huckabee wrong, but it conveniently shows something else - that when firearms had slower rates of fire, held fewer rounds and were harder and slower to reload, the casualties of these attacks were considerably lower than after more rapidly firing and reloading weapons began to hit the markets.

This is critical to the current conversation, when we need to limit the damage that can be done by limiting the ability of shooters to be able to kill rapidly by denying them the rapid firing military style weapons.

Go read it, and prepare yourself to be amazed at the differences between the shootings now and then - and the similarities.

A sampling.

First on the list:

November 12, 1840: Charlottesville, Virginia. University of Virginia student Joseph Green Semmes shot law professor John A.G. Davis when Davis attempted to unmask Semmes and another student, both of whom were wearing masks and carrying pistols. Professor Davis died three days later.

Last on the list:

October 17, 1961: Denver, Colorado. Tennyson Beard, 14, got into an argument with William Hachmeister, 15, at Morey Junior High School. During the argument Beard pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and shot at Hachmeister, wounding him. A stray bullet also struck Deborah Faith Humphrey, 14, who died from her gunshot wound.

Obviously, learning about god in school didn't stop the killings, nor did god take a hand in preventing tragedy.  Even where he was very welcome.

The Stupidest Excuse.

Of all the stupidest excuses for not passing stricter laws against the spread of firearms in this country is the "If we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" argument.

Why?

Because, in spite of the cutsie little play on words there, the principle is that outlawing guns is useless, because criminals won't obey the law.

What?

Let me get this straight.  You've taken a poll pulled an imaginary number out of your ass, and because you feel that some number of Americans will willingly disobey a particular law, it would be a failure, so we just shouldn't pass it?

Let's look at a statistic.  I could use more than one, for the sake of drama and histrionics, but for my purposes, one will do - plus, I HATE statistics.  I think that the total number of murder victims in the United States in 2011 was 12,996, according to Wikipedia.

I do hate math, but in my dimly remembered high school math, that number, compared to the total population of the US at over 350 million people, would come to somewhat less than a fraction of 1%.

So, you are saying that because a very tiny fraction of the American population is likely to fail to obey a law, it shouldn't get passed?   Really?  Are YOU some special kind of stupid?

That principle, if spread out over the entire Justice system, would simply shut it down.  We'd have no reason to pass laws.  Look, let's get something straight, for those of you who failed to take civics because your ultra-right wing christian school board forgot to fund it that year.

The justice system exists to set in place a system of laws intended to inform the populace of the general expectations we, as a society, have for the behavior of those who live here.  It is not a set of general guidelines, but a system of rules - with requisite punishments for those who violate them, in keeping with the severity of the violation.  They are passed using a system of democratic representation which ensures (supposedly) that the population supports the laws as passed.

Yes, we DO expect you to obey them.  Yes, we WILL take you to court in order to impose those punishments on those who fail to do so.  That is the way we set it up.  That is the system that the right wing and most Republicans revere so much they'd like to send even more people to jail if they could.

And yet, in this one particular instance, we have this glaring, bright, nasty exception.

It puzzles me.  The proposed law, like the one which expired in 2004, is NOT a general outlawing of assault weapons so that cops will come take your guns.  It is a ban on the SALE of assault weapons.  That is intended to reduce the possible outlets for getting one to zero - legally speaking.  This would have a couple of salutary  results - it will reduce the availability of these weapons drastically - to those who are willing to risk Federal imprisonment or to private sale.  This would, in turn, in accordance to economics 101, cause the price of said illegal items to skyrocket in price.

Good news if you happen to own one - a private sale could net you as much or more for a used weapon as you may have paid for it new!

Bad news if you are a Federally licensed firearms dealer.  One less item to sell and profit from.  REALLY bad news if you are a prospective buyer before the ban goes into affect.  You'll need a LOT of additional money to get one - and THAT ensures that fewer people with homicidal tendencies will be able to afford to buy one.

So, let's reduce this to a Facebook meme:

Hatefulness at its worst: Trigger Warning!

I'm not going to post much today - busy with holiday stuff in meatspace.  To ruin your Sunday, make you feel dirty and want to take a shower, here is an example of the nasty, hateful and ... well, words fail to properly describe the base human pettiness and intolerant hate that is spewed on the video I am about to show you.

Prepare your shower, you'll need it!

Introducing the Westboro Baptist Church!

Now, go, take that shower...

Fischer isn't alone, alas!

Mike Huckabee has, predictably, joined the crazies:

HuffPo — Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) weighed in on the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. on Friday, saying the crime was no surprise because we have “systematically removed God” from public schools.”We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”


Have they no shame? Have they no sense of decency? Why do they have to use the deaths of these children and other victims as a springboard for their completely unrelated political goal?

If the rest of the christians in this country want us outsiders to see their religion in a better light, these men will be excoriated and shunned as a result of this stand they are taking. I know some of my friends on Facebook are with me on this. It needs to go viral!

Reactions to Tragedy

First thought:  "Not again!"

