Our Democracy is in Trouble (duh!)

Al Gore’s recent book, “The Assault on Reason,” could not have been timelier: for a mainstream politician to point not only at his political adversaries for embracing irrationality, but also the voting public for irrational thinking, is amazing.  Sadly, though Mr. Gore has become more popular and high profile due to his campaign on global climate change and has been prescient regarding the war on Iraq, his useful book ranks as only #264 on the Amazon.com best sellers list; respectable but not earth-shaking.  I guess people are fine with blaming the politicians they vote for but not fine with looking in the mirror for their lousy decision-making in picking them in the first place.

This comes as no surprise to those who have received the INQUIRER newsletter over the years.  In 2004 we reported about a PIPA survey (go to http://www.pipa.org/archives/us_opinion.php) showing how voters who had the facts wrong regarding Saddam Hussein, 9-11, world opinion and WMDs in effect re-elected President Bush.  If you thought Saddam Hussein took part in the 9-11 plot and that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that the world wanted the US to attack Iraq, you were much more likely to vote for President Bush.  Coincidentally, I’m sure, if you watched FoxNews you were worst informed; but if you watched PBS news, you usually had the (three) facts straight.

Now that the average citizen has “seen the light” regarding the Iraq invasion and no longer agrees, on the average, that this was a good idea, have we learned from our mistakes of the past?

Answer: ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Here is what PIPA found in March 2006:

Though their numbers are declining, a majority of Republicans continue to believe that before the war, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for developing them and do not think that most experts believe Iraq did not have WMDs.  A growing majority of Democrats believe the opposite on both points.  Sixty percent of Republicans continue to believe that Iraq had WMD (41%) or a major program for developing them (19%), representing only a modest decrease from the 70 percent who held such beliefs in an October 2004 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll.

A majority of Republicans, though declining, maintains the belief that Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda and that clear evidence of this support has been found, in contrast to large majorities of Democrats who hold opposing beliefs.

You might argue, based on these reports that the problem is isolated with Republicans; that they are often out of touch with reality for some reason.  This would be a bad assumption.

DATE: August 2, 2006

SOURCE: Scripps Howard News Service

HEADLINE: "Anti-government anger spurs 9/11 conspiracy belief"

WRITER/REPORTER(s): Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III

BODY: More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll…  The poll found that a majority of young adults give at least some credence to a 9/11 conspiracy compared to less than a fourth of people 65 or older.  Members of racial and ethnic minorities, people with only a high school education and Democrats were especially likely to suspect federal involvement in 9/11.   (Go to http://www.newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=55.)

Last month’s sixth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks brought out many of the conspiracy theorists who somehow are able to overlook bin Laden’s recent commemoration of the event, and his lauding of one of his 19 hijacking martyrs.

It’s as if “merely” flying two jets into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon would not have been enough to start the ball rolling on a retaliatory war (it would have been enough, duh!): for some reason conspiracy theorists think it was necessary to make sure they were blown up and completely destroyed!

Why?

The American public has been convinced in the past to support wars for far less reason.  In fact, going after bin Laden would have been totally justified even if the WTC towers did not fall.  You could have argued about the methodology of going after bin Laden, but all rational persons should have sought justice and security after such an attack.

Let’s go further: what if the FBI had arrested the hijackers BEFORE the flights, making huge heroes out of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Ashcroft and every other relevant Administration member for preventing the whole catastrophe.  If, after their great deed, they said we needed to go to war against bin Laden, who would have argued?  Some, perhaps, but the case for going after bin Laden would STILL had been legitimate even if there were not a scratch on the WTC.  There was no good reason for the Federal government to either conspire or allow the World Trade Centers to be destroyed by bin Laden, especially if they wanted to target Saddam Hussein in the long run.  In fact, preventing the attack would have secured this Administration’s place in history, particularly if the Iraq adventure subsequently never occurred.  I cannot think of any scenario that could have motivated the Administration to even allow or hesitate to act (other than their by now well-documented incompetence) the attack on the World Trade Center.  Irrationality inspired or caused by an incompetent administration is still irrational.

