Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

For those of you who have been following the discussion in the post I made earlier entitled Bob Smith and the Tree Huggers, you’ll note that USMarine has recently stated that the USA was founded for god and also basically told me to leave the country if I didn’t believe in said god.

Damen,

First off if you dont belive in God, why dont you get out of the country that was founded for him, your contridicting your own ideals, obviously you do belive in him why else would you live in America, hmmm how does it go ” I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to The Republic for which it stands, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Yes, that’s all well and good but when you look at history without a handy-dandy set of Bible-Noculars in front of your eyes you’ll see things quite differently.

I have already said this before but it bears repeating because I fear that our good friend USMarine will skip over what I said a second time.

For those who may think USMarine is right and the USA is somehow founded for god I want you all to take a moment to direct your attention to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment I

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.

Seems kinda cut and dry there. No religion in the government. Kinda hard to miss, what with it being in the first sentence and all. But apparently USMarine missed it, or he just didn’t really know what it meant. Well, that’s fine, but then he went on to say to Jim

Jim,

Sir, how is that claiming superiority over anyone, I am stating that it would be contridictory to say I dont belive in shoes but yet still wear them every day kinda get where im coming from?, no sir they are the ones that need to “own what they say” if you dont belive this country was founded for God then you dont know history or the pledge of allegiance. nor should you live here.

Now this is a shocker to me. USMarine wants to talk about knowing history? Okay, let’s just take a look at history and see if he’s right, shall we?

In the Treaty of Tripoli (which was signed by John Adams) it states in Article 11:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

There it is, a little something from history which states that the United States is not founded on the christian religion. So one must ask how, if the USA is not founded on the christian religion, can it be founded for the christian god? The answer here is, it’s not.

USMarine also uses the Pledge of Allegiance to justify his stance because it has “Under God” in it. Well, he wants to tell us to look at history? He should look at it first because the Pledge of Allegiance did not have Under God in it when it was adopted in 1892.

A quick search on Wikipedia.org will show you what I mean, but I’ll just save you the time.

Addition of the words “Under God”

Docherty’s message began with a comparison of the United States to ancient Sparta. Docherty noted that a traveler to ancient Sparta was amazed by the fact that the Spartans’ national might was not to be found in their walls, their shields, or their weapons, but in their spirit. Likewise, said Docherty, the might of the United States should not be thought of as emanating from their newly developed Atomic weapons, but in their spirit, the “American way of life.” In the remainder of the sermon Docherty sought to define as succinctly as possible the essence of the American spirit and way of life. To do so, Docherty appealed to those two words in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. According to Docherty, what has made the United States both unique and strong was her sense of being the nation that Lincoln described: a nation “under God.” He took the opportunity to tell a story of a conversation with his children about the Pledge of Allegiance. Docherty was troubled by the fact that it did not include any reference to the deity. Without such reference, Docherty insisted that the Pledge could apply to just about any nation. He felt that the pledge should reflect the American spirit and way of life as defined by Lincoln.

After the service concluded, Rev. Docherty had opportunity to converse with President Eisenhower about the substance of the sermon. The President expressed his enthusiastic concurrence with Docherty’s view, and the very next day, Eisenhower had the wheels turning in Congress to incorporate Docherty’s suggestion into law. On February 8, 1954, Representative Charles Oakman (R-Mich), introduced a bill to that effect.

Senator Homer Ferguson, in his report to the Congress, March 10, 1954, said that “the introduction of this joint resolution was suggested to me by a sermon given recently by the Rev. George M. Docherty, of Washington, D.C., who is pastor of the church at which Lincoln worshipped.” This time Congress concurred with the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, and Eisenhower opted to sign the bill into law appropriately on Flag Day (June 14, 1954).

A little history lesson and you’ll find that until 1954 the words “Under God” were never mentioned.

What many people fail to remember is that despite what the Founding Fathers may have believed in, whether they were religious or not, they set up a secular government, one of the first in history, and they did it because they knew what happens when you mix religion into the government. When religion is allowed to take part in the proceedings of the government, it will open the door to tyranny. But I think I can do better to quote one of the wiser men of our nation.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. ~Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. ~Thomas Jefferson

~Damen

Just saw the evening news. Apparently Limbaugh-The fat Nazi-has been arrested. Except that his lawyer insists that he was not arrested, merely booked.

If The Fat Nazi was not arrested, and comminted no crime, then Clinton “did not have sex with that woman”.

If mug shots, fingerprinting and posting bond is not being arrested, Then Nixon was not a crook.

If obtaining addictive drugs by illegal means is not a crime, then Saddam Husein is innocent of war crimes.