After that, things get a bit jumbled.  Grief, sympathy, sadness, anger all kind of roiling around, surfacing as I hear different parts of the story.

Two parts of this affect me the most.

First, the parents.  As a parent of three girls (all fortunately grown), I cannot possibly imagine the affect on me to hear if one of them had been killed at school by some nut with a gun.  Would I just sit down and cry?  Drop to my knees and just scream?  Stand stunned, speechless?  I just don't know - any and all of those are possible.  Having never been there, how can I?  All I know is that to even think about how those parents must feel is heartrending, and I just tear up.

Second, I cannot bear the thought of being the first cop or firefighter to enter one of those classrooms.  The images of dead children would haunt me for the rest of my life.  I don't know if I would have the strength to do my job.  I think the shock of such violence done to such young children would be too much to bear.

Or maybe the anger would take over and give me the boost I'd need to carry on.

How do you know until it happens?  You don't.  I understand that as a first responder, there's training to carry you on, training and instinct as the Sandy Hook Lieutenant said tonight.  He said it hits you later, when it's over.  If it is ever over in your mind.

Listening to the Ed Show tonight, I learned one shocking fact.  Since the Columbine shooting In Colorado 13 years ago, there have been 181 school shootings in the United States.  Look at that number again:

181

Not temples, not offices or businesses, of which there have been 64 since that time, in addition to the school shootings.

One hundred and eighty one.  In each one, at least one child died, in others, many more.   That is HUNDREDS of children - American children - who have died at the hands of some crazed killer with a gun.

Inevitably, the calls for gun control are beginning to be heard, and on the other side, the gun supporters are still saying that guns don't kill people, people kill people.  (When I hear that one, I remember the scene from one of the Harrison Ford movies where the dashing hero is standing in a marketplace facing a man carrying a curved, wicked sword, swinging it in circles, faster and faster, until he stops with a sharp cry, brandishing his sword at our hero - who promptly pulls a pistol out of his pants and shoots the man, turns and walks way, shaking his head at the fool who brought a sword to a gun fight!

With a gun, facing an essentially unarmed opponent, there's no danger - no possibility of harm, and the act takes no courage.  In fact, we now know that the majority of these killers are young people with a history of clinical depression.  By the time they get to that point, harm to themselves is actually part of their scenario - they often end up killing themselves at the end of their spree.  Courage is not part of their mental arsenal, an act which requires it cannot be carried out.

Which points to the solutions we must bring to the table - better efforts to make gun buying more difficult to help weed out spur of the moment impulses to violence, greater efforts to screen potential gun buyers for mental health issues, a greater effort to screen out teens and young people with mental health problems, especially depression, and a concerted effort to change the social attitudes in this country towards violence to end our acceptance of using violence to solve our problems.

The solution is NOT to get guns into the hands of teachers and other adults in schools!

And it did not happen because god isn't wanted in schools!

Smorgasbord of right wing crazy...a couple of updates.

Reposting from Dispatches from the Culture Wars today...

Hey, remember the wingnut who was so happy god destroyed a strip club?

Well, he seems to have had an epiphany - god did it to stop a casino from being built in Springfield!

If the obliteration of SCORES actually was by God (even Mayor Sarno acknowledged that it was a “miracle” that there were no deaths or serious injuries), then what is the message God is trying to send? Could it be a warning to Springfield NOT to build a casino here?… 

If God did want to send Springfield a message, could He have done it any more blatantly than to literally pulverize the very center of the “entertainment district” during the period of public comment about the plan to bring in casinos?… 

Who will be the Savior of Springfield? Jesus Christ? Or Vito Corleone?

Sounds like god could give Vito a little lesson in how to persuade people, huh?  I'd say leveling a strip club beats a dead horse any day, wouldn't you?


This isn't exactly right wing stuff, but it's weird anyway:

You know how governments usually have these old laws that have fallen out of usage because culture has moved beyond the need for them?  Like the old laws against spitting on the sidewalk to stop the proliferation of ugly tobacco juice, or the old laws against witchcraft that haven't been used for over three hundred years?

Well, Canada has a new use for an old law - cracking down on scammers who are targeting seniors of various ethnic groups in Canada by warning them of a curse and charging them to get rid of it - and run off with the payment before even trying to perform the ceremony!

The law prohibits “fraudulently…pretend[ing] to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration.”

I wonder if that means that real witchcraft is ok?


You know how it is now legal to get married if you are gay in New York now?  Well, guess what is located in New York State?  The United States Military Academy at West Point!  Yes, folks, the school which has hit the news for being so taken over by the right wing Dominionists has slipped up - they allowed a gay marriage ceremony the other day... or was it deliberate, just to be able to play the persecution card to deflect criticism?

“We are in the grip of an unholy regime,” he contends. “We have people who are lawless, godless. They are a law unto themselves, and they have taken command of our government, our institutions, the media, Hollywood — you name it. So people who love God and obey his laws are up against huge force.”

Yeah, sure.  The right wing is so persecuted...


