Fight Fire With Fire and Everyone Burns

Blacks are a "hated people" writes Jamil Smith in the New Republic Is there no safe place? Our Racist History Isn't Back to Haunt Us. It Never Left Us. Rebecca Traister wrote in the same issue.

 It's to be expected that those who see a senseless murder and respond with such passion about it will be in the headlines for a while and those who try to put it in another perspective will have a hard time avoiding criticism, but is there any safe place for anyone?  We have a history of senseless violence in America and as coverage of it around the world screams at us all day and all night we all know about it, we all fear it no matter how small the odds for any individual.   School children, Muslims, Jews, gay people get attacked, always by disturbed and probably demented and deluded young men -- it's a long list and it grows.  Random samples of the population have been involved in mass shootings in recent memory.  Movie theaters, restaurants, schools, office buildings and the streets.of Boston,  Deadly explosions, aircraft hijackings and shootings.  One might correctly think Americans are a hated people.

But he's right, of course, there are people who hate anyone with any African ancestors, like our current president -- and his election and re-election has released some hate gas from the muck, but the unspoken implication is that everyone hates black people:  The White People hate Black people, that is. That's not only untrue as election results prove, but it's a statement that is needlessly divisive and inflammatory.  It serves to heighten hatred and fear as well as it serves to sell magazines. It's a racist sentiment.

I do not doubt the sincerity of either writer and I do share the anger and a disgust with racism of all sorts, but it's very very hard in the atmosphere we have been given to breathe even to discuss the possibility that outrage is just another form of the same thing we're angry at -- that fighting bad doesn't make everything you do good or true or helpful. This isn't the old South, the murderer has zero chance of getting away with it.

Is this latest tragedy really the result of intransigent racism or the story of  another young man slipping into madness and choosing a "cause" that's a relic of the Old South?    I have heard people say you can't go to the movie theater any more, you can't send your kid to school any more and even that our laws provide an open season on black children.  Irrational and untrue and hyperbolically out of proportion.  Black people are still more likely to be shot by a black person. Domestic acts of terrorism have been quite random when it comes to the race of the victims.   Every time something happens we're told this changes everything, but the truth, the sad truth is that it doesn't.

Again did Dylann Roof  shoot up a church because we have a tradition of racism or because we have a tradition of letting the insane go unconfined?  Would one cause have been as good as another?  Was it really all about suicide?  He did claim he was going to kill himself after all.  We don't know and perhaps some don't want even to talk about it because they're on a mission of their own and don't want the passion play watered down or its passionate elements soothed. 

Black like Me

So Rachel Dolezal claimed African ancestry.  Doesn't seem like such a big deal to me and I wonder about how one reconciles the outrage with the claim that there is no such thing as race anyway, but all that seems petty today.  Today I identify with being black too and I feel militant and angry and outraged.  There nothing ambiguous about the circumstances, no lack of witnesses, no question about the innocence of the victims. The little bastard just walked into a church, waited through the service and opened fire on unarmed people, some begging him to relent.  He is said to have reloaded five times, killing nine people while talking about how "they" raped "our" women and were "taking over " the country.

Who gave him such ideas?  Watch Fox lately?  Listen to AM radio?  I think we know whose hands are bloody. I think we know who's been promoting anger, hate, irrationality and vicious stereotypes.

The perp is in custody.  I have no doubt there will be charges of  9 counts of Murder One. I have no doubt about the verdict, but I doubt I'm going to see the end of racist murder in my remaining time.  I mean racism, capital R Racism, not the nanosecond delay in recognizing a facial expression, not some secret fear of the black man in the baggy shorts and hoodie not a dislike of Al Sharpton. I'm talking about visceral hate, about vicious stereotypes, about the irresistible urge to kill people begging for their lives. I'm talking about the sort of things I thought we'd left behind in the 60's

How will we react?  Will we hear more about he war on Christianity on Fox?  Will we hear that every pastor carry openly?  Will we blame it on "military style" weapons?   I hear the grindstones beginning to whir.

