Atheists deserve better treatment

Posted for A. Charles Catania by Gary Berg-Cross
  
WASH Board member Charles Catania published  a letter in the October 5 edition of the Washington Post.

You can read Dana Millbank's orignal posting at A case of nonbelief.
It included arguments such as:

..in practice, atheists aren’t about to become capable of breaching the “fence of piety” that makes religious expression a virtue for American politicians. This is because the very notion of uniting nonbelievers behind a common cause is pretty much an oxymoron. Those who identify themselves as atheists and agnostics tend not to be the type to join affinity groups. That’s why there isn’t an International Brotherhood of Individualists. “Although it’s a movement, it’s not so much monolithic in terms of unanimity on a lot of issues,” Niose allowed. 

 Below is Charles response.


'Dana Milbank laced his Oct. 2 column, “No suspension of disbelief,” with snide asides:

“They don’t have a prayer”; “Good heavens”; “God willing.” Imagine the reaction if Jesus had been invoked in mocking Jewish or Muslim views, or if the Buddha had been invoked in lampooning Christian ones.

To take the conviction of atheists seriously, one has only to listen to the former Catholic student who has been disowned by her family after confessing to a lapse in belief, or to the former Muslim who worries that it might be dangerous even to admit that he can no longer follow Islamic precepts, or to the Jew grappling with the oxymoron of Jewish atheism, or to the African American who finds that he is now ostracized by his Baptist friends and neighbors for expressing doubts about God.

Probe further, and you will discover their shared deep moral and ethical convictions, including one that says that a country built upon the separation of church and state should have their backs, too. They are as entitled to their disbeliefs as others are to their beliefs, and it is unseemly to make fun of their views.'

Charles wasn't the only response online a person took unbrig with Dana throw away line -
"But that obvious fact won’t stop them from exercising their God-given right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. "Reader and commentator ron64740 corrected the record with this:
The right to petition the government is is not a "God-given right" -- it's was granted under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a document written by MEN.

If it were a "God-given" right, it would cover ALL humanity. Go tell the people of North Korea and Syria that they have the "God-given" right to petition their governments -- see how that goes over.

Teaching Low Information Citizens to Fish for Knowledge & Understanding

By Gary Berg-Cross

The recent presidential debate has been called wonky with stats and perhaps reflects the focused attention being paid to win over undecided/ unaffiliated voter. That’s the approximately 5 percent of the populace who say they haven’t decide who they will vote for president.  They may well decide the race and are a popular topic of conversation. Saturday Night Live spoofed them as no-nothings and low information, possibly slow thinking folks asked numbing questions such as: “When is the election? What are the names of the two people running? “Who is the president right now? Is he or she running?” Can women vote?”

But as  Ezra Klein pointed out in Washington Post blog “uninformed” need not mean “dumb.” We are all uninformed about some things, say the Redskins roster, when the World Series starts or why the banks failed in 2008. The culprit is human attention. At least that is the what political scientist Lynn Vavreck (UCLA) explains it:

“They are lower on political information, for sure. That’s a function of being not that interested and not paying attention. It’s not that they can’t comprehend the information, or that they’re at a balancing point and can’t decide. They’re just not dialed in. They’re not getting all the information you or I are getting.”

OK.  Understandable.  After all it’s a new TV season and important things compete for our time. So maybe it is more of a difference of values controlling what grabs our limited attention than intelligence. According to Vavreck’s polling, only 35 percent of undecided voters could identify Boehner’s job as “congressman” and maybe an equal number can identify John Wall as a basketball player.  Same thing I suppose.Freethinkers often wonder why some religiously devote seem to "know" so little about what their sacred books say, the contradictions therein and the reasonable implications of some of their precepts

It’s hard to remember details like the Senate GOP plan to help the economy. It included such general topics as:

1. Cut “job-killing regulations”
2. Add a balance the Budget Amendment to the Constitution;
3. Line Item Veto for the President.
4. Reduce corporate taxes;
5. Reduce the top tax rate to 25%;
6. Repeal Obamacare.

Who has time to fact check the details and implications?