So most Republicans have the facts wrong, and many Democrats have their own blind spots.  Who is left to vote on a reasoned basis?

That is why the Center for Inquiry exists; to promote reason for humane ends in a non-partisan manner.  Still, one can’t help but look at the irrationality around us and wonder if our democracy is in real trouble when so few seem to be able to think straight.  Our task ahead is huge.

Tags: , Democracy, United States, Al Gore, PIPA, reason,

The God Squad's Bigotry Against Atheists

Recently, because of his Parkinson’s disease, Father Tom Hartman was forced to retire from active duty co-writing the God Squad syndicated column with his partner Rabbi Marc Gellman, leaving the rabbi on his own.  It did not take the rabbi long to find a way to demean atheists, one of his long-time favorite targets of derision in his typically passive-aggressive manner.

A reader wrote (Newsday, Saturday, October 6, 2007) to the God Squad that she  was sending her best thoughts and “vibrations” to the ill Father Tom with whom she often agreed.  She added that the “strange thing is, I’m an atheist.  I don’t believe in a god… I believe ‘god’ is the sum of all the souls who’ve ever lived, most over and over, until they got it right and entered a state of perfection…”

Of course, Rabbi Gellman responded as expected, with a “nice” sounding insult.  He wrote, “Even atheists can find their way to virtue and kindness as long as they have what you have – a belief that there’s something more than dirt and death in our lives and in our world…”  Would he have written “Even Muslims” if the writer had been a Muslim?  Or “Even Jews” if the writer had been Jewish?  You get the idea.

Just as Bill O’Reilly “could not get over the fact” that African-Americans could behave civilly in a restaurant, Rabbi Gellman seems to be amazed when an atheist appears to be moral.  But Gellman, in a sense, is worse than O’Reilly, who at least did not require any particular qualifications for the moral fitness of the African-Americans who so impressed him at Sylvia’s.  Rabbi Gellman did have such requirements: atheists can be virtuous as long as (and by implication, only as long as) they believe in some supernatural nonsense, such as, in this case, reincarnation.

There is one more thing; are these letters to the editor legitimate?  I for one would love to know if the writers of these fastballs-down-the-middle questions truly exist or if they are merely figments of the God Squad’s dogmatic imagination.  Is there really a reincarnation-believing atheist, Claudette from Boca Raton, Florida, who loves the God Squad?  I think it behooves Newsday to do a quick check on the facts.  (For the Newsday column go to http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-lsgod5402454oct06,0,2428350.column ; for the TMS version, go to http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20070927ctngs-a.txt&catid=1709&code=ctngs .)

Tags: The God Squad, Marc Gellman, atheists, atheism, Tom Hartman

The Jena 6, Imus & O'Reilly

One of the missions of the Center for Inquiry is to defend freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor.  On occasion, this mission leads us to scrutinize many prevailing orthodoxies involving society, politics and religion.  If we apply the scientific method to test the reliability or truth content of many such orthodoxies, we may conclude that they are either likely true or untrue.  If we apply humanistic standards to these orthodoxies -- in other words, we assess, to the best of our abilities, whether the practices of a prevailing orthodoxy contributes  to humanity’s well-being or whether the orthodoxy causes misery – we sometimes formulate serious moral criticisms.

Such criticisms and truth content judgments when sincerely and conscientiously applied to religious claims and practices are not examples of bigotry or prejudice.  To the contrary, this mission is highly moral if not polluted by pre-conceived biases and falsehoods.  Unfortunately, despite this “purity” of purpose, even well-intentioned religious criticism is typically poorly accepted and it is not uncommon for the religious to condemn ALL religious criticism as bigotry and an affront to religious freedom when it may actually be the opposite.  It is typical that the first victim of religious intolerance is the religious dissident whose sincere criticism of a religion is often punished by the State on behalf of that prevailing religious orthodoxy.  Yes, sometimes the many may have it exactly wrong and the few may have it exactly right.