I only hope the memory of the murdered isn't sullied by the kind of routine things we've been seeing elsewhere.  I hope we allow civilization to prevail, allow the justice system to hand out justice and I hope the people of Charleston don't share the same urge I have today to put a gun in my pocket and look suspiciously at  cars and houses and people with Confederate flags on them.

I'm an old, affluent white man who lives in the south but I don't care who says what about  my thoughts and my right to identify with another gender or race or species for that matter. Today I feel Black as Black can be, black as the barrel on a Remington 870, black as a Beretta M92, black like a 40 round magazine on an AK - black like anger, black like me..

Tales of Turf-N-Serf: The Low-Down on Trickle-Down

(Notes from the cephalopod:  This post is revised and updated from an earlier article to reflect current
macroeconomic data.  I intend to repost this article before election day and every election cycle thereafter.

As always, your comments, feedback and suggestions for improvement are always welcome.)

Supply-side macroeconomics, also known as trickle-down economics, has dominated our national debate for the better part of 35 years.  In theory, proponents argue, high taxes and burdensome regulations raise the cost of  business and drag down the economy.  Once relieved of these burdens,  more products and services at lower prices will attract consumers and unleash the engines of economic growth; hence the term ‘supply-side.’

No empirical evidence supports this view. In practice, consumers do not spend money unless they have discretionary cash in their pockets, and suppliers have no incentive to raise output when consumers have no money to spend. Furthermore, lower prices do not always reach consumers when businesses choose profit-taking over investment. In the real world, wealth does not trickle down from the top. Rather, the middle classes create wealth from within when they are prosperous and upwardly mobile.

In the pseudo-mathematics of supply-side theory -- where subtraction equals addition -- the privileges of a few justify the impoverishment of the many. The dark side of supply-side is confirmed in these trends of the past 30 years:

Median incomes are 12 percent lower than a generation ago.  The marginal propensity to save has vanished as middle-class families struggle with rising costs.  Debt has nearly doubled; bankruptcies are up twofold.  The economy has become an inverted pyramid where billionaires are taxed at lower marginal rates than teachers, and a privileged business class has won a disproportionate share of new wealth.

The result is an inequality bubble unseen since the Gilded Age. By all accounts, supply-side is the modern analogue of a medieval master-serf relationship; yet, it gives political cover to legislators and paid lackeys who argue the case on behalf of their wealthy benefactors.  Not a word on the evening news, but we see it everyday in our communities.

Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day

Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way

Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be

Oh, Monday, Monday, how could you leave and not take me?

For some reason, everyone in my neighborhood prefers to take off weekends and mow their lawns on Monday.  Why every Monday but not Tuesday, you ask?  Bizarre, I admit. Perhaps it just turns out that way.

Good lawnmowers make good neighbors.  We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood.  Witness this daily exchange every time neighbors meet at the mailbox:

“Good morning, Mr. Briggs. How are you today?”

“Mighty fine, Mr. Stratton. And yourself?”

We mow our lawns on Monday but not always in the same way.  Some of us cut grass in straight parallel lines, while others tend to meander or zigzag around our yards. Folks of different strokes are good as long as the grass is cut, and everyone knows:  Good lawnmowers make good neighbors.  We keep up appearances and keep peace in the neighborhood … until something strange happened one day.

Exactly how it happened or when it happened, no one knows for sure … but assuredly it happened.  Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles won the right to be treated as legal persons. Then they secured easements that granted them special rights and privileges.

You would think homeowners in the neighborhood would find common ground and unite in common cause.  Oh no!  The Lampposts -- in league with Manhole Covers and Utility Poles -- started a PR campaign that forewarned the homeowners on Magnolia Street to beware the residents of Hawthorn and Dogwood, who sneer at the folks on Elm and jeer the good citizens on Elder.

The Lampposts convinced the homeowners on Magnolia to love the neighborhood more than the neighbors who dwell on Hawthorn, Dogwood, Elm, or Elder – all of whom no longer look like, act like, or talk like real neighbors, they claim.

