Whenever I write about religion, I’m often asked, “What makes you an expert?”

I’ve got news for you.  We’re all experts on religion to one degree or another, every last one of us.  Religion is not like, say, heart surgery or entomology or aviation.  Sure, there are people who spend years in school studying theology and the bible, years in seminaries becoming clergymen.  But there are also people who wake up one morning and decide to start their very own religion, and then do it.  You, if you so desired, could go online and, for a small fee (small compared to the tuition that would be required to get a degree in anything), become an ordained minister, start a church and – presto-chango! – become a tax-free religion (yes, it really is that easy).

In any field of endeavor in which you are free to make it up as you go along, the word “expert” has little or no meaning.

We’re all experts on religion by virtue of our experience with it.  No matter who you are, no matter what your religion or denomination, whether you’re agnostic, atheist, Satanist, Rotarian, Pisces, a Nobel Prize winner or someone who lives in a refrigerator box in an alley with nothing to your name but a grocery cart full of unmatched old shoes, you have had a great deal of experience with religion.  If you live in the United States, you’ve had more than most.

The United States of America is the most religious nation in the industrialized world.  According to a 2009 survey of 21,000 people in 21 countries conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Religion Monitor, 89% of Americans identify themselves as religious, 62% highly religious.  In the United States — an ostensibly secular nation whose Constitution makes no mention of god, Jesus Christ, the bible, or the ten commandments and mentions religion only to prohibit from government its promotion or hindrance — 76% of Protestants and 65% of Catholics say that religion influences their political views in ways ranging from moderate to substantial.

If you live in the United States, religion is a part of your everyday life, and that religion is Christianity.  Whether you’re religious or not, believer or atheist, Jew or Muslim, Democrat or Republican, outraged by it or indifferent to it, it’s everywhere you go, everywhere you look.  You can’t even sneeze without someone invoking a deity.  Literally!  The only way to avoid it is to stay home and never leave your house.  But even that doesn’t work, because then they will bring it to your door.

We are all experts on religion, whether we like it or not, and that qualifies us to speak out about it.  The only problem is … that’s not really allowed.

Religion has always been an untouchable subject.  We are not allowed to comment on someone’s religious beliefs in any way that does not involve abject praise unless we’re willing to be pilloried by nearly everyone within earshot.  Why?  That is a very good question.

We can argue about politics, sports, movies, history, literature, art, science and any other topic you can imagine to our hearts’ content.  We can disagree about them and with them, criticize them, ridicule them, denounce them, and no one cares.  But when it comes to religion, we are expected — by some unwritten law, some unspoken universal agreement — to respect the beliefs of others and remain silent about them.  No.  Matter.  What.

If a man says he cannot leave the house without flipping every light switch in it on and off 40 times so the earth won’t burst into flames, we might tell him that he has a treatable problem and urge him to get help, and that’s acceptable.  If a man says he can fly and intends to jump off a cliff to prove it, we do everything we can to stop him because we know he is delusional and will kill himself, and that’s acceptable.  If someone says he doesn’t like us because of the color of our skin, or our weight, or our political affiliation, we can tell him to go piss up a rope and that’s acceptable.  But if parents refuse to get medical treatment for a sick child because that goes against their religious beliefs and they are certain that god will intervene and heal the child, we are expected to zip our lips and respect that because it is a religious belief and it is somehow unacceptable to say or do anything that might offend the believer.  Even the state is reluctant to step into such situations, although it sometimes happens — and then many become outraged and complain that religious rights are being violated.  If someone comes to your door on an otherwise peaceful Saturday morning to inform you that your soul is in danger of eternal damnation if you do not embrace their religion and live your life the way they say you should — which, as far as I’m concerned, is the height of arrogance and obnoxiousness because this person has actually come to your home to do it — you are expected to gently, politely decline, thank that person for stopping by and send him on his way with a smile, because it would be unacceptable and offensive to the believer to cut him off mid-sentence and tell him and his bible to get the hell off your porch before you get the garden hose.

Every human being on the face of the earth deserves respect.  But somehow, we have allowed ourselves to be convinced that those human beings who choose to believe in invisible, unprovable, and nonexistent things — and, in turn, to believe that we must believe in those things, too, or we are bad people who will be eternally lost — entitles them to some greater degree of respect, and we must be tolerant and silently endure their presumption, arrogance and simply rude behavior because they believe and have faith — and aren’t those wonderful things?

Well, I disagree with the whole arrangement.  I have nothing whatsoever against people practicing their religion, but when it intrudes on my privacy and disrupts my life, when it is rudely pushed at me, or when it abuses others or is used to break the law, I must object.  I’ve discovered that I am far from alone in objecting, but even most of those who feel as I do are afraid to voice their feelings because of the inevitable response, which is always swift and angry and sometimes even threatening and violent.  And that is unacceptable.

I don’t expect religion to go away.  That won’t happen anytime soon, and certainly not in my lifetime.  Although I must admit that this would be a better world without it.  It would be a freer, more peaceful world and we would have advanced farther and faster than we have with it.  By now, without religion, we’d probably have those damned flying cars we were promised by the year 2000.  At the very least, Salman Rushdie’s security bill would be a lot more manageable.

I am a sincere and enthusiastic supporter of the freedom of religion provided by the United States Constitution.  Hell, I’m a cheerleader for it.  I agree that everyone should be able to worship as they please, believe whatever they want, and apply those beliefs to their lives.  Spirituality is an intensely personal and individual thing for those who embrace or need it, and no one should ever be made to feel that their spirituality must conform to anyone else’s.  Our founding fathers recognized that individuality and wanted to protect it, which is why the Constitution declares that no one religion will be recognized by the United States government, which remains secular and divorced from religion.  That is left up to the individual.  And that is a significant part of what makes that document one of the greatest ever written.

But not everyone embraces or needs religion (or, if you prefer, spirituality) or is even interested in it.  Those of us who fit that description should not have to keep swatting religion away like swarming flies as we go about our business.  We shouldn’t have to deal with pamphlet-bearing Christians who come to our door and claim to have something we cannot live without.  We should not have to listen to politicians, who are annoying enough as it is, talk about god or Jesus or prayer or about how this is a Christian nation when it most certainly is not; it is a secular nation that is populated mostly by Christians — there’s a big difference.

It is not my intention to offend anyone, but in the case of religion, it is virtually impossible not to.  One does not need to attack or insult a religious person to cause offense — one need only to disagree with, question, or in any way criticize that person’s religion.  I have found religious people to be among the most thin-skinned on the planet.  They demand that everyone respect their religion by complimenting or praising it or saying nothing at all — and yet they seem incapable of showing respect as they routinely and casually criticize and condemn others who do not share their beliefs for living lives of which their religion does not approve.  They spout and spew their dogmatic nonsense freely and without pause.  But when others openly disagree or criticize, their response is, “Just shut up!”

The Constitution guarantees us the freedom to believe –- or not believe — as we see fit, but nowhere in that document is there a guarantee that others will agree with our beliefs.  Nowhere is there a guarantee that others who do not share our beliefs will take seriously our gods and rituals.  And there certainly isn’t anything about others being required to show reverence or deference to a god or a belief system that they do not worship or share.  There’s not even any requirement that they take them seriously.

While they may be the majority in the United States, the right guaranteed by the Constitution is not guaranteed to Christians alone.  It is guaranteed to each and every single individual in this country so that individuals can decide for themselves what they believe according to their own conscience.  It guarantees these individuals the right to gather with others who share their beliefs and engage in rituals that uphold those beliefs.

And that’s about it, folks.

But somehow, any response to religion other than respectful silence has become a social crime in our culture!

In an April 23, 1803, letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Nothing but free argument, raillery and even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.”  Jefferson didn’t think it was a crime — he thought it was a necessity.  Of course, Jefferson didn’t think too highly of the clergy.  He saw them as corrupt tyrants who controlled the masses with confusion, spiritual threats and mystical intimidation, and who craved ever more power.  Here are two excerpts from letters that serve as perfect examples of Jefferson’s attitude toward men of the cloth:

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
– To Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.  He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.  It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes.”
– To Horatio G Spafford, March 17, 1814

Jefferson did not trust the clergy.  He saw their greed for power and control as a threat to liberty, and it seems that he thought ridicule was one way of preventing that threat from being realized.  It’s pretty hard for something to become a threat to liberty as long as people are allowed to openly criticize it, expose its weaknesses and faults, and even joke about it.

Jefferson thought the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was utter nonsense and had no qualms about saying so.  He believed it was the kind of nonsense only a priest could decode and explain to his flock, using that concocted understanding as a tool to make himself necessary to them and further control their minds and lives.  In a July 30, 1816, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, he wrote:

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.  Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.  It is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”

Can you imagine the outrage and uproar such a remark would cause today?  An infuriated and harrumphing Rush Limbaugh would vilify Jefferson for hours and hours on national radio, five days a week.  A sobbing Glenn Beck would denounce Jefferson as anti-American and declare him to be a supporter of concentration camps for Christian patriots.  Ann Coulter would call into question the size of Jefferson’s penis and his ability to use it.  And Fox News would go on red alert and probably hire extra on-air talent to handle the amount of incensed coverage the story would get.  All of that would happen because Jefferson’s fear has become a reality — speaking in any negative way about religion has become such a taboo that religion has been allowed to gain power and control it does not deserve.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s take a look at some of the things this unwritten law, this unspoken agreement has intimidated us into respecting with our silence.

