Category Archives: Liberalism

The Christmas War on Atheism: What’s the Religious Right Whining About When It’s Really Non-Believers Who Are Under Attack?

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Right-wing Christians are waging a war on non-believers’ right not to have religion shoved down their throats. . .

The “war on Christmas” victim narrative usually tries to obscure what’s really at stake: the promotion of Christianity at the expense of other faiths and non-belief. . .

Essentially, the Christian Right wants the government to back its religion. . .

If we wanted to borrow from the Christian Right’s hyperbolic framing, a “war on Atheists” or “war on Secularism” would be a more appropriate title for the holiday season, and all year-round.

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Are the .01% Capitalists?

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The super-rich might not be so outraged by accusations that they haven’t earned their money fairly if they didn’t know it was true. . .

Many of today’s super-rich, particularly in the financial sector, have achieved their wealth in ways that are fundamentally anti-capitalist. As a consequence, people are justifiably wondering whether we have an economy that operates on the principles of capitalism or of oligarchy. . .

Are the rich and successful the creators of wealth and jobs for all of us, or are they the predators and moochers (Ayn Rand’s term in Atlas Shrugged), the reverse Robin Hoods who succeed by finding ways to redistribute wealth upwards?

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US 2012: Tougher laws to curb voter fraud (VIDEO)

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Millions of Americans may not be able to vote in the 2012 elections because some states are introducing tough new laws which they say are necessary to curb voter fraud.

These sweeping new laws could disenfranchise millions of voters in 2012 – and it is students, minorities, immigrants and ex-convicts who are disproportionately affected.

A total of 14 states, the majority of which are Republican-controlled, have passed such legislation. The most controversial measure is the new requirement for voters to have a government-issued photo identity document (ID). Others include restrictions to early voting and imposing barriers to registration.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 25 per cent of African Americans and 16 per cent of Latinos do not have a photo ID.

Hundreds of thousands of students may also be denied the right to vote. In the state of Wisonsin, student IDs are accepted if they include current address, birth date, a signature and have a two-year expiration date. But no college in the state currently meets those requirements.

Former convicts are denied the right to vote in some states. In Florida alone, nearly a 100,000 of those who have served time are disenfranchised.

So, what is behind the effort to change voting requirements? Are voting restrictions justified, or are they undemocratic?

Inside Story US 2012, discusses with guests: Hilary Shelton, the director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the oldest civil rights organisation in the US; Simon Rosenberg, the president of New Democrat Network, a progressive think tank based in Washington DC; and Cherylyn Harley LeBon, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee who had also worked in the Bush administration.

Watch video here . . . 

Robert Reich: The Great Republican Crackup: How Angry, White, Southern Men Took Over the GOP and Made Our Government Into a War Zone

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. . . today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

. . . This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans – only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.

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The Christianity Meme: A Viral Infection of the Mind

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In A Nutshell…

The mind virus of religious belief preys on fear, warps instinctive attributes and skews morality. It contradicts responsible behavior, reason and compassion. It retards free will and causes a lack of ability to differentiate between rational and irrational choices. It allows the religionist to exist in a perfectly rational way in many other aspects of their existence in society while the infected area of the mind is stuck in a cyclical delusion. . .

Conversion Immersion…

Just as a physical virus does, Fundamental Christianity protects itself by sequestering the infected host against outside attack. Thus, the “world” is discredited. Any evidence that is contrary to doctrine is willfully ignored and taught as persecution. In the real world, this stunting of intelligence causes a decline in mental health due to the allowance of instruction only through approved church doctrine. . .

Reason Is The Enemy…

The viral use of fear is particularly effective on believers who were already ignorant and superstitious prior to their conversion, but the virus of fundamental religion has propagated and adapted  well only until very recently. . . The virus of fundamental Christianity is getting most of the press and although it is often marketed as the true religion of love and tolerance, inwardly it is a destructive force that causes division, promotes willful ignorance and retards intellectual growth. . . 

An Atheist’s “Great Hope”

The rise of atheism on planet Earth has already caused fundamental religious belief problems maintaining itself in our post-modern world.  Religious apologetics have stagnated.  Like a virus that is running toward the end of its course, the meme of fundamentalism is losing its ability to replicate.

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The decline of labour unions in the US (VIDEO)

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Labour unions are under fire across the US, but do they have enough vitality to fight back?

For decades, labour unions in the US have been on the decline. While they are widely credited with boosting safety standards and worker pay, many have received blame for wanting too much in times of a struggling economy.

Unemployment is at nine per cent and people are clamouring for jobs, unionised or not. And their greatest political ally, the Democratic party, has taken its support for granted, weakening its pull on the strings of power in Washington, DC.

A new battle has emerged in 2011 as Republican governors have taken on public sector unions, in some cases stripping them of rights that have been in place for 50 years. It is part of a trend that is happening in key swing states and may weaken democratic voting strength in next year’s presidential election.

But organised labour has fought back hard. In Wisconsin, unions occupied the state capitol as 100,000 protesters took to the streets. In Ohio, voters overturned a law that was intended to greatly reduce the right that unions have in that state to bargain collectively.

Now as Occupy Wall Street galvanises Americans to take action against financial institutions and big corporations, labour unions have a new ally. But can organised labour harness the anger that everyday Americans are emitting or will this opportunity pass it by? Do labour unions still have the strength to organise or has their power waned to the point that they will no longer be a major player in American politics?

Watch video here . . .

What Shall We Tell The Children?

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. . . Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.

In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense. And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.

That’s the negative side of what I want to say. But there will be a positive side as well. If children have a right to be protected from false ideas, they have too a right to be succoured by the truth. And we as a society have a duty to provide it. Therefore we should feel as much obliged to pass on to our children the best scientific and philosophical understanding of the natural world—to teach, for example, the truths of evolution and cosmology, or the methods of rational analysis—as we already feel obliged to feed and shelter them.

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New Statesman Preview: “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind” by Richard Dawkins

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In “The tyranny of the discontinuous mind”, Dawkins wonders why we cling to absolutes of yes and no, black and white, rich and poor; pretending not to see the millions of grey areas in life. These absolutes, he argues, distort reality:

Dawkins goes on to consider a variety of these absolutes — where a blindness to intermediates may constrict or condemn us — beginning with the arguments proposed by anti-abortionists:

There are those who cannot distinguish a 16-cell embryo from a baby. They call abortion murder and feel righteously justified in committing real murder against a doctor – a thinking, feeling, sentient adult, with a loving family to mourn him . . .

It is amusing to tease such absolutists by confronting them with a pair of identical twins (they split after fertilisation, of course) and asking which twin got the soul, which twin is the non-person, the zombie. A puerile taunt? Maybe. But it hits home because the belief that it destroys is puerile, and ignorant.

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Posted by New Statesman – 19 December 2011 17:47