The takers

What do you call people who are exempt from taxes, get big government handouts and have a hugely disproportionate influence on the way government spends and our representatives vote?  What do you call people who somehow seem to be able to tell schools what to teach and what not to teach without seeming to care about historical, mathematical and scientific truths or the methods that revealed them?

I call them takers.

No, I'm not talking about people who don't pay much or sometimes any Federal Income Tax.  Not the people the Tea Party Republicans like to portray as leeches even though most of them pay out as much taxes percentage wise as the wealthy do.  I'm talking about the Christian Right for the most part.  Those folks who get federal support and public respect for schools that teach lies, fallacies and disrespect for logical thought processes. Those folks who somehow escape punishment for shouting down nearly every intellectual achievement since Aristotle.

I'm not going to exempt other religious organizations that take school voucher and tax-credit scholarship program  money to teach paleolithic superstition rather than mathematics and science, but few can come close to matching America's Children's Crusade.

Raw Story quotes one school as asserting:

"Our understanding is not complete until we filter it through God’s Word,”

It's not so much that I despise liars, cheats, perverts, idiots and child molesters, although of course I do, but that I despise people who make me pay for it -- who make all of us pay for it more.  We pay not only some billion dollars in subsidies to religious lie factories, we pay for it with our declining educational standards, with a generation less and less prepared and less willing to live in the real world. As Liberals, we oppose factors that put minorities and the poor at a social and educational and legal disadvantage but we're strangely silent on one of the most sinister assaults on education and on freedom, truth, justice and what we fatuously describe as the American Way. Frankly if you're cowed by self-appointed authority, afraid of  what might happen if we're allowed to follow truth where it takes us, we're not anything like a Liberal and we're part of  the empire that has opposed Democracy and freedom of thought for millennia.  How many of the world's greatest evils were not sold as God's word?  No wonder we're not supposed to respect truth.

Whether or not God is a lie, everything you say about him/her/it is filtered through someone's words and someone's agenda and usually it's the desire for power, for control that lie behind the words, the exhortations, the threats, the prophecy.  The easiest to control are the ignorant, the outcast, the troubled and afraid and such marginal people are what Big Christianity wishes to produce by teaching fear and lies and promoting ignorance and poverty.

Anyone who quotes God's word is a liar, even if he's right and any nation that allows its children to be lied to and misled by the Pat Robertsons, Oral Roberts's and all the other greedy perverts and child molesters of America has a grim future.

That Vatican Rag

People have argued that Science is just another kind of faith, or at least another but equally valid way of telling truth from fiction; establishing fact from a confusing universe. I suppose that Pope Benedict would be suggesting such a 'fair and balanced' approach by suggesting that same sex marriage would be a "threat to the future of humanity itself."

I would argue that science is the best method we have of keeping our beliefs honest by constant examination of the data -- and that data as concerns the cohabitation of couples, or triples for that matter does not in any way suggest that the Holy Father's predictions are based on what happens in this world when such things are not prohibited by law or even custom.

“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,”

he said to some 180 diplomats at the Vatican yesterday. The education of children needs proper “settings” and “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.” I'm not quite sure that personal pride in being traditional and obedient to dogma constitutes justification for regulating private life in a free society, but then a free society is the definition of a heretical society and it wasn't long ago that Catholics were threatened with excommunication for voting for political leaders. I'm sure the rationalization for that was much the same farrago of gold embroidered, incense scented rubbish as was the persecution of Galileo and the scientists of the Renaissance -- to cite the less egregious examples.

The fact is, that children raised by gay couples can't be shown to have turned out as Benedict predicts and since gay people have been around since the dawn of humanity and a bit before -- and long before the shaman, that oldest of professions, told them they were evil -- we can assume that human dignity hasn't been much affected. The indignities of the Crusades and Inquisitions and centuries of war and tyranny might have done some harm, but I won't go into that here.

As I said, science rejects propositions, predictions and proclamations that do not produce the results claimed. I might suggest Mein Herr, that there's a bit of egg on your face and blood on your robes from trying to stifle that heresy with force of arms, torture and murder, but so far, nothing you or your predecessors have predicted has ever been demonstrated to be the truth. So how long caro padre, will you go on predicting that if we do A, then B will happen, because we've been doing A for a hell of a long time and there's no sign of you being right so far.

All you need is love

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.
-Colossians 3:18-

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
-Ephesians 5:22-

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands
-1 Peter 3:1-

women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.
-1 Corinthians 14:34-

Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.
-epistle of Paul to Titus-
__________________________

I've lived long enough to be familiar with several reversals in the mission of liberal activists and even with the kind of reversal that coexists with its opposite. Is human behavior the result of genes or is it the result of cultural conditioning? Is it both and can we work both angles at different times to support our doctrines?

Are personality types in humans genetically determined as we see in dogs? I certainly don't know and I'm not going to pretend I do, but those who do pretend seem to have had profound influences on our culture and in ways that seem to defy or deny rigorous examination.

Are men, for instance, more prone to violence because our culture teaches that violence is manly or is it genetics driving that view of what it means to be male? Do men tend to have a certain natural role in society and women have a different one? Recent studies seem to lend weight to the idea that in primates in general, the way we organize our societies has more to do with genetics than with the exigencies of our environment; to suggest that gender roles and group behavior have a biological basis. Yes some continue to insist that more women would seek a career in boiler repair or sewer work if we insist on calling a manhole a "personnel access cover" while denouncing any serious research on the subject of gender difference as anti-Feminist.

Some feminists will be alarmed at any such studies, perceiving with some accuracy that it can be used to justify injustice by confusing it with "nature's way" just as genocide has been justified by confusing it with natural process. In neither case would nature need to have our help and of course even if nature prompts us to seek leadership from males, that's not a justification for excluding women. Nature of course doesn't demand that we wash our hands or cook our food or most of the things that have served our survival.

Dogs are going to seek a pack leader and although there is a chain of command between the females, that leader is going to be male and amongst prospective leaders there will be constant rivalry because male dogs are wired to think they can lead. Is there something similar at work in human societies? Do we see that thing working in the very movements attempting to combat it?

Domesticated dogs look to humans for their leaders, or are easily persuaded to do so in most cases, while wolves generally do not. Canids with human leaders seem to be doing better in the world than those who follow other dogs. Can we learn from this? Are we going to the dogs because of the leaders we choose and ideas we protect?

