In 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther, began a new era in Christianity by declaring his independence from what he saw as the excesses and iniquities of the Roman Catholic Church. Having kicked off the Reformation by nailing an itemized list of complaints to a church door, Luther challenged not only the orthodoxy of the Church but the political structures of Christian Europe.

In the early years of Luther’s new religion—Protestantism—he became known as a defender of the Jews, whose treatment at the hands of Catholics horrified him. “If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian,” he once wrote. As his theological revolution had purged what he saw as the impurities of Catholic dogma, Luther thought that now the Jews would finally be able to be converted to Christ.

Of course, the problem Jews had with Christianity wasn’t with the selling of indulgences, but with the divinity of Christ. When Europe’s Jews failed to join Luther’s new church, he turned on them most viciously. By 1536, he presaged the Final Solution in his book, “Of The Jews And Their Lies,” calling for Jews to be put into bondage, killed, or expelled from Europe if they did not convert to the gentle message of the Gospels (he put his money where his mouth was by driving them out of many a German principality.) In the introduction to this seminal work of anti-Semitism, Luther writes,

“I have received a treatise in which a Jew engages in dialog with a Christian. He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith, concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith.”

Chris Hedges, author, journalist, and himself a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and son of a Protestant minister, has written his own 21st-century version of “Of The Jews And Their Lies,” entitled I Don’t Believe in Atheists. Anti-Semitism is a bit passe for today’s Christians (a bit tacky after Hitler, wouldn’t you say?), but bigotry against the godless remains relatively safe to express in public. Many a reviewer and interviewer have called the title “cute” (cuter than Von Der Juden und Ihren Lugen?), and Hedges’ bigorty seems to be getting a pass from folks on the left for who probably would have reacted differently had it been anyone else writing the same words.

I feel the same about Hedges as I do about Christopher Hitchens, after he came out so forcefully behind the Bush’s invasion of Iraq; a deep admiration now gone sour. Hedges says the book was born of his debates with what he calls ‘the new atheists,’ writers such as Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and E. O. Wilson. He calls today’s atheist writers religious fundamentalists, assigning them to “the cult of science” and decrying their intolerance and bigotry while doling out plenty of his own.

In foreign policy terms, an atheist like myself has much more in common with Hedges—we both oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (unlike Hitchens and Harris). In searching for a larger framework to contest what he sees as Hitchens’ and Harris’ support of imperialist war, however, he decides to tar even war opponents like Dawkins and Dennett with guilt by association and lumps us all together as evil and a danger to the Republic. But while atheism might be said to have a political philosophy (the separation of church and state), it certainly doesn’t have a foreign policy.

Within the 224 pages of I Don’t Believe in Atheists, Hedges winds his way through a dense thicket of strawmen. Not only has Hedges created a new Christianity for himself (one without heaven, hell, religious institutions, or an interventionalist god), but he’s created another one for his enemies. “To turn away from God is harmless,” Hedges grants, magnanimously, but “to turn away from sin is catastrophic.” You can have your Model-T in any color you want, as long as it’s black as religiously-defined sin.

Works like I Don’t Believe in Atheists reinforce the fact that nonbelievers are one of the most hated minorities in America. Hedges’ liberal bigotry is writ small, at least in the physical sense—the book is a pocket-friendly 5″ by 7″. The sprawling (and often repetitive) critique of today’s out-of-the-closet atheists finds Hedges equating us with Nazis, all the while calling on the reader to heed the wisdom of, say, Christian Realist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who helped shore up support for the atomic bomb and is considered by many to the first neoconservative. Niebuhr’s “just war” theory is often invoked by Iraq war supporters, because it frames mass murder as the necessity to confront evil.

I Don’t Believe In Atheists is a gentle, liberal incitement to an American pogrom against nonbelievers, based on his very own version of a blood libel:

“while the new atheists do not have the power of the Christian Right and are not a threat to the democratic state as the Christian Right is, they do engage in the same chauvinism and call for the same violent utopianism. They sell this under secular banners. They believe, like the Christian Right, that we are moving forward to a paradise, a state of human perfection, this time made possible by science and reason.”

Do atheists believe in a ‘state of perfection?’ Do atheists belong to what Hedges calls the ‘cult of science?’ Must we all have gods, as Martin Luther once said?

A thoroughly modern believer, Hedges declares he can pick and choose truths and falsehoods from science with the same ease as he does from Bible (parts of which he calls ‘morally indefensible’). As with other intelligent design advocates, a faulty understanding of science buttresses a foregone conclusion—that the divine inhabits the gaps in human scientific understanding and the pursuit of further understanding is hazardous to the soul. Richard Dawkins, a target of Hedges’ self-righteous indignation, calls this belief the ‘god of the gaps,’ and Hedges tries mightily to sacralize the mysteries of the universe in order to warn scientists against the hubris of discovering truths about reality instead of waiting for revelation about the mystic.

Intelligent design, a modern descendant of creationism, is the same impulse which lead ancient mapmakers to draw sea serpents in unexplored parts of the oceans and declare: “thar be monsters.” Hedges’ book amounts to nothing less than the intelligent design argument applied beyond biology to all realms of human endeavor, from physics to philosophy. And the monsters are the so-called “new atheists.”

“Religious thought is a guide to morality. It points humans toward inquiry,” announces Hedges, but his dogma leads him toward an inquisition instead. The main thrust of the book is the idea that today’s atheists are trying to ‘perfect’ humanity, which is at the top of Hedges’ list of cardinal sins:

“[t]he belief in human perfection, that we can advance morally, is itself an evil. It provides cover for criminality and abuse, a justification for murder. It sanctifies war, murder, and torture, for an unattainable purpose. It denies our own moral pollution.”

One could substitute “the divine” for “human perfection” in the above sentence, but that’s the easy way out. Even if the new atheist authors really believe in human perfection, is that the same thing as a belief in moral progress? “There is nothing in human nature or in human history that points to the idea that we are moving anywhere,” protests Hedges. Well, it all depends on your metric for progress, of course—not to mention your definitions of ‘moving’ and ‘anywhere.’ If nothing in nature or history supported the idea of progress, Hedges’ wouldn’t have to repeatedly and weakly dismiss the notion. For Hedges, the fact that there is still murder and hatred and all manner of iniquity and inequality proves that there is no progress ever past or present, QED.

But really, is there anything in human nature to say we, as a species, I suppose, are moving anywhere? There’s a whole science of genetics which is helping to explain how we got here in the way we did, from helping us trace the movement of early humans out of Africa to developing cures for birth defects which were never possible before. Did morality work differently for our pre-human ancestors as it does for homo sapiens? Does the evolution of and within hominid society qualify as moral progress? I would venture to say so, if only because I don’t think animals are capable of the kind of abstract reasoning ethics require. Evolutionary biology shows us that change is slow, and its smallest increment is generational.