Sure paid ads on some favorite TV shows may pump some info into the empty balloon knowledge spaces of low info voters (LIVs). This generates a temporary invest in and issue and with the election looming LIVs can soak up all they need to know from well funded political ads.

A third of people in Vavreck’s polling did not feel they “knew enough” to give President Obama a job rating.  That may be because the info isn’t current, or being argued by opponents or maybe even because one needs to think things through. It could be a mix of good and bad reasons. It does take effort to process information even when we devote attention to it.  Yes and perhaps a bit is generated by an adversarial system that recognizes human limitations and intends to confuse.  Better to have results determined by one’s base.

But all of this just doesn’t seem right for a Jeffersonian Democracy.  Maybe we need some directed civics to make all citizens interested participants. Ads are like giving a person a fish.  Free fishy ads at election time.  But if we teach citizens how to fish for information themselves they  is a lifetime of a healthier diet.

Image Credits:

Taxes 101 for the Low Information Voters: http://manwiththemuckrake.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/taxes-101-for-the-low-information-voters/
Undecided voters: http://www.facebook.com/NPR
Low Info Voter: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002967593
Teach a child to fish; http://www.eclipse-magazine.it/cultura/le-interviste-di-eclipse/intervsta-a-erica-bertollotto-manager-di-teach-a-man-to-fish.html

Mohammed Iqbal

by Edd Doerr

Mohanned Iqbal (1877-1938), educated in Pakistan, Britain and Germany, was a  Pakistani/Indian philosopher, poet,  politician, and one of the founders of modern Pakistan, though in the l930s he envisioned it only as a self-governing part of the British Empire. One of his poems, "Dialogue between God and Man", struck me as being rather humanistic, so I have recast its form  just slightly as a combination Japanese tanka and haiku (57577, 575).

You created night,
But we created the lamp.
You created clay,
But we created wine cups.
You created the deserts,
Mountains and wastelands.
We made then into orchards,
Gardens, flower beds.

Romney and School Vouchers

by Edd Doerr

(Here's the comment I posted in the Washington Post on 10/4 in response to Dana Milbank's column.)

During the debate Romney extruded a remark about his support for school vouchers, which is Republican code mantra for having government force all taxpayers to support special interest sectarian private schools through vouchers. Now it happens that Romney is most closely associated with three states -- Massachusetts, Michigan and Utah. Well, it happens that the constitutions of these three states all prohibit tax aid for church-related private schools. It also happens that these three states have had a total of SEVEN referendum elections in which voters rejected vouchers  or their analogs by about two to one.

Conclusion: Romney is contemptuous of the constitutions of the three states with which he is most closely associated. He is contemptuous of the voters of three three states, as he is of the voters of the other states (NY, MD, DC, MO, SD, CO, CA, OR, WA, AK) that have had similar referenda. He is contemptuous of the religious freedom of all Americans, their right not to be forced by government to support religious institutions. He is contemptuous of the public schools serving 90% of our children , which cannot help but be harmed by the diversion of public funds to private schools.

Romney, who comes off like a sleazy  used car salesman who lies with a straight face, should be rejected by voters come November.

Beer and Tangled Choices in an Era of Hidden Ownership

By Gary Berg-Cross

OK I’ve known about political and ideological divides on beers for a long time.  Coors Brewing Company has been funding conservative causes for decades.  Now comes  charts from the National Journal, based on Scarborough Research’s 200,000 interviews with American. The bubble chart results shows where various brew falls along the political spectrum on one dimension and measures likelihood of voter turnout along the other.  Sure Coors Light is there for Republicans, but so is one of my favorites Blue Moon. Oh wait that’s also a Coors Brewery product.  Heineken is more of a lefty brew, most strongly associates with Democratic stance.  Check for it at your neighbor’s next party. But the charts show it doesn’t associate with voters likely to turnout! More potent left-leaning beers include Corona, and of course the Canadian Molson is associated with high voter turn out. But wait Coors merged with Canadian brewer Molson in 2005!  You can’t easily escape those Coors tentacles. Maybe it helps to know about union made beers.