I've written about the ultra fundie groups like the Quiverfull Movement before, and may have mentioned the ultra-orthodox Jewish groups, but here is a story that is threatening to open that world up for all to see.

This is a Jewish Hasidic Community, and a girl there has accused a rabbi who was to counsel her of sexual assault.  However, the results for her have been extreme:

Indeed, ever since she reported the abuse, the alleged victim of Nechemya Weberman — an unlicensed “therapist” to whom, testimony has indicated, Satmar schools referred “wayward” girls for “help” — has been subjected to intense pressure to withdraw her claim, including intimidation, harassment, social ostracism of her family and even a reported $500,000 bribe. Last spring, members of the Satmar community held a lavish fundraiser for Weberman’s defense. Not long after, four men were arrested and charged with witness tampering in connection with the case. And last Thursday, four chasidic men were arrested for taking the young woman’s picture — which was then posted online — as she testified in the courtroom… 

However, many people with ties to the chasidic community believe there is something even more important about the Weberman case — namely, what it exposes about the larger communal role played by chasidic “modesty committees” in communities like Williamsburg, Borough Park and Kiryas Joel. These groups — to which, sources say, Weberman was connected — originated years ago to guard the “purity” of the community by enforcing strict dress and behavior codes that characterize the insular chasidic lifestyle. But, insiders say, the tactics of these self-appointed, freelance modesty patrols have evolved from public shaming to extortion and threats… 

However, community members and observers believe that Weberman’s connection to the modesty committee (or Vaad HaTznius; tznius is Hebrew for modesty,) and his ties to the Satmar schools make this case about more than one woman’s allegations of sexual abuse against a man ostensibly charged with helping her. 

According to Yerachmiel Lopin, who blogs at FrumFollies and has been reporting on the case for two years, “UTA was in effect, extorting money for Weberman. I strongly suspect they kept some of it. Given widespread rumors about his sexual misconduct, Satmar was in effect pimping its girls to Weberman, adding insult to injury by making the victim pay to be victimized.”… 

According to Engelman, one of the roles of the Vaad — which comprises various “divisions” and whose members’ names are not publicized — is to conduct surveillance on those who are thought to be transgressing. Examples include local businesses that may be featuring immodest window displays or creating an atmosphere conducive to mixed-sex socializing. Young people who are spending time with members of the opposite sex or leaving the community to attend movies or go to bars or clubs are also targets, as are those who are having affairs. 

Armed with their “evidence,” Vaad members then approach their subjects and, according to Engelman, attempt to persuade them to pay for therapy — with “therapists” they select — or risk public exposure. Wayward spouses are also given the option of paying members of the Vaad to fund “therapy” for their wronged mates.

And some folks have questioned my conclusion that religion is basically harmful?  This all the proof I need.

More on Atheism

To expand on some issues that came up on one of my posts advertising yesterday's post on Facebook, here is more.

I want to touch on two issues here.

First, there was a lot of doubt expressed about the attitudes of christians towards atheists and whether actual violence can happen towards them.

From Northern Louisiana:

On the eve of his graduation, the atheist student contacted the school superintendent to let him know that he opposed the inclusion of a prayer at the graduation ceremony. He pointed out that government-sponsored prayer in the public schools was unconstitutional and legally forbidden – and that he would be contacting the ACLU if it went ahead. The school agreed to substitute it with a moment of silent reflection, which was subsequently scuppered by a Christian student. 

Then Fowler’s name, and his role in this incident, was leaked. As a direct result:  

1) Fowler has been hounded, pilloried, and ostracized by his community. 

2) One of Fowler’s teachers has publicly demeaned him.

3) Fowler has been physically threatened. Students have threatened to “jump him” at graduation practice, and he has received multiple threats of bodily harm, and even death threats.

4) Fowler’s parents cut off his financial support, kicked him out of the house, and threw his belongings onto the front porch.

Not because he said he was an atheist, but because he wanted the school to obey the law!  Imagine what might have happened if he'd actually come out as one.

Here's some stuff from this page at Secular Humanism's site:

Gray, Tennessee: Carletta Sims joined a financial firm in June 2001. Shortly afterward, two Baptist coworkers took offense upon learning that Sims was an atheist. Management granted the coworkers’ request to be assigned workspaces further from Sims. When Sims complained about a picture of Jesus left on her computer, management discharged her. Sims filed suit, seeking $250,000; U.S. District Judge Thomas Hull ruled that “religious discrimination (or preferential treatment of Christians) can be inferred.” In January 2004, the major bank that had since acquired the firm settled with Sims for an undisclosed amount. 

Ada, Oklahoma: A Baptist student told a local newspaper she wouldn’t take professor William Zellner’s classes because he was an atheist, triggering a flurry of abuse. Zellner received harassing notes and telephone calls, some threatening. His car was vandalized, for a time on a daily basis. A local church sold “I am praying for Dr. Zellner” buttons. 

His children experienced shunning and beatings from religious children. 

