*sigh*…the year in review.
Archive for December, 2008
Where is the case for optimism?
Monday, December 29th, 2008Atheists=Trolls?
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Atheists Should Be Treated Like Trolls – FOX NEWS
Wow. Just wow.
I shouldn’t even look at anything from Fox News because this is so typical. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen a news story with logic this flawed. As the video explains, there was an atheist sign near a nativity scene that was stolen, and the owners of the sign now want to replace the old one with a “thou shall not steal sign”. Fox makes it sound like that by doing this, the atheists are hypocrites. It’s definitely ironic, that’s for sure, but apparently not for reasons anyone at Fox realizes.
Michelle Malkin goes on to complain about atheists a little bit. She suggests that atheists are just being attention whores with all these “christmas wars”, “outbursts”, and “tantrums” (apparently a sign qualifies waging war on Christmas.)
She then says that atheists are so radical, soon they’ll be saying they’re indispensable.
I don’t know about you, but I find atheists pretty useful. A good majority of the world’s most influential and intelligent scientists are atheists. I’ve never thought about it before, but I realized that, yeah, if every atheist in the world were to just suddnely disappear, there would be problems, especially because so many intellectuals are atheists. Malkin suggests, however, that if every atheist alive just suddenly died… well, it would be no skin off her back.
But get ready, because she’s about to say the most horrible, meaningless, overdone remark you can imagine. Ugh. I hate this, hate this, HATE this line. I hear it in discussions, debates, you name it. People think it’s a valid thing to say. They think that it gives them extra points and automatic credibility. And I’m sure you guys know what I’m talking about.
Immediately following her last comment, Michelle Malkin says:
“Now, some of my best friends are atheists.”
What?! Does she hear the things she’s saying about “some of her best friends”?
A minute later she says atheists “just can’t leave well enough alone and let people enjoy the season.”
So someone who had their property vandalized should just let it go because it’s Christmas? I mean really. She relates the sign to “making a nusence in the town square.”
And THEN… oh boy, this is good… that blonde news anchor from the beginning of the video says that if this kind of thing doesn’t stop… Christianity will DISAPPEAR.
And now for the biggest joke of all.
The solution? Treat atheists like trolls. Mock them. They’re just attention seekers anyway.
FFRF to sue Colorado school district in religious case
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is suing the Cherry Creek School District of Colorado on behalf of three parents of children who attend schools in the district. The suit is taking place over an item in the district’s “40 Developmental Assets” list. #19 is the one in question, which urges that children spend at least an hour a week in a religious institution. A notice on the FFRF website states that, “this Asset is prominently posted in Cherry Creek public schools alongside the photo of a young child with her hands clasped as though in prayer under the title ‘Faith Community.’ ” (Note that the text of the photo is not verbatim to the actual asset listed in the CCSD’s development guide, this seems more harmless.)
Now I’m not personally one to promote lawsuits for every minute little thing, but how schools let this kind of thing happen is still beyond me. From experience, I know that Colorado is not a particularly religious state. My brief time in the Cherry Creek School District when I was younger was pleasant and looking back on it, I would say the experience was fairly secular. So when a friend told me about this case I was pretty surprised. I’m not sure that a lawsuit is the right solution to this problem, exactly, but that’s not really for me to decide. However I would say that this problem is kind of major, considering that the district is saying that religion is an asset to a child’s development.
On that note, if you know a child or a parent of a child who attends a school in the Cherry Creek School district, the FFRF urges you to pass this official statement on:
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has a very important challenge regarding the separation of church and state in the Cherry Creek School District in Denver. The lawsuit challenges the District adoption of the “40 Developmental Assets,” of which number 19 is a recommendation of a “religious community” for children. The school district is recommending that children spend at least an hour a week in a church or other religious setting.
In a document specifically written for children, the endorsement reads: “I spend time with my religion.” A poster of a praying child next to this wording is displayed in various ways. The asset appears on a master calendar at the District website and various District documents.
