history

Atheists Crying Wolf, Part 1

Calvin Freiburger Alonzo Fyfe, atheism, bigotry, blogosphere, Bush, Constitution, demagogues, history, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, religion
A while back I took on charges of anti-atheist bigotry leveled against an Illinois lawmaker by atheist blogger Alonzo Fyfe. Beyond that, Fyfe claims a whole host of things amount to prejudice against poor, innocent atheists:
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(1) A sitting president said that atheists are not fit to be judges – and the statement can still be found on the White House’s own web site.”[W]e need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench.”
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(2) We have atheists who stand and feign support for a Pledge of Allegiance that says, “As far as this government is concerned, atheists (those not ‘under god’) are the moral equivalent of those who would commit themselves to rebellion, tyranny, and injustice for all.”
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(3) We have a national motto on our money and going up in more and more places in this country that says, “If you do not trust in God, you are not one of us.”
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(4) Atheists are routinely blamed for everything from terrorist attacks to school shootings to hurricanes to the Holocaust.
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(5) On this latter point, there is a movie that will officially debut around the country on April 18th that is making a blatant attempt to link atheism to the Holocaust.
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I intend to show that these victim-centric interpretations are wrong, and that, when not distorted by atheist activists, none of them constitute bigotry against those who don’t believe in God. My case will be divided into three posts: this one on atheism and the judiciary, a second on ceremonial references to God & religious symbolism, and a third on atheism and violence.
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(1) “[W]e need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God.” President Bush is right, and if a statement like this is enough to send Fyfe flying off the handle, methinks he needs to re-read the Declaration of Independence, brush up on American history, and take a couple deep breaths.
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” So says the Declaration of Independence, the guiding light of American governance. Examples of the Founding Fathers echoing and elaborating upon this sentiment are abundant. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government assumes men to be “the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker.” The concept that our rights come from God was a sharp departure from prior conceptions that rights originated either from government or from cultural lineage. Its implications are powerful: it divorces human rights from intellectual, physical, or racial superiority, or from bloodline. All individuals deserve equal treatment simply because they are human beings. Accordingly, under this conception of God-given rights, government becomes a servant of the people, rather than the master.
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If one believes in judicial originalism, that the purpose of judges is to faithfully glean and apply the original meaning and intentions of a law, then why wouldn’t it be legitimate to consider a potential judge’s understanding of the Framers’ conception of rights? A judge who sees our rights as God-given understands that he doesn’t have the authority to thwart them by judicial fiat, no matter how much he might think his personal views on any given case might be better. I, for one, think that sort of humility is highly desirable in a public figure, especially one wielding the power of an unelected, unaccountable, lifetime position.
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Granted, the Constitution prohibits faith-based legal disqualifications from public office, and Bush didn’t propose any. But that isn’t the same as the individual in charge of choosing a candidate—the executive making his appointments or the voter casting his ballot—having a preference for the type of ideas which he or she believes can best serve the office. Unlike skin color or sex, religion and atheism are ideas (or the absence of particular ideas) with implications relevant to society. Therefore, it’s reasonable for people to use them as criteria when judging potential public officials. Surely many atheists think believing Christians are less-than ideal officeholders, as is their prerogative. I’d passionately disagree, of course, but it’s not bigotry to take religion, or lack thereof, into consideration. Then again, perhaps the actual goal isn’t tolerance, but rather to insulate one’s worldview, via intimidation if necessary, from critical evaluation by the people.
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By all means, atheists like Alonzo Fyfe should have equal opportunity to seek public office. But that doesn’t mean they get to pretend the philosophical foundations of the nation never existed, or to exempt their ideas from public consideration.

Quote of the Day

Calvin Freiburger culture, Europe, history, O'Sullivan, patriotism, quote
And our literature! – Oh, when will it breathe the spirit of our republican institutions? When will it be embued with the God-like aspiration of intellectual freedom – the elevating principle of equality? When will it assert its national independence, and speak the soul – the heart of the American people? Why cannot our literati comprehend the matchless sublimity of our position amongst the nations of the world – our high destiny – and cease bending the knee to foreign idolatry, false tastes, false doctrines, false principles? When will they be inspired by the magnificent scenery of our own world, imbibe the fresh enthusiasm of a new heaven and a new earth, and soar upon the expanded wings of truth and liberty? Is not nature as original – her truths as captivating – her aspects as various, as lovely, as grand – her Promethean fire as glowing in this, our Western hemisphere, as in that of the East? And above all, is not our private life as morally beautiful and good – is not our public life as politically right, as indicative of the brightest prospects of humanity, and therefore as inspiring of the highest conceptions? Why, then, do our authors aim at no higher degree of merit, than a successful imitation of English writers of celebrity?
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John L. O’Sullivan, November 1839