Since 1949, Billy Graham has been the biggest Christian star since Jesus Christ himself.  He has been beloved by Christians around the world, and his “crusades” have always attracted massive throngs that would have made Cecil B. DeMille envious.  He’s the one evangelist people have taken the most seriously and have seen as the most sincere — so much so that he has been the pastor to the presidents.  But all of that should have been called into question when, on Thursday, February 28, 2002, the National Archives released an audio recording of an Oval Office meeting between Graham and then President Richard Nixon.  In reference to the influence the minister thought Jews had on the United States, Graham said, “This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.”

“You believe that?” Nixon said.

“Yes, sir.”

Nixon said, “Oh, boy.  So do I.  I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.”

“No, but if you get elected a second time,” Graham said, “then we might be able to do something.”

Do something?  Wow.  Sounds like Billy was ready to fire up the ovens again.  I can see the two of them, Nixon and Billy, standing together in a crowded back yard, each wearing an apron — Nixon’s reads, “I am not a cook!” and Billy’s reads, “Eat this in remembrance of me” — and Billy, holding a spatula, shouts, “Okay, everybody, how do you like your Jews cooked?”

Later in that same conversation, Graham told Nixon that he had Jewish friends in the media who “swarm around me and are friendly to me. … They don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.”

So, when Billy was preaching Jesus’s love and forgiveness all those years, apparently it did not extend to Jews … even though Jesus, according to the bible, was a Jew.  Another Jew — hmmm.  Tell you what, Billy, while you’re heating up those ovens, why don’t you grab a hammer and some big nails so just in case Jesus does decide to come back, you’ll be ready for him.

Jerry Falwell was a fundamentalist Baptist minister and televangelist who helmed a megachurch (a church that has 2,000 or more members) in Lynchburg, Virginia, founded Liberty Christian Academy and Liberty University, and cofounded the Moral Majority.  He was one of the most prominent and respected Christian leaders in the United States for decades.  During that time, he said some things that were, well … interesting.

In 1999, Falwell saw what he believed to be homosexual indoctrination in the UK TV show for preschoolers called The Teletubbies.  He identified one of the Teletubbies — a character named Tinky Winky — as gay in a “Parents Alert” in his National Liberty Journal.  Falwell wrote, “He is purple — the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle — the gay-pride symbol.”  In a statement issued later, he said, “As a Christian I feel that role modelling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children.”

Some Christians see Satan around every corner, but Falwell saw gays, too.  Judging by some of the other things he said about gay people, one might conclude that Falwell thought Satan himself was gay.  In a March 11, 1984 broadcast of The Old Time Gospel Hour, in reference to the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church, Falwell said the following:

“But these things speak evil of those things, verse 10 (in the book of Jude) which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.  Look at the Metropolitan Community Church today, the gay church, almost accepted into the World Council of Churches.  Almost, the vote was against them.  But they will try again and again until they get in, and the tragedy is that they would get one vote.  Because they are spoken of here in Jude as being brute beasts, that is going to the baser lust of the flesh to live immorally, and so Jude describes this as apostasy.  But thank God this vile and satanic system will one day be utterly annihilated and there’ll be a celebration in heaven.”

Here are a few other choice quotes attributed to the good reverend:

“The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.”

“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”

“There is no separation of church and state.  Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

“I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools.  The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.  What a happy day that will be!”

“Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”

“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”

And my personal favorite:

“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.  To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s charioteers … AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

On September 13, 2001, Falwell appeared on fellow evangelist Pat Robertson’s TV show and said the following about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 only two days earlier:

“I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

The next day, when confronted with this remark on CNN, Falwell backpedaled:  “I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize.”  But in May of 2007, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked him again about his remark.  Falwell said, “If we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past.”  When Amanpour asked if he stood by his September 13, 2001, comment, he said, “I stand right by it.”  A week later, in a gesture of uncharacteristic consideration for others, Falwell had the good taste to die.

While he was certainly a master of the hateful, batshit-crazy statement, Falwell hardly cornered that market.  He had stiff competition from his good buddy Pat Robertson, who had the advantage of living on after Falwell’s death, thus having plenty of time to outdo Falwell’s sterling record of being a douchenozzle.

Although an ordained Southern Baptist minister, Robertson functions mostly as a political spokesman for conservative Christians in the United States.  Over the years, he has founded a university, a broadcasting network — all kinds of lucrative entities.  And he tried to run for president in the 1988 primaries.  He is, at this moment, probably the most prominent, influential and powerful — not to mention richest — Christian leader in this country.  He is the host of The 700 Club, a Christian TV show that airs throughout the United States.  Robertson has something to say about … well, everything.  It’s usually something jaw-droppingly stupid, obnoxious and hateful, and he usually says it on his TV show.  Here, in no particular order, is a selection of Pat Robertson quotes taken from The 700 Club’s page on the Internet Movie Database:

“The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people.  But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society.  And that’s what’s been happening.”

“The public education movement has also been an anti-Christian movement. We can change education in America if you put Christian principles in and Christian pedagogy in.  In three years, you would totally revolutionize education in America.”

(On homosexuals)  “It’s one thing to say, ‘We have rights to jobs, we have rights to be left alone in our little corner of the world to do our thing.’  It’s an entirely different thing to say, well, ‘We’re not only going to go into the schools and we’re going to take your children and your grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.’  Now that’s wrong.”

“Why are so many marriages falling apart?  Why is the divorce rate so high?  Why is there such a tragedy in marriage?  Now the basic answer to the basic problem of marriages today is a question of leadership.  The wife actually makes the husband the head of the household and she looks to him and she says, ‘Now you pray, and I’m going to pray for you that the Lord will speak to you.’”

“If the widespread practice of homosexuality will bring about the destruction of your nation, if it will bring about terrorist bombs, if it’ll bring about earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, it isn’t necessarily something we ought to open our arms to.”

(On Apartheid in South Africa) “I think ‘one man, one vote,’ just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights.”

“Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals.  The two things seem to go together.”

“There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution.  It is a lie of the left and we are not going to take it anymore.”

“I have known few homosexuals who did not practice their tendencies.  Such people are sinning against God and will lead to the ultimate destruction of the family and our nation.  I am unalterably opposed to such things, and will do everything I can to restrict the freedom of these people to spread their contagious infection to the youth of our nation.”

“The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There’s never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I’ll buy some of the feminism.”

(On Planned Parenthood)  “It is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism – everything that the Bible condemns.”

“I am absolutely persuaded one of the reasons so many lesbians are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is because being a mother is the unique characteristic of womanhood, and these lesbians will never be mothers naturally, so they don’t want anybody else to have that privilege either.”

(A nifty-keen science lesson from Professor Roberts)  “I think the sky is blue because it’s a shift from black through purple to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the farther we get into darkness, and there’s a shifting of color of light into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that’s bouncing off this earth, uh, the darker it gets. I think if you look at the color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on out, it’s the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars singing, and that’s one of the effects of the shifting of colors.”

“NOW (the National Organization for Women) is saying that in order to be a woman, you’ve got to be a lesbian.”

Opposing the equal rights initiative in Iowa, Robertson wrote in a 1992 fundraising letter:

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women.  It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

On page 218 of his book The New World Order, Robertson wrote:

“When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm.  ‘What do you mean?’ the media challenged me.  ‘You’re not going to bring atheists into the government?  How dare you maintain that those who believe in the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?’  My simple answer is, ‘Yes, they are.’”

The day after the January 12, 2010 7.0 earthquake in Haiti that killed as many as 200,000 people, Pat Robertson went on TV and said the Haitians had brought the earthquake on themselves:

“They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

Of course, the above quotes are the words of only three of the most prominent Christian leaders, but there are many others whose statements are no less horrifying.

This is what we’re supposed to respect?  This is what we’re supposed to tolerate with our reverent silence?  This is what we’re not allowed to criticize?  How did this happen?  How have we been made into people who will sit still for this kind of — and I use this word loosely — thinking?

When we read of the horrific slaughter of certain races or religions throughout history, we often ask, How could this have been allowed to happen?  How could people stand by and do nothing while this was going on? The answer is simple.

We’re living in it!  This is how it happens — what we’re discussing right now, this unwritten law of silence and so called “respect” when it comes to religion in America.  We have been intimidated into silence, into saying and doing nothing while hateful lies spread like a cancer that has metastasized throughout the population, resulting in discrimination, persecution, and even murder.  We have been respectfully silent for a long time now.  And look where it’s gotten us.  Of course, where it’s gotten us is nothing compared to where it will take us if we remain silent.

