NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Tue, 26 Jul 2005
On Fundamentalism
Friends and Neighbors, I am tired. It is a very difficult, 24-hour
a day job caring about my country and trying to peacefully wrest
control of my government from the hands of the greedheads and the
warmongers and the authoritarian religious fundamentalists to which
51.4135% of you gave it. Well, as is the case with a democratically
based republic, we have the government that we deserve. But we
don't have the government that my son deserves, so I'll keep on
trying.
I am especially tired right now of hearing that this country was
founded on so-called "Christian Values." Horse manure. If you're
talking about the far-right fundamentalist predestination-believing
settlers of Plymouth
Rock, all well and good. But they did not found this country. They
founded a settlement. And I don't see a lot of Puritan houses of
worship in my neighborhood. They were, and are, a dead
out-of-mainstream religious sect, worthy of an asterisk in the
religious history of our nation. The closest surviving relative of
that sect is modern Presbyterianism, and it survived because it
embraced a less Calvinist, more compassionate viewpoint.
This nation was founded on the values of The
Enlightenment. Our founding fathers were, above all, children of
the Age of Reason. (As a matter of fact, Both Jefferson and Monroe
urged Thomas Paine to finish his book of that
title after he was released from a French prison and returned to
this country.)
The very first words of the very first amendment to Our Constitution
read "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion." How clear is that? It means that I am free of your
religion, and you are free of mine.
It is none of my business if you believe that a collection of oral
mythology and badly translated ancient allegories are the "written word of
God, inspired by the Holy Spirit and without error in the original
manuscripts." That is your business, and I am morally, ethically, and
legally bound to respect your personal viewpoint. And to respect your
right to have that viewpoint. And to respect your right to peacefully
assemble with others of that viewpoint.
But you have the same obligations. I am a foundationally religious
person. There is no doubt in my mind that we are a part of a mystical,
greater whole that cannot be fathomed at this level. But my god
answers to every name, be it Yahweh, Jehova, Allah, Krishna, Baal, I
Am, Bagadjimbiri, Changing Woman, Djigonasee, Thor, Margawse,
Ama-No-Minaka-Nushi, Cerridwen, Athtart, Nu Wa, Hathor, Bastet,
Ururupuin, Xochiquetzal, Tsunigoab Khoi, Airmid, Isis or a million
other names. My god has malice and judgement towards no one. My god
doesn't do politics, because my god knows that nothing of lasting
import can happen on this plane except Love. No one can die or be
truly harmed here; we are all utterly and profoundly Safe, and we will
all realize this at the appropriate moment. We are simply here,
voluntarily, to experience the beauty of life in all the duality of a
physical manifestation, good and bad, and perchance to realize that we
are all a part of The One. We all know this when we choose to come
here; we come here to realize it.
You see, my god is so big a target that it is impossible to
miss. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin so profoundly and correctly puts
it, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are
spiritual beings having a human experience."
If you choose to believe the idea that you will be physically
picked up and taken to a twelve thousand furlong cubed city with nine
gates surrounded by a 144-cubit-high wall called "Heaven," while
people like me burn in a searingly painful underworld Lake Of Boiling
Sulfur, being poked with spears by sadistic red bipeds with horns for
All Eternity (having been put there by your Compassionate God), then
feel free. I have no problems with that.
But if you want to take over my country, and force me to pay public
homage to the myriad illogical minutiae of your beliefs, and
teach my children your demonstrably flawed mythology in place of
proven physical reality, well, I have a huge problem with that,
and I will fight you at every turn.
Keep your beliefs in your heart, and in your home, and in your
church and I will do everything to defend you against all who would
try to abridge your right to keep close those beliefs. But keep your
beliefs out of my home, and my church, and my government, as I keep
mine out of yours.
That is freedom of religion. More specifically, that is freedom
from religion. There are as many paths to God as there are
human souls, and I fundamentally respect your right to your path. I also
fundamentally demand my right to mine.
That, my friends, is proper fundamentalism.
Posted at 11:26 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
[Reload all]
[E-mail]
Heh. Tell Us What You Really Think.
The gloves are really beginning to come off at the fringes of The
Punditry. Witness, children, Doug
Thompson over at Capital Hill Blue:
Bush, in my opinion, is criminally insane, a pill-popping dry drunk
whose erratic behavior and reckless actions threaten world peace and
the future of this nation far more than any Islam-spouting religious
fanatic. He is an enemy of the state, a mood-swinging despot whose
threatens the very freedoms that form the foundation for this
country. He has created a police state where basic American freedoms
have vanished under an politically-exaggerated threat to national
scrutiny, milked the human tragedy of 9/11 for his personal agenda and
ripped the Constitution to shreds through the USA Patriot Act, a
rights-robbing piece of legislation put together by his former
attorney general, the bible-thumping John Ashcroft, an inept former
Senator who couldnt even win an election against a dead man.
Nicely put. Shouldn't be long now until the mainstream begins to
start asking the right questions and expressing the appropriate
concern for our nation.
Posted at 11:14 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
[Reload all]
[E-mail]