Minneapolis, Minnesota: First-grader Michael Bristor, an atheist, was denied an honor roll certificate when he refused to participate in an unconstitutional “prayer time” at a public school. For three years, administrators ignored the family’s complaints until a lawsuit was filed. 

Caro, Michigan: In December 2001, Anonka—an open atheist who maintains a museum of Christian religious atrocities—appeared before the Tuscola County Board of Commissioners to challenge a nativity scene placed on public land. Commissioners responded angrily, saying she had no right to be present and proceeding to ridicule her. Anonka and her family suffered repeated harassment including annoyance calls, threatening calls and letters, and vandalism. In February 2004, the county settled in U.S. District Court, agreeing to pay an undisclosed sum and to issue a “public expression of regret.” 

Pocopson, Pennsylvania: My own atheism came to prominence when I became involved in a legal challenge to a Ten Commandments plaque on the wall of the Chester County, Pennsylvania, courthouse. Neighbors organized a shunning campaign, some area merchants refused to do business with me, and I received hundreds of threatening letters and phone calls. (The depth of public animus against me became a subject of local news and magazine coverage.) I was forced to close my interior decorating business because of death threats that compelled me to stop visiting the homes of persons unknown to me. 

Calgary, Alberta: An eleven-year-old boy (name withheld) experienced daily physical attacks and threats against his life by schoolmates—notably the sons of three local pastors—after protesting intercom readings of the Lord’s Prayer in a public school. He was repeatedly body-checked into hallway walls and attacked in the rest rooms. One pastor’s son stalked him with a butcher knife in an empty portable classroom. Despite the seriousness of this incident, no action was taken. The boy’s parents transferred him to another school for his own safety.

In short, the attitude is that as long as you keep your mouth shut and allow christians to continue on their merry way, enjoying the privilege they give themselves, you can still live among them, but as soon as you let it be known that you are unhappy with the status quo, look out.

Most Americans are not faced with this problem.  In Maryland, where I live, this is rare.   It is rare in much of the South for one simple reason:  incidents like those outlined above show clearly what will happen to you if you rock the boat.  Most people just don't have the courage to stand up to that, so it just doesn't happen much, because they tend to go along and let themselves be intimidated!

I could go to the Freethought blogs site and find case after case just like those above, much newer than those old cases.  Face it, folks, this may be America, but we are humans, just like Northern Ireland, and they killed each other for over EIGHTY YEARS!!  Bombings, drive by shootings, kneecappings, kidnappings, it ran the gamut of the nasty stuff humans can do to each other, and all because Catholics refused to submit to Protestant rule backed by the English.  Such sectarian violence is not uncommon.

Iraq's problems we dealt with were almost exclusively sectarian in nature.  One kind of muslim against another.  Strictly forbidden in the Koran, but, hey, people are people, right?  There is much sectarian violence in Africa, too.  We just don't hear much about it because, well, they're black.

Well, Americans are human too, and Americans can be as sectarian as the next nationality can!

The next is why I write about these things.

I am not in the business of converting people.  If you want to believe, fine.  This country was founded on the principle that you can do that without the interference of the government, either to stop you or to force you to worship in one particular way.  You can do that however you like, at church, at home or out in the boonies communing with nature.  (dressed or not!)

The reason I write about this is because there is a movement of Americans, who believe a particular kind of fundamentalist teaching, who believe that they are tasked by god with the job of taking dominion over this country - or even the world - to bring it to god.  THIER god, not yours.  They are not particularly trying to do that using democratic principles, but want to establish a theocracy, which is a religious based dictatorship.  No democracy.  The bible doesn't teach democracy.  It teaches feudalism.  The divine right of kings, whose authority is given by god, which was why French kings were anointed with oil upon their coronation.  That oil was consecrated "by god" for that specific purpose.

They are using the above attitudes by ordinary Americans against Atheists and even non believers of other stripes to foster that anger and intolerance you have seen on TV in this last campaign.

Come on, you don't think that stuff came from out of the blue?  That "war on women" thing?  Right out of the bible.  Read Paul.  That's where they get all that "women should be subservient" stuff, and how they shouldn't have the right to decide their own reproductive future.  That's for the man they married.  They'll enforce that by simply outlawing contraceptives.  And abortion.

Once that is accomplished, they can sit back and let economics take over - since then women will be forced out of the workplace when they get pregnant, and after Republicans dump all of the Union backed laws forbidding firing women for pregnancy, women will have no legal recourse.  It'll be back home, barefoot and pregnant!

My cause is the Separation of Church and State.  As long as atheists are seen as a tiny minority and christians see themselves as a "vast" majority, that separation is a myth.  They keep atheists as that "tiny minority" by intimidating us, threatening us, passing laws to punish us as a way of keeping us QUIET.

One of the ways they do this is to use organizations like Gallup to foster and spread the myth that atheists are a tiny minority of insignificant numbers and influence.

As I noted, the personal experience of one person, or even a few in a group, are not representative of the whole of the American population.  The term Gallup uses, non-religious, doesn't mean atheist, of course.  But it alludes to someone being a person to whom religion is unimportant.

