O’Reilly on Jefferson

O’Reilly, in a recent syndicated column, said that Thomas Jefferson would ‘mock the secular fools’ [who are assumably waging the war on Christmas]. He also reiterated the fallacious claim that the separation of church and state was a myth, etc., etc.

O’Reilly is, at least, grossly mistaken and, at most, a blatant liar preaching to the converted choir that has no purpose for reason or evidence anyway. If O’Reilly had found it incumbent upon himself to back up his assertions with actual words from Jefferson, he would have surely been distressed at the mountain of quotes to the contrary.

I find it ironic that O’Reilly would be so careless as to invoke both subjects in the same column, that is, Jefferson and the Wall. It was Jefferson, for God’s sake, who coined the term “Wall of Separation” between Church and State. Do you really think, do you really believe he would think it was a myth, ‘if he was alive today’? It was Jefferson who authored the First Amendment and the Virginia Statute on the Free Exercise of Religion. Do you really think that he would want religion and government to become increasingly entangled?

Here’s a good Jefferson quote, often cited to show his support of religious matters: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” It should be noted that, when one consults the context of this quotation, they find that Jefferson is vowing eternal hostility against the machinations of theocrats.

Ah, here’s a good Jefferson quote: “Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.” And another: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” That’s our Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, in love with public religion and scornful of ’secular fools.’ I’ve had with O’Reilly, he’s just a damned moron.

Let us hope that a good portion of O’Reilly’s readers took it upon themselves to fact-check his error. A people should know their Founders, and know their past. For, as Jefferson said, “If a people expect to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, they expect what never was and never shall be.”

Existential quandary

In 1991 when British troops invaded Iraq to fight the First Gulf War, they wore forest camouflage, having sold all of their desert camo to the Iraqis to fight the Iranians just a few years earlier.

Senator Orrin Hatch said that, “capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.”

Every Diebold AccuVote electronic voting machine in the country can be opened with the same key.

The US government recently put online documents that are allegedly Hussein’s government’s plans to build an atomic bomb. The plans, untranslated from Arabic, they later realized, could likely be used to actually build a bomb. In a panic, they took the documents down. Never mind that The Progressive published plans to build a hydrogen bomb in 1979 after defeating the United States government in the Supreme Court. (This is parallel to Bush lambasting the New York Times for revealing a program tracking international money transfers after Bush himself had revealed the program to the public in the aftermath of September 11th.)

The frustrated and flabbergasted state in which I now find myself, because of the contemporary political atmosphere, is the state of a man repeatedly confronted by the absurd. I’m nearly dumbfounded by the world around me, and those who are pulling the strings.

I urge all of you to vote next Tuesday (however few people will read this). As Plato said,

one of the consequences of refusing to participate in politics is that you find yourself being governed by your inferiors.

No Jesus, No Peace

I saw a bumper sticker today: “No Jesus, No Peace.” I find it ironic that the only time anthropologists have been able to identify a period of complete world peace was under the Pax Romana, Before Christ.

And so it seems that the exact opposite is true: there was a brief two-hundred year flash of world peace before Christ came on the scene and, since, the world has been engulfed in turmoil of one kind or another non-stop.

Patrick McHenry

Representative McHenry has been alleging, with a nudge and a wink, that the Democrats are somehow behind the timing of the release of information that led to the Mark Foley scandal. On Wolf Blitzer:

Wolf: “Do you have any evidence [that the Democrats were involved], Congressman?”
McHenry: “Do you have any evidence that they weren’t involved?”

Nothing says America like ‘guilty until proven innocent.’ I suppose McHenry never realized that the burden of the proof rests on the prosecution and that the fact that Democrats are refusing to testify under oath is not proof they had anything to do with the timing of the scandal.

Stay the Course

Raise your hand if you’ve heard Bush insist that the right thing to do in Iraq is to “stay the course.”

Now everybody put your hands down, because according to him, he’s “never been ’stay the course.’” Kudos to ThinkProgress for assembling a short list of instances that directly contradict Bush’s denial. At this point, I’m simply aghast at this man’s audacity. Does he actually think the American public is that stupid?

Lying to the public

The point was made that lying to the public is an Impeachable offense, and one brought against Nixon. It’s certainly lamentable and morally reprehensible, but I don’t know if it’s a high crime or misdemeanor, as the Constitution specifies. Nevertheless, Nixon lied about the Watergate break-in, as well as invading Cambodia and the death toll figures for Vietnam.