FFRF has uncovered a religious agenda of the “40 Developmental Assets” program (in which the Lutheran Brotherhood, which developed it, cites bible verses which inspire each “asset,” even the secular-sounding assets).
Due to a child of a plaintiff graduating, FFRF is down to a single plaintiff. We are requesting anyone having a child in the school system who supports the separation of church and state to join the suit.
If you have a child in the Cherry Creek School system (or sympathetic friends or relatives with children in the District) and you might be interested in joining our action against this establishment of religion by the school district, then please let me know. Plaintiffs must have children who use the Cherry Creek public schools.
If we are to add additional plaintiffs, they need to be added before 2009. There is no cost involved and very little time required, and you would be helping to ensure we can challenge a violation that is occurring nationwide. The Court has a protective order which keeps parent (and child) names out of the court documents and newspapers. If interested contact me ASAP
Tim Bailey 303.921.0641
Tcsgrv@mindspring.com
Humanists of Colorado
Cheers
From Afar…
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008From afar, our planet is tiny, blue and fragile, held in a fistful of darkness. Pockmarked by light emitted from surrounding stars, some of which have travelled billions of years to reach us. The silence of space eclipses the spinning globe, as a sun growls in the distance. The beauty of the earth’s blue and green face is veiled like a bride by white clouds. Its fragility quivers with a sense of surrounded silence, surrounded darkness and spiralling away from fellow planets. Utterly alone, it sinks like full-stop at the end of a muted sentence.
And its future is held within the palms of beings who could be bacteria: ourselves. Palms which have developed poor thumbs, bodies with over-sized adrenal glands and decaying eyesight. These are the creatures within this pale-blue beauty that will decide her future. Already fragile and temperate, it is us, her children, her keepers, her creatures who will decide her impact. In 6 billion years, that growling dog of a star will be let loose from its chain and devour the planet. Those same creatures, we with the poor digestive systems, will not be here. Those creature whose eyes will hold the exploding sun will be as different from us, as the first eukaryote from our evolutionary past. But our impact this century, in our lifetimes, can make our planet into an exclamation mark on the unending sentence, or the tapering off into ellipses…
The great philosopher AC Grayling poses a problem we all should contemplate. Suppose there is only one species in the whole universe which has advanced consciousness, to realise its presence, its future, its past. Suppose there is only one such advanced species: it would have to be us. This means, according to our view of happiness, we decide the happiness of this universe. We will decide how much happiness, fulfilment and liberty is accorded throughout the universe. The sentence is undeterred, the universe is indifferent and indifference is popularly known as the opposite of love. Even if the universe hated us – which, at times to our egotistical selves, seems to be the case – at least it means acknowledging us. Such is not the case. Therefore, we have the entire responsibility of the universe in our hands. How much happiness are we going to bring, how much of an exclamation mark can we make our existence into the quiet, cold universe? Are we to render our bride, our mother and our planet into a place of decay, madness and violence? Are we to view her as a necessary stepping-stone to “something better”, as many religious fanatics would have it?
Even if she is a stepping-stone, what a stone she is. A man himself is but paltry next to the unfathomable beauty on the earth upon which all men were born and all will die. King Henry the Fifth, in the Shakespeare play of the same name, says: “A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn to white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow, but a good heart, Kate, is the sun … for it shines a bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.” Even on this stepping-stone, which is to be our gravestone, nothing should detract us from loving our planet. Nothing should stop us from caring for it.
The maddening fact of life is that we are in it. The sobering fact of life is that we are on this great planet. Yet it takes a simple click of a button, or the turning of a page, to see her as no one before has. The simple fact is that we are part of the first group of humans to see the planet upon which we make our home. And what a home it is. If ever we feel ourselves consumed with rage, anger or absolute love or passion, we must simply remember: Spinning, slowly, calmly, held in a fist of darkness, surrounded by blinking eyes of stars, standing before a growling star, is a pale-blue dot we call home, veiled in white and awaiting the final placement by the actions of tiny creatures on its surface.
