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Today's
Stories
April 3 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
April 3 / 5, 2004
Newdow vs. the Pledge
of Allegiance
On
Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Use of God
By GARY LEUPP
The legitimate powers of government extend
to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me
no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no
god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson, 1782
Question with boldness even the existence
of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage
of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Because religious belief, or non-belief,
is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of
religion affects every individual. State churches that use government
power to support themselves and force their views on persons
of other faiths undermine all our civil rights Erecting the "wall
of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely
essential in a free society.
Thomas Jefferson, 1808
The whole history of [the Gospels] is
so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute
enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their
text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that
we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what
parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal
evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary
man [Jesus]; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior
minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out
diamonds from dunghills.
Thomas Jefferson (to John Adams, 1814)
De-demonizing Atheism
The word itself has a foul sound: "atheist."
It did in ancient Rome, when it referred not to what we today
understand as atheists, but to persons who declined to publicly
worship the Roman deities. Odd though it may seem, Christians
were condemned for their "atheism." Many contemporary
atheists will avoid the word, fearing hostility and misunderstanding,
preferring the less provocative "agnostic." Nevertheless
atheists are all around us: people who are quite convinced that
things in general don't exist because some One, for
some reason, as an act of will, made them---but because
processes unknowable to our minds, preceding the existence of
consciousness in general, caused them to happen.
The atheistic premise is simply, and
maybe best, articulated by Friedrich Engels: "It is impossible
to conceive of thought without matter that thinks."
Some people, having the option of thinking a primal Mind created
everything, or else that minds, thoughts, neurological activity,
"spirit" etc. postdate the billions-old existence
of much else, choose the latter option. Not necessarily because
they want to, out of some willful anti-God inclination,
but because they sincerely just can't buy, not only a specific
religious tradition, but the God-assumption generally. Their
logic causes them to agree with Ludwig Feuerbach's contention
that humanity made God, not vice versa. Atheists are not bad
people. They are just people who think, and their thought takes
them to the sober conclusion that no Creator exists, and that
conclusion tends to lead to the belief that when you die, and
your brain activity ceases, you as a personality are gone forever.
Dr. Newdow's Suit
One such thinking person, a physician as it happens, is suing
the federal government for obliging his nine year old daughter
to recite, in school, the statement that the U.S. republic is
"under God." He asks why, if he seeks to share his
worldview with his child (as most parents want to share their
beliefs with their kids), the state should intervene to promote
a contrary view. He asks why, if the constitution mandates a
separation of church and state, his daughter's public school
schedule every morning should include a verbal pledge indicating
that she believes that she, and her country (indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all), is "under God."
This is a very reasonable question to
ask, it seems to me, precisely comparable to the question a devout
Christian, Jew or Muslim might ask if his or her child were asked
to daily recite, "one nation, without gods, indivisible"
Why should schoolchildren have to pledge any opinion on
this issue? The pledge is by definition "a promise or agreement"
(Webster's), and when you have states requiring, by law, that
kids stand hands-to-chest and publicly promise something---anything
at all--- "under God," you're asking them to either
believe that thought preceded matter that thinks (thereby
attempting to shape and skew their whole thought process) or
to under duress pretend belief (to the advantage of those
who really do believe this, and want their kids surrounded
by other kids, in tax-payer funded institutions, who will dutifully
intone the God-pledge and so shield their own innocents from
the troubling existence of doubt and diversity).
This is unreasonable.
But surely the Supreme Court will rule
against Dr. Michael A. Newdow's case, filed on behalf of his
child. It will say that the inclusion of "under God"
in a statement, the recitation of which many states require,
does not conflict with the constitutional principle of
separation of church and state. Justice Stephen G. Breyer has
already suggested that "God" is so inclusive a concept
that it should be inoffensive to atheists like Newdow. The doctor
responded reasonably, "I don't believe I can include 'under
God' to mean no God, which is exactly what I think." I'm
not sure whether Breyer is being profound (drawing upon the Upanishads
and the notion that God neither exists nor doesn't exist, existence
itself being a merely human concept); or absolutely stupid,
(which Supreme Court justices can by law be); or just arrogantly
dismissive of Dr. Newdrow's argument.
