Guide to the Upcoming Rebellion: Part 3:
Public $upport of Religion
By: The Sceptic | 05February2001
Buddha Day in Texas
To honor his life and teachings, Buddhists of all races and traditions have joined together to designate April 8th as Buddha Day. As part of this celebration of unity, they are taking part in the 10th annual March for Buddha in cities throughout the Lone Star State. The march, which began in Austin in 1991, is now held in nearly 180 countries. Buddha Day challenges people to follow Siddhartha Gautama's Eight-Fold Path of right beliefs, right aims, right conduct, right effort, right speech, right occupation, right thinking and right concentration by performing good works in their communities and neighborhoods. By following the path of wisdom and morality through meditation, and clearing their minds of evil, cruelty and ill will, everyone can play a role in making the world a better place. I urge all Texans to answer the call to serve those in need. By volunteering their time, energy or resources to helping others, adults and youngsters follow the Buddha's message of love and service in thought and deed. Therefore, I, George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, do hereby proclaim April 8th, 2000, Buddha Day in Texas and urge the appropriate recognition whereof, in official recognition whereof, I hereby affix my signature this 7th day of April, 2000. " Vishnu Invited to Boise IdahoAssociated PressApril 13, 1998
The proclamation reads: "I, H. Brent Coles, Mayor of the City of Boise, together with the company of those who confess allegiance to the second god of the Hindu triad Trimurti -- the preserver of the universe who represents mercy and goodness -- do hereby welcome and invite Vishnu to make a triumphal entry into this city, this region, and this State, to lead us in the battle against evil." Jack Van Valkenburgh, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, says Coles' signature on the proclamation clearly crosses the line. Valkenburgh says the mayor is saying as fact that it's the city's belief there is a Vishnu and he is being invited to make a triumphal entry into the city. But Coles is defending his signature on the proclamation, saying he supports people who want to teach morals and values. Vishnu is said to be the cosmic ocean nara, which was the only thing in existence before the creation of the universe. For this reason, he is also known as Narayana, or "one who moves on the waters." QuizChoose the statement that best describes the two incidents related above:
George Doubletalker BushDubya had been in office less than two weeks when America woke up one morning to find out there was a White House Office of Religious... something-or-other -- a bureaucracy that would be unthinkable in a country with the First Amendment, except for the miracle of doublespeak. The US President was able to pulled off this trick by using deliberately ambiguous and evasive terminology, an emaciated cluster of doublespeak, to wit, "faith-based". It is actually called the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, but Dubya has just enough sensitivity to realize that a White House Office of Religious... whatever would make some Americans flinch, and might even remind a few of them about the existence of the First Amendment.Given what Dubya proposes, he certainly doesn't want a lot of citizens thinking too long and hard on the First Amendment. If Bush gets what he wants:
In addition...
PaybackEarly in the race for the US Presidency, a question asked at a GOP debate was "What political philosopher or thinker do you identify with and why?"It may be helpful to remember that George, son of George, is a C-student. He may have trouble remembering whether Locke and Rousseau are famous for soccer or rugby, and think Voltaire is a measurement of electrical potential. Even so, he was clever enough to formulate an answer that would help keep his ignorance a secret, while simultaneously pandering to precisely the kind of people who are least likely to elect a known crackhead to office. Dubya's answer was "Christ, because he changed my heart". He was identifying the man who is reported to have said "My kingdom is not of this world" -- and never once proposed a social program or economic theory or political ideology -- as a "political philosopher or thinker". Jesus represents different things to many different people -- prophet, teacher, son of God -- but nobody had ever reduced him to a "political philosopher"... at least, nobody had until Bush Jr. Unfortunately, it is only necessary to fool some of the people some of the time. The religious right and born-again voters to whom Dubya was pandering -- at least those who seem particularly interested in the kingdoms of this world -- fell for it. The man who proclaimed Jesus Day to be an officially recognized Texas celebration -- on the same level as Texas Reading Club Day and Future Entrepreneur Day -- became president of the US. Jefferson's AnswerThomas Jefferson -- an earlier US president -- was far less pretentious about his personal beliefs:"Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine." Jefferson had seen blood shed in a war that made the US independent of a country that had an officially recognized State Church. He not only drafted the First Amendment to the Constitution, he had also written: "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."George W. Bush -- ex-crackhead and favored son of the religious right -- knows that in order to be reelected, he will have to start putting out. This is why he has established his White House Office of Religion, the purpose of which is to turn religious charity into just another government program. Churches will soon be able to pursue their usual programs of winning converts and influencing the unwashed masses, and do it all using public funds, i.e., on your dime.
The Pharisee
You Can't Have it Both Ways
Your Uncle is Dead
Great Britain in 1776, with its official Church of England, was a "Christian nation". Rome in 325,
under emperor Constantine, was a "Christian nation". Modern Rwanda with its genocides and atrocities
is a "Christian nation". Even Croatia from 1941 to 1945 -- where Catholic Priests, serving as
concentration camp commanders, murdered Serbs, Jews and Romas -- was a "Christian nation".