Now, you might be saying, Isn’t it unfair to base a characterization of all Christians on the ugly remarks of a few TV hucksters?  To you they might be TV hucksters, but to Christians, these guys are (or, in the case of Falwell, were) leaders.  These men represent Christianity in the United States — throughout the world!  How do you think they got so rich and powerful?  Off of bake sales?  Kino winnings?  No.  They got rich off the loving, supportive and generous — not to mention tax-free — donations of their followers.

If these men do not represent the thoughts and feelings of Christians everywhere, then when they make these appallingly hateful and lunatic statements, where is the outrage of Christians who don’t want to be represented by them?  Why haven’t throngs of Christians denounced them?  Why hasn’t the money stopped flooding in?  Why haven’t their television ratings plummeted?

That hasn’t happened because these men and others like them do represent the thoughts and feelings of Christians everywhere.  And we are supposed to say nothing about it.  We have been convinced that it is somehow wrong to criticize this because faith and belief are such sacred things.  And if we do criticize it, then the Christians cry persecution.

Try having a conversation with a Christian about the words of Falwell or Robertson or any of the other tyrannical, homophobic, mysoginistic, hatemongering greedbeasts who represent them.  The Christian will always inject his BUT into the conversation.  Christians have a lot of very big BUTS and they use them as dividing lines.  Before the BUT, you will be told what the Christian thinks you want to hear in an effort to soften you up and get comfy with you, to make you think you’re sympatico.  Then after the BUT, the Christian will tell you exactly what he thinks.  The latter always completely contradicts the former.  It goes something like this:

“I certainly don’t agree with Pat Robertson about the earthquake in Haiti and I think it was wrong of him to say that.  BUT.  He has every right to say it because the Constitution guarantees it, and after all, Robertson has sent a lot of food and money to Haiti to help those poor people.  What have you done for them?  And when you think about it, he’s not too far off the mark.  I mean, historically, he’s right, isn’t he?  Where does voodoo come from?  Haiti!  And that’s Satanic!  I think you just have a problem with religion, that’s all.  I don’t know what’s made you so bitter, but you shouldn’t try to impose your angry personal feelings about religion on others.  Christian-bashing is prejudicial, but these days, Christians are the only people it’s okay to hate in America, and I think it’s terrible.  A person’s religious beliefs are personal and deeply felt and you should show them respect.  Why don’t you focus on all the good things Pat Robertson has done instead of just pointing out his mistakes?”

Good things?  How many good things can possibly be done by someone who says the things Pat Robertson says?  And on the outside chance that he is doing something good while hating women and homosexuals and everybody who isn’t a Christian and drawing on his formidable resources to limit or even abolish the rights of those people, does it really matter?

And there’s that word “respect” again.  We are told, over and over, that we owe our respect to the religious.  But how respectful are they?  Do you see any respect for fellow human beings in the quotes from Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson?  Was Robertson being respectful of others when, on January 14, 1991, he said on his TV show:

“You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing.  Nonsense.  I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.  I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don’t have to be nice to them.”

Was Jerry Falwell being respectful when he wrote in his book Listen, America!:

“The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief.  They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.”

Are these people who have respect for others?  If the word “respect” can be defined as “bigotry and hatred shown to all who do not conform to your beliefs,” then yes, they are abundantly respectful!  But what dictionary gives that as the definition of the word?  In the above quotes, both Robertson and Falwell were talking about other religions!  If they don’t show cowering respect for the religious beliefs of others, then why the hell should anyone else?

Respect is a two-way street and it needs to be earned in both directions.  I don’t know about you, but I refuse to show respect for people who speak, write, support or believe the words spoken by these men, or any other words like them.

Christians are quite convinced that they are being persecuted at every turn.  Here’s Pat Robertson again, being interviewed by Molly Ivins in 1993:

“Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians.  It’s no different.  It is the same thing.  It is happening all over again.  It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians.  Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today.  More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”

Now, you know as well as I do that Christians in America are not being rounded up and ushered into concentration camps.  No one is giving them blankets infected with smallpox.  They are not being tortured and slaughtered.  They are not even being abused or discriminated against.  In fact, every right they have ever had in the United States remains untouched and fully intact — they just want to have more rights while others have fewer.  If anyone is persecuting anyone, I think the above quotes from Robertson make it quite clear as to who is being victimized by whom.  He says women are to be subjugated and they are to like it; he says feminists and lesbians are child killing witches; he says homosexuals are Satanists and child predators and if we treat them like human beings, horrible natural disasters will result; he says the Constitution is for Christians only, that only Christians are capable of properly running the country, and everyone else is anti-American.  And yet he claims that he and his fellow Christians are the ones being persecuted?

Come on, people — did we just fall off the idiot truck yesterday?

Robertson’s claim that Christians are being persecuted in America is, quite frankly, a bald-faced lie.  But it’s a lie told often, and it’s catching on.  And it’s not the only lie — there’s also the lie that America’s founders were all devout Christians, that America is a Christian nation, founded by Christians, for Christians.  These lies, too — despite all the proof available to refute them — continue to be repeated, and they, too, are catching on with an increasingly distracted public that is sadly ignorant of its nation’s history.

Joseph Goebbels, who knew a thing or two about influencing the masses, said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Pat Robertson?  Meet Joseph Goebbels.  Oh, I’m sorry — you’ve already met?  Great!  Then I’ll leave you two alone so you can catch up.

Now, you might be saying, Sure, they’re nuts, but they have every right to believe whatever they want to believe.  They’re harmless.  Just ignore them.

Harmless?  Just ignore them?  Really?

While interviewing syndicated columnist Joel Mowbray, author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Endangers National Security, Robertson said:

“I read your book.  When you (the reader) get through, you say, ‘If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that’s the answer.’  I mean, you get through this, and you say, ‘We’ve got to blow that thing up.’”

Foggy Bottom is a Washington, D.C. neighborhood where the United States Department of State is located.  The term “Foggy Bottom” is frequently used to refer to the State Department.  So let me make sure this is clear –- in the above statement, Pat Robertson, on national television, advocated the destruction of the United States Department of State with a “nuclear device.”  If you or I did that, we would, at the very least, be on a watch list so fast that all the Dramamine in the world wouldn’t keep us from puking.  But Pat Robertson is a man of god, right?  He represents the biggest religion in the United States, so to criticize this remark would disrespect his religious beliefs and offend Christians throughout the country.  And we just can’t do that.  Right?

On his TV show, Robertson once said the following about Islam:

“I want to say it again and again and again:  Islam is not a religion, it’s a political system meant on — bent on world domination, not a religion.  It masquerades as a religion, but the religion covers a worldwide attempt to exercise power and to subjugate the world into their way of thinking.”

Now read the following Pat Robertson quotes and tell me — doesn’t his description of Islam above apply just as accurately to his description of Christianity in America?

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say this very clearly.  If the people of the United States — all across America, in their churches and in their civic groups and in their legislatures — decide that they’re not going to allow the Supreme Court to dominate their lives in the fashion that it has been in this nation, the Supreme Court does not have the power to change that.  They are not going to be able to overturn the will of a hundred million American people.  And I think the time has come that we throw off the shackles of this dictatorship that’s been imposed upon us.  We had a war in 1776 that set us free from the shackles of the arbitrary rule of the British crown … And I think the time has come that we do that.”
– The 700 Club, quoted in Conrad Goeringer’s article “A Not-So-Modest Proposal – Post the Commandments, Spare Not the Rod”

“We have enough votes to run the country.  And when the people say, ‘We’ve had enough,’ we are going to take over.”
– in a speech given to the April, 1980 “Washington for Jesus” rally

“We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares.  We are training people to be effective — to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures, and to key positions in political parties. … By the end of this decade, if we work and give and organize and train, the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political organization in America.”
– a July 4, 1991, fundraising letter

These are not the words of a man who wants to spread the love of Jesus Christ.  These are the words of a man whose religion is nothing more than a disguise for a political system bent on dominating and subjugating others.  These are the words of a revolutionary who wants to overthrow a free and secular nation, abolish its Constitution, and establish a theocracy.  These are words of sedition.

But we can’t criticize these words because they wear the sacred cloaks of religion?  We aren’t allowed to stand up and say, This is wrong!  This is anti-American! because it might offend the faithful believer in the exercise of his constitutional freedom of religion?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I call bullshit on that.

The same Constitution that gives these people the right to say these horrible, hateful things also gives everyone the right to denounce and condemn those things.

But there’s that unwritten law, that unspoken agreement that we won’t say anything negative — anything at all — about the sacred, constitutionally protected religious beliefs of others.  We are to respect it!