Clearly the function of the God reference---not
part of the original pledge but inserted during the 1950s (when
schoolchildren were taught that the Free World faced Godless
Communism)--- is designed to inculcate belief that the cosmos
has a Creator that the Republic acknowledges and reveres, and
in so doing attaches itself to that which is ultimately powerful,
rational, holy and good. Those who promote the pledge should
honestly state this point in making their case. The neocons'
ideological mentor, atheist Leo Strauss, stressed that the masses
should be imbued with religion, so that they might be better
controlled. If they see in the actions of the state the unfolding
of the will of the Creator, they will be far more inclined to
support those actions than if they see them as the naked power-plays
of mere humans---mere millionaires and billionaires--- unimpeded
by the simple commendable moral sense of the humbly devout, but
eminently able to politically exploit it. (Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
know this very well, and have encouraged President Bush to depict
their plans for a Middle East empire as a crusade to smite evildoers
and do God's will.)
So the Supreme Court will find no merit
in the atheist's case, will ridicule it as numerous politicians
(from Bush to Tom Daschle) have, and will deny that anyone's
freedoms are diminished by the coerced public declaration, dutifully
intoned by schoolchildren, of the thesis that in the sky over
the U.S. there hovers God, who, even if their parents say nothing
about capital-H Him at home, is someone who definitely is,
and is important to their teacher (an object of respect) and
to their schoolmates. Why, the justices will ask in legalese,
should anyone at all, holding any belief system, have a problem
with this or see it as a violation of their constitutional rights?
The Religious Views
of the Founding Fathers
Religious fundamentalists incessantly
repeat that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic were
God-fearing Christians. This is simply untrue. They key figures
were men of the Enlightenment, religious skeptics, generally
persuaded that there was a logical Mind behind the marvelous
machine which was the universe, but contemptuous of Biblical
literalism. George Washington said little about religion (nothing
about Jesus), rarely attended church (when he did, he indifferently
visited Quaker, German Reformed and Catholic services) and was
willing to hire on his estate "Mohometans, Jews or Christians
of any Sect, orAtheists." Thomas Paine specifically rejected
Christianity as a religion abounding "in invented and torturing
articles that shock our reason or offend our humanity" John
Adams distanced himself from Christianity, asking "when
or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would
tolerate a free inquiry?" James Madison blamed the religion
for "superstition, bigotry and persecution." So did
Benjamin Franklin. It would be highly inaccurate to term these
men "Christians."
The finest mind among the Founding Fathers,
Thomas Jefferson, certainly did not believe that the God of the
Old Testament---alternately loving, angry, punitive, regretful
of his actions, reconciliatory---really existed out there in
the cosmos, or that that God consisted of three parts, or that
one part (the Son) had to be brutally crucified in Jerusalem
seventeen centuries before his time in order to allow humans
otherwise consigned, by that God's decision, to fry forever,
to instead live forever in Paradise if they embraced some suitable
version of Christianity. Jefferson indeed dismissed this worldview
as nonsensical. He was a keen student of the gospels, found much
value in the words attributed to Jesus, and called himself a
"Christian" only in that he held (as he wrote in a
letter in 1820) "the precepts of Jesusto be the most pure,
benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man."
Diderot and the Christian
Lady
Among the thinkers who influenced Jefferson
(and others among the Founding Fathers) was the French philosophe
Denis Diderot (1713-84). In 1814 Jefferson wrote that Diderot,
whom he described as an "Atheist," was "among
the most virtuous of men," whose virtue "must have
had some other foundation than the love of God." (So
Jefferson expresses an opinion on that fundamental question:
"Can people be good if they don't believe in God?")
