Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Family values

The 'American Family Association', which seems to me to be more vicious hate group than anything else, isn't happy with the freedoms America was created to establish. They've set up a website that gives bigots, racists, and people who are keen on Jesus the chance to turn their bloated and unfounded feelings of oppression into public policy. One of their recent forays into Jesus-sanctioned fascism is their support of the 'Religious Liberties Restoration Act' (wtf?), an attempt to bypass the normal corruption found in the US legal system by placing issues like the posting of the 'ten commandments' in our courthouses and the 'one nation under god' line in the pledge of allegiance (again, wtf?) outside of the reach of the judicial system:

Finally, a U.S. Senator has given Americans a method to restore our religious liberties. He has introduced a bill, S.1558, "Religious Liberties Restoration Act," which does exactly that.

S. 1558 is not a constitutional amendment, but a legislative statute which would remove from federal court review the displaying of the Ten Commandments, the national motto and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Using this approach, a constitutional amendment would not be needed. Sen. Allard's bill would become law by a simple majority vote in both houses of Congress and the signature of the President. No liberal federal judge would have any authority to rule on this law!

Note that they seem to find a lot of joy in the fact that the rights of the people can be so effortlessly curtailed.

The part of my brain that is currently screaming and wanting to get the fuck out of this country (off the whole fucking planet, preferably) wonders how people can talk about the 'restoration of liberties' in the same breath in which they talk of taking away the few freedoms people have to make their own decisions about their spirituality. The more jaded part of me knows that the answer is in the question: in order for people to maintain such serious delusions about their own innocence, they must continually assert that their situation is the exact opposite of what it really is. The ability of these people to even hallucinate that they are victims of religious oppression, when they spend so much energy and cultivate so much hatred in their quest to oppress others, is evidence enough of their inability to think at all.

In the early part of the last century, it was predicted that by the year 2000 automation would have created a brave new world where each person, at last freed from the drudgery of work, would find the time to create and grow, to bring about a new renaissance. To a large extent, that luxury economy is here... for all the talk of stalled economies the US, we are still an extraordinarily material culture, where basic 'needs' have been redefined to include cars and televisions and digital cameras and $100 tennis shoes. (If this isn't evident to you, you need to travel outside the US for awhile.) But instead of finding time to create, we have merely found the time to hate.

Every little glimpse of I get into the minds of the people in this world fills me with more dread. Delusion, hatred, ignorance, misery, self righteousness, madness... and that's just the people who think they are doing good. How did it come to this?