In short order, the Manhole Covers demanded a tax cut.  As Job Creators, they claimed, tax cuts for Manhole Covers means more jobs in the neighborhood (although no job that has ever fallen into an open manhole has ever been seen again).

Unfortunately, tax cuts for Manhole Covers has meant less revenue for our town. To close the budget gap, Utility Poles voted to cut services, lay off workers, and raise the consumption tax on lawnmowers. Cutting grass, they insist, no longer levels the playing field, and lawnmowers have no right to complain. Irate lawnmowers are waging class warfare on Lampposts and Manhole Covers, they explain.

Meanwhile, the Lampposts and Utility Poles say: “If senior citizens living on Elder lose their healthcare or pension benefits, they should consider themselves empowered.” To further humiliate the jobless, Manhole Covers claim unemployment benefits kill the incentive to work.

Legal but non-living persons now rule the neighborhood.  They never created a single job but reserve the right to trample on our bushes and shine flashlights into our bedroom windows at night.

Years ago, when a Lamppost burned out, a service truck came to the neighborhood and replaced a bulb. This year, the Lampposts say: “Buy your own bulb and replace it yourself.” Then they demand a bonus, a pay raise, and another tax cut. Last year, the Lampposts traded in their service truck for a Jaguar. This year, their Jaguar morphed into a Rolls Royce.

The situation has set homeowner against homeowner, and these non-living entities are ruining our community.  Today, you can hardly tell the difference between a Lamppost versus a real person anymore.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood mood has turned ugly.  Everywhere you see: Weeds taller than Utility Poles, crabgrass, hardship, and resentful neighbors no longer talking to neighbors. If there are lessons to be learned, forget the Lampposts, Manhole Covers, and Utility Poles.  Forget the polemics and dog whistles. How I yearn for the smell of fresh cut grass, E Pluribus Unum, and friendly neighbors exchanging friendly greetings at the mailbox again.

Monday morning couldn't guarantee

That Monday evening you’d still be here with me.

Reminder:  Tomorrow is Tuesday, the day we bring our trash to the curb.

Graham Crackers

I have to wonder about people who spend their days thinking about other people's sex lives and denouncing them for what usually is consensual and often loving behavior between consenting adults.  It not as though people like Franklin Graham are hormone-addled adolescents after all and it's not as though the world doesn't have other, more serious problems, like all those folks at present killing each other to please some god or other,  but like his father Billy, this extraordinarily rich man seems to have appointed himself, by virtue of some declared holiness,  as God's scourge and protector of mankind's morality. By morality, I mean the neo-Christian concept of it which has little to do with anything other than sex.   Excuse me, but that holiness is far more lacking in evidence than anything that ever spoke from a burning bush or whirlwind.  Rich men, camels and sewing implements, etc. You've heard it all before.

Unless money, scriptural inconsistencies notwithstanding,  is proof of God's approval, which would say something rather odd about God if true. Maybe he doesn't care if he, like Don Corleone, gets a 'taste.'  At any rate, at my last reckoning Frank made about a million a year working for "charity" and whether or not he is tax exempt by virtue of holiness, that's a good deal of money.  Having a barn with a large cross on his property might serve to make real estate taxes nugatory as well and cause God to let him off the eye of the needle thing, but I'm speculating and this isn't about money earned, but money that earns us all a good laugh at his expense.

Frank, you see, was terribly offended by a Wells Fargo commercial featuring a gay couple, so he moved his "ministry's" massive accounts to  BB&T, No word about his private accounts of course, lest God notice how rich he is. 

Can't fool God though, he knows and as with all good humor, the truth or the proof if you prefer is in the punch line.  BB&T, you see, and unbeknownst to our Bad Samaritan is the sponsor of the Miami Beach Gay Pride Parade, along with the chief sponsor of Miami Beach Gay Pride’s “Legacy Couples” program, which celebrates same-sex couples in “committed relationships of 10 years or longer.

The company hopes to “support the individuals and organizations that broaden our perspectives and strengthen the diverse fabric of our communities. That’s why BB&T is proud to be a part of this day of pride and celebration of the 2015 Legacy Couples.” 