I know I'm rambling here, but I do have a point in mind. It seems that there are contrary schools, both identifying as 'Feminist' that tell us that our roles in our society are not predetermined but also that our natures are all but scripted by our genes. Males are born bad, to take one school to the extreme -- and all gender identification is entirely learned says the other extreme, so culture is the culprit. Culture, some would say is male dominated and so culture teaches male domination in a vicious circle. As with all such disputes, science is the guardian of honesty and that's why it's been so difficult to pursue or even to discuss the science of gender. Better to protect doctrine because the doctrine protects our feelings.

Of course good and bad are things we make up, or that people who would be pack leaders make up. There is no good and bad in nature, there is only that which is advantageous to the gene pool, or disadvantageous. Primate societies, suggests the study, are the result of what has worked over millions of years and in the social nature of our closest relatives. Change the circumstances and conditions, but the pattern persists.

War and violence seem to be there -- the major difference is that humans recognize wider group identifications than do the chimps. We are better able to feel compassion, allegiance and common cause with others outside our immediate tribes and nations and even species while other primates have smaller range. I think that's where our salvation resides, but more on that later.

I think humans have got by so far by being just barely smart enough to put nature in its place. We haven't all arrived at the point where we will recognize our genetic orientation for what it is and use it to the advantage of all of us -- of life in general. We tend to use it as monkeys do, for the advantage our the tribe, the family group and that's quite true of monkeys like the Vervets who seem to be quite viciously matriarchal. We haven't arrived at all although there are religions that teach universal compassion, they're too often -- most often used to form tribes and gender subgroups within tribes, allowing us to lapse into our primitive tribalist behavior. Looking for and finding enemies: it's a primate thing. Hell no, they're not us and we're not them. They're males, they're females, they're crackers, liberals, yankees, blacks, Mexicans, yuppies and the Bible tells me so and so do my genes.

So the evidence for nature playing a role in our social organization can be used to divide us into gender and lead into gender wars, race wars and nationalism or we can choose to notice that we are genetically capable of being above such things. We can recognize that being above it is in our nature which puts us far, far above the apes in our ability to recognize what's good for all. But of course, religion - the thing we look to for guidance and moral leadership often teaches that this ability was taken from God or the gods illegally and is sinful. Obedience to our pack leader is good, but not to those other heathens and satanists. Which part of our nature do we choose? Look at history, listen to the people who would lead.


Sure it's more emotionally satisfying to band together as victims and claim that since a majority of violent crime is perpetrated by young men, all men are suspect by nature, but it's not only bad logic, since most men are not violent criminals, it's a step back into our animal nature of equal size. It's an admission that we are not capable of knowing right from wrong and acting accordingly - or at least that the other group isn't.

So yes, Chimps are kinder to their own families than to their tribes, and their tribes more compassionate with each other than to others, even though those others contain their own daughters and grandchildren. We're better than that, as some religions have taught. We're better because our compassion is infinitely broad - at least it can be. Can it be that ability to be the other, feel with the other, identify with the other has been part of the obvious survival advantage our species has over other primates - almost as much as our technological prowess has been?

That's what I'm suggesting and that suggestion suggests that many of the political and social movements claiming to be a solution are part of the problem. Religion has largely failed us here as have so many social doctrines. Compassion alone of the virtues will not sponsor the burning of others, crusades, Jihads, stonings, slavery and the subjugation of women even when compassion appears on the letterhead of Allah the merciful or Jesus the God of Love. Religions become tribes and we no longer see ourselves in the members of other religions and we follow the pack leaders with their books and costumes as wolves follow wolves with good hunting instincts and big teeth. Religions become tribes and will attack other tribes whether secular or religious and the doctrines or other tribes become satanic even when they advocate compassion and mercy above all things.

I've seen it happen and so have you whether you've noticed or not. I've seen people bridle at the criticism of religion, taking generalities as a personal insult. I've seen people dismiss an entire gender, race without seeing it as a personal insult to a member of those groups. It's our animal nature to separate ourselves from identification with the other, whether we recognize it or not. Compassion, love, altruism are also in our animal nature, our genetic gift from our ancestors. So is the ability to choose what works rather than what what our inner ape likes -- for are we not human?

______________________

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"— in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me," — in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.
-Dhammapada Verses 3-5 -

Amerika Über Alles

Mitt Romney is hard to figure out, partly because his most salient feature is the love of ingratiating himself dishonestly with any group he thinks is worth ingratiating himself to. So I have to wonder if he really thinks the United States is the nation chosen of God to lead the world as he told cadets at the Citadel yesterday or whether he just assumes that people embarking upon a military career are dreaming of imperial glory. I have no way of knowing whether these cadets have Napoleonic dreams or are attracted to arms because of some sense of personal weakness and humiliation, but I'd hesitate to bet that many really think that US history isn't filled with mistakes at home and abroad or that we aren't a better, more moral nation than once we were. Of course I don't mean to say we shouldn't strive to be a good influence in the world, but being a good influence doesn't mean command, doesn't mean control, doesn't mean we're the infallible and mighty hand of some invented Lord as Romney would be implying if there were any implications beyond opportunism in anything he has ever said in public.

But as I say, you never know what Romney thinks, particularly if your assessment is derived from listening to the man. You certainly can know that he's willing to put some strange interpretations on events to bolster his imperial and messianic aspirations whether or not he believes them. President Obama's "apology tour" for instance; Mitt would like to make the psychorabble feel important and loved by associating honesty with apology and apology with weakness and weakness with Jonah-like abdication of a divine mission. Of course Obama never went on an apology tour, but what black man has ever not been in danger from Godly Americans when someone accuses him of winking at a white girl. Where there's smoke, there's fire, we say, forgetting that where there's smoke there may be a smokescreen and there may be arson.

That Obama portrayed American history in a poor light by admitting that we have sometimes been guilty of arrogance and have sometimes made mistakes is a big fish to swallow, to invert the metaphor and it clashes with Romney's carefully crafted humble demeanor. There's nothing humble about him and there's something disturbing about the belief in divinely ordained male control of family life his religion seems to demand, at least to an outsider like me.