Whether that means they are atheist or casually believe in god but don't care, what does it matter?  For the purposes of understanding the religiosity of America, it doesn't.  A person who says they are christian but never goes to church isn't really a christian.  They are a labeled christian, but do they really, if pressed, actually believe it deep down inside?

Their actions tell.

The most "religious" parts of this country have higher level of the indicators of social disfunction.  Divorce, adultery, teen pregnancy, murder, robbery, DUI, all are higher than in States with lower rates of religiosity.  All things directly opposed to the teachings of christianity.  On a national level, countries in Europe, denigrated by the Republicans as "ungodly" and "socialist", actually have much lower rates of those indicators, and often also have much higher rates of self-proffessed happiness.

I am not saying that atheism cause happiness, no. I am saying that places where people are supposed to "follow" imposed values and rules of behavior such as religious practices, people do not follow those rules and the populations in those areas suffer the consequences.  If more christians live there and actually lived their religion, one would think that the indicators of social unrest and discord would be lower, wouldn't you?

But they aren't lower.  This shows clearly to me that tons of people are unhappy.  Tons of people are showing the signs that they are not happy with the rules they are supposed to live under and are refusing to do so in ways that are frowned upon by that society.  That rebellion isn't against god, it is a rebellion against a society which forces them to live like they believe in something they don't.

These things lead me to believe that the numbers of real unbelievers are higher than people think.  Yes, a lot of folks will tell you, in an honest conversation, that they believe.  They will even sound earnest, and they may even convince themselves that they do.

But when it comes to living the life their religion dictates, they balk.  What good to christianity if they believe in god but refuse to follow his law?  Refuse to even attend church, thus refusing those churches the tithe their clerics tell them their holy book requires?  And often, fail to even teach their children their religion.

Demographics do not lie.  A much larger percentage of kids under 30 do not believe.  Most of them are not conservative.  The religious ones are dying off - that's our generation.  Something like 2% per year are moving away from christianity.  Christian clerics have known this for twenty years - since the early 90's, when church attendance and donations began dropping off dramatically.  This is partly what is fueling the religious backlash - they know that if the trend keeps up, not only will they eventually have trouble funding all those expansive christian TV shows, but even churches will start having trouble.  Some are already, as the numbers of believers shift from one type of church to another.

Go to this site for a surprising look at what Churches know and are trying to spread the word about!

As the numbers of real, attending believers is reduced, their apparent religiosity will increase.  Only the true believers will tend to remain.  Fundamentalism, which is the fastest growing segment of christianity (and one of the only growing segments), is a clear indication that we are approaching one of the end stages of widespread belief - or belief as a "majority value" of this country.

This is masked by the fact that the non-religious, in other words, those to whom religion is not a major, or even a minor, factor in their lives (whether or not a belief exists) are not organized as a block.  They are splintered into different social elements, based on other characteristics, such as race, politics or age.  Thus, their influence is reduced compared to the religious, who are represented by major religious organizations, well funded and staffed by political experts.  Note that the liberal denominations of christianity are NOT represented by those groups!  The fundies will even deny that they are even christian!

Now, today, our focus should be on keeping this country democratic.  Enforcing, advancing and promoting the separation of church and state to fight and limit the influence of the fanatics who would take our freedoms away from us in the name of their god is critical.  The advancing of a true look at the real state of American belief in religion is "fundamental" to this struggle - pardon the pun!  The more people see that it is ok to be non-religious, the more will admit to being so, and the less influence the Dominionists will have.

Mainly, I want people to be able to be happy, and to be able to be themselves.  To be able to admit to their real beliefs so they can stop being forced to live a lie, just to live a decent life.

Right now, that is, in many parts of the US, an impossibility.

Gallup swallows the Kool-aid!

People who have known me for some time and have been reading my stuff for a while know that I've been saying for a very long time that the numbers of people who are either atheist or simply non-religious are higher than people have acknowledged in the past.

Even other atheists have doubted that, noting the previous polls showing the numbers in the 10-15% range.

But, now I've proof, and I contend that this proof shows that the numbers are even higher than this poll shows.

Why?  Because the polling organization is the Gallup folks!

Go read this poll by Gallup.

Now, the first thing that will jump out at you is that Gallup is trying to use the poll results to show that the US is "still" a Christian Nation.  But I would like you to note that in the past, Gallup has put the numbers of non-religious at lower than 10%, in the single digits.  A while back, the Pew Research folks noted the now famous poll setting that number at around 15%.

Now, when you go look at that Gallup poll, I want you to notice the numbers;

They are defining the very religious as those who go to church regularly.  But notice the non-religious! Now that number has jumped to over 30%!!

Before you point out that the religious, both very and moderate, are almost 70%, please note that for decades, Gallup has been reporting that figure to be at or almost 80%.  This is a huge drop in that figure and a huge increase in those who are non-religious.  They are, in this article, blithely ignoring that trend.