I am frustrated and bored, maybe you have some other thoughts.

Hey, hey, hey! Before the weekend-mind of Friday overcomes you, pay attention to the news coming out now that there are hundreds of cases of abuse, torture or murder of prisoners by agents of the American government substantiated by credible evidence. Read more about it in a report by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch.

There oughta be a law.

Word is that corporations that provide home insurance are picking up and deserting Americans who live along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast in the South. They say that the insurance deal is no longer profitable for them, so insurance corporations are cancelling homeowners’ policies just weeks before Hurricane season is set to begin again.

In many states in the area, it is a crime for homeowners not to have home insurance, so many homeowners are being forced into the hands of insurance sharks who charge super high premiums. In other places, homeowners are just being abandoned, in spite of the years of payments that the homeowners have made to the insurance companies.

There oughta be a law – making it a crime for insurance companies to engage in this kind of massive pullout of coverage from a region less than one year after a major disaster. If the insurance companies couldn’t figure out the true risk beforehand, then that’s their problem. It is highly unethical, and it ought to be illegal, to leave people financially defenseless, just before the next storm hits.

Back in the late 60′s just before my dad died, he and my son sat together on a park bench talking. My son looked up into the sky and said “grandad Look, its a airplane”. My dad looked up and started talking to my son. I stood to one side listening fascinated while my dad told him of things that had happened since he had been born in the late 1800′s.

“I remember when I was child about your age” dad said to my son, “seeing a man walking in front of an automobile waving a red flag. It was the first car that I had ever seen. The man had to walk in front of the car carrying the flag, to warn pedestrians and horse drivers and riders. The noise that the car made, was so loud and unusual that it frightened horses and some pedestrians”.

Later when my dad was a teenage boy, he told of reading about two young men in North Carolina who had flown the first airplane. Dad thought that this was the most amazing thing ever.

My dad told of the time as young man when he went fight a terrible war with the new airplanes, the first tanks and the biggest guns ever made. Dad told how he was wounded three times. Once by machine-gun fire, once from arial bombing and once from mustard gas inhallation.

Dad was a patriotic young man of his day, who proudly came home from that war to find his country in economic dissaray with no homes and no work for the returning soldiers. and the fervent pre-war promises of the politicians forgotten or ignored.

After spending 20 years struggling to support his growing family in a time of plenty for the rich and powerfull, another war started and he and three of his sons volunteered to fight a war that was once again declared to be just and honorable.

Dad told my son of the time during that war, when he had taken me to the back door of our house to watch London burning and how three days later, an older brother carried me out of our burning house with my hair on fire. My son asked “why did they do that Grandad?” Dad replied that “when people go to war, lots of ordinary people get injured, lose their familes, homes and belongings, and that everyone is hurt or damaged in some ways”.

I stood and listened to my dad talking to a child, of the wonders of his life. I saw as his face grew firm at the telling of his war stories, and how his eyes lit up when he talked about the early cars, and the first airplane that he ever saw and how, as an old man he had watched in fascination, as a man walked on the moon.

Three days later, My dad died. I regretted that I had not taken time to listen more to his tale. But one thing that I do remember, Is the sadness in his eyes when he talked of war. And how he turned his face to hide tears when he spoke of his oldest son killed if France in the beggining of WWll.

I remember my dad only as a pacifist who had fought for his country when called and who watched his children growing into poverty, in a land of plenty ruled by a culture of class and race and social separation. He taught me that there was no shame in being opposed to any war. His life had shown him that war does not solve any problems either political or social, no matter how just or honorable. He challenged me to stand firm when some politician would call for war, and to resist injustice and falsity as an excuse to fight. I learned from him, that when a politician decides to go to war, there will always be one group which stands to benefit. They are not the working poor, the emigrants the minority cultures or the socially disadvantaged. It is the rich who profit from imense wealth created from war, and who feed on the false patriotism and glory, from which the young who fight the war will derive no financial benefit.

I look today at a modern world as different to me as the first car and the Wright brothers flight was to my dad and although I have served in the military, I am and have always been a pacifist.

George W. Bush dishonors his father by starting a war in which the prime aim is not even just and honorable, but purely for personal enrichment for him and his followers. I am not a coward or ashamed to stand and declare the war in Iraq and its terrible toll on people is wrong. I am not a traitor or disloyal to my country in opposing the blatant war profiteering on the bodies of dead Iraqis and American soldiers. On the contrary I am proud to stand and say that the policies of this administration, offend and denigrate Americans and free thinking people everywhere. The Rupublican efforts to divert the intention of the constitution and the bill of rights in pursuit of profit and power is an affront to all Amercans.

