“We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear — fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer.”
Hunter S. Thompson
My appreciation for the absurd has been taxed to the limit with the following press release;
Ben Stein, known for his lead role in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and his Comedy Central show Win Ben Stein’s Money, believes in liberty and truth. In recognition of this, Biola University’s masters in science and religion program will present him with the 2008 Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on March 27, a month before the release of his major controversial motion picture, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
In light of Stein’s contribution to the pursuit of liberty and truth, particularly as it relates to the field of Intelligent Design, he is being honored with the 2008 Johnson Award. The award ceremony will feature premiere clips from the forthcoming movie, the personal appearance of scientists who were expelled from their jobs because they are sympathetic to Intelligent Design, and will include a brief address by Stein.
Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California, established the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth in 2004 to honor legal scholar and Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, who was the award’s first recipient. The award recognizes Johnson’s pivotal role in advancing our understanding of design in the universe by opening up informed dissent to Darwinian and materialistic theories of evolution. British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, became the second recipient of this award in 2006 for his Socratic approach of “following the evidence where it leads” and abandoning atheism on account of design arguments.
The sentences I’ve made bold are those that made me nearly spit coffee out my nose.
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
– Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary Of Quotations
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
– Mikhail Bakunin, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
Religion is a collective insanity.
– Mikhail Bakunin, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
The idea of god implies the abdication of human reason & justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty & necessarily ends in the enslavement of manking both in theory & practice.
He who desires to worship god must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty & humanity.
– Mikhail Bakunin, his classic statement on the matter
All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.
– Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871), quoted from Emma Goldman, “The Philosophy of Atheism” (1916)
These may not be the only reasons more people believe in gods than aliens, but they’re the most obvious to me.
Since we have as much supporting evidence for the existence of aliens as we do gods, you’d think both would be equally embraced. Yet they aren’t, because…
…our interest in the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe is fairly recent. (Only in the last few hundred years have we come to better understand the requirements for life to exist. Only in the last century have we developed the means to explore the universe in such a way that the conditions that would permit life to exist might be detected. Within the last century we’ve come to accept that space flight is possible.)
…the reward for believing in gods is substantial while believing in aliens doesn’t have any pay-off. (Nearly every religion offers a reward for belief. Forgiveness for transgressions, eternal life, community with other believers, peace of mind, the belief you are loved and cared about. Belief in aliens doesn’t promise any benefit, temporal or eternal.)
Originally submitted to David Farber’s Interesting People mailing list:
Clearly whatever it is that Dutch politician Geert Wilders wants to talk
about in his film is going to be the end of the internet. The news that
Network Solutions decided to pre-empt his use of a domain name registered
through them for the purpose of promoting his film need not be re-hashed
here.However, before bemoaning yet another registrar freely deciding, as is its
right, with whom it chooses to do business, it’s important to look at the
big picture. No, it is not “censorship” for Network Solutions to decide how
it wants its services to be used. There are a number of internet registrars
all over the world, and as recently demonstrated with Enom having been
notified by the US State Department that, yes, the OFAC SDN list means
something, one might do well to select one’s registrar based in part on an
understanding of the legal climate where that registrar is located.But, perhaps we might understand Network Solutions policy more clearly by
looking at domain names registered through NSI which freely promote killing
Muslims rather than merely making films about them. Take for example the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, affectionately the Tamil Tigers – a nearly
universally recognized terrorist group perhaps best known for the
assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, but which has engaged in far more numerous
outright massacres in predominately Muslim areas of Sri Lanka.The Tamil Tigers maintain at least two, if not more, domain names through
Network Solutions – eelam.com and eelamweb.com. Here, one can learn the
answers to all of your frequently asked questions about ethnic cleansing
such as at: http://www.eelamweb.com/faq/ which states “Muslims have been
asked to leave the Tamil Eelam territory until the independence of Tamil
Eelam.” This polite request is normally made at gunpoint during operations
of the Tamil Tigers.So, the takeaway from these two actions of Network Solutions: (1)
prohibiting an NSI domain name to be used to promote an anti-Muslim film,
and (2) permitting two NSI domain names to be used to promote the mass
eviction and murder of Muslims in Sri Lanka; indicates that one needs to
apply a balanced perspective of how NSI would like its domain name services
to be used, before making rash judgments of alleged “bias”. If the
continued operation of eelam.com and eelamweb.com is any indication, NSI’s
view would appear to be that Mr. Wilders just isn’t going far enough.Next up, the Islamic Army of Iraq, and their Louisiana brigade, courtesy of
iaisite.info, registered through Directnic.John Berryhill, Ph.d., Esq.
While humorous, Mr. Berryhill’s comment does raise a serious question. What is the role of a host in monitoring and controlling the content of sites that register through them? If AT&T gets its way, webhosts may soon be legally and financially liable for the content carrid on their networks. Can we trust private companies to decide what is available on the internet?
Have the terrorists won yet?
An American internet company has inactivated the website of a Dutch right-wing politician, who was planning to release a critical film about the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book, on the site.
Network Solutions announced late Saturday that it had suspended the site, www.fitnathemovie, as the company assesses whether it contravenes its “acceptable use policy.”
Politician Geert Wilders says he’s made a 15-minute film as a warning to the West about the teachings of the Qur’an.
Wilders is a well-known anti-Islamist who has called for a stop to immigration from Muslim countries and a halt to the building of new mosques in his country.
Wilders has said he’s not against Muslims but against their faith. He has previously talked about the “tsunami of Islamization” in the Netherlands, which is home to about one million Muslims.
After being turned down by at least four broadcasters in the Netherlands, Wilders announced this week that he planned to release Fitna —the Koranic term for “strife” — on March 31 over the internet.
