To Silence Hate - The Odyssey Of A Fallen Marine's Father

Those of you who know me well know that I believe the U.S. Constitution is probably the best governing document any nation's created since, perhaps, the Magna Carta - maybe even ever, period.

It's got some pretty cool provisions. Checks and balances; three branches of government, holding each other accountable; no standing army unless approved every couple of years by Congress; posse-comitatus - and the First Amendment, which allows, among other things, Rush Limbaugh to spout bilious nonsense at 50,000 watts over 1,000 stations; Sarah Palin to make unconscionable millions for a book full of nonsense; the likes of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich to befoul our noontime-airwaves, and morons to stand on streetcorners with sandwich boards saying "Repent! The End Is Near! Jeebus Be Comin', An' He's Pissed!"

Sandra Day O'Connor was right when she said, "We don't count noses when enforcing the First Amendment." The smallest minority gets their right to Spout Off, and the law still applies. However, there are restrictions.

First, it's long been held that this right isn't absolute. You can go to jail and be held financially accountable for screaming "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre. Anyone who saw the Sydney Pollack film "Absence of Malice" remembers Wilford Brimley's speech toward the end, regarding the supposed 'privilege' of a reporter to withhold a news-source from a court of law: "You can keep your objection, counselor - this ain't no court. The First Amendment don't say that, and the privilege don't exist. Miss; do you know that I can ask you this question in front of a grand jury? And, if you don't answer me, you can go to jail? Oh, it's not just possible; it's damned likely!"

Among the other things which aren't covered by the First Amendment is hate-speech.

In 1990, right here in Portland, Oregon, a case was won by the family of an Ethiopian immigrant who had been beaten to death by a pack of racist skinheads. A First Amendment 'defense' by the instigator, a man named Tom Metzger who ran an outfit in nearby Idaho called the White Aryan Resistance, was disallowed - Metzger's 'teaching's and hate-speech were instrumental in instigating the three hoodlums who killed the man on a streetcorner near his home in 1988.

Which brings me to this story.

Most of you have heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. They're the 'church' founded by a man named Fred Phelps in 1955; its membership is made up mainly of members of Phelps' extended family. The church's website is 'godhatesfags.com'; an idea of their social leanings - among their 'activities', this bunch tracks down funerals of dead soldiers, and pickets them.

That's right. They picket the funerals of dead servicemembers.

They do so because they believe that 'god' hates America for its sin, and that anyone defending America goes to 'hell' when they die. By this twisted logic, it's all right to protest the funeral of a dead servicemember - a photo of one of these protests is at the beginning of this article.

When Al Snyder's son, Marine Lance Corporal Matt Snyder, was killed in Iraq in 2006, Matt's funeral was one of those targeted by Phelps and his clan for a protest. Snyder sued Phelps and won $2.9M in compensatory damages for, among other things, intentional infliction of mental and emotional damage.

In late 2009, a Federal appellate court overturned the verdict on a First Amendment argument. The court did not issue a reason apart from this.

The court also ordered Mr. Snyder to pay Phelps' legal fees, in a stunning insult-to-injury.

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"There ought to be a law" is an old saying - usually prefacing a statement-of-the-obvious; a comment regarding something so blatantly in the realm of common-sense as to not require legislation.

This is one of those times.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the appellate court simply wasn't persuaded - Mr. Snyder didn't have the support of a whole mob of well-heeled midwest parishoners to buy an army of attorneys - and likely never heard the Metzger precedent or others which support the restriction of First Amendment rights due to hate-speech.

Regardless, what we have in America isn't justice - we have an auction. Auctions cost money, and Mr. Snyder is in need if he's to continue pursuing these religious jackals to the point where genuine justice is done.

You can donate to his legal fund here. I know I have.

Sleep well tonight, folks, in the certainty that we have fine courts like the 4th Circuit in Baltimore, Maryland and fine judges like The Honorable Richard Bennett, who'll find for a group of Jesus-wolverines like Phelps and his mob over the father of a man who died while carrying out the orders of the government which that court purports to serve.