I dread the day when I shall sit with my grandsons and tell them that between my fathers life and my own, nothing has changed. Rich men still order the sons and daughters of the poor to fight to defend a system that has no concern for them.

I have just one hope, that maybe. Just maybe, this generation will have the courage to stand before history and declare in the the words of Cheif Joseph of the Nez Perces in the year of my fathers birth, “From this time forward, I will fight no more forever”. Dare I hope that history at last will think kindly of us?

Just seen: a red pickup truck driving on University Boulevard in Durham, North Carolina with the following hand-painted words across one side:

“DUKE/LASIK Trashed My Vision”

This may or may not be true. But I know for sure that I was glad to see the truck from the relative safety of the sidewalk.

White Pride
I posted a question regarding why one would take pride in one’s skin color when it is clearly not something that we would praise or blame one another for. I would still be interested in an answer. Since posting my comments regarding what I consider the silliness of having “pride” in the color of one’s skin, I’ll admit it’s been on my mind, and I was reminded of an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled “Anti-Semite and Jew,” in which he argues that anti-Semiticism is attractive because it can be a source of pride for those who really have no attributes that actually merit pride.
The following are selections from that essay:

The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may supervene to cast doubt on it…But there are people who are attracted by the durability of stone. They wish to be massive and impenetrable; they wish not to change…
…[T]he anti-Semite is impervious to reason and to experience…not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.
…The anti-Semite has no illusions about what he is. He considers himself an average man, modestly average, basically mediocre.
…To this end he finds the existence of the Jew absolutely necessary. Otherwise to whom would he be superior?
…Anti-Semiticism is not merely the joy of hating; it brings positive pleasures too. By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite. This elite…closely resembles an aristocracy of birth. There is nothing I have to do to merit my superiority, and neither can I lose it. It is given once and for all. It is a thing…
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1948): “Anti-Semite and Jew” from Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. by George J. Becker, NY: Grove Press.

I think the analogy with this and taking pride in one’s skin color is blatantly obvious, so I won’t insult you by explicating it.
One of the things JP points out is something that I’ve been harping on about on this website in a couple of threads. That’s that if one is willing to believe propositions without justification, not only are you likely to believe false propositions, but you run the risk of believing harmful ideas. If you convince yourself that you have a special access to knowledge that nobody else has access to, then your beliefs will be impervious to reason and experience. Once you conclude that your internal truth detectors (ITD’s) are superior to (i) everybody else’s ITD’s, (ii) your senses, and (iii) your ability to reason, then what is to stop you from believing anything and everything that you would enjoy believing?

I’d like to brag for a moment about how I’m raising my kids as color blind as I possibly can. I came home from work one evening, and my son,6 years old at the time, was excited to tell me about an episode of Star Trek he’d watched. I asked him which series he was talking about. It was the one “with the man captain.” Well narrowed it down to three (this was before “Enterprise”). I asked him to narrow it down further. “The captain is bald.” Narrows it down to two (TNG and DS9). More specific? He couldn’t think of a way to distinguish between the two captains, so he started describing the aliens. It would be easy to distinguish between the captains of TNG and DS9 as they are different colors. But since skin color is such an irrelevant feature, it never even occurred to him that skin color is a characteristic worth mentioning.
Below is a cutnpaste of my comments from the Texas Town Remains a White Settlement Thread

• Here’s some insight. You had nothing to do with the color of your skin. It’s determined by your genes, as is most of your other physical characteristics.
Claiming to be proud of the color of one’s skin is akin to, and makes about as much sense as being proud of the length of your colon. Both are completely beyond your control, both having nothing to do with you, both are determined by your genes.
Maybe you might want to claim pride in what others of your skin color have done. Maybe watching Carl Lewis made you proud to be black, or George W’s leadership makes you proud to be white…
Well, I have dangly earlobes as opposed to connected earlobes. I want to take pride in the accomplishments of those who share my genetic trait of dangly earlobes. Einstein, Condie Rice, and Prince Siddhartha were all danglers. Makes me proud to be a dangler.
In fact, I come from a village that was settled by folks with dangly earlobes. “Danglyearlobeopolis.” We don’t have a problem with those with connected earlobes, but we get a little annoyed when they try to use the “dangler only” peircing boutiques.
Did you know that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were all danglers? Yep, 100% of them. Yet we still allow “connecterds” to live in our country.
I’ve got a bumpersticker on my car that reads “Dangly Power” but that seems a little biased, so I’m going to replace it with a “Power of Pride in Danglyshipness” sticker.
I want to emphasize that some of my best friends are “Connecterds” and I am no way affiliated with those dangly supremecists who burn an Ankh on the sundecks of the poor connecterds.
I even let my daughter date one of them people once. I don’t want her to marry him ’cause I’m sure God divided the danglers from the connecterds for a reason.
April 14th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Some people try to argue that Jesus had connected lobes.
God wouldn’t have let that happen, so I don’t believe it…
SOLIDARITY MY DANGLY EARLOBED BRETHREN!
April 22nd, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I’ve recently noticed a downturn in the number of dangly earlobed folks in my part of Canada. Due, no doubt, to failed immigration policies.
Should I be trying to convince the wife that we should be poppin’ out more little ones to before we become the minority?