"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender"

said the man who is more frightening for his benign smile. To me there is no one more dangerous than a man who can call upon a sufficiently established god to justify world domination and I don't think I need to offer examples. No one more dangerous unless, of course, we add the photogenic charm and the forked tongue. What Mitt really is saying is that America is chosen to be the priest and caretaker of the planet and what he is implying is that by being its ordained leader, he's God's agent on Earth. Where and when have we heard this before? Certainly not from the founders of our Republic who took up arms against God's own chosen King.

I've often been told that Obama "went over there and apologized to them" by Fox News victims totally ignorant of where there is or who said what. It's a lie of course and a big one but it isn't going away even if Romney never says another word about it or is magically transported to another world for him to rule, as apparently he thinks he will be. Lies, like cancer cells, are all but immortal. Truth and decency and the hope for a world not run by pompous and powerful thugs in expensive suits and plastic hair are as fragile as a dream.

Justified?

I'm constantly deleting political diatribes from my in-box that begin with wild claims about something the "liberal press" isn't telling us for nefarious reasons. Nearly always, it's already been in the headlines or never happened in the first place, but here's a story that doesn't seem to be getting enough exposure, considering the rants and tirades coming from Rush and Fox and other people trying to twist the Oslo massacre into something that shows persecution of Christians, whom we all know are never, ever violent -- not like those amoral Mao-loving Stalinist Atheists and devil worshiping Kalashnikov-carrying Muslims.

According to a new Gallup poll, when asked whether they're against violence that kills civilians, Muslims are most likely to answer in the affirmative at 78%. Atheists and agnostics are second at 56%, while only 38% of Protestants and 39% of Catholics would agree with such an affirmation of the value of human life.

Let me repeat it for the benefit of the many-headed beast: over 60% of those who identify as Christians, the overwhelming majority of Americans, will tolerate the slaughter of innocents versus only 22% of Muslims. Would I define all of these people as Christians - or Muslims for that matter? No I wouldn't, but that's hardly the point. It's wrong to absolve people with such a hypocritical ploy. Neither the Torah, the Bible nor the Quir'an ever killed anyone, but there is enough in them to provide a template, an excuse, a justification for nearly any abomination.

My long standing opinion that there are hardly any Christians around still stands and among that few, many would tell you the others weren't Christian either - as history proves, but applied to the question with us today: "is this a Christian Nation, based on Christian principles?" I can insist it's not. To the question of "are those alleged principles the best and only way" I would try not to laugh and offer the suggestion that we could use a large dose of Muslim and Humanist principles if we'd like Jesus to smile upon our arrogance, hypocrisy and pretension.

When asked whether it was justifiable for "an individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians," Muslims still were far more likely to be 'Christian' about it with 89% answering in the negative and Christians again coming in last, behind the godless infidel. Can we begin to understand that the ancient religious wars between Christian, Jew, Muslim, pagan and infidel have little to do with anything good.

Of course, to attempt discussion using terms like justice is like juggling water, but in my opinion, the enormous industry that scripts our opinions for us is showing it's hand here -- or bloody claw, if you prefer. If you want to know why we are the way we are regarding placing blame for violence and hatred, I might speculate that Muslims and Atheists and free thinkers aren't likely to be watching Fox or to follow Beck or Limbaugh or their hate filled and dishonest rants, while those who call themselves part of the Religious Right often do.

A year ago, a Pew Poll found that only 30 percent of Americans in general have a favorable view of Muslims. I think we know why and I think we know who is behind the unrelenting defamation: burning books, carrying signs in the street and opposing basic freedoms for Muslims in America.

After all, who has the most to gain from vilifying infidels or anyone else trying to oppose replacing secular law with Gospel Law? What are the goals of people who condemn humanism and those who assert their reverence for human life?

I have no doubt that the Religious Right will have no choice but to ignore these numbers or attack them with some neo-Ernulphian malediction and a chorus of Liberaiberaliberal and there is less than no doubt that they'll never give up on the notion of their special privileges and special, God-given right to dictate to all of us, lashing out at enemies they create for the purpose of distraction and ignoring the casualties.

Graham Crackers, part two.

Franklin Graham knows what Muslims want and because they all speak with the same voice and have identical ideas, he knows that what they want is to build as many mosques and cultural centers in the US as they can, so that they can convert as many "regular" Americans to blind obedience to Sharia law as possible.

It's not fair, he proclaims, with the lie barely showing on his face, that Muslims do not allow churches in their countries, although now that we've bombed secular Iraq back into primitiveness, exiling or killing it's Christians, there may be one less Muslim country that does allow freedom of religion.

This of course, even if it really were possible to assume that those buildings weren't to serve the many Muslim faithful in the US, I'd be hard pressed to say that the many towns and cities in the US where there are more churches than Libraries, Schools and Gas stations weren't there to convert as many people to "Judeo-Christian" Bible based law and the obedience to higher fathers we hear about on the countless Christian TV channels and Fox News. Is it projection on the Younger Graham's part or a guilty conscience -- or perhaps both since he's made his fortune and career on "saving souls" as the process of badgering and threatening people into joining his "Crusades." That, in my observation, seems not to be the case for all Christian churches who will welcome most anyone but don't necessarily harass people on the street or insist that the country forbid divorce or outlaw masturbation much less demand the death penalty for working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2.)

Of course the crusade to interpret the US Constitution as a Christian document, as contrary to its history as it may be, still doesn't forbid us to go beardless or eat shellfish or wear clothes sewn with a cotton blend or to approach the altar of God if we wear corrective lenses. Christians generally don't require stoning for Bible Belt proclivities like sleeping with an in-law (you can relax now, West Virginia) and frown on selling their daughters into slavery either. I cn't think of a single Christian who's ever advocated stoning anyone for planting two crops in the same field -- but it's there! Yes, I'm sorry to say, Mr. Graham, that your favorite book is as much of a little shop of horrors and depravity as any other scripture; human sacrifice and all -- and you don't have much of a place to stand on when trying to slander over a billion people.