You don’t want to offend anyone?  You don’t want to make waves?  You don’t want to exercise your constitutional right of free speech?  Fine.  Then don’t complain when, someday in the not too distant future, the government tithes you as well as taxes you.  Don’t come whining to me when prayer in schools becomes mandatory and your kids come home from school to watch reruns of The Flintstones because their science teacher says it’s a documentary and it’s part of a homework assignment.  You’ll have no room to gripe when your favorite sex act becomes illegal because it offends god.

Because that is what these people want.

Silence may be golden, but in this case it’s deadly.  Remember what Jefferson said about the priest being “hostile to liberty” and always being “in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”  And remember what he said about ridicule being “the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions” and the only way to preserve “the purity of religion.”  If Jefferson were somehow able to rise from the grave and see how “free argument, raillery and even ridicule” regarding religion have been smothered into silence, and see how severely religion has been allowed to encroach on the freedoms of this secular nation, he would simply drop dead and have to be buried again.

The silence is being broken finally, thanks to the work and encouragement of great writers and thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others.  But it’s happening too slowly.  America is experiencing trying times right now — economically, socially and politically.  Times like these make any country vulnerable to drastic change — often not for the better.  Times like these are often irresistible to those who want to dominate and subjugate, especially when the people being dominated have been convinced that it’s wrong to speak out and resist the very tools those dominators use to achieve their goals.  We can’t afford to be silent right now.

Speak up.  It’s your Constitution, too.

Mother Teresa is considered by many to be a saint for her supposed selfless dedication in the service of humanity. However, some have accused her of being a rather mean and ghoulish character and running an orphanage where children were maltreated and abused. Some also accuse her of taking money that was meant for the poor and funneling it back to the Vatican for her own personal recognition.(Abusing Children Mother Teresa Style by Atuna Dey)

In Christopher Hitchens opinion, the reason that Mother Teresa is so highly revered amongst not only the Catholic community, but also other religious and even non-religion groups and individuals is:

Partly because that impression is so widespread. But also because the sheer fact that this is considered unquestionable is a sign of what we are up against, namely the problem of credulity. One of the most salient examples of people’s willingness to believe anything if it is garbed in the appearance of holiness is the uncritical acceptance of the idea of Mother Teresa as a saint by people who would normally be thinking – however lazily – in a secular or rational manner. In other words, in every sense it is an unexamined claim.

In his book The Missionary Postion, Hitchens labels Mother Teresa ” the “Ghoul of Calcutta” a “fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud” amongst other things, and there are others who share that same viewpoint for good reasons. Unfortunately most sheeple people will not even bother to listen to or consider these accusations.

In his above-mentioned post on his blog Atanu Dey on India’s Development, Dey writes:

What exactly is my main grouse with M. Teresa? I think that she was evil. She manipulated others and cheated them, and she did so on the backs of Kolkata’s miserable. She was the most famous “beggar lord” – a person who makes a living by taking the money that people give to beggars and using that money for some other purpose. In her case, it is suspected that the money is funneled to the Vatican so that she would get on the fast tract to being canonized.

And now we have this story reported in the news recently:

Light the Empire State Building to honor Mother Teresa, or else?

Catholic forces in New York City are not-so-quietly mobilizing a massive petition drive, protest, lobbying effort and media campaign to attempt to force the owner of the Empire State Building to light the building blue and white on August 26 in honor of Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday. Their efforts have even infiltrated the City Council of New York City, in the form of a resolution which was referred to committee at the council meeting on June 9.

The City Council resolution introduced by Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. would force the building owner to honor the New York City Catholic League’s lighting request.

According to the New York Post, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was infuriated by the owner’s refusal to light the building to honor Teresa. Quinn said: “I just think it’s a really wrongheaded decision.”

Anthony E. Malkin, who privately owns the Empire State Building, said the building “has a specific policy against any other lighting for religious figures or requests by religions and religious organizations.”

The New York Post (June 9) featured a full-page cover story and photo of the Empire State Building with a huge headline: “THE EVIL EMPIRE.” The Catholic League plans to demonstrate outside the Empire State Building on August 26 and has collected 40,000 signatures for a petition in support of the Mother Teresa lighting.

These Catholics are as bad, if not worse than the evangelical protestants when it comes to their lack of consideration for freedom of and freedom from religion. The building is privately owned. The owner can choose to do whatever he wants with this demand. He can honor it, or ignore it. And we know when there is “religious uprising” when they can’t have their way, there could be violence. They say so themselves.

The president of the Catholic League griped: “I think that too many Catholics have fallen asleep at the wheel. It’s time for people, the rank and file to say enough is enough. I hope it’s going to be nonviolent, I wouldn’t encourage violence but I know there’s a lot of anger.”

So they are pissed off because a private building owner will not light his building to honor a certain denominations religious icon, and a ghoulish one at that. What’s really mind-boggling is that the city hall is getting involved instead of just standing firm that it is not their business to promote or make special accommodations for any religion.

Speaker Quinn has additionally joined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to declare August 26 a “day of service in honor of Mother Teresa.”

Quinn said: “The Empire State Building does not have final say on how Mother Teresa’s life should be honored. That’s why we in the Council are inviting all New Yorkers on August 26th, light up their own windows, homes, businesses in blue and white as a tribute to her. Lighting up the Empire State Building as a tribute to her would be great. But honoring such an inspiring woman does not have to be limited to a single building.”

Fine, light up your own damn windows any way you choose, honor and worship the Ghoul of Calcutta if you choose to on your own property, in your own deluded way. But should the city council be promoting or encouraging such a thing?

“It is inappropriate and unseemly for city council representatives to use their office to promote a denominational religious figure such as the nun, Mother Teresa,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation said.

I agree, it is inappropriate. Once again, a religious community has no respect for the separation of church and state and is trying to bully a private citizen to get its way using elected government officials.

As the article states, “August 26 has long been celebrated as Women’s Equality Day by feminists as the date in 1920 when U.S. women finally won the right to vote, enshrined as the suffrage amendment — the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Let’s keep August 26th “Celebrate Women’s Equality Day”, Not birth of Mother Teresa, Ghoul of Calcutta day.

An atheist activist in Illinois is taking action against Friends of Bald Knob Cross which has accepted $20,000 in state money to renovate their execution symbol monument near Alto Pass, Illinois. This may seem like a trivial matter, a little thing, but stopping the little things helps to maintain separation of church and state and prevents the need for bigger, more expensive and more difficult lawsuits down the road.

Atheist threatens to sue over state funds spent on cross

A Chicago area atheist activist isn’t happy that $20,000 in state money is being used to renovate an 11-story cross at southern Illinois’ highest point — and he wants the landmark’s overseers to give the money back or be sued.

Rob Sherman has told the Friends of Bald Knob Cross that a religious symbol getting taxpayer money is inappropriate.
A member of the group’s administrative board told Sherman it is considering his request.

If it decides not to return the funds, Sherman said he’ll file a lawsuit to force them to give up the money.

“I could just run it to court and drop you off a copy of the lawsuit, but litigation is expensive,” Sherman said.

The 47-year-old cross near Alto Pass is undergoing a renovation that’s expected to be completed this summer.

Sherman has sued over religion before, successfully challenging a state law requiring a daily “moment of silence” in Illinois public schools.

– Associated Press

We have to constantly keep an eye on these sneaky god botherers.

After much consideration about the upcoming “Draw Muhammad Day” tomorrow, I have decided to join others like Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, Vjack from Atheist Revolution, NoGodBlog and many others and post an invitation for those of you who wish to participate.

This action is not merely to rile up and piss off peace-loving Muslims. This is to stand up to those who are attempting to create a global theocracy and do not respect freedom of speech and expression except when it comes to their violent and oftentimes lethal public protests against any criticism of their religion and beliefs.

As for the risk of violent response? Here is a quote from NoGodBlog:

If it makes Muslims uncomfortable, maybe they should consider why they pray to a god that can’t even stomach being drawn, let alone being criticized. Maybe they should consider how barbaric it is that everyone taking part in Draw Muhammad Day is endangering lives, and risking terrorism. Maybe they should consider, just for a moment, that their religion is indeed primitive.

Definitely not a religion of peace if their response is going to be one of death threats and violence.

If we respect their beliefs and shut up like they want everyone in the world to do, then we are giving in. We may as well just shut down our websites, go back in the atheist closet and just let them have their way. And it won’t stop with just curtailing our freedom of speech. They will want to take more, and more of our freedoms away till Sharia Law rules the planet. We would not tolerate this from the Christians or any other religion. But because fundamentalist Islam threatens us with violent acts, many are too afraid to criticize them at all anymore. Like in the video of Vilks’university lecture being shut down in Sweden. If we keep giving in what will happen to our world?

There are many who truly intend to make this whole world a theocracy, and those who wish to make friends with those who would not lift a finger to stop it are merely helping the fundamentalists’ cause. As we saw on South Park, and heard from my warm-and-fuzzy friends, it appears some wish us to roll over and let them win. So we can’t mention Muhammad or show a drawing without fear — does anyone really think it ends there?

Of course it won’t. Like with the fundamentalist Christians, they want it all their way.