Campaign Finance "Reform" and Reagans, Past & Future

Calvin Freiburger 2008, campaign finance, Coulter, free speech, history, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Reagan
Ann Coulter’s column this week is especially important:
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Inasmuch as the current presidential election has come down to a choice among hemlock, self-immolation or the traditional gun in the mouth, now is the time for patriotic Americans to review what went wrong and to start planning for 2012.
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How did we end up with the mainstream media picking the Republican candidate for president?
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It isn’t the early primaries, it isn’t that we allow Democrats to vote in many of our primaries, and it isn’t that the voters are stupid. All of that was true or partially true in 1980 — and we still got Ronald Reagan.
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We didn’t get Ronald Reagan this year not just because there’s never going to be another Reagan. We will never again get another Reagan because Reagan wouldn’t run for office under the current campaign-finance regime.
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Three months ago, I was sitting with a half-dozen smart, successful conservatives whose names you know, all griping about this year’s cast of presidential candidates. I asked them, one by one: Why don’t you run for office?
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Of course, none of them would. They are happy, well-adjusted individuals.
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Reagan, too, had a happy life and, having had no trouble getting girls in high school, had no burning desire for power. So when the great California businessman Holmes Tuttle and two other principled conservatives approached Reagan about running for office, Reagan said no.
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But Tuttle kept after Reagan, asking him not to reject the idea out of hand. He formed “Friends of Reagan” to raise money in case Reagan changed his mind.
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He asked Reagan to give his famous “Rendezvous With History” speech at a $1,000-a-plate Republican fundraiser in Los Angeles and then bought airtime for the speech to be broadcast on TV days before the 1964 presidential election.
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The epochal broadcast didn’t change the election results, but it changed history. That single broadcast brought in nearly $1 million to the Republican Party — not to mention millions of votes for Goldwater.
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After the astonishing response to Reagan’s speech and Tuttle’s continued entreaties, Reagan finally relented and ran for governor. In 1966, with the help, financial and otherwise, of a handful of self-made conservative businessmen, Reagan walloped incumbent Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, winning 57 percent of the vote in a state with two Democrats for every Republican.
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The rest is history — among the brightest spots in all of world history.
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None of that could happen today. (The following analysis uses federal campaign-finance laws rather than California campaign-finance laws because the laws are basically the same, and I am not going to hire a campaign-finance lawyer in order to write this column.)
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If Tuttle found Ronald Reagan today, he couldn’t form “Friends of Reagan” to raise money for a possible run — at least not without hiring a battery of campaign-finance lawyers and guaranteeing himself a lawsuit by government bureaucrats. He’d also have to abandon his friendship with Reagan to avoid the perception of “coordination.”
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Tuttle couldn’t hold a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for Reagan — at least in today’s dollars. That would be a $6,496.94-a-plate dinner (using the consumer price index) or a $19,883.51-a-plate dinner (using the relative share of GDP). The limit on individual contributions to a candidate is $2,300.
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Reagan’s “Rendezvous With History” speech would never have been broadcast on TV — unless Tuttle owned the TV station. Independent groups are prohibited from broadcasting electioneering ads 60 days before an election.
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A handful of conservative businessmen would not be allowed to make large contributions to Reagan’s campaign — they would be restricted to donating only $2,300 per person.
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Under today’s laws, Tuttle would have had to go to Reagan and say: “We would like you to run for governor. You are limited to raising money $300 at a time (roughly the current limits in 1965 dollars), so you will have to do nothing but hold fundraisers every day of your life for the next five years in order to run in the 1970 gubernatorial election, since there clearly isn’t enough time to raise money for the 1966 election.”
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Also, Tuttle would have to tell Reagan: “We are not allowed to coordinate with you, so you’re on your own. But wait — it gets worse! After five years of attending rubber chicken dinners every single day in order to raise money in tiny increments, you will probably lose the election anyway because campaign-finance laws make it virtually impossible to unseat an incumbent.
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“Oh, and one more thing: Did you ever kiss a girl in high school? Not even once? If not, then this plan might appeal to you!”
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Obviously, Reagan would have returned to his original answer: No thanks.
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Reagan loved giving speeches and taking questions from voters. The one part of campaigning Reagan loathed was raising money. Thanks to our campaign-finance laws, fundraising is the single most important job of a political candidate today.
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This is why you will cast your eyes about the nation in vain for another Reagan sitting in any governor’s mansion or U.S. Senate seat. Pro-lifers like to ask, “How many Einsteins have we lost to abortion?” I ask: How many Reagans have we lost to campaign-finance reform?
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The campaign-finance laws basically restrict choice political jobs, like senator and governor — and thus president — to:
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(1) Men who were fatties in high school and consequently are willing to submit to the hell of running for office to compensate for their unhappy adolescences — like Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich. (Somewhere in this great land of ours, even as we speak, the next Bill Clinton is waddling back to the cafeteria service line asking for seconds.)
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(2) Billionaires and near-billionaires — like Jon Corzine, Steve Forbes, Michael Bloomberg and Mitt Romney — who can fund their own campaigns (these aren’t necessarily sociopaths, but it certainly limits the pool of candidates).
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(3) Celebrities and name-brand candidates — like Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Bush, Giuliani and Hillary Clinton (which explains the nation’s apparent adoration for Bushes and Clintons — they’ve got name recognition, a valuable commodity amidst totalitarian restrictions on free speech).
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(4) Mainstream media-anointed candidates, like John McCain and B. Hussein Obama.
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What a bizarre coincidence that a few years after the most draconian campaign-finance laws were imposed via McCain-Feingold, our two front-runners happen to be the media’s picks! It’s uncanny — almost as if by design! (Can I stop now, or do you people get sarcasm?)
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By prohibiting speech by anyone else, the campaign-finance laws have vastly magnified the power of the media — which, by the way, are wholly exempt from speech restrictions under campaign-finance laws. The New York Times doesn’t have to buy ad time to promote a politician; it just has to call McCain a “maverick” 1 billion times a year.
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It is because of campaign-finance laws like McCain-Feingold that big men don’t run for office anymore. Little men do. And John McCain is the head homunculus.
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You want Reagan back? Restore the right to free speech, and you will have created the conditions that allowed Reagan to run.