Perhaps it's as unlikely that very rich men like the Grahams will pass through the eye of a needle as that they can tell us what "the Muslims," most of whom don't live under fundamentalist, theocratic regimes are up to. Yet they keep trying and keep profiting by scapegoating and damning and hate mongering -- and lying. Sure Father Billy, 'Jews are ruining America' Graham and Son-of-Billy Franklin don't come near the lunacy the fringe elements that are campaigning for Christian supremacy: people like Brother Nathaniel " A Christian America, not a Jewish America" Kapner. I won't like to that bastard, you'll have to look it up yourself, but such an underground exists and one would be hard pressed to prove that it represents Christianity less than Wahabbist extremists represent Muslims. Graham doesn't even try, he just pretends they're all alike, all evil -- as power and influence grow and the dollars come rolling in.

Yes, it may be true that a fundamentalist adherence to the Qur'an would seem to allow the so called honor killings, As Franklin is eager to point out, yet it's quite apparent that a literal reading of the Bible allows all kinds of violence and indeed appears to demand slaughtering women and children, stoning, slavery, prostitution and all kinds of things nearly all Christians and Jews abhor - and that includes honor killings.

Jesus needs jets

Coming soon, to an in-box near you:

"The Department of Defense denied a request for a military flyover at the 2009 'God and Country' rally. Obama denied a military flyover at the annual "God and Country" rally in Idaho, where new military recruits were inducted and all military were honored. This is the first time in 42 years that there has not been a military flyover in formation, and organizers were stunned that Obama refused to allow this. . . . . it was because of the event's "Christian nature." This is beyond unbelievable action by the Commander in Chief and President, and Americans need to know about it!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, stunning - they were stunned, I tell you -- stunningly unaware that in November of 2001 the Department of Defense under George W. Bush decided to prohibit the Military's support of events that

"provide a selective benefit to any individual, group or organization, including events with religious themes."

Yes, America's memory is short and in only a year, the deeds of Bush can be attributed to his successor with impunity - and with outrage. Whether or not the event "honors the military" or was in previous years primarily for that purpose, it's organizers stated purpose for 2009 was that

"Our mission is primarily about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ."

According to Snopes.com, the Treasure Valley God & Country Festival; "unabashedly a Christian event" has four steps to witnessing about Jesus Christ (i.e., bless people, fellowship with them, meet their needs, present the Truth), and say of the rally's program of events: "At the end of the evening, we move to step four, presenting the Truth. Each year, we ensure that the message of the Gospel is presented, and information is provided for those who have heard and want to know more about Jesus Christ."

That's all well and good, but not when it's done with taxpayer money; not when it requires the US government to spend a great deal of money proselytizing for any religious group, using the prestige of the US military to raise money for churches and doubly so in times when the public wants to justify every unnecessary expenditure. In a nation of churchgoers, government financing of revival meetings is more than just unnecessary, it's illegal.

Of course lying to the public to make it seem like the President "disrespects the troops" because of a decision made in accordance with the US constitution, almost a decade ago and under the previous and Republican administration , is in fact necessary to people who write these electronic cruise missiles. Necessary because they have nothing to offer but lies and no hope of being relevant without stirring up anti-American hysteria. Necessary because they need power the way a vampire needs blood and they'll do or say anything to get it including ripping the throat out of America. They need hysterical people and what better way to get them into the fold but to insinuate that Obama hates their religion?

To a rational person the unprecedented tsunami of false witness from the radical right would wash away any pretense to being Christian or to be of any other reputable religion for that matter, but that's where the hysterical irrationality, the gullibility and yes, the intellectual laziness of America comes in and any chance for a free and prosperous future goes out.

God hates freedom of religion

He hates yours anyway, you heretic.

I don't know if the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but the road to Heaven is once again being resurfaced with fresh slime. The Family Research Council, which purports to be a Christian organization having something to do with families, is really a lie factory with the objective of fomenting a civil war pitting fundamentalists against our religiously neutral constitution. They've now launched yet another campaign against the rest of us, claiming that the President plans to "silence Christianity" and "Impose homosexuality." It's the kind of thing that requires dementia, stupidity and ignorance to believe but in 21st century America, the very air stinks of it.

I really don't wonder that such people are obsessed to the point of mania about homosexuality or that for them, the purpose of what they call Christianity is to bring about a fundamentalist state that will enforce their sexual and social taboos. It's not so much that people hiding behind a false name are at war with secular democracy or at war with religious freedom or at war with private consensual sex, these are people at war with their own wet dreams.

"It's hard to make this stuff up" says Stephen Webster at Raw Story. Not for them it isn't. Their four-page letter, available here howls, shrieks and lies like the Devil himself about Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would guarantee gay, lesbian and transgendered Americans the right to work just like other Americans without fear of reprisal by the employers due solely to their sexual orientation or appearance. No, it does not force churches and their businesses and their schools to hire anyone they don't want to but FRC lies and says it does. No, limiting the free exercise of religion does not extend to giving any group the right to force their practices on anyone, but they say it does. The FRC has been lying about a lot of things for a long time and the rest of us have let them do it no matter how many people have to suffer. America gets weak and spineless every time some one crosses two sticks and pretends to speak for God.

Censorship in America

Anyone still clinging to the excuse that religion is a source, or the source of morality should examine the foetid depths of moral emptiness to which religious authorities will descend in defense of something demonstrably false and viciously idiotic. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish informs us that:

"A celebrated new movie about one the world's greatest scientists cannot find a distributor in the US."

Although Darwinism thoroughly proves the idea that complexity and organization do arise and evolve over time as a result of mindless algorithms, most Americans, with the help and censorship of the Christian establishment, not only are totally ignorant of the evidence, ignorant of the principle, but are unaware of just how much Darwin's dangerous idea has revolutionized such diverse things as the development of the digital computer and epidemiology.

The Christian establishment has of course tried to satanize everything from the telescope to the ratio Pi to the barometer over the centuries and of course has punished science and scientists heavily, but such things now go on mostly in the United States. Contrary to George W. Bush's assertions, the jury is not out on Evolution any more than it's out on the Pythagorean Theorem, the Speed of Light or the age of the universe. But far worse than the pathological denials of fact are the immoral, dishonest and dangerous attacks on Darwinian science as a source of extremism. A "Christian" website that pre-judges movies for the believers has launched into an attack on Creation so viciously dishonest that it has succeeded in censoring it so that cannot be shown in the US.

It's easy for someone with little education and a superstitious mind to buy the slander that the philosophy of science founded by Charles Darwin leads to eugenics and that Darwin himself was

"a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering."

