Listen up

Listen up, profiteers & climate change deniers

This is our Father’s world, and to our listening ears

All nature sings, and ‘round us rings the music of the spheres.

This is our Father’s world. We rest us in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;

His hand the wonders wrought.

This is our Father’s world. He shines in all that’s fair;

In the rustling grass we hear Him pass;

He speaks to us everywhere.

This is our Father’s world. Oh, let us ne’er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong,

The battle is not done ‘til earth and heaven are one.

A Pledge for the Tea Party Faithful

March 31st, 2010

Dear Tea Party Friend,
Please sign this pledge:

I,________________, as a member of the Tea Party, pledge that I will not use “socialist” programs such as Social Security, Medicare, other medical coverage provided by the Feds. I will not take out loans from the Feds. I will not use the Federal highways, roads, fire departments, the 911 emergency
 system, police departments or programs of any type benefiting from Federal funds. I will not accept protection from the Armed Forces.
I will not use libraries,
schools, cell or land phones since they use Federal money. I will avoid television, radio stations, and the internet. I will not use Federal workers to guide my plane to an airport, or use public transportation.
I will avoid anything that uses Federal money, including free wood from national forests, hunting land, fishing resources,
and camp grounds in national parks. I will also take a chance on the food I eat and the water I drink, since I will have to test them myself along with the wastewater leaving my property.
If I am using or benefiting from any Federal program, I will immediately stop and repay the money.

Sincerely,______________ Date___________

1. 
   
2. Not All Texans Are Fanatics

   Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
   -George Orwell, 1984

   I must begin this statement by establishing my identity and background. I was born in Texas, and but for a few years just after college, have lived in this state for all of my life. I was educated in the public school systems of three progressively larger Texas cities and graduated from a university in Texas. This is by way of announcing that I am proud of my state, but I am not at all proud of the current state of my state.

   I am, first of all, not proud that we have a sitting governor who, if justice were done, should have been removed from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which states: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

   The Governor of Texas who now asks to be elected to yet another term did just that; gave aid or comfort to those who proclaim their enmity toward our country when he stood before an anti-government rally and suggested secession of this state from the union. He has continued to suggest secession without cessation and has aligned himself with those in at least one other state who also speak of secession.

   Second of all, I am not proud that the State Board of Education of Texas has acted in such a way as to give rise to the belief that the entire population of this state is, to put it gently, loco. Here is a suggestion for correcting the undue influence the 10 uber-conservative members of that body apparently have regarding the adoption of information to be contained in textbooks that will serve the nation’s schools.

   Texas has always been very proud of its Alamo defenders. The story of Colonel Travis’s line in the sand is one Texans learn early on. It is time to draw another line in the sand and to ask our sister states to cross over and stand with us to defend facts that should be available to students who deserve unbiased information. Those who are the future of this nation should receive education not indoctrination.

   I call upon the other 49 states to join those of us in Texas who deplore the actions of this board. I suggest that they can do this by telling publishers of textbooks that they will not buy any materials that incorporate the omissions and/or misstatements demanded by the Texas Ten. The only thing that works in the country today seems to be monetary pressure. If there is a blanket refusal to spend state money on the incomplete, slanted material proposed by the Texas Ten, we might see some reason returned to this process. Within our own state, I call for a serious effort to discover a way to rid this board of those who would pervert the facts in order to promote political and religious views. George Orwell warned us 62 years ago that tyranny through force is but one form of tyranny. Tyranny through control of information is another more insidious form.

   1

Religious Freedom Isn't Free Either

It’s always amusing to hear the assertion that this nation was founded by people seeking religious freedom. That is correct to the point that the Puritans were seeking religious freedom for themselves, but not for anyone else. The Puritans were every bit as rigid and ruthless as any religious zealots of today. For example, consider Anne Hutchison, a woman who was persecuted because of her divergence from the Puritan orthodoxy. “Hutchinson preached that one could achieve salvation through a direct intuition from God. Puritan leaders argued salvation could be achieved only by obeying the laws of the church and government. To Hutchinson, the church’s view was a corruption of the true spirit of the Puritan movement and would produce a colony of hypocrites, pious only on the outside…” Both Hutchison and Roger Williams left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of the freedom of belief that the Puritan sect had forbidden.

Theocracy didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. True religious freedom in this country has meant that one is free to hold any religious belief, conservative, liberal or none at all. There are those in this land who seem willing to return to the days of reflex religious orthodoxy. Those who appear to prefer to have an established state religion perhaps should look to the recent events in Iran where an election was determined, not by the voters, but by the one vote that counted: that of the Grand Ayatollah.

The Puritans were seeking freedom to believe and worship their way. It should be remembered that belief in the right to religious freedom has been a steadily evolving concept over the life of our country. We should never allow it to be perverted or abandoned. It is worth fighting for.

Amendment I
 :

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

Remembering May 17, 1954

A new president was elected last November. For a day or two thereafter, I allowed myself the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps this country was at last growing up….then I remembered May 17, 1954.

On that day, I was a college student. The U.S. Supreme Court had voted 9-0 to end segregation in public schools. I had a friend who was not native to the South. We had a serious discussion in which she, as I allowed myself to do these many years later, thought that perhaps, just perhaps… the country was at last going to grow up, abide by the court’s decision and that everything would work out just fine. Sadly, I knew better and tried to explain that the troubles had just begun and that there was and would always be an element in the South as well as in the entire country that would never peaceably abide by such a decision. They didn’t. They still aren’t going to peaceably abide by a decision, not one by the Supreme Court this time, but one by the electorate.

If Barak Obama were as evil as the Tea Bagger/Klan class would have us believe, he would have already declared himself President for Life, ordered the silencing of the protests of last August and dealt with the march in Washington, D.C. in the same manner as that used against the WW I Bonus Marchers in 1932.

The progeny of those who fought integration is on the march egged on by propaganda that is dispensed with the apparent complicity and blessing of the movement that has taken the Republican Party. There’s a whole lot of lying going on from that source. And that’s the truth.