Hedges’ idea that naturalists believe we are the culmination of a process leading towards perfection shows the limits of his understanding. “The belief in human perfectibility, in history as a march toward a glorious culmination, is malformed theology.” Actually, it’s malformed science; biologists understand that evolution is a continuing phenomenon, and we are not the end of it. Only under the weight of eschatology (the study of the end of time) does evolution have an ‘end.’ For scientists, Darwin only described a ‘means.’ What Darwin showed was that evolution was random, as opposed to competing evolutionary scientists of his day—like Lamarck, who theorized that giraffes grew long necks in order to feed from tall trees.

Hedges is just getting started mischaracterizing science for his own ends: “[p]luralism has no place in science. Neither does the principle (so familiar from the arts, humanities and human sciences) of competing truths. Scientific ideas, because they an be demonstrated or disproved, are embraced or rejected on the basis of quantifiable evidence.”

Pluralism certainly has a place in science, and it’s called the cutting edge, where such ideas are called theorems. (Just look at the panoply of string theories, which are themselves intended to resolve the competition between quantum field and general relativity theories.) Hedges’ rants remind me of an English major drunkenly explaining that Science majors have no soul. And not only that, adds Hedges, but neuroscientist Sam Harris “does not engage in the laborious work of acquiring knowledge and understanding… He has no interest in debate, dialogue or scholarship.” (One presumes Hedges had compelled Harris to debate him against his will in San Francisco in 2007). Or, “[Sam Harris'] assertion that Muslim parents welcome the death of children as suicide bombers could only have been written by someone who never sat in the home of a grieving mother and father in Gaza who have just lost their child.” Now, I have never been to Gaza, but one such parent, known as ‘Umm Nidal‘ (who famously encouraged her sons to become martyrs and handed out chocolate and halvah upon hearing her son was killed attacking an Israeli settlement) was, in fact, elected to Palestinian parliament on the Hamas ticket in 2006. Similarly, Hedges protests that somehow religion had nothing to do with the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Christians. The book is full of such hollow falsehoods, Jesuit-level equivocations and semantic boondoggles.

The tone of the book is reminiscient of a sermon—long, tedious, repetitive, and full of earnestly resolute pomposity:

“The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction. [...] God—and different cultures have given God many names and many attributes—is that which works upon us and through us to find meaning and relevance in a morally neutral universe. [...] God is, as Thomas Aquinas argues, the power that allows us to be ourselves. God is a search, a way to frame the questions. God is a call to reverence.”

Reverence of what, exactly? It isn’t clear, but it seems that if anything should be exalted, it is human limitation and our irredeemable shortcomings, whatever those might be. Hedges not only constructs a strawman (the belief that atheists and scientists are trying to perfect humanity) but a new religion—the worship of human flaws. There is no greater sin for Hedges than to turn away from the concept of Sin, and those who do are embracing an evil so profound that Hedges’ doesn’t talk about much else. Hedges’ speaks of the “wisdom of original Sin” and exalts, at length, human evil:

“Human evil is not a problem. It is a mystery. It cannot be solved. It is a bitter, constant paradox that is part of human nature.”

Hedges goes on to accuse the new atheists of ‘externalizing evil’ — but the truth is that Hedges is guilty of internalizing ‘good.’ English doesn’t have a distinction between religious and secular definitions of ‘good’ the way it separates ‘evil’ from ‘bad,’ so let me clarify that as an atheist, I believe in ‘bad’ but not ‘evil.’ Because contrary to what religion wants you to think, the relevant parties to telling right from wrong are your fellow beings, rather than any imaginary ones. Yes, there is bad and good, but we must always ask—bad for whom? Good for what?

In a summary of his book published by the Free Press, Hedges writes,

“Religious institutions, however, should be separated from the religious values imparted to me by religious figures, including my father [who was a liberal minister]. Most of these men and women frequently ran afoul of their own religious authorities. Religion, real religion, was about fighting for justice, standing up for the voiceless and the weak, reaching out in acts of kindness and compassion to the stranger and the outcast, living a life of simplicity, finding empathy and defying the powerful.”

Leaving aside for the moment the question of how Hedges gets to cleave ‘real religion’ from the kind most people practice, we must ask—what exactly are religious values? Are there such things regardless of the religion in question?

The truth is, there’s only one universal religious value: orthodoxy in the service of power. The world’s faiths share a vast-ranging disagreement on everything else, even the number of gods to be worshiped—from zero in Theravada Buddhism to the Trinity of Catholicism to the countless loa of Voodoo. Everything about the temporal world is up for spiritual grabs, from the threshold for justifiable homicide to the divinely inspired way to wipe your ass.

Much as science is morally neutral, religion is merely a tool for the powerful to control the masses. And yet, there is a process by which religions themselves evolve. Within my own lifetime, for example, Bob Jones University, which went from defending their ban on interracial dating and marriage on God’s ipse dixit 1983 before the Supreme Court to revoking the policy in 2000—not because George W. Bush was about to make a speech there and they didn’t want to offend the heathens for political purposes, but because the sacred words of God must have changed, mysteriously acquiring a new meaning.

Whether there’s a text or an oral tradition, every religious person picks and chooses, interprets and reinterprets the tenets of their faith and applies them to the real world. Those choices are temporal, secular—because religion is all in your head. Interaction with your fellow humans is real, and therefore will never live up to Hedges’ idealized ‘good.’

Morals are personal, ethics are interpersonal. The zeitgeist (as described by Dawkins) describes the movement of social mores—the definitions not only of evil, but of ‘good’ as well.

When Hedges admits that some parts of the Bible are ‘morally indefensible,’ it is the reader’s duty to ask how they got that way. So when Hedges writes, “All ethics begin with religion. We must determine what moral laws to accept or reject. We must distinguish between real and false prophets,” while enjoining us from using reason and science to do so, on what basis does Hedges make these distinctions? It would appear that there is no rational distinction between true and false prophets.

The truth is that all of us, Hedges included, create a personal moral code using real-life, secular ethics—the realm of human interaction which Hedges finds so spiritually devoid: “Those who focus only on human communication, who are unable to step out of the realm of prosaic knowledge, sever themselves from the sacred. They remain trapped in a deadening self-awareness. They lose the capacity to honor and protect that which makes life possible.”

A band of prophets known as the Firesign Theatre once said, “when you clock the human race with the stopwatch of history, it’s a new record every time.” Things we view as “evil” or immoral by today’s standards were moral yesterday, and we gauge our progress by comparing these standards. For example: would Jesus buy an SUV? Has burning gasoline always been sin, or just bad for the environment? And how could we possibly answer such a question (much less ask it) without the advances of science? Moral ‘progress’ is inevitable, if only because morality has to address new problems every day.

Hedges goes on at length about how the new atheists want to ‘perfect’ humanity, but suspiciously, he doesn’t use any direct quotes. So, I decided to read Harris and Dawkins in search of this ideology of perfection, but I couldn’t find any. Dawkins definitely speaks of the Zeitgeist and of “evolving complexity,” but nowhere does he say that ‘perfection’ (whatever that is) is attainable or that he has set his sights upon it. Harris hardly speaks in absolutes, and certainly doesn’t say that atheists seek to achieve perfection. So, where is this murderous ideology of perfection?