But of course we're not told how little the real Darwinism has to do with the "survival of the fittest" interpretation cooked up by others. One might as well blame Louis Pasteur for biological warfare. One might as well blame Nietzsche's hatred of anti-Semitism for Hitler. One might as well blame Jesus for the Crusades, the Inquisition and the dangerous lies of the American religious right. That less than 40% of Americans "believe" in evolution shows the cultivated and stultifying ignorance that lubricates our downward slide, that produces the enthusiastic gullibility that produces sign waving mobs and demented political displays.

Of course the Christian jihad against science and scientific method and scientific epistemology is part of a larger Church led war against Democracy. The concept of heresy, the freedom of opinion, is a grave offense but the backbone of Autocracy and the greatest impediment to Democracy in history has been religious orthodoxy. So far they've kept that movie out of our country and our survival depends on their failure to maintain our ignorance.

Dinosaurs don't pay taxes

In a way, we might look at the vast, seemingly endless and profoundly deep ignorance of Americans as a resource. Certainly many people make a good living from it. People who have less than an intelligent 4 year old's grasp of reality are willing to spend money to have their pathetic fantasies upheld in places like Dinosaur Adventure Land where you can view fake animals in a fake surroundings made to resemble fake history and pretend that the most certain things can be less certain than baseless conjecture.

Yes, I'm talking about Florida where for decades fake was like a second name for the state and sleazy roadside attractions and amusement parks made it a Mecca for kitsch enthusiasts and carloads full of rubes and hicks percolating down from Dixie. Much of it is still here, like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids and alligator wrestling and Lion Country Safari but as far as I know nobody is claiming that the mermaids are real or the lions were dropped off in Florida by Noah on his way to Turkey.

The fake history park in Florida flaunts things on their website like the idea that "the more is known about DNA the more difficult it is to escape the conclusion that all things have a personal creator." Of course there's no way around calling this a complete lie and if there is anything ineluctable about what's taught in Dinosaur Adventure Land is that nothing they say has any basis in fact whatever. Evolution as the origin of species and indeed as the origin of life from natural algorithms and natural law is not on its way out, isn't "just a theory" that Science is moving away from in the light of new data. Of course, the age of the Earth and of the universe is very accurately known and sorry, our planet is more than 4 billion years old and no man ever saw a trilobite or a Gorgonopsid or a Sauropod.

It's more than possible to escape the conclusion that existence of living organisms demands the existence of a deity and all their miracles and all the attempts to demonstrate otherwise have been shown to be fallacious and fraudulent. Yet, the Creationists persist in marketing their perverted epistemology demanding that unwillingness or inability to understand opens a window into understanding -- as though ignorance and stupidity were virtues. Wisdom through ignorance certainly winds through Christianity's bowels like a tapeworm but particularly through the kind of cartoonish fundamentalism sold like tawdry talismans at a flea market to tourists in T shirts.

It must be apparent that I view this kind of militant superstition as a cancer threatening any progress in learning and perhaps the safety of civilization itself and so you won't be surprised that I have to smile a bit to hear that an amusement park built on lies and the mockery of truth is in big trouble with the IRS for not paying employee withholding taxes and is due to be seized. Hardly surprising is it, that people who make a living telling lies and attacking the truth are dishonest?

Hardly surprising either that Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, simply to profit by lying, would forget that Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes: “Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” or "Render unto Caesar. . ." Matthew 22:21

Hovind's position was that since he and his brothers in dishonesty worked for God, they didn't owe any taxes to the Government at all. I don't know what Jesus' position on obstruction of justice or last minute, back-dated, illegal transfers of property to avoid seizure was, but of course anything Jesus is supposed to have said is "just a theory" right? The argument was persuasive enough to get him 10 years in the slammer. For once Jesus and the Law -- and I -- seem to agree.

Christianophobia?

I'm guessing that the blog world as well as the commercial media will be gobbling about Sarah Palin for the rest of the weekend. You can almost see the WTF? rising like a cloud of smoke over the entire planet, but lest you think the supply of utterly and unfathomably absurd things has been exhausted, take note of the latest from the Vatican -- and try to supress your gag reflex.

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, spoke yesterday concerning the death of 13 Christians in India that were the result of sectarian violence against Christians who were attacked after the murder of a Hindu leader. Let me take the opportunity to speak against it myself and in support of religious freedom, but how can I forget that this same Vatican, with it's infallible knowledge of good and evil, arguably has been the largest supressor of religious freedom from it's inception until the rise of Stalin. Stalin is dead, but the Vatican is still there.

"'Christianophobia' should be combated as decisively as 'Islamophobia' and anti-Semitism,"

said the representative of the organization that invented anti-Sematism and slaughtered the Muslims, Jews, Protestants and Cathars in Europe and abroad; the organization that persecuted religious dissent and even scientific inquiry with torture and genocide.

It's hardly a phobia when the fear is real, when the feared people had to be legally restrained from running the biggest pederasty ring in the world and when Christians are still doing all they can to make sure we don't hear about evolution, cosmology, geology or large parts of history; to make sure they alone determine who can marry whom or have intimate relations with whom and to force our children to hear about their gods and make oaths to them.

Christian organizations and the governments they control have a rotten history of supporting Colonialism, vicious exploitation, drug addiction and disrupting "traditional values," in Asia, Oceania, the subcontinent and elsewhere. It took hundreds of years and untold amounts of blood and destruction to pry the Church out of governments of Europe and while they are still persuing the conversion of the non-Christian world, identifying all other religions with Satan and still teaching the fires of hell and damnation for anyone they don't approve for heaven, that "phobia" is going to continue to seem more like a legitimate fear to billions of people. If there ever is to be religious freedom, will it have to be pried from the cold, dead fingers of prelates?

Ben Stein's brain

I used to watch the Comedy Central quiz show Win Ben Stein's Money; not because I liked the guy, but because I liked to be amazed at what he didn't know. Of course not knowing all kinds of political and historical trivia isn't an indication of being a dumb schmuck, but letting one's name be affiliated with a movie like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is proof positive. It's slightly gratifying that the public largely has ignored Ben Stein's turd of a film although divine intervention in some really ghastly way would have been more gratifying.