OK, so that's what we know about voters.  What do we know about companies that own products like beer?  So many product brands with only a hint of who is behind the ownership curtain and what their values are.  It does raise an uncomfortable question in a “free market” system - who am I implicitly supporting when I buy something? Or perhaps what values, like a decent wage or worker’s rights am I supporting when I buy something?

It’s not a simple question with a single item or arithmetic value answer. Coors Brewing Company consciously "greenwashes"  itself in some progressive concepts that belie deep, conservative behavior. So it was one of the first corporations in America to offer same-sex partner benefits, and it makes corporate donations to a variety of African American, Asian American and Hispanic organizations.
But it is also is in the  union-busting as it steamrolled a serious boycott of its products when the union at the Coor’s flagship Colorado facility went on strike.

There’s clearly a lack of transparency about the products we buy and who’s behind then, but with conglomerates there’ not exactly easy knowledge of who is behind the products we buy. 

Which leads me to Bain Capital (I could have equally asked about Koch Industries) .


What products that we buy are at least partly owned by Bain?  Since its inception, Bain has invested in or acquired hundreds of companies. Among them are some ones that we see and frequently in a normal week.  These include: 

Burger King, Clear Channel Communications, Domino's Pizza, Dunkin' Donuts, The Sports Authority, Staples, Toys R Us, Warner Music Group and The Weather Channel.
Sure some, like Clear Channel are clearly illiberal, but others seem neutral.  But according to a recent report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), many of the fifty largest minimum wage employers in the country are either currently owned or have been owned by Bain Capital in recent years. These include:

#17: Dunkin’ Brands, which owns Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins and is currently owned by Bain Capital. U.S. workforce: 132,000 employees.
• #25: Bloomin’ Brands, which owns Outback Steakhouse among other causal-dining restaurant chains and is currently owned by Bain Capital. U.S. workforce: 85,200 employees. Incidentally, this company is reportedly  trying to lower the minimum wage in Florida.
• #45: Staples, Inc., for which Romney provided investment funds back in 1985 and served on the board for over a decade. U.S. workforce: 32,991. It’s often cited as one of Bain’s success employment and turn around stories.
• #20: Domino’s Pizza, Inc., owned by Bain Capital from 1998-2010. U.S. workforce: 98,220.
• #7: Burger King, acquired by Bain Capital from 2002-2010. U.S. workforce: 191,815.

According to the article Romney Economy: Too Few (American) Jobs, Too Little Pay these 5 companies alone account for about half a million workers.  — part of the 47% perhaps who work for around  $7.25 often with little or no benefits, like sick days. Sure, they grow companies profits which are funneled to Bain Capital investors like Romney and they produce “wealth’ there.   

But is that good enough for a humanist, opportunity society? Does it affirm an open, pluralistic, upwardly mobile and democracy society?  One might doubt it reading something like Russ Bellant's The Coors Connection How Coors Family Philanthopy Undermines Democratic Pluralism.
 Does it help to guarantee a protection of human rights from wealthy,  authoritarian 1% elites? All part of the mix of values tangled in our choices of beer, burgers, blooming onions and climate forecasts in our free society.

Image Credits

Bain: http://www.baincapitalprivateequity.com/
Burger: http://mbcalyn.com/tag/bain-capital/
Coors Connection undermining pluralism: http://www.paperbackswap.com/Coors-Connection-How-Russ-Bellant/book/0896084167/ 
union busting: http://mariopiperni.com/republican-politics/union-busting.php

Germany's Church Tax: Part Zwei

by Edd Doerr

See my 9/24/12 .Secular Perspectives blog comment on German's Church Tax.  On 9/26 Germany's highest administrative court  ruled that Catholics who opt out of paying the church tax must autonatically leave the church altogether. The court ruled against German theologian Hartmut Zapp, who wanted to leave the church as an institution  but remain a Catholic personally.

The AP story was buried in the business section of the Post on 9/26..

My 9/24 comment stands. But let me add: Jesus kicked the moneychangers out of the temple but today's German Catholic church has elevated the moneychangers to the status of sainthood. "Render unto der Kaiser what der Kaiser will render unto the bishops."