Seek and ye shall find, says the Bible, and Hedges’ uses his denseness as his guide: “Wilson and Dawkins build their vision of human perfectibility out of the legitimately scientific theory that human beings are shaped by the laws of heredity and natural selection. They depart from this position when they assert that we can leave determinism behind. There is nothing in science that implies our genetic makeup allows us to perfect ourselves. Those who, in the name of science, claim that we can overcome our imperfect human nature create a belief system that functions like religion… there is nothing, when you cut through their scientific jargon, to support their absurd proposition.”

Leaving aside whether Hedges is truly capable of understanding scientific jargon—as opposed to simply cutting through it—you have to wonder (as with his claim that “Dawkins, like Christian zealots, reduces the world to a binary formula of good and evil”) where he’s getting this stuff. As Hedges writes, “these are not questions atheists answer. They attack a religious belief of their own creation.” Atheists don’t believe in eschatology, and neither do we seek to negate ourselves by becoming gods. Atheism merely seeks to turn the pyramid scheme of religion upside-down.

“Because there is no clear, objective definition of God,” writes Hedges, “the new atheists must choose what God it is that they attack.” Actually, that’s not true, but like all good debaters, Hedges needs to reframe the debate on his terms in order to claim rhetorical victory. What Hedges fails to understand is that atheism is a rejection of the whole notion of a top-down universe, no matter whom your particular creation myth places at the top. A universe without gods is one which is eternal and works from the bottom up, without meaning or intent. Hedges characterizes the universe as “morally neutral,” but at the same time posits an objective ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and that God is the good in each of us. One wonders why, if there is only one god, why it can’t be the morally neutral in each of us? If animals have a moral value, what is it, and do they share the same god as humanity or the rest of the universe?

For most of the book, Hedges’ seems hell-bent on conflating atheists with Raëlians, an extropian UFO cult who send out press releases claiming to have cloned a human being every so often. For all his Western-centric chauvinism, Hedges’ concept of the universe, with its personally uninvolved deity in an amoral universe who works through us, sounds a lot more like some Yoruba-derived syncretic religion, such as Candomblé or Santería: Oludumare, the creator, doesn’t deal with people, and so requests are made of orishas (‘the owners of heads’) who possess and work through their followers. But Hedges’ Christian prejudices against atheism and polytheism are merely precursors to the real weakness in his arguments.

When Hedges writes, for example, that “[w]e progress technologically and scientifically, but not morally. We use the newest instruments of technological and scientific progress to create more efficient forms of killing, repression and economic exploitation, and to accelerate environmental degradation,” is he saying that the pursuit of any scientific knowledge (for example, genetics, which can certainly be said to “change human nature”) is an evil because it attempts to improve the human condition? And if some science is OK, where is the boundary between good and evil science, the border line where Hedges and the Unabomber stand, wagging their fingers at humanity?

“There is a good and a bad side to human progress. We are not moving towards a glorious utopia. We are not moving anywhere,” he proclaims. It seems by definition that if there there is human progress that we are moving somewhere (if not towards some glorious utopia). Hedges lives in a world of absolutes, as much as he protests otherwise; since the imaginary end (utopia) is deemed impossible, he seems to say there cannot be any movement altogether, failing to make the distinction between ‘perfect’ as a verb and as an adjective. When, for example, America’s founding Deists employed the phrase ‘a more perfect Union,’ it didn’t suggest (to me, anyway) that they thought there was going to be a perfectly perfect Union.

I Don’t Believe In Atheists plumbs the depths of Hedges’ unwillingness to engage with atheism, or atheists—encapsulated by the way he laughs off Christopher Hitchens’ lack of theological training with regard to his question of who created the Creator:

“This is the declaration of an illiterate. Aquinas, along with many other theologians, addressed at length the issue of who created the creator. God, Aquinas argues, is not an entity. God is not a thing or a being. Creation is an act of handicraft. Creation is the condition of there being something rather than nothing. Creation didn’t happen long ago. Creation is a constant in human existence. It is part of life.”

This is what’s known as “conversion by definition” (or “the bear hug”) where extremely lazy evangelists posit that the fact one is alive is proof that at least one god exists. (For the sun, or your electronic devices, which operate on the principle that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it’s a different story.) “God is a human concept,” admits Hedges, but that’s about as far as he’s willing to go in understanding the subjects of his monograph. Because Hedges’ doesn’t understand atheism, his critique is understandably flawed. Worse still, he is unwilling to subject himself to his own critique:

“They see the “other” as equal only when the other is identical to themselves. They project their own values on the rest of the human race. …Those who are different do not need to be investigated, understood or tolerated, for they are intellectually and morally inferior. Those who are different are imperfect versions of themselves.”



I exhort you, faithful readers, to vote for my blog in the Best Writing category of the Koufax Awards. I have this fantasy of winning out over 126 contenders. As the Mets say, You Gotta Believe.

Please, vote here (it says the voting hasn’t opened yet, but it has):

Wampum’s Koufax Award for Best Writing 2005

My votes, incidentally:

Dada Head for Best New Blog.

Dada Head for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.

As Dada says, Dada is the egg. Dada is the Police of the Police.

My own manifestoes are somewhat less overtly political.

UPDATE:

To quote Wampum:

“Thus, polls will close Sunday night, March 12th, at 11:59 pm. Dwight and I will sit down and start counting votes, hopefully having the results in a few days. Then onto the final round. Finally, please consider contributing to Wampum’s Koufax Awards operations fund to defray the not insignificant cost of running these awards.”

The Auto, The Hurricane, and the Ice Floe

Since the beginning of America, you can always find one Christian group who was preaching that the country was going to hell for any number of national sins: slavery; abolitionists; homosexuals; Communists and so forth. It appropriates a familiar narrative from the Old Testament, and no wonder–it was written in the same vein as the preachers who use it today. And it’s the same all over the world, on both sides of the Huntingtonian divide.

I wonder whether there ought be, or already exsts, a Christian narrative which looks upon what I call “Nature” as “God”, and has a story for the punishment of environmental sins as the reason for natural catastrophes, if our offense toward Nature could be explained in plain meterological terms. Perhaps it might be easier to construct a narrative of the President’s bearing of false witness as the reason for the deaths and maimings of American soldiers in Iraq. Lord knows Reverend Phelps blames “don’t ask don’t tell” and so forth, you could do worse in terms of biblically-correct reasons for the casualties of war.

The Catholic Church has already accepted Darwinism, and even intelligent design advocates believe in “micro-evolution,” that is to say, individuation within species (e.g., dog breeds) in caveat to science. Surely there is enough room in religious worldviews for acknowledgement of global warming as the result of human misdeeds.

Another Great New TV Show Idea

You know what would really make political television more interesting? If, instead of having captions like “Senator Joseph Biden, Jr, (D-DE)” we could have a list of their major campaign contributors instead of part affiliation: “Senator Biden, (Credit Card Industry-DE).” Wouldn’t that go a long ways toward giving the viewers an informed debate?

How about we go a step further? I bring you POP-UP-CSPAN!