Diderot was among the French thinkers, during what's called the
"Enlightenment" prior to the Revolution of 1789, who
pushed against the limits of the Old Regime's censors in advancing
human thought at the expense of irrational religious dogma. What
the philosophes achieved intellectually in the eighteenth
century remains the bane of our twenty-first century Back-to-the-Bible
neanderthals who wish the Enlightenment had never happened. Diderot
authored much of the Encyclopédie, or Encyclopedia,
which epitomized contemporary European rationalism and couldn't
help but antagonize the Church. While doing so, Diderot penned
a little gem, published under a pseudonym in 1777, entitled "Entretien
avec la Maréchale de -----" that has been translated
by Lester G. Cocker into English as "Conversation with a
Christian Lady." It is a philosophical dialogue involving
a fictitious Monsieur Thomas Crudeli and an aristocratic lady,
who like many high-born Frenchwomen of the time was well-educated
and enjoyed lively intellectual reparté in her
salon.
The philosopher Crudeli happens by, intending to meet the lady's
husband, who is out. But she "at her toilette" courteously
entertains his visit. She knows his reputation, and remarks that
he's a man who doesn't believe in anything. When he confirms
this, she asks curiously: "Yet your moral principles are
the same as those of believer?" and he replies that they
are. "You don't steal? You don't kill people? You don't
rob them?" she presses him. No, he replies, so she asks
him: "Then what do you gain by not being a believer?"
Crudeli (Diderot) gently disabuses the
noble lady of her expectation that nonbelief stems from a desire
to engage in wanton crime. He does not aggressively promote
atheism, but merely defends his intellectual position, noting
in passing that much violence has occurred in the name of religion.
But, the increasingly consternated maréchale asks
him, "if you destroy religion, what will you put in its
place?" He offers no alternative, just noting "there
would at least be one terrible prejudice less in the world."
She points out the comfort people derive from the belief in an
afterlife. He replies: "I myself do not entertain such a
hope. But I do not wish to deny it to others."
She asks, what if he's wrong---and he
dies and faces a Creator who will judge him? He responds with
an allegory suggesting in essence that if, by chance, there is
an ultimate intelligence that created the universe, it will not
consign to eternal hellfire decent rational people unable, due
to their own honest reasoning processes, to recognize itself.
She asks him if, if called "before the magistrates"
(atheism still a crime in France at this time) he would "tell
them the truth?" He says no, he would aver religiosity so
as to "spare those magistrates the responsibility for an
appalling crime" (that is to say, his own execution).
"You coward!" she chides. "And if you were at
the point of death, would you submit to receiving the last rites
of the church?" "Most conscientiously," says the
atheist. (It is one thing for the religious believer to endure
martyrdom confident of a heavenly reward, another for a nonbeliever
to nod to religious sentiment, to avoid conflict or make others
happy or avoid a pointless death.) "You wicked hypocrite!"
She replies.
Maybe she has a point. Maybe people should
stand by their beliefs, whatever the consequences. Dr. Newdow
(whose public profession of unbelief is fortunately legal
in this country, although I imagine he gets a lot of hate-mail)
is not a hypocrite. He is not simply averring his atheism, but,
two and a half centuries after Diderot, in the country of the
religious skeptic Thomas Jefferson, he's demanding that his daughter
not be forced, by the state, to be a hypocrite. Unfortunately,
I fear, contra Jefferson, the Supreme Court will reinforce
the bridges so far built between church and state, forcing through
its theological view and undermining civil rights. The Founding
Fathers would not be pleased. (But being dead, it's likely they
aren't following this story.)
