* Susan Jacoby on the Dumbing Down of America

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON
Published February 2008
by Susan Jacoby

"This impassioned, tough-minded work of contemporary history paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society—on the political right and the left. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic."

“The Age of American Unreason picks up where Richard Hofstadter left off. With analytic verve and deep historical knowledge, Susan Jacoby documents the dumbing down of our culture like a maestro. Make no mistake about it, this is an important book.” ~ Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley

More on Jacoby: * How Secularism Became a Dirty Word
Also see: * A Cruel, Capricious Master of the Universe

* Atheist's Lawsuit Cites His Treatment in the Army

Saturday, April 26, 2008

JUNCTION CITY, Kan. — Like hundreds of young men joining the Army in recent years, Jeremy Hall professes a desire to serve his country while it fights terrorism.

"But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he's been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn't believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates."
. . .

"Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and — just as severe to some soldiers — gay, none of which, he says, is true. Hall even drove fellow soldiers to church in Iraq and paused while they prayed before meals." More ...

Cross-reference METAXY: Atheists in Foxholes and George Bush's Christian god told him to go to war with Iraq.

New York Times: Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

"It is unclear how widespread religious discrimination or proselytizing is in the armed forces, constitutional law experts and leaders of veterans’ groups said. No one has independently studied the issue, and service members are reluctant to come forward because of possible backlash, those experts said."

Christian Tolerance?

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy which has marked the present age would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination, so far that we should never again see their religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

~ George Washington, letter to Sir Edward Newenham, Oct. 20, 1792.

Source for most of the biographical discussion of Washington's religion is The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, From Washington To F.D.R., by Franklin Steiner.

Today, there are many ways of classifying the over 1,000 Christian faith groups in North America:

By denomination
Into three or four meta-groups (e.g. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican)
By theological belief system (Calvinism, Arminianism, etc.)
By religious family, (Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, etc.), and
By "wing." The conservative, mainline, and liberal wings of Protestantism are described here.

	Introduction: Fragmentation of Christianity from one to thousands of faith groups
	Criteria for selecting the "true" church Using Jesus' statements and how he treated outcasts as a guide Using Jesus' disciples and church success as guide; Conclusions
	The view of an evangelical Christian (an essay donated by William Taylor Sr.)
	The beliefs of some Mormons
	The current teachings of the Roman Catholic Church

This lack of consensus is so extreme that sincerely and devoutly held beliefs by very liberal Christians may well be considered blasphemy by very conservative Christians, and vice-versa. One result is that some Christians view Christianity as a collection of religions, not as a single religion.

* Noam Chomsky on the Reactions to US Threats

We Own The World

Adapted from a Z Media Institute talk, June 2007

January, 01 2008 By Noam Chomsky

Chomsky's ZSpace page

Chomsky on US foreign policy and the reactions of other nations to US threats as understandable in light of the "we own the world" mentality.

For example, Chomsky writes,

"We can pay attention to the dissidents and the reformists in Iran who are struggling courageously to turn Iran into a more democratic society. And we know exactly what they are saying, they are very outspoken about it. They are pleading with the United States to withdraw the threats against Iran. The more we threaten Iran, the more we give a gift to the reactionary, religious fanatics in the government. You make threats, you strengthen them. That is exactly what is happening. The threats have lead to repression, predictably." Full article ...

A.N.S.W.E.R. Florida

FAU Employee spits on Muslim student: Why won’t FAU condemn racism and discrimination on campus?

On October 30^th, 2007 FAU students and members of the community united to protest against the hateful and racist ideas of Daniel Pipes, who was invited by Middle East and National Security (MEANS), a student organization at FAU. The students conducted a silent protest and held banners that resembled the ideas they wanted to portray to the audience” signs read “No to racism, No to Xenophobic speech”, “Spread love, not hate”, and “Guilty cause I’m Muslim?” while standing quietly and respectfully with their banners, students faced harassment by several members of the Pipes audience who yelled “Go back to your country”, “I see you ready for Halloween” while pointing to a woman wearing a Hijab (headscarf), and “You don’t belong here”.

One of the audience members, an FAU employee, went so far as to spit on one of the Muslim students ...

We see this hate incident not as the act of one intolerant employee but rather as an atmosphere on the FAU campus where openly expressing anti-Muslim sentiment has become acceptable. The university must provide cultural tolerance training to everyone employed by the university. The training should be focused on creating an atmosphere of real cultural acceptance and understanding. More ...