The premise that "intelligent Design," the resurrected, quasi-Deist argument that life and perhaps the universe is too complex to have arisen through natural processes, has been so soundly, thoroughly and often humorously debunked over the last two centuries that it shouldn't be necessary to note that existence not only predates our inability to understand it but isn't subject to reducing its complexities to the level where a religious person can understand. Yes this is a religious argument and that's why it's only applied to Human evolution and not to the equally difficult aspects of quantum physics, general relativity and advanced mathematics. Imagine my saying that Tensor Calculus is flawed because it's beyond my ability!

Comprehensive denunciations of Intelligent Design have been around for centuries. It's a buried fallacy now exhumed like some hollow zombie only because our culture has lost touch with itself and the majority of us are as ignorant if not more so than we were 200 years ago. Percy Bysshe Shelley's refutation of Deism and his Necessity of Atheism not only makes Ben Stein's vaunted brain look dull and pedestrian, but illustrates the ironic appeal to victimhood that is this movie's argument. Shelly was thrown out of school for his brilliant efforts; thrown out by the same militantly dishonest dullards who claim to be unfairly treated by science.

The argument from Ignorance has it that biological structures like the eye cannot have originated without guidance from a supernatural intelligence because, say the the proponents of God, they don't understand the process. This proposition begins with the absurd and doesn't need to be reduced far for one to notice that according to such arguments, the greater the ignorance, the more true the propositions must be. To the ignorant, all things are equally possible.

Of course nature can be difficult to understand and even when understood, it can be counterintuitive. Humans took a long time to accept that up and down were relative directions and they roasted scientists alive for showing evidence that myths were incorrect. Battles were fought over such things as atomic theory and of course the heliocentric universe. Being less and less able to do so today, those who cling to and insist that others must cling to myth, have to create an additional saga of their own persecution: hence this movie.

If you buy into it of course, you cannot avoid admitting that you value comfort above honesty; that you see evidence as less valuable than comfort and that you want to punish anyone who disagrees. There is not only no evidence for order in the universe much less order than can only be a design, but the conjecture does not provide for the design of the designer. It's like the classic rebuff to the argument that there is no giant turtle upon whose back the Earth rests: it's turtles all the way down says the little old lady to Bertrand Russel. It's not an argument, it's a hysterical fugue. Imagine arguing for the existence of a "Firmament" or for a world that floats on water or a heaven one can walk into from a mud brick tower! Although ID may require only the Deus Absconditus of the Deists; a God who created things and moved on, there is no evidence, there is no science, nothing that can be demonstrated, nothing that can be inferred from demonstrable fact. ID is of the same ilk as magic, voodoo, deception, outright stupidity and pathological delusion.

The evidence for the origin of species through natural selection is sufficient that no alternative explanation can compete fairly, hence the unfairness, the dishonesty and the outright sleaziness of Steins movie. Do I need to repeat that there is no evidence whatever for the Divine hand other than the argument ad ignorentiam? If we must give equal opportunities for bogus theories and reject all standards for truth in education, we must abandon the notion of education altogether and return the universities to the Churches we took so long to dethrone. Ben Stein has bet his money that we will. I hope he loses every dime.

Baptist Balls

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

-Bob Dylan-

Who says Florida is backward? Our State may rank near the bottom by many methods of academic assessment but at least now, at last, you can use the word "Evolution" in our schools - even if your kids still have to pledge that God is sovereign and not the people.

New academic standards that squeaked through by one vote Tuesday, now state that evolution is

"the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence."

No shit! So with one stroke and by one vote, Florida puts it's toe tentatively into the 19th century, trembling with fear and holy trepidation.

The executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention has objected to calling evolution the only fundamental concept underlying biology in an e-mail to the Florida Education Commissioner. John Sullivan the Baptist asserted that the Baptists firmly believe there's evidence of a "Creator-initiated origin of life." He didn't explain how he knew that Baptists believed this; whether they believed it because they were Baptists or Baptists because they believed it, nor did he tell us how many of these people doubted the evidence for gravity. The "evidence" for creationism consists entirely of the will to believe what someone once said in a book written before soap was invented and a carefully guarded ignorance of Geology, Genetics, Physics, Mathematics, Logic, Chemistry and Paleontology. Too bad I didn't have the Baptist Cojones as a student to try to dismiss the Calculus of multiple independent variables as a "mere theory" whose weaknesses were that Jesus didn't know how either and that I didn't do my homework.

"The weaknesses of science should be taught as well as its strengths"

says Sullivan and never mind the weaknesses of belief or of "God's Word" as concerns the Jerusalem centered, 6000 year old universe, a flat earth that floats on an endless sea and a fixed firmament studded with little lights that can be reached by building a mud brick tower above which a male God complete with navel and genitals, lives in endless and vindictive glory.

Gospel of lies.

The Washington Monument needs no Doktor Freud or a semiotician to evoke phallic visions. The last thing I think of when I see it is Jesus, but the nasty worm that chews at the heart of America has been circulating another one of an endless series of historical perversions trying to make you think not only was it designed by Washington as a statement of our country's religious essence but a monument to prayer, a stone arm reaching up from our first president's fundamentalist heart to God above. Perhaps you've seen it.

"Washington continues to give praise to God" is the title of the lie although of course the words "Jesus Christ" never once appeared in any writings of his yet to be found, much less any evidence that he differed from Jefferson in believing that the notion of a divine Jesus was anything but a myth destined to be relegated to the same fate as the divinity of the Greek gods. He was never known to give praise to God, and his friends, including Jefferson did not think of him as a Christian at all but a Deist.

"The constitution does not provide for separation of Church and state" screams the version that appeared in my mailbox last night. It does, of course and Washington agreed:

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.

So much for his acknowledgement of a nation under God.

Of course the monument was begun in the Civil War era, when the evocation of God as the foundation of the soon to be disunited States was foisted upon the public as a way to make the unpopular war seem , as we're usually told wars are, God's work. Such an idea could not have been further from the ideas of George Washington and did indeed elicit rage from Jefferson and his fellow patriots. Yes, as the viral gospel of lies claims, the capstone does read Praise to God or Laus Deo, but by 1888, when it was installed, the history of our aggressively secular Republic had already been drowned in the deluge of religious rapture brought back to our shores by the huddled, God sodden masses we had left behind and Washington was dust and his dreams come to nothing.