Shame. Shame on them all.

(Yes - that link on Bennett's name has his email address.   It would be an amazing coincidence if he was inundated with shame-mail, now wouldn't it?)

As If Things Couldn't Get Any Weirder (I Love WorldNetDaily)....

I love WorldNutNetDaily. I really do.

Joseph Farah, the founder/CEO/Head Nut has surrounded himself with some world-class wingnuts as writers. From the illustrious and storied actor, Chuck Norris and the Constitutional expert, Janet Porter, to that acclaimed journalist, Joe Kovacs, Farah has outdone himself.

Long the headquarters of Wingnut Nation, WND is also the central clearinghouse of 'information' on the Birther phenom, as well as colorful theories on 9/11, Obama-as-the-Antichrist, and other suchlike.

However, he's outdone himself today.

Easter, if Kovacs is to be believed, is 'evil' - in fact, WND has declared 'war' on Easter.

(Seems they just got around to noticing that the word "Easter" is a corruption of the names of at least three related, older deities - Eostre, Ostara, and Ishtar. Hence, chocolate bunnies and egg-hunts are 'out', if you're a 'real' Christian. Since the White House has sponsored an Easter-egg hunt since the Hayes administration 130 years ago, I imagine there'll be an 'evil Obama' link there, somewhere.)

Count on more foaming-at-the-mouth when someone gets around to breaking the news to Kovacs and Farah about the origins of Christmas.

Meantime, countless thousands of people are going to Easter services this Sunday. They should.

As I'm fond of saying - you can't make this stuff up....

Jealous of Atheism - A Christian Comments on The Other Side....

A recent article in Unreasonable Faith made me sit up and pay attention.

See, most of my friends are atheists. I'm an atheist. (In case someone wonders what that means, it's the absence of a belief in any deity).

It's difficult - if not impossible - to get religious folks to talk with us; either they're afraid of confronting the disquieting reality that their Imaginary Friend may really be - well - imaginary, or they're just uncomfortable with discussing their faith in something which can't be seen.

It was with a certain amount of relief - much like breathing fresh air after a night in a stuffy bedroom - that I read the article "My Jealousy of Atheism" by Barry Hardee.

He begins with a simple statement: "I’m admitting something that most Christians never dream of saying out loud — I’m jealous of atheists. How could you not be jealous of a position of rationality and enlightenment?"

Hardee goes on to define 'atheist' in a straightforward manner. What follows, however, rapdly descends into the murk of sectarianism - hence, the title of his article and his main thesis - he's jealous of those of us who have explained things with reason, logic, and acceptance - and left it all at that.

"The term Christian on its face value would seem to have a straight forward definition, but a visit to different churches would quickly dissuade you from such a naïve conclusion. The tent of Christendom seems to be quite large when considering the diversity of those who call themselves Christian. Consider we have John Hagee and John Paul II, Bishop Tutu and Bishop Spong, Ken Ham and Ken Miller, and even Fred Phelps and local favorite John C. The fluidity of the term Christian is shining proof of Wittgenstein’s view of language. The problem is that Christians seem to have very different views of what makes up an essential."

Hardee goes on to ask us atheists to explain to him what we view as a Christian.

To me, the question is inextricably wrapped up in the concept of rejection - defining Christianity (or any other religion) calls for either acceptance or rejection - one can't simply ask, "What is it?" The question is much the same as a researcher who finds a dynamic new microorganism; along with the identification must come some form of attempt to classify it - and part of that classification is the ultimate determination as to its danger.

Is it benign and/or beneficial - or does it have the capacity to destroy us all via infection? Researchers are placed in this position - because part of the process of microbiology is ultimately the protection of the human race.

My own background - as well as my own two-cents on the matter - is that of a man with an atheist father and Christian mother. Both were pretty pragmatic people; Mom’s approach was “if it’s not in the Bible, it doesn’t exist”, tempered with some common-sense. Dad rejected it all, having been one of the first Americans allowed in the city of Hiroshima in late 1945. (I asked him once why he didn’t believe in a ‘god’. He said, “Because I’ve seen Hiroshima.”)