On digital cable, users will be able to hit a button and scroll through a short summary of legislative records and donors. The technology exists today!

Since my internet connection went down earlier this week, I’ve been sitting and stewing about various things:

No Blogging on Yom Kippur

A few days ago, I was lamenting the fact that my traffic had been flagging lately. It’s not like I don’t know why; I don’t post every day, like most blogs do. These posts (usually) take time to write and research, and I don’t make any money off this page.

That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to hear I was nominated for a Koufax Award for Best Writing. Named for the famous southpaw pitcher and administered by Wampum, the Koufaxes are handed out to the best of the left-of-center blogosphere. Congrats to my fellow nominees:

Adventus: Robert Jeffers , Alas, A Blog: Ampersand , Alicublog: Roy Edroso , All Facts and Opinions: Natalie Davis , AmericaBlog: John Aravosis , Anonymoses , Attytood: Will Bunch , Baghdad Burning: Riverbend , Bitch Ph.D. , Blood & Treasure: Jamie Kenny , Bob Harris , Body and Soul: Jeanne d’Arc , Booman Tribune: SusanHu , Booman Tribune: Blksista , Booman/European Tribune: Oui , Bootstrap Analysis: Nuthatch , Bouphonia , Bradblog , Busy, Busy, Busy , By Neddie Jingo , The Cassandra Pages , Casual Asides: DJ Waletzky , The Carpetbagger Report , Cool Beans: Bean , The Countess: Trish Wilson , Courting Destiny , Creek Running North: Chris Clarke , Daily Kos: Hunter , Daily Kos: Armando , Daily Kos: Devilstower , Daily Kos: Georgia10 , Daily Kos: Grand Moff Texan , DC Media Girl , The Democracy Cell Project: Casey Morris , Driftglass , Echnide of the Snakes , Effwit , Enemy of the State , Eschaton: Atrios , European Tribune: Jerome a Paris , Ezra Klein , The Fat Lady Sings , Feministe: Jill , Feministe: Lauren , Firedoglake: ReddHedd , First Draft: Athenae , Frogs and Ravens , From Pine View Farm: Frank , From the Rooftops , Girl Scientist , The Green Knight , The Heretik , How to Save the World , Hullabaloo: Digby , Hullabaloo: Tristero , I Blame the Patriarchy: Twisty Faster , Informed Comment: Juan Cole , James Wolcott , Jeremy Blachman , Kid Oakland , King of Zembla: Simbaud , Lance Mannion , Legal Fiction: Publius , Lawyers, Guns and Money: Scott Lemieux , The Left Coaster: Paradox , Left I on the News: Eli Stephens , Liberal Street Fighter: Madman in the Marketplace , The (liberal) Girl Next Door , Liberty Street , Looking for Someone to Lie To Me: Michael Roston , Mad As Hell , Mahablog: Barbara O’Brien , Majikthise: Lindsay Beyerstein , Making Light: Jim Macdonald , Making Light: Teresa Nielsen Hayden , The Marj Memoirs , Matt Yglesias , Michael Bérubé Online , The Moquol , MyKeru , My Left Wing: Gottlieb , My Left Wing: Shanikka , My Left Wing: Maryscott O’Connor , My Left Wing: Caliberal , My Left Wing: Weeping for Brunnhilde , Neil Shakespeare , The Next Hurrah: Meteor Blades , Norbizness , Obsidian Wings: Hilzoy , Old Fashioned Patriot , Once Upon a Time: Arthur Silber , One Good Thing , The Opinion Mill , Orcinus: David Neiwert , Pandagon: Amanda Marcotte , PastPeak , The Poor Man: The Editors , Random Thoughts: Unfair and Unbalanced: Susan Nunes , Red Tory , Respectful Insolence , The Reaction: Michael J.W. Stickings , Rigorous Intuition , Rittenhouse Review: Jim Capazzola , Rox Populi , The Rude Pundit , Sadly, No!: , Saint Nate’s Blog , Set Free , Shakespeare’s Sister: Melissa McEwan , Suburban Guerrilla: Susie Madrak , Sufficient Scruples , Sisyphus Shrugged: Julia , Talking Points Memo: Josh Marshall , The Tattered Coat , Timothy Burke , Thou Shall Not Suck: Unholy Moses , TomDispatch , Washington Note: Steve Clemons , Unclaimed Territory: Glenn Greenwald , Unqualified Offerings: Jim Henley , Washington Monthly/Political Animal: Kevin Drum , WhirledView: Patricia Lee Sharpe , Whiskey Bar: Billmon , Winding Road in Urban Area: Jaye Ramsey Sutter , Working for Change: David Sirota , Yep,Another Goddamn Blog: Jurassic Pork

I’m still working on reading all of those links. I can safely say that the odds of any one of us winning are 126 to one against, so good luck to all!

Seriously, thanks to “Jason” for nominating me; and to my loyal readers. I’ll be alerting you when voting opens next week.

Also, if any of the aformentioned blogs want to trade links, I would be honored. (Thanks to M. J. W. Stickings of The Reaction for leading the way on that one.)

The Cult of Strength

Speaking of fellow Best Writing nominees, the lefty blogs have been talking a lot about Glenn Greenwald’s excellent post about “conservatism” being redefined as the cult of George Bush. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently–is Bush really a conservative?

Just because he has introduced recrod spending doesn’t mean he isn’t ultimately serving the interests of “limited government” as envisioned by the likes of Grover Norquist. Remember, the increase in spending is mostly due (I mean, apart from the disastrous Medicare Part D) to the increased expenditures on ‘defense,’ either for the military or the Department of Homeland Security. When it comes to the kind of spending that drives conservatives crazy–i.e., programs that are actually aimed at helping people–Bush has been ruthlessly slashing program budgets, from NASA to Medicare to education (hint to federal employees: if the President mentions your department in the State of the Union and you’re not wearing a uniform, consider yourself screwed). In fact, my personal opinion is that Bush is running up a huge deficit in order to make those cuts permanent, well beyond his eight-year tenure; the massive deficit will put subsequent Administrations in the position of having to raise taxes or keep defunding services. Just as if he were running one of his ruinous business ventures, Bush is projecting his incompetence into the future. And people say he doesn’t see things in the long term.

At any rate, I’m not here to defend Bush to conservatives. I actually want to offer a small defense of “conservative” Bush cultists today, and to do that I need to talk about reflexive defensiveness. Bush-worshippers are defending Bush the same way Democrats defended Clinton, nothing more or less. Even if you think Bush has sold his base out on any number of conservative principles, the simple fact remains that Bush drives liberals even crazier than Clinton drove conservatives. People love a strong leader, and two-termers have proven that essential quality associated with strength in a democracy, electability. (Sidebar: I have resisted saying this for a year and a half, but I am now of the opinion that Bush stole the 2004 election, particularly in the case of widespread fraud in Ohio. Not that this matters in practical terms, but there, I said it.)

