Philosophy

By David Swanson

On Saturday, June 5, I took part in an event organized by Jeff Nall of Humanists for Peace, together with Nall, Armineh Noravian, and Debra Sweet. Nall had organized a panel at the national conference of the American Humanist Association to talk about the need to work for peace. And the room was packed.

By David Swanson

Chris Hedges is one of the best, one of the most morally useful, writers we have. He's free of loyalty to political party or dogma. He knows war first hand and describes it without flinching. He's an almost ideal gadfly to our corporatocracy. But he has a hangup on religion that holds him back.

Here's Matt Taibbi on this today, and me on the same topic in 1999.

By David Swanson

When Americans get "ethical" these days they ponder the great moral mysteries, like "Is public health coverage fair to insurance companies?" or "If we increase the military budget but reduce one section of it, can the whole world still be safe?" or "Would you still oppose torture if it worked?"

By David Swanson

According to an Associated Press story on Friday, more than a half-million people have toured the creationism museum in Kentucky since it opened in May 2007. However, at least one of those people was there to make fun of it with a video camera.

By David Swanson

Article VI. of the U.S. Constitution says that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

The writers of the Constitution knew the recent history of wars of religion and religious persecution in Europe. Many of the thinkers who influenced them associated political freedom very closely with freedom of religion, with the dismantling of state religion, and -- in some cases -- with the abandonment of religion entirely. "Man shall not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest," said Jean Meslier, or Denis Diderot, or perhaps Voltaire, depending whom you ask. Voltaire's bust was, and still is, prominently displayed in Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Jefferson and George Mason led the establishment of religious freedom, first in Virginia, and then in the new United States.

By David Swanson

Remarks made on May 24, 2008, in Radford, Va., at the Building a New World Conference: http://www.wpaconference.org

Martin Luther King Jr. said:

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered....

The first international conference of the World Prout Assembly, entitled, "Building a New World," committed to ending imperialist wars and affirming models of cooperative, community-based economies and political activism, will be held May 22-25 at Radford University, Radford, Virginia.

By David Swanson

Like most Americans, I'm appreciative of all the wonderful people and experiences in my life, and I like the idea of taking a day off from lamenting all the painful, tragic, and humiliating experiences in my life and the many more in the lives of so many people around the world impacted by my government (even if we are now losing an innocent life in Iraq alone at the rate of one every 10 minutes, or 144 in the day I take off to "be thankful").

By David Swanson

I've often seen Bush compared to a child and Cheney to a monster, which I think is incredibly unfair to children and monsters. The following is a commentary on a blog posting by Digby that compares the Bush-Cheney crime gang to postmodernists and “relativists”, which I think is entirely unfair to postmodernists and “relativists”. In fact, I think the Bush-Cheney gang's defense of cruel and criminal actions fits seamlessly with their opposition to “postmodern relativism,” rather than constituting a glaring and hypocritical contradiction to it, as Digby supposes.

By David Swanson

The Governor of Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine, has just pardoned Gabriel Prosser for leading a slave revolt in Virginia over 200 years ago. Prosser sought to organize thousands of slaves to accomplish the "wholesale massacre" of whites in Richmond and other slave-holding areas, according to historian Virginius Dabney. Kaine cited Prosser's "devotion to the ideals of the American revolution – it was worth risking death to secure liberty." Kaine concluded that "Gabriel's cause – the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people – has prevailed in the light of history."

By David Swanson

Whenever anyone asks me what author has had the greatest impact on me, I don't hesitate. There's no doubt that it's Richard Rorty. I consider him the most significant author of the past century, something I once told him, and which he had the humility to say and honestly believe was ludicrous. Richard Rorty died this week and took from this planet the most brilliant mind we've ever seen put to the kindest and most useful endeavors.

By David Swanson

On March 17, a huge mass of people will gather at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and march from there to the Pentagon for the cause of impeachment and peace.
http://www.impeach07.org

By David Swanson

With Jimmy Carter's book a best seller and the Iraq War a top political concern, many Americans may have an interest right now in thinking about Israel and Palestine. I'd like to recommend to anyone with that interest picking up a copy of a short and brilliant book by the British philosopher Ted Honderich called "Right and Wrong and Palestine, 9-11, Iraq, 7-7."

The God Delusion.

By Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com

America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be 'raptured' up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the 'Armageddon' that is to presage the Second Coming. Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull's-eye as usual:

By Sam Harris, Boston Globe

THE MIDTERM elections are fast approaching, and their outcome could well be determined by the "moral values

By David Swanson

John Dean, former legal counsel to Richard Nixon, is 95% recovered from a long bout of conservatism, and he doubts that many others can make the same recovery, but I don't.

Dean's published two excellent books on the Bush-Cheney administration's abuses of power. The first was "Worse Than Watergate." The new one is "Conservatives Without Conscience." The title is a play on former Senator Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative," and Dean originally intended to co-write it with Goldwater.

By Jan Frel
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/frel/38280

I have two people in my close family who are long-time members of some very weird Christian splinter groups. One of them, who I won't identify, is a Jehovah's Witness. This relative -- an adherent for more than 20 years -- walks around, knocks on doors, passes out literature with some of the most laughable illustrations I've ever seen in my life. The most common pastiche is one composed of what look like off-duty prozac-popping bank tellers walking around in mocked-up nature scenes that most resemble a Hawaiian golf course in the adoring company of fuzzy mammals -- such as smiling tigers and koala bears. In the Jehovah Witness' world, this is supposed to be a depiction of paradise on Earth, when in fact it's litmus proof that 9th-rate minds are cooking up a weak broth of religious fantasy that makes the Left Behind series look as real as the pile of parking tickets in my glove compartment. Luckily for them, poor suckers like this relative of mine are satisfied with this Motel 6 version of Christianity.

By Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet
http://www.alternet.org/story/36195/

Sam Harris is not your grandfather's atheist. The award-winning writer practices Zen meditation and believes in the value of mystical experiences. But he's adamant in his belief that religion does more harm than good in the world, and has sparked controversy by suggesting that when it comes to faith-based violence, religious moderates are part of the problem, not the solution.