Opposing Religious Themed War Memorials

This post was originally written in August 2015.

I just read this article about the American Humanist Association's (AHA) failed suit to remove a Maryland war memorial because it's in the shape of a cross. I've been a member and supporter of the AHA for many years and will continue to be, but I have mixed feelings about their position on this issue.

Sure, that cross is clearly a Christian religious symbol. One can make a solid legal argument, as the AHA did, that it should not be on public land as that can be construed as government endorsement of a particular religion. However, I'm wondering if challenging a decades-old war memorial is really a good idea. This memorial has been there for nearly a century and commemorates World War I soldiers. How many people passing by even notice it let alone fixate on its Christian symbolism?

I fear that challenging monuments erected decades ago, particularly those honoring war dead, makes us secularists look petty, trite and mean-spirited. These monuments have become part of the history of the communities in which they stand and frankly, I don't have a problem with them.

I think we should challenge the construction of any new monuments on public lands or with public funds that contain religious imagery because they violate the values of our time, but we should not challenge ones that were erected in a different era. They reflect the values and social norms of their time, outdated as those values and norms may now be. I think that we should avoid aggravating people over small, historical things like this and focus on the bigger matters of today. Issues such as protecting reproductive rights, fighting religious discrimination, keeping religious doctrine out of politics and public institutions, defending science, etc. are crucially important in the here and now. A local and little-known 90 year old war memorial is not.

Lamenting the Death of Intellectual Conservatism in the USA

I used to be a Republican. It's hard to believe now, but it's true. That was back in the days when the Republican Party still had a pragmatic, responsible, secular, and intellectually sophisticated moderate wing. Sadly, those days are gone. Over the past two decades, the party's ant-intellectual, jingoistic, anti-environmental, theocratic, fiscally-reckless, wing-nut fringe took over the party.

I was a Republican because I believed in a limited role for the federal government, state's rights, fiscal responsibility, free market economics, and the need for a strong defense (this was when the USSR was still around). But I also believed (and still do) in the absolute separation of church and state, respect for science, abortion rights, environmental protection, that tax cuts must be accompanied by commensurate spending cuts, and that liberals were equally patriotic countrymen and colleagues who deserved our respect and with whom we could amicably disagree. The Democrats were the other major American political party, they were NEVER the enemy. Back then, these views were not seen as incompatible with mainstream Republicanism. Sadly, there is no place in today's Republican Party for people like me. I and many others left the party. Or more accurately, the Republican Party left us!

Now, the wing-nut fringe of the Republican Party is its base. To be a Republican now, you have to disrespect science, be religious, oppose abortion rights, believe in a militaristic foreign policy, support tax cuts with no regard to their impact on the Government's fiscal solvency, disrespect the separation of church and state, not care about the environment, and think that anyone who disagrees with you is a communist! I'm appalled at the absence of intellect in the Republican party of today. It's downright scary that Republican members of Congress and state governors feel that they have to cow-tow to a loud-mouthed and intellectually bereft buffoon like Rush Limbaugh and that the party's recent presidential nominee selected the risibly unqualified Sarah Palin as his vice presidential choice in order to appeal to its unsophisticated base voters.

It really infuriates me that these superstitious nincompoops think that they are the guardians of national morality. Bill Clinton lied about his reckless and inappropriate, but otherwise harmless personal behavior and got impeached for it. George W. Bush lied in order to sell an unnecessary and unjustified war in Iraq that costs thousands of American lives and many more Iraqi lives and got reelected! Do they have their moralistic priorities just slightly out of order?

Because I believe in science, the rule of law, support diplomacy over militarism, am non-religious, support gay rights and same-sex marriage, care deeply about the environment and want to protect it, believe in balanced budgets, and believe that America is and should be part of the world, today's conservatives consider people like me to be communists (or Nazis, they can't seem to make up their minds) and view me as someone who "hates America." These people are so fanatical and their beliefs are so lacking in intellectual content that we have utterly nothing in common. It's so bizarre that believing in the Bill of Rights and in the due process of law makes you a communist of a Nazi. I wonder what sane Republicans like Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller would say if they could see what their party has degenerated into.