i don’t vote, never have or will, george washington once warned americans of having faction (political parties). Unfortunately the father of our country had slaves, as did the democrat party in the 1800′s. Segregation is what ended slavery in the south because slaves and slavers were not seperated at the time of slavery. You’d think blacks would want segregation to be able to ban whites and make them sit in the front of the bus. Then came hippys and in the early 60′s who didnt reveal their hippy style till at least the mid sixties. Ya see the best wicca’s arent goth or freak, they are the aspiring actress that wear dresses, skirts, they are polite, sophisticated and well mannered. they never cuss. Hippys and wicca’s (slave seekers) were outraged when lbj passed the civil rights bill instead of jfk, they wanted the slaver to look like the liberator instead of lyndon johnson. Ever since segregation has been banned, the perverted wicca hippys have totally scoped black culture out and any future slavery would be a complete mental sexual thing. I’m shocked that i can say this ever since democrats have been pushing communism, and anarchism. They all have to speak a certain way, the same way and they tell me not to shout, not to cuss, not to say this or that or say it this way or that way. We will lose freedom of speach, it’s already been tainted with the patriot act. As for marijuana, democrats destroyed that culture after years of hard work and struggle (at the end of 1993, 30 years down the drain was already complete after only maybe 3 months work of anti-pot projects) COPS was popular as well as abuse of black males at that time. Southern states brought back the paddle around that time and black males were paddled overwhelmingly more in red states like arkansas and alabama, not that republicans are helping with anything either, i can’t stand seeing monkey man march and walk all fast when he gets off a plane, and how he keeps on and keeps on waving and wiggling his busy little fingers as hes walkin. After toppling a regime knocking over statues and capturing saddam in less then a year (before 2003 ended), he should have pulled out right then and there like his dad did years back. The guy is so dumb he didnt realize he won, but now he has lost the war for “staying” too long80

One of my favorite columnists, Dennis Rogers, hits it out of the park again with a few short paragraphs on prayer in school and the political sphere:

Call me cynical, but I suspect many politicians publicly pray so people (read, voters) will be impressed with how saintly they are. Either that or they think God is hard of hearing.

Wouldn’t a silent and sincere prayer from the heart cut through the heavenly chatter faster than a mini-sermon from some long-winded politician unable to keep quiet in the presence of a captive audience?

The courts agree the Constitution allows prayer at governmental meetings so long as the praying stops short of preaching. It’s when officials promote one religion over others that they get in trouble.

How ironic the American Civil Liberties Union chose Holy Week to gently remind the Chatham County Board of Commissioners that ending its opening prayers with some variation of “in Jesus’ name” promotes Christianity and is a no-no.

Prayers are allowed at public meetings, the ACLU said, but Chatham’s elected officials have crossed the constitutional line separating the business of man from the business of God.

Politicians may bluster, but they really love such controversy. They get to pose as stalwart defenders of truth, justice the American way and God, too. As if God needed their help.

There’s never been a clearer example of what such blowhards are up to than the recurring prayer-in-school spat.

Kids quietly pray in school all the time. Teachers, principals, secretaries, janitors, school bus drivers and lunch ladies quietly pray in school, too. As one wag put it, as long as there are algebra tests, there will be prayer in schools. Amen.

The catch is, you can’t force others to take part in your prayer, which is exactly what happens when you pray out loud in front of a class, a meeting or the big game on Friday night.

Want to pray in school or at work or before a session of the county zoning board? Fine. Close your eyes, bow your head and silently pray away. No one will hassle you. Ask for world peace, a date to the prom, a pay raise or that the world ends before next Friday’s geometry exam. Or just say “thank you.”

Our freedom of faith was bought and paid for by brave men and women fighting on battlefields and in courtrooms. But that’s apparently not good enough for some folks.

So to Bible-thumping politicians who feel their brand of religion trumps the freedoms for which so many have died, I offer this bit of sage advice:

Testifying at a Senate hearing last month, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, said, “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

Pray over that, politicians.

