The Christian Guide to Atheists: Atheists are Unpatriotic

Often it is said that atheists are unpatriotic, and I’m speaking strictly about American atheists here, that we don’t love our country just as much as anyone else.

As with most of these misconceptions of atheists, there is a bit of truth to it. Then again, I could easily say with that same bit of truth that Christians don’t love their county and neither do liberals, Muslims, conservatives, Jews, libertarians, socialists, Hindus, or anyone else for that matter.

We all think that the United States could do better, by whatever definition or meaning we give to the word “better.” Conservatives want to outlaw or severely limit abortion and gay marriage. Liberals want to raise taxes on the wealthy and decrease military spending. Certain Christians want state recognition of their religion as the one true religion and to have it taught in public schools. Atheists want complete separation of church and state and want science (and, you know, reality) to be taught in public schools.

There are things that each of these groups think that America needs improvement on. That does not make any of them unpatriotic. Of course, in politics, it is common to say that anyone who disagrees with your ideology is unpatriotic.

Atheists though tend to not put America is such high regard (speaking from personal experience there). Most atheists are also humanists. We put more value on humanity as a whole than one country that we just so happened to be born in. We see the value in all of humanity and work for the betterment of the human species and not just those who were born within the arbitrary borders that are the United States.

I cannot speak for all atheists when it comes to matters of politics, as every atheist will disagree on something when it comes to that subject. I’m an atheist and a liberal. There are atheists who are socialists, libertarians, conservatives (yes, they do exist), anarchists, populists, and every thing else in the political spectrum.

Some of them very well could be unpatriotic or the most patriotic, flag waving people in the country. For me, personally, because of my aforementioned humanism, I would be considered unpatriotic by many. Not because I hate America, but because I want all humans to have the same rights and privileges that I enjoy and more.

I would be considered unpatriotic, because I don’t agree with the conservative Christian rewriting of American history that tries to paint America as a nation that was founded on Christian values, when it most certainly was not. Most of our Founding Fathers, at least the important ones, were deists. You could even call them secularists, even though that term did not exist until the mid-1800s. They did not believe in the Christian god and were, in fact, kind of anti-religious in some of the things they said.

I wold be considered unpatriotic, because today in American politics it is unacceptable to be an atheist. In a 2012 Gallup poll, they found that 43% of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president, simply based on the fact that the candidate was an atheist, while more than two-thirds of the respondents said they would vote for someone who was gay. There has only ever been one openly atheist member of the US Congress, and that was Representative Pete Stark of California. He is no longer in office, by the way.

At the University of Minnesota, researchers found that respondents, when asked “whether they would disapprove of a child’s wish to marry an atheist, 47.6 percent of those interviewed said yes.” Also, “When asked which groups did not share their vision of American society, 39.5 percent of those interviewed mentioned atheists.”

We are the most hated minority in America. We are associated with communists and the USSR. We are fired from our jobs. We are killed. We are discriminated against and harassed in the workplace, in the military, in schools, and every where else in public life for simply not believing in a god.

We are mocked and ignored by the mainstream media. We are snubbed out of politics. We are told that our efforts to maintain the separation of church and state are persecution of the religious. We are told by the Vice-President of the United States himself (and soon to be President) that we aren’t even citizens, because America is “one nation under God.”

Living in a nation that hates you, that absolutely hates you and does not want to even acknowledge your very existence for fear of bringing God’s wrath down on America, that would make you a little unpatriotic too.

But we’re not unpatriotic. We vote (or at least, I vote). We pay our taxes. I considered joining the military at several points in time, but the horror stories that I hear from atheists and just non-Christians as a whole who were or are in the military makes me want to never go anywhere near a recruiting station. We love our country, but we love humanity more. We want humanity to succeed, not just the United States or even just the West. We want humanity to achieve greatness and bring about a better world for all.

As always, be sure to read Alise’s post on the subject. They’re always much better than mine.

Next week’s installment of The Christian Guide to Atheists will be “Atheists believe they are God.”

Is My Favourite Band Conservative?

My favourite band is My Chemical Romance. Yes, I know people will flock to the comments with comments like “emo fag,” “do you cut yourself?” or something along those lines. I really don’t care, and I really don’t care to defend my taste in music to anyone.

The reason I bring this up is that I came across a blog post about them that was just…special.

Recently, MCR came out with a new album called Conventional Weapons. They released the album in stages of two songs at a time. One of the songs in the second installment, Number Two, is titled “Gun.” (yes, the period is part of the title), and this is probably one of my favourite songs off the entire album.