In a strange sense, more acceptable than a scientific and humanistic approach to the claims and practices of religions is actual bigotry or prejudice!  Elected officials, such as Rep. Virgil Goode, have actually been able to object to a Muslim, Keith Ellison who was duly elected to the House of Representatives of the United States, taking his oath of office on a Koran (as opposed to the Christian bible) – without being hounded out of office in disgrace!  One wonders how many votes Mr. Goode may have actually gained via his bigotry.

But if Rep. Goode had instead said that according to the evidence, there is no reason to believe that Abraham or Moses had ever existed, or that there is no reason to believe that Jesus was divine or that Mohammed or anyone else had received revelations, and that the only appropriate printed material for an oath of office was a copy of the Constitution of the United States, his career would have possibly been over!

Here is a question: Are there more Virgil Goode types or are there more (atheist) Pete Starks types in the House of Representatives?

So it is in this wild context that it seems that a bias crime against a person of Iranian descent was committed recently on Long Island, in Locust Valley, Nassau County.  A female proprietor of an upscale nail salon was robbed at gunpoint and assaulted according to a Newsday story.  The perpetrators apparently scrawled anti-Muslim messages in her store and called her a terrorist.

THIS is bigotry, not a reasoned critique of religion.  The alleged victim has been in the US ever since the Ayatollah came to power, escaping to the US legally in 1982.  She became a US citizen as a response to 9-11, according to Newsday, and said of the US, “It’s my home now and nobody can take it away.”  She says that she is not religious.

Religious or not, this is the kind of immigrant we should be welcoming to our country, not terrorizing.  This is a person who is not a burden, and values the United States in the most important way possible – in the form of the freedoms as defined and guaranteed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Another example of Islamophobia (or perhaps we should call it Muslimophobia) may be that of Long Island’s own Rep. Peter King.  According to a number of websites, King was quoted in an interview with radio and television host Sean Hannity saying that 85 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by “extremist leadership.”

There is absolutely no way that King could have data of this detail even if we overlook the fact that simply defining “extremist leadership” is no simple task!  If he could define “extremist leadership” sensibly and produce the data supporting his contention, we’d all love to see it.

But at least his contention about Muslims leads to something we should think about: for example, if a majority (or close to it) of Christians in this country believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, it would mean, logically, that they endorse what is contained in the Bible, including the obligation to kill witches, unruly children, adulterers, and in some cases, non-believers.  Would that make most Christians terrorists or extremists, based on their own word?

Skeptics often point this sort of thing out and by doing so, condemn the religion in general even though most Christians would be appalled by the murder of “witches” and “unruly” children – yes appalled by their own infallible religion—if they weren’t in such deep denial.

And so it goes with Muslims.  Yes, the leadership can be dogmatic and their scripture heinous, as it is in most all religions; does this make them all “extremists”?  It makes those who know and accept what their scriptures and beliefs actually endorse “extremists” (such as Christian extremist Randall Terry); but the truth is most persons are in blissful ignorance or denial of their own religion’s extremist dogma.  They are not personally extreme even though they claim to believe in the religion completely as if it were infallible – they just don’t know what they’re talking about.  Nothing is simple when trying to figure out what a person is really saying – general incoherence must be considered in making a generalization or analysis.  This should lead us to be very precise in our accusations or condemnations.  Rep. Peter King should take note.

As skeptics, seekers of truth and humanists we must denounce and reject religion based bigotry.  It does not mean we must self-censor ourselves when we believe a religious belief is untrue or a religious practice is harmful.  There is far too little constructive religious criticism as it is.  It does mean, however, that we must judge persons for what they actually do and not for the labels we assign to them or they assign to themselves.  We all know persons who claim to be one thing but behave in ways totally incompatible with their stated beliefs, for both better and worse.

The world is truly a troubled place.  Many naively believe that the cure to all our problems is accepting their preferred dogma over some other opposing dogma, while at the same time having little idea of the content of the opposing dogmas.