As MSNBC tells us.  Is God having a laugh?  I certainly am. Is God's word somehow in teh punch line? Camels, needles and rich men, but maybe self-righteousness, rage and the grease of slick piety can let him squeeze through, even though he hasn't shown inclination to sell his clothes and give the money to the poor. And besides God was really only joking about rich men.  I mean it's really all about sex, isn't it?

 

The Transformation...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

 

 

Since Bruce Jenner's transformation into Caitlyn Jenner she has been in the news or talk shows daily. Like many folks i'm sure, I am, and have been totally indifferent to the chatter over her transformation. I admit to not understanding her decision, How could or would I? There is no desire in fact to understand her decision, it does not affect me or my loved ones in any way whatsoever. Neither does it affect broader society in any appreciable way whatsoever, unless you choose to let it. What is important in my view is to simply accept that Caitlyn made the decision that was right for her, for me that is the end of the story.

Apparently there are some who feel differently. Those who believe Caitlyn for some reason should not be accepted for who she is. Maybe it is because of loyalty to biblical verse, or perhaps out of fear that society will be forever changed. Or in the case of El Rushbo apparently it it political, an opportunity to once again to attempt to define the GOP as the intolerant judgmental party that Limbaugh prefers it to be.

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh thinks Republicans should reject Caitlyn Jenner, even if she agrees with them politically.  

Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday that liberals are trying to “redefine normalcy” in an effort to stigmatize conservatives and that conservatives shouldn’t agree to their terms by accepting Caitlyn Jenner as a woman.  

He likewise dismissed a conservative blog that wrote that Republicans should embrace Jenner as one of their own to seem more humane, saying that doing so would constitute falling into a liberal trap.  

Under this system, “conservatives and Republicans are the new weirdos, the new kooks,” the pundit said, “and that is part of the political objective here in normalizing all of this really marginal behavior. I mean, if less than 1 percent of the population is engaging in it, it’s marginalized behavior. It isn’t normal, no matter how you define it.  

“We should not be celebrating this, we should not be lionizing this, we should not be encouraging this. These people have a very serious problem, and they need treatment,” he said. “They need help, not encouragement.

Hey Rusbo, since when has simply accepting situations that harm no one encouraging the situation? Caitlyn's decision is a highly personal one (as it would be with anyone making the same decision) and affects only her and her family, a family that has as far as we know understands and has accepted her decision.

“This fits everything the media wants to do in terms of turning the culture upside down, redefining what ‘normal’ is, getting revenge against the majority for all of these decades of discrimination and mockery and disapproval and all these religious fanatics judging other people simply because of, quote, ‘who they love,’

It is impossible for those of us who know Caitlyn's transformation, while significant for her, is really just a minor news event in the broader picture of important issues. Via: Memeorandum Via: POLITICO

Nothing New Under The Sun. Or In Pop Culture.

Do you think memes are something new?

In 1928, a cartoon by Carl Rose, which was captioned by E.B. White (of Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web fame), was published in The New Yorker. Broccoli was a new thing on the American plate, having been introduced by Italian immigrants on the East Coast.

The New Yorker was only three years old at that point, and was not as successful as it would be later. (Also, in what might be entirely coincidence, "spinach" was a term in 19th Century England for "nonsense.")

For whatever reason, the phrase caught on: "I say it's spinach" came to mean "to hell with it," and eventually "spinach" came to mean something worthless. Elizabeth Hawes, for example, titled her 1938 autobiographical exposé of the fashion industry, for example, Fashion is Spinach.

Alexander Woolcott used the phrase in 1934's While Rome Burns ("I do not myself so regard it. I say it's spinach.") S.J. Perelman was an American humorist who wrote (among other things) two Marx Brothers movies (Monkey Business and Horse Feathers) and, in 1958, a TV version of Aladdin with music by Cole Porter; he wrote a story in 1944 for the Saturday Evening Post called "Dental or Mental, I Say It’s Spinach."

Speaking of Cole Porter, other musicians used the phrase, too.