“What the American public doesn’t know is what makes them the American Public.”
– Zalinksy (Dan Aykroyd) in Tommy Boy

“Ha-ha-ha!  You said ‘nuclear.’  It’s ‘nucular,’ dummy.  The ‘s’ is silent.” – Peter Griffin in Family Guy

“The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.”

Those are the words of Thomas Jefferson.  He knew a thing or two about what makes this country work, and he repeated one of those things over and over and over.  He says it again here:

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”

And again here:

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

If Jefferson were alive today, I think he would quickly come to one unavoidable conclusion:  We have a problem.  A big problem.

The word “elite” is thrown around a lot these days.  It is used sneeringly, with disdain.  A significant portion of the American population uses the word “elite” to indicate that a person or group is pompous, arrogant, overeducated, and most importantly, wrong.  It is a derogatory term meant to disparage its target.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines “elite”: “The choice part; cream; the best of a class.”

Here is Sarah Palin talking with Brian Williams on NBC News and giving her definition of “elite”:  “Oh, I guess just people who think they’re better than anyone else.”

According to Merriam-Webster, “elite” describes someone who excels, someone who is the best at what they do.  According to Sarah Palin, “elite” describes … what?  People who disagree with her?  People who criticize her?  From the sound of it, Palin wants you to think that the elite – the people who have worked hard to excel in their field – think they’re better than you.  In other words, people who are smarter than you should not be trusted because you have all you need to know as long as you … I don’t know, watch Fox News and read your bible?  Actually, it doesn’t matter what Palin’s definition means – what matters is that it resonates with her target audience, with her base.  Who are they?  Well, they’re people who like the sound of Sarah Palin’s definition of “elite.”  It rings true to them – He’s really good at something?  Really smart?  Then he thinks he’s better than me!

Never mind that her definition has absolutely nothing to do with the word’s actual meaning.  Her definition – which she is far from alone in applying to the word – transforms “elite” into a label for people who are … well, knowledgeable; people who tend to point out inconsistencies of logic; people who are prone to be articulate and well-spoken.  Palin herself is none of those things.  Neither are most of the people who make up her base.  Those who are those things are considered suspect by Palin and her many admirers.  They are not to be trusted.  Their knowledge and abilities are really nothing more than arrogance.  They are rejected, mocked and smeared.  And keep in mind that Sarah Palin was the Republican vice presidential candidate in the election of 2008.  Keep in mind that she fills auditoriums when she speaks.  Keep in mind that Palin’s book Going Rogue sold 300,000 copies it’s first day.  None of those things would be true if Sarah Palin were alone in the opinions she holds.

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States of America, said, “Well, the jury is still out on evolution, you know.”  He also said, “The bird flu virus could evolve to a form that can be spread easily from human to human.”

In a 2007 debate of Republican presidential candidates, the following question was asked:  “Do you believe in evolution?”  Three candidates – Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo – said they did not.  Those three men were not elected to their offices in a vacuum.  They have a lot of like-minded supporters.

According to a Gallup Poll, fully one third of all Americans believe that every word of the bible is literally true and accurate.  That means they believe, among other things, that animals may talk, that a bush can burn without being consumed by the flames, that the sun can be stopped in the sky during its rotation of the earth, that eight people repopulated the entire planet after a global flood, that it’s sometimes okay for a man to have sex with and impregnate his own daughters, that a woman can get pregnant and have a child while still remaining a virgin, and that people sometimes come back from the dead and live and function as they did before dying.  This requires them to reject science whenever it contradicts these beliefs.  It also requires them to reject anyone who does not share these beliefs.  Don’t believe me?  Watch this political campaign advertisement.

That campaign ad pointed out that Bradley Byrne does not hold the beliefs listed above, but does accept the scientific theory of evolution and does not think that every word of the bible is literally true and accurate – and it pointed all of that out in an effort to discredit him.

America’s founding fathers repeatedly made clear their conviction that America was a secular nation that neither endorses nor enforces any religion, but allows all religions, or no religion.  The evidence of this is abundant.  There’s George Washington’s letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in which he wrote, “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”  There’s the Treaty of Tripoli, endorsed by Washington and ratified by John Adams, which states without ambiguity, “The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian religion.”  There’s the Constitution of the United States, in which the only time religion of any kind is mentioned is to prohibit it from government.  There is more, too, plenty more.

And then there’s this.

Despite the abundant evidence that they are flat wrong, a hefty segment of the American population shares Sarah Palin’s opinion in the video linked above that America is “a Christian nation” that merely “tolerates” other faiths out of the goodness of its heart and views these other faiths as inferior.  These people will passionately argue that America was founded on Christian principles by Christian people so Christians can live here in a nation of Jesus-loving Christianity, that the United States is the nation that Jesus built.  I was recently in an argument about this with just such a Christian, and when I pointed out that nowhere does the Constitution mention god or Jesus Christ, he said, “Yes it does!  The Constitution is dated this way:  ‘In the Year of Our Lord!’  And our lord is Jesus Christ, the son of god!”

Are you beginning to see why “elite” has become such a dirty word in America?  It has replaced the once popularly maligned word “intellectual” – because, one might presume, it is shorter and easier to spell.  Intellectuals are usually the early targets of any dictatorship as it comes into power (it seems dictators don’t like the “elite” any more than Sarah Palin and her fans).  Why kill them?  Noam Chomsky answers that question:  “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.”

Those damned pesky elite intellectuals – always asking questions, and worse yet, often answering them!  They’re so troublesome and annoying to corrupt leaders who don’t like it when their actions are criticized or their motives questioned.

In an interview with Cincinnati Magazine, musician, writer, poet, actor, talk show host and punk rock legend Henry Rollins put it well:

How can you argue with someone who applauds when Sarah Palin says we need a real commander-in-chief, not some scholar?  Oh, I see, we don’t like intellectuals.  We don’t want a smart guy as president because he won’t start a war with Iran.  We like the dumb guy better, who couldn’t pronounce any leader’s name and couldn’t find a country on a map; who struggled with the English language like a guy trying to hold on to a live eel.  Yeah, that’s, you know, the coarsening of the intellect.  Who feared smart people?  Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Putin … interesting.  And Palin.  And her flock. “I like Sarah because she’s like me and she’s a good person.”  Well, what about her policies?  “Oh, I don’t know about them, but she’s a good person and that’s why she should be president.”

Of course, here in America, we can’t go around killing intellectuals the way Hitler, Mao and Stalin did … can we?  No, not really.  It wouldn’t look good.  It would be all over the news, Oprah would disapprove, and the media might even make a “reality” TV show about it.

Of course, just because we can’t kill them doesn’t mean we can’t assassinate them in the arena of public opinion.  Listen to right-wing radio talk show host Michael Savage on any day of the week and you will hear him venomously refer to President Obama as, “That university professor!”  As if it’s an epithet on a par with calling him the N-word.  Listen to any of the right-wing radio talkers and you will see how contemptuous they are of well-educated people who’ve devoted their lives to a particular field.  Former Saturday Night Live cast member Dennis Miller, once one of America’s wittiest, most intelligent and acerbic comedians, whose material was peppered with a wide variety of intellectually challenging references that ran the gamut of art, science, pop culture, and history, now hosts a right-wing radio talk show on which he says, multiple times every day, “I’m not much for no fancy book-learnin’.”

But if you think this rejection of intelligence, knowledge and excellence happens only on the right, you’re mistaken.  This past week, movie actor and vocal leftist John Cusack (whom I follow on Twitter) posted this message (I am reproducing it here exactly as he wrote it):

hope we can believe in– ban the ivy league! i kid but not really… lets see what happens when the” best and brightest” dont rule–

Let me repeat that last part again: “Let’s see what happens when the ‘best and brightest’ don’t rule.”  Yes, let’s shove the best and brightest aside and go down the ladder a ways to find our leaders.  Maybe this country would be better off if we put it in the hands of people with no historical frame of reference, people who don’t reach decisions through critical thought and reasoning but rather according to their religious beliefs and ancient religious texts written thousands of years ago by ignorant, superstitious men.  How would that be, huh?  Can you imagine a time when that’s the kind of thinking we use to choose our leaders?

Oh, wait … we’re already there.  Are you scared yet?

In 2008, Susan Jacoby was interviewed by Truthout.org.  Jacoby was a reporter for the Washington Post and the program director of the Center for Inquiry in New York City.  She is now the author of several books, including The Age of American Unreason.  She discussed the common attitude toward knowledge, intelligence and excellence in America and gave the following example of this phenomenon on the left side of the aisle:

At the end of the primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain endorsed a gas tax holiday for Americans this summer. Every economist, both liberal and conservative, said this would do nothing to help matters.  And when Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, “Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?” she said, “Oh that’s elite thinking.”

Now to say that economists have nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is like saying that you don’t ask musicians about music; you don’t ask scientists about science.  It’s not just an attack on a political idea; it’s an attack on knowledge itself. … Of course, she doesn’t believe it for a minute. It shows that a lot of politicians think they have to play to ignorance and label anything that goes against received opinion as elitism.