Humanists have the better idea: to avoid all dogmatic beliefs in favor of promoting what actually works to lift humanity.  Humanists are concerned with deeds.  Creeds are only important in how they may affect behavior.  Creeds are to be judged, as is everything else: by their “truthiness” and their consequences on well-being.

If freedom and democracy truly are components of a better world, as most humanists would agree, we must prove to those whoeither are unconvinced or reject these ideals that freedom and democracy would improve their lives as well; and there is no better proof than proof by example.

(The whole story @ Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-libias175378585sep17,0,5170531.story. )

 

 

Tags: Imus, Jena, O'Reilly, racism, Sylvia's

Islamophobia on Long Island

One of the missions of the Center for Inquiry is to defend freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor.  On occasion, this mission leads us to scrutinize many prevailing orthodoxies involving society, politics and religion.  If we apply the scientific method to test the reliability or truth content of many such orthodoxies, we may conclude that they are either likely true or untrue.  If we apply humanistic standards to these orthodoxies -- in other words, we assess, to the best of our abilities, whether the practices of a prevailing orthodoxy help humanity thrive or whether they cause misery – we sometimes formulate serious moral criticisms.

Such criticisms and truth content judgments when sincerely and conscientiously applied to religious claims and practices are not examples of bigotry or prejudice.  To the contrary, this mission is highly moral if not polluted by pre-conceived biases and falsehoods.  Unfortunately, despite this “purity” of purpose, even well-intentioned religious criticism is typically poorly accepted and it is not uncommon for the religious to condemn ALL religious criticism as bigotry and an affront to religious freedom when it may actually be the opposite.  It is typical that the first victim of religious intolerance is the religious dissident whose sincere criticism of a religion is often punished by the State on behalfof that prevailing religious orthodoxy.  Yes, sometimes the many may have it exactly wrong and the few may have it exactly right

In a strange sense, more acceptable than a scientific and humanistic approach to theclaims and practices of religions is actual bigotry!  Elected officials, such as Rep. Virgil Goode, have actually been able to object to a Muslim, Keith Ellison, elected to the House of Representatives of the United States taking their oath of office on a Koran as opposed to the Christian bible – without being hounded out of office in disgrace!  One wonders how many votes Mr. Goode may have gained via his bigotry.

But if Rep. Goode had instead said that according to the evidence, there is no reason to believe that Abraham or Moses had ever existed, or that there is no reason to believe that Jesus was divine or that Mohammed had received revelations, and that the only appropriate printed material for an oath of office was a copy of the Constitution of the United States, his career would have possibly been over!

Here is a question: Are there more Virgil Goode types or are there more (atheist) Pete Starks types in the House of Representatives?

So it is in this wild context that it seems that a bias crime against a person of Iranian descent was committed recently on Long Island, in Locust Valley, Nassau County.  A female proprietor of an upscale nail salon was robbed at gunpoint and assaulted according to a Newsday story.  The perpetrators apparently scrawled anti-Muslim messages in her store and called her a terrorist.

THIS is bigotry.  The alleged victim has been in the US ever since the Ayatollah came to power, escaping to the US legally in 1982.  She became a US citizen as a response to 9-11, according to Newsday, and said of the US, “It’s my home now and nobody can take it away.”  She says that she is not religious.

Religious or not, this is the kind of immigrant we should be welcoming to our country, not terrorizing.  This is a person who is not a burden, and values the United States in the most important way possible – in the form of the freedoms as defined and guaranteed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

As skeptics, seekers of truth and humanists we must denounce and reject religion based bigotry.  It does not mean we must self-censor ourselves when we believe a religious belief is untrue or a religious practice is harmful.  There is far too little constructive religious criticism as it is.  It does mean, however, that we must judge persons for what they actually do and not for the labels we assign them.  We all know persons who claim to be one thing but behave in ways totally incompatible with their stated believes, for both better and worse.

The world is a truly troubled place.  Many naively believe that the cure to all our problems is accepting their preferred dogma over some other opposing dogma.