Additionally, I would note, again, a site that I have linked to a lot in the past.

The Religioustoerance.org website from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, has a page on How Many North Americans Go Regularly to Church.  On that page, they conclude, among other things:

How many people lie about going to religious services? 

Various studies in recent years have cast a grave doubt on the 40% value. 

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.  

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.

So, I leave it to you, gentle reader, to draw your own conclusions.  Given that Gallup has a historical conservative bias, just how likely is it that the numbers of the non-religious noted in this recent poll are not actually higher, since Gallup did note that the results are based on self-reporting by those polled?

What do you think?

The biggest news internationally over the last few days (besides the Japanese earthquake - again) is that Assad in Syria has readied the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons at airbases in an apparent move to make ready to possibly use them in a desperate bid to stave off the inevitable collapse of his government.

Naturally, this has set off a whirlwind of handwringing, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the international community, especially in Europe, where the competing ideas of international intervention and the use of WMDs on a civilian population are like comparing the immovable object and the irresistible force.

Both are, in a word, unthinkable on that continent.  Europeans have been extremely reluctant to intervene in the "private" affairs of other countries, no matter how ugly it gets.

Witness Uganda and a million racially motivated deaths and the failure of Europe to so much as glance southward.

On the other hand, they are painfully aware, as any intelligent adult should be, that allowing the use of WMDs on civilian populations is a precedent of dangerous proportions that cannot be allowed to be set.  While Qaddafi wasn't using WMDs on civilians, he was using aircraft and other modern military weapons, and besides, there was Libyan oil normally sold to Europe to grease the skids a bit...while in Syria there just isn't any oil.  That makes the skids sort of rough and full of metaphorical splinters in the European mind.

Meanwhile, here in the US, we are so bound up with the results of the election and worrying over the GOP-built "fiscal cliff" that when the news broke, we were rather surprised, and haven't had much time to digest the situation.  Still mind-bent by the GOP insistence that our debt is enough to put our economy into a wheel chair, the idea of spending more money on another military intervention is not very inviting to either party.  This is as close to the pre-World War II condition of isolationism as we've ever been since.

So, what's your opinion?  As I see it, we've got a few options.

1.  Leave it alone and let the Syrians settle it themselves.

2.  Leave it alone and let Europe deal with it.

3.  Align ourselves with Europe, and like with Libya, stand back and let them do the heavy lifting.

4.  Align ourselves with Europe, and UNlike with Libya, play the part of the rescuing cavalry.

5.  Bomb Damascus.

6.  Bomb the rebels.

7.  Bomb them both.

8.  Break out the popcorn and go back to watching the Republicans implode.


So, whataya think?

A quick thought...

Not a lot of verbiage, just a quick thought.  (Brought on by a post on Facebook)

Images of christ are all over the christian world.  People have been making images which supposedly depict him in myriads of ways - on the cross, preaching, at the last supper, all sorts of depictions of him to illustrate his ministry and the parables he told in the New Testament.

Now, as a student (once upon a time) of art history, we saw a lot of them, and viewed a good representative sampling of them from different cultures and time periods.  As a comment on that Facebook post noted, it seems that people depict him as they view themselves - or, cynically, he is depicted like the local population so they will identify with him better.

As an atheist, I am tempted (there's that word...) to choose the latter, but is that really true?  Is it totally false?

I don't know.

I am aware that in ages past, the RCC has chosen to wrap its own celebrations of church events around times on the calendar which coincide remarkably to traditional holidays in the competing religious calendars of the locality where they were trying to integrate themselves into the culture.  I mean, its obvious, don't you think?  If you've taken control of an area and you want the locals to accept the religion you are cramming down their throats, wouldn't that process be helped along if they could "celebrate" your new holiday on a day when they are accustomed to celebrating one of their own traditional holidays?  If you are poor, scrabbling for a living from the land, any day off is a good day, and in the long run, does the name of the god you are forced to worship really matter?

Again, I don't know.  I've never been in that situation and I hope sincerely that I never am.  But that is the situation historically, when the RCC moved into an area and supplanted the local religion, often by force.  It just seems sensible that as that new area is brought into the fold of the church, they'd commission artwork to depict Jesus in a way that the locals would identify with, instead of being different.

Although I guess it could make sense to others that making him look like the new masters would send a very different message - obey or die!  After all, looking at the raw christian message as preached in the mid first millennium, being told that to disobey god was to spend eternity in hell would be a very intimidating message...especially when the church - or your local lord - had the power to send you there a bit earlier than you might like with the power to advise god as to where you needed to be!

Sorry this is so sordid, but looking at the history and the biblical message from the outside, this is what I see.

You might look at it differently.

The Heart of the Constitution.

The right wing of the political spectrum in this country would have you think that they revere the Constitution.  They constantly bleat on and on about how they protect it and it should reflect the Founders' values - which they conveniently twist around to reflect their own.

So, today, let's take a look at that idea.