I left the Republican Party years ago and am now a registered Democrat. I now consider myself a political liberal, even though my views have not changed much over the years. I still harbor some hopes that the moderate wing of the party will resurrect itself, but I'm not holding my breath.

A new day for the nation and the world

Today, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States! I live near Washington, DC and I thought about going down to the Mall to be part of the event.  But it was a regular work day for me and I have a lot to get done by Friday, so I really couldn't afford to take the day off.  And it was cold today, very cold.  I watched the inauguration live on a big screen at work with some coworkers.  I'm so happy that the nation and the world are finally rid of Bush.  I think that future historians will rank GWB as one of the worst, if not THE worst, president in US history.  Back when GWB was reelected in 2004, you could almost hear the groan from the rest of the world.  Today, you can almost hear the relief that he's finally gone.  Bush has left Obama with some huge messes to deal with.

In only eight years, Bush has turned the biggest budget surplus in history to the biggest deficit in history; he's transformed us from the most respected nation in the world to the most despised nation in the world; he's embroiled us in an unnecessary and disastrous war in Iraq; he's bungled the probably necessary war in Afghanistan; in the name of national security, he's trampled on the basic human rights and the very values that used to define what the United States stands for; he's stuck his head in the sand with regard to global warming, which might well turn out to be the biggest crisis to ever face humanity; he's knocked holes in our precious wall of separation between church & state; he's made decisions about climate and medicine based on religious dogma, not on science; and he was asleep at the wheel while the financial industry recklessly binged on price-inflated financial securities to bring about the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.  The list goes on...  Well, done George! In fairness, I will give Bush credit for two accomplishments:  there has not been a successful terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 and he had done a lot to combat AIDS in Africa.  Except for those two successes, his presidency has been a disaster!  I wish Bush a happy and quiet retirement.

Good luck, President Obama.  You've got your work cut out for you.

Utterly "Religulous"

I saw a screening of the new movie Religulous courtesy of the American Humanist Association in Washington, DC on Wednesday (Oct. 1, 2008).  The movie, presented by comedian Bill Maher, challenges the truth of and outright ridicules the world's three largest religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  Well actually, I use the term "documentary" loosely.  The film is highly one-sided and is more a long infomercial in the style of Michael Moore's films rather than a serious documentary.  Maher attacks religion with a combination of ruthless satire and simply letting its most extreme and ignorant adherents make fools of themselves.

Never the less, I loved this movie.  It fired some well-deserved ridicule at religion.  Some of the extremely religious people he interviewed acted and sounded like such nitwits that they were difficult to listen to.  Some of the other people he interviewed, particularly two Catholic priests, one a Vatican astronomer and the other a monsignor, were clearly very sophisticated and very modern.  The movie is hilarious and outs religion as the anachronistic absurdity that it is.  Near the end of the film, Maher warns of the dangers of religion, particularly in how deeply religious political leaders can make critical policy decisions based on the tenets of Bronze Age mythologies rather than a rational evaluation of current facts.  Maher goes on to claim that religion is a direct threat to the survival of civilization.

This film will probably not change the views of many deeply religious people.  However, for that large number of people who are religious, but still open-minded and capable of critical thinking, it may well facilitate doubts that they probably already harbor.  Maher is dead on in his assertion that religion is absurd, outdated, and dangerous.  If nothing else, it might encourage a few closet atheists to come out and challenge these anachronistic dogmas.

Maelstrom on Wall Street

Well, it's day two since the US House of Representatives in its great wisdom (smirk) voted down the treasury secretary's $700M bailout of the financial industry.  The ugly faces of petty partisanship and ideological zealotry reared forth among the histrionic vomitus spewing out from both sides of the aisle.  The Republicans blame the Democrats and the Democrats blame the Republicans for causing this mess.  SURPRISE!  Of course, the truth is, they both share blame.

 

Starting years ago with good intentions, but bad economic theory, the Democrats pushed forward the federal intervention in the housing market that made credit too easily available. They wanted to make home ownership attainable to a larger segment of the American population.  Through Fannie and Freddie, the Government made a lot more money available for mortgage lending.  This did make it possible for more people to buy houses and to buy bigger and better houses; however, in doing so, they disrupted one of the free market's natural checks and balances.  The free market normally hold's Wall Street's insatiable greed in check with risk.  But the Government made home more mortgages less risky than they would normally be for the lenders.  Risk was socialized while profits remained privatized.  What a deal for the lenders!  Through creative loan packages, they could make high-risk loans that they otherwise would not have touched and then quickly offload them to Fannie or Freddie who would repackage them and sell them off as securities.  And if the borrower can't afford the loan in the long-term, hey, it wasn't their problem.