“If need be, I will personally distribute DVDs,” Wilders told Dutch news agency ANP after hearing about the website’s inactivation.
On Saturday, about 2,000 protesters gathered in downtown Amsterdam to demonstrate against Wilders and his film.
Calling their protest ”Netherlands shows its colours,” demonstrators say they were upset over what they saw as a right-wing witch hunt against Muslims.
Dutch officials fear the movie could spark violent protests in Muslim countries, and have emergency evacuation plans in place for their citizens in those countries.
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said he rejects Wilders’s views, but supports his freedom of speech. (Source)
The Muslim terrorists have done better than killing all the infidels, they’ve made us afraid. In our fear, we will do what they couldn’t, destroy Western civilization from within. In our fear we’ll restrict liberty, bypass Constitutional protections and permit our government to act in any way they see fit…just save us from the terrorists. We once thought the greatest threat to our way of life were the Japanese, the Germans, the Muslims. We were wrong. The greatest threat we face is our own fear, our own impotence to provide security while at the same time maintaining our freedom.
Glenn Greenwald, in a Salon.com opinion piece, provides a refutation of the points in the previous Time article. While he doesn’t challenge the underlying premise that the U.S. government is acting in ways detrimental to and incompatible with our Constitution, he does question the conclusion Time reached, that Americans just don’t care.
No matter how corrupt and sloppy the establishment press becomes, they always find a way to go lower. Time Magazine has just published what it purports to be a news article by Massimo Calabresi claiming that “nobody cares” about the countless abuses of spying powers by the Bush administration; that “Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security”; and that the case against unchecked government surveillance powers “hasn’t convinced the people.” Not a single fact — not one — is cited to support these sweeping, false opinions.
Worse still — way worse — this “news article” decrees the Bush administration to be completely innocent, even well-motivated, even in those instances where technical, irrelevant lawbreaking has been found…
Does Calabresi or his Time editors have the slightest idea how secret, illegal spying powers have been used, towards what ends they’ve been employed and with what motives? No, they have absolutely no idea. Not even members of Congressional Intelligence Committees know because the Bush administration has kept all of that concealed. So Time just makes up facts to defend the Bush administration with wholly baseless statements that one would expect to come pouring out of the mouths only of Dana Perino and Bill Kristol — the “motivating factor” for secret, illegal spying was nothing “other than law and order or national security.” This article literally has more factual errors — pure, retraction-level falsehoods — than it has paragraphs. It makes Joe Klein look like a knowledgable and conscientious surveillance expert. It’s one of the most falsehood-plagued articles I’ve seen in quite some time.
The proposition that “polls consistently” find that Americans don’t mind incursions into their civil liberties is a rank falsehood.
Read the full article for a well-supported contention that Americans do care about the situation. What to do about it may well be the most important question in the upcoming election.
Via Time Magazine online:
A quick tally of the record of civil liberties erosion in the United States since 9/11 suggests that the majority of Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security. Polling consistently supports that conclusion, and Congress has largely behaved accordingly, granting increased leeway to law enforcement and the intelligence community to spy and collect data on Americans. Even when the White House, the FBI or the intelligence agencies have acted outside of laws protecting those rights — such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the public has by and large shrugged and, through their elected representatives, suggested changing the laws to accommodate activities that may be in breach of them.
In all the examples of diminished civil liberties, there are few, if any, where the motivating factor was something other than law and order or national security. There are no scandalous examples of the White House using the Patriot Act powers for political purposes or of individual agents using them for personal gain. The Justice IG report released Thursday, for example, examined some 50,000 National Security Letters issued in 2006 to see whether the FBI misused that specialized kind of warrantless subpoena. The IG found some continuing abuse of the power, but blamed it for the most part on sloppiness and bad management, not nefarious intent. In a press release accompanying the report, Fine said, “The FBI and Department of Justice have shown a commitment to addressing these problems.”
For now, however, civil libertarians will have to continue to argue that the danger lies not in how the government’s expanded powers are being used now, but how they might be used in the future. So far, that argument hasn’t convinced the people.
There’s an old joke; The two most destructive attitudes in society are ignorance and apathy…but I don’t know and I don’t care. It seems this may no longer be a joke.
Do the words attributed to Ben Franklin apply here? “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety“, used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759). It could be argued that the colonialists could not envision the threats we now face and that Franklin (or Richard Jackson or whoever) would not have been so absolute in saying that had they lived today.
Is security and national defense sufficient cause to restrict liberty and add conditions to our freedoms? Or are those concepts being used by a malevolent government in order to suppress dissent and control the population through fear and intimidation?
These are perhaps the most important questions we face as we move into the 21st century.
Twitter and FriendFeed are becoming popular ways for like-minded people to communicate and keep in touch.
So how many of you use those services? It would be cool to share our usernames and build a network of atheist and free thinking folk. You may also want to check out Twhirl as a Twitter desktop client.
I’ll go first. I’m jeber on both services. Among my Twitter friends are several atheists and free thinkers. Add them as your friends. Let’s talk.
I just heard a TV ad for a clothing store that repeats the phrase “Family Values” several times. Ostensibly they’re referring to values (savings) for the whole family.
On another level, they’re parroting a phrase popular in society. That some customers might associate this store with a religious right catchphrase that appears to imply wholesomeness and decency is a subtle attempt to manipulate opinion. Of course all advertising is an attempt to manipulate opinion, but I don’t often see advertisers trying to incorporate phrases more appropriate to the political spectrum to sell dresses and shirts.
Being aware of these efforts to put thoughts in your head that have nothing to do with the product in question is the first step in resisting such efforts.
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