However, the lyrics to it made me question something. Is My Chemical Romance possibly conservative?

According to AZ Lyrics:

Because the government
Because the government wants your gun
Wants your gun

Some of the other lyrics in the song could be argued to be talking about a police state, as well.

It is not like I would honestly care or stop listening to their music if they were. I listen to music from bands that are very overtly conservative or have played at conservative conferences. Journey played at the 2012 Republican National Convention, and I don’t really care. Nonetheless, I became curious.

I decided to simply use Google and find out if the band had ever made any political statements of any kind.

The only thing I have found is that Frank Iero, the rhythm guitarist and backup vocalist for the band, is pro-gay, a vegetarian who was dubbed by PETA to be one of their World’s Sexiest Vegetarians, and voted for then Senator Barack Obama in 2008.

So at least one of the band’s members are definitely liberal, and that doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.

But apparently some conservative blog back in 2010, when MCR came out with their music video for “Na Na Na” in their album Danger Days, wrote about how the Gerard Way, the lead singer and frontman, might be a “closet conservative.” Before I read it, I was, for a split second, legitimately concerned that this might be true.

Then I read it, and I could not stop laughing at how ridiculous his reasoning was (emphasis not mine).

Gerard ruffles liberal feathers from the get go:

“Look alive, sunshine. 109 in the sky, but the pigs won’t quit. You’re here with me, Dr. Death Defy. I’ll be your surgeon, your proctor, you’re helicopter.  Bumping out the slaughtamatic sounds to keep you live…  Anti-matter for the master plan. Louder than God’s revolver and twice as shiny!...The future is bulletproof.  The aftermath is secondary.  It’s time to do it now and do it loud!  Killjoys, make some noise!”

Doesn’t Gerard know that mentioning God is a no-no (or was that ‘na na’?), and that coupling Him with a revolver might cause the kids to link a Creator—from which all our rights are derived—with self defense?

Liberals are all anti-God now apparently and wanting to snuff out any mention of God, specifically the Christian god, in public square, because that offends our delicate sensibilities.

He goes on by pointing out themes he sees in the music video that apparently mean the music video and the band are propagating a conservative message. Like these:

• American flags proudly displayed.
• Guns as legitimate tools of self defense.
• American muscle cars and the freedom that comes from the open road (It would be hard for Killjoys to save the world if they were waiting all day for public transportation).
• Vampiric authority figures tied to the federal government or a company closely associated with it.
• Resistance movements, individualism, and self-reliance.
• Orwellian double-speak.  Better Living Industries (i.e., BL.ind)
• Dystopian future (batteries provided by Better Living Industries have played a role).
• State controlled media.

If anything, the spider (which I actually have as a tattoo on my back) on the American flag should be seen by him as a disgrace to the honour and purity of the flag, not a proud display of it.

But liberals apparently can’t like the American flag too. That’s just a conservative thing, because they’re “real” Americans that eat meat and hate homos. Even though my personal Facebook banner for the longest time was this photo:The other stuff that he says are reasons why Gerard Way is a conservative just do not make any sense, like the fifth bullet-point, “Resistance movements, individualism, and self-reliance.” No liberal resistance movement has ever existed, I guess. And liberals all must want this hive-mind community that takes away all of your individual rights. This person seems to have absolutely no understanding of liberal ideology, other than what he has heard about those scary liberals from Fox News and the Drudge Report.

As for the “[vampiric] authority figures tied to the federal government or a company closely associated with it,” that was completely nonsensical. One, because there are no ties shown between BL.ind and any government in the video; I assumed the “dystopian future” came about because there was no government in sight. Two, because now a conservative is saying that corporations are bad. And I agree. Corporate and government ties are very much a bad thing. I see no evidence of this in the video or in the lyrics of the song though.

In the end, this is a music video, not a propaganda film. One can read into it to find some other meaning, but this kind of interpretation of the video is simply absurd. Shame on you, Douglas Ernst, for making me worried that my favourite rock star might be a conservative, when your reasoning behind this was obviously grasping at straws.

How Liberals Celebrate Independence

It’s the fourth of July, the day delegates from the American colonies 236 years ago got together and declared independence from the mother country of Great Britain. Today is a day of hot dogs, American-themed hats and other apparel, fireworks, and, of course, conservatives bashing liberals for not being xenophobic, homophobic, and pro-war enough, among other things.

On Twitter there has been a trendy topic going around #HowLiberalsCelebrateIndependence. It is exactly what you would expect, conservatives saying we are anti-freedom and anti-America, because we don’t agree with their hatred of others. I’m going to share with you some of my personal favourites.