Al Franken to Win Senate Seat?
Monday, December 22nd, 2008Former SNL comedian and Air America radio host Al Franken is likely to become Minnesota’s next senator. For those of you out of the loop, Franken trailed Coleman by 215 votes on Nov. 4th after all the ballots were counted – a difference of 0.01% – triggering an automatic recount. However, Franken seems to be gaining more votes from the recount than Coleman, and Intrade has his chances of winning at 85%. Why is Al Franken so awesome? I refer you to the Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus:
Visions & Mind-Reading
Sunday, December 21st, 2008My doctor (who happens to be my father) gave me a cold stare: He gave that infamous doctor’s look of being thoroughly unimpressed with my self-maintenance. His folded arms mimicked his frown. “If you want to have less headaches,” he said, “you have to read less!”
Read less? Why not ask me to severe my right leg, too? To be denied reading and comprehension would be my worst handicap. If that happens, I would start parking in the “disabled zone” and pushing myself around in a wheelchair.
Our bodies are our only access into the physical or phenomenal world around us, though they may simply be carriers for future progeny. Beside that, taking care of it is important. But one can’t help that when one is obsessed with words.
There are two things I always carry with me, as much as possible: A bottle of water and a paperback. I believe this is one thing that if everyone did, we would live in a world of less suffering. It would be healthy physically and mentally. As Rousseau said in his Confessions: “We are so little formed for happiness in this world, that of necessity the soul or the body must suffer, when they do not suffer together, and a happy condition of the one nearly always injures the other.” Healthy people, then, means a clarity for good thought to flourish This is just my opinion but one I find reasonable. However, there does seem to be the downside to reading copiously: A rising headache-rate.
Consider your eyes: Light hits an object and is projected, by criss-cross intercessory pathways, into your eyes. The light is caught by the retina; an appropriate name since retina is derived from rete, ‘net’ in Latin. In contrast to insects’ compound eyes, which are incredibly sensitive and able to take in a great amount of the environment onto the smallest number of cells (therefore without the creature moving its head), human eyes are bulbous and accord greater ‘resolution’. The images travels through all parts of the eye, like the cornea, lens, etc. only to be upside down. It is then ‘flipped’ – an incredible array of neural activity occurs during this time. Our knowledge into vision gives us great insight by manipulation. Us social scientists, especially psychologists, are famous for our conjuring tricks to discover a part of human processes.
The psychologist Peter Wason had a test, which I would like you to look at. And what’s interesting is that this test is mostly not about vision at all. But have a look:
You are given four cards. The cards have a number on the one side and a letter on the other. Two of the cards facing you have a letter facing; the other two have the number facing. The cards you see are:
[D] [F] [3] [7]
You are given a rule: “If a card has [D] one the one side, it has a [3] on the other.” A simple if-then statement, if you will. The question is this: Which cards would you turn over to see if the rule is true? Have a think, then read on.
Wason found that most people choose simply [D]. Or perhaps [D] and [3]. The correct answer is to turn both [D] and [7]. If you turn [7] around, it would falsify the proof if you found [D] on its reverse. This is where the great Karl Popper’s influence shows, in this test.
What has this to do with vision? Aside from the nauseatingly obvious answer that you looked at the cards (nothing stops the test from also using other senses!), it reminds one of the development in children. We are not psychics, we have no extended vision wafting like ethereal pipelines to journey through space and time. For most of us, the most important position of according possible psychic abilities would be with other people: What they are thinking, what they are going to do, what matters to them, etc. We imagine that the ‘psychic’ thoughts would be like hearing our own thoughts. Or perhaps your ‘reader’s voice’ that you have whilst reading this article.
Yet, everyone has this ability!