We live in a country in which many brilliant, well-educated people feel they have to play dumb in order to get elected.  They feel the need to pander to the most ignorant among us to get votes, to throw their own knowledge and intelligence out the window and say things they don’t really mean or believe in order to get votes.  And do you know why they do it?  Because it works.

In the same interview, Jacoby gives another example of the frightening way knowledge has been rejected and ignorance embraced:

I’ll give you an example of how stupid this country has become.  I’m one of the village atheists on Faith, a panel sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek.  In a recent post I wrote that when I was 7 years old, I was taken by my mom to visit a friend who had been stricken by polio and was in an iron lung. Polio has basically been eradicated, but I grew up when polio was still a real threat to children, before the Salk vaccine.  This childhood friend had been playing and running only three weeks before, and now he was in an iron lung. And I asked my mom, “Why would God let something like that happen?”  And to her credit, instead of giving me some moronic answer, my mother said, “I don’t know.”

After posting this on Faith, I received an e-mail saying, “All childhood memories are unreliable.  We construct narratives to justify what we now think.”

Of course it would be stupid if I’d said I became an atheist at the age of 7.  But I hadn’t said that, only that I remembered this childhood experience as making me begin to question what I’d been taught.  The whole tone of the e-mail was that nobody’s memory about anything could possibly be accurate – no fact could possibly be true.

… One of the points I make in my book is that unreason pervades our culture. It’s not just a matter of right-wing religious fundamentalism. There are all kinds of unreason and suspicion of evidence on both the Right and the Left.

We often hear about the vast promise of technology to educate and enlighten us, to put oceans of information at our very fingertips.  But how can all that information be useful … if we have no frame of reference to apply to it?  Susan Jacoby again:

In my talks to people, I often mention a statistic from the National Constitution Center that almost half of Americans can’t name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student stood up at a university in California and said, “That doesn’t matter because you can just look it up on the Internet.” But if you don’t know what the First Amendment is in the first place, you don’t know what question to ask the Web.  Garbage in, garbage out. The Web’s only as good as our ability to ask questions of it. The ability to access information means nothing if you don’t have an educated framework of knowledge to fit it into.

But aren’t we at least smart enough to know that we don’t know a lot?  How could we possibly get ourselves into this situation?  Susan Jacoby says:

A fundamentalist is one who believes in a literal interpretation of sacred books, and a third of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.  That’s about 10 times more than any other developed country in the world.  It’s entirely possible to be a religious believer and to accept science, but not if you’re a literal religious believer.  You can’t believe that the world was literally created in six days, and be open to modern knowledge.

There’s also something else:  We’ve always had more faith in technology than other countries. One of our problems with computers is that we believe in technological solutions to what are essentially non-technological problems.  Not knowing is a non-technological problem.  The idea that the Web is an answer to knowing nothing is wrong, but it’s something that Americans – with our history of believing in technology as the solution to everything – are particularly susceptible to.

Why is it that such a large percentage of the Americans read every word of the bible literally?  Jacoby again.

That’s in my previous book, Freethinkers.  One reason, oddly enough, is our absolute separation of church and state.  In secular Europe – as it’s often called sneeringly by people like Justice Antonin Scalia – religious belief and belief in political systems were united.  So if you opposed the government, you also had to oppose religion.  That wasn’t true in America because we had separation of church and state.  Many forms of religious belief survived in America, because you could believe anything you wanted and still not be opposed to your government.

The freedom of religion in America gives us more freedom, it’s true – but it also gives us more religion, and that freedom provides no balance whatsoever.  People are free to believe whatever idiotic nonsense happens to appeal to them – and they do.  But shouldn’t education provide a balance for this?  Sure, our educational system is a bit problematic these days, but it’s still the best in the world, because America is number one – right?  Jacoby says:

… Americans are unwilling to look at how really bad our educational system is because we’ve all been propagandized with the idea that we’re number one.  That may have been true after World War II, but not anymore.  The idea that we’re number one and special and better than everybody else is a very powerful factor in American life, and it prevents us from examining certain respects in which we’re not number one.

Is Jacoby exaggerating?  Is the educational system really that bad?  After all, America is number one … right?  Well, let’s see.  According to the December 12, 2004 issue of the New York Times, the United States ranks 49th in the world in literacy, 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy and American workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that businesses in the U.S. spend $30 billion a year on remedial training.  According to the January 7, 2005 issue of The Week, 20% of all Americans think the sun orbits the earth, and 17% believe the earth orbits the sun once every day.  On page 78 of Jeremy Rifkin’s book The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, he notes that the International Adult Literacy Survey found “that Americans with less than nine years of education ’score worse than virtually all of the other countries.’”

If you don’t believe any of this and think I’m exaggerated or my information is incorrect, please watch this video, which is a few years old, but still quite relevant.  And be afraid.  Be very afraid.

From the time that I was a boy, I watched my father retreat from the world because the world refused to conform to his opinions and beliefs.  When he was in the sixth grade, his teacher wanted him to give an oral book report in front of the class.  He didn’t want to.  The teacher insisted.  So Dad threw a tantrum, walked away from school halfway through the sixth grade with his signature I’ll show them attitude and never looked back.  He went through life with that same attitude, and the older he got, the angrier he got, because he found that his attitude was not well received.  When I was a child, he used to come home from work angry every day – everyone else was stupid, everyone was out to get him, everyone else was to blame for all of his problems.  After having back surgery, he applied for disability and got it.  He wasn’t disabled – he did plenty of hard work around the house – but he no longer had to face a world of people who knew more than he, who thought more clearly than he, who refused to tell him he was right about everything when he was right about virtually nothing, and who refused to tolerate his tantrums when this fact became clear.  He continued to retreat from the world until he almost never left the house, even to go to church (he was quite religious and was fond of wildly misquoting the bible he never read).  The excuse he invented was, “I don’t like being around crowds.  It’s my nerves.”  My mother played along.  The little house in which they lived became his entire world, and in that world, he knew everything, he was always right, and everyone else was crazy and ignorant and full of crap on every conceivable topic.  And if you didn’t believe him, just ask Mom.  She would nod and smile and say, “That’s what Dad has always said.”  As if always saying it makes it right.

If you had a discussion with him about anything and you happened to disagree with him, you didn’t simply hold a differing opinion – you were saying that he was wrong.  Opinions weren’t just opinions to him because in any conversation, someone had to be right and someone had to be wrong – and he had to be right.  As a result, he walked away from every conversation by angrily snarling his favorite words:  “I know what I know!”

Dad used to pronounce the word “realty” as “reality.”  This drove me crazy.  Finally, I pointed out to him that he was mispronouncing the word.  “Realty refers to the sale of real estate,” I said.  “Reality is a different word and has an entirely different meaning.”

“But I’ve always pronounced it ‘reality,’” he said.  My family was big on the idea that repeating something a lot made it true.

“I know you have, but it’s always been wrong.”

“Well, I prefer to say it my way,” he said.

“Then no one will know what you’re talking about, Dad.”

“That’s their problem.”

I wanted to say, No, Dad, that’s your problem, but I said nothing, and if you’d known my dad, you would know why.

Life in America is starting to bear a terrifying resemblance to life with my parents.  I’m 47 years old, have been married to my wife for 20 years, and yet it seems that, with increasing frequency, when I engage others in conversation on topical subjects, I feel like a little boy again trying to have a conversation with my father.  This is due, I think, to a combination of phenomena that have created a perfect storm of willful ignorance in America.

Fully one third of the population believes in the infallible accuracy of a book that claims it’s okay to abuse or even kill your children, that seas part so people can walk across them, that women are unclean during their menstrual cycle and everything they touch during that time must be burned, that virgins have babies and people rise from the dead.  These people in turn reject any scientific information – sometimes even evidence that is right in front of them – that contradicts this book.  And let’s face it, folks – if you believe all that not only without a speck of evidence to support it but in the face of hard, cold proof to the contrary, then there is no limit on what you will believe.

We live in an era that is bloated with information.  Once upon a time, there were only three, four, maybe five television channels available to most people.  Now there are hundreds.  News channels now have 24 hours to fill every day, which has made everything “news” – the latest celebutard drug overdose, political sex scandals, missing puppies and updates on American Idol contestants are now given the attention and significance once reserved for national policy decisions, wars and natural disasters.  “Reality” TV has invaded every area of television – the major networks, MTV, cooking channels, it’s everywhere – presenting as “reality” the very worst elements of humanity.  Selfish, arrogant, angry, deceptive, promiscuous, ignorant, small-minded people get their own TV shows today and are held up as celebrities, and people tune in to follow their exploits.  They’re soon popping up on shows other than their own – talk shows, panel shows, “news” shows, and in magazines where they pose for glossy, glamorous photo shoots.  They become the topic of watercooler coversations in workplaces around the country.  These people – the stars of “reality” TV shows who have, as a result, become TV stars, celebrities, and the subject of stories that pass for “news” these days – have rapidly become cultural touchstones for us.