Maybe the church's new motto should be: "Die Deutschekatolischekirche unter alles". (The Garman Catholic Church UNDER all.") Heil der Heilige Papst!

Michell "Pseudo-Reformer" Rhee

by Edd Doerr

The 9/28/12 Washington Post features a half-page op ed piece by Michelle Rhee titled "A Democratic evolution", in which she lashes out at the Chicago teachers and their union and at teachers and teacher unions in general.  Rhee, the failed head of the DC school system, had the nerve to call herself a Democrat.

Her blustery half-page screed consciously overlooked the fact that the recent Chicago teacher strike was supported by 90% of the teachers and a solid majority of Chicago parents. Rhee nose-thumbingly
uttered not a word about the fact that 86% of Chicago kids are black or Latino and about that % live below or near the poverty line. Her  spiel said not a word about the fact that Chicago public schools are overcrowded, lack adequate air conditioning in warm weather, are seriously short of such wraparound services as  nurses and social workers, and have far too many kids in too many classes (such as one teacher's class of 41!). We know from Tennessee's STAR demonstration that keeping K-3 kids in classes of not over 15 kids has strong beneficial effects that last through high school. But getting class sizes down means more money for more classrooms and more teachers.

Let's not forget that Rhee is a rabid hater of teachers, is a strong advocate of diverting public funds to sectarian and other special interest private schools, and runs a zillionaire-funded outfit called "StudentsFirst", a front for undermining public education

Never Apologize, Never Explain

By Gary Berg-Cross

On July 6, 2012 Bill Moyers had humanist poet Philip Appleman on his show. Appleman, author of nine books of poetry, three novels, and six volumes of non-fiction, is famous for many works including his editing of a critical anthology Darwin as well as a poetic turn with his  books Darwin’s Ark and Darwin’s Bestiary. As Moyers noted these have earned him praise for:

       illuminating the “overwhelming sanity” of Darwin’s thought with clarity and wit.  

But for freethinkers we can add to these his recent collection Perfidious Proverbs and Other Poems—A Satirical Look at the Bible (published by Humanity Books ) is definitely one to enjoy. Bill Creasy pointed to this collection in his article published in the September 2011 issue of WASHline, the newsletter of the Washington Area Secular Humanists.

A portion of his poem GERTRUDE, celebrating his mother Gertrude Appleman, 1901-1976, is shown below.  Phillip starts with a piece from the  Catechism of Christian Doctrine which states that “God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty.”

The poem takes this doctrine to task. It includes this:

I wish that all the people who peddle God could watch my mother die: could see the skin and gristle weighing in at seventy-nine, every stubborn pound of flesh a small death.
I wish the people who peddled God could see her young, lovely in gardens and beautiful in kitchens, and could watch the hand of God slowly twisting her knees and fingers till they gnarled and knotted, settling in for thirty years of pain.

I wish the people who peddle God could see the lightning of His cancer striking her, that small frame tensing at every shock, her sweet contralto scratchy with the Lord's infection: Philip, I want to die.
I wish I had them gathered round, those preachers, popes, rabbis, imams, priests—every pious shill on God's payroll—and I would pull the sheets from my mother's brittle body, and they would fall on their knees at her bedside to be forgiven all their faith.

The image above is from Appleman’s poem God’s Grandeur in “Karma, dharma, pudding, and pie...”.  

 The tongue in cheek poem starts out in a Jobian way

When they hunger and thirst, and I send down a famine,
When they pray for the sun, and I drown them with rain,
And they beg me for reasons, my only reply is:
I never apologize, never explain.

When the Angel of Death is a black wind around them
And children are dying in terrible pain,
Then they burn little candles in churches, but still
I never apologize, never explain.

It ends with this:

Of course, if they’re smart, they can figure it out–
The best of all reasons is perfectly plain.
It’s because I just happen to like it this way–
So I never apologize, never explain.”

You can see Appleman reading the entire poem on Moyers show at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x34fi6KQgg

More of Appleman’s thoughts are at The Labyrinth: God, Darwin and the Meaning of Life

A full version of the poem is available on the American Humanist’s site.