SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Thom Hartmann / “School & Religious Freedom Dying in Louisiana”

MILITARY EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN PROSELYTIZATION: U.S. Military being used as Government-Paid Missionaries


h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t:  PZ Myers

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Louisiana Lunacy: Tens of Millions to be Spent on Faith-based Education

SCHOOLS run along faith guidelines have hit the jackpot big time following Louisiana’s decision to siphon tens of millions of tax dollars out public schools and into religious institutions where only creationism will be taught.

In what is described here as “the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education”, the state will pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

Said Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who muscled the plan through the legislature this spring over fierce objections from Democrats and teachers unions:

“We are changing the way we deliver education. We are letting [some of the most notoriously uneducated] parents [in the country] decide what’s best for their children, not government.”

Jindal is a [converted] devout Catholic, and this is what he believes:

“As Christians, we’re secure in the knowledge that in the Book of Life, our God wins. He gets off that cross. He beats Satan. We’re not called to be despondent. We are called to be salt and light and to be planting the seeds of the gospel.”

Read more . . .

h/t: The Atheism News Magazine

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Zinnia Jones / “Governor Bryant, There Is No “Non-Denominational” School Prayer”


“Without school-sponsored prayer, students are still free to pray on their own while in school. But where school prayer is mandated, students from all walks of life have often been required to acknowledge an “Almighty God” or “Heavenly Father”, whether through regulation or just social pressure. Such an arrangement is clearly antithetical to genuine religious freedom in schools.”

Video transcript: http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones/2012/06/governor-bryant-there-is-no-n…

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: Joseph Stiglitz / “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future”

ECONOMIC AUSTERITY: Joseph Stiglitz / “On Occupy and Why U.S.-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery”

QUOTE: Eric Hoffer, On Intellectual Sterility

Eric Hoffer a.k.a. “Longshoreman Philosopher” (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983)
American Social Writer, Author, Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength (he sees no obstacles), but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony. The fanatic is also mentally cocky, and hence barren of new beginnings. At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula – his formula. His is thus without the fruitful intervals of groping [uncertainty], when the mind is as it were in solution – ready for all manner of new reactions, new combinations and new beginnings. (Between the Devil and the Dragon. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982, p. 287)