In college, I studied religions alongside my requirements for an anthropology degree, and later for an advanced degree in history. What I learned was this:

Christianity is the ‘chicken’ of the religion world; the feelgood-religion of Western civilization. Apply whatever ’secret sauce’ you’d like – by selectively taking ‘ingredients’ from the Bible and mixing them up to create a creed – throw it on the grill for a while, and you have another branch of Christianity. Tastes like chicken; philosophically-speaking. Mmmm-good!

Because you can create anything you want out of it (remember, Adolf Hitler was a Catholic; much of the Nazi creed and its ceremonies were lifted in whole or in part from Catholic dogma; the Wehrmacht had a thriving chaplaincy and the words “Gott Mit Uns” [God is with us] on their belt-buckles), the only way any of us outside the confines of the Christian maze can possibly cope is to simply accept the self-identification of people who call themselves ‘Christian’.

There are no real rules. No standards. No ‘head Christian’ (although the Pope would like to be) to tell us what-is and what-isn’t. Only the endless argument of people who justify the equally-endless monstrosity, perversity, and inhumanity committed in the name of the Founder, with the equally-lame and Nuremberg-like statement, “But, they’re not real Christians!”

Joseph Goebbels wrote a play about Jesus entitled “The Wanderer” – it’s still performed today in Germany, although the authorship is usually hidden by a pseudonym; Stalin went to seminary; Jim Jones was, by some accounts, a nice guy. All of them were (with the exception of Stalin, who recanted) Christians by self-definition.


The fastest-growing group in America is that of non-believers. We’ve rejected religion in general – because it explains nothing and demands everything of its adherents – and Christianity in particular, because of the seemingly-endless contradictions, petty squabbles, and major depredations against humanity.

Inquisitions? That was a long time ago. Besides – they weren’t real Christians. Ovens? Those people weren’t real Christians, either.

Priests, buggering little boys? Yep – you guessed it.

Some of us stayed awake in class. Regardless of whether the ‘emperor-du-jour’ is Pat Robertson or Benny the Pope, he’s not wearing any clothes.

Christianity is the creation of Constantine; not because any of it is real – but because he wanted to save the Empire. In the end, the reasoned and educated among us are looking upon collective church apologists the same way a parent does a child, caught with his hand in the cookie-jar and making mile-a-minute excuses – with a mixture of humor and embarrassment for the little fellow, who is so clearly in over his head.

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Reading:

"My Jealousy of Atheism" - (Barry Hardee; Unreasonable Faith - March; 2010)

The Fundies Have Done It In Texas (The Great Texas Textbook Massacre)

Well, they've gone and done it.

By a vote of 10-5, the Christian Right - which spent several years patiently working for this day by obtaining appointments for ultraconservatives to the Texas Board of Education - has passed a significant hurdle in their attempt to rewrite history by way of the most aggressive and revisionist curriculum changes in generations.

A word of background.

The Texas Board of Education meets on a regular basis to decide, among other things, what will be taught in Texas schools. In doing this, they save quite a bit of money by purchasing school texts and distributing them, rather than leaving these purchases to each district - there is practical value in volume purchasing, but this has also placed Texas in the sometimes-enviable position of ensuring that their decision is also mirrored by nearly half the school districts in America - literally; decisions made in Texas wind up in textbooks which are sold everywhere else.

So, what were the decisions?

First, Thomas Jefferson's teachings (which, among other things, called for a 'wall of separation' between religion and government) will no longer be taught. In their place will be the 'musings of Newt Gingrich' and the 'historic significance of Phyllis Schlafly'.

It gets worse.

Rape, along with sexual identity/orientation and eating-disorders will be presented as the result of personal choices.

Creationism will be taught as fact.

McCarthy and his Communist witch-hunting in the '50's will be vindicated.

Texas students will also be taught 'the decline of the dollar', and the 'influence of the democrats in the abandonment of the gold standard.'