In a first-past-the-post, two-party political landscape, you’re either with the party or you’re against it. Sure, ‘conservatives’ who decry GOP dissenters from the cult of Bush as liberals lack sophistication, but so does our electoral system. Bush is about as far from his libertarian supporters as Clinton was from his leftist supporters. (From my vantage point to the extreme left of both politicians, I have no problem pointing this out).

Back to reflexive defensiveness: as Der Spiegel wrote about the cartoon controversy in France:

One paper quoted a young man named Said from Nice. He said he considered himself to be an atheist, but “when the mayor rejects the building of a mosque, I suddenly become a Muslim.”

When the other guys attack our guy, we rush to our guy’s defense, no matter how indefensible. Maybe we should call the Bush supporters ‘knee-jerk conservatives.’

While we’re talking about Clinton, let’s talk about impeachment. Those who admit Bush has done wrong in some sense but balk at actually impeaching him will often ask, “does this mean that every President will get impeached from now on?”

The question is really, “has every single President committed an impeachable offense?” The answer, more than likely, is “yes.”

Evolving Creationism

There’s been a lot of coverage lately of grassroots creationism lately. Take, for example, the L. A. Times coverage of Ken Ham’s creationist seminars for schoolchildren:

“Boys and girls,” Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, “you put your hand up and you say, ‘Excuse me, were you there?’ Can you remember that?” The children roared their assent.

“Sometimes people will answer, ‘No, but you weren’t there either,’ ” Ham told them. “Then you say, ‘No, I wasn’t, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.’ ” He waved his Bible in the air.

…

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

“We’re going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles,” Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham’s ministry, Answers in Genesis.

The Christian Know-Nothing movement is trying to engender nothing short of a childrens’ crusade against evolution. So, kids, here are some questions to pose to your fellow students when they start spouting this kind of crap:

• Which did God create first, man or animals? (hint: check Genesis chapters 1 and 2 for the two contradictory accounts.)
• In scientific terms, how did God create trees before the sun?
• If there’s no such thing as evolution, should you need a different flu shot every year?
• If the problem with science’s explanations for the universe is that it doesn’t explain how all the stuff in the universe got here, what is the Bible’s explanation for how God got here?

Fortunately, I have the answer to all of these questions. That’s right, I’ve finally found religion. And it tasted good.

Note: I’ve been busy and uninspired lately. Actually, I’ve been trying to pitch articles to magazines instead of working like a dog to fact-check stuff for a blog that relatively few people read. The market has wreaked its horrible toll on this blog, I’m afraid.

But don’t despair, I found this draft from a while ago about the Religious Right that I’d been meaning to fully develop at some point. Instead, I’ve just polished up some rough edges and will post a further discussion at some even later point.

Note: this is the continuation of Incredible Values.

Enjoy!

If you were to believe Pat Robertson, James Dobson, or Alan Keyes, Christians and Christianity are under attack from the evil, soulless forces of secular judges and politicians. They’re right, of course; the political power of Christians is always abutting and opposing the political and systematic proponents of secularism, one of which happens to be the U.S. Constitution. Remember, the United States is comprised of roughly three-quarters Christians and Whites respectively, so it might be instructive to think of the political kulturkampf as a parallel to the civil rights movement.

Then, as now, the rights of the minorities were being asserted against the unjust concentration of political power in the hands of the majority. Jim Crow laws were majority enacted and enforced, remember. All the same, the civil rights movements claimed new power at the expense of white power, plain and simple. White people’s monopoly on power was (and is) being diminished, but not unjustly so.

[A side note about white supremacist movements: Of course, the those most likely to suffer from this minor shift of political balance-of-power are the whites at the periphery of power, the working class whites of the type who are drawn to white power movements. These movements seek to regain that colonial advantage which would let their race's weakest to enjoy their previous advantages over other races' strongest.]

Just as the shift towards equilibrium launched by the civil rights movement threatened whites’ privileges more than their freedoms, so to has the parallel secular rights movement diminshed Christians’ political control rather than their ability to practice. The central and most instructive example is the fight over school prayer, which I have summarized previously: as long as there are tests in schools, there will be prayer in schools. But ‘school prayer’ has only one express purpose, which is to get kids who wouldn’t otherwise pray to accept Christian values.

Jesus’ take on politics was “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but we all know Christianity has come a long way from (and since) the words of Jesus. Much like Islamism, today’s American version of Christian evangelism is a political as well as social movement. The statist aspirations of a Bin Laden and a Ralph Reed are basically similar:

“I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.” –Ralph Reed, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 9-Nov-1991

Consider the prominent ‘Christian’ political issues–school prayer, which is about non-Christian children; abortion, which is about non-Christian women, gay marriage, which is about non-Christian marriage. Here, I’m using ‘Christian’ as the evangelicals do, to refer to the more conservative theology that dominates the ‘Red’ states and the GOP base. These battles are about preserving a Christian monopoly in the legal arena, to which their superior numbers simply do not entitle them. Ever since the Emperor Constantine, Christianity has been gained a political aspect which, though completely extraneous to the New Testament, is nonetheless an integral part of the religion.

Having established that “values” is a terrible code-word for “Christian,” we could turn to the other politically correct code-word, “family.”

First, let’s dial it back for a moment. The world runs on convenient fictions, thing that we must believe for the sake not only of expediency, but if we didn’t, that which we call ‘the world’ would fall apart. Whether these are religious beliefs we accept on faith, trusts we have in a national currency, or narrow views of history which highlight one set of achievements and tragedies over others, we lean most heavily on these lies’ rhetorical strength when we see their truth being challenged.

Liberals have a real problem understanding why Christians want to outlaw gay marriage when the simple fact is that if you’re opposed, all you have to do is not marry someone of the same gender. Well, nobody’s going to get anywhere until they understand and empathize with the other side. Let’s take a look at, for example, one of James Dobson’s Eleven Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage (Part 1 of 5):

1. The legalization of homosexual marriage will quickly destroy the traditional family. …the introduction of legalized gay marriages will lead inexorably to polygamy and other alternatives to one man/one woman unions.

Isn’t it curious that though homosexuality predates both the Bible, marriage, and the nuclear family, Dobson links gay marriage’s destructive power to its supposed ability to bring back polygamy… like we had back in the Bible!

…After the introduction of marriage between homosexuals, however, it will be supported by nothing more substantial than the opinion of a single judge or by a black-robed panel of justices. After they have reached their dubious decisions, the family will consist of little more than someone’s interpretation of “rights.” Given that unstable legal climate, it is certain that some self-possessed judge, somewhere, will soon rule that three men or three women can marry. …Those who disagree will continue to be seen as hate-mongers and bigots. (Indeed, those charges are already being leveled against Christians who espouse biblical values!)

These Christians conveniently ignore that what they call “the traditional family” (a.k.a., the nuclear family) is an invention of the Industrial Revolution, and that what sociologists refer to as ‘the extended family’ predates even marriage. Early humans lived under arrangements much more like Dobson’s nightmare scenario of ‘group marriages.’ Agricultural societies like those of the bible were frequently polygamous and often polyandrous, and featured high rates of illegitimacy where monogamy was enforced. Extended, intergenerational households were the norm before people moved off the farms to the cities. It’s curious, isn’t it, that those we consider “Christian fundamentalists” have a vision of Christianity that’s so historically divorced from its seminal prophet and text.