Let’s start off with this piece of conservative religious garbage since most people reading this are probably liberals and/or atheists.

I personally don’t celebrate Christmas, because I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. I know the true origins of the holiday from Pagan rituals and then corporatism. There are many atheists who do celebrate Christmas, because it is not about Jesus and God and how God (who is also Jesus… but is also a separate… but combined part of him… who is still two people… and then there’s that holy ghost guy… what?) raped a twelve-year-old girl to impregnate her with himself and then how she gave birth to God(‘s son). The holiday is about spending time with your family. As well, spending a ridiculous amount of money on things you don’t need and probably don’t even want.

Are you saying we don’t understand the history behind Independence Day, because that would be most conservatives on the contrary, or the concept of independence itself? I’m going to assume you mean the latter, because some other tweets we will get to later had similar remarks. We don’t understand independence, because why? Because we believe people should have the right to a job and a home and food? Because we believe people shouldn’t be unemployed, homeless, and starving because they “didn’t work hard enough”? Yeah, screw the poor. They don’t deserve our assistance, because they screwed up, even though most people that were laid off over the past few years were because of an economic recession which was not their faults.

Speaking of having a right to a productive life. Yes, we don’t understand independence, because we want people to have a life where they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from or if they can afford to keep a roof over their head that isn’t made of cardboard and old newspapers.

So all liberals are dependent upon the government? They’re just a bunch of welfare queens scamming the system. People should work for their money. Like the trophy wives and their children who never worked a day in their lives and just mooched off of their rich husbands. They sure worked hard for their money. They deserve every penny of it and should have their taxes cut while we’re at it, since they are the job creators.

Yes, independence is a bad word to us, because we want everyone to be dependent upon the government so that they can have a house and a job and an education and a future where they feel fulfilled, even if their wallets may not be. We’ve been found out!

Conservatives use Medicaid, Social Security, police, firefighters, teachers, roads, libraries, and everything else that liberals do, they just complain about it while they’re doing it. Liberals are grateful enough that they live in a country that can provide these things to its people. If anyone is hypocrites, it’s conservatives.

Disenfranchising minorities and the poor from voting, that’s racist. Purging voter rolls, the vast majority of which are Hispanics, that’s racist. Creating laws so that cops can racially profile, that’s racist. Trying to ban abortion, that’s sexist. Trying to ban contraception, that’s sexist. Banning gay marriage, that’s homophobic. Discriminating against gays in the workplace and trying to ban them from adopting, that’s homophobic. Using the very social programmes they say are bad, that’s hypocritical. When liberals call conservatives racist, sexist, homophobic, hypocritical bigots, it’s because they are.

Now we move into the “liberals are un-American” section.

We hate America so much we now wish it hadn’t even been born. Liberals wanted to abort America, even though the Declaration of Independence was created because of liberal thought, but let’s not let facts get in the way. We still want to abort America. A very late-term abortion, since we are psychopaths who love abortions, especially late term abortions so that all the godless atheists can have more food, and want more people to get abortions, mostly white people so that the white race will end, since we also love Hispanics and blacks over white people too, especially if they are illegal immigrants who come to take jobs that the vast majority of Americans won’t take. However, we don’t want to abort any gay babies, but since being gay is entirely a choice and not something that is decided upon via genetics and biology, we will just have some babies and turn them all gay by having already gay men molest young boys to make them gay, and then America will no longer exist, since gays can’t reproduce. That’s what we want for America. That’s what all liberals want. That’s our Final Solution!

Well then… I think I may have gone a little too far there. Just maybe.

I wonder if there are actual conservatives in America who think something like that. I was being hyperbolic, but I truly want to know if someone really believes something close to what I said. I know some people believe certain aspects of it and that’s where I got most of those parts to put them together, but I wonder if someone believes all of that. I’m not sure if I would be more surprised or disappointed if there really was one person who truly did.

And now we support terrorists. Remember folks, the guy who first trained and armed those “freedom fighters” was Reagan.

Let me get this straight though. Because we believe Guantanamo Bay is a violation of human rights and that President Bush’s “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” is a false dichotomy meant to divide people, we watch Michael Moore films that honour terrorists who killed innocent people. You know how conservatives celebrate independence? Watching a tribute film to the guy who killed that abortion doctor in Kansas.

This one just doesn’t make any sense. I honestly don’t know if he’s implying that all liberals are Mexicans or that all liberals support illegal immigration because we love Mexico so much and hate America or some other nonsense like that.