As with most immigrants, Israel Isidore Baline (better known as Irving Berlin) felt he needed to be more American (and more patriotic) than anybody around him. (It's pretty common with a person "born-again" into any subculture - religious, societal, or any other coherent group.) His way of doing that was to be more in touch with popular culture than anybody else. So he wrote songs that reflected "the common man" - many of them, we would now consider racist (but that was very common in America at the time).

In 1932, Berlin was already a successful musician, when he wrote the musical Face the Music. (That wasn't redundant. Shut up!) In it, he included the song "I Say It's Spinach (And The Hell With It)."


The lyrics start at 1:14, if you're in a hurry.

Also, despite the impression you get from the video, the first Popeye cartoon was made by Fleischer Studios a year after this song was recorded, in 1933. And at the end of the song, the Popeye-like voice is by a man named Poley McClintock. He'd been using the low, croaky voice on records since 1927; some people have suggested that voice actor William (Billy) Costello based the voice of Popeye on McClintock.

So, even without the internet, a single meme could find a place in the popular culture of America before parts of the country even had running water.

From Rome to Rubio, The Last Crusade

Let's be clear, when politicians like Marco Rubio talk about a danger to the survival of Christianity, they're not talking about survival or about Christianity, they're talking about a danger to the power and authority of a certain definition of Christianity that many Christians would call by a different name. Whether or not he seriously thinks Christianity will die out, that nobody will or could be a Christian if the US allows people of the same sex to be party to a civil marriage contract, Rubio, as most politicians do, is using words in a consciously deceptive way.

How do we define, or more importantly how does the government define Christianity?  In fact the constitution forbids it to do so . There are and have been many such claimants to the robe and sandals and the reins of government, so Marco is surely being less than honest to refer to Christianity when he means his Church and its rules. He's being a damned liar by offering us fables about the origins of our laws or arguing from tradition.

Some people simply don't define Christianity as a secular authority primarily established to restrict the private sexual thought and behavior of all people. Certainly not since they never legitimately had such power, nor does the American Constitution state or imply that any legitimate power be given such authority, nor is or government empowered or obliged to "save" any religion, tradition or religious practice.

There is no unified, undisputed definition of  Christianity or of any religion or the doctrines thereof and to say anything else is prevarication. If the legalization of an inherent right of Man is a blow to Christianity I would suggest that a weakening of Christian authority must have preceded it as is the case in Ireland where years of censorship, control of education, marriage rights, reproductive rights and lastly the widespread abuse of women and children, turned Christian power into a thing of public loathing and anger. Indeed Democracy and the right to elect a government only succeeded after the Church lost the power to prevent it.

Rubio, like many of his Evangelical allies are consciously taking the risky position of posing what people approve or see as a right to be protected, as being the enemy of their tribal authority.  He needs to remember how all the other shibboleths have fallen, interracial marriage, blue laws, censorship, the inferiority of women and indeed slavery -- and fallen despite claims that Christianity was in jeopardy and God would punish us all for allowing it.  Sooner or later the prophet has to deliver or be swept away. It's not a good thing to be in power when the argument from tradition, the argument from authority is stretched so far that it snaps.

No, Christianity in some form or another will survive. Perhaps a kinder, gentler more respectful form. It's Marco Rubio and the various crusaders against the right of the people to decide their own rights who are at risk.  I truly doubt that Rubio isn't aware of the truth of that, or that he is unaware of  the kind of  State toward which the manifest destiny of free people inexorably  trends.  It's a shortsighted lust for power and with all his dishonest nonsense about Christian tradition, that tradition has never been about freedom of conscience or any kind of liberty.

As with his mumblings about how our Cuba policies have not failed after 50 years, it's a defense of blind, intransigent, self justifying power and authority and an attack on objectivity and the liberty of the citizen. Make no mistake, Rubio is against the idea that the government is of the people, by the people and for the people and legitimized only by the people and not by gods or politicians who pretend to speak for them.