Think about this for a moment.  What is the foundation of our political system?  What one principle is at the basis of how our government is designed?  Anybody?

"Freedom!"  Well, it's there, but as something to be protected, not the basic principle.  Ok, you there, in the back...

"Democracy!"  No, that's what we call the system...ok, in the third row over there!

"Government by the people?"  BINGO!  You win the door prize, please wait for the maintenance man to take it off the hinges before you try to take it home!

To be a bit more precise, the Declaration of Independence puts it like this:

"...governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Ah, the enlightened words of Thomas Jefferson!  So, now - just what do those words mean, and how do they pertain to today's struggles?

Again, the right wing would have you believe that the Constitution is a static document, that it should be interpreted in the light of what those words meant when that document was ratified.  Ignore all of the centuries in between, what did it mean then?

But, is that really what the Founders wanted?  I don't think so, because they gave us a way to amend it, and more than one Founder remarked of the necessity to actually use that power.  Jefferson actually put a time period to that use; about every ten years or so, he said it may be necessary to revisit that document to bring it up to date.

So says one of the progressive thinkers of his age, a man whose writings, as published, shook the feudal system in Europe to its roots.  Why?  Because those monarchists were the Conservatives of his day!  Their system had endured for over a millennium, and they were very comfortable in their wealth, power and privilege.

His idea was that in order to stay ahead of the Conservatives you had to keep up with the times, to keep updating your laws to reflect the thinking of the people, at that time.  Conservatism is a backward looking ideology, changing more slowly than progressivism and defending its past as the precursor to their preferred future.

But how can you have a government who derives its powers from the consent of the governed if the ideals and values of that government are rooted in the past and not in the present or the future?  The old ways are dying out - the numbers of Conservatives holding to present Conservative values as we know them today are becoming a distinct minority, and that minority is getting smaller with each passing year - as the values of the future are being reflected in the young people coming of voting age every year.

This last election has shown that the right wing is getting desperate - even to the point of lying even to themselves about polls and elections and how many people hold their values.  How can they run a good Presidential campaign if they can't even see the polls correctly?

I know, they are beginning to concentrate on the States and local races, as if State and local races can trump Federal law!  We on the left can only hope that those demographics catch up with them fast - or we will start seeing attempts by the right wing to use their local and State power to try to change that Constitution to suit themselves!

Probably won't happen, but it pays to be prepared...

Facebook, experimentally.

I've decided to try posting both on this site and Facebook.  I don't know exactly how this will work, but I'm willing to give it a try.

So, go to Facebook and Like my page!

Warning - the subject of this post will sicken you!

I haven't posted anything about religion and my opposition to it in a while.  I've tried in the past to explain that my opposition to religion is NOT a criticism of all religion as practiced by many people, but the way that a whole lot of folks do practice it is in no uncertain terms sick, twisted and often simply insane.

I know that a lot of folks do a lot of good through their religion, and believe good things.  Kudos to them, and I mean that.  Please understand that what I am about to reveal to you is one of those sick, twisted things that some people do, and we are fortunate indeed that none of this is practiced in this country - or at least not that I know of.

But I want to make clear that the very existence of these practices, anywhere in the world, at least to me and a lot of other non-theists is plenty of reason to oppose religion of any kind and to work to reduce its influence wherever possible.   Because, you see, without the excuse of religion, this kind of cruelty would have at least one less reason to exist.

This article by the Huffington Post tells it all.  Children, some as young as eight, are denounced as witches, and their families often pay the accusing pastors as much as a year's wages to perform an exorcism to "remove" the influence of witchcraft.  These exorcisms often involve beatings, starvings, administration of such things as acid or being forced to eat cement.  Some children have even been buried alive.

As the article notes, these denouncements are driven by the need for churches to complete for attention, and being able to detect witchcraft in a society which believes in it is a valuable "skill".

All of this, of course, is nonsense.  Witches, like gods, do not exist.  Magic is merely the observance of natural forces unknown or not understood by the observer.  People, by nature, tend to see causation where none exists, and this is why man invented the scientific method to cut through the fog of our natural inclination to assign a cause where none exists.

As I noted above, however, this manifestation of religious fervor is beyond the pale.  To accuse innocent children is easy - they have no defense of their own and depend on the adults in their lives to protect them.  How can they protect themselves if those very adults are the ones perpetrating the violence against them?

Yes, these are extreme cases, and most christians or even practitioners of other religions, do not practice such horrifying activities - but were it not for religion and the superstitious beliefs that come along with it - especially in an ignorant and uneducated country - this would not happen.  I wish I could say that Americans were involved in trying to stop these practices - but the fact is that these things occur because of the spread of Evangelical Christianity - and it is the Evangelical churches in this country who are spreading their venom abroad.  Witness their active sponsoring of the "kill the gay" legislation in Uganda, for example.

All of this because of the christian imperative to spread the "word".  It is spread without concern or even knowledge of what the consequences are to primitive societies with already superstitious beliefs, which often destroys that society and combines in these horrific ways with these primitive superstitions to bring real harm to millions.