We want to burn the Constitution, and apparently replace it with the South African one, while roasting marshmallows, while at the same time “attacking conservatives who want to keep America FREE & EXCEPTIONAL,” because we want to destroy the country we hate so much.

American Exceptionalism: believing America is the greatest country in the world while being the country that is 37th in healthcare, 49th in life expectancy, 7th in literacy, 22nd in science, 27th in mathematics, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, and the largest military budget which is more than the next 26 countries combined. But we are the most free, having the largest prison population in the world.

God bless America.

The Right Gets it Terribly Wrong on “Fast and Furious” Scandal

President Obama is being heavily criticised for the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” scandal that came to light following the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry by gun traffickers who were being sold guns by the ATF. The operation began when the Tuscon, Arizona branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) planned on selling guns to Mexican gun traffickers. These guns would then be tracked back to the Mexican drug cartels as part of a sting operation in hopes of finally breaking the drug cartels that have been wreaking havoc on the Mexican-American border.

The president is being criticised for asserting his executive privilege to withhold certain documents concerning the operation. Congressional Republicans, the Republican National Committee, and the Romney campaign all jumped on President Obama for this action, saying that he is going back on his promise for having a transparent government and that him and Attorney General Eric Holder, who recommended the president use his executive privilege, are trying to coverup a flubbed operation that resulted in the murder of a federal agent. They either fail to remember or simply ignore the fact that President Bush invoked his executive privilege six times. This is President Obama’s first.

The Republican controlled House of Representatives voted along party lines to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress and linking him to the failed operation and its supposed coverup. This could land Holder in prison or at least with a hefty fine, but more than likely not.

The other criticism of trying to coverup the operation, Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is chairing the Congressional probe into the matter, that the Justice Department releasing 7600 documents concerning Operation Fast and Furious should have been ample evidence that no coverup is trying to be made. The Californian Representative seemed to ignore that bit of information, and the attorney general was still voted in contempt.

President Obama and his administration are claiming that Republicans and the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are doing nothing more than politically motivated attacks to make him look bad in an election year instead of doing what they promised when they won the House in the 2010 midterms, which was creating jobs and helping the economy, seeing as they have killed almost any bill put forth by the Democrats of the Democratic president that would do such a thing.

Politicians and pundits alike on the right appear to be unaware of the fact that Operation Fast and Furious began during the Bush Administration in 2006 when it was known as Operation Wide Receiver. When Fox News had something to say about it, they conveniently left out these important details, or would simply ignore them when they were shown right to their faces. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly either do not care about the facts or will outright ignore them if they do not fit into their notions of President Obama being the Black Hitler and will do and saying almost anything in order to criticise him.

So why is it that President Obama is being blamed (again) for something that began during his predecessor’s administration?

Tea Party vs. Tea Party

As most of my followers around the interwebs know, I live in Texas (unfortunately), and the primaries for US Senate in Texas are right around the corner. Watching the GOP primaries unfold makes me laugh (when it doesn’t make me cry), because it shows the kind of in-fighting and identity crisis that the GOP is experiencing in this political climate.

Currently, the top contenders for the Republican primary seat that is being left vacant by retiring Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson (the key figure who killed the DREAM Act, so good riddance) are Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is being backed by Governor Rick Perry (you know, the guy who held that giant prayer rally in Houston), and former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, who is being backed by former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, both of whom (Perry and Palin) are Tea Party favourites. Both sides seem to be trying to call the other side moderates and that their candidate will cause the most disruption in Washington DC in order to win Tea Party support.

A spokesman for Ted Cruz’s campaign said, “…conservatives are supporting Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst to take our country back from go-along, get-along moderate politicians.” I watched a political ad today attacking Dewhurst, where they quote-mined a bunch of news articles in order to make it seem like he’s a moderate somehow. The problem with this is that Lt. Gov. Dewhurst is one of the most conservative politicians in Texas (which is a bad thing).

Now it seems that Dewhurst will win the Republican primary over Cruz. Once there, he will be going up against the Democratic candidate, which is expected to be former Texas House Representative Paul Sadler. Knowing Texas, the Democrats will lose unfortunately.

However, what it’s come down to is that conservative Americans have moved so far to the right that calling someone a liberal is overdone. They made liberal such a dirty word in America that they are moving along to the next thing: moderate. It’s bad to be a moderate. It’s bad to reach across the aisle. It’s bad to work with others like grown adults do. It’s bad to compromise, because we would rather see America suffer than have to work with those damn Democrats. We would rather kick and scream and whine to get what we want, and if we can’t get it, then no one can have anything.