A child, for example, learns to mimic the actions of mouths, hands, eyes, words. It notices the tongue and the light changes. As we grow, this is where ‘reading’ people comes from: Our vision. It is a pity that such a beautiful word is sometimes usurped by the demagogic legion of superstitious quacks. We learn about people from their nonverbal communication – it’s why people move their arms, even when talking on the phone. It helps clarify the visual ideas into a physical format: the vibrations from their vocal chords and movement of limbs. When giving people directions, we point with our fingers, we wind them through pathways unseen. When people greet each other, we can tell a lot from their nonverbal gestures: Consider two men in business suits, shaking hands. Now, consider a casually dressed man and a casually dressed woman embracing, holding each other for a long time, caressing each others’ backs. Now, consider a suited man shaking hands with a casually dressed woman, perhaps pecking her on the cheek. There are many inferences you can make, no doubt you are doing it automatically right now.
We are incredible creatures, learning and knowing intricate details from simply watching. From the use of our eyes. The stimulation accorded to the fluctuations of light, bouncing off the skin of other humans, as their bodies fluctuate to the dictates of their brains is the most important form of learning we garner. Being psychic is a cop-out; learning to read people, to heighten their experience of social interaction, is a true gift. Don’t fold your arms, don’t look away to often, lock their eyes and blink every few seconds – occasionally glance away when you speak. These are pieces of advice many body-language consultants give and they can enhance our interactions. But it all comes from watching, from being alert and from vision.
So, no. We do not have ‘psychic abilities’ but we can achieve the same results: We can infer from their appearance, their disposition, their body-language. And then we can just simply ‘ask’. The information is transferred, as we lock gazes and inquire as to the well-being of a fellow human. No psychic additives or preservatives needed to maintain a conversation or interest.
And this is why I read. My vision extends further, I feel my empathy expand upon contemplation of even fictional characters. My knowledge of our beautiful planet and our troubled species is minuscule – and it will always be so. One can not be aware of the extent of one’s ignorance but one can be aware of ignorance itself. This surely is a virtue. Books humble us, as words slide into our eyes. The feel of a soft page turning, as our brains are nourished. These are important. And it is a sad fact that my headaches will continue because I just can not stop reading.
“You read too much,” people tell me, with a kind of accusatory stare. How much is too much? What does that even mean? Life is short, Milan Kundera wrote, reading is long: the paradox is that I will never be able to read everything I want. Confound mortality for that and that alone. Perhaps my own Mephistopheles will arise from the ashes of my forsworn hellish domain to proffer a bargain. If so, I need to do some reading now to make sure I don’t sign anything too valuable away.
How interesting: Apparently, you only need one kidney….
Mutiny on a Chromosome
Saturday, December 20th, 2008In Darwin’s time, it was believed that selection occurs at the level of an individual – that an entire creature is either selected or not. But as we learn more about what we are made of, we realize that the entire concept of an individual is somewhat illusory. Every macro-creature is not a stand-alone individual but rather a construction of millions of smaller transitory creatures that use its body as a vessel. The only way in which these creatures are working towards a common goal is in protecting this body from foreign invaders. The genes, the true residents of the body, are here only to make it to the next generation. They don’t necessarily care if other genes on parallel loci make it with them or not; they simply care about themselves.
To accomplish their goal, they network with each other in a complex hierarchy. We can compare the workings of this network to that of a corporation. Just like companies have CEOs, executives, managers, and workers to look after their daily operations, the body has various genes working at different levels of control. This hierarchy in the body is called its pleiotropy. The senior genes have the power to shut down, change, suspend, or accelerate operations based on the needs of the body. This system allows the “critical stages” of development as discussed in a previous article.
In corporations, several people work together to accomplish something an individual cannot accomplish by themselves. These genes in our bodies are doing the same thing. By working in a network, the composite bodies of these genes accomplish seemingly magical tasks – such as thought and communication. On a broad scale, all bodies involved in the network affect the workings of all other bodies surrounding them, quite intimately.