One gets the idea that Pope Francis is well aware of all this and is concerned that Rubio's way of thinking is making the Church not only irrelevant, but unsustainable in the modern world, but as the Chinese were wont to say from ancient times, "Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away.". The Vatican has one policy, the parish priest and the pandering politician have another. Down at the level where the rhetoric hits the road it's still the old beast.

Christianity has survived a great deal  as it always has -- and it will change a great deal as it always has.  If anything is in danger, it's the guy staking everything on holding back the tide.

Memorial Day 2015

On 8 July 2003, in the middle of the night, a squad of 13 guys led by me landed on the runway of what had been called, until very recently, the Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. We were there to take over security of the area from one of the squads who'd gone in to set up the camp four months earlier.

The landing was pretty standard for a region known for rocket attacks - we flew over the end of the runway, and then spiraled down, straightening out at the last possible moment, to touch down while presenting as small a target within reach of the ground forces as possible.

At that point, I was a lukewarm liberal, not the most outspoken person politically; my wife had eased me out of some fairly conservative views, and turned me into a compassionate human being (I'm not sure I've ever forgiven her for that).

While over there, seeing the rubble we'd left of a beautiful city and learning more and more about how the Bush Administration had lied to get America to go to war, my attitude began to swing more firmly to the left.

I was lucky (if that's the right word) that none of the guys I took there came back in a box (one of them essentially came back in a straightjacket, but that's a story for another time). We didn't have a lot of direct fire - our big risk was the daily, ongoing rocket and mortar attacks.

I started learning more about what went on in the run-up to the invasion, and when I got back to the States, I volunteered for the Kerry campaign. And I wasn't the only vet in the room. That didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, and the day after Kerry gave his concession speech, I filed my retirement papers from the military.

So maybe I have a different perspective on the subject. I find myself getting a little angry as the GOP tries to rewrite what is, for many of us, current events.

We didn't invade the country that attacked America, we invaded Iraq based on lies that they weren't cooperating with US weapons inspectors. To call that action "a mistake" is an abuse of the English language. But that's the currently popular position to take on the Right.

The full story (that some people in the Bush administration felt that we needed a permanent base in the Middle East, and it was just fine to destroy a country to get that) wasn't something that would go over well with the American people. So they had to change the narrative. It wasn't a "mistake," it was a calculated effort to mislead the public.

(If you don't know about them already, you should read up on the think tank that called themselves The Project for the New American Century. Jeb Bush is trying to back slowly away from his statement that he would have invaded Iraq, just like his brother did. (And of course he would have. Most of his advisers previously worked for his brother.)

Marco Rubio won't even go that far - he thinks it wasn't a mistake because it got Saddam out of power. So apparently, all those Iraqis can just suck it.

In a recent Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi pointed out that, as I said above, it was actually clear to a lot of people "that the invasion was doomed, wrong, and a joke."

It was not a "mistake," it was a cold-blooded, calculated conspiracy, carried out from the highest office in the nation.

It's a hell of a "mistake" that leads to almost 4500 dead Americans, and literally countless Iraqi dead and injured.

Memorial Day. It's all about remembering.

De Brevitate Vitae - A Sermon

Whether or not John Nash's mind was beautiful, it is too far beyond my mathematical ability to judge, but I'll take Hollywood's  word for it -- and the Nobel committee's as well.

Nash and his wife were killed yesterday when the taxi they were riding in hit a guard rail on the Jersey Turnpike.  They weren't wearing seat belts and were thrown from the car.  Even the best and the most beautiful minds can be as foolish as anyone else and particularly when it comes to the assessment of risk.

I always wear them.  I was in a multiple roll-over 50 years ago.  I wasn't hurt.  Who's the wisest of us all?  But of course he was 16 years older than I and there will be time I tell myself. Time before I have to think of such things.
And time for all the works and days of hands.
That lift and drop a question on your plate.

One event happeneth to us all, as the Bible says.  As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth to me; and why then was I then more wise?