Humanists have the better idea: to avoid all dogmatic beliefs in favor of promoting what actually works to lift humanity.  Humanists are concerned with deeds.  Creeds are important only in how they may change our behavior.  If freedom and democracy truly are components of a better world, as most humanists would agree, we must prove to those who either are unconvinced or reject these ideals that freedom and democracy would improve their lives as well; and there is no better proof than proof by example.

(The whole story @ Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-libias175378585sep17,0,5170531.story )

Tags: Center for Inquiry, humanism, Islam, Islamophobia, Virgil Goode, Keith Ellison

Iraq, the Surge and What's Next

It has been a while since I’ve written about the attack on Iraq because I’ve said almost everything I needed to say about Iraq far in advance of almost everyone else saying it, so I have little to do except repeat myself; from the start I believed Iraq would be a disaster.

For example, in December 2002 I wrote “Purity of opinion or voting record does not get you to humanist heaven.  For example, voting for someone other than Al Gore if one vehemently opposed George W. Bush was reasonably expected to help elect George W. Bush, and it did.  The difference in a number of states was smaller than the number of votes for various 3rd party candidates.  As a consequence, Bush is president.  As a consequence, we have a tattered wall of separation between church and state, a tax cut for the better off, no new social programs in sight, a ballooning budget and deficit, a weak economy, no answers for Wall Street abuses, and a potentially disastrous war in Iraq on our hands.”  (Go to http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/DEC%202002%20newsletter.pdf .)

Every thing that has since occurred, while not a certainty, has been very predictable, as I, and later on, Al Gore, in his book, “The Assault on Reason,” have pointed out.  While pundits such as Chris Matthews of MSNBC (who make millions of $$) declared as Baghdad fell “that we are all Neocons,” I wrote at that very moment (May 2003) that “The days immediately following the symbolic toppling (of Saddam’s statue) brought sobering, if not distressing, news:  No weapons of mass destruction had yet been found; suicide attacks on US soldiers had occurred, leading to US soldiers inadvertently killing innocent civilians as a reaction; rival Iraqi religious leaders were hacked to death by an angry mob at a meeting designed to bring about reconciliation; looting and lawlessness broke out in major cities in Iraq; hospitals were in crisis mode due to the problems caused by war; protestors demonstrated in the Shia-dominated area of Iraq over the British choice of former Baath Party leaders to head an interim authority in Basra; some exiled Shi’ite factions boycotted a meeting of Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’ites to discuss the future of Iraq; thousands of Iraqi civilians have perished, and many other troubling problems on the ground.”  (Go to http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/May%202003%2010pg.pdf .)

All of these doubts about the Iraq enterprise were the result of applying the values of secular humanism and scientific skepticism – nothing more complicated was involved than simply being conscientious enough to ask the relevant questions and rejecting fanciful conclusions.

So here we are today; Iraq is a mess with, most likely, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis now dead, who would not have been dead otherwise, plus close to 4,000 American soldiers dead plus countless others maimed and mentally injured for the following results:

1)      More Islamic terrorists and terrorist sympathizers in Iraq and in the rest of the world

2)      More than trillion dollars to be spent by US taxpayers resulting in a lowering of the quality of life (bombs tend to destroy not create)

3)      Less security for US citizens because of less money available to be spent on Homeland Security

4)      Less personal freedoms in the US

5)      Less pride in America after understanding that the US started an unjustifiable war and used its military callously and recklessly

6)      A resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the continued non-pursuit of bin Laden due to the diverting of military and other resources to Iraq

There is no equation that can balance the scale of lives spent and results obtained.  This war is a disaster no matter what, and the reality is far worse.  And what is the obvious reality?

The Shia see the potentialfor dominant power over Iraq and see little need to compromise; and they are not compromising - oil will pay for their future tyrrany and the security to defend it.  Security for ordinary Iraqis obtained during the current surge in US forces is being accomplished primarily by ethnic cleansing – Sunnis are being chased out of Shiite enclaves, and the goal is a Shiite Bagdhad.  The Bush Administration, being totally amoral, will cynically point to the increased security as proof of progress – and Americans will buy it.  The media will not want to rub this fact too hard in American faces.