Just do it quietly.

This is a story I wrote not too long ago for another website. I had made a flippant remark that, when it comes to abortion, this one member of that site had said that he’s against it because a fertilized embryo will become a fully-formed human and therefor to him humans are alive from the time of conception. I has responded with “Saplings will become trees, but that doesn’t stop me from mowing over them. He asked if I were equating trees with humans and I corrected him by saying “No, I’m equating sapplings with a fetus.” He responded by saying “Okay, well, that’s the same thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

The story that follows expands on that line of reasoning.

—

Bob Smith and the Tree Huggers

One bright and sunny weekend Bob Smith was getting some much needed yardwork done. As he was pushing his mower across the grass, a blond man with a beard and wearing a tie-dye T-shirt stopped in front of Bob Smith’s house.
“STOP!” the blond man yelled; “Turn off that mower!”
Bob was curious, so he did as the man said. Now that he could hear over the engine, he inquired; “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see it?” the man asked and pointed to a patch of ground a few feet in front of the mower.
“See what?” All that he could see was grass.
“That tree you’re about to murder!”
Bob Smith peers long and hard at the patch of ground, but he can not see a tree. He is starting to become convinced that this fellow is a loon; “Buddy, there is no tree there.”
The blond man walked over to the patch of earth, pointing as he went and leaned down until his finger was touching a plant barely a half inch high but visible through the grass; “This tree!” he shouted.
Bob Smith, now looking on in disbelief, turned and glanced at his cherry tree. The plant this man (who Bob was now thinking of as a “Hippie”) was an offshoot of the main cherry tree. He had mowed over many of those saplings before because if he didn’t they would take over his yard and kill off his flower beds.
“That’s not a tree,” he says, “It’s just a sapling. That’s a tree,” He jerked his thumb towards the cherry tree a few feet away.
“It makes no difference,” the hippie said sternly, “A tree is a tree from the moment it sprouts.”
Bob Smith was now tired of this conversation and started up the lawnmower once again, “It’s not a tree, it’s a sapling and I don’t have the time or money required to tend to another tree,” and proceeded to run the lawnmower over the sapling, chopping it in half. The hippie gaped at Bob and said “You wait, we’ll put a stop to this!”

The weekend after next, Bob Smith was pulling his lawnmower out of the garage when he saw a group of people sitting on his lawn and holding signs with sayings like “Lawn Care is MURDER!” and “What about the saplings?!” on them.
“What’s going on here?” Bob Smith asked as he approached the group.
“We’re going to stop you from killing this tree,” the blond hippie from two weeks ago told him. He was wearing a handcuff around his wrist and the other end was laying over another cherry tree sapling.
“This is ridiculous,” Bob said and went back inside to call the police and have this group of people dispersed.
“No, this is serious,” A woman wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of a sprout and a leaf and with ‘Let Me Live’ written across her chest; “We’re stopping a murder!”
An hour later, the police arrived and the crowd was forced off Bob Smith’s lawn. The next day, a Sunday, there was a knock on Bob Smith’s door. When he opened it to see who was there, a television camera and a microphone were forced into his face and cameras started flashing so much he was nearly blinded.
“Mr. Smith!” a female voice called out, “How does it feel to commit a murder?”
“Are you going to kill any more trees today?” a male voice called as a second camera was shoved through the doorway. Bob forced the door shut as more and more cameras and microphones were thrust at him. After another call to the police, and another hour of yelling, the reporters were made to leave. That night as he was watching the 6:00 news, Bob was shocked to see his face featured on Weasel News (We Lie, You Believe) with the words ‘Lawncare or Murder?’ under his picture.
“This crime must end!” the Hippie was yelling into a microphone from what looked to be in Bob’s own neighborhood. “How many more trees will cut down before they even have a chance to grow up and know life?”
After the story gained mass attention, more and more hippies started writing their congressmen demanding something be done. There was such a flood of letters that, even though it was being done by only a minority of people, that small group was so vocal that finally a ban on lawncare was enacted to stop the murder of innocent trees.

Five years later, Bob Smith’s lawnmower was rusting in his garage and his yard was now over run by cherry trees. They had choked out his other flowers and turned his once presentable lawn into a grove so thick it was difficult to get to his car. Because the law passed required him to not only allow the trees to grow, he was made to care for them and was now running into debt from the cost of water and fertilizer. Other people were in the same boat as Bob Smith, trees, weeds, and vines choked yards and the roots were destroying roads and sidewalks. Baseball, football, golf, and soccer games were soon abandoned because it was against the law to cut down trees.

But at least the hippies were happy.