Jewish Atheist

Americans and people all over the world are shocked by each episode of Muslim violence. They shoudn’t be. Violence is what Islam is all about. Mealy-mouthed apologists (and they crawl out of the woodwork every time Muslim violence disgusts and horrifies the civilized world) insist that theirs is a religion of peace. Sure, you can find that in the Quran, and these people may really believe it. Maybe it’s true for them. But worldwide — and for the non-Muslims on the receiving end of the bomb or firearm, for those of us watching as our President is burned in effigy over CARTOONS — the reality is quite different.

Until the BP oil spill is stopped, every entry will have the following preface:
America’s thirst for oil has created a disaster. Before the spill is stopped, the entire Gulf of Mexico could be ecologically exterminated. I hope I am wrong. But until this disaster is fixed, I hereby call for an immediate moratorium on the […]

I hope Justice-elect Kagan appreciates how, like Palin plucked from deserved obscurity, she’s in the right place at the right time. That she has not shown the humility to recuse herself on Day One implies an arrogance and/or an ignorance that I don’t want to see in a Supreme Court justice.

It’s not money that’s the root of all evil. The root of all evil is the human mind and the horrendous behavioral decisions it’s capable of making. The fertilizer for that evil is bullshit: the invitation to turn off your thinking mind and let someone else decide how you should live.

Bullshit is the music of mindless conformity. Without bullshit, we would not have governments of psychotics taking over countries and leading them to ruin. Without bullshit, we would not have centuries of religious atrocities, which continue to this day. Without bullshit, we would not have our frantic hyper-consumptive (and probably unsustainable) culture.

Let us dedicate this D-day to thought and reason. To discourage these, as politicians and clerics do, is to make perpetual war inevitable.

Of all the wars that America has fought in my lifetime alone, only one – World War II – had anything to do with my freedom. Mostly they had to do with politicians’ vanity; or their need to prove their toughness by sacrificing others (if it’s so necessary, why don’t THEY go?); or America’s wish to forcibly impose its will on other countries.

The Founding Fathers didn’t get it completely right, especially as regards women and forcibly transported Blacks, slave and free. But they did focus on one shining concept that promised to improve the state of humanity on earth: liberty. Not “relentless dogmatism” (Zorn). Liberty from millennia of kings, czars, and other despots.

This is the same insane school-administrator mentality that suspends students for having an Advil or nail clipper. Students learn, in no uncertain terms, that the adult world is irrational, demanding, rigid and ruthless. Students at Highland Park High are getting a valuable lesson indeed. Perhaps a few brave spirits will not be broken.

When, when, WHEN are black people going to get it: a double standard hurts everybody? The achievements of the protected class (yes, that’s the term they use) are forever tainted (would you want an affirmative action brain surgeon?), while the resentment of the unprotected class continues to fester.

Governments decide what drugs – and what drug users and traffickers — are to be the scapegoated (in On Liberty and Drugs, which I heartily recommend, Thomas Szasz points out the historical relationship between the two meanings of pharmak-, ‘scapegoat’ and ‘remedy.’ After all, scapegoating was the way to rid the tribe of all its evils.