On top of that, our culture has become dominated by things like Twitter, Facebook and cell phone texting, all of which have positive aspects.  But a significant portion of our population has come to believe that it’s very important that everyone know exactly what we’re doing at every moment and that we share every little thought that pops into our heads.  It has given us a sense of self-importance we did not have before, the feeling that the minutiae of our lives is somehow special and of great interest to others.  Hey, if those unpleasant, obnoxious, proudly stupid people on The Jersey Shore can have their own TV show, then I can be a celebrity, too, right?  We have become celebrities in our own minds, filled with a false sense of our own importance.

Add to all of the above another factor, one that perhaps does the most damage.  Just as wealthy, pampered celebrities tend to surround themselves with “yes men” who tell those celebrities only what they want to hear, it is now possible for us to structure our own personal lives to confirm only those things we believe about ourselves and our world.  You’re a Christian conservative who believes that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles to be ruled by Christians?  Then watch Fox News and CBN and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham and go online and read Newsmax and WorldNetDaily (both of which have a long history of outright lies).  You believe that the scientific theory of evolution is a lie and the world was created in six days by a silent, invisible god?  Well, there are plenty of well-funded organizations that agree with you and are working hard to spread the word that your belief has scientific support and is being unfairly rejected by the American educational system in favor of its wicked, godless teachings.  In no time at all, you will be absolutely convinced that you are right about everything!  You don’t even have to listen to anything that disagrees with you!  After all, you have TV shows and reporters and news websites and celebrities and shiny organizations to back up everything you believe.  Suddenly, all those who disagree with you become the “elite” – people who think they’re better than you, people who think they know more than you.  What more do you need to know other than the fact that you’re right!

Now, ignorance and stupidity are not only allowed, they are actively encouraged and nurtured!

During the eight years that George W. Bush was president, I nearly pulled my hair out every time I heard him speak.  Whenever he opened his mouth and words came out, he butchered the language, said appallingly ignorant things, and made it very clear that he just wasn’t thinking clearly, as if all the wrong synapses were firing at all the wrong times (“Is our children learning?” … “You need to put food on your family.” … “The jury is still out on evolution.”) Whenever I openly complained about this, it seemed there was always someone who spoke up and said some variation of the following:  “Leave him alone!  At least he’s not one of those people who says everything exactly right all the time, like he’s better than everybody else, like knows more than everybody else!  He talks like a normal person!  He talks like me!”

Every time they said that, what I heard them saying inside my head was, I like him because he’s dumb like me! I heard my father saying, I know what I know! I heard him saying, That’s their problem.

No.  It’s our problem.  It’s the entire country’s problem.  And it’s a problem that is rapidly getting worse, metastasizing like a cancer.  Thomas Jefferson was right – the functional operation of this country as it was conceived by the founders is absolutely dependent on an informed electorate, on reasoning and informed intelligence.  All of that is disintegrating right before our very eyes.

Don’t wait for the educational system to fix this.  Don’t wait for the government to correct it.  It will only get worse unless we start doing something about it ourselves, individually, one at a time.  Educate yourself and stay informed.  Think – and think critically.  Turn off the television and radio and stop listening to the many talking heads who want to do your thinking for you.  Go to the library or a book store, do some reading.  Seek out information and opinions that challenge you and will keep you from saying, I know what I know.  Examine each issue thoughtfully, using reason as your guide, not devotion to a religious belief or allegiance to a political party or the popular opinions of our time.  Keep in mind that the majority opinion is seldom the right one – that the majority once wanted black people and women to remain second class citizens without voices or rights.  Arm yourself with the facts, then speak up when you hear those facts being trampled or twisted.  Don’t remain silent in the face of willful ignorance and disinformation.  Point it out, correct it, and then denounce it.  If we don’t do that with frequency and conviction, we will find ourselves traveling backward in time with terrifying speed, and we will land in a place ruled by ignorance, superstition and anger.  We’re halfway there right now.  In that place, there will be no freedom, no individuality, no thinking.  There will only be the constant repetition of the words, I know what I know … even if what is known is nothing at all.

As some of you may be aware, I’m currently working for the 2010 Census Bureau (albeit temporarily, alas). It’s a job. I knock on doors, and ask a few questions, some of which are slightly intrusive. The US Census, which has been going on for some time now (in fact, since 1790). In California, we’re in danger of losing a representative, and the process in question renders demographic statistics that allow the government to allocate funding to specific programs.

In the course of centuries, it’s grown more diverse and complex. It’d be a good guess that only white folks were counted, nobody knew how many Native Americans were about (not that they got money for anything anyways), the Chinese were just those subhumans who built the railroads…you can fill in the blanks. We have more of everyone now: there are transgender folks to count, and America is literally resembling more the melting pot that it was claimed to be in metaphor only.

There are, of course, people wailing “Foul!” at the incursion of government’s seeming nosiness. The above video is one such, Jerry Day, who demonstrates a complete lack of journalistic integrity.

Why do I say this? Watch the video. He does a lousy Andy Rooney, for one thing. For another, he whinges on about how the census is asking all these questions: how much was your mortgage? What do you pay in bills? Etc.

What he leaves out, is that this happened last year. The Census Bureau was doing a numbers pull (my terminology, not theirs), about the cost of living. This year, I’m just asking these questions. Yes, the same ‘questions’ that Day couldn’t seem to get out of a single phone call. Note the Frankensplicing he uses. Most government workers are drones, and being approached by a media celebrity of any caliber usually sends them rushing off to consult with managers, who inform them that they should likely just hang up. I would truly like to hear the entire conversation, not just watch Day stare at a phone and rattle on.

For an even more aggravated response, I found this during a random Google search:

To obstruct a census worker in his duties per provisions of Title 13 of U.S. Code comes with a possible fine "…not to exceed $500." There have only been a few cases where code convictions have resulted in fines. Most people cooperate with the census and permit themselves to be counted. However, with the advent of the American Community Survey in 1995, a program administrated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census under the Department of Commerce, people began to quietly rebel. Instead of just counting us by number, gender and race, we were expected to fill out a form that asked scores of extremely invasive questions, answers to which many Americans felt were none of the government’s business and refused to fill out the 36 pages of survey questions. Beginning last April, the quiet rebellion erupted in outspoken anger as the dupes of military contractors masquerading as census workers used GPS locators to tag Americans’ addresses to their front doors (The IO, April, 2009). The reasons given for the "precensus" trespasses were not satisfactory to a large cross section of Americana. Following is an explanation that, while not making us feel good about the fact that foreign troops or rockets can find our front doors from outer space, it will answer questions that the temporary worker dupes couldn’t—or wouldn’t.

Scare-mongering at its finest. While I’ve never been a big fan of Big Brother government, hinting around that some foreign troops or rockets will descend on us because of some exacting cartographic locationing is a little bit over the top. Big pluses are: people being able to find you via GPS (including the police, if you get home-invaded, or EMTs in the case of severe medical emergency), being able to chart and sidetrack in case of natural disasters – why, think of it, folks might not get lost any more, which could save a few lives here and there.

And yes, Michelle Bachmann, talking head/second eye candy of the reichwingnuts, she of the anti-global warming nonsense, who perhaps has the scariest amount of stupid quotes in the world (probably only eclipsed by the commander-in-thief who ruined this fine country), is actually claiming that the Census (held since 1790, likely by the ‘Founding Fathers’ these nutballs slaver over constantly) is some sort of conspiracy by ACORN and Obama to…well, these people exhaust me with their stupidity.

I’m not insisting the government’s completely trustworthy, but there are injunctions against misuse and the violation of confidentiality that are quite the deterrent.

In other news, the other talking head strumpet Palin declares:

"Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant – they’re quite clear – that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the ten commandments."

And think about it – these two retards are looking at running for the presidential ticket in 2012. 

Makes my heart skip a beat in terror, it does.

Till the next post, then.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. – Einstein

We are all vested in Schadenfreude, to some degree. It’s all right to admit it. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. Being an atheist, I somewhat wallow in it when it comes to mocking religulous wackadoolery – most of us at GiFS! are fairly invested in it.

In fact, it’s become a hallmark of American culture. We watch shows like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (which I refer to as the Evil Seinfeld), we laugh at the Dilbert comic strips (like the one festooning this post), we find humor in the oddest places, sometimes in the cruelest. Pointing and jeering, and of course, that secret sigh of relief, thank the FSM that it was someone else, not I.

In my 51 years of life on this earth, I’m surprised that I still am shocked by the consistent stupidity of my fellow men (and women, so hush).