The Tea Party is eclipsing, if not taking over, the Republican Party, and conservatives are becoming more and more conservative in response to claims that even the most conservative of them are moderates, which they are not. It’s a race to the right, and the losers are the American people, especially those that stand in their way. While the Tea Party is fighting itself to see who is the most conservative, it is creating an atmosphere that is extremely hostile to liberals, gay, religious and ethnic minorities, women, the poor, and anyone who is not a white, straight, male, Christian conservative.

Michelle Malkin: Bigoted Anti-Bigots?

Michelle Malkin is a conservative blogger and political commentator that often appears on Fox News and other media outlets to spout off conservative lies and propaganda, and she very recently published an op-ed article titled “Bigoted Anti-Bigots” for the National Review Online.

First off, the title. Now, she’s referring to the LGBT movement, calling it the “gay-marriage mob,” claiming that they are “guilty of the very ugly bigotry [they claim] to abhor.” It’s the common saying of, “It’s intolerant to be intolerant of the intolerant,” which is an unintelligible sentence, at best. It is not bigoted to be against the bigots who want to oppress you. If that were true, then blacks and women were being bigoted towards whites and men when they were fighting for their right to be treated equally. I am sure Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony were great big bigots in their times.

When saying that gays and liberals are being hypocritical bigots, Malkin is referring to the recent controversy over boxing champion Manny Pacquiao for “being true to his Catholic faith.” This is because in a recent interview with Examiner’s conservative contributor Granville Ampong, he supposedly mentioned Leviticus 20:13 when asked by Ampong about President Obama’s recent new stance on gay marriage. In his original post, Ampong made it highly suggestive that it was Pacquiao who brought up the Bible verse. It was presumed even more after an actual quote from the boxer where he said, “It should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of Old.”

After the USA Today, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice all reported (in that order) about the original interview, saying that Pacquiao quoted Leviticus 20:13 because of Ampong’s suggestive writing, Ampong wrote another article titled “Biased writers grossly twisted Pacquiao’s view on same-sex marriage,” where in it he blamed the writers from the USA Today and the other news sources mentioned for his terrible writing style, all without correcting his initial post.

Manny Pacquiao has since apologised for the confusion, and has said that while he is against same-sex marriage, he does not think that they should be put to death as commanded by God in Leviticus 20:13, even though he also said that God’s law should always come before man’s. So yes, Granville Ampong is a terrible journalist, Examiner needs to have more oversight of what their writers post, and Manny Pacquiao is still (only partially) a bigot for being anti-gay marriage.

Michelle Malkin, being everyone’s favourite conservative, took the side of Ampong in all this nonsense in order to blame the “politically correct bloodhounds” that are, of course, “backed by George Soros,” the right’s least favourite billionaire. I do not know what it is about conservatives, but nearly every time there is something happening in the media that they disagree with, they always try somehow to blame George Soros for it. Just because he’s rich, is not a conservative, and funds progressive causes does not make him the Anti-Christ. Calm the fuck down, people.

It is interesting, or more so mind-boggling, how Malkin is blaming the “left wing media,” even though the USA Today is not liberal or left-leaning at all, the LA Weekly is most certainly not liberal, and the Village Voice…okay, that one is. It seems that anything to the left of Fox News is, of course, part of the giant leftist conspiracy to turn your kids gay and America into a socialist state (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Near the end of her article, she says that the “bigoted anti-bigot brigade” is targeting poor, defenseless people like Rush Limbaugh, Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Catholic healthcare providers, among others, because they “refuse to conform to ‘progressive’ values.” Yeah, such a terrible thing progressive values are, like thinking that women should not have their healthcare denied to them because of someone else’s religion, that workers should have the right to unionise and not have their salaries slashed while giving tax breaks to millionaires, that gays should be treated equally for a change, and that bigots, actual bigots like Michelle Malkin, should be called for it.

My personal favourite part of the op-ed is when Malkin says that the “left wing media” is “shamelessly [demonizing] religion in the name of compassion.” So something that says gays should be put to death, along with many other people for completely arbitrary reasons, does not deserve to be demonised?

Update 19:56: A fan of my Facebook page commented on the link I posted of the original article by Michelle Malkin. They said something that I believe should be shared.

If one can actually consider intolerance of those opposed to the expansion of human rights to those that should already have them to be bigotry, particularly when those fighting against human rights have a habit of literally bullying, bashing, and beating those they oppose, then by Poseidon’s watery beard, I’ll wear THAT particular bigotry badge proudly.