The nucleus of all somatic cells in the body contain two pairs of genes – they are diploid. One pair from the father and one from the mother. The only cells in the body that are haploid (one set of genes) are the sex cells. Textbooks teach that the genes that make it to these cells are there by “random selection”. But of course we know that is not how it works. In reality, every gene is fighting for its place on a chromosome. This is called it’s ‘meiotic drive’ – it’s drive to be included in the process of meiosis.
The fight can rise to such dramatic proportions that some genes could even take a position that is damaging to other genes, or even the rest of the cell. In “The Extended Phenotype”, Richard Dawkins calls such genes ‘outlaws’ (not his term originally). It is in the interest of the rest of the genes of the cell to subdue this outlaw. So here, we see a collective effort emerge between genes at other loci to make sure that the outlaw is not selected. But on the other hand, any outlaw that can somehow beat the system is greatly increasing its chances of making it to the next generation, so selection would certainly favour it greatly.
Things become more interesting however when outlaws appear on sex chromosomes. Any driving gene on an X or Y chromosome, could easily alter sex ratios drastically and hence even lead a population to it’s demise. If a Y-driving gene is successful enough, the next generation will see only males being born (in mammals for example) leaving them no one to mate with. This method has also been tested as a weapon against pests. In labs and simulations, the introduction of an intentional outlaw driving towards a particular sex, destroyed the entire population in as few as four generations.
The workings in nature of one such outlaw have been witnessed in mud-daubing wasps. The females of this species build their own nests, lay a prey in it for their new-borns to feed upon, lay their eggs on the already dead or dying prey, seal the nest, and then begin the cycle again. As opposed to most other wasps, the males here are also present at the laying and in fact, during it, force the female into a strange ritual dubbed ‘holding’. The whole process begins when the female, having already laid the prey in her nest, goes head first into it with her abdomen facing outside. The male, who is outside, then copulates with her in this position. Then the female turns around, pops her head outwards from the nest and faces her abdomen inside it. She feels for the prey with the tip of her abdomen as if about to lay her egg. At this point, the male grabs her head with his forelegs and proceeds to pull her antennae outwards for about half a minute, to prevent the lady from dropping her egg just yet. Then the female again turns around and copulates with the male, only to turn around again and make another attempt to lay her egg. The male does the same thing. This repeats several times until the female finally gets to lay her egg.
It is hypothesized that the male here is trying to influence the sex of the egg. In Hymenoptera, unfertilized eggs usually result in males and fertilized ones in females. So perhaps by not letting the female lay her egg immediately, the male is trying the make sure it has time to fertilize in the oviduct, or perhaps he is trying to overflow her internal tracts with sperm, so the egg has more of a chance of fertilizing. Both of these actions would lead to a greater chance of new born being a female, giving the male more mating opportunities. Of course, the resistance of the female is necessary, not only because more unfertilized eggs mean more males for her, but also because without it, the entire population might perish.
In ways like these, outlaw genes and other interesting types (segregation distorters, other germ-line replicatiors) cause strange behaviours in our world, and make evolution seem even more implausible. But as always, there are breakthroughs and paradigm-shifts in Science that show us the way. “The Extended Phenotype” is a brilliant book, and deals with several such cases, and all in all, gives one a wonderful perspective of genetics. Dawkins had said before that he considers this book to be his best work; I don’t know if he still considers that true, but if you’re looking to do some interesting reading on evolution, there is no better book I could recommend than this.
Pat Buchanan’s Culture War Speech
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Beneath this print is a transcript of Pat Buchanan’s speech to the 1992 GOP convention, where he defined his idea of culture war, before any discussion can proceed, I ask that all concerned parties read this speech:
Well, we took the long way home, but we finally got here.
And I want to congratulate President Bush, and remove any doubt about where we stand: The primaries are over, the heart is strong again, and the Buchanan brigades are enlisted–all the way to a great comeback victory in November.