I can’t seem to shake this schadenfreude, this delight I take in the (abstract) suffering of others. Likelihood is good that my response would be far, far different were I watching the event take place, rather than reading about it. And of course, the old adage of ‘twenty-twenty hindsight being the best sight’ springs to mind. While we’d all like to think we’d spring into action if another human was imperiled, I’d likely be the fellow saying “Excuse me? I…don’t think you should do that…” Boom! Flash! Smell of cordite. Shrug. “I tried to tell him.”

In the spirit of this (almost) light-hearted introspection, the Darwin Awards are the epitome (but hopefully not the epitaph) of our species’…harrumph!…lack of critical thinking skills.

Let’s start off with some all time classics. 1996’s Macho Men:

Some men will got to extraordinary lengths to prove how macho they are. Frenchman Pierre Pumpille recently shunted a stationary car two feet by headbutting it. "Women thought I was a god," he explained from his hospital bed.

Deity or not, however, Pumpille is a veritable girl’s blouse compared to Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe’s most macho man by cutting off his own head in 1995. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men’s games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting "Watch this then," he swung at his own head and chopped it off.  "It’s funny," said one companion, "when he was young he put on his sister’s underwear. But he died like a man."

A 1998 classic:

(February 1998) Matthew and his friends were sliding down a Mammoth Mountain ski run on a foam pad at 3am, when he crashed into a lift tower and died. His makeshift sledge of yellow foam had been stolen from the legs of a lift tower on Stump Alley. The cushion is meant to protect skiers who hit the tower, and the tower Matthew ran into was the one from which he had created his sledge. There’s a moral in there somewhere.

And, an…eating disorder?

(1998, NJ) An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a Phillipsburg establishment. "I didn’t think he was going to eat it," the dancer identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk."

Why anyone would think that sort of feat would impress a girl…?

And, impatience is often rewarded with pain:

In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20, was hit in the leg with pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust pipe of his car. When repairing the car, he needed to bore a hole in the pipe. When he couldn’t find a drill, he tried to shoot a hole in it.

Can you say Duh-HOY, Aaron?

Really, seriously, what is wrong with these people? Funny as hell in the short run, but scary in the long term.

Share your favorite stories, Darwinian or anecdotal, let’s have a chuckle or two, while we stroke our collective chins in worry.

Till the next post, then.

Credit: Woody Guthrie (composed 1940; recorded 1944; published 1951)

Arizona is the new Alabama, c.1963. The racists “nativists” in AZ can’t get into a debate about the “brown-skinned” illegals. How do you say, “There’s a huge difference! The blacks in the South were born here! They were already legal citizens!” That’s contrary to their cultural behavior, back in the day.

The shouting has just begun, over a bill that won’t go into effect until August. But that didn’t stop one state trooper from demanding a birth certificate from an AZ truck driver. The driver wasn’t carrying it on his person; he called his wife and had her bring it to him so that he could be released from custody.  Iowa Independent (04.26.10):

The new birthers: Arizona truck driver arrested, forced to show birth certificate”

A Latino truck driver outside Phoenix was taken into custody by law enforcement at a weigh station. He pulled in to have the truck looked at, was apparently approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and asked for ID. He showed them his commercial driver’s license. They asked him for more ID. He told them his social security number. They cuffed him took him to the central office in Phoenix and called his wife to bring his social security card and birth certificate. The man is identifying himself to media only as “Abdon” and he is an American citizen born in the USA.

Governor Jan Brewer gave her Montblanc a real workout last week.  First, she signed the “birther” bill, making all future candidates for the presidency (of the United States, not of AZ) show “proof of citizenship eligibility”.  No word on whether President Obama will need to re-meet their standards in 2012.  However, I suspect that is their sole motive in passing this AZ legislation.

“This is a question that has been answered exhaustively,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told CNN. “I can’t imagine Arizona voters think their tax dollars are well served by a legislature that is less focused on their lives than in fringe right-wing radio conspiracy theories.”

By the way, the MSM ignored this.  But the UK didn’t.  Check here.

Second, she signed a bill that will allow AZ citizens to carry concealed weapons without the need for a permit, joining Vermont and Alaska.  USA-Today (04.16.10):

In Arizona, it’s now legal for (most) adults to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer just signed the legislation, putting her state in the same camp as Alaska and Vermont.

The state had issued 154,000 permits under the old law, which required background checks and instruction. Gun buyers still face federal background checks when purchasing weapons from a store.

And last, she signed into law a bill so “draconian” (the seeming consensus of opinion), it is unparalleled.  Police are allowed to shake-down any person who appears to be of Mexican heritage, if they have “cause” while performing their duties.  BUT police are required by law to do this, facing lawsuits by their local citizens if said citizens believe that their police force is not doing their job to the fullest extent.  One critic called it, “the crime of breathing while Hispanic”.

President Obama “on Tuesday warned of harassment against Hispanics under Arizona’s tough new immigration law, saying such “poorly conceived” measures can be halted if the federal government fixes the nation’s broken immigration system for good.”  AP, via HuffPost (04.27.10)

Obama’s comments came on the same day that Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were critical of Arizona’s new law, and Holder said the federal government may challenge it. The president sought to step up Washington’s will to get an immigration deal done.

“I will bring the majority of Democrats to the table in getting this done,” Obama said in response to a question at a town hall in south-central Iowa. “But I’ve got to have some help from the other side.”

The GOP is shameless but they may recognize that this is “their very own Waterloo”.  It would be a mistake on their part, if they treat this as just a “little dustup in Arizona”.

The passion on both sides is running red hot (think:  habanero pepper!).  John McCain has waffled back and forth.  On the other hand, his daughter, Meghan, was an early voice with clear and concise rhetoric.  (Meghan, your Dad looks and sounds like a doddering fool.  Have a doctor check him over; if he hasn’t had a stroke yet, doctors may be able to intervene.)

“One Man’s Family”:  “Look, our border is not secured. Our citizens are not safe.” But the Arizona senator did not provide any additional details to back up his assertion about cars carrying illegal immigrants “intentionally causing accidents.”  John McCain on April 20.

“I believe it gives the state police a license to discriminate, and also, in many ways, violates the civil rights of Arizona residents,” Meghan McCain wrote in her column, entitled “Hate the Law, Not Arizonans.” “Simply put, I think it is a bad law that is missing the bigger picture of what is really going on with illegal immigration.”  Meghan McCain on 04.26.10

“Well, I regret it. People are free to express their views but the fact is the Arizona legislature and governor acted for one reason and that is because the federal government didn’t — did not act and carry out its responsibilities to secure our borders.“  John McCain, on Feh…News, 04.28.10

But wait!  There’s more!  Reverend Jim Wallis hates the bill:

“Wallis calls the new law a “social sin” and just issued a press release, vowing the churches “will not comply.”

Even (possible pederast) Cardinal Mahoney hates the bill:

The head of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese has condemned a proposed Arizona crackdown on illegal immigrants, saying it encourages people to turn on each other in Nazi- and Soviet-style repression.

The measure wrongly assumes that Arizonans “will now shift their total attention to guessing which Latino-looking or foreign-looking person may or may not have proper documents,” Cardinal Roger Mahony said in his blog Sunday – a day before Arizona’s Legislature sent the immigration enforcement measure to the Republican governor.

We’re not done yet!  The boycotts are coming!

A sports correspondent for The Nation says:  No One is Illegal:  Boycott the Arizona Diamondbacks. His motivation rests on this:   “‘The D-backs organization is a primary funder of the state Republican Party, which has been driving the measure through the legislature.”

While San Francisco’s municipal government may boycott Arizona as a conference destination,  SFGate’s Phil Bronstein says:  not so fast. Boycotting Arizona a bad idea on 04.27.10

“In our great rush to protest potential discrimination, we should be careful that we don’t discriminate ourselves. Since Arizona is about 58 percent white, could we be guilty of reverse discrimination if our boycott affects some of those people who may not support their new law? Or how about the 30 percent of Arizonans who are Hispanic? It seems likely that banning SF-to-Arizona business and the reverse could end up hurting not Gov. Brewer – the evil signatory – but, instead, innocent folks just trying to get by.”

Boycotts to the North, followed by Travel Advisories from the South.

It says that the law’s passage shows “an adverse political atmosphere for migrant communities and for all Mexican visitors.”

Weaponized Frijoles Refritos:  vandals smeared refried beans in the shape of swastikas on the state Capitol’s windows.

Let’s wrap this up quickly.  Dr. Boyce Watkins says: “Immigration fight could pit blacks against brown.”  Tom Tancredo says “Arizona Immigration Law Goes Too Far, [but I] Still Support It.”

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and KARL ROVE spoke out against it!

Finally, on a surreal note, GOP contender in Iowa:  Microchip Illegals Like Dogs

However the most heinous suggestion came from the mouth of physician Pat Bertroche who said,

I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going…I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal? That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under.

UPDATE:  And then there is this from Greg Palast, who concludes the hysteria is misplaced because the GOP is secretly using this for voter suppression.

What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote — and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.

In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters … directed by one Jan Brewer.

In the category of asshattery and/or meanness, with few exceptions, the GOP takes the cake.