Bush has lied to the public on several occasions – “I didn’t think anyone anticipated the levies would break,” and “We do not torture,” and “Anytime you hear anyone talking about wiretapping, we’re getting a warrant” – but I think stronger charges to bring would concern the actual illegal programs or gross incompetence Bush was attempting to hide in each of those instances. Namely, appointing a horse judge as FEMA Chief and then congratulating him for doing “a heck of a job;” outsourcing interrogation to private unaccountable civilians and condoning their wanton abuses of human rights; blatantly overstepping Executive bounds and ignoring procedures already in place for wiretapping…

Fifty-three percent of Americans want Congress to Impeach Bush if it can be shown that he deliberately mislead the public into war. That poll is pretty old. I would guess the number has only gone up as the situation has worsened. If only we lived in a proportionally represented democracy, it’s possible we would see some action on Congress’ part. Why did Congress spend forty million dollars to investigate Clinton?

There is no question that Bush has lied to the public a number of times, about very serious issues.

“Now, when the President does something, that means that it is not illegal.” –Richard Nixon

Bush’s actions imply that he holds the same belief.

Oil and Coca Cola

An oil executive compared the price of oil to the price of Coca Cola, saying that $60 dollars a barrel was ‘really not that high.’ While the analogy may be telling, it warrants the examination of some relevant differences between the two commodities. Namely, oil is near vital for today’s economy to operate: as such, it has a distinct nature from the fetishized Coca Cola, which society could do very well without. One might as well compare oil to a Starbucks latté — both comparisons are equally absurd. Our society is not fueled by high-fructose corn syrup and carbonation.

Coca Cola is priced highly simply because it is a luxury (in comparison to oil) and, simply, people will pay for it. Though both commodities are subject to the same laws of supply and demand, oil is somewhat more rigid: society is at the mercy of undemocratic backroom meetings by conglomerates like OPEC when it comes to petroleum. Oil prices are not nearly as responsive to the buying habits of the public (both by their nature and by the fact that the public has yet to greatly alter those habits).

Though Coca Cola is more expensive, it is also inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. If the price of Coca Cola had tripled in the past 6 years, likely many people would have given it up. Our society, on the other hand, does not have the luxury of renouncing oil overnight, the role of crude being so integral to our lives.

So, when the exec goes on to say that the fact people are still buying SUVs and running their air conditioners on high is a sign that people don’t care about gas prices, he should think again. The wasteful habits of the moneyed bourgeoisie are no evidence for a societal acceptance of murder at the gas pump.

I dare say that a 16 oz bottle of Coca Cola gives us more pleasure than the convenience we get from an equal amount of gasoline (about 3 miles of travel on 25 mpg, which in itself is generous).

It is altogether unfortunate that our capitalist society drags its heels in the face of Peak Oil. I agree that oil will have to remain at above $4 or $5 before people in America will change their ways. There is no Peak Coca Cola, nor is Coca Cola ruining our atmosphere. The analogy is a poor one, at best, and grossly misleading at worst.

Injustice anywhere

The New York Times quickly breezes through a handful of atrocious policies OK’d by the Senate recently:

…suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

What do we have there, three breaches of the Bill of Rights? As well, the bill formalizes the absolutely astonishing ability of the President to rob a citizen of their Constitutional guarantees. I’m simply sickened. I don’t understand how denying an American citizen their right to trial protects my freedom. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” –Martin Luther King

I want my Constitution back.

A Third Revival

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious people “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

Casting the world in black and whites, in “good and evil,” is a gross truncation of logic, or, rather, an utter ignorance and scathing betrayal of logic. The tendency to do just that is a side effect of strong religious faith — it is one of the reasons people seek religion, for easy answers to hard questions.

People don’t want to consider that terrorists are humans with the same feelings and motives as we, that they legitimately feel victimized, and that maybe, just maybe it’s not our “freedom” but our foreign policy that shapes their beliefs.

You will find few strict dichotomies in the real world, just like you will find few absolutes. To jump to conclusions, to exaggerate, to hastily label: these habits have no place in civil and constructive rhetoric. It is unfortunate, indeed, that our President would resort to such tactics and — more sadly — that they would find broad appeal and acceptance in the populace. I just ask that you take a step back and analyze things.

Hindsight is 20/20

The U.S. invasion “was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing,” [Cheney] said.

I would like to think that that’s a metaphorical defense — that we would remove Saddam from power, and remove his oppressive regime and all that, but that the intricacies would be better planned.

If, however, Cheney does me that we would do the exact same thing, he means that, knowing what we know now, we would have no qualms about plunging a country into chaos, or igniting a bloodbath that, while short of civil war, is widespread and anarchic. And we’d also kill an estimated hundred thousand civilians. Knowing what we know now, those were all good choices. And we’d gladly do it all over again.