Like many of you last month, I watched that giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden–where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists–in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.
One by one, the prophets of doom appeared at the podium. The Reagan decade, they moaned, was a terrible time in America; and the only way to prevent even worse times, they said, is to entrust our nation’s fate and future to the party that gave us McGovern, Mondale, Carter and Michael Dukakis.
No way, my friends. The American people are not going to buy back into the failed liberalism of the 1960s and ’70s–no matter how slick the package in 1992.
The malcontents of Madison Square Garden notwithstanding, the 1980s were not terrible years. They were great years. You know it. I know it. And the only people who don’t know it are the carping critics who sat on the sidelines of history, jeering at ine of the great statesmen of modern time.
Out of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise, Ronald Reagan crafted the longest peacetime recovery in US history–3 million new businesses created, and 20 million new jobs.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, one by one, the communist dominos began to fall. First, Grenada was liberated, by US troops. Then, the Red Army was run out of Afghanistan, by US weapons. In Nicaragua, the Marxist regime was forced to hold free elections–by Ronald Reagan’s contra army–and the communists were thrown out of power.
Have they forgotten? It was under our party that the Berlin Wall came down, and Europe was reunited. It was under our party that the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the captive nations broke free.
It is said that each president will be recalled by posterity–with but a single sentence. George Washington was the father of our country. Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union. And Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. And it is time my old colleagues, the columnists and commentators, looking down on us tonight from their anchor booths and sky boxes, gave Ronald Reagan the credit he deserves–for leading America to victory in the Cold War.
Most of all, Ronald Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. We never felt better about our country; and we never stood taller in the eyes of the world.
But we are here, not only to celebrate, but to nominate. And an American president has many, many roles.
He is our first diplomat, the architect of American foreign policy. And which of these two men is more qualified for that role? George Bush has been UN ambassador, CIA director, envoy to China. As vice president, he co-authored the policies that won the Cold War. As president, George Bush presided over the liberation of Eastern Europe and the termination of the Warsaw Pact. And Mr. Clinton? Well, Bill Clinton couldn’t find 150 words to discuss foreign policy in an acceptance speech that lasted an hour. As was said of an earlier Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the Intl. House of Pancakes.
The presidency is also America’s bully pulpit, what Mr Truman called, “preeminently a place of moral leadership.” George Bush is a defender of right-to-life, and lifelong champion of the Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was built.
Mr Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v Wade, he was told there was no place for him at the podium of Bill Clinton’s convention, no room at the inn.
Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that convention and exult: “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history.” And so they do.
Bill Clinton supports school choice–but only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or Catholic schools, need not apply.
Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents, and she has compared marriage as an institution to slavery–and life on an Indian reservation.
Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
Friends, this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America–abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat–that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God’s country.
A president is also commander in chief, the man we empower to send sons and brothers, fathers and friends, to war.
George Bush was 17 when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high school class, walked down to the recruiting office, and signed up to become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific war. And Mr Clinton? When Bill Clinton’s turn came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.
Which of these two men has won the moral authority to call on Americans to put their lives at risk? I suggest, respectfully, it is the patriot and war hero, Navy Lieutenant J. G. George Herbert Walker Bush.
My friends, this campaign is about philosophy, and it is about character; and George Bush wins on both counts–going away; and it is time all of us came home and stood beside him.
As running mate, Mr Clinton chose Albert Gore. And just how moderate is Prince Albert? Well, according to the Taxpayers Union, Al Gore beat out Teddy Kennedy, two straight years, for the title of biggest spender in the Senate.
And Teddy Kennedy isn’t moderate about anything.
In New York, Mr Gore made a startling declaration. Henceforth, he said, the “central organizing principle” of all governments must be: the environment.
Wrong, Albert!
The central organizing principle of this republic is freedom. And from the ancient forests of Oregon, to the Inland Empire of California, America’s great middle class has got to start standing up to the environmental extremists who put insects, rats and birds ahead of families, workers and jobs.
