Another Brownie Moment
An Open Letter To Resident Bush
October 1, 2005
Dear Mr. Resident
Because I am a political dissenter, an antiwar and antinuclear activist, and because I have been outspoken about my opinions, I have often (really!) been told that I should go to some other country to live. Ignoring the fact that this is neither possible for me, nor particularly desirable, I have, until now, found it impossible to understand people with such exclusionary views. America was so obviously made by dissenters, and for dissenters. Dissent is patriotic in a democracy. It is necessary. How could you ask someone who disagrees with your political or religious views to leave their native land? Then I came across this stupefying paragraph in an article about Karen Hughes' apparent Weirdwill trip through the Middle East, by Sydney Blumenthal:
"'Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives,' she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why Mr Bush mentions God in his speeches, Hughes asked him whether he was aware that 'previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our constitution cites 'one nation under God'.' "
I guess Hughes (now forever marked as a pointless airhead) was having a Brownie moment, huh? Or are all of the members of your faith-based dumbocracy chosen for their appalling ignorance? The Constitution has no mention of god at all. But then, obviously, none of you guys has ever actually read it, or particularly believes in it, or - despite your 'sacred' oaths (delivered with such sickening piety) - defends it.
OK this is really important - 'One nation under God' is a quite late addition to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954), not the Constitution. Nothing like the Consitution. Try to remember that fact - repetition helps. The Constitution didn't mention God - nor did it require a daily loyalty oath to flags or crosses or even the Liberty Bell. Even the original Presidential Oath of Office didn't include God - or the flag - it asked that the president swear allegiance to (guess - can you guess?) The Constitution. The Pledge of Allegiance itself is of questionable legitimacy, since it is incessantly administered as a kind of intimidating religious test in public places, public meetings, public classrooms - with all eyes suspiciously peeled for anyone who is troubled by its implications.
Now: this is America. In America, we have Freedom of Religion - yes! - and that includes Freedom of Thought. Meaning we're not required to practice or believe in or support any religion - or any imaginary or mythological or supposed or even historically-approved 'deity.' We are not required to pass any religious test, or set aside our consciences in the interests of uniformity of thought, or pretended virtue, or public propriety, or subscribe to any state religion or popular theology, or bow to any state-approved idol or religious symbol. that is what it means to be free. The Founding Fathers didn't always agree on religion - so they agreed to disagree. Some of them quoted Taoism, for chrissake!
Thomas Jefferson cut up the bible to extract only Jesus' words from what he considered a body of irrational legend. I don't agree with his strategy, by the way - I say, take all your medicine and your whole unexpurgated religion, with eyes wide open and don't try to make of it something it is not - in Jefferson's well-meaning case, a demythologized moral teaching and humanist document. Of course Jesus was a secular humanist, but isolating his words from the rest of the document misrepresents the bible to the point of doing it violence. People follow Jesus because they believe his birth was foretold by the bible, and that he was a third part of the bible's deity, Jehovah. If they read that bible, they will get an account of that deity's truly reprehensible behavior, which if emulated, can only do mischief. Jesus' life and words should be accompanied by a strong disclaimer as regards his legendary parentage.
Some of the Founding Fathers were - or were descended from - once-persecuted religious minorities: Catholics or Quakers or Unitarians, Puritans. They understood perfectly the problems of state religion. Tom Paine thought the bible was a slander on the creator. John Adams referred to the trinity as ridiculous. Ben Franklin was a skeptic too, and though he hoped against hope that religion would help people behave, he too was dismayed by much of the content and history of organized religion.. They knew what they were doing when they created a secular framework in which citizens could be privately as religious or irreligious as they chose.
They - unlike you and your rich but stupid henchpersons, had studied History (when it was a subject and not merely a synonym for irrelevance). They knew all about witch-burnings, inquisitions, religious purges, the repression of science in the name of faith, the torturer priests who terrorized Europe for centuries. and the terrorism of irrationality combined with bigotry and political power. They wished to avoid it. They knew that while religion has the ability to inspire and magnify the very best that is in our species, that it can be a weapon used to silence all dissent, stifle all creativity, prevent all human progress because it deals with thought, with ideas, and too often with the tyranny of the conventional majority over the restless, curious, creative few. When enforced, religion is the oldest form of thought control - bad enough, but when enforced with Sincerity, it has produced the cruelest passages in human history ('history' here meaning what happened, not some cabinet member's fabricated resume). They clearly hoped our land would not become a stage for such holy horrors (although they overlooked a few of their own). And they built the Constitution around that brave and truly radical, secular hope.
And that is what America is really all about. If you and your cronies don't like it, why don't YOU move to some draconian theocracy where your views will be more in harmony with the laws?
Slán a Chara,
adrien rain burke
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