Of course, in my experience it is by far mostly the prejudiced, hateful, anti-human rights crowd that call their opposition bigots for opposing their bigotry, so forgive me it I can’t properly express the amount of fucks I don’t give regarding their opinion of people who do actually stand for things like equality.

Pop Police in Public Schools

Some irony before you read this. I was writing this while drinking a Pepsi.

In recent years, bans in public schools on carbonated drinks have been put into place in several places across the country on school lunches and vending machines containing pop (it’s pop to me, if anyone calls it soda I will murder them) to make sure that kids drink healthier things. California became the first to implement any sort of a ban by banning pop in all grade schools in 2003. The Faulkton School District in South Dakota recently made it so that students had to dispose of all carbonated drinks before even entering the building.

These measures are taken in order to reduce childhood obesity, as it is on the rise in the United States with about one out of every three persons under the age of 18 either overweight or obese. However, these efforts run into many problems. Many school districts are reluctant to have these bans, because drink sales do bring in a lot of money for the schools, which is increasingly more important these days. This is understandable. With conservatives threatening public education more and more everyday, finding revenue wherever it can be found could mean the difference to a teacher’s job.

Most bans on pop have been ineffective anyway. The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that students in schools that have bans on pop are just as likely to drink other sugary drinks, such as fruit juices or sports drinks, as students in schools with no bans. This is similar to how schools that teach abstinence-only sexual education have students who have sex just as much as students who are taught actual sexual education. With pop gone, what else are kids going to drink? Water?! Don’t be ridiculous!

This gives schools less and less incentive to ban pop. However, some things are necessary for the health of children and the betterment of society. I would go one step further and ban all sugary drinks from all public schools (K-12). Not just pop, but things like sports drinks, lemonade, and other fruit juices which have just as much, if not more, sugar than most pops do. This prevents them from going around the ban and just having a Gatorade instead of a Coke (I don’t see why anyone would want a Coke in the first place though), and it actually does what the pop bans were intended for, giving kids a healthier diet so as to reduce childhood obesity in America.

In fact, let’s go another step further and ban junk food. That would severely help cut down on the consumption of processed garbage that contributes to more health problems in children. Another step just for the hell of it, ban all sugary drinks and junk food from even being allowed in public schools, similar to the restrictions put in place by the Faulkton School District.

It may sound like a “nanny-state,” because it is (not that there is anything wrong with that). Children, even teenagers, are not mentally developed enough to make their own decisions and understand the full consequences of them. Someone might say, “So the government should make those decisions for them and not their parents?” Yes, because parents cannot look out for their children when they are at school. Most parents today cannot look out for them even when they are at home, because most people are divorced and/or have jobs.

I have no problem with schools making kids eat their broccoli and drink water instead of Doritos and 67 grams of sugar in one bottle of Minute Maid. I have no problem with the government looking out for our best interests, which helps them, as they will no longer have to cover the costs of hospitals who have uninsured, obese children being treated for heart problems and diabetes that are meant for people in their forties and fifties.

Yes, banning these kinds of drinks and foods could hurt the schools if these things are no longer being sold, but if conservatives would stop sending more funding to the Pentagon and the military that should instead go to social programmes like food stamps and schools, we would not have to worry about school districts having to fire hundreds of teachers because their budgets could not afford it. Banning sugary drinks and junk food in schools will help prevent childhood obesity, which is great in it of itself (for one reason, we will no longer have to look at fat children). This in turn prevents unnecessary and expensive medical treatments, which are either extremely expensive for the middle class who can barely afford them or too expensive for the poor who simply cannot pay and the bill is sent to us taxpayers.

The Radical Right

In the Republican primaries for the US Senate in Indiana on Tuesday, long-time Senator Dick Lugar lost 40% to 60% to Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s state treasurer. This in it of itself is shocking; Lugar has been in office since 1976 and had been considered one of the greatest minds on US foreign policy.

What led to his loss is even more upsetting. During the campaign Mourdock railed against Lugar for compromising with the Democrats and reaching across the aisle. He continued to call him “Obama’s favourite Republican,” trying to paint Lugar as a moderate and friend to the Democratic Party, saying that he would oppose bipartisanship if he were in office.

This is the disturbing things about the Republican Party.

Anyone who has taken any political science or American history class will tell you that things only ever got done in Congress when parties compromised with each other and decided to work together for the benefit of the country. Someone just won a Congressional primary on the ticket of ignoring common knowledge and the slogan of “We Will Not Work With You, Only Against You.”

“Bipartisanship,” “compromise,” and “working together” have almost become dirty words to Republicans and the Tea Party. The right has become so radical that it has simply refused to do anything that would possibly get anything done if it meant being an adult and actually working with people to do what is necessary for the country.