Under God, the "War on Terror"
A common criticism of Islamic societies,
widely repeated lately, is that they never experienced an Enlightenment---a
movement that could have weakened the hold of religious fundamentalism
over the minds of Arabs and other Muslims. The charge is somewhat
deceptive. The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century
was largely a correction of the intellectual stagnation bred
though centuries of institutionalized Christian dogmatism. The
kind of dogmatism that obliged Galileo to back off, under threat
of torture, from his heart-felt conviction that the earth (despite
Biblical references to its immobility) revolves around the sun,
and not vice versa, in 1633. The Muslim world in contrast allowed
for free scientific inquiry, and it is largely due to contact
with that world that science came to revive in Europe during
the Renaissance. Thus so many of our words pertaining to mathematics
and astronomy---zero, cipher, nadir, zenith, algebra---come from
Arabic. The Muslim world didn't have a Dark Age from which it
needed to emerge.
The widespread illiteracy, backwardness
and religious fundamentalism in the present Muslim world results
not from specifically Islamic traits, or a benighted past, or
the content of the Qur'an and hadith, but power
relations in recent history. Poverty, corruption, alliances between
local tyrants and foreign patrons who have cleverly used Islamic
religious passion when it served their purposes. Once upon a
time, U.S. administrations (Carter and Reagan) happily built
an anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan drawing on Muslim fundamentalists
from all over the world and specifically urged them to see their
struggle as a jihad. Few issues were more crucial to these
jihadis than the rejection of male-female equality and
the maintenance of Muslim clerics' leadership in society. If
there was some prospect for "enlightened" policies
in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the U.S. deliberately sabotaged
them, delighting instead in the fact that some of the most backward
forces on the planet shared its determination to topple secular
Soviet-style rule and merge their religious agenda with America's
Cold War politics.
But one shouldn't stereotype people from
"Muslim countries" as religious fanatics. I've met
lots of Muslims who believe in a Supreme Being but have little
interest in or use for Islamic theology, and others who culturally
identify with Islam but don't really embrace religion at all.
And in the history of Islam, one finds the occasional expression
of deep religious doubt and dissent:
Alike for those who for TO-DAY
prepare,
And those that after a TO-MORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! Your Reward is neither Here nor There!"
So wrote the Persian scientist Omar Khayyam
around 1100, this translation provided by the nineteenth-century
British Christian Edward Fitzgerald. Khayyam's Rubaiyat abounds
with religious skepticism.
The Islamic world has had its skeptics,
its Diderots, and has potential to generate more---as does the
U.S.A., threatened as it is by Christian fundamentalists who
want to blur distinctions between church and state, force worship
into our schools, draw on public money to proselytize, bring
religion into public health policy, institutionalize homophobia
on religious grounds, and make kids publicly swear that they're
"under God"---whether or not God's here or there, whether
or not there's ever a heavenly reward. We have lots of people,
who like the third U.S. president, demand we "question with
boldness even the existence of a god" and insist that the
preaching of such existence falls outside "the legitimate
powers of government." But the forty-third U.S. president,
like the fundamentalists of the Taliban, thinks government should
promote religious belief.
"The American people, when we pledge
our allegiance to the flag, feel renewed respect and love for
all it represents," said George W. Bush in July 2002, after
Dr. Newdow won a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
striking down the "God" reference in the Pledge. "And
no authority of government can ever prevent an American from
pledging allegiance to this one nation, under God." (As
though "government" was trying to "prevent"
rather than promote religion.) This was not long after Bush
had used that Pledge (Oct. 12, 2001) to try to get the nation's
schoolchildren behind his "War on Terrorism," and behind
his yet unannounced plans to use 9-11 to attack Iraq.
Stand there with me, kids, and pledge
obedience to whatever I, your President, decide to do to smite all this scary evil out there threatening
our Homeland. Doesn't it feel good to all be together, all pledging,
all under God?
Bush no doubt rests assured that the
justices who upheld his election will uphold the "under
God" language as well, and that the Pledge in which it occurs
will remain serviceable as his war, rooted in and exploiting
both mundane and religious delusions, spreads liberty and justice
to all, everywhere under God that U.S. troops can occupy.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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