On the Contrary

They say ignorance is bliss and our most shinning example of this adage is the guy who is presently occupying the oval office.  In an interview with his sister published on Friday he said:

“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process…..I came to Washington with a set of values and I’m leaving with the same set of values.”  Then he said, “I surrounded myself with good people.  I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.”

Let’s just start with the first part.  Said another way it could have been, “I came to Washington with a fixed set of ideas and I didn’t let reality or objective facts sway my beliefs.  With events swirling around me and the world in constant changing flux, I never once considered changing my approach to changing circumstances.  Flexibility is a dirty word”  The man is a marvel of ignorance.  But let’s not forget he enforced his ignorance on the rest of us by trying to stifle scientific findings and changing scientific recommendations. This was the administration whose ideology was more important than fact.  When fact was counter to their beliefs, they tried destroy the facts.  That is one way to hang on to your values.  Wasn’t it the Catholic Church back in the 16th and 17th century who stifled scientific thought (Copernicus and Galilio)?  We have come a long way.

Then maybe we ought to examine the values he hung on to during his reign of terror.  Would that be the torture he allowed?  The rendition?  Or could it be the waiving of our basic right of habeas corpus?  Could that be the signing statements that tried to destroy the balance of powers between the three branches of government?  Were those values the ones that allowed him to misrepresent the facts about the Iraq war and then change the reason for the war three times (WMD, freeing the Iraqi people, establishing a beach head of democracy in the Middle East)? Was that the straight talker who promised to fire the one who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and then when discovered said, oh never mind?  Would that be the values that allowed him to pardon Scooter Libby but ignored the unfair sentencing of thousands on non-violent drug offenders? Or would that be the values that allowed him to provide aids treatment to millions at the same time he denies women access to birth control information?  It’s okay if they get it, then we will give them drugs.  I wonder how many people have been abuse or died because of his ignorance.

Then there are those good, smart, capable people he surrounded himself with.  Would that be Karl Rove, Dick Chenney, or Scooter Libby?  How about Rummy? Would that be Ms. Rice and her mushroom cloud? Would that be the Attorney General Gonzo and the political lackeys that politicized the Justice Department?  Would that be all the Neocons? Let us never forget Brownie.  Or would that be all the wonderful people who are at this very moment trying to gut the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Environmental Protection laws (as you read this he is expanding and reducing the limits on surface mining of coal and dumping the wastes into the watershed), removing regulations on businesses that protect workers, and secund his ideologues in civil service jobs?

If results are important, what advise did these people give him that allowed him to make the tough decisions that have improved our country?  Is he oblivious that we are a shell of a country overseas?  The last election was a referendum on all the good things they did.  The economy is in shambles, and by the way, No Child Left Behind is a joke of testing and lack of funding, not learning critical thinking skills that he wouldn’t know if it ran over him.  The terrorist threat is worse, not better, and we are bogged down in two wars we can’t win and have to find a way out of.  He if makes any more great decisions before he leaves office, it could be the beginning of the great depression.

But last but not least President Moron informs us that, “I would advise politicians, however to be careful about faith in the public arena.  In other words people should not be judgmental people based upon their faith.”  Good lord, do you think he knows our Constitution is based upon that principle?  It is like some great insight he has had instead of learning that in 10th grade Civics class.  Can he look around the world and see that almost every major threat in the world is between warring religious parties?  Yet the moron used his religion to justify stifling stem cell research to help people, outlawing providing birth control information, not funding any world birth control efforts other than abstinence, and trying to interfere in peoples private decisions about end of life decisions.  In fact that is exactly what he did, use his religion to judge what we can and can not do.

He arrived in ignorant bliss, the ignorant put and kept him in office, and based upon his statement he leaves in ignorant bliss.  It’s true; ignorance is bliss because neither party, Bush or the people who put him in office, are willing to own up to the damage they have done.  But for many of us, his ignorance could cost us our retirement and our well being.  For others it has cost them their lives.  Would he just leave and close the door behind him on the way out.

I always have this debate with myself on religion.  Being a confirmed non-believer, I look at many of the problems in our little world that revolve around religious belief and wish it would just all go away.  But on the other hand I also know the sometimes belief is what gets people through impossible situations and helps them overcome what seems like insurmountable odds.  Doesn’t make it true, but does make it useful.  So is there a balance?  Only if the religious can live by and keep their beliefs to themselves.  Just as an aside, I prefer to look at the philosophy of a religion to judge its efficacy and worth, not in its “revealed word” or belief in some personal god guide.  Where religion gets to be a real problem is when the “revealed word” of one religion tries to mandate that revealed word on the rest of us through political action and the power of government.  We have seen three cases of this recently and they speak volumes about keeping religion out of politics.

The New York Times reported last week in “Mormons Tip Scale on Ban on Gay Marriage” that the Mormon Church joined the battle against gay marriage with major fund raising and door to door campaigning:

“First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought religious freedom meant you could believe what you want, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone, and you didn’t use your religion as a political force to use government to jam your beliefs down the throats of others.  But in this case, that is exactly what they did. Of course the good Mormon Church has a history here as they were a major force in defeating the equal rights amendment back in the 70s.

Another ugly face of religion to raise its ugly head was a Catholic priest in North Carolina who refused communion for Obama supporters.  As reported by MSNBC:

“A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.””

Now once again, it may just be me, but is this not using the church as a political lever to control you political choice?  Now in both of these examples, the religious see no problem since they are just expressing their religious beliefs, right?  But the reality is they are not just expressing them, but they are trying to force them on the rest of us by the use of the voting box and religious pressure to get government to implement their religious agenda.  This to me is quite all right as long as we now recognize these institutions as political institutions and yank their tax-exempt status.  And that is why you are seeing the picketing of the Moron churches in California and Utah.  They are now fair game as political organizations that have a political agenda to force their beliefs on the rest of us just like any other political action group.

Finally, there is the case before the Supreme court (from Utah) about who can erect religious dogma monuments in a public place.  In a public park there is a monument to the Ten Commandments.  So a fruit loop group wants their own statue that reflects their rather out there views.  Of course the local government rejected them resulting in a free speech suit.  The problem is if you allow one, which one.  When you choose, government is in the business of promoting a certain religion. USA Today.  From my point of view fruit loop is in the eye of the beholder and as a government you either allow all, or you allow none.

If you think life begins at conception, don’t get an abortion, don’t use any advancement of science as a result of stem cell research, and don’t ever utilize artificial insemination to start a family, but don’t prevent others who don’t share your belief from sharing in these practices.  If you don’t approve of gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person, but don’t prevent others from finding a little happiness in their lives. If you want to promote religion or formal prayers in pubic schools, consider whose religion, whose prayer.   How hard is that?  Ah, but they have the only “revealed word” and they must enforce it on the rest of us.  Anybody ever wonder why there are so many different versions of the “revealed word”?

And that is when religion gets very dangerous.  We now have people in the political process who believe compromise is sin and their way is the only way.  Sounds pretty much like Republicans, except worse.