The convenient fiction like the ‘traditional family’ dovetails well with the claim that gay marriage will destroy marriage itself. But if you read the critiques from the likes of Dobson (essentially that marriage will become short-lived and arbitrary more than it is already), what they’re really arguing against is the legalization of divorce. The real fear arising from gay marriage is that the Christian monopoly on yet another section of legal mores will disappear. There’s a reason the Bill of Rights is an amendment to the Constitution: the majority cannot be trusted to protect the civil rights of minorities. We realized this relatively early in the democratic experiment we call America.

In today’s evangelical movement, but most particularly in its political wing (which I refer to here as ‘Christian Patriot’) there has been an adoption of free-market capitalist rhetoric. Like the other main GOP client group, business interests, they have no intention of eating their own dog food. Much like American business leaders rail against government regulation while accepting corporate welfare and all of the legal protections and mechanisms devoted to corporate interests (including the very concept of an artificial citizen with “limited liability”), Christian Patriots rhetorically reference freedom of religion, but demand government interference in the same breath.

The Christian complaint is that they are losing their right to control legal mores. Christians, like any majority faced with a similar situation (again, a parallel to the whites of the Civil Rights era), naturally see the progress made by non-Christians not just a challenege to their position in society, but as a challenege to their fundamental democratic rights. As the majority, they feel entitled the dictate the morality of the rest of the country to a certain extent. Because you can’t come right out and say that, however, this reasoning manifests itself in two rhetorical memes:

First, that government acceptance of [insert non-Christian activity here] is the same as government promotion of non-Christian values. Secondly, they fear for their children growing up in a world of moral ambiguity where Christian and non-Christian values are presented as morally equivalent in the eyes of the government, which would lead these children to abandon Christ.

Within the evangelical community, there are two approaches to the problem of urban secularization. Loss of power is traditionally met with retrenchment–those who wish to withdraw from secular culture and society (interesting fact: Harper’s noted in a recent Index that the ratio of gated communities to mobile homes in 1:1). These are the home schoolers, the suburbanites of close-knit Christian tract developments of places like Colorado Springs (or for that matter, Elohim City). These are the people who are content to build themselves the separate nation I spoke of earlier. These people live lives of private virtue, working to fulfill their religious obligations without pushing their religion onto others.

But the political activists who wish to harness even those passive members’ political power are those who are not satisfied to live righteously themselves, but to force virtue onto others. Sometimes, (and the mayor of Spokane, Jim West, who spent 20 years distinguishing himself as the anti-gay pit bull of the state legislature is just the latest and greatest example), Christians have enough trouble living up to their own religious morality that they feel compelled to use state means to harass others who don’t share their Christian values.

These political operatives have appropriated the rhetoric of victimhood to try and rally Christians around the necessity of extending their theocratic control over the laws of this country. Freedom of religion is not enough for evangelicals; which is why they bristle at the logical extension of religious freedom–freedom from religion.

Pat Robertson:

“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.”

These Christian cries of martyrdom are just detestable. They ought to quit whining about the lack of restrictions on other people and worry about themselves and render unto Caesar already.

So, I'm turning 25 as we speak, and I've decided to celebrate by being responsible and catching up on all this work I need to have done today.

That is why this post is so short. I have been working on a post wherein I advocate withdrawing from NAFTA, the War on Drugs and Iraq as part of waging a more successful "War On Terror," but that will have to wait for another day. Right now there is a little Afghan child whose heart operation I need to digitize so that Nightline can make a segment about it.

In the meantime, for those who crave D. J.'s intellectual beat-downs to while away time while <i>you</i> should be working, enjoy the following debate I had with some idiot about the existence of god, et al, on my friend Kelsey's blog, The Kvetcher.

Also, in the "I called it" department, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons as a direct result of U.S. agression, and Indonesia and the Acehnese are negotiating again.

This evening, I got a phone call from my cousin, who used to work at the Heritage Foundation. Needless to say, we often disagree about politics, and we all know how much I enjoy a good debate. The following is a condensed account of our conversation.

“The first amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” said my cousin. “There’s nothing in it about this wall of separation between church and state.”
“It absolutely implies a wall of separation between church and state!” I protested.
“Take school prayer, for instance…”
“Aha! Perfect, perfect example!” I cried. (‘Aha’ is a word I often use when I smell blood in the water.)
“What’s wrong with students leading a non-denominational prayer in schools?”
“It’s coercive! You should read the Supreme Court’s decision in that Arizona case.”
“How is it coercive if it’s voluntary?”
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘as long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools?’”
“Ha ha, yeah, I have.”
“Well, it’s true. People are going to pray when and where they want to. That’s free exercise. And really, there is not a force on earth that can stop you from doing it. The question is about a public prayer, where school time is devoted to it.”
“Have you heard the prayer they were going to use? It’s totally non-denominational.”
“Doesn’t matter. Think about it—whom is school prayer actually meant for? The faithful are going to profess their faith anyway, right?”
“Yeah…”
“The school can’t stop you from praying on your own time. We already know that people who really believe are going to pray anyway. So who’s it really for?”
“What’s wrong with a moment of silence or something like that?”
“Why are they having a moment of silence?”
“So that if you wanted to pray…”
“If you want to pray, you’re already doing it on your own, without the government telling you when and where to do it. So why have school prayer?”
“OK, I see your point.”

School prayer is solely designed to coerce people who wouldn’t otherwise pray to do so. If you were already praying, you’re doing it on your own time. The only people it could possibly be aimed at are students who don’t want to pray.

Then I told him about how when I was a freshman in high school, there was a proposal being floated by Newt Gingrich and his ilk to put prayer back in the schools. My plan was that if such a law were ever passed, I would have immediately asked for permission to slaughter a goat as part of a sacred ritual. Christians love school prayer, unless the other guys get a hold of it.

I knew it. The Supreme Court threw out Newdow's case on a technicality. Arguing that Newdow does not have standing to file the case because he is a non-custodial parent, the Supreme Court weaseled their way out of making the most important church-state ruling this session.

It's not like the Supreme Court has a problem with making unpopular decisions. The justices' terms are lifetime appointments for a reason, but in today's uber-politicized government, no office is free of partisan considerations anymore. I suppose it's always been this way.

Look for a flurry of new lawsuits by custodial parents in the fall.

So, Michael Newdow argued his case before the Supreme Court yesterday. Having already written a lengthy article on why Newdow should win, I think the most efficient way to approach this topic is ‘fisking’ the New York Times’ excerpts:

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: What — what you say is, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. So that certainly doesn’t sound like anything like a prayer.MR. NEWDOW: Not at all.

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: Then why isn’t General Olson’s categorization of the remainder as descriptive, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all? You can disagree it’s under God, you can disagree that it’s — has a liberty and justice for all, but that doesn’t make it a prayer.