The History of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day





Barack Obama Speaks at Dr. King's Church

See also METAXY

The Taboo on Islamic Apostasy in the Netherlands:
The Ex-Muslim Committee under attack

By Floris van den Berg

A new act in the tragedy of Islam and the open society is now playing in Europe. In several European countries Ex-Muslim Committees are being or have been founded. There is a lot of resistance from both Muslims and non-Muslim naivists. In Germany, Mina Ahadi (www.minaahadi.com) takes the lead in the Ex-Muslim Committee (www.ex-mulime.de). Because of death threats, she is now in hiding. On September 11, 2007, the Committee of Ex-Muslims will be founded in the Netherlands. Though the Committee has not yet been established officially, a clash has already taken place. Ehsan Jami, a twenty-one-year-old member of the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA), publicly stated that he is an apostate (though not an atheist), and he criticized Islam and Mohammed. “Allah is a cruel and tyrannical god,” says Jami. Since he made these public statements, he has been threatened and recently has been molested by three young Muslims. Now Jami is in hiding under police protection. Jami and the Ex-Muslim Committee are being supported by the same intellectuals who backed Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh, foremost apostate Afshin Ellian (Fellow of CFI/Low Countries). And the same public figures oppose this initiative who earlier criticized Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh. They attack Jami with the same argument: it is the tone of the debate that they criticize because, these critics say, the tone of the statements against Islam is what angers Muslims. There is a strong plea for self-censorship not to criticize Islam. It is perfectly accepted by these critics to bash Christianity, but criticizing Islam is taboo. So, these public intellectuals side with the fundamentalists. They should realize that if the fundamentalists were to gain power, these naivists will also be their enemies. If the Netherlands were to become an Islamic theocracy—liberal Muslims, naivists, liberals and humanists all—would be severely restrained in their freedom. While the naivists clearly see the evils of Christianity, they are blind to the dark side of Islam. This reminds me of Sartre who claimed to be a humanist and an advocate of individual freedom and criticized religion and paternalism in France, but was blind for the evils of communism in the Soviet Union and China. The Dutch public intellectuals all know about Sartre, but apparently they have not learned his lesson.

What is much worse than this plea for self-censorship is that some of these relativistic, malicious naivists go so far as to say that Jami himself is to blame. It is a variant of the mini-skirt fallacy: “The woman who was raped was wearing a mini skirt, therefore she asked for it!” The public debate is turbid because, when the media ask (Dutch) Muslims about apostasy, the answer usually is that it is a private and individual choice. No Muslim says in public that apostasy should be punished with capital punishment. The same is said about homosexuality and Islam. Though publicly Muslims do not advocate violence against homosexuals, the number of incidents of homosexuals being molested by Muslims is rising rapidly. However, Jami did receive numerous (death) threats from Muslims because of his public statement of apostasy and his critique on Islam. Islam is a prison: if you happen to be born in it, you cannot escape. Being Muslim is a life-long sentence. Not a well-informed, autonomous, rational choice. Only if you are religiously naïve can you manage to neglect that there is a problem with leaving Islam even in a society as open as the Netherlands. Jami is a new voice in the choir of critics of Islam: Van Gogh was murdered, Hirsi Ali has left for the United States, Jami is in hiding.

Dutch freethought association De Vrije Gedachte has publicly backed the Ex-Muslim Committee. Even the less outspoken Humanistisch Verbond has welcomed the Ex-Muslim Committee. We humanists should hope that ex-Muslims will find their way to the freethinkers and humanists.

*Floris van den Berg is a philosopher and Executive Director of CFI Low Countries. He can be e-mailed at florisvandenberg@dds.nl.

Jewish World Review August 2, 2007 / 18 Menachem-Av, 5767

GROW UP, MIDDLE EAST!

By Victor Davis Hanson

Radical Islamists love to scream about the "decadent" West.
Everything from our operas to our attitudes about women outrage
these loud pious critics.

As part of their condemnation, fundamentalist Muslims say they put a higher premium on family values and reverence for the past than crass modern Americans and Europeans do. But that is hardly true.

Full article ...

FUNDAMENTALISM, FATHER AND SON, AND VERTICAL DESIRE

By Ruth Stein

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I describe a certain state of mind which, conjoined with cultural and group processes, leads to fundamentalism, and with further developments, to coercive and violent fundamentalism. Hallmarks of this state are a sense of utter certainty, a feeling of being in the right, hermetic consistency, and highly rhetorical reiterations of Truths. I describe how the simplification of complexities into binary oppositions (basically of good and bad) not only creates order out of chaos and vagueness, but also constitutes a "vertical" homoerotic quest for God's love. These processes of ordering and desire are supported by the need to sacrifice, by masochism and coercion, and are enacted by increasingly severe purification processes. It is usually assumed that the religious quest is a search for meaning, but, as will hopefully become clear, this quest is at the same time a series of transformations of fear. In this latter sense, the fundamentalist state of mind originates from what may be likened to an extreme and long-extended form of what we experience at those moments and hours when anxiety and fear, or shame, overwhelm us and reduce us to helplessness, a painful sense of smallness, and the feeling of being at the mercy of greater powers than ourselves. Full paper ...