One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here. I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush calls “those crazy Sunday talk shows.”
But I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the president in the Republican primaries and fought as best we could. From February to June, he won 33 primaries. I can’t recall exactly how many we won.
But tonight I want to talk to the 3 million Americans who voted for me. I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me. But I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be now–in this presidential campaign–is right beside George Bush. The party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choice religious schools, and we stand with him against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.
We stand with President Bush for right-to-life, and for voluntary prayer in the public schools, and against putting American women in combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography that pollutes our popular culture.
We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.
My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.
My friends, in those 6 months, from Concord to California, I came to know our country better than ever before in my life, and I collected memories that will be with me always.
There was that day long ride through the great state of Georgia in a bus Vice President Bush himself had used in 1988–a bus they called Asphalt One. The ride ended with a 9:00 PM speech in front of a magnificent southern mansion, in a town called Fitzgerald.
There were the workers at the James River Paper Mill, in the frozen North Country of New Hampshire–hard, tough men, one of whom was silent, until I shook his hand. Then he looked up in my eyes and said, “Save our jobs!” There was the legal secretary at the Manchester airport on Christmas Day who told me she was going to vote for me, then broke down crying, saying, “I’ve lost my job, I don’t have any money; they’ve going to take away my daughter. What am I going to do?”
My friends, even in tough times, these people are with us. They don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart.
They are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know they’re hurting. They don’t expect miracles, but they need to know we care.
There were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town high up in California’s Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of death because a federal judge has set aside 9 million acres for the habitat of the spotted owl–forgetting about the habitat of the men and women who live and work in Hay fork. And there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.
Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.
Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.
They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.
Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.
God bless you, and God bless America.
Obama and Rick Warren: My Take
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Rick Warren is giving the preacher talk at Obama’s inaguration.
Warren sucks. He is a homophobic, fundamentalist, who believes that the purpose of life is to have the magic voice of Jesus inside your head tell you what to do.
This is, no doubt, frustrating.
I am of the school of thought that religion is usually harmful, and that evangelical Christians are a dangerous political force in the U.S.
I am of the opinion that Christianity, in its mainstream practice, should be resisted and that we must write and make creative and artistic efforts to decrease its influence and popularity.
But I am 100% calm about Obama and Rick Warren.
When Obama came into politics in Illinois in the 90s he identified as an agnostic.
When he realized that the political deal making in his district happened in the black churches he conveniently converted to Christianity. These details were reported in the July, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.
Now, I know some of you are appalled at this.
I would argue that Obama is merely performing a political necessity that has been true for thousands of years. Most Americans are Christian, and believe Christianity is essential to good leadership. It is the easiest of things to appease.
See watch, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Pay no attention to the fingers crossed behind my back.
Machiavelli wrote, centuries ago, “in all matters appear to be religious, indeed be religious,” in The Prince.
The famous secularist legal scholar Eddie Tabash points out that Clinton pontificated on the virtues of school prayer when he was on the campaign trail, and convinced the electorate that school prayer was something he believed in strongly.
But when he was elected he appointed Judges that struck it down at every turn, and those same judges held up separation of church and state.
Tabash says we can be confident Obama will appoint secularist judges. Judges who uphold separation of church and state.
I would like to close with this:
It is our job, the job of secularists, to shift the zeitgeist so that religion is not so powerful that all American presidents have to pander to it, or sacrifice their ability to be re-elected.
But instead it seems to me that secularists get bent out of shape when a politician does pander to the religious, and at the same time finds the whole idea of us trying to promote secularism among the religious to be the most abhorrent strategy in the world.
We have a mentality that is destined to fail, and as long as we are so cowardly about our ideas we can expect more and more pandering from politicians to people like Rick Warren.
We should be grateful that politicians who have secularist sympathies, as Obama has expressed on several occasions, has the shrewdness to do what must be done.
The president appoints judges people, that is how separation of church and state is ultimately protected.
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