This may be a good thing after all though. As the Tea Party ultra-nationalists alienate the moderate and establishment Republicans, they will eventually go so far to the right that they will form a third party that will split the vote for the conservatives, giving Democrats and liberals the chance to elect real progressive politicians who can bring real change to this country.

The Third Red Scare

I am sure that most people are aware of the recent comments made by fading rock star Ted Nugent concerning President Barack Obama and other members of the Democratic Party. For those who are not, let me fill you in very quickly.

At the National Rifle Association convention, Ted Nugent said on stage, “…if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” This prompted the Secret Service to contact Ted and have a nice, friendly talk with him of why he may or may not have threatened the president.

More fun comments from him at the convention were, “We are Braveheart. We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November,” and describing the Obama Administration as, “vile, evil, America-hating.” The funny, or more so scary, thing is that after he made these comments, the audience erupted into thunderous applause. It’s not that he simply thinks President Obama is a terrible president, it’s that he hates America. He might as well have said that a terrible football coach hates the football team he’s coaching.

In Florida around the same time, Rep. Allen West of Florida, who tried to defend Ted Nugent for the things he said, spoke at a town hall meeting, and when asked about how many Marxists are in Congress, he said, “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party who are members of the Communist Party.” Is it just me or does this sound an awful lot like Joseph McCarthy’s infamous talk in Congress about how he had a list of 202 Communists, which turned out to be a blank sheet of paper he was holding up, that had infiltrated the State Department, which helped kick off the Second Red Scare?

Now, the numbers West gave were not randomly pulled out of thin air like McCarthy did. He is referring to, and he admits to this, the 80 or so members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which he says is an American branch of an international communist organisation known as Comintern. The reason he believes they are communists is because he simply does not understand ideologies that are not his own and thinks that anything to the left of him is all one giant communist party, saying, “There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, socialism.”

These are just small samples of the bigoted garbage that is spewed out by the far right on a regular basis.

We are entering an age that makes it okay to say tremendously hateful and threatening things towards people who do not hold to the same outlook on politics, including the President of the United States. We are entering an age that makes it okay to divide Americans by fear-mongering. We are entering an age, if we have not already, of the Third Red Scare, when if someone says that they are not a gun-toting, homophobic, theocratic ignoramus (and proud of it), then they are a godless communist that hates America.

My Trip to the Book Store

Bored, no work, nothing to do but masturbate, tired of the books on my bookshelves that I have already read through, so I decided to go to my local Barnes and Noble that resides in one of the most conservative neighbourhoods in Texas and find some new books to read about liberalism, atheism, evolution, vampire romance, or whatever else may have caught my attention. While there, I came across a section of books labelled ‘Current Affairs.’

Most of it was books I had seen over and over again, ranging from The Audacity of Hope by President Obama to something about Sarah Palin being an idiot like usual. On a side-note, I don’t see why people still bother with Palin. She’s old news; she’s not even fun to laugh at any more.

While browsing through the section for something to quench my thirst for knowledge, I came across a specific book that made my eyebrow raise by a specific person that makes nothing of mine raise except my stress level.

On the top shelf, with its shiny, jet-black cover and blood red letters was Ann Coulter’s new book Demonic. At first, I thought it was an autobiography, but apparently the rest of the title was How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America. Like all of her other books that try to ‘debunk’ or ‘refute’ beliefs held by liberals, or at least anyone that she doesn’t like, I decided I would like to be a masochist for a few seconds and read a few pages to see what the far-right has been up to these days other than shooting up Norwegian camps filled with teenagers. Boy, was that a huge mistake. I literally opened the book to the first page that my fingers fell in between and started reading at the first paragraph that came into view.

Just that one paragraph was more than enough to make me want to bash my brains in with a rusty pickaxe. I don’t particularly remember what the chapter was even about; all I remember was the urge to hit my head against the nearest brick wall until the stupid went away. So that no one thinks I am lying about the stupid I am referring to, I decided to take a picture of said pickaxe-to-brains worthy paragraph to show other people the idiocy that is the right-wing and their propaganda.

In case the picture cannot be read, here is the paragraph I was talking about.

‘The first exception to Americans’ abhorrence of mob action came in the sixties. The civil rights movement gave mobs a halo. Disgust with Jim Crow laws overcame Americans’ natural aversion to disorder. At the outset, the civil rights movement consisted of peaceful citizens battling mobs that were oppressing blacks – mobs that were, as always, led by Democrats. Orval Faubus, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – Democrats all.’