This worked for a while.  Lots more people could buy homes or move up!  The real estate market soared and so did housing prices. As long as people could get loans at artificially low rates, the party went on.  Of course, there had to come a point when home prices got so artificially high that people couldn't afford them even with their complex hyper-packaged mortgages.  That's when the bubble burst.  So the Democrats, while trying to help more people own their own homes, made credit available to people who simply couldn't afford it.  Had the Government not intervened and made it easy for banks and mortgage companies to sell-off complex high-risk loans shortly after making them, things would never have come to this point.

Now the Republicans contributed their part to this debacle as well.  In the name of ideological purity, they would not let the Government regulate the free market.  No Government meddling in the economy.  Let Wall Street do its thing! Greed is good!  It moves the economy.  There's actually a perverse element of truth in this.  However, by guaranteeing  the value of home mortgage based securities, the Government had already meddled in the economy.  They made risky loans less risky--for the lenders, that is.  The Republicans let the tax payers absorb a big chunk of the risk, but would not let the Government regulate the lenders to make sure they staid within the bounds of prudence.  Thanks to Democratic risk reduction and Republican pseudo-laissez-faire, Wall Street had a feeding frenzy--on a charge card.

Moral of the story:  If you are going to follow a laissez-faire economic model, governments shouldn't meddle in the free market at all!  They shouldn't do anything that might disrupt the market's natural balance of risk vs reward that restrains reckless financial moves.  If you are going to intervene in the free market, no matter how noble your intentions, and interfere with its natural checks and balances, then you had damned well better regulate it to make sure that it doesn't overheat as it inevitably will.  What's truly pathetic is that the Government made this same type of mistake with the savings & loan industry in the 1980s.  They deregulated it while still guaranteeing the deposits.  With the natural check of risk removed, the S&Ls were free to gamble.  And gamble they did with predictably disastrous results.  Alas, history has repeated itself.  Some lessons are just never learned.

I could be a CEO!

I think I found the job I want.  I want to be the CEO of a Wall Street financial firm.  Where else could you fail utterly, drive the company's stock value into the toilet, send the company into near bankruptcy and still walk away with a multi-million dollar bonus or golden parachute?!  In any other job, such a disastrous performance would get you fired and out on the street without a dime.

I'm going to write to these financial firms and offer them my services as CEO.  I could drive the company into the ground, wipe out its stock value, send it into bankruptcy, and wreck its reputation for a fraction of what their current CEOs are charging to do the same thing.  Financial firms, why pay your current CEO tens of millions to wreck the company?  I'll do if for less than half the price!

On Patriotism this Fourth of July

Well, it's Independence Day, 4th of July 2008. This has always been one of my favorite holidays, not just because of its national significance, but because it's in the middle of summer when the weather is warm. I love warm weather. I see myself as just as patriotic as most Americans, but I've never been much of a flag waver. To me, that's insincere. I think that one should show patriotism through charity, donating one's time to public service and conserving our country's natural resources. Waving the flag costs you nothing and requires no effort or sacrifice on your part. So who's more patriotic, the person who does nothing but stick a flag on the bumper of his gas guzzling and environmentally destructive SUV or the person who donates his or her time and money to causes which better the lives of fellow citizens?

Sadly, conservative demagogues in my country, the USA, have cynically usurped the flag and patriotic words like "freedom" to justify jingoism, excessive militarism, a hegemonic foreign policy, and the suppression of basic rights at home. Defending the writ of habeas corpus and our constitutional prohibition against "unreasonable search and seizure" (electronic and otherwise) from a government that is attempting to disregard them is patriotic! Attacking other countries who did not attack us is not!

And when Americans stand up and demand that our government respect the principles of human rights and the rule of law that used to define what America stood for, conservatives accuse them of being "unpatriotic!" What hypocritical nonsense!