* Sanitize the Bible & Christian Creeds ~ Is Patriarchy Dead?

Christianity (Worldwide)
Androgenous Holy Trinity:

"Religion is one of the main tools, and chronologically the first one of them, fitted to perpetuate the victimage mechanism." ~ Paolo Diego Bubbio, Colloquy, Monash University

Many people think that patriarchy is either dead or dying, some think it is actually staging a comeback. It can go one way or the other, but the perpetuation of patriarchy can be averted by continuous improvement of gender balance in all roles of authority, both secular and religious. This may entail, among other things, editing venerable documents (such as the Christian creed written by the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E.) to reflect a new sensitivity about God being neither male-only nor female-only, but both male and female, and infinitely more than just male and female. Even sacred texts such as the Bible may need to be sanitized of patriarchal language, albeit in such a way that the "signal" of revealed truth is amplified without distortion. ~ Mimetic Violence in Patriarchal Religions

Ironically, a ridiculous solution from Solidarity & Sustainability to violence against women is prayer, "It is fitting to conclude with an urgent appeal for prayer, study, and action." And do we really think that religious androgeny in creeds, bibles, and art will stop violence against women? No. It is religion that has to go--a daunting task that may bear fruit, unfortunately, in a future that can't be foreseen. Meanwhile, billions will suffer and die, including men, in the evil name of religion.

**Religious violence exacerbates, and often directly leads to, social violence. Recently:

Stop Violence Against Women in America
Kenyan schoolgirls raped on march
Women go 'missing' by the millions
More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing
China’s One Child Policy Exacerbates Slavery
Many Faces of Gender Inequality
Patriarchal Violence in the Name of ‘Honour’
More than half of Thai Catholic women abused, survey reveals

Rene Girard's Memetic Theory.

Girard excludes Judaism and Christianity from his mimetic theory. Lefebure [5: 19] states that the God of Israel and Jesus' Abba: ... is not a mimetic rival of humans and does not demand sacrificial victims. Instead, God rather expresses solidarity with victims even to the point of dying on the cross. However, violence is no stranger in Christianity. ~ Religion and Violence: the Suffering of Women by Susan Rakoczy

Rene Girard, Colloquium on Religion and Violence

* "The Origins of Religious Violence" by Nick Gier ~ Which Religion has Killed the Most Human Beings?

By Nick Gier, New West Unfiltered 6-06-07

RELATIVE VIOLENCE IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho

"I'm writing a book on the origins of religious violence and my thesis is that there has been far more religiously motivated violence in the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—than the Asian religions.

"... Short of Osama bin Laden getting several nukes and using them, militant Muslims have a long way to go to match the historical Christian kill rate."

Gier: The connection between strong belief and religiously motivated violence can be well documented, and the early results of my research on the origins of religious violence can be found here.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. See his columns as the Palouse Pundit.

Gier's Website

~ Hope for America After All?

New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left

by ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE
Published: June 27, 2007

Today's youth "have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

"More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans."

Full Article for specifics, e.g., stance on gay marriage, abortion, etc. ...

If this current trend continues a more stable America could emerge for the future.

* Eyes on Darfur via Satellite Images ~ Breaking News, Reuters/Amnesty International

Amnesty International: Eyes on Darfur
Reuters: A screenshot of EyesOnDarfur.org, taken on June 6, 2007. Amnesty International started posting satellite images on the Internet of villages in Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur on Wednesday in a bid to pressure Khartoum to allow U.N. peacekeepers into the region...

"We expect the Sudanese government to protect these and all villages throughout Darfur," said Ariela Blatter, director of Amnesty USA's Crisis Prevention and Response Center, who led the development of the Eyes on Darfur project. "We expect these villages to be intact today, tomorrow and well, well into the future."

Read Report on 2006

* Bush Troop Surge Not Working ~ Why are We not Surprised? ~ What Can We Do?

Not only are there 3,301 US military deaths resulting from the Iraq war as of today, there are perhaps half a million Iraqi civilian deaths The Lancet.

Follow current news, Iraq Today

Red Cross Warns "Disastrous," “Immense” Iraqi Humanitarian Crisis "Ever-Worsening"

Democracy Now!
April 12, 2007

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is warning that the conflict in Iraq is inflicting immense suffering on the entire population and is steadily getting worse. The Red Cross says “civilians are bearing the brunt of the relentless violence and the extremely poor security conditions that are disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions.”

What can we do?

Stay Educated, e.g., Peace Action

Sign Petitions

Donate, if Possible

Prepare for Voting

Speak Up


Get Involved

Other suggestions will be welcomed ...

* Call for Impeachment of Bush/Cheney Over and Over Again ~ We've had Enough!

