Dawn of Reason Has Broken For Sure

Increasingly, signs of intelligent life emerge. I think everyone with tolerant, thinking natures have been saddened by the past decade, with the right wing casting off all restraints to forge to a majority by instigating class warfare. The intensity of their desires for power and of their exercise of it for self-enrichment is very reminiscent of the priests and the pharoahs of biblical times, who used the names of their gods to enslave their followers and accumulate wealth.

Polls showing Americans see that we are on the wrong track are encouraging. Today, a poll showing tolerance for other religions, despite all the anti-'islamofascist' cant by the wingers, shows that we are on an upward path from the past two presidential terms of divisive propaganda.

Most Americans say they are absolutely sure about standards of right and wrong – and are just as sure that no one religion holds an exclusive franchise on the truth.
(snip)
The researchers also said the results indicate that it's wrong to assume that Americans can be pigeonholed on the basis of religion. There is a wide diversity of beliefs and behaviors, even among people who say they belong to the same religious group, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum with a long history of studying faith-related polls.

"I was stunned by just how diverse it was," he said. "The diversity goes all the way down."
(snip)
Depending on the question, from a third to half of those who said they belong to Evangelical churches took religious and political positions generally associated with the religious right. If those results are accurate, 10 to 15 percent of voting-age Americans would be in that group.

Other questions indicated potential majorities for some Democratic policy positions, the researchers said. Large majorities of most religious traditions said that the government should do more to help needy Americans, even if it means going deeper into debt, that stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost, and that diplomacy rather than military strength is the best way to ensure peace.

Hot-button issues that have strong Republican support did not fare as well. A slim majority, 51 percent, said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 50 percent said that homosexuality should be accepted by society. (Emphasis added.)

Having up close and personal ties with a psychotic who chooses prolife stances over family and reason, I tend to associate religion with that element. I commented to that effect while introducing the article cited above, this morning at Eschaton. The following conversation was produced:

"Ruth: me, I have a lot of trouble with abortion. I never, even as a ten year old, well before Roe v Wade, saw that as an easy one. And part of that emerges from a life lived mostly making love to people I care a lot about, where a child conceived therein would be of deep significance to me. I wind up in favor of choice precisely, rather than in spite of, the fact that I find the issue complex in a way that some do not; I conclude, every time I think of it, that the only possible stance is to allow the complexities to be resolved, as best as possible, by a woman acting as an autonomous agent, doing the best she can as the owner of the uterus in question.

I have no problem with people who want to live 'pro life'. I do have a problem when they arrogate to themselves the right to assume that their answer should be universally applied to lives they have no relationship to or knowledge of whatever. And abortion will continue whether or not it's legal. Ban it, and the rich and well-connected will go back to getting therapeutic D&Cs for dysmenorrhoea, and the poor will get coat hangers shoved up their uteri, and sometimes die, horribly, as a consequence.
ProfWombat | 06.24.08 - 9:11 am | "

From me (Ruth): That prolife stance taken as a political position is the one I encounter, and it is totally twisted against the actual woman facing the actual decision, which includes me and most women at one time or another.

A real prolife feeling would have to include a respect for actual life, which can be a pretty rotten prospect for a fetus in a wrong place at a wrong time for a wrong reason.

ProfW followed with a reminder that real prolife belief would include rejection of killing.

There is a positive appeal of goodness that has for much of mankind's history been associated with religion, and the false ones that depend on hate try to latch onto the goodness and turn it to the ends of evil. We see that in the dark side of the right wing, and especially in the Cheney appeal to the worst nature in their followers.

There is a commandment that anticipated that: 7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. That's from Exodus 20. A lot of Sunday Schools teach that as 'not taking the name of the Lord in vain', and apply it to cussing to keep those little fellas from using rough language, but it means much, much more. It refers to kinds of manipulation that seek power from the misuse of language that should help and benefit us all.

Eventually, lies disprove themselves. It's happening now, like dawn after a storm, and the discrediting of such mantras as that - our society is damaged by tolerance, diversity is undermining our strength, war is right as a way to impose our ideals on others, individual rights are in the way of peace through war, and that the rich will take care of us all if we just take all the laws out of their way - is being done by the takeovers those evils have produced. Seeing the idols of the right topple is satisfying, but it isn't an end, with the pre-eminence of reason tied up forever.

We relaxed after Nixon left, but the evil didn't. They kept working and won power which they've used to take us into the hideous hole they've dug. We have to fill in the hole, and that will take some time. Then we have to take away their shovels - the powers of high office.