America, on the other hand, didn't start out as a Christian nation, nor did many early Americans think of it as such. In 1789, when a resolution was introduced in the US House of Representatives that President Washington "...recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer..." Representative Thomas Tudor Tucker "thought the House had no business to interfere in a matter which did not concern them" and "... it is a business with which Congress have nothing to do; it is a religious matter, and, as such, is proscribed to us." A treaty between the US and Tripoli was drafted in 1796 -- President Washington's last year in office -- and sent to the floor of the Senate, 07June1797, where it was read aloud and unanimously approved. President John Adams signed it. Of thousands of treaties the US has signed with other countries, the Treaty of Tripoli would be of interest only to historians, except for 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." America's founders -- children of the Age of Enlightenment -- created something entirely new. They established a nation that had the capacity to tolerate human beings, regardless of their beliefs, because it had no particular respect (or disrespect) for any specific religion. Over 200 years later, however, and while most US citizens would have a hard time imagining a government-sanctioned Buddha Day or the Hindu God Vishnu being officially invited to visit a city by its mayor, they can imagine equivalent holidays and invitations if their object is Jesus Christ. This is all possible because the nation that Washington, Adams, Paine and Jefferson established -- in which government can do nothing that favors one religious point of view over another -- is dead! Animating Uncle Sam's dead corpse -- in spite of efforts by constitutional scholars, the ACLU, and those who continue to love freedom -- is a fiction called "America the Christian Nation", although it has more in common with the Law of Moses of Hebrew Scripture than anything Jesus ever proclaimed.
Basis for LawThe Law of Moses was both the civil and religious rules for the ancient Israelis. Even when an entire people agree on which specific god they will follow, S/He doesn't regularly reveal his/her will by unmistakably miraculous fashion, which is why mystics, priests and witch doctors are historically required to interpret his/her will. Unfortunately, like economists, these holy men and women fail spectacularly at agreeing with each other. More armies have slaughtered each other over oblique theological questions than for any other reason.Another problem with making religious law equal to civil law is that divine revelation is an unsuitable basis for law in any country that favors freedom. Under normal circumstances, it would be insanely twisted to put the dietary rule "Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself" and the personal conduct rule "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment" on the same level of "Thou shalt not kill", and make the punishment for all three equal. "Congress (along with many of the states) actually succeeded in ratcheting penalties for most drug offenses up to levels exceeding those customarily meted out for the most serious crimes of violence: robbery, rape, and noncapital murder. There is another principle that is a much more reliable basis for law than the whisperings of deities because it doesn't require divine intervention or a priesthood. It is a principle that -- when properly understood and applied -- sorts legitimate law and public policy from little issues of personal morality that should be left to each citizen's conscience, thus maximizing safety and freedom for all citizens. One way to state the principle is: "Thou shalt not initiate aggression". A common way to explain it is that my freedom to swing my arm stops where your nose begins. By this principle, a citizen is permitted any action that doesn't attack, invade, harm, threaten to harm or defraud another citizen. Since only actions which initiate aggression against other people are crimes, there can be no action that is a victimless crime. The US government was never meant to be the paternalistic voice of God and punisher of sin that it has become. It was only designed to keep citizens from bothering each other, and otherwise leave them alone to pursue their happiness without being molested by every priest or puritan who caught a politician's ear. Given what has happened in the past 200 years, Dubya's push to have government support the prevailing religions was merely the next logical step.
"Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Land of the Free?The US is currently incarcerating over 2 million of its own citizens -- as if the entire State of Nevada was behind bars. Approximately 50% of these prisoners are doing time for consensual crimes -- in which there was no victim. South Africa under apartheid incarcerated 729 black men per 100,000, but in the "land of the free", 3109 black men are incarcerated for every 100,000 of the population.When people are arrested for victimless crimes, they are taken from their homes and booked into filthy, dangerous and crowded holes where physical and sexual assault is the norm. Arrested people usually forfeit their jobs or careers, long before any conviction or acquittal of charges. They are magically transformed from taxpayer to tax burden. Of over 50% of men employed before a prison term, less than 20% will ever hold a steady job thereafter. Incarceration creates mental and attitudinal changes within an individual, including depressive neurosis, hostility, anomie and withdrawal. There are now criminal records on 50 million Americans. Put people in prison for consensual behavior -- people who would never consider victimizing a fellow citizen -- and in five years, over half of them will be trained criminals who won't care about anybody's rights. And why not? In a country in which a person can by lawfully punished for minding his or her own business, the law is a joke, lawmakers are oppressors, the police are corrupt and fairness is a cruel fable. Does the new US president, ex-coke head and compassionate conservative, intend to do anything about the war on consensual behavior that has given America a higher incarceration rate than any nation on earth? Well actually -- in relation to his White House Office on Religion -- he said, "I propose to encourage mentoring programs for children of prisoners as well as programs that, when possible, help to mend broken families." "It was the way we had over here of living with ourselves. We'd cut them in half with a machine gun and give them a bandaid. It was a lie, and the more I saw of them, the more I hated lies." |