No, Pierre Charles L'Enfant who designed a plan for the street layout did not design the pattern to look like a cross from the monument which was only contemplated long after his death in 1825. In truth, the government did not like his plan, adopted the usual "tax and spend" rhetoric and refused to pay him for it and he died penniless. The actual planning for the capital city was accomplished by the surveyors, Andrew and Joseph Ellicott, and none of these men discussed any monuments to God or to the pretend piety of our first President or the idea that the view from a monument built a generation later would remind anyone of a cross.

"Praise be to God, such was the discipline, the moral direction, the spiritual mood given by the founder and first president of our unique democracy . . one nation under God"

hisses the evil snake of Christianist revisionism. The one unique feature of our new democracy was that its authority was not based and was forbidden to be based on divine authority, but on the consent of the governed, nor was the illegal religious oath we force children to say, possessed of the phrase "under God" until 1954 thus, finally erasing our national heritage and our national birthright of religious freedom.

The screed finishes with a fictitious "prayer" by Washington which was not written by Washington, was not a prayer to God but a deliberately misquoted version of a direct statement addressed to a governor.

What can I say? Like Jefferson, I can only swear eternal enmity to those who lie and subvert in the pursuit of tyranny over the mind of men and the religious lies they use to that sinister and vile purpose.

Huckabee's Church of America

The trouble with molding a society or running a government "according to God's standards" as Mike Huckabee says we should do, is that God's standards can only be determined by people like Mike Huckabee, and Mike Huckabee, like most of mankind, has his own God. I don't think he has Krishna in mind, or Vishnu, much less the God of whom Mohammad spoke or even the God who commands us to exterminate certain nations, cast out our non-Jewish wives and refrain upon pain of death from using certain kinds of thread in out clothing or eating a cheeseburger.

Of course Huckabee is really talking about amending the constitution, not to institute the 600 some odd Biblical commandments that he and his chuckleheaded Christian cheerleaders ignore as a fundamental precept of their religion, but to solicit the support of the fundamentalist barbarians who base their "values" on the unchristian and non-Christian contempt for homosexuals and are so dependent upon polyester preachers withTeflon tongues that they think the Bible prohibits abortion.

Opening my first e-mail this morning was like entering some gas station bathroom to find the toilet un-flushed and clogged. FAITH. FAMILY. FREEDOM was the headline, followed by

Mike Huckabee a Man of Principle for President.

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

I could hardly read the rest of it. Needless to say, I don't think a government directed by faith is anything less than a tyranny of the faithful. I don't think we need a government intruding into family matters or a government to tell us who we may or may not include in our families and if we have that, we have no freedom at all.

I'm sure I don't have to explain that the foundation of the enlightenment philosophy that produced our form of government was that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were fundamental rights and not privileges or favors bestowed upon us by God's chosen king. The latter of course was the way the world was run in the 18th century and that was supported by Biblical authority. It was a step away from the Biblical and ecclesiastical authority we took by assigning sovereignty to the people and not to the often half-witted and corrupt interpreters of "faith" like Mike Huckabee and to allow our Constitution to be twisted so as to pretend the American Revolution never occurred and the government and its Church were once again as one.

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards,"

said Mike speaking as though he were God's own mouthpiece. Mike Huckabee would rather have us governed by an oligarchy of Baptists and bibles with their peremptory ideas about God than by the will of the citizens. Is there anything further from the essence of democracy than Huckabee's vision?

"We need a President that thinks about all the people"

says the screed floating in my in-box, and I agree. All the people are not fundamentalists however, much less Christians of any sort. Some of us have different gods, different ideas and all of us are guaranteed the right to have them.

"Mike Huckabee is attacked by the New York Times because when asked about evolution he states "I believe that creation has a Creator."

Not so; he's attacked by those who don't want science suppressed and superstition installed.

"More than 20 years ago Mike Huckabee determined to put his faith and conviction into action fighting for the American Family and their Freedom to Pursue Happiness"

except when that happiness includes things Huckabee thinks his personal god dislikes or when that family doesn't met Huckabee's standards. Huckabee and his pet god will tell you what freedom you're allowed and indeed it will be little enough of it unless those of us who really value liberty and want a government that is us rather than them, send Mike a message of contempt by voting for a candidate that represents our traditional, constitutional values and not a church.

Deus ex Video

God loves slaughter. Never mind that stuff we tell you about Jesus and love-thy-neighbor; God not only likes you to kill, he'll sometimes hate you if you don't. I'm not just talking about the battle of Jericho, I'm talking about God II, Deus Ex Video, the shoot'em up game called Halo.

Microsoft's latest version hit $300,000,000 in sales in its first two weeks and at first glance, you'd think it was the sort of thing that Fundamentalists as well as actual Christians would hate. It not only takes place in worlds the Bible does not discuss, but it's all about the thrill of killing and kids love the wanton destruction of life so much they'll put up with lectures about God and his upcoming first person shooter called Armageddon. Even more so if there's free pizza.

This morning's Times tells us about the hundreds of Churches around the country offering free access to the violent video game on big screen TVs to lure kids into indoctrination. In Denver, the Colorado Community Church uses the joy of wholesale slaughter to lure pre-teens. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” says the youth minister. Of course other Churchmen are raising holy hell, metaphorically speaking. “If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and he's right.

Of course this is America and what makes money is what is right and the business of religion is business and if it gets asses onto church pews and donations onto the plate it's good. All that's needed is a better video game more in line with the Bible; its drownings, burnings, stonings, floggings, hangings and disembowelments. Why go looking for alien worlds when you have all the mayhem you need right there? As for going to hell, Microsoft is planning to release that one for the X-Box in time for Christmas.

Cross posted to The Reaction.

You can feel it on the air

The last day of Summer now seems to mark the beginning of the Crusade season, October is become a cruel month, breeding anger out of the dead truth, mixing memory with hate, stirring dull brains with new lies. In other words, It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Of course there's no chill in the air where I live and the local merchants are hawking Halloween candy and plastic pumpkins made in China but Fox is gearing up it's war stories again. Captions like "War on Christians" and "Anti-Christian Crusade," are appearing on the official propaganda channel of the religious-military-industrial complex.

In case you forgot, them Liberals; those lefties are warring against Christians and against Christmas.