She might as well just say, ‘These people called themselves Democrats a long time ago and were against blacks when political parties believed in completely different things than they do today, therefore all modern Democrats are bad people and against blacks,’ even though almost ninety-percent of all blacks vote Democrat.

What Ann Coulter doesn’t seem to know, or refuses to accept, is that before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democrats were the conservative party and the Republicans were the liberal party. After that act, the parties switched platforms after a series of events and disagreements over policy and ideology. If one were to talk to some senior citizens who were Democrats back in the good ol’ days, they will most likely say how they switched parties when the Republicans became the conservatives, because back in the good ol’ days, the Democrats were the conservatives. Either Ann Coulter is that historically illiterate, which would not be surprising one bit, or she is purposely deceiving her historically illiterate audience to try to demonise the Democratic Party, because she knows that her audience is the type that will believe almost anything without any proper evidence as long as it fits in with their preconceived notions, hence why most conservatives are creationist Christians, including Ann Coulter.

But Ann Cuntler is not the only face-palming fun that I had while at the book store. Right under her/it were the Glenn Beck books about the same stuff; only difference is that they had a slightly less unattractive conservative on the cover.

Along with the usual rhetoric about how liberals are evil and how President Obama is going to ruin the country somehow by implementing this horrible thing called socialism, I noticed his book Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine.

Apparently, what America’s favourite class-clown doesn’t seem to realise is that Thomas Paine was a hardcore liberal that spoke out against the ‘free market’ and wanted government regulations over corporations to make sure that they did not become too powerful. Paine saw government as a necessary evil, but saw that everyone deserved a free education and help from the government and that all social programmes would be paid for by taxes. If one thought that Thomas Paine was in any way, shape, or form like Glenn Beck or was at all similar to a conservative at the beginning of this entry, I suggest actually reading some of Paine’s works, especially Agrarian Justice and The Necessity of Taxation. After reading those, go listen to one of Beck’s radio shows, since he’s no longer on Fox News, and see if you can refrain from laughing when he tries to claim that Thomas Paine was the equivalent of a modern-day conservative.

But wait, that’s not all!

I had even more fun in the ‘Current Affairs’ section when I came across this little gem of right-wing idiocy. This one was right next to Ann Coulter’s book, so I think we all know where this is going.

This one is called Revolt! How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs, A Patriot’s Guide by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.

I love how it’s apparently ‘patriotic’ when one goes against President Obama’s supposed socialism, but when it was against President Bush’s fascism, it’s damn near treason.

I have always wanted to ask this to a conservative who actually thinks that President Obama is a socialist/communist/Marxist/whatever-other-terms-the-right-uses-to-scare-its-sheeple, but could you please give me an example of President Obama wanting to implement socialism in America?

He lowered taxes and is going to keep them there for another two years; he’s caved to almost every Republican demand when it comes to the economy; he watered down the healthcare bill so much that it might as well have never existed; he constantly is putting conservatives in office over liberals and progressives. I need an example, please. I guess the closest one can come to socialism with President Obama is how he wants to…I honestly don’t know.

Now, I’m not the biggest fan of President Obama, but I would sooner vote for him than any candidate the GOP has been lining up for us to point and laugh at.

So yes, that was my adventure to the book store. In the end, I got a book by Paul Krugman in order to wash away the stupid.

Amendment as of the 28th of July

I headed back to the same Barnes and Noble a few days later to find a book that had to do with religion/atheism, but instead I came across another piece of conservative propaganda and stupidity in the ‘Current Affairs’ section again; I think the stupid just draws me to itself so that I may mock it. Right next to Glenn Beck’s Common (Non)Sense was another one of his self-pwning pieces. This one was called The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century. In other words, ‘I’m going to slant history to favour my side as much as I can to sway gullible sheep into agreeing with me.’

Glenn Beck does not seem to have any understanding of American history, which is completely understandable seeing as how he has no understanding of what Thomas Paine actually stood for, because although the Federalist Party could be loosely construed to be similar to modern conservative values in some fields, the Federalist Party were in favour of just that, a federal power, hence the freaking name. I thought Glenn Beck wanted less federal power, isn’t that why his latter mentioned book is about how we need to stop the ‘out-of-control’ federal government? As with Ann Coulter, either Glenn Beck knows this, that the Federalist Party were for a stronger federal government and the Anti-Federalists were for more state control (which is something that I thought conservatives like Glenn Beck wanted in America today), and he is purposely deceiving his audience, or he doesn’t know anything about the history of the country he was born in and claims to love. At this point, I’m still unsure as to which one is more likely.