I am sorry, but missionary work to Africa should be illegal.  Period.

Rights of the disabled - screwed by right wing lies.

Did you think that the right wing crazy ship that sailed through the election had faded into obscurity?  Kind of dropped below the horizon, slowly dropping out of sight?

Think again.

Today, the Senate failed, by five votes, to muster the 2/3rds vote needed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, an international treaty intended to push for the rights of the disabled in other countries - which would require the rest of the world to meet the standards that Americans already enjoy under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.

Why?

World Net Daily (WND), a conservative website which pushes birther fantasies and other conspiracies, announced on Sunday that it had hired former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum “to offer exclusive opinion each Monday.”

Well, you see, Santorum has a disabled daughter, and his opinion of this bill is:

The staunchly anti-abortion Republican worried that the treaty would “put the government, acting under U.N. authority, in the position to determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them.” 

And taking that thought to its absurd conclusion, Santorum suggested that the U.N. treaty would have meant the death of his daughter, who has a rare genetic disorder. 

“In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is ‘incompatible with life,’ would her ‘best interest’ be that she be allowed to die?” he asked. 

“Some would undoubtedly say so.”

 So, a bill that was intended to assist other countries in becoming more enlightened about treating people with disabilities better, more like our own flawed but increasingly improving system, is excoriated for being intended to let them die?

Some people are simply amazing in their ignorance - or maybe it is simply their mean-spiritedness.

Guns or Butter?

I've heard these arguments for decades.  I had a college professor who was so virulently anti-war and anti-military that he actually lowered my grade when I argued the point with him.  His argument was that money spent on the military was wasted and useless to society.

My point to him is the same I will make to you and the same I made to a virulently right winger at the dog park the other day.

Military spending (including the WWII spending the dog park guy was talking about) DOES help the economy.  The money gets spent right here in the USA (as Federal law makes it mandatory for contracts to be let to US companies wherever possible), the employees who develop, design and build those things for the military work right here and spend their paychecks here too.  The companies spend a fair amount of that money on goods and services obtained here (absent the specialized elements not available here, such as specialized metals and other things mined elsewhere) and even that contributes to American jobs which ship them from US ports to the manufacturing sites here in the US.  Every penny the US government (or other levels too) spend in the US, they use to pay US companies for good and services used to further the government's mission.  These dollars contribute directly to the US economy in myriads of ways and are scattered scrupulously across the US to invite the votes of as many US Congresspersons as possible!

Which is why my friend George, in an email about this today, noted that even military spending shouldn't be reduced too much yet.  The economy is too fragile.  Krugman has said it time and time again, and he is right, you spend your way out of a recession, and Europe's experience proves it.  When the government is the only entity with money to spend, and it stops, the economy grinds to a halt.

It has been a popular meme that WWII didn't get us out of the Great Depression, which this high school "historian" tried to tell me the other day, and refused to see this point.  We did NOT see the depression end until we began our buildup, beginning with the lend-lease programs which began to put people back to work as we sent goods to Britain.  He tried to tell me that none of that helped because all that stuff we built went overseas.  Bullshit, because the money we spent to build it had been spent already - right here in the US of A.  What the US government does with those goods makes no difference to the economy - in fact the point he made that those things kept getting blown up just proves my point that the destruction simply drove up demand, which just made us buy more stuff!   As we shipped more stuff, that made us pay more US companies to ship it overseas (we had a real merchant marine then) - at exorbitant rates as companies had to cover war losses.

That is why wars always lift us out of depressions - we spend our way out.

The difference here is that today we need to spend on civilian stuff - infrastructure that badly needs to be rebuilt and repaired, putting construction workers back to work and also sending money to the States, putting teachers, cops and firefighters back to work, too as well as other State workers who, for instance, maintain those roads or keep them open in winter. (or city workers who do the same things)  The Feds used to send a lot of money Stateward - we need to get back to doing that so they will begin hiring people back they fired in the last four years - many of them to further the Republican dream of not re-electing Obama.

This whole concept is well known in economic circles and is called the guns vs. butter controversy.  Which are better for the economy, guns or butter?  The main thing that was concluded by my Economics 102 teacher (macroeconomics) was that it depends on your goals - defense or civilian uses?  Do you need to defend yourself?  Or do you need to care for an aging and sick population?  The money is spend right here in either case, the circles of wider spending as the primary contractors buy goods and services to fulfill those contracts get wider and wider and fall to companies whose business isn't strictly military or governmental - and of course the employees spend all of their salaries on civilian goods, just like the rest of us do.   Hence the spending benefits us all in the end, no matter the primary contract's purpose.  (not counting, of course, the profits that remain in the pockets of the rich and don't get spent at all)

Detractors of the military often speak as if the money so spent disappears down a black hole and is ever seen again.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Every dollar of it is spent in the civilian economy.

The primary thing to truly argue over is to what purpose should our money be spent?  That depends on the circumstances of the day and what is needed more at that particular time - guns or butter?