Quote of the Day

Calvin Freiburger American Revolution, debate, Founding Fathers, free speech, history, quote
What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments. It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them. Weak advocates of a good cause or artful advocates of a bad one, may endeavour to stop such communications, or to discredit them by clamour and calumny. This, however, is not the age for such tricks of controversy. Men have suffered so severely by being deceived upon subjects of the highest import, those of religion and freedom, that truth becomes infinitely valuable to them, not as a matter of curious speculation, but of beneficial practice. A spirit of inquiry is excited, information diffused, judgment strengthened.
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Before this tribunal of the people, let every one freely speak, what he really thinks, but with so sincere a reverence for the cause he ventures to discuss, as to use the utmost caution, lest he should lead any into errors, upon a point of such sacred concern as the public happiness.
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– John Dickinson, 1788

Oswald & Ruby

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, history, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, JFK, national tragedies, scandal
Could there be another dimension to President John F. Kennedy’s murder?
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Lost documents said to be a “conspiracy theorist’s dream come true” have been unearthed which suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby plotted together to kill President John F Kennedy…The boxes of evidence, found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse, include a transcript of a conversation said to be between the pair discussing how they would carry out the assassination on behalf of the Mafia.
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The transcript claims that the real target of the Mob was the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, himself later assassinated. Robert had launched a campaign against the criminal underworld. In the alleged conversation, Ruby, a nightclub owner, and Oswald decide that it would be easier to kill the president than his brother and that JFK’s death would end the inquiry just as effectively.
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I’ve never given much credence to the various JFK conspiracy theories, but this sounds interesting…