Here’s the problem: the words “under God” were specifically inserted into the Pledge where they had never existed before. Had the text been a cohesive whole which included “under God” in the original text, then Rehnquist might have had a point. But the 1954 addition was meant specifically to exclude atheists. Why, not only that, but let me print here an excerpt from the sermon of the Congressional Chaplain, delivered at the 1954 Flag Day ceremony–quoted from the congressional record (emphasis mine):

To put the words “under God” on millions of lips is like running up the believer’s flag as the witness of a great nation’s faith. It is also displayed to the gaze of those who deny the sacred sanctities which it symbolizes. On that June day, within a few minutes after the signature of the President had written “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the bill that legalized it leaped to life in a scene silhouetted against the white dome of the Capital. There stood Senator HOMER FERGUSON, who had sponsored the resolution in the Senate, and with him a group of legislative colleagues from both houses of Congress. As the radio carried their voices to listening thousands, together these lawmakers repeated the pledge which is now the Nation’s. Then, appropriately, as the flag was raised a bugle rang out with the familiar strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”

Anyway,

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: What if, instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, the school required the children to begin their — their session by singing God Bless America? Would that make your case weaker or stronger? …MR. NEWDOW: I think that if they stood up the child and they said, stand up, face the flag, put your hand on your heart and you say God bless America, I think that would clearly violate the line as well, just as in God we trust.

Well, “God Bless America” was originally written by Irving Berlin as part of the summer camp musical revue, “Yip Yip Yaphank.” If Congress amended “The Age Of Aquarius” to include a reference to God, and then made its recitation a daily requirement of public schools…

MR. NEWDOW: The issue is whether or not government can put that idea in her mind and interfere with my right. I have a absolute right to raise my child as whatever I see. Government is weighing in on this issue.GINSBUSRG: No, you don’t, you don’t. You — there is another custodian of this child who makes the final decision who doesn’t agree with you.

Unfortunately for Newdow, the standing issue leaves a loophole for the liberal justices to avoid making a widely unpopular ruling. We’ll see how that pans out.

MR. NEWDOW: Not — not under what the — this Court has to distinguish in this case. No one — when this Court opens, God save this honorable Court, nobody’s asked to stand up, place their hand on their heart and affirm this belief. This Court stated in West Virginia v. Barnette that this is an affirmation, a personal affirmation.JUSTICE O’CONNOR: And you have no problem with, in God we trust, on the coins and that sort of thing?

Of course he does, he’s said so on the record.

MR. NEWDOW: Well, it’s — again, the Establishment Clause does not require a prayer. To put the Ten Commandments on the wall was not a prayer yet this Court said that violated the Establishment Clause. To teach evolution or not teach evolution doesn’t involve prayer, but that can violate the Establishment Clause. The issue is is it religious, and to say this is not religious seems to me to be somewhat bizarre.And as a matter of fact, we can look at the standing argument and we can look at Elk Grove Unified School District’s brief, in which eight times they mention that this is the mother involved with religious upbringing, they keep talking about religious upbringing, 18 times they spoke about religious education, religious training, religious interest. All of this has to do with religion, and to suggest that this is merely historical or patriotic seems to me to be somewhat disingenuous.

Zing!

JUSTICE BREYER: But what I’m thinking there is that perhaps when you get that broad in your idea of what is religious, so it can encompass a set of religious-type beliefs in the minds of people who are not traditionally religious, when you are that broad and in a civic context, it really doesn’t violate the Establishment Clause because it’s meant to include virtually everybody, and the few whom it doesn’t include don’t have to take the pledge.
…
…JUSTICE BREYER: So it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect, but it serves a purpose of unification at the price of offending a small number of people like you. So tell me from ground one why — why the country cannot do that?

Here is the familiar argument by statistical irrelevance. Hey Justice Breyer, if the purpose of “under God” is merely to promote unification at the expense of excluding a small number of people, then Congress would have done much better (at least numerically speaking) by changing the Pledge to, “one nation, except the Jews.” Oh, wait… that would constitute religious discrimination, wouldn’t it? It’s a good thing the current Pledge isn’t exclusionary based on religious beliefs… oh, wait…

MR. NEWDOW: You’re referring to the two words, under God?JUSTICE BREYER: Yeah, under God is this kind of very comprehensive supreme being, Seeger-type thing.

MR. NEWDOW: I don’t think that I can include under God to mean no God, which is exactly what I think. I deny the existence of God, and for someone to tell me that under God should mean some broad thing that even encompasses my religious beliefs sounds a little, you know, it seems like the Government is imposing what it wants me to think of in terms of religion, which it may not do. Government needs to stay out of this business altogether.

Newdow shuts Breyer down!

JUSTICE SOUTER: Well, I think the argument is not that the Government is saying, we are defining this as inconsequential for you. I think the argument is that simply the way we live and think and work in schools and in civic society in which the pledge is made, that the — that whatever is distinctively religious as an affirmation is simply lost. It — it’s not that the — that the Government is saying, you’ve got to pretend that it’s lost. The argument is that it is lost, that the religious, as distinct from a civic content, is close to disappearing here.

Lost on whom, Justice Souter?

I was doing a search on Thomas today, looking for a random National Day of This or That. I came across a proposal for the National Day of Prayer And Fasting. Actually, it’s stump speech given by Senator Nickles in favor of S.Res.91 which was proposed by Senators Santorum and Brownback. Here’s a sample:

March, 17, 2003, should be designated as a national day of prayer and fasting.

Whereas the President has sought the support of the international community in responding to the threat of terrorism, violent extremist organizations, and states that permit or host organizations that are opposed to democratic ideals;

Whereas a united stance against terrorism and terrorist regimes will likely lead to an increased threat to the armed forces and law enforcement personnel of those states that oppose these regimes of terror, and that take an active role in rooting out these enemy forces;

Whereas Congress has aided and supported a united response to acts of terrorism and violence inflicted upon the United States, our allies, and peaceful individuals all over the world;

Holy shit. Wait, it gets worse:

Whereas our Nation, tested by civil war, military conflicts, and world wars, has always benefited from the grace and benevolence bestowed by God; and

Whereas dangers and threats to our Nation persist, and in this time of peril it is appropriate that the people of the United States, leaders and citizens alike, seek guidance, strength, and resolve through prayer and fasting: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that– (1) March 17, 2003, should be designated as a day for humility, prayer, and fasting for all people of the United States; and (2) all people of the United States should– (A) observe this day as a day of prayer and fasting; (B) seek guidance from God to achieve greater understanding of our own failings; (C) learn how we can do better in our everyday activities; and (D) gain resolve in how to confront those challenges which we must confront.

Raise your hand if you think this is a violation of the first amendment! I don’t even understand why religious people would go for this either. Congress is basically assuming ecumenical powers and directing you to fast and pray in some grand scheme to fight terrorism? There’s a reason why we don’t have a theocratic state here, folks. The age of the priest-warrior-king is over–the Mayans left a large stone memo about this in the Yucatan. And then they have the gall to suggest that we’re all being told to fast in some celebration of democratic values? Well, I elect to eat, thank you.