I raced home yesterday afternoon, fleeing a thunderstorm on my motorcycle, passing cars like they were standing still, relishing the blast of wind on a 90 degree day.  I'll shortly be driving my car south on the Turnpike where the traffic moves at 90.  Fear isn't a factor.  I love driving and on such a beautiful morning as this in my shiny automobile I feel  like a kid on Christmas morning, but as the amazing J.L Gates said: Death may be your Santa Claus.

But there's time, I tell myself.

And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

And how dieth the wise man?
As the fool.

Sacred or senseless.

Religion, does it do more harm than good?  Is that even a question that anyone can address without letting their biases overwhelm objectivity?

Watching a program titled The Third Rail on Aljazeera America this morning did little to dispel my suspicions.  Larry Taunton, an Evangelical spokesman, asserted that not all religions are equal in that respect, but Christianity "brings benevolence to the table." Perhaps it does, but it's hard for me to accept that it brings much benevolence to the world,  as the influence, at least in the US on public life is to restrict the rights and political power of certain people while putting a holy gloss on the supercilious condemnations and malevolence.  Democracy and human rights are usually only apparent relative to the rights of the faithful but even then, the rights of women, of unbelievers and the members of antagonistic religions would be rigorously suppressed given their ability to do so. Their god does not compromise or relent and neither do they.  His evidence of course is that Evangelicals give more, or so he says, although again, that they certainly don't give more than Muslims and Jews, but with faith, with arrogance and with dishonesty all things are possible.

"For we have been saved by grace through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."(Ephesians 2:8-9)

Yet boast of it they do and most fulsomely. Wars, slavery, tyranny, executions and torture: that some justify them and others do not seems to have little to do with religiosity and more to do with some independent viewpoint that often runs afoul of doctrine and dogma and ecclesiastical authority. One has to ask what there is in Christian benevolence that is absent in Humanist benevolence, Muslim benevolence, Marxist benevolence and most of all, benevolence itself. The answer of course is that religion, at least Western religion, offers exceptions to everything but obedience.

Yes, some people benefit from Christianity says Atheist Dan Dennett, but what bothers him is what bothers me:  the "systematic hypocrisy that almost obliges them to lie."  Indeed it does as we see when Taunton claims that Evangelicals give more to charity that atheists.  The problem is that atheists are not a group and have nothing in common but the lack of credulity to a certain myth. Any statement that puts Karl Marx, Ayn Rand and John Lennon in the same envelope can't be taken to be honest.  And of course that "statistic" confuses donations to institutions that spend the contribution on airplanes for ministers and invest in African gold mines using slave labor with "charity."  Faith requires dishonesty, demands fallacy and ultimately is vanity.   The only one in this conversation acknowledging legitimacy to anyone else is the atheist. If God can't compromise, how can his followers?

 Did Christianity motivate Abolition and has Christianity been at the root of  civil rights reform? Well it certainly allows Christian booster Taunton to claim so and not to be embarrassed when forced to admit that he didn't consider gay marriage to be a civil right because of his Christianity.  Many Christians of course didn't and still don't consider slaves to have civil rights and there is much in the "scriptures" to back them up. His statement is only tautological: Christians support only the rights we support as Christians and no others.  And here's where the argument fails. Christian benevolence is offered to Christians as long as they don't offend Christian authority.  A poor sort of benevolence in my mind and of Daniel Dennett's.who points out the centuries of vicious persecution of those people who see benevolence as innately human and not god given.  We want to be your sole source of morality, say the religion vendors and damn you if you roll your own or buy another brand.

Since the religiously motivated horrors of history are hard to deny (not that people don't try) I have to ask whether religion isn't like nuclear power, gunpowder and sharp objects in general, things that can help us but contain no internal protection against misuse?  Is blind faith of any kind inherently dangerous and does that danger too often outweigh any benefit that is just as inherent in safer things?  One can believe in any god you can imagine, good or ugly, merciful or monstrous, and we always have, but gods are never dangerous.  They have no power, no characteristics not assigned by their believers and being human we create gods in our image, according to our own needs for self justification.  By faith we are oppressed. It's belief that creates gods and only doubt, only disbelief, only reason and honesty can save us from ourselves.