The participation of Tejanos at the Alamo will no longer be presented. In fact, Hispanics have been all but excised from the Texas curriculum, along with the study of racism. (An excellent article encapsulating these decisions and their ramifications may be found here.)


Just who influenced these decisions?

The Board, as it turns out, takes many of its cues from an advisory panel. Front and center on that panel is a man named David Barton.

Barton is a 1976 graduate of Oral Roberts University with a 'degree' in theology (let's sidestep, just for a moment, the notion that it's possible to grant a 'degree' in the study of the unknown). Barton is the founder of "Wallbuilders"; he also published a book in 1997 entitled "The Myth of Separation", in which he made his case against the current interpretation of the First Amendment -- that, in fact, there is no 'separation of church and state'; no 'wall of separation'.

In Barton's view (and he provides quotes from many of the nation's founders as 'proof'), the First Amendment has simply been misunderstood, and hence misinterpreted. The Founders intended America to be a Christian nation all along - in fact, they intended Christianity to be the nation's religion - the Establishment Clause was written to prevent all other religions from gaining primacy, and preventing government from unduly-repressing Christianity.

(His scholarship reflects the work of someone who is not an historian. At least twelve of the 'quotes' he attributes to various founders and authors of the Constitution have been later discovered to be spurious; his conclusions have been called into question by most credible historians who've weighed in on the matter).

Barton also holds another board membership - he's part of the ruling body of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools - -their "The Bible in History and Literature" is a 300 page 'textbook' which he aggressively promotes.

(There is one vote left as final approval in May of this year; during this period, the public is asked to weigh-in on the debate by way of public testimony, letters, and other input.

Texas is sixty days away from educational theocracy.)

And The Right Wing Just Keeps Getting Crazier....

While I'm working on a far more serious piece regarding the Religious Right's attempts to subvert the constitution and Run The Country For Jesus, I ran across this piece from Bossier Parish in Louisiana.

Turns out that Sheriff Cletus Whackjob Larry Deen sees the need to "protect viable resources" using 'volunteers' in the event of natural or manmade disaster.

Sheriff Deen sees things a little differently than most.

“If an event were to happen nationally or locally, we want to make sure that we could take care of the people of Bossier, no matter what,” says the sheriff. This means that he'll use "church facilities and people with all sorts of backgrounds and talents" for his "Operation Exodus".

Really. I'm not making this up.

"It is apparent that home-grown terrorists are in our midst," said Sheriff Deen in his press-release this February. To that end, he's authorized the 'installation' of a 50-caliber machine gun on the bed of a pickup-truck - something he calls his 'war wagon'.

(Now, I know what some of you are thinking, and it's the same thing I thought when I read this 'release' - a 50-cal on the back of a pickup is called a 'Technical'; not a 'War Wagon' - and training a group of middle-aged volunteers in Tae-Kwon-Do and target-practice is likely just to get a bunch of people hurt when the next hurricane comes through Bossier Parish.)

Calling it something else doesn't make it different.

(Back in high-school, there was a kid who was more than a bit lacking in the IQ department - he took an eight-inch length of iron-pipe, capped it at both ends with a wax-string coming out of one cap, and filled it with gunpowder. He then brought it to school, claiming to have created the 'world's biggest firecracker.'

It fell to me to explain to him that what he'd created wasn't a 'firecracker' - it was a pipe bomb - and calling it something else wasn't going to change things.)

In this case, I was able to report him to the school office and have his 'toy' confiscated before he could cause some damage. I was unpopular with this fellow and his minions, but I'd done an immeasurable service to those of us who actually wanted to finish high school in one piece.

In the case of the Sheriff from Louisiana, there's no one to whom his charges might 'report' him.

They're stuck.

The Oscars and the Politics Thereof....

The 2009 nominees for the Academy Awards are now in the position of yesterday's catch - they don't quite smell, but there's something that's not-quite-fresh about them.   James Cameron is probably upset that he didn't reprise "Titanic" - then again, I happen to agree with at least one person that two of the 'winners' belonged on cable - specifically, "Lifetime".