In Sunni dominated areas the US will pursue a different cynical tact: they will support non-Al Qaeda former Sunni insurgents; yes, the very same persons who were killing Americans not long ago, and enable them to create all Sunni areas in Anbar, etc.  Of course, they will become insurgents to the Shia dominated Iraqi government, but that will be their problem.

The only saving grace to the program of ethnic cleansing, supporting insurgents and looking the other way to the vicious militias of all sorts is that it may allow us to withdraw during a period of relative calm while each ethnic territory is effectively cleansed.  Of course, what happens after that is anyone’s guess but here’s mine: Iraq and Iran will get very chummy, Saudi Arabia will continue to support Sunni militias and Iran will support Shiite militias.  Civil War will continue, and Iraq will become a failed state.

Even the division of Iraq is doomed.  Such a division would create two land-locked countries, one for the Kurds and the other for the Sunnis, and their only routes of trade would be through enemy territory (the Shiite Iraq, Iran and Turkey.)  Good luck!

Many argue that we have a moral obligation to the Iraqis - we started this and we ought to see it through.  This argument has merit but here is the problem: we have helped them hold elections; we have spent lives and money ridding them of Saddam; we have tried to reconstruct their country.  What can be done to fulfill our moral obligation that has not been tried?  My suggestion is this: convict those in the US government that perpetrated this war under false pretenses and then ineptly prosecuted this war.  At that point we will have admitted to the world that the US as a whole was duped and the dupers are being held accountable.  We will have done everything possible; other than changing history, nothing will be truly sufficient, so why continue to make things worse?

The US should have had only one military goal before the war in Iraq; the control or neutralization of Al Qaeda and bin Laden.  It abandoned that goal with the Iraq War and continues to shun this goal to the point where Al Qaeda has made a comeback.  A withdrawal from Iraq should be designed with only one military component in mind; controlling Al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization inadvertently created by the inept Bush Administration.

Unfortunately, they are totally incapable of performing or even centering on this clear task.  Nothing will resolve itself until the next Administration takes office, and it would not be surprising if this Administration does everything in its ability to avoid being affixed the blame for the disaster that is Iraq, even if it makes things worse in the long run.

Tags: Bush, Iraw, surge, Al Qaeda, Saddam, bin Laden, Al Gore

Lindsay Lohan vs. the Astronauts

According to the head of a panel of outside experts, reviewing astronaut behavior in the wake of the actions of astronaut Lisa Nowak, "Two specific instances were described where astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and-or fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety.  However, the individuals were still permitted to fly."

Consider that if astronauts cannot be trusted to be sober before getting on board a space shuttle, what chance do we have of hoping Lindsay Lohan will be sober when driving a mere car?

Tags: Lohan, astronauts, Lisa Nowak, drunk

Slaves working on US Embassy in Iraq?

From the Wall Street Journal: Federal prosecutors are investigating the Kuwaiti company (First Kuwaiti) building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, probing allegations that foreign employees were brought to work on the massive project against their will and prevented from leaving the country.

Exactly how low will this all go?  The list of outrages is already incredibly long but damn it if they cannot keep topping themselves!!!

According to the Washington Post, “Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad told Congress yesterday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions.

Yup, we’re talking slavery.  According to the testimony before Congress, 51 Filipinos who believed they were being taken to Dubai were instead shipped from Kuwait to Baghdad, which is quite a difference, and then had their passports taken away, preventing them from leaving.  Their job was to help construct the US Embassy.

The Post wrote, unsurprisingly, that “State Department officials disputed the charges, telling a House committee that inspections had not substantiated the worst reported abuses.”

What a relief!  But then again, one can only wonder what this State Department would consider the “worst reported abuses.”

What next?  It is beyond imagining.

Tags: Bagdhad, slaves, First Kuwaiti, US Embassy