History Repeats Itself

Calvin Freiburger abortion, civil war, debate, evil, Founding Fathers, history, slavery
Consider the following passage:
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Those on the Religious Right, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind — from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-choice fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the embryo is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the born man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just — but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.
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Sounds like your typical pro-abortion hyperbole, right? Demonize the opponents as fanatics and claim the mantle of reason for yourself. Right out of the playbook.
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Well, it is, but the interesting thing is which playbook. Y’see, these words were spoken many years ago by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, in his famous Cornerstone Speech. Of course, he was talking about Northerners, the Negro, and the white man where I substituted in the terms of today’s debate, but it’s remarkable to note that his spiritual successors are using the same tired, discredited arguments to justify their dominance of their chosen inferior class.
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(Incidentally, the speech is also interesting in that Stephens’ rhetoric pretty clearly refutes the idea that the Founding Fathers, and the Constitution they produced, viewed slavery as a decent societal norm. Well worth a read.)

Man’s Inhumanity to Man…& the Spin Defending It

Calvin Freiburger abortion, history, pro-life, religion, reporter, science
Back on April 5, the Reporter ran this pro-life letter:
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Abortion: ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’
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Keith Kramer
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Because abortion cannot be defended on its own merits, population controllers argue for a woman’s right to choose, never about what is being chosen.
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Choosing abortion always kills the innocent glimmer of light within our very dark world. A grieving time for life, our society begs healing from questions still to be asked; yet a man’s intellect never quite permits asking, lest complacency flee like dried dandelion fluff.
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We would dwell beyond the snares of “man’s inhumanity to man,” leaving inhumanity at the door of the Nazi holocaust. Now that we are the enforcer, we justify atrocity as somehow necessary and excusable.
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“I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just.”—Thomas Jefferson
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Today this response appeared:
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Brent Schmitz
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Mr. Keith Kraemer asserts in his letter to the editor on Thursday (April 5) that “abortion cannot be defended on its own merits,” and proceeds to refer to pro-choice Americans as “population controllers,” evoking images of the government mandated infanticide and involuntary sterilizations of parents that have occurred in China for the past decades.
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It’s equally safe to assume that there won’t be a mass program to imprison & kill Jews in the United States, too. Does that mean we can’t attribute such a desire to neo-Nazis operating within the country? Furthermore, while a variety of motivations prop up abortion (all of them sick), there is a very real movement of “population controllers” on the Left, as evidenced by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Gate.
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By focusing on abortion as “inhumanity,” Mr. Kraemer ignores the vital question of this issue, “When does human life begin?” I am neither a doctor nor a theologian, and do not presume to answer this question with an assertion, though Mr. Kraemer feels no such apprehension.
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I suspect Mr. Kramer “feels no such apprehension” about accepting unborn humanity as a given because we live in an age where that fact ought to be as clear as that the sun rises in the morning. I think that, considering the length of the average Opinion letter, Kramer focused on a point that needed to be heard.
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I would ask him what qualifications he has to assert the beginning of life at conception. This position, if supported adequately, is certainly valid, and thus would render abortion immoral, but Mr. Kraemer has given us no evidence to support his conjecture.
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I also find it interesting that Mr. Kraemer compares a pro-choice society to Nazism without acknowledging that there is doubt in whether or not abortion terminates a human life—there is no such doubt that millions of innocents died in the Holocaust.
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Actually, the only doubt is among those who want abortion to be legal. In reality, “life begins at conception” is a scientific fact. But Mr. Schmitz’s acknowledgement of doubt points to another flaw in the case for abortion: unless science could unequivocally establish that life begins at some point after conception, to terminate something you understand might be life is a clearly-evil act.
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Mr. Kraemer ends his letter with a quotation from Thomas Jefferson. I will do the same. “Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.” Mr. Kraemer, defend your position without invoking religious dogma, which cannot be argued against, and our country can begin to have a serious debate about the moral dilemma that is abortion.
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The most serious debate our country ever had was about the moral dilemma that is slavery. And that is the evil to which Jefferson referred when he trembled for his country at the thought of God’s justice. Does Schmitz think Jefferson’s invocation of “religious dogma” invalidated his disgust for slavery? Did the explicitly-religious rhetoric invoked by the rest of the Founding Fathers supporting the overall concept of liberty invalidate the American Revolution or the Constitutional Convention? What about the deep influence religion held on Abraham Lincoln? Or Churchill’s calls to fight for “the survival of Christian civilization”?
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Maybe the issues revolving around America’s birth, slavery, the Civil War, and World War II don’t count as “serious.”