Sign Petition

Read what petitioners are saying

The following is from The People's Email Network (The PEN):

It doesn't matter what rock at the White House we turn over. There's nasty stuff under them all. And now just as the subpoenas of accountability are finally starting to fly, they tell us that millions of White House emails, required to be preserved and archived by federal law, have up and disappeared. Or so they now claim. And isn't this yet ANOTHER admission of administration law breaking.

Was it not enough that they lied us into a war that has killed more of our citizens than 9/11 and as many as a million in foreign countries? Was it not enough to conduct illegal wiretapping of our personal communications, while simultaneously swearing they were doing no such thing? Was jeopardizing our national security by outing a key figure in tracking down the REAL weapons of mass destruction, was that not enough? Was an official government policy of torture, to our shame around the world, not enough?

It's just one high crime after another, and either the president is totally not in charge of anything, in which case he should be impeached for that dereliction alone, or all this pipes right through Karl Rove into the Oval office. And whether Cheney is in charge of everything or just half the treason, he's got to go to.

Rosie O'Donnell was speaking for a lot of people when she exclaimed recently, "What do you have to do to get impeached in this country?" But what will make it really happen is when each one of us speaks for ourselves, and we contact our members of Congress to finally demand Constitutional responsibility, and keep doing it again and again.

ACTION PAGE

We don't believe for one second that the Bush administration hasn't now on top of everything else totally corrupted our federal justice system by requiring selective and wrongful prosecutions of members of the other party as a CONDITION for continued employment as an attorney general. The corruption goes completely to the core of everything our country is supposed to stand for. The last time we checked the Pledge of Allegiance ended with the words "justice for all". You got that, George? ALL! And that means you don't just prosecute non-Bushies and let yourself and your cronies off the hook.

But of course he doesn't get it. He's never going to get it. Instead Bush is going even deeper into tantrum and denial mode, demanding even more and more power to grossly abuse, without any accountability whatsoever, as if the results of the last election had not even taken place. They think they're just going to plow ahead with new proposed laws to expand domestic surveillance even further, as if all those rubber stamping Senators voted out in November were still around.

He's not going to stop on his own folks. He's incorrigible. And the only force that can stop him is the pressure of public opinion, coming from our individual voices to our members of Congress, to call on them to honor the Constitution and do what should have been done years ago already. We can't wait until 2008 to be rid of them. Impeach the president and vice president now.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

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Movement to Impeach George W. Bush

* Who's Who on the Religious Right?

AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

"Religious Right leaders often claim that they offer a mainstream vision for America. Their own words, however, demonstrate a radical worldview far removed from the values of most Americans. Over the past two decades, their rhetoric and agenda have been shrill, divisive and extreme."

The single greatest threat to church-state separation in America is the Religious Right TOP 10, PDF

Read all about 'em ...

* Easter at the White House

On Friday, President George W. Bush issued his 2007 Easter Message It says in part: "In this season of renewal, we can rejoice in Christ's rising, draw strength and inspiration from His example, and remember that in the end, even death itself will be defeated. This Easter we pray for all our men and women in uniform and for the military families whose loved ones are deployed on important missions in distant lands. We remember especially those who have given their lives in freedom's cause. On this powerful day, let us join together and give thanks to the Almighty for the glory of His grace."

Of course, as is usual for Bush, he violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. He consistently promotes his Jesus in his speeches to America.

* Dump Religion in Favor of People ~ Women's Rights, not Religion!

I wish someone would have told me that, just because I'm a girl, I don't have to get married. ~ Marlo Thomas

One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man. ~ Marlo Thomas

Amnesty International

German Judge Cites Koran, Stirring Up Cultural Storm

New York Times
by Mark Lander FRANKFURT, March 22 — "A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman’s request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

"In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

"News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence.

"The court in Frankfurt abruptly removed Judge Datz-Winter from the case on Wednesday, saying it could not justify her reasoning. The woman’s lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, said she decided to publicize the ruling, which was issued in January, after the court refused her request for a new judge.

“It was terrible for my client,” Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said. “This man beat her seriously from the beginning of their marriage. After they separated, he called her and threatened to kill her...” Full Article

* Breaking News ~ Some Dots Connected Today

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

~ George W. Bush, State of the Union, January 28, 2003 speech

Libby found guilty in CIA leak case

March 6, 2007 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney was found guilty on Tuesday of lying and obstructing a probe related to the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and could face years in prison ...

Iraq War Began March 17, 2003
Casualties of the War to Date

Someone's fantasies.

* March on the Pentagon ~ March 17, 2007

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
(Two Minute Video)

"On March 17, to mark the 5th year of this immoral and unjust war and occupation of Iraq, JOIN FORCES and march on The Pentagon. Tell the Bush Regime to End the War NOW! No attack on Iran!"