"This is a small part of a big, huge attack by the left on Christianity, which has always disliked the concept of Christianity, "

said Fox News blowhard Andrew Napolitano on Friday, of advertising for a San Francisco block party that used leather bar imagery to depict the Christian myth of the Last Supper.

Using their customary travesty of Socratic method Fox News hosts tossed about every conceivable fallacy in the attempt to build a bigger straw man than last year, using popular Radio Brown-shirt "Mancow" to make the case that mythology and belief should be protected by law, particularly if it's Christian. Mancow, who was criticized for playing a song called "Burning Mosques" 6 years ago apparently feels that appearing on a Fox program gives him the authority to say "I don't make fun of Religion" and asks us what would happen if there were a parody of Gay people.

Well of course there are parodies of Gay people spewed like green vomit from pulpits and political platforms and in televangelistic tirades every Sunday and that's only a small part of the crap about heretics and Jews and infidels and sinners burned at metaphorical stakes. Those people don't need to have their opinions legally protected from humor, criticism, analysis, parody or the inquisitiveness of historians, but Christians do.

"It's a godless group there, and they hate it,"

says moronic Mancow who apparently can't see the comedy in his assertions - as if anything said that invokes the magic word Christ were protected to the detriment of the beliefs of all others. But in a sense Fox has a point. The left leaning people who founded our laws in the secular enlightenment of the time did not distrust religious institutions, religious writings, priests and nations under God and tried to created a nation free of their intrusion into government and into civil liberty. Their ideas have been steadily eroded and never so swiftly as today, with an uneducated and indoctrinated public and modern methods of mass mendacity.

General Pace or General Disgrace?

Oh hell, let Congress censure me, but I'm an American citizen and I don't work for the government and I have a right to call it the way I see it. I have absolutely no obligation to respect the opinions of people I consider to be enemies of freedom and particularly those people on the public payroll who insist they work for an invisible entity not the taxpayers. I will not be bullied into worshipping authority or their authoritarian gods.

So when Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a Congressional hearing yesterday that our secular democracy should

"not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God's law."

I have to call it disgraceful. I have to call his "upbringing" disgusting and I have to call the private and legal behavior of consenting adults none of his God damned business. There is no religious test or requirement for service in the armed forces and our troops are not required to bow to the beliefs of generals.

Screw Pace, screw his superstition, arrogance and his upbringing - and as for his god - screw him too.

87.0736% extremist

New York Rep. Peter King thinks there are too many mosques in the US. I don't know whether that's true. I can only say that I've seen exactly one since I was old enough to know what a mosque was and I've been old enough for a long time. But Representative King is a Republican, a part of Guiliani's campaign and the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee and so has a personal financial interest in the marketing of hysteria and the promotion of irrational sectarian hatred.

85% of them, however many of them there might be, are controlled by extremist leadership, says Representative King. 85% -- although that number is probably there because it sounds like statistics but would be impossible to confirm or deny -- and besides, extremism is a relative and thus easily invoked term. Extremism can, according to traditional Republican values, be good: "no vice" as that icon of Republican virtue and multiple felon Spiro Agnew once told us. All in all, it's not a good argument, just one of the few left at the bottom of the barrel of bullshit.

Of course I think there are far too many Churches in the US and 87.0736% of them are extremist in that they are promoting the restriction of civil rights according to the teachings they invent for the purpose of undermining democracy and liberty and justice for all. They've succeeded in requiring our children to acknowledge their pantheon of bizarre deities and to swear that magic beings are involved in the government of the US. They have succeeded in replacing our coinage with little copper and paper religious engravings and they are constantly telling us what we can read, see, say and investigate; whom we can spend our lives with, how we can define our families, what we can teach our children about science and mathematics.

They not only promote wars and violence, they teach us that religious wars and violence are good when done in defense of an almighty dictator and are happy to provide all the fictitious history you could ever want to benefit their crusades and their war against science, math, physics, history, law, logic, cosmology, geology, paleontology, meteorology, statistics, probabilities and the origin of species through natural selection.

They promote the kind of mental illness that would allow, for instance, Mitt Romney, a follower of one Joseph Smith: demonstrable liar, forger and sexual pervert, to elevate his campaign to deny civil rights to people his sexually perverted and somewhat unclean looking prophet didn't like. It allows extremist followers of a Roman Bishop like Rudolph Guiliani to close a public museum for Blasphemy because he didn't think we should have the right to view a painting of a magic virgin who has babies with invisible gods that didn't adhere to the precise iconography of his church.

Too many Starbucks, too many SUV's and burger joints and way too Goddamn many churches.

Let's just give up.

It sometimes seems there is no end to the sea of lies, superstition and stupidity in which America floats and one of those times is now, when John Boehner can smugly announce to Wolf Blitzer this evening that any price to pay in Iraq is worth it if we stop al Qaeda there and because al Qaeda is the main enemy we are facing there. Do we have a future if someone like Blitzer can pass over this without saying "wait a minute - how stupid do you think the American people are?"

Do we have a future if the CNN switchboard isn't jammed with violently furious citizens sick to death of the lying and the corruption and the rule of morons? Is it worth pointing out that stopping a world wide operation by killing some of them in Iraq is meaningless?

Probably not. America is a country where power is always given to the stupidest, the most dishonest and the best able to lie with a straight face. We're the country that won't vote for someone perceived as smarter than us and dreams about some bumbling rube of a hero born in a log cabin with a vocabulary of slogans about honor. America is a place, where according to Jack Cafferty this evening, the majority think the Constitution establishes Christianity as a state religion and that the founding fathers sought to establish a Christian nation. It's a place where a substantial number believe that religious freedom applies only to Christians and that the Bible should be used as a standard history reference in the public schools.

Does this country retain a shred of the intelligence, education and indeed, the sanity to make a republic possible or will we be looking at our iPods and grumbling about toys and Britney's belly in a state of oblivion as we fade into history? Is it acceptable that a quarter of us didn't read a single book last year and the most literate perhaps read 4 romance novels or new-age self improvement crap?

Go ahead and call me an America basher - an America hater or anything you like, but if I had a brain in my head I would have abandoned this vast national celebration of ignorance a long time ago. It's only because I love what this country is supposed to be that I hate what it has become and I hate the people who have made it as it is and if I knew a word more hateful than hate I would use it.