Documentary films don't get much play with the Academy - they're too busy patting each other on the back or 'making history' (which was the undercurrent of last night's 'aren't-we-important' festivities, from that gal in "Precious" to the Best Director award.) The five minutes they gave to films like "Food, Inc." were an embarrassment; then again, the truth is a bitch, and telling it is uncomfortable when the participants are just as concerned with Who's Wearing The 'Best' Gown as the quality of the dreck they're producing as art.

Hollywood hasn't had a genuinely new idea in nearly ten years; while "Avatar" was a visually-rich film, the theme was derivative, and easy to trace: "Dances With Wolves" begat "The Last Samurai", which begat the main theme of "Avatar". 

Cameron can produce blockbusters and drag eyeballs to a screen - what he can't do is write anything genuine. In the end (and in the one rare truthful gesture which was made last night), "Avatar" got what it really deserved - recognition for its technology, design, and effects.

I pay much more attention to the Sundance Festival and the variant independent film awards - because if the truth be known, there's good cinema out there.

You just won't see much of it on Oscar night.

Running Out Of Time - Factory-Food Production in America.

We're running out of time.

Grocery stores in America offer a placid shopping experience with pleasant music and helpful staff; you can eat off the floors, and everything from carefully-arranged produce to shrink-wrapped meat products are artfully placed to give the appearance of a well-run, sanitized machine.

The truth is much different.   Large agribusiness produces food animals in abysmal conditions at breakneck speed, with an economically-driven mandate to stay ahead of the inflation/population curve.

Workers are abused, the same as the animals.  They handle meat; bacteria gets under their fingernails to the point where it's easy to tell a meat-packing worker - they have no fingernails.

Illegal immigrants - inured to a culture where complaints lead to midnight-visits by death-squads - do these jobs without complaint.

Large agribusinesses have 'agreements' with the INS - fifteen workers per day are deported; the production lines aren't affected.   Fines are a cost of doing business, and no other penalties are imposed.

Chickens are fed steroid-laced corn - while they were evolved to eat a mixed diet of seeds and insects - so they'll grow to three times the size of their 1950 counterparts in one-third the time.   The stress literally breaks the legs of 1/3 of them before they're 'harvested'.

1/3rd of America's farmland is planted in corn.   From batteries to beverages; from cola to charcoal, corn is a component of nearly everything we consume.   Cattle are fed on corn - while they were evolved to eat grass.  The result is that while chickens and cattle both grow faster and become larger - the inhumanity of the system which produces this cheap food is an abysmal statement of our pursuit of bigger and cheaper.

The average American farmer during the turn of the century fed a little over six people.   Today, he feeds 126.  What isn't seen is that the 'farmer' is usually a big corporation - not a human-scale operation.

There are six billion people on the planet.   Paul Ehrlich, in his book, "The Population Bomb" stated that mass starvation would occur in the mid-1970's as the population topped four billion.

While his work was widely discredited, it turns out he was right.  

What happened?

With America in the lead, humanity sold itself to large agribusiness.  We traded our humanity for inexpensive foods - and we didn't care.

In his film, he points out the high cost of cheap food - the system is vulnerable to everything from higher oil prices to small changes in the weather - while in the 1960's there were ample food reserves in America to deal with temporary shortages, those reserves are now a thing of the past.

EColi and Salmonella outbreaks are now commonplace - because the system, stretched to its limits - has sacrificed health and safety for an assembly line of death.

Me?

I spend more. I vote with my dollar, and my dollar goes to free-range, human-scale producers, who are devoted to organic production methods.

The clock continues to tick. As of today, there are 6.8 billion people on the planet. There will be 12 billion by 2100 - and while some say that level will 'peak' well before then, it shows no current signs of slowing down - because we've postponed the inevitable due to genetically-engineered crops (and the lawsuits which accompany them); with factory-raised chickens which can't walk; with factory-produced beef which lives with its own waste 24/7 - and with a blind eye to all of these things, because we'd prefer 'cheap' to 'better'.