The mainstream media reaction to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court’s decision to overturn the 1954 addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance reveals precisely why the decision was right. And no matter how many talking heads get upset about it, Newdow v. U.S. Congress, et al. is neither a theological nor social debate; it is a court case with considerable legal backing.

Of course, the decision rests mainly on the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Note that it uses rather general terms; it doesn’t say establishment of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion. The Establishment Clause applies equally to any and all religions. It doesn’t matter if the words “under God” might, by mere coincidence, seem to apply to several faiths. No matter how many religions might potentially be included in that phrase, the fact is that “under God” applies exclusively to (monotheistic) religious belief.

The idea of separating church and state is that your religion is your own business, not that of your fellow citizens or your government. Having a class confirm every morning, in unison, that they believe in “God” qualifies neither as religiously neutral nor free exercise of religion, even if one has the right to single oneself out for ostracization by keeping silent during the Pledge. To quote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (as quoted in the Newdow decision): “The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community…Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.”

This brings us to the central point of the Newdow case; even if students are allowed to opt out of the Pledge, the imposition of “under God” devalues the civic participation of non-believers. So do the remainder of the government endorsements of religion including, but not limited to, the request that “God save” the Supreme Court recited every session, the “National Day of Prayer,” and the changing of the national motto from “E Pluribus Unum” (“out of many, one”) to “In God We Trust” in 1956.

Now, the court’s decision provided a great opportunity for politicians of both major parties to fall over each other in order to condemn it. The ruling was decried variously as “just nuts,” “junk justice,” and “ridiculous.” “There may have been a more senseless, ridiculous decision issued by a court at some time, but I don’t remember it,” said Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT). Presumably, shock has temporarily expelled the memory of, say, the Dred Scott decision, which declared “Jim Crow” laws Constitutionally sound. Senator Lieberman also called for a Constitutional amendment to prevent the Pledge from being returned to its pre-1954 version, a sure sign that he realizes the unconstitutionality of Congress’ actions in the first place.

Particularly striking are the ad hominem attacks against the judges who wrote the majority decision: they’ve been called “stupid,” “dumb and dumber,” “robed tyrants,” among other epithets. One editorial cartoon depicted the justices of the 9th Circuit as demons. Pundits, who have the luxury of expressing themselves in somewhat longer soundbites, pontificated about how “under God” is an inclusive, non-sectarian phrase which oughtn’t offend anyone, except maybe some atheists.

This argument by statistical irrelevance (“the overwhelming majority of this country believes in God” and like statements) is really quite appalling, once you think about it. According to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, published by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, roughly seventy-seven percent of Americans are Christians. About fourteen percent classify themselves as having no religion, a category which includes atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists. Jews and Muslims account for a little over one percent each. By comparison, the 2000 U.S. Census reveals that about seventy-five percent of the population is white; African Americans comprise about thirteen percent. Imagine if we substituted “African Americans” for “atheists” in these statistical irrelevance arguments we hear and read in the mainstream media? Remember, Christians comprise roughly the same percentage as whites within America. Realizing the full implications of this line of reasoning is left as an exercise for the reader.

If this is to be the mode of future arguments about accessiblity to American civil institutions, it certainly does not bode well for any minorities seeking protection from the social mores of the majority.

A more established legal argument, although just as wrong, is Justice William Brennan’s “ceremonial deism” thesis. Brennan said that words like “under God” and the motto on our currency have been repeated so often that they have somehow been stripped of their religious meaning. A few questions arise: how is it that only religious sentiments magically lose their meaning after constant repetition? One wonders if this applies to other religious speech, like the Lord’s Prayer, which has been repeated far more often that the Pledge of Allegiance. And what about other oft repeated government speech, such as “you have the right to remain silent?” Furthermore, if these references to God don’t mean anything, why are they there in the first place? Apparently, you don’t have to listen to the government if it repeats itself a sufficient number of times, as long as what the government is saying violates the Establishment Clause.

Newdow is not just a case about one atheist in Sacramento being “offended” at the Pledge of Allegiance. The word “offensive” seems to carry the implication that political correctness is the motivation behind Newdow’s lawsuit; the case is very clearly about civil liberties, and making sure that the government follows its own Constitution. The outcry at the decision demonstrates the need for protection from “the tyranny of the majority,” in the words of John Stuart Mill. The protection of minorities, religious or otherwise, is one of the reasons we have civil liberties in the first place.

Of course, the Newdow decision has prompted an outcry from almost every public official who knows that to come out in favor of the decision would be political suicide. The Republican party, never one to miss an opportunity, somehow blamed this on the Democratic challenges to GOP judicial nominees. The Democrats quietly noted that the judge who wrote the opinion was a Nixon appointee and quickly turned to nervous displays of piety so as not to be outdone by their colleagues across the aisle. When asked about the decison, George W. Bush said, “[w]e need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench.” (For those of you keeping score: according to Republicans, judicial activism is bad, but activism in judicial appointments is good.)

Not only is this sentiment dangerous, but illegal. The Constitution clearly states that there shall be no religious test for any public office in the United States. To bring a little context to this point, Torcaso v. Watkins, unanimously decided by the Supreme Court in 1961, declared illegal a provision of the Maryland Constitution which said that while no religious test was required to hold office, officeholders must believe in a god of some kind. Although this case was not mentioned in the Newdow decision, it has tremendous bearing upon the public debate. Belief in a god is not a civic virtue, it’s a matter of personal preference. (Several months ago, The View’s Star Jones stated that she would never vote for an atheist. Immediately, the example came to mind of an election between Mark Twain [an atheist] and Hitler [a self-professed Catholic].)

Compounded in the outcry over Newdow v. U.S. Congress is a particularly hysterical strain of deficient scholarship. Senator Kit Boyd (R-MO) reacted to the decision by saying, “Our founding fathers must be spinning in their graves. What is next? Will the courts now strip ‘so help me God’ from the pledge taken by new presidents?” Of course, our founding fathers made sure there was no mention of God in the inaugural oath (or the Constitution as a whole). This is what it says in Section II: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The part about “So help you God” is a tradition maintained strictly as a matter of personal preference.

It seems as though many politicians are under the impression that this country was founded fifty years ago. When the Constitution was written, it was made very clear that religious belief, even though it may be a motivation for public service, is not the province of the government. No state religion, even the watered-down Christianity which has placed “under God” into our Pledge of Allegiance, is legal.

Almost every interview or debate about the decision has included the question, “do you want God off the currency, too?” Well, why not? We’re in the middle of redesigning our money anyway. If the Constitution means more than our currently unconstitutional national motto, then we ought to go about fixing the problem. The other inevitable question is, “do you think the Declaration of Independence is unconstitutional, too?” Not exactly; the Declaration of Independence is pre-Constitutional. Furthermore, it’s not the law, but an historic document of national significance.

America was founded with the idea that no matter how important one’s religious beliefs are, they remain personal, and not the business of the government. Now, if only we could get George W. Bush to pay attention to the Constitutional defense part of his oath.